Ever wonder what happens to words in emails? It's just bits and bytes. Turn the power off and they're all gone, right? How do you put this stuff in museums? What happens when your whole world streams to you through a screen and the only way you can interact with it is a keyboard, maybe a digital camera?
None of this is real and you can't touch any of it. You can be whoever you want to be with a keyboard in hand.
I was sifting through some old stuff- I often like to pull out my writings and see what I wrote a year ago today, two years ago, etc... Most days, I don't have much. But today I stumbled across something from our Europe trip last year. It's not a year ago today, more like a year and four weeks. Let me share, verbatim.
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Interlude 2
Praha. Praha. In many ways, a dead end. 15 years after the revolution, beggars everywhere, pissing in corners, bars overrun by loud Americans. Here I find a shot of absinthe and a reasonably local place. And a one-eyed bartender. Jesus. Isn't there supposed to be something symbolic about that? There's a parachute here in a bar that seems to be called The Crow. I'm smoking, drinking, and looking like some sort of German tourist idiot here. Ahh, the crazy twists of the travelling life. I don't even know what to believe anymore. I wonder why it is that men presented with a strange situation, in a foreign bar, figure that drink and cigarettes will ensure some sense of seclusion.
To the people in this bar, the two bartenders and the two kids here at the bar, the language barrier makes me look like an idiot- but the pen! The paper! I'm taking pictures of them and they know it, and they are as mystified by what I write as I am by what they speak. So this, at the end of the day, is what it means to be a foreigner. Far out of my element- even my rudimentary German is hardly sufficient to survive here. At least I can order a beer, an absinthe, a pack of the same Lucky Strikes that killed my grandfather. But I still wonder- what does it mean to find a one-eyed bartender in a bar called The Crow (U Kozel)?
Czech is a mystery- a cloaked language. The barrier is high. I hardly even understand the looks, the expressions. This is truly the other side of the world- though not as far out as Jay, who at this moment wanders the mountains of Romania.
And Jesus! I sit here and watch a music video, Rage Against The Machine, that points out the absurdity of the American situation! Fuck it. Fuck this world and all it contains. And, Mr. Kafka, what's next? Will I become a cockroach?
Am I doing anything, anything at all, other than rapidly speeding my slide to death? What the hell is this life? Why does it all come to pieces here in Praha? I hardly even know what my eyes see here. Here, truly, I feel the language barrier, the tremendous foreign-ness of a city where every step threatens to dump me lost in a maze-like alley going nowhere. God, I feel so fucking alive and so fucking dead at the same time! I feel the throbbing pain of my predecessors- Sterne, Wilde, Ginsberg- always Ginsberg- and I throm my hands up at it all. I see a model of a '57 Chevy. And I can't even tell the people here that I took my driving test in a '55 Bel-Air, that my dad loved Chevys and that he died broken and disappointed. Fuck fuck fuck. Reno means nothing to these people. For that matter, Sweden means nothing. I'm losing my mind again. It feels great.
The beer here is shit. Pure shit. I'd love to drink up and leave, but I can't explain to the bartender that the beer tastes like crap and I'm losing my mind. What would I say? "Ja. Guten Tag. Mein Vogel ist sehr gross, und deine Birre schmeckt als Scheiss." They'd hardly understand. A bartender in a Czech bar where beer is less than a dollar a pint doesn't need to speak any language other than Czech, and a fucked-up drunk who is neither an author nor an artist nor a musician doesn't need to say anything other than "another". Don't even need to say that- they'll refill my beer before it's empty. An endless loop.
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I saw a lot of mixed up poems about the elections in 2004. They need a few more years to breathe.
From November 14-15, 2004
The last dark clouds pass over leaving behind
patches of blue, yet
Lightning over ozone-smelling hills cleansed by
tremendous showers we thought would never
calm, so loud that the cats hid under
curtains
Like steam billowing from a laboring engine, new
clouds collect themselves from the damp
ruin of the last storm
And wearied by fear that the rain would
never stop, we pretend that the blue sky
will spread and dissolve the next storm
Even though we know that it will rain just
as hard as the last thunder,
And we won't have time to clean the gutters
or dry the patio chairs before it comes
down harder, rushing off the eaves
Trying to clean this Earth once again, trying
to flush us all away with the dirt, the
leaves, and everyone else who can't hold on
to the last trees as the wall of water
carries us out to the ocean and
drowns us in the weight of every last failure.
-----
Every eye on a Berlin sidewalk tones
its vision of architectural mishmashes of
communist block apartments and 20th century
ripoffs of classicism
With the color of a jackbooted soldier stepping
on the head of a young socialist until
the jaw cracks and the gutter water
runs a sweet thick crimson
All in that street, they stopped and
knew since they were still walking and
chanting, it wasn't real and that
boy lying purple on the sidewalk
was just that, something other.
But every eye knows that too many bodies
laying on streets dead for faith in
humanity, means that
If I want to keep complaining about
the graffiti and the discordant
structures, it's best if I just
walk on and hope that
No one sees the vicious thought I
have of tearing it all to pieces
with my bare hands and
taking it all back for my
family, blood-stained and dead.
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And then, November 14, 2005
Fourth grade, Mr. Davis' class, on the edge of
the playground, we fantasized about Dungeons
and Dragons, invented tall tales to elevate
imagined figures, based on old mythologies.
I knew nothing of Chinese religion, but a
drawing of a hobbled old man leaning on a
cane brought back visions of Yoda, and
I guess I idolized that sage wisdom
they embodied, the idea of never saying
the wrong thing in public, always knowing the
right words, the right manners....
That's why I must have always acted
the part of the ancient Chinese god.
So, I wonder what my friends, both Chinese,
aspired to when they modelled the wild
Anglo figures of Odin and Loki, those
masters of war, chaos, death...?
These thoughts don't occur to a nine-year-old
boy who calls his teacher a communist.
But they surface now, as if I'm still
there amidst icy pools, the portable classroom, and...
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And two from the last few weeks....
Armageddon again always on the horizon,
always today's red scare marching over the border,
across the sky, through your bedroom window.
TONIGHT, they say!
Trouble, I tell you, trouble I am! You won't believe
the magic tricks lurking
under this sorcerer's hat
Don't say hi, walk on by, pretend
nothing's going on here
this is a waking abyss
just look at it the wrong way
just ask a couple questions
and BOOM! You're there, wake up
three weeks later on a drug-filled
yellow train somewhere in a flat country
where fantasies don't lie and
work doesn't get in the way,
you may be face down in the pasture,
when you finally come 'round,
and the dawn
as quiet as Glacier Point, Yosemite,
5 AM, and you didn't know where you
were going then, either.
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Rise and find the new directive!
Rise and find the new perspective!
Hallucinate! Infuriate!
Dive in to the shambles!
Don't deteriorate!
Invigorate!
Eliminate hate! Berate!
Jazz like folds marijuana skies
countdown to electronic takeoff
land crash reassess recalibrate
piss all over Persian rugs
rewrite the rules, obey none other
come back to where
you recognize the disease,
now find the cure,
find the vaccine,
find the people who deserve to take it,
find the rest who deserve to rot away.
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Enough madness to get through the season. Next stop, hopefully, is print. Looking to print photos, random musings, cultural observations, and LETTERS! Yes, letters! But only mailed, written letters. Real stuff, something we can touch, something that feels like more than just poking at keys when you write it. I'm not saying that we won't type it and print it that way, but I want to hold on to anything that goes in.
Don't know what the title will be, don't know whether or how we'll sell it, don't know if it'll ever even happen. But you gotta have dreams.
Should you want to send a letter,
The Narcissistic Flaneur
xxxx SE xxst Ave
Portland, OR 97215
Don't let anyone else tell you what your eyes see.
