happy fall and all

school! school has begun! and now i have assignments:

for selah (who is so great, by the way--everyone said it and now i know it's true: she's going to cambodia to see what a university system means after genocide and what forms happen in order to speak this experience. she also says that trauma hybridizes the body and splits the language!)'s tutorial (blanchot), she has asked us to wear blanchot for the next two weeks. i think i will wear this:

"more significant is the 'transcendence' of language in and of itself: that is to say, a given language enters into resonance with itself and determines itself without end: it constitutes, thus, an interrupted, uninterrupted action, which then causes 'the soul to enter into resonance with itself or with the object'"

i also have to, in an "exercise of essentialization," answer these mystery questions through 15 minute free-writings and a lot of reduction to follow that:

1. to whom, for whom, do i speak--am i responsible?
2. is the love i give good and do i deserve it in return?

i just read those questions for the first time! the second one will be like an entire therapy session with myself.

okay. and then, for eleni's ws, i have to notice what i notice--the banality, what's before me. and read spring and all, which has this:

in passing with my mind
on nothing in the world

but the right of way
i enjoy on the road by

virtue of the law--
i saw

an elderly man who
smiled and looked away

to the north past a house--
a woman in blue

who was laughing and
leaning forward to look up

into the man's half
averted face

and a boy of eight who was
looking at the middle of

the man's belly
at a watchchain--

the supreme importance
of this nameless spectacle

sped me by them
without a word--

why bother where i went?
for i went spinning on the

four wheels of my car
along the wet road until

i saw a girl with one leg
over the rail of a balcony

this is so incredible. i can't believe i haven't read it before. the ending goes further away from, or maybe further into humanity, or how we come so close to seeing the distance between life and not life--so close that it becomes us. the other poems we looked at had this quality: the end as precipice or inlet into the starkness of being a living thing. the confrontation. this is what's important. i guess from there it's all how to manage it.

another effect of having mannequins produe other mannequins

"another effect of having mannequins produce other mannequins or works of art is, of course, that the active figures are depicted as 'absorbed,' in michael fried's sense of the term. in the art criticism of diderot, fried argues, the depiction of figures involved in 'absorptive' tasks or situations requiring concentration turns them inward on the depicted world; their apparent obliviousness of the painting's beholder in turn frees up that observing position for a voyeuristic interpretation of the scene."

from, living pictures missing persons: mannequins, museums, and modernity

the best sentences

just so i can never lose this. i want to walk around saying these sentences for one month:

Clown for Kicks (Mendota Heights)
Date: 2009-08-28, 11:12AM CDT
Reply to: sale-hqu43-1346837248@craigslist.org [Errors when replying to ads?]

I am looking for someone to dress up like a Clown and hang out with me. I would cook you diner – or we could BBQ something. I’m interested in making my neighbor lady wonder. I have already had a man in a panda costume last month – and also had a heard of sheep come in for the day to cut the grass. (sheep do a good job by the way). A clown would be something.
Maybe you could bring some balloons – or make balloon animals to hang in my tree. I’d like to have this done some evening between 6pm and dark. The longer you can stay the better (like if you could stay for the whole 3 hours). Do you have any tricks you could do?
Like I said – I could cook diner and get you drunk – I’d even be willing to pay your cab fare to and from. I don’t have much to offer – and my neighbor lady is driving me nuts – so I want to drive her nuts. If you had a Mime friend – it would be cool to see you two chase each other around the yard or do relay races while I time you.

Let me know your thoughts – open to Men and Women Clowns.

everything fine

comes from ss

this is the best trick. i just want to make each word something to click on.

this is a test

love, love

howard moon is ready for you

goldie, self-reflexive

since mg is back, so is goldie, but this time she is watching herself. here is our new photo shoot (and yes, her feet still smell):

from the transformation

"but soon it was clear that she was simply gray now, just that, the way years ago we had to admit that she was simply a tree now, and no longer a girl. but a tree is one thing and a stone is another. there are limits to what you can accept, even of impossible things."

lydia davis

i've been thinking so much lately about being a tree. here is something i was thinking about it from a week ago:

i am only being a tree as an example.
when i become one, you'll know because
my speech will be in leaves and you won't
recognize me. you'll stand next to me calling my name
and looking out into the distance. it will be
so hard then. as a tree, i'll try my best at being
a person. i have a feeling it won't work.
nothing will work. i'll be sent to a tree farm
along with all of the other things that seem like me.

how to of the day:

how to start a jellyfish tank:

Jellyfish tanks must be plain. If you enjoy "aquascaping" then jellyfish are not for you. Decorations threaten the integrity of the jellyfish, literally

an unfortunate woman

some of the best things from richard brautigan's an unfortunate woman:

(there are other great things, but they're long, so these will have to do):

i can't find the exact quote, but something like, i would find cars more interesting if they came with their own parking space.

"also, i am always the last person to know what's going on in my life, but i have a feeling that's maybe the way it is with everybody and belief in self-understanding is only a delusion."

"i don't think it would be a very good idea to fall helplessly into silence and just stand there staring at a photograph of somebody and a chicken taken together in hawaii, waiting to be put out of my misery."

this is a story about a reality star and a swimsuit model

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ENA7Po58uGQ&eurl=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.google.com%2Fnews%3Fq%3Dryan%2Bjenkins%26sourceid%3Dnavclient-ff%26ie%3DUTF-8%26rlz%3D1B3GGGL_enUS309US309&feature=player_embedded