we have taken to clapping our bellies on sunday mornings

here are some photographs from inside of the robot machine that pontiac gave me some time ago. and also here is a good story, courtesy of richard. at the end of the story, there are comments, and one of the comments says this:

No matter how cute and whimsical this construction might be, the suggestion of being Art is surely overstated. The sad thing is that it probably should have been subject to Planning Consent, especially on an allotment. At three quarter size, the buildings could conceivably be habitable. What if we all indulged our obsessions to put up an edifice on our allotments or even our gardens (over and above what may be allowed under Permitted Development) in the name of 'Art'. Not impressed by his lack of scaffolding either, HSE would have something to say, and maybe there's even a CDM implication for such a project, especially as the builder wishes it to be a visitor attraction.
Phil Sears, Dorking UK


and richard responded by saything this:

To Phil Sears of Dorking: the type of joyless bureaucracy showcased in your comment is making the world a greyer place. This man’s art transcends the one brute fact of all our lives: loss. Rather than applaud, you’re talking about scaffolding permits.

if you're still interested, you can turn to this.

dear diary,

here is something from my diary, june 10, 1985 (i was eight):

i feal very sorry for the poor people in africa. they are getting food and drinks i hope. there are people dieing. i'm trying to help them but i keep forgetting to. so will other people help them. like you plese. we are the world we are the children.

i guess i didn't understand that a diary was a sort of private space. hm.

and then there is this very descriptive entry, 10-17-86:

it is friday morning. we halft to take our test and go back to reading. i have 51 posters of kirk. tgif. thank god it's friday. kirk is so cute i love him. i still like miles. he is ok. last night i had a realy weird dream it was so neat though.

in ws, we did speed-dating with wcw:

write the red wheelbarrow in another season, break the prose, change prose to poetry, animate a thing/destroy it, misread williams, etc.

i think this is the best that came from it:

the improvisations coming at
a time when i
was trying
to remain firm
at great cost i
had recourse
to the expedient of letting
life go
completely in
order to live in the world
of my choice

i will leave you with this quote from jan:

"you sly old boots, you never mentioned it."

today i got a nice box. when i got home, i put everything in it. now it has a lot of things in it. in the mail last night i got zs's scary, no scary. it came with a miniature broadside that looks just like a hotel key. the book is like ovid's metamorphoses. and also like the best fairytale. one thing he says:

i hover above the pond
like a ghost hovering
above the wrong funeral.
i watch a person who looks like me swimming around.
i plan to watch him forever.
this is some kind of bravery.

the pond 

appropriate day rabbit

here is the how to of the day. i like the picture of the rabbit in the dryer.

we are going to see cold souls in 5 hours. i'm so excited for this.

lakeside

tonight, i went to lakeside and rode three rides. this is a picture of my carousel animal (a rabbit) and the other picture is of me before a spinning ride. blanchot was there, too. in my hair. i think he enjoyed himself.

wearing blanchot

all of these things are happening to my head. today, i am wearing blanchot like a flower in my hair. i don't know if i should wear him in the same place everyday. the purpose is to walk this text through the context of my life. i thought i could monitor this process by evaluating how wearing blanchot makes me feel. so far, i feel regular. i guess there is a heightened sense of presence. when i feel blanchot on my head, i remember that it is now (as the play we saw last night (which had one of the greatest sets ever: thousands of jars filled with pencils, men, wood, string, animals, letters, houses, curtains, and dirt) so often insisted) and i am here, wearing blanchot. i don't think about what it says so much,--instead, i think about what wearing it means. what does it mean to wear text like flowers in your hair? also, i finally got a bicycle helmet. m and i were talking about painting the bicycle to match the helmet.

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):