Physiognomy

{!!} A person's character is often revealed less by what he says than by the subtleties he unknowingly exudes. There is almost nothing that a person does that doesn't in some way betray him - his gait, his gaze, the inflections of his voice, his posture, laugh, every mannerism, the clothes he wears, a sigh, a grunt, a belch - everything is telling, everything pronounces something.

A person's physical traits too have a voice of their own. There is much that speaks of a man by the symmetry of his ears or eyes, or by the shape & contours of his skull. Even his rump is a novel of its own, and I can usually learn more about someone by what I see in him than by what is spoken of him or by what he propounds.

"The tongue expresses only the thoughts of one man, but the face expresses a thought of nature herself." - Schopenhauer

I think Velazquez was following my same train of thought when he decided to depict the hump in the smock in the painting above. Not only does his face "discover" him, but also his pregnant posture, his hands, and particularly his outspread legs. If you cdn't slide a sofa-bed through them without him knowing, you couldn't slide anything through, and for this I do not believe I wd've liked him. I can only imagine what self-indulgent atrocities this charlatan committed during his lifetime. I can only imagine what rings of hell his monstrous prancing feet led his people through.

Wholly Crustacean

[?] When I am drinking heroically, or thinking about booze (as is my wont wnever I'm sober); when I am reading Sterne, or Swift, or Joyce or Burroughs; when I listen to the strains of the Irish fiddle and they lift me through the chimney to the rooftops then sink me into such a dark depression that even plastic bags become a threat; when I think about my furies, my hatreds, my loves, & the seesaw of emotions that fill my soul every day, I know I am Irish through and through.

But when I read the works of Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, and Heine, and even more than that when I listen to Bach and Beethoven as I always do; when I want nothing more than to write & work, and work & write and when I don't such a deep feeling of listlessness/ogida comes over me that I can hardly handle myself, let alone others (having been cursed w/ the inability to make small talk, I am wholly crustacean, and avoid my neighbors in the most shameful ways for fear of being pried out of the glory of my shell), I know my German ancestors have their hands in my soul, and are turning my inward glance towards them.

But when I am transposed by the paintings of Edvard Munch; when I am reading Hamsun; when I am overtaken by a feeling of wanderlust and lusting for the ocean, or want to go fishing in a crab boat on the Bering Sea - this last hardly ever happens -

"never having had a fondness for catching fish" -- Turgenev

But when it does I know I am more Norwegian than anything.

I am 2/3rds Irish and German, parts Norwegian, and am just beginning to figure on what came from where, & who is responsible for my particularly sad form of madness.

It was probably the English. I have some of that in me too.

“It is no good casting out devils. They belong to us, we must accept them and be at peace with them.” -- D.H. Lawrence

On Welts Wanting One More Seasoning

(--.) The farther we are from our hometowns, and from those who know all our faults and that which makes us both slavish and mortal, the better we are perceived. Most people aren't aware of this, but I actually have somewhat of a cult following in a small village in Madagascar. They are promulgating my legend among their people and several neighboring communities as we speak, they tell me, but they need more donations. Apparently there's traveling expenses and printing costs I didn't foresee when I became involved with them. But their accountant has been both accurate and thorough w/ the statements he has sent me, and I believe in the urgency of this cause, so my money has been well spent.

"If you lend someone $20, and never see that person again, it was probably worth it." -- Author Unknown

('') Death needs nothing but its own dark humor; death is stuffing turkeys and wearing latex gloves tonight; death will assail the boudoir in grandmother's bloomers
come midnight.

(*) Ya ever notice that the more you try to cure someone of the character flaws that most become them, the more you actually drive them back into themselves, thus enhancing what you wished most to eradicate in the first place?

In other words, "You can drive out nature w/ a pitchfork, but she always returns." -- Horace

And when she does return she returns in full fury.

Observation Makes Art Real

(/\.) The paintings I post in here relate either subtly, obviously, or in no way at all to what I write, but I like looking at them more than I do photos (especially of myself - there's nothing more crass and vain than filling your blog up w/ pics of yourself - writing about yourself is vain enough).

"We speak little if not egged on by vanity." ~François de la Rochefoucauld

Anyway, I spent about five hours last summer at the Art Institute of Chicago looking at Picassos, Toulouse-Lautrecs, Van Goghs, etc., and it wasn't enough. My girlfriend had to drag me out of the place.

"Nothing exists until or unless it is observed. An artist is making something exist by observing it. And his hope for other people is that they will also make it exist by observing it. I call it "creative observation." -- Burroughs

our culture is an arm in the crapper reaching for a baby wipe that never should've been flushed in the first place

#(1) Intro
(b.) intermezzo stomp

#(2) Here's a quote from today's paper: "The little lickspittle wasn't satirizing, he really thought his pimps, buggers and opulent idiots were important, instead of the last mold on the dying cheese." And this is so true. If you lived with them, you'd wish you didn't. And if you never did you'd romanticize them. I was chased yesterday by a guy with a hammer. He hurled it at a rack of pumps behind me. I told him next time that happens you better kill me, because if you don't I'm gonna get that fucking thing somehow and beat the fuck out of you with it. I don't believe Proust ever had a hammer-wielding idiot moving towards him. Because if he did, it would've helped. It would've stripped the tinsel from his dark clouds.

#(~) Predators accused in periwigs and clown suit trappings 'midst bitter root and tangled bougainvillea. Eating fried pork and conch stew on the courthouse corner of Quadrille and Olive under a sign that says,
"I used a P.D." and Salt Chunk Mary too.

And somehow I knew this time is closer
The burn of tobacco in my throat
Everyday offering something you should take
Everyone something you should learn

They're there for that.

And I keep clearing my throat.

#(3) Humberto Checklick vs. Mohan Pickholtz in the blue tint twilight.
Laundry strung across Brooklyn tenements
Crescent moon coming up over them
Men with heads filled with small-time schemes
rummaging through their pockets for receipts
Checklick sparring a horsefly on a fish hook
Checklick strong of back and weak of mind
Pickholtz sawing a violin for low foreheads
Checklick's double-fisted pigeon-toed passion
Mohan pleading for a fifth
The sixth chapter wearing like an old pair of pants
Schopenhauer throwing old ladies down flights of stairs
Humanity's victorious pumping fist
The crowd a sea of tiny beetle grins
Zweiter Teil, Erster Tiel!
A couple of corn-fed oafs in the knoll
Christians in blaze-orange hunting gear
because they know
And Wilma Pug in a Buick,
her wagging pink tongue slapped down her
throat like a wax seal on a fat envelope
As graveyards grow more teeth
And we forget to remember what's worst.

#(4) CAIRO, Illinois -- MISSING MARINE CAUGHT IN SPIDERHOLE WEARING GUNITE AND ASS-SHOT TROUSERS. Yea big midget unaccounted for. (( )) <-- wholly bandy.

#(5) Good's the best form of cowardice,
and Evil's best when you're willing to die
one death or a thousand continuous
ones

# 6.) But goodness is not cowardice. Good is letting someone in the culture you've created know. Them. It's not about you. The truest cliche. Someday I'll do more than spout. We don't sacrifice lambs anymore. Our time is the only thing on the alter. And it's usually just
useless time anyway, but we don't know it yet.

#(^^). SUGARKANE -- Sturm und Drang, like Siegfried & Roy
Horn, but the lion is me
walking with fools and sleeping with sorrow
and the dream:
her ass crack slowly swallowing her sweat pants
munching a pair of ELECTIVE INFIRMITIES
and Claribel
tall enough to hunt geese with a rake
a bingo parlor of embittered old comedians
catering to bones but not heart
and Steve Allen's dead gams
using a jockstrap for an oxygen mask
and the way he sidelines in locker rooms
disguised as a bar of soap
while squirting blue dye
in crappers
as though it's the height
of class
to have blue water
shot through
crappers.

My co-worker trumping every story with one more wild and far-reaching (reaching something other than truth, always) which is the quickest way to kill a conversation and inspire hate.

#(*) G.W. Bush harvesting daggers under a dove-white kerchief folded neatly on his lap, his strategy session consisting of sumo wrestling with (pompous) blowhards
Commodore Nutt playing "The Vulture Hustle" on a sludge pump
Bill 0. fielding circus peanuts lobbed across a Romper Room bounce house.

Each session consisting especially of diapers
(soiled) in the middle of the ring.

#(::) HURLO-THRUMBO -- And it's so much like that lately, trading hyperbolic tooth for the direct look in the eye from a dog (human or otherwise), and I remember our hugger-mugger salutations so long ago Jesus windblown on a skiff doing hack squats with a masthead (because he looked like a crucifix) the tarpon even parting his wake
and I remember when she said she hardly knew me
drunk on the prow with a dinky crossbones flag violently hoisted
my composure more of Buford T. Justice
than of any Redbeard you could drum up
and if you wanna know where my dignity is I'll dig that up too
and I don't drink anymore
unless the hands of the clock are on a time
and she could've been rude
ambling under there overseas
A cripple in a Turkish trench coat
Peering through shop windows with her submarine
periscope.

In a silvery lean to (pup).

Tugboats passing in the night, and the tolling of bells
and then darkness
and then silence.

Forgive me for my misdeeds and that place in my heart where you are.

But I hope you get better too.

#(4) Instrumental

#) Wine is better the longer it observes from the shelves. I'm more wine than I am heliotrope.

#(7 The shelves at my house filled with Emmett Kelly Jr., W.C. Fields figurines where the head was a cork for a drink never drunk. My dad was an S & L kinda guy. Something happened. My mom taught Spanish and English. Money eludes them still like water parting a jutting rock. Though they still believe in it (even if it were a hobby). They never stopped doing that, despite all it's done for them (in the way of nothing). Of course it has a purpose. I'm not talking about that. Most
people just never can step back from the thing. Even for a moment. It's why most men in America who retire after 65 die within two years. What else is there, for them? All there is is the thing. And insurance too.

Death Brokers with ice picks at their immediate disposal. As feral hogs charge with their eyes closed.

#(V.) CALYPSO -- Beethoven Sym. #9., Choral Fantasy, Bach, Shosta. #15,
Van Morrison.

But modern music is time; classical is eternity.

#(11). And it's never too late to Mendelssohn. But it doesn't mean I
like him.