Lust with Wings...

Anal Peppers and Word Excursions on the Aegean Sea

2012-01-15T18:21:00.002-05:00

An accidental escape from Istanbul on a southbound Aegean adventure. Moneyless on our way to Muǧla, stopping autos outside of olive orchards with thumbs and accordions and cardboard signs. Riding on the backs of packs of street dogs equally opportunistic in their willingness to sleep in any warm bed. Our legacy of hitchhiked parking lots and trash cans and sliding glass doors. The sound of highway traffic at night. The white light of streetlights in puddles.

Left behind to roll down hills at 2am in cars with minty men valleying at the bottom into a village crumbling to the sea. Akyaka. Her unwillingness to get into cars with kurds the reason for our late coming. Arriving to a czech girl who doesn't mind being judged a gypsy mess. Streets lined with orange trees. Red roof. Coffee colored wood carved ottoman orient on white greekspeaking houses filled with turkish population replacements.

Compliments I can't keep in my throat and the swift punches that follow from my spastic paranoic companion, a one girl turkish circus who questions my every intention with a giddy hop and a sudden stop to talk while we walk.

Taking her up a mountain past beehives and chicken coops and shotgun shells and strategically placed seaside overlooks which really do illuminate a special blue in this corner of the old sea sailed since Greek grandmas and grandpas first figured out how to swim. They didn't stop to take pictures. We played on a playground like the little angels we are and then we hurried into the woods.

There we wallowed like gods in the mud of a ravine. She and her twin brother like the same mythological creature who can change sexes. I see him in her face and frustration and the same pattern of pubic hair. She tastes like him with the same big lips but she's all aflutter and more eager to bite. I see her sign her signature in the purple ink of my blossoming bruises.

I thought she'd be scared but the mud is nothing. It's everywhere. Also the drop of cold water that falls first on my back then on hers when she's on top. The way she pulls my cock out and gets herself off with it despite the vulnerable sensitivity of prolonged intense contact with the head. The cold droplet still dropping. We hike down dirty and brown to sip Sahlep at the seaside, my cum drying in her panties.

The arguments about God, evolution, anything. She's an eternal muslim. I, a reluctant agnostic. She's not afraid to say Mohammed with her hand down my pants. She's not afraid to use her nails when I don't agree. She's not afraid.

Hitchhiking back to Istanbul. Eternal returns. Silent otostop mustached men or young boys. Never any women in Turkey. All the cars we can stop woth one little finger. All the kilometers that run around mountains and on ferries over the Marmara.

Hours and weeks and adventures I escape with the flick of a thumb, the snap of a finger. But at night they come again. Pide and çorba begged from strangers at rest stops. I don't have a single lira. Still hungry I eat the condiments. Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers and Owen ate the whole jar. My burning mouth soothed itself with saliva salve but now I'm home and the hot snack is having a star-studded finale. A flaming anus is its magnum opus. A straining anus in pain is its final burning bow. I shower in the afterglow.

Waking again in my Lil' Dixie Kasımpaşa refuge, a southerner consoled in his confederate consolate. My housemates awedly await as I turn up my sack of spoils -- a flutter of glittery letters. Each adventure away into Anatolia is a vocabulary mission. On these word excursions we endeavor to collect the precious and semi-precious utterances of Turkish tongues straight from mustached mouths and bind them in our notebooks for later reassembly when we'll use them again for our own linguistic purposes. Learning a language becomes a bit like being a pirate, or, at best, an art forger.

Back in my lair, as I write in my bed, I wonder if I ever even left. From this particular point of view, the only evidence of my adventure is the bruises on my arms, the sting in my ass, and the new cardboard sign on my wall 'Muǧla'.

The Futurenaut

2011-12-31T06:21:00.005-05:00

Oh God Damn it

B4

He can't even partake of his secret personal rituals because the movement of his interior history has evolved from mere personal mythology to a whole one man culture and in that one man culture's current counter-culture scene his private personal rituals are considered passé. It's hard to write from a place of innocence when he is the judge. No one has less sympathy.

He might just die here this way, with his laptop on his chest and his cock in his hand and no one there to clean up the

B Gin*
*Because on New Years it's okay to start drinking before you get out of bed.

Kaymak made from water buffalo milk. Dessert of quince baked in yufka. Then, the moment it spills steaming and buttery down his beard, Beata climbs the stairs and he's got to dodge the sting of her keen, no-nonsense sensibility. It's a difficult game, but understanding her english is even harder.

Yet, he found her constant critique and commentary endlessly amusing and can hardly imagine his home without the weight of her tiny-bodied balloonlike personhood and the blunt-force trauma of her exhausting company. Not to mention the snoring.

They shared fancy cigarillos on Tarlabaşı stoops and Kasımpaşa rooftops. Lung suicide, but it smells nice.

MidLulz

Finding that eventually if he writes a novel, it will just be a string of facebook statuses, text messages, couchsurfing references, conversations and shameless boasts about his sexuality and intelligence.

The first forms of writing were for tax records. Imagine going through that literature searching for inspiration. Later, people learned to write their thoughts and stories. But imagine future communities of readers bored by the very idea that we'd want to record our personal lives on millions of useless sheets of paper. We'd want to fill harddrives and internets, blogs and books and kindles and cassette tapes with primate dialogue. With babbling streams of consciousness. Obviously if they'd been more aware they'd have realized how little will or volition goes into these endless inkblots.

It's an automatic function of the electric octopus floating in every monkey's skulltank and here we sit proudly chuckling to ourselves, chimpanzee champions who bested the beasts and won ourselves the right to shit in the watering hole, all the while preserving our echolalic brain-bowel movements in primitive scrawling paperbound dialogues.

His room is next to the bathroom. His roommates don't want to know what he knows about their precious private piss and poop periods. Nevertheless, he'll tell the whole internet.

He seems to remember becoming so quote entangled in the emotional entrails of certain people that he mightn't quote sort out the spoof for a lifetime. The attempts at extrication have been delicate, painful, and fruitless because of the sheer vested ingrowth. It seemed romantic at the time but now he's got regrets because he's across time and geography but he's got a network of erotic intestines stretching across continents like fiber-optic bile channels.

And when it's lunchtime they're all facing the digested remains of his breakfast while eating dinner in five time zones. He once peeled the whole top layer of skin off his lips and swallowed it just so he could kiss one of his entrusted encrusted colon cronies on the other side of the sausage fest.

Not to mention some of the water buffalo hipster hippo seven stomached cud-chewing unruminated bullshit that came his way via GI tracts stretched like yarn and tin cans across rooftops halfway around earth's orbit.

Especially awkward are the bits of shit and red hair balls which roll out the bottom line, coming from a fragrantly far-away species of endangered tiger which no longer speaks to poaching boasting posers like him.

Game Over

His head like his house, full of languages, overflowing with unwashed philosophers and bags of garbage and separated recycling that will never be taken out. Poland and Holland at war for a dirty bathroom and a toilet that doesn't flush correctly.

His day, with parties looming creepily over the little things he really should probably do first.

The last page in his notebook which he really didn't mean to finish now, here, in a way that provides conceptual continuity and resurrects a personal ritual (meant to be performed in view of a God he'd decided wasn't watching despite the reports of high ratings which came in season after season and renewed the show for additional epileptic episodes), a ritual invented by a teenager he thought he no longer was, who had failed to become one with everything because it turned out he was alone in the universe.

Aft

On some future New Years he will look back, as he always does, to previous New Years wondering where he was and what he was doing. Here you are, asshole, and you ain't doing bullshit. Awake three hours already and you're still in bed writing, flipping an online coin to decide whether you should masturbate now or wait for your boyfriend to get here.

2011-12-28T05:57:00.000-05:00

I'm getting teased for being a pragmatist by two well-coiffed Poles. If only they knew how I was flirting with my doubts- my secret worry that I'm not really an atheist. That which is my life seems uncannily to be winking at me. Like a portrait, the world is following me with its eyes, though I know I'm alone in the hallway.

Today I won a piano contest and free tickets to see the Moscow Radio Orchestra play Petrushka, which is one of my favorite ballets. As I rode the metro home I was dancing.

The other night I watched my friends, on Gadulka, accordion, drum and saxophone seduce an entire barfull of initially suspicious listeners. I replay the recording and can almost pray for that kind of musical communion.

As in the orchestra, violin bows pointing out in sewing sawing motions all the million trajectories of sounds written a hundred years ago and read from ink dots on paper. A ballet, and the only dancer is the old man with the baton sashaying across the conductor's platform, sequined with sweat and waving his arms.

In the bar, it is as if the instruments had no players. They lean into each other like lovers licking tongues and swirling lips. The microphone somehow catches the cloud of moist gaseous music and releases it into the atmosphere of the internet.

My spanish professor dissected generalizations as she drove me in her SUV. Her family in the car. Pride swelling between the seatbelts.

She took me to see a tango concert in an art gallery. The wine was free. The shrill tones of the bandeonon climbed stepwise up the cold white walls and slid down the neck of the guitar.

There's a spunky polish critic in my bed as well. Two in the room. One on my bed. House overflowing with couchsurfing philosophers.

'I judge people mostly upon their tastes in reading and their hairstyle.' My guests made it easy. Their profile was just a photo of their haircuts and a list of authors. Now here they are, two professors, professing.

2011-12-21T11:58:00.000-05:00

My Turkish friends ignore me
when their heads are too beautiful
even when we've only drank a few sips
of a joint.

Suddenly,
It's an empty universe
and I'm not in it.

Another Haiku

2011-12-19T11:57:00.000-05:00

Looks in the mirror
his jealousy of himself
a diarrhea green.

Mercury in Retrospect

2011-12-18T19:55:00.001-05:00

Waking up next to something which might best be described as a cigarette butt shoved in a crushed beer can (only in human form, though no less damp or maloderous), a man who isn't called Mercury*'s first thought comes in a panicked rush which manifests itself as a sort of manic only-semi-conscious nearly eyes-closed search for its object.

He remembered worrying about losing the button from his pants, which had popped off at some point during his adventure the night before. As he continued, now almost open-eyedly, though at risk of awakening the hoary human compost pile, to pat the sheet draped over the couch he had slept on in search of the button, he remembered pocketing the it and immediately jammed his hand into the little cotton hip pouch common to nearly all garments worn on the hips of westerners (especially male ones).

The pocket was empty and, unfortunately, the hand he'd used had been the one that Mercury was balancing his semi-prostrate-self upon and his erect upper body toppled, bringing the top of his already hung-over head into high velocity contact with the side of the obligatory small table which loyally accompanied and partnered with and complimented, and helped illuminate the couch.

The shock was enough to fully awaken him and he noted with distaste** that the button he was frantically searching for was actually right and safely there with his phone and the other odd and not so odd items usually removed from pockets and placed on humble couch-accompanying tables before sleep.

So, he'd awoken adrenalized and worried, then further adrenalized and actually injured and frustrated himself today, already, before even properly waking up. In addition, what Mercury had all night taken for a bedmate was actually several couch cushions and that sucked for a variety of reasons;

A) Because the smell of sour body and cigarette butt coming from the three areas of dampness on the pillows (one of which may actually have been beer, but two of which were visibly identifiable as bodily fluids***) likely originated with parts of Mercury's person.

B) Because his chivalrous assumption of uncomfortably accomodating sleeping positions for the benefit of a potential cuddle buddy had been pathetically unnecessary.

and (worst) C) Because it meant he hadn't actually gotten laid last night.

*henceforth referred to as Mercury
**Actually, the distaste was coming from his mouth and was more directly related to the hot dog Mercury had not yet recalled consuming at 3:37AM after leaving the bar.
***Thereby rendering the pillows marginally human, since they may in fact have hosted living human DNA.

But Mercury still had a good feeling about the night before. He hadn't been too self-conscious about being a foreigner at the party. He'd spoken confidently and, more importantly, listened confidently in the (for him) backwards language of the country he lived in. He'd even semi-humorously responded almost on time to one or two jokes about his nationality.

The guests had all enjoyed themselves despite the perceived and remarked upon abundance of males vs dearth of females (there being perhaps a 2:1 ratio at first, which shifted toward balance later in the evening).

The hosts, who Mercury had been hanging out with regularly, seemed to be graduating from mere new-friends-in-a-new-town to genuine besties -- which is to say that a certain comfort, a familiarness with nessipisms and idiosyncracies, a casual composition of inside jokes and interpersonal mythology, and a casual but platonic bodily intimacy were emerging.

III

So, once the shock of his dramatic but anticlimactic wake up had worn off, the worst Mercury felt was a pressing need to urinate (not yet worth heeding, since inevitably he'd soon be called upon to undertake a related, but decidedly greater task when his intestines had warmed up). He picked up his book and read.

When he finally did have to shit, he took the book with him and, afterward, while letting the toilet tank refill so that he could make an unfortunately necessary second attempt at flushing, he decided he was so impressed by his book's authors' prose that he would write, for the first time in a while, something fictional.

He flushed, then again lamented (mostly, actually, for your sake) that everything he'd written lately had been either simple happy diaretical piss-yellow recountings of events in his daily life, similar accounts written with a snotty, more exotic flair (which made him feel travel-bloggy and idiotic), or solipsistic, diarrhea-green-with-jealousy-for-himself, arty farty bullshit pieces (often written in French).

After his third and finally successful flush of his friends runny toilet, Mercury set about writing the piece of fiction, right there in the bathroom, before the air had cleared.

But it was at about this point, while he was intemittedly writing and distractedly using his friends' comb to part his hair in different places and angling his face differently toward the mirror while trying on the three pairs of glasses that were on the bathroom counter, that Mercury realized that just because he'd changed the perspective and the name didn't make the story fictional or the character any less the same guy who the whole rest of his diary was about.

It took three additional flushes to clear the toilet of the 9 pages of his work of fiction. The last flush elicited a feeble call from his sleeping friend to ensure that all was well in there.

Mercury stepped out and, instead of writing fiction, picked up the beer bottles and washed the wine glasses, rearranged the furniture, (admittedly took a facebook photo of himself in last night's outfit), and started to cook breakfast for his friends in their little kitchen.

Burning Garbage

2011-12-16T19:38:00.000-05:00

Oh, you great garbageburners of Kasımpaşa. You're our favorite scapegoats. You're the reason why the streets are hazy an stink. You're the reason why our laundry ends up flaked in ash when we hang it to dry.

There's no firewood in Istanbul. Space heaters drive up your electric bill. Central heating and insulation are luxuries you cannot afford. I'm tired of the smell, but you're probably just as tired of breathing poison.

Today I had brunch with a garbageburner. I would never have suspected him. He clipped the straw off a broom for kindling, then tore up cardboard to feed the burning chair, which he had broken and shoved into his aluminum or steel stove. 'It's always eating,' he said. I tried not to gag as he dropped a shiny, colored packed into the flame. I swear it burned a chemical green for just a moment.

People us windowframes and doors and ottomans and bedside tables that have loyally held up lamps or cups of tea (with and without coasters) for years never imagining they'd be burned in a pyre with fruit boxes and cereal boxes and old mail and the ends of brooms.

What if, instead of paying for facebook photobooths on Istiklal and TV's on the ferry, the municipality of Istanbul got these poor people some firewood? Or even some insulation? Then, the streets wouldn't be hazy with the smokey stench of burning trash all winter and people could actually keep warm.

2011-12-16T19:34:00.001-05:00

I want to say that I got fucked by a bonified transexual kurdish terrorist last night,
but that would imply that their ethnicity and gender were the determining factors
in the fucking. In fact, it's just because they're cute. The rest is all shit I say to look
cool. Very little of my diary is about what actually happens. It's mostly the shit I
ornament what happens with so when I reread it, I think I was cool back then.

2011-12-16T19:34:00.000-05:00

You can't have an extravaganza
without the extra vag.

2011-12-12T14:52:00.002-05:00

Recovering after slaying so many zombies, it's strange to sleep in my own bed. The creeking of my new ship sleeping soundly as it snores after its maiden voyage soothes me. It's a new blue bike with a basket and I'm contemplating a synthesis of confederate and ottoman nostalgia nomenclature to christen it; perhaps Robert E. 'Sultan Mehmet' Lee?

As the Bosphorous breeze trickles through the traffic tween Gumuşsuyu and Beşiktaş, I realize I've a new life and a new zombie to slay.

How come?

2011-12-10T14:44:00.002-05:00

La lune est toujours plein dessus Istanbul; les vers sortant de la terre en se tortillonant. J'ai une démangeaison dans le trou du cul et je me demande si l'attraction lunaire confirme mes soupçons a propos d'une infection parasitaire potentielle. J'ai essayé de les tuer en buvant; ils sont devenus philosophes. Eine bunte Truppe betrunkener Philosophen.

Ou c'est peut être que j'ai passé trop de jours sans me laver. Je me sens mauvais, je pue, et le pire c'est que je me sens que je pue. Je suis couvert de foutre, le miens et celui d'un garçon kurd avec qui j'ai couché sur une canapé dans le Starbucks pendant l'occupation. Maintenant, je rentre chez moi, en me demandant ce qui est le plus important; de prendre une douche, ou de faire une sieste.

Innocent little haiku

2011-12-08T14:43:00.000-05:00

Fucking my friend's couch
cumming between the cushions
it's a perfect crime

Thievery

2011-12-07T14:26:00.000-05:00

Je ne peux pas y résister, l'impulsion me séduit avec un sentiment la fois innocent et honteux. Sans passion, juste fortuitement et sans souci, je saisi n'importe quel petit truc proche de moi; une papier, une photographe, un livre, des pièces, n'importe quoi.

Je ne peux pas spéculer sur les raisons possibles pour ma conduite. Cette cleptomanie n'est pas motivée par le manque de quelque chose. Quand je vole dans un magasin ou aux supermarché, c'est totalement différent.

L'objet en soi ne m'importe peu. Souvent je l'oublie ou je le perd. Je ne vole que les gens envers lesquels je suis attiré. De cette manière, même si une personne me semble mystérieuse, je me sens plus proche d'elle, ainsi.

C'est comme si instinctivement je voulais me tortiller dans leur existence quotidienne vers ce trou que j'ai mis avec mon vol.

Turkey Day with Ol' Big Bird in Lil' Dixie

2011-11-24T18:30:00.001-05:00

This is a crack house
full of information addicts
no argument goes un-won
when wikipedia's automatic

we're hair-trigger fact-checkers
googling every detail
eating our daily political bread
and every news reel in our email

and we're addicted to english
though we eschew the habit
and I'm dependent on Sarelle as well
every time I'm in the Bakkal I grab it

I can't keep away from news
when online I always look
though I'll shamefully admit
the first glance is always facebook.

deep down in the başi--
ex-pats in kasımpaşı
it's practically a region of France
yabancıler gentrifying tarlabaşı

and though for us it's a holiday,
there's nothing festive in the street.
In Turkey every day is Turkey day
and all the meat's dark meat.

I can't keep off the piano
I play accordion in bed
now that I've stopped smoking weed
all my other addictions fill my head.

And though I'm in love with a mime
who speaks no english at all
I didn't think what misunderstanding
I could sew with just a phone call

She'd showed me her stash
where she grows her own grass
and now I'll never smoke her hash
because she thinks that I'm an ass.

So I spent hours in the İş merkezi
and went to the cabaret alone
all because I mistook the word gelen for yarın
when we made our plans on the phone

Alas-- on Turkey day in the Ol' Big bird
drinking alone in my Lil' Dixie
I'm thankful for girls on İstiklal getting donations for Unicef
Turkish coffee, and turkish tea.

opening doors with a smile comme d'habitude. Goodbye yabancı blues...

2011-11-16T18:18:00.000-05:00

I hope that carrying the accrued weight - the frustration from a foreigner's million daily failures - will only strengthen and expedite my ability to understand. I feel so stupid after each of my unnumerable idiocies but increasingly I am avoiding them, or at least anticipating them. It's easy to retreat - to find my enclave of foreigner friends and wall myself in with english on all sides. I must become allergic to ease, disgusted by comfort, aroused by challenge and most of all I must fall in love with this land and language - or I will always be the yabancı, the foreign object caught in the throat of ol' bigbird. He'll cough me up like leftover fez fuzz and leave me without even a güle güle.

A Turkey-day with Ol' Big Bird

2011-11-12T18:09:00.002-05:00

I ain't live in Sarasota
no more
nor no Ashevilles.
I've flown in with the big bird over yonder--
Turkey
and as I crossed the Bosphorous with my big bag of bread
a gaggle of giggling gulls flocked to my breadside,
keeping abreast at our behest as we jettisoned simit boomerangs
into their gaping beaks.

This called me out of the jaded shadows of my over-traveled egotism and I felt for a moment as if -- but before I could uncover my inner abandon we'd docked at the iskele and I had to dim my bright bulb among the scowls of the disembarking crowd.

Later on, at my Turkish grandparents' house, as I sifted through the surprisingly useless contents of a long-awaited package, I realized that there is a foggy world inhabited by the absent-minded and I may as well have had my box delivered to an address in that cloudy abode. As I prepared for the slow collapsing disappointment of an anticlimax, we hear the ambulance.

When hearts attack--
and how tragic, the tragedy underscored by the fanciness of food uneated
and the unsullied redness of the new pullover my grandfather Ercan had donned (with much excruciating awkward old-man effort) just to greet his friend
who suddenly died in the street before reaching the apartment.

We left without dinner, the somewhat schizophrenic melange of random but eagerly awaited personal possessions on our backs, Back at the iskele, Billie convinces us to shed our baggage burden of shock and death and hunger and don cabaret costumery for a photoshoot.

My eager ego arose from the grave, skipping merrily about Kadıköy and carrying me home to cookies. When I finally finished the milk, I realized that something had penetrated the dark green hard jaded layer of culture-shock-proof interior armor I've got and it tickled me to tears. I'm so set in my shell, though, that only an earthquake could shake me now.

2011-11-05T17:57:00.000-04:00

Hier matin, je suis allé encore pour rendre une autre visite a mes amis a la Douane Turque. Il est drôle maintenant que, au début il y a un mois, j'avais l'espoir chaque fois que je suis allé que cette fois va être la dernière et en fin je vais prendre mon paquet.

'But you musn't be so goal oriented,' a blagué ma coloc.
'Bien sur, non. Moi, je vais a porter volontaire ma temps pour mes amis pauvre qui travail toute la journée dans la bureau de la douane,' Je dit.

Alors, pour la sixième ou septième (ou huitième?) fois, j'ai pris la bus jusqu’à l’aéroport. Aujourd’hui, je n'avais pas d'illusions. Je suis allé juste pour voir quelle problème va être inventé pour expliquer pourquoi je ne peux pas prend mon paquet, même après le promise hier que 'with this last step completed, you can take your package tommorrow.'

The reason?

'Bilgisayar yok.'

When I worked as a customer service agent, and I didn't want to deal with an issue, my excuse was always 'our computer system is down at the moment'. So, I could appreciate the strategy my friend Levent at the cargo company was using when he explained simply

'Bugün bilgisayar kırılmış.'

Tomorrow, surely, I will have my package.

Il y a un mot en turc pour comment j'ai soi traité par MNG Kargo, Fedex, la douane turque, various customs brokers et conducteurs de taxi, et la mot est Toplu Tecavüz. GANG RAPE.

Hélas, j'ai mis en place mes affaires. Puis, je suis sortie bien habillé en costume d'un euro-voyageur pretentieuse pour retrouver mes amis devant Galatasaray Lisesi.

The big city

2011-10-27T17:54:00.001-04:00

Does the abundant opportunity for perfect social bliss outweigh the overwhelming intensity of the challenge of logistical chaos which city life entails?

'L’irréversibilité du temps. Temps du meurtrier: présent effacé entre les parenthèses du passé et du futur.'

Misadventures...

2011-10-21T17:42:00.000-04:00

Aujourd'hui je suis allé de l'aisselle d'Istanbul jusqu'a la chaussure puante. Maintenant, Tarlabaşi sent comme paradis. Je ne peux pas me mettre d'accord avec les pirates qui ont pris mon paquet en otage en Ikitelli. Mais on a fait un peut de progrès en les négociations diplomatiques, et après on était allé sur un dolmuş a Şirinevler. Par la, attrapé par l’hospitalité d'un cordonnier Kurde et plein d'humilité on a trop mangé. On est partie avec les bottes comme neufs, et les nouvelles bottes. Bientôt, on se trouvé en compagnie de les gens qui ont tombé malade avec les symptômes -- d’accessoires inutiles et poile de visage super-flu. Quand on ne pouvait pas les suivre aux bars très hip (a cause de nos commissions: des bananes et une bouteille d'eau) on est revenu chez moi heureux que on n'a pas contracté la même maladie. Ainsi...

A Glorious Catastrophe

2011-10-18T17:29:00.000-04:00

So I got a little too adventurous. I had planned on a weekend visit to my friend Resul in Samsun, but before I left my friend Miette arrived from France. Inspired by her daring feat of hitchhiking, we took our thumbs to Samsun and, gathering Resul, convinced him to hitch with us around the black sea.

In retrospect, it was stupid to think that we could tour the entire north east of Turkey in a weekend and be home for class on Monday, but nevertheless we hit the road. I wanted to find a mountain range or a national park-- anything that wasn't a city. Unfortunately, Resul has lived his entire life in cities, so for him any town with a population under 100,000 may as well be the Amazon.

He expended much effort coordinating rendezvous and rides to smaller and smaller cities-- and each time promised nature. We were never satisfied as we attempted to explain exactly what we wanted. Our adventure had soon become a quest -- to somehow find a natural park or a little farm before it was too late.

In fact, it was already too late. We didn't even leave Samsun until Sunday. On Tuesday we were still in Trabzon, which is something of a metropole. Wednesday was our last chance to find something.

We hitched south and ended up in a town called Maçka. The mountains and density of industrial carnage reminded me of West Virginia. After the industry, the villages got smaller and smaller. Eventually, someone took us to a gate marked 'Altındere Milli Parkı'. At last, we had found a national park.

We frolicked joyfully in the tasty air for a few hours, explored caves and rivers and abandoned stone houses. As the sun was setting, we picked one to camp in that still had something of a roof. At the last moment, though, someone grunted at us from the doorway. I could see a male silhouette holding a pistol. Though Resul could not establish his exact credentials, or any connection to the administration of the park, his weapon ensured our compliance with his questionable authority.

We were either to pay him 50TL to camp, or 50TL for a ride back to Maçka. There were no other options, but we also didn't have 50TL. After some arguing, Resul convinced him to drive us 3km so we could try to hitch back to Maçka. Later, in the rain, we arrived in Trabzon where I found myself in the same situation I have found myself in many times after a failed adventure; at the center of some random town using the wi-fi at a cafe, desperately searching for a last minute place to stay on couchsurfing.

But my account of our adventure here has not done it justice. For, according to my story we have suffered much and had little fun. Yet, in every photo we have taken on this little trip we are smiling and usually doing something rediculous. Even now, we three are quite content to be hanging our in the cafe, sticking spoons to our noses, daring each other to eat hot peppers, and making fun of the TV.

This makes me happy-- even if the adventure is technically a total catastrophe, with friends it can be at least a glorious catastrophe.

2011-10-10T17:24:00.000-04:00

Can't see through the bus windows. The inside is wet with human humidity, the outside streaked with rain. The covered girl stands next to me. I can feel her invasive pressing presence hoping I might chivalrously sacrifice my seat to her on the basis of traditional gender roles. I look up and she's pleading like a cat, but she smells like a wet dog, sweating beneath her tawdry full length religious garments. I pretend that her insistence cannot penetrate my jazzblasting headphones. But, in the unpretentiously sweaty odor of her religiously cloaked flesh, I can smell the weight of her discomfort and so I offered her a bit of my own. Now I am standing.

2011-10-04T17:19:00.000-04:00

Siezed by visions for hours, he can hardly speak. Four women dreamed of him this week. One wanting only to spoon him, another jealously watched him fuck a mutual coworker, the third was merely in passing, and the fourth saw him pissing in a toilet overflowing with shit. Then he daydreamed on the bus that he could lie his fantasies into truths. That night by boat in Üsküdar he crept into a graveyard and painted his face. They tried to read his fortune in his coffee grounds but he had eaten them, leaving sweet black dust on the white makeup. He stood, drunk with wine, rakı, hashish and cemetary air and heard a slight sound as of snowflakes or feathers. What white falling from him and why? He thought he had wings like a bird or an angel but the soft pale rustle was only the sound of some dandruff, bits of makeup, and his principles landing in the gray clay grave garden.

2011-09-30T17:17:00.000-04:00

I have no great wisdom to impart. Just the daily mewls of the mind of a mankitten. Yesterday I saw dolphins in the bosphorus on the morning ferry. I ate cake at work. I found an anarchist library. I volunteered at a social center in the evening. I got my lost books back from a cute spanish guy. Today it riained. I drank too much Türk Kahvesi, We tried to drive to the airport but got stuck in traffic. I have to tell the azeri girl who's been chasing me that I don't want to sleep with her again. This is a pretty okay day, but it feels the same.

2011-09-26T17:13:00.003-04:00

H

2011-09-26T17:10:00.000-04:00

You're biting your lip
We go to bed together
Now you're biting mine

2011-09-24T11:43:00.000-04:00

I do not have any vivid memories of eating a candy bar. I know that I have likely eaten hundreds if not thousands of in my life. I know the taste of 20 or so different types. I have probably spent a few hundred dollars solely on candybars.

Yet, I can't remember eating a single one. Not specifically, anyhow. I know that I have, and my loss of memory doesn't seem uncanny. Yet, as I prepare to eat this candy bar, I look forward to losing my memory of it.

Fragment

2011-09-23T11:35:00.000-04:00

There is an idiotic, snaggle-toothed smirk on the face of some sadistically indulgent deity's fat little cherub face today. Luckily, I don't believe in old fatso. I'm an atheist, despite his efforts to indulge my whims and seduce me into his flock of chubby sheep.

Though I prefer a lean diet of cynicism and cigarettes, he spoon feeds me serendipity and cigars. So, after french club I get smoked out. Then, barely making the last bus between Kadıköy and Taksim, I sit beside some metalhead french kids and we commiserate about french people's lack of hospitality.

At home my luck seemed for a moment to fade - but it was only a break between dinner and dessert. My words were written in frosting on the cake and I ate them:

I'd been locked out of my apartment and resigned myself to sleeping in the hallway. It was 4am and I'd hardly closed my eyes when some more french came trudging up the stairwell bourne on the footsteps of frenchmen.

They were my neighbors, and they ironically quashed my assumptions about their countrymen's hospitality by feeding me cheese and wine and saucisson and letting me crash on their extra cot.

2011-09-15T11:31:00.000-04:00

Did you know that it is illegal to plant pine trees in the state of Florida? They're invasive and kill the mangroves.
They recently banned mulberry bushes in the state of North Carolina. It seems they carry a disease that kills the pines.

Down with pines! Down with mulberry bushes!

It seems even the trees have been infected with the revolutionary fervor that by all means should be overtaking America.

So why is there no change in our country? Political scientists are baffled. The arabs are laughing. Our intellectuals are embarrassed. No one can explain why Americans don't act in the face of corruption in our society.

But I have a theory -- it's because of the revolution among the trees.

In the absence of mulberry bushes, all the monkeys have ceased to chase freedom and are content to sit around watching weasels go 'pop'. (The monkeys think it's all for fun)

2011-09-12T11:29:00.000-04:00

My heart isn't broken. My heart breaks me.

Nostalgia Again

2011-09-12T08:07:00.000-04:00

In the midst of the sweaty bustle of busrides, as I sway with every jerking halt and hurry of traffic, I cannot keep my mind in my stressed surroundings. My thoughts are lost in mountains.

Each time we mount a hill I gaze, hoping to see a blue ridgeline, though I know it's half-way round the planet. If I truly wanted to gaze longingly at the Blue Ridge, I'd best look down at my feet and through the floor, the road, the mantle, the core. But I look out at the passing city. My tears know the way -- drawn appalachiaward they tumble down my cheeks and soak into the ground.

By the time I'd run my errands on the European side, it was nearly rush hour. So I sat in the library to wait it out. To take my mind off of my Carolina cravings, I decided to watch a movie. But half an hour into it I felt sick. For behind every shot was a faint grey ghost cutting a curving horizon through the background.

Then I recognized the interiors -- the film was shot inside the Biltmore, right in the very town I was trying not to see in my every day dream. For the rest of the film I watched only the sky in every shot, like a starving man might watch people in a café eat pastry. I only felt hungrier afterward.

I walked back from the top of the hill toward the bus stop. I wasn't ready to be crushed and rushed and publicly transported. I stopped for a moment to pet a street dog and the sound of the singing of the call to prayer splashed me like warm water and I felt the chill in the wind. A sea wind.

I could see a pink sun singing back at the men on minarets. The ones on the Asian side sung against the singers on the European side and the waves lapped a clapping applause until the sun blew the Golden Horn so hard that it's face turned red and the lights went out.

I was still crying. I am always crying. The dog was drooling and my tears met its spit in the dirt. And maybe if they won't soak through to Appalachia, they might at least roll down the hill into the Bosphorus.

If I can't see the Blue Ridge, I can at least gaze at the blue waves, the blue mosque, and the blue lights on the bridge across the blue Bosphorus. If only that had quelled my nauseating nostalgia -- but a busride across the bridge will never have the thrill of a countryside bikeride down an Appalachian hill.

Every Week

2011-09-10T08:05:00.000-04:00

It must be a scent that blows in from seas and straits everywhere in the world. I smelled it in the late morning bustle of Kavacık. All of me, from the corners of my mouth to my middle toe knows it and is readied for something -- readied by habit as it has been each week since I'd wake up smiling as a kid because there's no school today. Because dad's home today. Because we might go to the beach or the movies or the farmer's market or even Miami today. It's a Saturday.

As arbitrary as names-of-days may be, and though I am at the frontier of the Western world, today is clearly a Saturday. It smells like a Saturday, it looks like a Saturday. I can tell, even Istanbul is waking up hoping for a spirited surprise only a Saturday can provide.

I risked missing my bus to run back home and grab my banjo. If it's going to be a good Saturday, I want to be prepared.

One Month Since

2011-09-03T08:04:00.000-04:00

One month since
laurel street heats my feet's meat
on barefoot jogs with my parents' tiny dogs
and I am successfully installed in Istanbul
(well, at least downloaded if not installed)
via France and Belgium and England and Wales and the Netherlands
and planes and trains and thumb-powered adventurous covoiturage
from class-warring anarchist forest occupations to classy rooftop Taksim bars
and monolingual french children
to quadrilingual Turkish grandparents
I'm still doing my daily doings
lifting a bag and crunching and pushing up
watching too much star trek
attacking my neighbors' piano two hours a day
and my weekly cleanings
scrubbing flossing and washing my hair on Saturdays
(My gynecologist recommends flossing my Vagina Dentata at least once a week)
changed my money from dollars to pounds to euro to lyra
but I still hear the same sound when I am busking
and coins land in my hat
from nodding to bisous to handshakes to hugs
I've greeted women and men and everything between in five languages
and kissed lips from eight countries
on four continents
stolen and paid too much for chocolate and beer and saucisson
starved and been stuffed
skipped food, skipped meals, skipped trains
skipped town, skipped class
been ID'd and got away
been searched and controlled
and freed and caught and freed and billed
and overlooked and scrutinized
and been photographed against my will
and asked someone to please take a photo
been rushed been bored been free been busy
smoked and abstained and been drunk and stayed sober
picked flowers and taken shits
bought phones and forgot phones
gained and given and borrowed and leant and lost
in this particularly august month of August.

Chewing Bones

2011-09-02T08:04:00.000-04:00

I got lost
only to discover
that, though I'd taken the wrong metro,
there was a catacomb of bones here to uncover.

At a station in a maze of skeletons,
what should I do?
The voice on the train said,
'This is the terminus. Mind the gap and prepare to chew.'

I looked around
and all I saw
were stacked-up bones
in every wall.

So I took a bone crusted with dried up flesh
(I think it was a thigh)
and I sat down on the station bench
prepared to bite into a lie.

If you wonder
what the flavor would be,
it tasted like woe and lost love
a bit salty, but savory.

I had to listen to all my stupid tales.
I'd been so gullible!
Though I chew the bones now,
I've already swallowed every syllable.

As I chewed, I laughed
at my idea of Owen.
I told myself so many stories.
I really had myself going.

A jury would surely indite me,
but all I have is bones to chew.
All I must face is a silent sob
while I munch a few.

As I marvelled
at the number of bones in the wall
and prepared myself
to eat them all,
the loudspeaker called
and a train came to a halt with a hiss,
'This is the hangover line
stopping at a headache and a morning piss.'

So I boarded somewhat hesitantly
and held a handlebar.
The loudspeaker called as the lights came on
it said 'Allahu Akbar'.

The dawn call to prayer
ends the night.
The dogs of Istanbul howl with the hocalar
in the growing light.

Always after a night
obscured by drink
I wake up early in the morning
finally able to think.

Only through a hangover headache
can I feel the spicy after-pain.
Something's suddenly made honest
in my lying brain.

And it's nice to chew bones.
Once in a while, to feel.
It sharpens the teeth
and it's almost a meal.

What's disillusionment to me?
I am a weasel at the core.
Knowing the truth just makes me more cunning,
the better to lie some more.

Den Bosch

2011-09-01T08:03:00.000-04:00

5am sweat rolling delicately down her nose takes a dive and lands in the fur of the cat who twitches, rolls over, and drapes its tail across his nose. He stirs and wakes me, sleeping behind him. Cat alarm is the only alarm I need, so I switch off my back-up and creep away to catch the train.

I walk through the chill, predawn streets of Den Bosch, frozen like an undefrosted meal. I watch the sun rise from the train and burn steamy clouds from green fields up into the blue-pink skies. I'm glad I bought tickets this time -- the tickt checker comes between every station.

in the ZAD

2011-08-19T08:03:00.000-04:00

For someone who is part of occupying this land, I frequently find myself under-occupied. When it rains at the ZAD, everyone ends their endless bricolage on the barricades, stops weeding the garden and building new shelters to retreat to their tent or caravan or squat or treehouse or shack or bender. Me, I hole up in the internet truck reading wikipedia or sit in the shitbox counting flies.

When the Gendarmes come by it's almost a relief. They shout idiotic questions like frat boys looking for a fight, they flash their lights, they take photos, they sound sirens, and they make empty threats.

In the evening we drink and dance in the squathouses. Trying to ride home with my drunk and faded Italian friends, we got lost on the petits chemins. All the way out to Fay De Bretagne. It was a fun ride, but shook me up -- I had a seizure in the middle of the night.

Dublin

2011-08-18T08:02:00.000-04:00

I'm after flying back from Dublin. It's France I've returned to. I feel like I fought hard for the little two-island tour I made. The UK is a hell of a country. After finally arguing my way in, it still proved tough to escape again.

I was riding a train with the Chelseas through Wales. The ticket-checker came by and, rather than idly accepting an unusually shiny eurail pass (as ticket-checkers in 7 other countries had done before), this person felt it was her duty to hassle these two young vagabonds. She was disdainfully polite about it -- she attempted to force her rouge-puckered lips into some semblance of a smile as she said 'Get off with me at the next stop and we'll sort this out.'

I, in fact, had a perfectly valid ticket from a ticket-vending machine at the train station and it was clearly marked as a Virgin train ticket to Dublin. But I was a vagabond too, sitting with the undesirables and so my legitimacy was to be regarded as dubious as well.

At the station we were met by two somewhat chubby middle-aged men who looked like security guards but whose nametags were stated their job title as 'Revenue Protection'.

These three skinny punks and our two slightly-too-shiny eurail passes were clearly a grand enough threat to the no-doubt vulnerable revenue of Virgin trains that the situation necessitated the summoning of guards whose sworn oath and life's purpose was to combat the conspiratorial forces of forgery here embodied in 3 young american twenty-somethings and to defend the sanctity of the £33 price of travel between the UK and Ireland.

They largely ignored me as they interrogated my companions. I observed as they blatantly tried the 'good cop bad cop' routine, one explaining that he really believed the girls had been scammed and that they deserved a 'fight for justice' while the other came on toughly, going as far as to quote an illustrious legal scholar as he explained, 'Your story doesn't make sense and, as judge Judy says, if it don't make sense it must be a lie.'

The girls weren't gullible enough to fall for this macho-cop play. I was impressed, in fact, by the competent way that Chelsea lied. The other Chelsea even tried to cry at one point, hoping it might lubricate the proceedings, but she couldn't take the flagrantly exaggerated performance of the Revenue Protectors (RP's) seriously enough to stir up any tears.

Meanwhile, I was genuinely worried that, having been removed from the train despite having a valid ticket, I might be forced to buy a new one or even endure the consequence of forgery. When I tried to raise this subject with the RP's, they refused to be distracted from their interrogatory penetration of my two young female companions.

After my third attempt, the 'good cop' pointed me in the direction of a bar and said 'Go have a brew and we'll sort you out afterward.'

They carried on, hoping for a climax, but none was forthcoming. The Chelseas had soon patched up any of the holes there may have originally seemed to have been in their story and even the bad cop couldn't find any evidence more than 'well everyone knows someone who can get them something contraband' that we were guilty of anything more than being victims of a scam.

He had them buy new tickets (at the maximum price of £125) and dismissed us, having seemingly forgotten about me. I was left with a ticket to a train that had already left. Nevertheless, with few scruples and no other choice, I boarded the next train with the Chelseas and no Revenue Protector ever challenged the now-invalid ticket I was traveling with.

II

We took the casino-like ferry across the Irish sea (my ticket proved good for that, but the Chelseas were forced to hitchhike with someone taking his car) and were pleased to discover that, like Nantes and Gent, Dublin has a tram system.

I have many friends who call it the 'free train' because, unline innercity trains, the fares are rarely enforced. And if you do see someone in a uniform board to check the tickets, you can just disemark at the same time and await the next train.

Using a combination of the tram, impeccably vague but confidently delivered directions from Irish pedestrians, and Chelsea's faith-based approach to navigation we (relatively) soon found the social center at which we were meant to meet our Irish contact Ishke.

He was a shephard-like hippie-punk, seemingly streetsmart with a little beard and flamboyantly ornamental façon de s'exprimer made all the more mystical by his use of a curved walking staff to herd us through Dublin's streets. I tried not to squeal and wet myself every time we passed a landmark familiar to me from my three readings of Ulysses (the spots were all marked, too, with plaques referencing pages).

Luckily, we soon exceeded the turn-of-the-century borders of Dublin and I was back in the meaningless post-modern suburban tundra in my comfortable anarcho-critical cultural analysis mode.

We spent the following days at Ishke's punkhouse, going into town to busk during the day and finding venues for Chelseas' band 'Dirty Fist' in the evening. After the girls had left, I took a ferry back to England, hitched all the way to Dover in one day and all the way from Calais to Nantes the next. The auto-stop gods were smiling on me, and I spent the night with a nerdy french girl (who showed me her 20+ pet birds and the awesome dollhouse she'd built by hand) then hitched back to the ZAD in the rain.

My Last Naughty Night in London Town

2011-08-17T08:00:00.000-04:00

My last naughty night in London town,
I took the tube with Kiera down to Vauxhall
for a queer variety show.
I watched a poet pull a stream of words out of his lovers' ass,
watched women wrestle in their period pinkness,
played dressup in drag,
ate birthday cake,
and was flogged by nuns in the park.
I rode home dowsed in glitter
and soaked in menstrual blood.

2011-08-16T08:00:00.000-04:00

I am a UK border reject. But who are you to say, whose administering of the frontier entrypoints is founded in the violence-based authoritarian claims of a state I don't recognize? I don't want to visit your repressive, surveyed, police-infested isle anyhow.

Thing is, my friends there are all going to Ireland, so I need to cross your island to get there. I'll take anything, though, and so will you after enough complaining. He puts me on a later train and, with a sneer, scrawls ONE WEEK on my visa.

2011-08-13T08:00:00.000-04:00

I have finally discovered the secret of thumb-powered transit. Today from Notre-Dame-Des-Landes to Nantes to Vitry Sur Seine to Paris in an antique renault, then with a nuclear engineer, and lastly with a van full of Tunisian teenage girls. I hiked the shit out of some hitches. The first polite and quiet, the second mustached and jocular, the last inquisitive (having picked me up because they saw people hitchhiking on reality TV).

2011-08-10T07:59:00.001-04:00

When I stretch I feel scabs from blackberry scratches around my ankles. There are bruises blossoming brown and purple on my shoulders from carrying my heavy sack, and the muscles underneath them ache warmly when stirred.

Nantes

2011-08-10T07:59:00.000-04:00

It takes a few days for the stressful part of wandering to wear off, but it's nice to settle into being unsettled again.

I'm couchsurfing with Gilou in his apartment in Nantes. I never really considered visiting this town. Nevertheless, I said its name nearly every day with Marshall. (It turns out we both mispronounced it). It's the name of a song we used to play together.

While wandering though the densely touristed plazas of centre-ville, I tried to enroll the various busking accordionists in playing the song with me on camera for Marshall. I said I was making a travel film. Some of them weren't interested, some wouldn't leave their established busking rounds (even for two euro), and most didn't speak enough French or English to get past excusez-moi. I made the movie alone in a square, filmed by a brit and a turk.

The turk was Banu. We'd hitched to Nantes from my friend Nina's farm near Poitiers. Banu was a lucky hitchhiker and we never had to wait more than a few minutes for a ride.

Though she was a great hitch-hiker, she had been a horrible guest at the farm. We hung out there three days with my friends Stani and Nina and their companions.

I'd sold Banu on the idea that we were going to work on a farm. But, whereas on most farms ones does as much as one can to maximize productions, on this farm they do the mininum necessary to grow food to survive. We made bread and fed the animals on the first day, weeded a few beds the second, and fed the animals again the third day.

The rest of the time was given to hijinks. My friends are drunks and stoners in the most delightful way. The farm is on squatted land in a national forest and we wandered through it chasing the dogs. At night we sang karaoke in costume.

But Banu would have none of it; not the work, not the hijinks, not the karaoke. (She did however, take part in the smoke and drink). She didn't join in the conversation (in fact she had me ask for things for her, though her french is just as good as mine), and she hardly left the house. Instead, she hijacked my computer and watched episodes of Family Guy with Turkish subtitles and smoked joint after joint of our hosts' weed.

She'd been so helpful and lucky when we were hitchhiking, but now she seemed more like a rock in my sack. I would take my frustration with me to bed, but before I could whisper a single word, she'd love it out of me. And though she had hardly left the couch and her eyes had been always on the screen, when we left she spoke only of how much fun she had had and how she'd like to stay forever.

Now I'm free of her. She's off to Amsterdam and another man and I am searching for a busking buddy here in Nantes.

2011-08-02T07:58:00.000-04:00

'An intellectual is never a real revolutionary. Just good enough to make an assassin.' -Sartre

My Dad's Porn

2011-07-28T23:28:00.005-04:00

Some people find their fathers' porn mags in a moment of childhood shame or wonder. In fact, it's a well-worn cliche. Though in the age of internet instant sex access, streaming video, and open-source erotica, the adult magazine has become something archaic.

Traditionally, boys have been shocked by or thought less of their father after discovering their porn. Often they have stolen it, shared it with their friends. You know the various variations on the cliche. Whatever.

I had the opposite experience. I figured out that porn existed online when I was 11 or so and amassed a vast library of my own on my computer. It was my father who found my porn collection and secretly made use of it. When I discovered this, I showed him how to access it on his own.

Tonight though, I finally found his magazines. Though I doubt he's completely given up online porn, the idea that my father doesn't always merely pull out his iPad and load up some hard-core youporn when he wants to get off, but instead reads through Playboy articles while regarding the airbrushed images of unmoving women makes him somewhat classy in my mind. It is as if this unnecessary inconvenience of dealing with mere paper rather than a screen, with choices limited to what some editor decided to include this month rather than myriad personalized options, merely makes this a refined, a classy, a stylish way to enjoy pornography.

After all, my father says when I compliment his taste, web pages don't get stuck together like the authentic ones do.

Can I tap that?

2011-07-24T23:15:00.000-04:00

The beauty of being poly is
when one dreamy genius turns me away on her doorstep
and a crushed queer crushling only wants to cuddle
there is still a third--
an untapped bearded neighbor bear.
I crept into his bed at 4am
and tapped on his door
and tapped that
in my purple dress

2011-07-21T23:12:00.000-04:00

I've added two new nations to my international fuck list.

U, Beninois beauty claims he's not gay as I kiss his muscled arms and his cock rises beneath his whitey tighties. His christian cum is salty, like his insistence on believing in christ even as his big brown-pink lips return the fellatio favor. In our 20s, we must have fun, he says.

M has fewer illusions. Egyptian former occupant of my squatted bedroom. I offered him an Owen-warmed bed. After we watched the Mountain Goats together, he kissed me quietly to sleep and got off in my hands.

2011-07-17T23:09:00.000-04:00

An eekwend in iMami
visiting yonder Grandma
I caught scabies and I'm
itchinscratchin
til monday doctor comes along

my aunt analyzing me over dinner says
It may be that I want the world to worship me
but it is only because I want to worship it back

I say I crave a vasectomied snip
so I can give up care about cumming
my aunt analyzing me over dinner says
Not having children is a way to escape being held responsible for my character flaws.

It's hard not to pick fruit before it's ripe.

2011-07-08T03:28:00.003-04:00

I'm no skilled writer of poetry
and it's too soon for me to say this
but how can I let you know?

I hope we hang out every day.
I just want to hear you be hilarious
and play Nintendo.

I don't care about dating
or flirting or pretending
to be cool.

I just want to laugh
and sleep with you
in your big bed

because I wonder
if we'll have as much fun when we're asleep
as we do when we're awake.

(Also,
your bed is fancier than mine
which kind of sucks)

One Month of Forever

2011-07-08T03:15:00.002-04:00

I've double sold my days
as a dish rat and a scribe,
a waiter and a corporate slave,
a giver of nourishment
and a taker of dictations,
a baker making berry bars and brownies
and a slut who whores his head
to foreign voices and his fingers
to dirty keys.

Even my days off are for sale.
Sunday I am doing hair in the AM
and then in the evening showing myself to a potential buyer
who I hope will lease my lips
and pay a short term premium in kisses

and in the sober moments between drinking
with coworkers
and double shifts
I can't help thinking about the hes and hers
and somehow feeling lonely
in my few moments alone.

Though I eschew monogohog true love hetero nonsense,
I find myself craving companionship.
Is it just a need for the Other
to fill the void of self?

For all the attributes of the Lover Other
are things we have in common
and why should I seek my own attributes in a match?
What has an Other to do with my loneliness?
If I see only myself in them,
isn't what I'm missing
only me?

If this feeling of loneliness is only some quality of lack in me,
then why should I seek someone like myself?
It's a trick of vanity.
What I want in my alone moments
is no one else but me.

So here I am, growing into Gainesville life
with a home and a job.
I've made a little social nest.
Though in only three weeks I fly across the ocean,
none of my new friends know.
So for this month I am here forever
living a little lie.

And I feel guilty!
At the cafe especially.
My little world of work is fun and tasty,
a small community of liberal foodies.
A co-op.
So when Anne says
'You're a natural baker.'
or
'You've got an impressive work ethic
(for a white guy)'
I know she's thinking I'll become part-owner,
share a piece of this cute little eatery.

I can't help burning with my quiet betrayal.
They're all giving energy to teach me,
to help me find a niche in their wonderful team dream
but I know I'm going to leave them,
and they'll have to work again
to fill the place they're teaching me to take.

I don't know how I'll break the news.
I'm skipping town,
skipping country,
skipping continent.
Thanks for boosting my ego, wallet, and resume.
How can I say I wanted to stay?
That my one month of forever felt like home?

Oh Springlove...

2011-07-08T03:12:00.003-04:00

How guilty I feel for keeping to myself all this heart's warmth that belongs to you. I've been trying to send this letter for a lifetime now. The Owen that's written you has been so many someones since I scribbled my first nostalgic sentences on the postcard. I never sent it though, not brave enough to let you know that I thought of you every day.

I've moved into a little life in Gainesville. I'm working as a waiter in a fancy restaurant. I really love it and I feel sad that I'm leaving this cute little life here, where I've rented a room and made a little social nest. In only three weeks I fly away across the ocean, but none of my new friends know that. How wonderful to live a little lie.

Love you.

Weasel.

Conrad's Date

2011-07-04T02:19:00.000-04:00

Conrad had a date yesterday. He met her at a party. Paprika Roberts. He thought she was cute because she spoke french and seemed to know a bit about Star Trek. She forms her phrases gracefully and always with a small round smile of self-deprecating cleverness.

Conrad had been exchanging flirty jokes with her for a few days over the phone and had realized that he was dealing with someone with a profound and bold wit which was nevertheless unscathing because often only used in a silly or self-directed way. The risk, Conrad knew, of getting to know such a person is the potential that they are only keeping that wit sheathed and that at once, having secretly worked out your every nuance, they will suddenly cut you down in cold blood for their own joy.

She's a scientist. She works as a researcher in a lab at a museum skinning frozen animal specimens and cleaning their bones by feeding them to beetles.

Before their first date, Conrad cut out a cardboard rectangle and wrote 'Roberts' on it, her last name. As she rode up on her bike he pretended that he was a chauffeur waiting for his client at the airport. 'Can I take your luggage madam?'

'No. Take me straight to my limo,' she replied and hugged him hello. They ate quiche together and tossed around ideas for ways to spend their date. They wanted the date to be an adventure. He had an idea; why not take a tour of all the pet stores in town?

It's always thrilling to throw yourself into the cute, cuddly capitalistic but colorful, morally questionable but adorable environment of our country's corporate markets of enslaved-species companionship. Sampleable companionship too, since not only can you pet the creatures in the store, you can even take them home for a short period to judge this other sentient being for its personal purchasability, pamperability, suitability, and programmability on your own terms in your own circumstances.

Ethical considerations aside (and there they are way over there--->), Conrad and Paprika walked a docile hound at Petsmart first. They traded physical affection with the animal while encouraging it to shit or piss on some grass so that they'd have the sense of having accomplished something. Conrad tried to chase the dog, wrestle the dog, anger the dog, excite the dog, but all she wanted wasto be stroked.

'I like a dog that can wrestle,' he said, evaluating this dog against some hypothetical adoption scenario,' She's super-sweet, but just so shy and calm.' After walking back into Petsmart, he read the sign on her crate as he put her back into her cell.

Caroline. Age: 3 years. Super Sweet :). Shy, but calm.

All that he had deduced on the walk had already been deduced for him by this card so that, had he been too lazy to take her out, he could still have evaluated her as not a good companion for him.

As they were leaving, he asked Paprika some inane getting-to-know-you type question.

'Paprika. Age 21 years. Clever, spunky, but socially awkward.' She said, and they laughed together.

'Clever, spunky, and hilarious,' he corrected, 'Want to go for a walk?'

The next closest pet store that Paprika knew of was a reptile store whose logo was (similar to many others in UF College Football-dominated Gainesville, Florida) orange and blue with a cartoonified gator flexing his anthropomorphized bicep.

As the bell rang on the front door he was opening, Conrad stumbled over a soft, heavy object with a thud. It was gray and fleshy and hissed at him as he recoiled. Then, with a flick of it's big gray tongue it transformed itself from threatening reptile tripping hazard to adorable object of affection and he was compelled to pick it up and cuddle it, cooing an apology. It was the proprietor's heavy-set pet moniter lizard named 'Tubby'.

It was clear from the beginning that this would be a rewarding visit. The large, guage-eared. bearded proprietor shepherded them around his terrarium-crowded store. The air ducts overhead leaked into buckets in every corner and Conrad and Paprika nearly tripped into them with every other step.

The proprietor adorned them with pythons, constrictors, frogs, geckos, and monitors all the while expounding on the microverse of the reptile industry in a dialect of herpatologic nomeclature and 'what-we-in-the-business-call' type jargon Like the smooth, cold bodies of these animals, his passion for reptiles was formidable, reassuring, and humble. Neither Paprika nor Conrad tripped on Tubby on the way out.

Their final stop was the humane society, a place only slightly less ethically challenging. They have just built a new, state of the art facility in Gainesville, staffed by volunteers and interns. Here, they divide pets by species and category.

First, a nursery of kittens, all mewling in harmony as Paprika walked in. Their purring, which became audible as she approached them, is actually a sort of sound radiation whose frequency impairs human neural function. After getting fairly out of their minds, they moved on to the room for adolescent cats.

There were only two teenagers. They were identical and, because of their feistyness, had graduated from the gentler world of kittenhood and were now here. They were fascinated by Paprika's car keys and could be endlessly employed pursuing the violent clanking clamor the keys elicited when struck by a well-aimed paw.

The next room was adult cats. Here, two interns who were showing them around were joinged by a third. He was passing through, scooping out the contents of the litterboxes into a pail.

After that, a room with overweight cats, special needs cats, and cats with skin or respiratory issues. Paprika said she liked them best, and Conrad wondered whether she thought about the palpable sense of doom in this room, with cats so unlikely to be adopted that their cutesy fat-kid nicknames (Brawny, Chubster, Banana Split, etc) may as well have spelled out Euthanasia. It was hard not to pity such adorable, loving creatures who, had they only had the privilege of being born human could have lived with what, as companion animals, could only be defects.

By the time they got through the first puppy room, Conrad was too overstimulated and hungry to keep up with Paprika's wit. He offered to use his food stamps to treat her to dinner. They went to Publix, then back to her place and cooked curry. They ate it and drank fancy white wine from his work.

They talked politics, Star Trek, and gender and played Nintendo, gorging themselves on Ben and Jerry's froyo. Conrad didn't spend the night, but he felt the warm giddiness of a new love unfolding in him as he biked home.

Conrad's Date

2011-07-04T02:15:00.000-04:00

Conrad wore his blue suspenders because he thought they'd look cute once they'd arrived at Bob's Water Park and he'd stripped off his shirt so that he was swimming in only his blue and white checkered cotton shorts and those suspenders.

'I have a date today,' he said when his roommates offered inquisitive eyebrow raisings to his ecstatic disposition.

'If you were a cat, you'd be fucking purring right now, bro.' Nova, his nappy-mohawked roomie said, pushing out the three gleaming rings that made up her lips in a playful pout. She looked down at Conrad, hands on her hips.

'Do you want to eat some of the quiche in the fridge? I brought it home from work. It has local squash. That's all I know'

'Yea, thanks Conrad, I'll try it out.' She smiled.

2011-07-04T02:09:00.000-04:00

As an American man on independence day, one is compelled to keep up with other males in a competitive beer-drinking, meat-eating environment. Like many other social contests, the fun is a primal sort of giddiness, an appeal to the instincts at the expense of the arrogant cries of an elitist sense of decency. There are many things I abhor about patriotism and the glorification of a state, but in the unrepentant taking of satisfaction in a hedonistic but problematic celebration of basic social pleasures I find only a disgustingly extravagant joy.

2011-06-30T02:07:00.001-04:00

I am only at home in Florida during a downpour. The heaviest of warm rains is the only force powerful enough to wash the mountains out of my mind. It should rain seven days a week in such a hot place. Luckily, for a month in the summer, it does.

Worms

2011-06-29T02:02:00.000-04:00

If a tree planted sets down roots, a house planted sets down plumbing. The plumbing in this house may be improperly grown in, but I'm beginning to grow fond of this patch of wormy ground. I do live in a wormy house, though. The cat's got worms, the compost has worms, the shower has worms, the potatoes have worms. At least the chickens are well fed.

But I find worms even in my dreams. In the midst of my night time travel fantasies, my new friends turn to worms. I find myself with parasites and the Eiffel Tower itself falls over and squirms away,

More Nostalgia

2011-06-21T01:56:00.000-04:00

Meanwhile, Nostalgia dulls me like a stroke. I taste the pickly embalmed flesh of my own swollen tongue and I can't manage to make words through the thickening cold of the tissuey blockage of an always undead past. Nostalgia, memory, threatens my existence. Incomplete thoughts and moments build up and clog my throat and finger joints like plaque on arterial walls.

I'm always running from the weight of my own unmurderable memory. The curse of living always in adventurous circumstance is the way each niche I find howls for me to fill it when I've left. Something in me howls too-- howls always Go Back!

A thousand howling mummified circumstances tear at me, each trying to drag me home to a particular moment. I must continue running, finding new havens to elude an army of undead carnivorous incarnations. But each safe hiding spot I find becomes a womb, the birth place of a new and hungrier creature. Every one of them tries to draw me back impossibly to a past that would now be nothing but a grave.

A month in Gainesville has been long enough for them to find me, the ghost of a life I didn't even know was dead is crying for me from a mountain cemetery.

2011-06-17T01:53:00.001-04:00

Some wrens made a nest in a hole above the screen door of the porch. As I sit here sopping serenely after a thunderstorm, the nestkeepers dart about the yard, picking at bits and pieces of various environmental components and toting chunks of food matter back up into the hole where each time their parents arrive, four tiny larval chicks screech in high-frequency harmony with joy for the nutrition they are about to assimilate.

2011-06-16T01:50:00.000-04:00

I've graduated from couchsurfer to full-blown roommate. I'm crashing at Camp True Love, one house on the Block, a tangle of squats which consist of old houses bound together by ropes and plywood. It's populated by punks and bugs the size of cats, cats infested with bugs, and cat-bug amalgamations running around the size of dogs. We take these creatures for walks and feed them borax -- a pesticide that they have gorwn resistant to and learned to thrive upon. Too creepy crawly to sleep with, for lack of clean cats, I've taken to cuddling the chickens.

Alma,

2011-06-13T01:49:00.000-04:00

my dearest mealy mealworm,
if I were to assemble my beautiful harem of balkan banjo players
I'd melt butter into their belly buttons
and dip shrimp into them
to feed to your quivering lips.

2011-06-12T01:46:00.000-04:00

'If I were to leave something here accidentally, would that too obviously betray my desire to return to you?" I asked, and tried to kiss him.

'My heart is still sore from Michael,' he said.

'If I could whip up a palliative, I'd eagerly prescribe it,' I said.

'You are palliative enough,' he smiled.

"And as I have a heart free of pain, you're welcome to borrow it any time.'

'We shall have to arrange a heart transplant,' he said and kissed me.

Until the days have names again

2011-06-09T08:57:00.003-04:00

The sun is floating up over Gainesville,
Sleeping on the roof, I can feel it
burning across my back
drawing sweat through my skin into my blanket.

I wake with wet words
crawling out my dry hungover mouth.
I dreamed the slaves fought for the confederates
and won themselves the south.

I unearth unearthly worms
clinging to the ringing in the inside of my ear.
I must have caught them in the thick mud
of that dark and dirty beer.

I squish them and they're sticky and they sting.
Their caterpillar guts linger;
proof my brain is rotting.
They leave a pain stain on my finger.

Then I remember why the pain's there.
They pricked my finger and my elbows;
those worms were tubes into my arm
because I sold my blood for cash flow.

My first sip of water
tastes like the thick chocolate-milk porter.
The same flavor as my headache,
but the aftertaste is shorter.

My second sip's a gulp.
It tastes gritty and hot
like the sun-warmed sandy gravel surface
of my rooftop sleeping spot.

I made it down the ladder
into the refrigerated inner air.
Feet secure on the cool green carpet,
I busted ass falling down the stairs.

Note: It's 6:58 AM
as I take a piss.
Though the time's pretty irrelevant
since I don't know what day it is.

I got pick-pocketed at the farmer's market.
It's bizarre but true.
I wish I could say I didn't need that $7 more than they did,
but I do.

I can't keep off my bike;
He's a lover who's got handles.
I can hold onto him.
I couldn't hold onto Amanda.

I brought him to the dock
which was long and wood and sandy.
I was thinking about the boy who bought me beer last night and all of the Amandas I have met, and missing Mandy.

I think they think I was watching their bodies float by on the stagnant water,
but to smell them makes me sneeze.
They were watching me
and I was smelling the breeze.

Now I'm playing on a public piano
in some government office hall.
I can only play what I already know
and nothing new at all.

Nothing new except me and these notes
Nothing new in the world but me
and these words and these notes and
Nothing new except me
and these words and these notes and this day
Nothing new but the words and the notes and the day and I
don't know what day it is
so it doesn't matter.
I can only play what I already know
and nothing new at all

or the man will stop me playing
because I bothered him at work
and my practice is irrelevant
next to the work of some government clerk,

but he didn't know what I played was new
and neither did I
but it was new. When I left it was noon
on my bike with the sun in the sky.

I slept through the heat of the day.
I think it's just one day I slept,
unless I awoke in the evening
in which case today's now the next.

I'm weary of too much sleep and not enough work
and I'm wondering, though it might be rude
if cute boys will quit getting me so many beers
and instead start buying me food.

Sleeping another nameless morning,
then running around with friends,
poor and hungry until I find a job
and the days have names again.

Sarasota

2011-05-27T09:16:00.000-04:00

Another fine day in purgatory.
The heavenly breeze is just enough to cancel out the tormenting heat. It's like oblivion, only with tourists. It's like a three hour beachside bikeride until I got home. I'd forgotten my parents were having a formal party and when I walked in everyone was all dressed but I was dazed and sweaty. It's purgatory in that awkward but refreshing shower afterward with everyone pretending they don't hear the water.

Rafting on the Colorado River

2011-05-23T09:21:00.000-04:00

He had droopy sacs under his eyes I could have kept my change in. In my mind I was dropping dimes into a slot that I am sure was hidden between the purple-hued wrinkles. He was talking about Vegas as his eyes lit up like slot machines.
'$500 is my limit. I'm very disciplined. $500 up or down. I once walked out with 25 grand though.'
'I though it was 15?' said the young, gruff, ruddy guy next to him, ' The number's grown since the last time you told the story.' I hadn't realized that they even knew one another.
'How do y'all know each other?' I asked.
'We met through some mutual friends the last time I was in Vegas,' eyebags said, ' Though this one doesn't even gamble--'
'I just watch the rich people press the glowing button again and again while I sit by the pool.' The young guy reached up to wipe water from the surface of his flared nostril, flexing a tattooed bicep. Then, he gripped the paddle. We were rafting down the Colorado river. 'I just don't see how people sit in the clockless, windowless rooms staring at bright lights and listening to piped in music when places like this -- five national parks -- are within two hour's drive. We were camping and hunting the last few nights in dixie national forest--'
'Oh yea,' eyebags cut in,' I dropped a buck, probably a five-year-old. One shot. First night.' He made a warrior face and I noticed he had a crew cut. His body had softened in his 50s but had perhaps been army fit once.
'Are you in the military?' I asked. We dropped over another rapid, and we were all soaked with cold riverwater. I missed the beginning of his reply to the slosh, '...Personel officer. Now I'm out in the private sector. I work for a private contractor...uh... Halliburton. I'm basically in HR. In Afghanistan. This is my vacation.'
'And were you in the military too?' I asked the buff gruff young one.
'Nah,' he replied,' I got a degree in biochemistry but I live in Salt Lake and there's no work. I've been all over that town. I couldn't even afford to finish this tattoo ('Yet!' chimed in eyebags). It's good to get away and I like sleepin' on hotel beds.'
' We only slept one night in hotel beds. Rest of the time he's got to sleep on the ground in a tent next to me. I'm going to help him finish that tattoo. It's an eagle.'
The guide helped us paddle towards a dock, where we stopped to eat a grilled lunch. As the older guy got out of the boat, I could see his balls rolling around in his shorts as if the dimes I'd sunk in his eyebags had rolled out his sinuses, dropped down his esophagus, slunk through his gut and were weighing down his underwear.
His younger companion got out too, his shirt pulled up. I couldn't help but watch as the delicate but chiseled muscles of his lower back flexed around his spine, just above his pantline. That's when I saw the connection.
I watched those dimes rolling out of eyebags underwear and into the form-fitting pants of the young, robust non-gambler. As we waited in line for lunch, the sugardaddy fetched his sugarbaby a drink as the latter ate his hotdog.

'

2011-05-15T09:43:00.000-04:00

I spent the night in Georgia, cuddled in the suburbs of a Williams-Sonoma wet dream. I had a dream that there had been a plague in 1994 that killed all the adults and that we now lived in an anarchist utopia. I have been listening to too much punk music.

Today I played the airport game; making the right moves, pushing the right buttons, using the right items, killing the right bad guys and beating the game.

Now I am on the plane, most exotic of habitats. This is my 20th flight in one year. I'm practically a native among the groggy ursine passengers and fleet-footed attendants, chuckling at each other like squirrels. I always steal the safety card from the seatback in front of me and make collages.

Mandy

2011-05-07T09:49:00.001-04:00

A grasswinged sunlit girl of joy has found her way into the last days of my life here. Last minute love filling my final moments with grassy sunny walking flights, bites, and kisses. Sex as playful as rolling down a big tall hill.

She glows so bright she leaves my heart sunburnt. Though I've got to leave her now, I know I'll feel good when the burn becomes a tan.

lost thoughts

2011-03-11T09:52:00.000-05:00

sometimes it's delightful to feel pathetic.

Ah, don't mind that
It's just a marine protected area.

Overheard:
A memorial service?
For who?
For the Cat?
It's at which church?
Yea, parking's gonna be a bitch.

Powercrust tranimalistic.

All the moldy gypsum slurry
no good for drywall, can't be buried.

Got drunk and went through the drive-thru the wrong way. Turned around to try and order.
'What can we get for you?'
'I'm gonna-fucking-piss-myself!' Meredith squealed.
'Drive!' I yelled to Mandy and she floored it. 3 bewildered heads watched us from 2 drive-thru windows.

First Dates

2011-01-16T23:27:00.011-05:00

When the Huns migrated west from the Central Asian Steps, they invaded and conquered the people they encountered. One strategy they used to defeat their adversaries was to take captives. It is said that the numbers they took could 'fill and entire province'. Captives were used as slaves and held for ransom thus decimating the morale and economies of the nations the Huns invaded. When the ransom was paid, the captives could either go home or become Huns. Astonishingly, a good chunk of them became enamored of Hun culture and 'ferocious Hun women'. As this group settled, they formed their own nations and sub-groups which have become today's Turks. Now, almost two millenia after the Hunnic invasions, one of their descendants has taken another captive and I am afraid I have become enamored.

Last night I had a date with a Turkish girl that I met through the Anarchist group on Couchsurfing. I asked my brother to drop me off at her university in Istanbul-- the Bosphorous University.

'That's a difficult school to get into. Everyone there has to be really smart and get good grades and shit. I'm not just going to drop you off with a smart chick. You don't understand; we're Turks, we're Huns, we're dangerous,' My brother seemed completely serious as he spoke,' A smart Turkish girl, man, she'll fucking pillage your balls and eat your heart. Plus, you're a foreigner. No, man. If I leave you there with her, you're doomed.'

'Come on, Cem. Don't be overprotective. Just take me there,' I begged.

'Okay, bro, but I gotta fucking meet this bitch and if she seems dangerous I'll stay with you.'

'Seriously? I think I can handle myself. She's a feminist and an anarchist, like me. I'm sure I'll be fine,' I assured him.

'You say that now, but I guess I won't be disappointed when you move here to Turkey for this girl.' He smiled at me. We crept haltingly through Istanbul's chaotic, staccato traffic.'Just call me every so often and let me know if you need to be picked up or not.'

'I don't know how appropriate that would be,' I replied, ' What am I supposed to say? "Hey girl, can I borrow your phone? I have to let my brother know I am getting laid."'

'You want me to drop you off or not? Just call me dammit.'

We pulled in front of the University and stopped in the middle of the traffic-crowded road. A girl emerged from a fissure in the gridlock. She was long haired and a bit fair for a Turk, though she had the sharp smile, wide eyes, and air of strength. She strolled confidently through the urban landscape with such command that my brother, who earlier had been so protective, now merely gave a weak greetin and disappeared without challenging her. As he passed me, he whispered. 'Nice dude. Good luck.'

Once we had escaped the honking mass of vehicular clotting to the sidewalk, we exchanged the bise.

'I'm Banu,' she said and took me to a little bar. She ordered nargila for us to smoke and we drank Raki. I learned that she was studying philosophy and as with any interaction between anarchists we began the usual intellectual posturing and evaluative philosophical inquiry. She impressed my hipster ego on all fronts and I let my guard down. As we sent glass after glass to the dishwasher, she let her guard down too. We had just gotten to a comfortable and hilarious conversation about getting the munchies when the turkish version of happy birthday broke out a few tables away. The lights were dimmed and a waiter came in bearing a candle-topped chocolate cake. I glanced at Banu and she looked at me with the same dastardly predatory grin.

'I got the drinks if you can finagle us a piece of that shit,' I said.
'Oh, I got this one. Easy,' She replied. She stood up and strode to join the end of the precake birthday ceremony. She matched the smiles and the laughs, she made conversation in Turkish, and within three minutes she was back at our seat with two plates, glowing with victory. We ate with pleasure.

'You like cake?' she asked as I dragged my fingertip across the bare remnants on her plate.
'Always. All pastry. I plan my day around pastry sometimes. In fact, my friend Jaguar and I used to get high and go on midnight pastry quests,' I started.

'Jaguar?'
'Yea. His name. He goes by Drew for short.'
'Pastry quests?'
'Yea,' I continued,'We'd drive around listening to electronic music and smoking joints. We'd try to satisfy our need for sweets without ending up at Starbuck's. We had to get creative.'

'Hey Owen.'
'Yes Banu?'
'You want to go on a pastry quest?'
'Right now?'
'Yea.'
'But we just had cake,' I said.
'But we didn't have the quest or the joint.'
'Nice,' I said, 'I am so down.'

The quest didn't take long though. There was a bakery right beneath the bar. We got all varieties of little Turkish pastry. Chocolate chestnuts, little brownies, sticky ones with pistachios. Then we walked back to the University. She led me to an tall old brick building. It was being renovated, so there was a scaffold set up along the western wall. Banu and I climbed the scaffold, ducking through the brambly vines that had grown up through it. We got to the roof.

Banu rolled a spliff and we smoked it, looking down over the Bosphorous strait. I could see the lights of the asian side of the city across the water. We flirted and ate pastry, moving closed and closer to each other until kissing was irresistible. She tasted like chocolate and ganja smoke. She took my hand and tugged me back down the scaffold. She opened a window and we climbed through into a dark classroom. We undressed each other and made love--first she sat on the edge of a rolling chair, then we did it standing up, then she laid down and I was on my knees,and finally we lay holding each other fucking on the ground.

Afterward, as we lay nestled in each others' nakedness, she said to me, 'I won't be able to come to this class anymore without thinking of you.'
'Really? You have class here?'
'Yea,' she answered.
'Which class?'
'International trade.'

We clutched each other sleepily and she buried her nose in my beard.
'You smell like a foreigner,' she said.
'You smell like a girl, I replied foolishly.
'Like a girl?,' she said,'I make love like a hun.'
I couldn't argue.

I noticed that the classroom had a small balcony.
'I have half a mind to go stand out there naked in the cold,' I said. We got up and stood a while, looking down at the campus. But the idea was less comfortable in practice than it had been in my imagination. We held each other, but couldn't stay warm enough. Eventually we put our clothes on and climbed back down the scaffold.

Banu took me to the banks of the Bosphorous. We ate stuffed mussels and sheep intestine down by the water. I could see her face again in the growing light-- her thin but unkempt eyebrows and slight smirk. We saw the sun rise over the water as the Imams climbed the minarets of the mosques to sing the morning call to prayer. That's when I knew I was a captive, and that even if my ransom was paid I would stay here in Istanbul.

II

Banu whispers Turkish. Her words are like the purr of a tiger. She knows I know she could behead me with a bite, but she just lays lovingly licking my ear. We lay in bed from before dawn to after noon. We'd loved until we fell asleep, then woke to love again. In and out of sleep pressed warm and naked in the smell of each others' morning bodies. She showed me her battle scars. Despite my breakfastless hunger, I couldn't keep my clothes on and she wouldn't leave the sheets. After I'd tried to rise and been dragged back to bed, Banu's friend (whose room we had commandeered) prodded us with oranges and coffee. Finally, Banu stretched with a toothy grin. She wouldn't let me say goodbye at the door. She insisted on riding back to Levent in the taxi with me, holding my hand. She kissed me with a possessive ferocity for a quarter hour outside the house. We said goodbye, but I don't remember the words because the sound of my love tearing in two drowned out the friendly farewells.

2011-01-16T23:24:00.000-05:00

2011-01-16T23:21:00.000-05:00

2011-01-02T00:00:00.000-05:00

C

2010-09-17T20:05:00.001-04:00

Who is this human?

You,

who I'd only estimated
to be the sum of you curves, your clothes,
and your springy leaping texan-talk

who I thought was only some tame
cute false-haired critter creature trying to escape
the circle of dyeing

Yet you

waxed wild
with a heart full of horses
in galloping equestrian conversation
leaped over my pitiful underestimation

spoke in bold monologue
and I wanted to hold onto your hand
just to follow the hoofbeats
of your unassailable arguments
clinging as I was to your lingering S's

but you

were swinging back and forth on the rope swing
in and out of the light from the road
I could only brush your fingers
as you passed the bowl

had writing in your voice
a diary behind the delivery
of well tied up sentences
knots tugged free
as you pulled your points across
in shrewd metaphorical prosidy

I
was enraptured
there is so much adventure in your voice

Rain on my Tent

2010-09-13T19:58:00.000-04:00

Under the storm
my tent is a dry dark wonderland
of many-legged shelter-seekers

black widows and mantises
sheepishly dry the wet hairs of their appendages
on my sheets
as they crawl through the zipper apprehensively

Soon, they have warmed
under my motherly ministrations
with bugbrains full of sweet smoky milk

the widow has set about knitting a bedweb in the corner
while the mantis blinks its squinty eyes
and nestles off to praying
in the pocket beside my glasses

Excerpts from a letter to A

2010-09-08T19:51:00.000-04:00

Opened your letter
all the hearts fluttered out and
onto the table

I wonder if I'll ever see my mind again
it's been swallowed
I can hear it working inside me
but I can't get at its contents
I know this though--
I'm all love at the moment
filled with it
delivered from winston-salem
where you confessed it to the paper.

As I read
I felt like my heart would beat its way out of my chest
and explode into the atmosphere
to orbit the earth like a comet.

When I burn in the sun
when I tan
I know that I am a real part of the universe
burnt by a star
matter burnt by a star

When I feel you I feel
like a real part of the universe
touched by A
human touched by A

I am still not sure why when you're around
I feel like I have a buzzing beehive in my belly
Don't worry about shattering my heart in the grass
It'll be eaten by praying mantises
and carried away in the soil
and grown into watermelons
and eaten by children in countries
where love grows on trees

In Class

2010-09-02T21:13:00.000-04:00

I am paying attention and taking notes diligently.
I'm paying attention to the protein floating across the surface of my eye;
little bars of transparent goo
that ever so slightly distort the shape of the letters of my poem.

Dirt on my face dirt on my feet
hand dirt leaves a mark on the page
I smell like sweat. Not my sweat.
I smell like Fig's sweat.
It seems he has borrowed my clothes
and returned them full of Fig scent
citrus sour boy smell
His hugs are full of it
and I feel like I'm holding him all day

I'm doing math. It makes me hopeless.
Postmodernism makes math hopeless.
Irony makes postmodernism hopeless.

I think irony may be a disease
Irony; sounds like the taste in your mouth
after you vomit blood
or drink it, I suppose.

I've become enamored of naivete.
While traveling I found it in me
like coins between my emotional sofa cushions.
Now I'm saving it up.
I try not to put it in my mouth--
after all, coins taste irony.

I'm cultivating the naivete--
not denying the problematics of dynamics
in the processes of my experience
but experiencing with unrepentant wonder.

Today I wore through the calloused skin of my index finger
weeding crabgrass in the peppers.
It wasn't until the stinging hot capsaicin of a rotted paper
found its way into the finger fissure
that I noticed my fervent farming had wounded me.

I held my finger against the sun
as it burned with agonizing glory.
In pride, like a baby bird
dripping its first drop of sweat
from sweating feathers in flight,
I announced my broken skin
to the assembled pepper population

The bushes beside it applauded
with a green basil-scented uproar.

They'd all been paying attention
and taking notes diligently.

You put me in mind of...

2010-08-31T21:40:00.002-04:00

sleep beside a beast
soil, calloused canine flesh
smell of a dog's feet

2010-08-27T21:37:00.000-04:00

I'm in a dormitory of doors.
In the fluorescent light
I'm listening to hallways sounds.
Guitar strums arrhythmically.
Water on somewhere in the wall.
Voices and music. Water stops.
Someone opens a door and shuffles
opens another door
and locks it.

I could never move
and observation would absorb me
I could sit and starve
fascinated by bustling building traffic.

Caterpillar hanging from a branch

2010-08-26T21:35:00.000-04:00

Caterpillar hanging from a branch
I'm spinning myself back up
back into my entanglements
I'm bigger than the knots around me
I've got to break some tangled bonds
but I can shoot shit shots of silk
and tie new ties
cacooned in my tent in the woods

Comes home

2010-08-25T21:32:00.000-04:00

What a life I lead
but never, it seems,
free of language.
Does the warm human in my arms
have a feeling
is she sensed before I frame her in my mental wording?

No words, she says, no words
but every path I try to take
to this experience of her
is paved with grammar
is sidewalked and guardrailed by culture.

Ultimately something passes
which does not satisfy any phrase I might build around it
which escapes the cage of my articulating
Did it pass from my experience to yours?

I cannot build the question
you'd never say anyways

but is this what is missing in memory?

2010-08-24T21:29:00.000-04:00

'To be human seems to mean being in a predicament one cannot solve. If the human is anything; it seems to be a double movement, one in which we assert moral norms at the same time as we question the authority by which we make that assertion.' Judy Butler

Gent

2010-08-20T21:14:00.000-04:00

Gent is full of adventurous heart burglars.
Every day I met five more friends
and each needs five days (or more)
to adventure with them.

Thus my days are thick and clotty
with rich sanguine fundoings
which bleed into each other
sloshing into the clinking glasses
of trappist ales.

My francophone companions and I
each ate 50 micrograms
and melted through the art museum
leaving a slimy trail
of kaleidoscopic laughter.

They turn their words around
until it's not french at all--
they chew up the syllables
and stuff their cheeks like hamsters
with unpronounced backwardspeak
'Tu as vu la meffe nantemai?'

We smoke joints in our canoes
paddling zigzags in the canal
all the weed from England
breathed by Belgian lungs.

The dogs on the train passed me by
unbothered by the herbs in my pants
or the bits of blotter paper
glued beneath the pages of
'De la Grammatologie'
the tramdriver never bothers
to make me buy a ticket
the busdriver gives me my 2 euro back

As I sat in the abandoned vet hospital
a dark black belgian anarchist bent to me and said
'You have a great cloud of luck about you'

II

Couchsurfing is a strange game
because I flit from life to life
inserting myself into the daily universe
of peoplehosts who are living their routine existences

I infiltrate living rooms

I've met more friends and friends of friends,
ex-girlfriends, brothers, pets, mammas,
drugdealers and landlords
than I will remember specifically

yet these glorious specificities--
the organization of kitchen drawers
stains on sofas
graffiti in the squats
broken toilets ('I'll show you the trick')
and little webs of drama
are much better
than any hotel chocolate
on a sterilized pillow

Going to the bar with friends
to meet friends of friends
is better than any rotten old cathedral

your smoky grungy corner of town
beats the shit out of polished touristique avenues
full of shit-smelling shops

III

And I'm
different
every time.

2010-08-15T13:16:00.000-04:00

I feel I make myself so transparent
to cover up my opacities
my stories have no holes
but I'm a great hole
filled with stories

I'm a Model

2010-08-15T13:05:00.000-04:00

I rode the underground yesterday
out to Langdon park
and hiked round the drab streets

at the epicenter
of this gangrenously drab area
of council housing
is the balfron tower

supposedly, it's a masterpiece
of the brutalist school of architecture

It is a tall brown brick building
bound to a tower by thin windowed walkways
the tower resembles a scabby limb
severed and sewn back on

the photography professor
has a home on the 12th floor
it's a crusty, barren flat
and he swims through the cigarette smoke
from room to room

with a proper cockney lilt
he bantered theory
and made smile-shattering jokes
he took down his wash
from where it hung by the window

'this is how I change the lighting'

photos exposed themselves into existence
as cup after cup of tea followed
cigarette after cigarette out of existence

an army of black and white Owen faces
wait in the darkroom

Adaptation

2010-08-13T16:34:00.003-04:00

'More than that, though, in Glastonbury I managed to be nomad without stabilizing myself or my ideas of place here. It was rather my remaining destabilized that conditioned all of my interactions here, and allowed me to lose myself in the lives and habits of my new friends in their tiny town and to live in it with them as nomads as nomad.'

I've always found myself to be adaptable, but only now do I seem to have adapted to adapting. In my experience, changes in location and situation have always destabilized my feeling of self-continuity. However, I am usually quite adept at establishing a narrative link between former and present contexts, and I quickly identify with my present circumstance.* In each context, those attributes which I identify with myself take on different apparent meanings and functions. I tend to find myself becoming accustomed to these changes rather easily.

At this present moment I am most of the way through a much more nomadic, much more sustained travel experience and I seem to have become accustomed to becoming accustomed.

It is not a process of maintaining sense of more than one self-circumstance. That is to say, it is not just that I remember the roles I have played and re-assume them or sustain them simultaneously. That would still be a first order adaption, or an axiom of adaptation.

Adapting to adaptation is a process of a higher order. I first noticed it in Glastonbury when, wandering the streets at night, I traced the routes I had traveled before both already familiar with (adapted to) them and aware of their meaning for me within the context of my nomadism-- a meaning which always already conditions my familiarity with them as provisional.

My consciousness of this provisional familiarity, though at the time unthought as such, interacted with my experience and allowed me to traverse the route in such a way as to make my transient knowledge of it serve a more adventurous purpose within the context of nomadism. This is what I mean by adaptation of a higher order (adaptation to adaptation).

Thus, rather than using my familiarity with the route to reach a destination, the route itself became a site of potential adventure (while remaining a means).

I also noticed this sensation in familiarizing myself with new people. Those performative habits, presentations, and ways of being which constitute Owen-as-other (whom I identify with) have different functions, meaning and affects depending on whom I interact with (and vice versa), and I quickly found myself familiar with the particular dynamic of my interactions with my new friends in Glastonbury.

I became increasingly conscious, though, of the way in which this familiarity too was transitory, the way in which I was transient, and how this attribute of the context in turn affected the dynamic of my interactions. This higher order adaptation allowed me again to use my familiarity within the context of nomadism.

That is to say, in adapting to this context (a process which usually allows me to move from a sense of destabilization to a sense of continuity), I yet retained a higher sense of transience and instability which conditioned my interactions as becoming-unfamiliar even as they became-familiar.

Though conscious at this point of a new sense of both ease and instability, it was not until I made it back to London that the essence of this feeling made itself apparent in a sudden tingly flash of insight on the train.

I was returning to taking a route that I became familiar with last. Traversing it again, after having experienced Glastonbury, I knew that the nomad using this route was both familiar-with (as Owen familiarizing) and unfamiliar-with (as Owen already familiarized) the route. Within this situation I was also becoming more familiar and (within a nomadic context) becoming unfamiliar with the route.

Thus, this becoming-adapted to adapting stabilized and destabilized Owen-as-familiar, while stabilizing the higher order destabilization of Owen-as-nomad. I wonder, though, whether and how I will integrate this sense when I leave the context of this particular journey and return to a habit and context with which I became familiar prior to my becoming-familiar with becoming-familiar. Will I have to adapt to having adapted to adapting?

*I feel the need to disclaim for the sake of rigorousness (and irony): I try to remain aware that the 'I' that adapts is not fully narrativizable and is in fact that which isn't stable in me. So, when I say 'I' adapt, I mean that this process of becoming-other accustoms itself to certain similar but non-identical patterns in its relation with processes of higher orders.

Glastonbury

2010-08-13T16:21:00.002-04:00

It's Friday the 13th and I'm bussing out of a witchy town. It's been a fortunate four-day detour to Glastonbury.

I landed in the rainbow-colored incense-scented laps of the South African hippies Chris and Nikki. Within minutes of my arrival they had me going, glowing with glowsticks in their cupboard of a home-- they call it the Groovitron.

It's hung with psychedelic eyecandy; tapestries and posters, mobiles and black-lights. There are toys everywhere and a little pool filled with brightly colored balls. My bed was next door, in a little room called the Nutshack.

They took me into the innards of G-bury by day, with the cultural commentary only foreigners can offer. By night they slept, and I roamed the old stone town smoking out unsuspecting sympathetic-seeming strangers. Dankin' up the local dankfolk.

There were meteors three nights in a row; they peaked last night as we lay up at Bushy Coombe. A night of shooting stars with friends cannot be undone; the bit of space one is looking at will never be as it would have been if one hadn't looked. We lit a fire in the firepit. Irrevocably altered by our interactions, we parted singing in the sunrise.

My friends are not footnotes; this town is not a short stop in a grand adventure. These were merely introductions. I'll be back in Glastonbury now that I know she's a dank town. I'll see Chris and Nikki again too-- at home in their natural South African habitat.

More than that, though, in Glastonbury I managed to be nomad without stabilizing myself or my ideas of place here. It was rather my remaining destabilized that conditioned all of my interactions here, and allowed me to lose myself in the lives and habits of my new friends in their tiny town and to live in it with them as nomads as nomad.

Squatparty

2010-08-08T11:18:00.000-04:00

I couldn't find the right bus. Another dreadie stood at the Hackney Wick stop, but on the other side. I crossed the empty nighttime street to ask him if he knew.

'Do you know which direction to take to Mare street?'
'I don't speak English,' he said with a heavy accent. I know that accent.
'Francais?' I ventured.
'Oui,' he nodded.
'Tu connais quelle direction a mare street?' I asked.
'Ici.' he said, and the bus came round the corner.

It felt good. If I did not speak French, I might have missed the bus or gone the wrong way. Little victory. In addition, he was going to the same squat party. He led the way once off the bus, and helped me find the squatted warehouse.

'Occupy Everything. Demand Nothing.'
'All Power to the Communes'

The huge room was made up with graffiti and murals. There was a stage edged by a half-pipe and other skatepark fixtures. For seating, there was a labrynth of detached ducts; hollow metal cylinders arranged in circles with pillows to sit on. I shoved my coat and water bottle in one.
In the back right corner was a bar and pizza overn, on the left were toilets.

The rooms filled with punks, hippies, and smoke. The music was diverse-- there were MC's, DJ's, grime, punk, and even an indie little brit-pop band singing in harmony.

I occasionally saw my french friend in the blending peoplemass of the dancefloor. Eventually, I fell in with three anarchists; Helen, Tom, and Kasper.

Helen had a mohawk, dreads, glasses, and a kind face variously puntuated by silver piercings. She was dressed all in black and spoke with a slightly shrieky Nottingham accent.

Tom was a bald boyish English punk, his demeanor straight from 'A clockwork Orange'. His every other word was fuck.

Kasper was polish and blonde. He'd shaved a warrior patch into his head and wore horn-rimmed glasses. He had a soft blond beard, only a week's growth.

As we sat talking and smoking spliffs, Riz, a dark-skinned curly-haired hipster, offered us each a drop of acid for two pounds. Once thoroughly sopping with psychedelia, the four of us oozed onto the dancefloor.

As I lost myself to anarchic decadence, I was thankful I'd left all my belongings at home.

I mixed with every clique. It seems that Anarchism in London is just as sectarian as in the US. There were at least 7 groups represented at the squatparty. For the most part they were friendly to each other, but I heard a bit of gossip and trashtalk. The Ratstars (which included Kasper Helen and Tom) seemed to be allied with the WAGS (white chapel anarchist group).

'They do the most serious hardcore badass direct action in London. Not like the fucking Wickers,' explained Helen.
'Fuck the Wickers!' echoed Tom, 'And the CRIER's!'
'And the Judean People's Front!' I added.
'Yea...we know,' said Kasper. Apparently this analogy had been drawn before.

As we were peaking, perhaps around 2am, I pulled a sticker from my notebook. It had a drawing of the Earth and an ear of corn made to look like a grenade.
'Organismes Genetiquement Modifies... Planete en Danger.' There was smoke and the words tic tic tic. It seemed to move and twist. The world seemed to turn. The others were looking too.

As smoke billowed from the corn grenade, we could hear it ticking. It was going to explode!
'Put it back!' Tom begged, near tears. I turned it over, exposing the back. It was safe and white, no ticking, no wriggly words. We breathed a sigh of relief.
'Again!' shouted Tom. I turned it over. The corn grenade started smoking and ticking and twitching on the turning planet.
'The back!' shouted Tom, again. I flipped it back. After that, from time to time, he'd ask to see it. It produced less glee after we'd peaked, but it became a recurring joke.

At one point I danced with a dreadie girl. We were both too far gone to converse. Somehow we migrated from the dancefloor to an airduct where I found myself lost beneath dreads and pillows with hot alcoholic lips messily mixing spit and lust into my mouth. Dizzy and overwhelmed, we passionately attempted to masturbate ourselves and each other. It was a messy endeavor. Neither of us could decide exactly which sex act we were trying to perform, and in the hallucinatory daze I could scarcely tell what affect I was having. It felt marvelous, though, and I had the impression that we were a tangled dreadlock mass of sopping orgasmic spoof writhing like earthworms in the corner.

I watched, eating pizza, with the ratstars on the other side. Realizing that I seemed to be two places at once, I asked
'Is this really here now?'
but it just sounded like one of the meaningless things everyone says while tripping.

Nevertheless, I finished the pizza and bought some delicious amaretto cake. The foggy windows of the warehouse began to brighten. Morning.

I said goodbye to every face that smiled at me and hunted down the 6:15 bus back to Hackney Wick in the overbright colors of the fading haze. Back at Kiera's I slept until 3. Then I cleaned up, packed, and dashed across town to catch a coach to Glastonbury. Here I am now, leaving London for cheaper waters.

2010-08-07T11:14:00.000-04:00

Greg's a greyboy irish queer
accent dancing across history and theory
philosophizing economics
and after each phrase
he rests his eyes on mine
and smiles
we biked through Hackney
as he told me about peasant movements
in Wick Woods
he showed me the trees they'd sat in
to protest the road
we pedaled through brambly blackberries
scratching at my legs
we stopped to pick sweet things
to say sweet things
to do sweet things
and sit by the tree holding hands in the rain
then we got indian takeaway,
rode home
feasted
and snuggled sipping cocoa

Customs...

2010-08-06T11:11:00.000-04:00

I was held up at customs before boarding the train for London. Apparently, they did not properly stamp my passport when I landed in Paris. This was interpreted as the possibility that I had entered France illegally. They held up the train and hundreds of people while I pulled out my computer and hunted for my flight number. They called Air Canada to confirm that I did in fact come to France in May. As I waited, they seemed already poised to eject me from France or forbid me from entering England.

But hey, it's not a vacation until you almost get deported.

2010-08-04T11:10:00.000-04:00

I'm in the 19th Arrondisement waiting to meet someone to couchsurf. The spot happens to be right outside of the Conservatoire de Paris. Four years ago, this is exactly where I planned to be right now. Here I am, I suppose.

Paris...unfortunately

2010-08-03T10:49:00.000-04:00

I've been in Paris for hours, but I've yet to meet a single Parisian.
I couldn't find a couch to surf, and as I used my twenty minutes of internet sitting on a staircase in the Gare de Lyon, a short winded-looking man with a goatee approached me.

'You speak English?'
'Oui,' I mistakenly responded,' I mean, yea.'
He then vomited a torrent of story at me with a slight eastern european accent.
'What?' I asked.

He took a breath and broke it down a bit more clearly. A bit.

'I was returning from Poland to my home in Jersey. My first vacation in six years! Ruined now... I had the misses and the kids on a plane. They arrived already. When I called them they were all crying, It's bullshit. Some fucking french lady-- I put the family on the plane and I will drive the car, but some stupid french lady hit me and now I am stuck in Paris. And the laptop--I didn't think to buy the adapter so now it doesn't work! You are from here? You know where I can find an adapter? The childrens are waiting for me!'

I thought of the adapter in my bag, Should I trust his story and lend it to him?
'I don't know where to buy one,' I said,'but... you can borrow mine.'
He lit up again.
'You have one? Thank you! Thank you!' I just need to charge my laptop,' he said.

We searched the station for an outlet, and found one in a cafe. We sat by a dreadie, and eventually began a conversation. The dreadie was french and Indian; his accent was beautiful. It was full of rolled consonants and purring melodious vowels.
'You know a neighborhood with lots of alternative folks?' I asked him.
'Unfortunately, no. I just come from India and I hate Paris. En fait, I'm searching for accommodation myself.'

The Polish man was seated beside us. He didn't speak a word of French, but when he heard the word 'accommodation', he perked up.
'Accommodation?' he said to me, 'Tell him I know a hostel for only 25 euro.'
'You know a hostel for 25 euro?' the dreadie asked in English.
'Yea,' said the Pole, ' right around the corner.'

The hostel buzzed with languages. Well, it buzzed with mostly English. Bad English of every variety buzzed about, landing on my ears like an annoying fly. The drunk Americans only served to augment the poverty of the assorted rotten flowers of my native tongue.

But when the French Indian dreadie, Matthieu, spoke to me through ganja smoke in our room, I felt like I was already in bed with my ear resting on a pillow. We didn't go to sleep yet, though, rather we walked the streets of Paris, sharing our abhorrence for the city. We reluctantly paid for overpriced Tapas while we shared our love of permaculture over overpriced beer.

Today we walked again-- we didn't stop to see the sights, we didn't eat anything fancy. We just walked through Paris all day, talking. We both know we will avoid Paris in the future, but we're also sure we'll meet again.

2010-08-02T10:45:00.000-04:00

Last night we stayed with Nina and Narayan at their yurt in Drome. This morning, Stani and I rushed to the Gare TGV in Avignon. I wasn't sure how to thank her for the umpteenth adventure she'd facilitated.

'I know,' I said, ' You are hereby declared a certified badass.'
She laughed and said
'La prochaine fois, chez toi.'

Leaving Paradise

2010-08-01T09:56:00.000-04:00

I

I had to leave Chambis today, after four days that felt like a lifetime; that was a lifetime. I was tempted to give into the possibility of that lifetime; to give in and live there. 8 humans in their own joyous habitat-- a community a mile's hike up the mountain from state, culture, electricity, peopleworld.

5 of the 8 are musicians; Stephen with his hurdy-gurdy, Antoine with his Clarinet, Camille at the piano, Phillippe on guitar, and Pauline singing gypsy songs.

They work liesurely in the terraced garden, bathe in the river, raise animals, and sleep together in a three story three hundred year old stone house with no floor, no doors, no electricity, and a woodburning stove. All day, between gardening, they eat cheese and make music together, carve, sew, sit by fires with wine singing together, smoke joints, read, and bake bread.

There are no fewer than 9 cats with constant kittens. The two dogs, Lutschke and Casey look like they come from storybooks.

II
Last night was Stephen's birthday. We had a feast and built a giant wooden boar filled with kindling. We painted our faces and circled the boar chanting 'Creme!' and Stephen beat it into flame with his torch. As it burned, we ate tiramisu and played gypsy songs and tarantellas. We made up stories together and played cards.

Antoine channeled George Brassens with the guitar while Pauline taught me to waltz. Then I tried to show her how to contra-dance. She looked at me as we stepped to the song, clutching each other. She didn't look away when I met her gaze. She smiled and I let myself regard the lines of her face.

'I wrote a little about you in my diary today. J'espere que c'est d'accord,' I said, turning with her.
'You'll read it to me?' she asked.
'No.' I replied. She pouted.
'What did you write?' She missed a step. Her low voice was a bit higher.
'You know...just what you said about learning spanish in Germany, about the gypsy songs you sang, what you said about grammar and culture...and I wrote about the way you walk.' I said the last bit a bit feebly.
'The way I walk?' she asked.
'Oui...'
'Tell me what you wrote!'
'Just that... well, I can't explain in French.'
'Explain in English,' she said,' and I'll pretend to understand.'
'You have a strong walk,' I started in English, 'You stand straight, lean a little forward, and step with all your weight, bobbling a little to the left, a little to the right. I dunno... c'est tres mignon. j'aime ca.'

She looked a little confused. Maybe she had understood a bit, maybe not. However, when the song was over and we'd finished dancing I didn't let go of her hand and she didn't pull away from my side.

Soon after, though, her phone rang and she left to talk alone. I sat with Steven, who insisted that all French songs were too serious.

'You're American. Sing something wild-west. Sing something Cowboy. Sing something Gospel. RocknRoll!'
'There is no song to satisfy all of these categories, Steven, but since it's your birthday I'll try,' I said, as Antoine handed me my ukulele.
'I've been working on the railroad...,' I started singing in a deep voice, playing dominant 7s and adding some gospel flourishes. Then we tried to translate the song into french
'J'ai travaille sur la chemin a fer... et passe toute la journee...'
After that, we tried 'coming round the mountain'. By the time we'd finished, the sun rose over the mountains.
'That means it's time to sleep, I think,' remarked Stephen.

III

We were all up by noon, leisurely munching the remnants of the birthday feast. I gathered my affairs and bid the kittens farewell. The nine of us climbed the winding route to the dirt road, stopping for water and rest at each terrace. Then we descended into the valley, where an aqueduct stretched over a river that had carved a canyon.

The walls of the canyon were lined with layers of color. There was no sand-- just cailloux and pierres on the banks of the river. The air was filled with wet lightning-- and the thunder from les nuages gris was caught between the canyon walls so that each booming crash rumbled on, sustained. As the rain fell, we flew one by one from the edge of a high rock and splashed in the green river after an airborne tumble.

When everyone had gathered further down river, Pauline and I lingered by the diving-rock.
'I don't want to leave today,' I started, ' I can imagine a thousand, no, a million conversations we'll never have. We haven't known each other as we should! I don't have the words...'

'It's okay, Owen. You will come back to Chambis.' She put her hand on my arm. There were little bumps, but I don't know if it was the wind or her touch.

'Maybe you'll come to Les Etats-Unis? I can feed you, teach you English...'
'No,' she said, 'You will come back here.' She was closer now, and I ventured a hand just above her hip. She looked at me with what I hope was happy surprise. Her face was so close-- I didn't have to bend or lean. I just stepped forward to put my lips between hers, hers between mine. Our faces were wet and cold with rain and river-water. She closed her eyes and I enwrapped her, feeling the few stray freckles of her back under my fingers.

She was against me and I felt I could have melted despite the cold water. I pulled my face away. Her eyes were still closed--then we got fucking soaked.

Stani hit the water just feet from where we stod, and the cold water shocked us apart. The three of us talked for a while, playing with the swimming dog. She'd become a slow aquatic mammal, playing water fetch in slow motion.

We climbed the ancient roman stairs at the edge of the canyon in the rain. Here's where we part. Stani and I put our things in her truck while the others put theirs in Steven's.

'I don't know why I'm leaving when I've already found the most awesome people in France,' I said. I gave them each a hug and a bise. As I let go of Pauline, I clutched my fist at my heart and sighed.
'Moi aussie...' she whispered.

Pauline

2010-07-30T09:43:00.000-04:00

I haven't the words
to be silly with you
and must be content
to watch you laugh
with the others

and to hear you whispering with Camille
in bed at night
Kennopod!
How I want to crawl across the room
under those sheets
where I know you're warm and naked.
The fire's not yet lit
and I'm cold
I'll offer you chocolate

I haven't the words
to flirt with you
and must be content
to speak of sterile things
but you are so interesting
reading Nietzsche in german
making tomato preserves
humming ravel and bach

I was so in love
when you taught us that chanson Tsigane
and we sat cutting tomatoes
each singing a different part.

Your voice is low and a little quiet
but I almost always understand you
unfortunately, the inverse isn't true
I was trying to make you laugh!
Instead I had to explain six times...
I was trying to tell you I am drawn to you
but I was too bashful to explain again

You're always smiling at me
delicious as you walked back from the river
shivering beneath your towel
your thick brown hair was wrapped up
and I could see the pale skin of your neck
where the sun has not browned you

I watch you walk while you work
a strong walk,
leaning a bit forward
and bubbling side to side

You human--
I can see you pick your nose by the firelight

and you're my height!
I need only lean forward to be cheek to cheek with you
thus, this bise is a torturous tease.
I want to stop in the middle
and meet your lips
or hug you like an American!

I have only one more day to know you
I hope some accident of chemistry, courage, or coincidence
will allow my desire to traverse your skin
and my name your heart

Chambis

2010-07-29T09:36:00.000-04:00

Roadtripping through Ardeche
Where is this commune?
Bumping up and down
on the obligatory dirt road
then another roadside picnic
and an hour's hike down the mountain
here it is,
in the ruins of a little village:
Chambis.
They've carved terraces into the mountainside
with vegetables growing all mixed together
mulched with hay
Pierres, Cailloux,
chats et chatins
composting toilets

Carrying rocks down the mountain
to build a cabane
we joke and smoke
work a bit
have coffee
hike
work more

This is not farming for money
this is life
Permaculture

we played music all night
Stephen with his hurdy gurdy
and ate together
silly convivial tabletalk
and sat in the ruins
I slept inside
for the first time in months
in a room with thirteen beautiful humans

2010-07-28T09:27:00.000-04:00

I must hide my naivete, for when I beheld the cliffs of southern ardeche, I waxed touristique. When we passed a medieval chateau, I nearly betrayed my electrified heart. Luckily, the Wal-Mart-sized Intermarchet next door deflated my wonder.

Utilizing our smoke signal, we managed to attract two sexy dreadheads, David and Alexi in their van. It was done up with wood inside. They had two beds, a shower, a turntable, and a puppy.

It was such a familiar feeling, smoking out in a parking lot listening to a car stereo. I could feel the echoes of a thousand former mes. When we joked stonedly, I heard the laughter of every parking lot smokeout, in supermarkets from Florida to Ardeche. How many people are utilizing parking lots the world over for this subversive purpose at any given moment?

We made it to Thueyts, a village of stone, entirely walled in; a maze of perfectly paved streets. They were filled with a festival; a soupy mix of french humans. Stani swam through it with me in tow.

I busked with Africans and Belgians all night, playing melodica and ukulele. I was so caught by the joy of playing with others that I forgot to eat. Soon it was three, and nothing was open. I'll survive. We all slept in the park in hammocks and tents.

2010-07-27T09:36:00.000-04:00

'Precisely my own opacity to myself occasions my capacity to confer a certain type of recognition on others. One can give and take recognition only on the condition that one becomes disoriented from oneself by something which is not oneself, that one undergoes a decentering and 'fails' to achieve self-identity...

...when we claim to know and to present ourselves, we will fail in ways that are nevertheless crucial to who we are...any effort to give an account of oneself will have to fail in order to approach being true.'

-Judith Butler

Quitting the Farm

2010-07-26T10:43:00.001-04:00

I was doing the dishes and Stani came through the window. A torso shoved itself out of the dark, her head asking in French, 'Where is the lake?'

Her voice quivered with constraint as though she were having more fun than could politely fit into someone else's kitchen. But there it was; fun in her oily black hair, in her round jaw, round the ring in her nose, in her scrunched together eyebrows. There was fun dripping from her red ganesha sweater and absolutely pouring from the lighter dangling around her neck.

I wanted to climb out the window and walk her to the lake, but the sound of running water in the sink tied me to my work.

'Follow the road to the bottom of the hill and walk through the forest to the left,' I explained and she disappeared leaving only a 'Merci' ringing through the room.

I finished the dishes and was about to head into the dining room when Sebastien stopped me. He turned a bit red--

'You're not to go into the dining room tonight. The clients are scared of your dreads and beard.' He sounded genuinely regretful and a little embarrassed. Nonetheless, it was a humiliating reminder that I am living in the square world again, where people are scared-- that the only people like me I've met here were down by the lake.

Tonight, she's there with who knows whom else. There could be a thousand dreadies swimming in the lake while I'm here working.

I cleaned the kitchen as if the clients had already finished eating. Then I asked Sebastien if I could leave early.

'Leave where?' he asked.
'Le lac.'
He nodded.

I was exhausted after my tenth hour of work, so I pounded a few cups of coffee. On my way out, I quietly crept into the winecellar and grabbed some organic Ardechois Merlot. It was cold in my pocket as I marched down the hill under the burn of the full moon.

This was a lucky night to be rounding roads usually too dark to follow. As I neared the lake, I heard the deep rhythmic grind and clunk of dubstep. I couldn't help but step to the bump of the beat, anticipation squeezing my feet through my boots.

I approached a lit clearing by the side of the road. Two big white vans, a covered truck, and a car had parked in a circle. One of them was the source of the music. There were six bodies sitting drinking in a circle in the center. It took them a moment to see me standing by the van, but then they all looked up at once.

'Are we too loud?' the nearest asked in French. I couldn't see his face with the light behind him, just his hat.

'Pas du tout!' I said smiling, and pulled the wine from the spacious back pocket of my overalls. At the sight of it, they gave a collective 'Ey!' and cleared a space for me in the circle. Introductions were drunkenly exchanged. I remember all but two of the names. Tosh, Elsa, Stani, Noe. They seemed to think my name was 'Oven'. As a result, I was called 'Four' which is the French word for oven.

They, like the other folks I've met by the lake, travel around France in their vans picking fruit and camping every summer.
'It's the greatest life.'

I told them all about my own; 11 hours a day at the Ferme Auberge. I tried to convey my love, but I was still frustrated from the day's work and judgemental clients.

'Poutain! With a summer in france you could have worked only 3 hours a day and seen every region and never met a square!' said Tosh, the bearded brother of Stani, who'd come through the window.

'I didn't know where to go. I just sort of picked a farm from WWOOF and came.'

Noe, the cute one with the hat who had greeted me, got up and walked to the van. He came back with a pen, paper, and corkscrew. I opened the wine and we passed it. It made a round with the paper and pen. When it got back to me, I had a treasure map of France-- cities, names, squats, farms, phone numbers.

'If Saint-Victor is all you see of France, it's a shame. Leave your farm and travel!' said Elsa, Tosh's curly haired lover.

'I've only got one more week.' I said.
'Poutain!' she whined.
'I know, fuck.' I said in English. They laughed at the word
;What the fuck is up with this fucking shit?' said a dreadie.
'Fucking hell!' teased another.
'Mother fucker!'
They were all amused by the versatility of 'fuck'. Stani handed me a joint.
'Fuck yea,' I said, hitting it.

II

When the coffee wore off, I somehow stumbled back up the hill to my tent at Corsas. As soon as I was awake I stumbled down again. It was late in the morning, and only Stani and Elsa remained at the campsite by the lake. They sat on a blanket in the sun, smoking rolled cigarettes.

'Cafe ou the?' offered Elsa.
'Du the'

After it had warmed a bit, we ventured to a nearby farm to buy eggs and courgettes and aubergines. The others returned to let us know they had to work at four (I had discovered that it was already two-thirty).

Stani retrieved a map and sat with Elsa apparently debating where to venture today while everyone worked. The other four had their opinions as well. Once the conversation began to roll, I couldn't follow the speed, the slang, and the names of places on the map. After I'd drifted into sunlit clouds of thought, there was a sudden silence.

The faces came back into focus--all of them looking at me as if expecting a response. It was apparent that I hadn't been paying attention.

'Are we talking too fast for you, Four? I forgot. Pardon! We'll slow down,' offered Tosh.
'No need,' I said, ' If I were at the auberge I'd be listening to square clients talk too fast about square bullshit-- I'd much rather fail to comprehend awesome anarchistes planning adventures than boring squares. Continue.'

They spoke slowly for a few minutes, but then the speed picked up again and I let the conversation escape me, abandoning myself to smiling at the tan-bodied faces of my companions.

Tosh, Noe, and the Dreadies left for work. Elsa, Stani and I arrangged ourselves in Stani's truck. It was a little room-- bookshelf, and kitchen shelf to the right, clothes rolled up beneath. On the left was a board stuck with anarchist posters in French and Spanish. In the back was a bed, covered with Stani's things. On the way up the hill, we passed the Auberge and I could see Sebastien working in the kitchen. I felt a bit of guilt setting out on an adventure while he served 25 guests, even if it was my day off.

Our first mission was to find fromage. From village to village we searched, and between each was a knot of hilly roads which Stani navigated avec vitesse. Each curving loop of the tangled route had us skidding and squeaking, with all the contents of chez Stani hurtling round the truck's interior.

'Ce'est comme un film americain!'

As we came round a curve, braced against the walls from centrifugal force, Stani abruptly shifted and braked. This sent us skidding into a gravel area, and we fishtailed for a good one and a quarter turns. Once the truck had stopped, Stani announced through the airborne cloud of gravel dust

'Voila. Une fromagerie.'

III

The addition of fromage to Elsa's road-shaken stomach was not conducive to a comfortable continuance of our wreckless trekking. So we took the rest of the route a bit more doucement. Unfortunately, as we slowed the terrain gave way to mountains and the roads lost all semblance of unidirectionality. Thus, it was both a struggle to remain steady enough to quell Elsa's stomach and to reach our destination so she could rest and recover. I wasn't quite sure what our destination was, only that it was 'tres jolie'.

As we came round the mountain, the road descended into a canyon. The canyon
was steep, with a river a thousand feet below. The road clung like a thin mustache to the lip of an outcropping on the rock walls of the mountain. An old roman aqueduct spanned the pass, now delivering vehicles rather than water.

We stopped a hundred feet or so above the river, where the mountain was level enough for a little glen. Stani opened up the back of her truck and Elsa lay on the bed while we cut the aubergines and courgettes with some ail and oignons. The glen was a bit too wet to light Stani's camping stove.

'Why don't we do it in the road?' I asked.
'Quoi?'
'Why don't we do it in the road?' I repeated, this time in English.
'Quoi?' repeated Stani.
'No one will be watching us. Why don't we do it in the road?' I continued. She looked at me a bit confused. The joke was lost on her.

Nevertheless, we did do it in the road. We fried the courgettes and aubergines, then added some leftover rice and cooked the eggs on top. The fromage was still sitting a bit heavy on my empty stomach, but the meal was invigorating. Afterwards, Stani, Elsa and I had a little fashion show in the glen with some fabric and ponchos Stani had picked up in South America.

Elsa started to descend the gorge, and I followed her. She said something I didn't understand, then repeated it. It wasn't until she made a frustrated face at me that I realized she had not come down to go to the river. She was trying to find a place to piss. I hoped I didn't look like a creep.

'Desole! J'avais pas compris!' I apologized. She stuck her tongue out at me and smiled. I climbed back up to Stani. When Elsa'd finished, the three of us climbed down by the wall of the aquaduct and lay on the sand by the river taking photos, making faces, and smoking joints. Drawn by the universal hippie smoke signal, some dreadies showed up with drums.

Back at the Farm later, I tried not to dance while I fed the animals and watered the greenhouse.

IV

Somehow, I knew it would come to this.
'Four, I'm leaving tomorrow,' said Stani, after another night of camping by the lake.
'Well fuck! Thanks for--' I started.
'Come with me.' she said, fun gushing from the corners of her eyes.

I was worried all the next morning, deliberately working out arguments in French to convince my bosses to let me go. But Sebastien just smiled and said
'Bon Voyage. Do the dishes and clean the shower before you go. Call me when you're done, I want to take a photo to say goodbye.'

'It's difficult to go,' I said, 'For me this farm is France.'
Julio made a shocked face.
'If this is France for you, you must go. This is not France. Hurry up, you have just a week. Fait attention, mais n'as pas peur! And wear a goddamn condom next time.'

Vermiculture

2010-07-15T07:45:00.003-04:00

'The history of writing is erected on the base of the gramme as an adventure of relationships between the face and the hand.' -Derrida

There's no need to worry about coming up with ideas; about articulating the concepts which occur to me. I can feel something stewing in the electric jello that inhabits my skull.

It is echoing the words I feed it with my eyes, mixing them with smells and sounds always chewed and swallowed by my five mouths. My throats are cratered and occluded-- geographic tubes with impressions called memories that shape the flows of perception.

There's no need to try and satisfy the aching hunger of my mental stomach with some final filling remedy. I need only feed and feed and wait for words to split like shits from tongue and finger language-expelling anus apparatuses.

The machine processes and casts its castings, yet creaking 'I' as it works. Worm swimming through soil, fertilizing and seeking fertility.

bastille day

2010-07-14T16:00:00.003-04:00

The other night I was life
to two twin lambs
emerging wet
walking by morning
but too slow to keep from falling victim
to a catch-and-cuddle

the other night i was death
no different
holding horns
cutting ram's tender throatparts
that bleed blood in a bucket
birthing organs emerging wet
from skinned cavity
all fall with a slosh
and I dig out the lungs and heart

I forgot the innards in my eagerness
I cut the mean
but left the greenorangepink of him
in the wheelbarrow in the barn
two days later i wheel him stinking down the hill

I had saved important bits because
when one is in a foreign country
one is obliged to eat an animal's testicles.
I am proud to say
I have fulfilled my obligation.

Mashed Potato Beetles

2010-07-12T06:11:00.003-04:00

I
This strong summer my body's beginning to get big again. Bales of hay on my pitchfork, buckets of water carried from the well, and pigs pushed like wheelbarrows held by hind legs rip tiny tears and muscle repairs make them feel a little lighter next time. The aching burn of working primate limbs is pleasure. I love to work.

With pulled up beets, carrots, nettles, cracked eggs and slaughtered skinned cleaned chopped sheeplambs I freely fry; I cuisinify. I farm for free, for food, and when I feed the pigs spaghetti it's just part of preparing dinner-- because maybe I'll still be around to eat muscle made of feed I fed and make my own muscle and feed more pigs.

II
Genocide feels good. Organs everywhere as I bend over here, gloved hands cracking beetle bodies or squeezing pink larval squirtyjuices or pulling weeds in the potatoes.

I'm still a tan-man farmhand under the french sun which watches hills checkered with plots of crops of every kind.

I'm working all day alone with my best friends; a thousand grinning zombies; my memories; my old me's. I talk to me in loud proud laughter drinking sun tea -- rosepetals, lavender, nettle, rosemary, and mint all plucked from the roadside -- and pluck the last of the cherries. Each has within it a worm, but I pretend I don't remember when I'm swallowing sweet and spitting pits.

Just me and Owen weeding watching working whistling getting darker and stronger and older making mashed potato beetles.

III
I walked whistling down the forested road. I found a lake in a basin between two hills. As I hiked to its shore, signs shouted warnings, no doubt contraindicating my intentions. As the warm thick lake muck-water wet my waistline, I heard a shout

'Stop! Baignade est interdite!'

Then I heard a splash. Full of panic, I froze. Without my glasses I could barely see the long form swimming toward me near the surface of the water. I backed away as it swam closer, hand to my heart. Finally, a head broke the surface, but it was smiling and dreaded. He laughed and held up his hand.

'Quel surprise trouver une autre person avec des dread ici en ardeche!'
'Oui!' was all I could say, smiling my panic away. Another dreadie emerged from some nearby trees with two dogs. The first two dreadies I have seen since I left home.

Some part f me that had felt alien amongst the square baldbodies of my daily work was finally at home. Their sunbrowned hairy skinbodies were like mine; well-worked and eager to swim.

The surface of the water was hot with sun, but underneath was cool and fresh. The three of us swam, breaking the surface only to sew together patches of my broken french to make conversation.

Naima and Julian; french fruit-picking dreadheads from Drome. We bonded over books and dogs, our mistrust of Obama and Sarko, the oil spill in the gulf and the much worse oil spill (unmentioned in the news) in the Niger delta.

They smoked me out; rolled a spliff with the first real dank green nugs I have seen in almost two months. I couldn't contain my gratefulness as I hit it and sipped the cold water from their cooler.

Around 7, they got up to go and gave me the only real hugs I have had since I left. None of this french face-kissing bise business, real body-huggin hippie-lovin. Somehow, those few moments held against sweaty naked brown bodies digging a freshbaked high made up for a whole night of drunken awkwardness with white baldbodied squares. I couldn't help thinking first as tragedy, then as farce. Hopefully again next week.

2010-07-10T06:49:00.004-04:00

I think my recent surreal sexual trauma must have put my nervous system in a very existential mode. I feel rather sharp.

Addicted to philosophy, from a letter to Elliot

2010-07-10T06:49:00.003-04:00

‎"I wish Kant had tried LSD, he would have loved it!" - Jonah Lehrer

Why is it that my interests and ideas always seem totally naive a year later? Does the expansion of my wisdom displace and expand the limit of my ignorance? Would I want it any other way?

Sure, I'm ahead of the curve, but only because I buy hardcover. Now everyone and their little sister is reading last year's philosophy in paperback, and has the same profound ideas I thought were mine last summer.

It seems I'm just a pomo-punk junky addicted to philosophy. Every time I fix on a new ism, I relapse. I've tried gum, tried cold turkey, and tried the patch. You can't cut down on a prediscursive libidinal multiplicity. I can't get high or low any more-- all I get is a thousand plateaus.

I'm post-queer, I have reconstructed post-structuralism, and run out of suffixes for anarcho-. I am always becoming-other whatever singularities, but all this becoming is becoming annoying. I've seen the irony in irony, and the irony in the irony of irony, and the irony is I'm covered in rust. Anyways, I'm beginning to suspect that irony is what enables us white people to live with ourselves, though we probably appropriated it from the cultures we colonized.

I've performed and critiqued every identity category and had my subjectivity produced by all sorts of power relations inscribing norms which I accidentally reinscribed in queering them. I schizo-analyzed my psychoanalyst but he turned out to be fine.

Meanwhile, Slavoj Zizek agreed with everyone he disagrees with and then begged to differ, despite the fact that differance isn't a concept he agrees with. I paid $30,000 for his class at the EGS; 'How to defeat Capitalism.' It was a math class.

The first question was 'If there is a coming insurrection leaving Chicago at 40mph and a coming community leaving San Francisco at 60...'

But I stopped paying attention because I had just received a text message from facebook suggesting I join the group 'We dislike facebook text messages'. I typed 'like' with a triumphant grin and a feeling of solidarity.

So, to combat my philosophy addiction I've gone to rehab here on the farm. I figured I'd get away from it all in France. Then I went into the garden and there they were, growing-- a million arborescences and an endless tangle of rhizomes deterritorializing and reterritorializing their ever-expanding limits of production.

As I created a break in the flow of water between the hose-machine and the tomato-machine, desiring production had me hooked again; a pomo-punk junky addicted to philosophy.