For Laila Tamer-Morael

Would that you were not dead,
but that instead you'd faked
your death to live a life without
family pressure and the business
of art, or that you were living a
life of art in Brazil. Would that you
had never gone to Brazil, that the
Lebanese civil war had been less
bloody, that getting an EU passport
were easier, or harder, that
art was less about business, that
business had more art, that your
poems and paintings were not
hidden in the upstairs back
corner of your gallery in Paris
but towards the front, that you
had never gone back to Paris--
no, I can't imagine that Paris is
ever a bad idea, but would that
you had gone back to Paris, which
you did, but that you stayed long
enough for Mark and I (or maybe
just Mark) to come and tell
you that in years of students you
were maybe one of two or three
that actually gave a shit about
it enough to paint and write
and open a gallery, would that
rescue fantasies were not just
fantasies. No, would that they were
(and they are), that telling someone
who hates their self how little in
there self there is to hate despite
the fact that there is so much to
hate in the world could actually
stop hate. Laila, you're not even
the first of Mark's former students
to die in this way, and my high school
friends have been dying sad, cliched,
Christmas day head on collisions,
my niece or nephew miscarried at
six months, all my birds died last
year because they were born
in breeding factories. I suppose I'm
angry. Would that anger could
bring back the dead, or keep the
wrong dead from dying. It doesn't.
But if I were Edgar Allen Poe,
handsome, sad and melancholy in
a white cravat, I would write the
tale of your disappearance in Rio,
you ghostly reappearance in Paris,
or here in Washington, DC at one
of the more obscure memorials.

Zombies and Florida

Recently mom was talking about a housing development in South Florida built on top of a cemetery. They didn't move any of the bodies and people kept digging up bones. Poltergeist! Even if it's not true, Florida is a good place for suburban horror and zombies.

The Same Things

The same things: leaving makes
love easy--people, place.
Emails with European evangelical
Christians--don't finish your
thought. I think I hate you
one a week, once a month--
you say it twice a year:
"I hate you." "I'm through with you."
Say we're through with not
saying how much we hate.
For example: Burning houses.
Our expanding neighbourhood.
Our neighbourhood sons. Dr. Phil
says anger is "really only" a combination
of three things: fear, hurt, and
something I can't remember--
don't finish my thought.
No wonder we feel so awful.

Basil Brush!

Who was Basil Brush?

Camel Racetrack, etc

A camel race track will be built in Sohar, Oman. Meanwhile, The PR of China is moving towards a flexible currency. Meanwhile, the first presidential debate took place last night. I watched so I could participate in liberal outrage and feel like I'm part of a community of like-minded peoples. The post-debate coverage is making me crazy. Instead of watching more news this evening, I'm going to continue reading writing by artists associated with Pop Art so I'm prepared to teach on Tuesday.

Claes Oldenburg says: "I am for an art that is political-erotical-mystical, that does something other than sit on its ass in a museum" ("I am for an Art," 1961).

And then Mr. Warhol, talking about life and TV in a way that is a bit dated but also rather relevant despite the fact that it sounds like a cliche: "Before I was shot, I always thought that I was more half-there than all-there--I always suspected that I was watching TV instead of living life" (Philosophy of Andy Warhol, 91).

Dancing, Strange Deaths

1. Is it really true that "Aeschylus the Greek dramatist, died in 456 BC when a vulture, mistaking his bald head for a stone, dropped a tortoise on it?"
2. It is really true that "Isadora Duncan wore scarves which trailed behind her, and this caused her death in a freak accident in Nice, France. She was killed when her scarf caught in the wheel of her friend Ivan Falchetto's Bugatti automobile. As the driver sped off, the long cloth wrapped around the vehicle's axle. Ms. Duncan was yanked violently from the car and dragged for several yards before the driver realized what had happened. She died almost instantly from a broken neck."

I've just returned from a modern dance class that was a bit too advanced for me. I can tell I'm out of shape because not only am I stiff, weak, and slow, but I have a deteriorated sense of balance. I was doing a combination and I kept on getting stuck at this one point where literally all I had to do was shift my weight from my left foot to my right foot in order to go into a turn and it took me two or three times to get it right

If anyone can clear up the issue of Aeschylus and the tortoise, I'd appreciate it. I can work on balance and wearing short scarves on my own.

Shark and Sharks

There is a shark of the coast of Massachusetts:



State will Seal off Shark from Boaters

Sharks don't end up in shallow cold waters off the coast of Massachusetts unless "things" are going badly. In Florida, children and pets get eaten by aligators every so often. When said aligators have the contents of their stomachs' checked--which means I suppose that game wardens or plain ol' wardens come and kill 'em--they are often quite empty (apart from the child or pet).

Some recent alligator stories:

Alligator Causes FGCU to Shut Down Main Waterfront

According to the article above, although there is no sure way to tell how much interaction with humans an alligator has had, "There are indicators. If an alligator approaches a human, then it most likely has lost its fear of humans." Moreover, "the vibrations of a lawn mower can attract alligators because it stimulates them, as can feeding them."

Also, you can read about a woman in Miami who found a dead and chopped-up aligator in her yard.

In Florida, the Fish and Wildlife service will not trap and kill an alligator unless it is deemed to be a "nuisance alligator"--an alligator that is not affraid of humans. This implies that most alligators are afraid of us, or at least will not approach us. Most of the gators I've seen just sit in the mud in the sun. But they were Singaporian gators.

I worry about sharks and alligators that are out of place.

Penis Blimp

Yesterday there was a small white blimp in the sky that looked like a small white penis. It was floating just above the tops of the buildings on Massachusets avenue, near Dupont Circle. So there was a small white penis-blimp floating against the grey-white clouds and I just stood on the corner and looked up at it. People looked at me looking up but no one else looked up. What was it doing there?

Someone else obviously noticed, because a news-google search for "Washington DC Blimp" yeilded the following results:

Army Blimp Paraded Over DC
Security Blimp Hovers over US Capitol

Apparantly floating blimps in the sky is a technique which "harks back to the 19th century, when military forces would track enemy movement from balloons above the battlefield" (see 2nd article).

A test post

bpNichol wrote for Fraggle Rock in the 1980s!--or, as The bpNichol project notes, he "became a sucessful writer for the children's television show Fraggle Rock." This is exciting news for me as I read The Martyrology 1 & 2.