the leg biting the chair back

[Amos]

A stranger had entered. He situated himself so as to be a dividing line between my body and my thoughts. I could act, with some effort and by instinct, but I could rarely speak or perform tasks that required harmony between my limbs and my consciousness. Previously my limbs had been my consciousness, or an extension of it rather. After he entered I became a disembodied being floating in a witless miasma of flesh and bone. I could not dance; I could not walk my path. Try as I might I could not expel him, and for many years I prayed and hoped that he would leave. I tried conversing with him, that I might persuade him to leave, but he was a coward I think and would not show himself. He did not answer my cries for mercy when I grew sad and disaffected. He ignored my furious demands when I grew frustrated at how limited and weak I had become. And when I grew lonely and in desperation sought his companionship, he hid in dark places of my being that I did not dare venture into.

[Amos]

"The less my sense, the more my love appears."

-Ovid.

[Amos]

up there, you can see the sun. it is saturday
i am a blue petal curling in the sun
my body emits the perfume of the sacred and the profane
the sun is a curving wet tongue licking dry thoughts
more than a drawing of a clown, trying to define a life that is
indefinable. our heads itch. bones bent at curious angles
a whining noise as of many hounds. being hounded by majestic riders.
clothing hangs still on the line. the windows are obstructions,
animal, are you blind?
yes, we are animals.
my body is the twin of the red man's
the red man is a house
he is a cabinet in the house
the dark flame that burns that burns you out
profane embodies sacred
the smallest particle of a leaf is beyond understanding
the trees are not trees. the birds you see are not birds.
we are not animals.
leaving the front gate you turn right and wander down the road
swinging your head back and forth, breathing deeply and quickly
following a schedule only as long as a moment
a heavy something is tied to your back, and it curves downwards
like the upside-down edge of a a doorway arch
you stand up on two legs and your left hand holds a harpoon
in a sea of dark fire you are going whaling.
green roof.. red roof.. salty-white plaster
how does the water taste? how does the fountain?
like the source of everything
it tastes like my skin and like your forehead
it robs me from within of a heavy weight of gold
where it was banked up in my stomach
a stealing white hand that enters through my face, my eyes,
and navigates by touch my every inch.
freedom then, the freedom to see and know anything
or the freedom to just burn in the light of her gaze.
the leaves are drunk on the wind, the birds are ecstatic messengers.
what was distant past becomes near to you
without your having to move more than an iris-length
listen to the conversation of the grass bending to transmit its green language
around the lawn. the clouds gather in a bunch, whispering to one another
and something or someone exits the sky.
these are more than just images.
they are images of your family, winding, tangled stalks and palms raised upwards.

[Amos]

Scenario: humans develop on an earth the size of Jupiter. How much longer does it takes us to colonize the planet? 300 million years longer? Imagine ocean journeys lasting for centuries, fending off sea creatures ten times the size of the ship, which itself was centuries in the making. How long before we deplete the resources of a planet that size? How much faster are our cars and how numerous our possible destinations? How large the suburbia and the shanty towns? On what magnitude are are weapons and our wars?
Or an Earth much smaller, only half the size of the moon. An earth the size of a grapefruit. What does it matter, the scale? At what point do we start becoming smaller? At what point to we stop growing larger?
An earth young and fertile again. We come like a plague of death, vampires in truth. There is nothing that we cannot find a way to feed on. Even spirit itself, and a planet of any size holds endless quantities of it. Or does it?
Is our notion of balance an oversimplification or a reflection of the actual intent of things? Is all to give way to entropy, only to be upset again by a careless shoe kicking a box of marbles? If the universe stops expanding will we start growing closer?

"I had to go, but I could not. So I waited for a while."

-unknown author

[Amos]

It's been a beautiful day, in every sense of the word beautiful. I went to the beach just now. The light all around was blue and slowly dimming into darker hues. I don't go to the beach because I think it's romantic or that it will inspire me. I go to be the beach. I go because it feels gentle and good and strong to be when being on the beach. I feel like I am my feet sinking into my sand. I am my eyes looking out across my waters.
There's no exchange of commodities. No estimations of market value. These are experiences beyond value that shape and cleanse our souls.

[Amos]

Whenever I am in the company of more than one person I inevitably become very quiet. When I was younger it was out of shyness, and it graduated slowly first to self-centredness and then, now, to observation and curiosity about what people mean when they say what they say, and if they mean what they mean. Are we, because we are noisier, all the more dumb compared to our ancient ancestors who needed only a grunt and a wave to evoke whole systems of thought that were readily understood by all those in their tribe and from any other tribe too? If we are silent do we say everything? Enough pretentiousness, Amos... It fees weird to call myself Amos... Do I really respond to it or is his a vague warbling that only slightly lures me from my egoless reveries? Do other peoples actions gain my sympathy or my contempt, either of them, at any time? Words words words... Can they really pierce and wound our very minds as people seem to think? Wounds or temporary disturbances? so like cannonballs plunging into the waters? If our thoughts are corrupted images emblazoned with rude sounds for meaner and meaner purposes... or if they are a music, sometimes stirring, sometimes assisting our arrest... or if we are mute visionaries when in a state of grace, and become foaming heretics when our mouths open... then so what? A man asks me a question at the supermarket to which I make an entirely ambiguous and stupid reply and we both walk away more or less satisfied with the dialogue. Two lovers are content to share their tongues in kissing, proving the genius of love. I could talk more pretentiously if you liked. Until you screamed. Until I became no one at all, just a gust of wind blowing lightly at your face, sashaying your eyelashes. A thief, robbing himself of treasures by refusing to steal hearts. I'm sorry. I can't put things all together when I'm like this. Nothing holds. So clamp up. Kill the messenger, the albatross, anything that tries to help you. Be a stream of babbling incoherence running backwards to the source. A tape deck playing in reverse. An LP skipping and blipping in the gardens of paradise.


Clear moments are so short.
There is much more darkness. More
ocean than firm land. more
shadow than form.
-Adam Zagajewski


New favourite band of the moment: The V!xens. New Zealanders! They live only half an hour away from me. "Lyle" knows them. Apparently they're something like elitists, they prefer not to associate with other bands from around here.. I heartily sympathize with elitism. Nobody should have to get along with people who make you want to itch or who annoy your soul. V!xens are awesome, they have an awesome name, they're probably descended from musical foxes in fairy tales. I have to see them live as soon as possible. Until then I'll keep listening to these four tracks. I never would have predicted that such good things could come from a place like this. Apart from me, I mean. Me, and not the crayfish ones, forever scuttling back into the darkness.

[Amos]

Doubting the nature of things. This world without edges
has become no different to the swarming insubstantiality of our dreams. Yesterday
I then think I must have was yesterday for
these are my clothes, my unopened letters, your fingerprints smudged off on
On the window. Evidence presupposes existence presupposed, whengermination gargled
a spit in the firmament.
We are or are not blind to the essential nature of...
...have faded into the ideas of themselves. This green tangle represents a plant. This looming globe
And there, in the sink,
is the blood that flows from the unseen wound
And there, in the sky, is the sky that ate the moon.

[Amos]

i expect that she will live forever
and listen to the doors of the world closing
and swinging open again
whip, bang, like a hail of giddy slaps
while i am searching for an invisible twin like a mouth practising kissing
paupers from the land of rain
sometimes--------------

she
has
no
ledges
left
to
cling
to
and the sky is beckoning
awaits with
-------------------------blackening eyes

everything true is as clear and as distant as my daughter's eyes,
those ancient travellers of empty galaxies
are weeping fire in the nascent gloom,
or just dawdling daddy, just playing the ghost {{__+

so Madness in the form of a turtle finds the Hatter just as he is awakening from
a vision of the deep with youthful vigor
and says “i'll trade you tomorrow for the finest sombrero you have”
and everyday returns for a new hat
until the Hatter's business goes bust because of the turtle's eternal demand for hats.
Debtors hound the Hatter! He kisses the hangman sweetly
and happily ever after.

[Amos]

"There was an air of mellow resignation about him, as if he had fallen into a pit of tar and did not especially mind."

[Amos]

The Week in Amos

This week was a big week for our hero. He uncovered many dastardly plots against him, and the plotters were none other than that gang of young poets/werewolves who haunt the roofs in the industrial area. He hasn't foiled them just yet, but I think we know he'll win out in the end.

On Tuesday he painted his keyboard. On Thursday he over-indulged in fruit. On Friday... Friday was a black day for Amos. Let us not speak of it in front of these fools. Later on, in the barn, I will tell you all about it.

He's been staying up longer and getting to sleep later, to the point where he now sleeps through most of the day, but if this pattern continues he should be back to normal sleeping hours again in about a couple of weeks.

On Sunday he regretted painting his keyboard, rather than rue his inability to touch-type. An interesting decision which could have gone either way really. My analysis: he will always damn his past-self before his present-self. "That stranger and I are not related sir, although he is the cause of all my present difficulties."

Clever boy, Amos. Not everybody can dissociate the costume from the fabric. Here, take a lolly. Now, am I to believe what I have heard about your questioning the oracle known as the I Ching? What question did you pose, and what was the oracle's answer? Oh, I see. "It does not further one to cross the great water." Guess that means you wont be going back to your old job then. Just what are you going to do then? I'm surprised you didn't ask the I Ching that.

On Monday he made a funky mellow track. He tried to add a solo at the end, but failed in this, having exhausted his powers of funk in pursuing the bassline.

On Wednesday, for a few hours, he felt like himself again. It was strange.

[Amos]

everything is so clear when viewed with such strong heart. no point in half-feeling, no sense in half-doing. must go all the way.

i sense that

fuck

so much for higher intelligence. i am a creature of pure sensation. a sensor, censor...

maybe i am crazy, and you are holy

maybe

i used to... leaping streams in blue gumboots, red soles, beautiful bountiful grasses, silver boundary which must be over-leapt, again and again

oh to be young forever and jumping with unintelligible pleasure in the pure light

i used to... fear that an octopus would not be dead, only washed up, and many more.... larger, 20,000 larger. i used to become a cloud

i used to love and love and love and love. used to touch. used to not know, only discover. all this is just... an afterthought... a slow funeral dirge... marching down an empty lane... so empty.... i miss, but must not miss... did i miss my mark? mark this, i will not miss anymore. must not half-feel, must ache. must bend but never break. must be! BE!

as dumb as you think it is. as bright, as fractured, as dark. it conforms to your thoughts! such power... so weak and unprepared we are for life. thank god i was a child, otherwise what a waste. hope i will be again, and surprise my inner atheist and thwart my inner buddha. let me be again and again and again and suffer and suffer, it is fucking worth it to know just a few hours or seconds of bliss.. let me crave and be attached! let me have my five minutes of fire

though i am but a fool, a fish in his ridiculous bowl, let me swim in endless circles, forgetting everything, living as intended by inexplicable... somethings... don't claim to know, or ever comprehend, i just am, and must be, and i demand that you love me

[Amos]

i'm heavily sedated and listening to Gang Gang Dance. and painting at the same time.. it's taken me a long time to write this. there are buzzing balls of shadow spinning past, and some of them are whoring around with my pencil. mmm music... i think that music as a whole has become a bloated mutation both sublime and hellish, a schizophrenic bellowing minstrel with glowing, cordial eyes and detuned synthesizers for hands. bands like Gang Gang dance represent the Hyde-side of this beast. charming misanthropes slash hyperactive cyborgs with broken antennae wailing out synthetic alien gibberish. needless to say i love it. in many respects it's pretty similar to the music i've been making over the last year and a bit (apart from my unplanned forays into dreamy, sexy r&b mixed with swinging tumpets and Haruhi samples... ), but much more threatening. they're like Deerhoof strangling Black Dice with barbed wire in a cave. the tide is out but the sharks are in... did i mention i was heavily sedated?

music keeps me going when nothing else will. or it did, but everything i hear is music to me now. conversation, cars on the highway, cattle in their fields, birds, the weather. just one big song, everything a convoluted beat dancing trapped inside a kaleidoscope of melody. i don't know what keeps me going now but i accept it as foregone that i will continue for a long, long time, and surpass my short-lived ancestors. i think they must have died from misery, living in this place. or ennui, for those on my French side at least. i will try to enjoy this penury in the way in which i enjoy all things: by conveniently forgetting what i have seen before. like i do when watching Amelie for the hundreth time, or crying yet again when Rory makes her graduation speech... or other manly things... so that it all seems new again, even though i know it's just the same old pile of hats with the same flowers growing amongst them.

i feel worse and worse every day about all the suffering in the world. i feel... that i must insensitive. deeply insensitive, less than a full person, because i'm not rushing out to do anything. and there's so much opportunity for error, and i mean really big life-destroying error. wouldn't it be better to lead a simple and blameless life? is that even possible, or does being human automatically mean upsetting many things? i believe in balance but i'm not sure what exactly balances what, or if such a balance as i imagine exists at all times with the same equivalent opposites. what if tomorrow the opposite of a stapler is a bird, but yesterday it was nicotine?

That's not a helpful question!

How can we be otherwise but in accordance with our natures?

If a thing is, how could it be possible that that thing is somehow inherently wrong or has adapted improperly? Does everything abide by a single Law, or as a set of Laws abiding temporarily within the bowels of Lawlessness?

Is anything possible if only the right conditions arise? Can these conditions be artificially generated? Isn't it true that the role of the mind is that of a "generator of conditions" to enable who possesses it to shape the world as he chooses? And therefore the strength of one's conscious powers determines the degree of free will, but all things can draw from the great well of the unconscious? So that all things are knowable, but one needs to develop the right configurations of mind in order to draw know more and more of that knowledge. And isn't then any bank of codified external knowledge, such as wikipedia, a part of the collective conscious, into which one can also enter and leave if one has the right configurations?

How much of the description matches the described? Are they one and the same somehow? Does the word jug partake of jugginess?

are we our bodies first and our minds later? are we something or someone else that is programming both, and where did that thing come from? are they like flashes of light on the surface of the water or long-burning lamps that cross underwater from bank to bank? or surely both?

i believe that asking is not always futile.


<(o)++++++EX(((((((((((((()__________+++++_++++++_ +++++_++++++_ZZZ()))))))))))))))))))


does a short memory imply a short temper?
i doubt that i am making pastry
in the shallow, profane shadows
Bolshevik in the pantry
want my garbage to-go
teeth wriggling to the tempo
leaking salt-water for the minnows

[Amos]

“I don't know what Zen is”, she said, “but it sounds foolish.”
I replied that I agreed, and we continued on our walk,
from a distance melting into the forest.

[Amos]

i miss my old reflections thread. why the hell did i delete it?

Ha! I found it! I knew I had put a copy of my backups somewhere. The sneaky thing was hiding in my gmail archives as a zip archive I'd sent to myself.

~does a little dance~

[Amos]

light is the language of the divine
my love lies in the heart of night
the wind prowls the streets
a sudden waltz takes up the dead leaves
dark butterflies dancing thick and fast
i mark their rise, their descent
flux of unlight, spirographs, angel fairy princess
ebony butterfly face
light is the language of the divine
of design: god, the spider
weaving galaxies
waving, farewell my unknown friends
my silent mysterious companions
a neon gasp
indescribable but, oh, my sovereign stars
over the mountain, vulva-lipped
space rises, my shadow creeping up
i am a tree of shadow, married to the earth
illuminati i am smote, smoke
can i articulate the same elegant electricity, zeus
lightning rod, divining rod, in the heart of night
my love alights, an ancient cry in the darkened blight