Home
 

ThirdPyramid

About Recent Entries

Bokonon Oct. 13th, 2007 @ 12:42 pm
"Beware of the man who works hard to learn something, learns it, and finds himself no wiser than before," Bokonon tells us. "He is full of murderous resentment of people who are ignorant without having come by their ignorance the hard way."

God is a Jealous Lover. Oct. 12th, 2007 @ 08:38 pm
I just thought it was worth repeating.
Current Mood: impressed

God is a Jealous Lover. Apr. 14th, 2007 @ 01:09 am
So it goes.




.
Current Mood: disappointed
Current Music: Alice DeeJay

The Sea and the Skylark Nov. 23rd, 2006 @ 08:06 pm
On ear and ear two noises too old to end

-Gerard Manley Hopkins

Lost Highway Dec. 11th, 2005 @ 02:34 am
Woke up at the Castro theatre during Lost Highway...around 1AM. Cold. Empty popcorn. A little ginger ale. Tightened my hoodie and recrossed my legs.

They were planning the mugging. You know, the scene where they guy falls into the coffee table.

I thought about leaving for bed. Stuck it out.

Tripped it out.

The movie explodes, you know? This Mortal Coil and "You'll NEVER have me".

And I was outside. I smoked my last Cleopatra and caught the eye of a guy through the ticket booth. Lingering.

William's friend Jacob glittered down the sidewalk "OW! OWWWW!" - he was burning his lips with a cigarette. Unexpected, pretty and wasted. Jacob.

"You're perfect. I wish I was perfect." The cigarette lingers in his long, thin hands... dangling delicately... drops.

I smile. "Nobody's perfect."

Hug and glitter. Chemical Distance.

"Didn't you used to live up there? MAN that was wild. Got a cigarette?"

William never shows up for their gigs, he says. Trying to hook up with his musical talent, he says. 2006 is his year for music.

William calls and says he's coming by then never shows. 'Cause he's into Tina.

It blows.

I care. I've always cared.

"You should go home"

"I know where you're coming from"

Someone said the same to me once. Only it was "I don't think you should go out". The teacher. A young black woman... mid twenties. She was on my sofa with her friend. The window was open. Warm Kansas City air, crickets and cigarettes. Billie Holiday and bourbon. I was only starting. The end, as it turned out.

Strange the way he bums a cigarette from a patron - hustles down the street. Strange the way he makes friends right away, then struts off alone. Beautiful.

God watches.

Holiday Barbie watches from atop the tree, arms outstretched. Joyful stigmata.

There's always another layer, isn't there? Shimmering beyond the assumed. It knows it's there, knows I'm a part of it whether or not I see. And then there's another after that. When you're open, it shimmers in. Sometimes it screams.

But I don't have to. No one has to. I can just let it be it. Let it be me. I can just watch.

God watches.

And pays gentle attention.

"On the floating, shapeless oceans

I did all my best to smile

'til your singing eyes and fingers

drew me loving into your eyes.

And you sang "Sail to me, sail to me;
Let me enfold you."

Here I am, here I am waiting to hold you.
Did I dream you dreamed about me?
Were you here when I was full sail?

Now my foolish boat is leaning...
For you sang, "Touch me not, touch me not, come back tomorrow..."

Love dreams.

I reflect.

I am reflection.

.
Current Mood: Unusual Peace
Current Music: Song to the Siren, This Mortal Coil

Sword in the Coal Aug. 13th, 2005 @ 05:16 pm
Bad trips are not really about acid. It's not like I'm pushing acid or anything, it's just that it's usually not.

Consider metal becoming a sword. It is heat heat heated, cooled, twisted, and pound pound pounded. All of those elements, old and new, all mixed together.

Sometimes, along the way, it is struck and it shatters.

Why is that? Is it the strike? Is it the elements set just so? Is it the mettle of the metal?

A Zen Buddhist might tell you that it is not one and not all of those things. Nor is it one and all together, and that this is big mind. It's not really about good or bad.

People are like that. Sometimes they become swords. Sometimes they shatter. That's all. And it doesn't take acid to do it. Really, it's not about that at all.

The funny thing about people is that you can't always tell which are swords and which are shattered.

.
Current Mood: Procrastinating
Current Music: Breeze

What I Did on my Summer Vacation Aug. 7th, 2005 @ 02:41 am
I got back a little while ago and sorted the pics in to a journal. The link below goes to ofoto and will run a slideshow that's about 8 minutes. You can sign up to leave comments or just click on the tiny little link that says 'view without signing in'.

Vacation Pics

Enjoy!

.
Current Mood: Complete
Current Music: Pavement Cracks, Annie Lennox

I'm Not As Dumb As I Am Pretty Jun. 4th, 2005 @ 12:11 am
Just for the record.

Love is all around,

Linda Leer.
Current Mood: easy
Current Music: Bela Fleck and the Flecktones

Seeing Is Believing Apr. 15th, 2005 @ 11:56 pm
It's not that people lie to each other that I find so frightening, it's that we lie to ourselves.  It is that we have and use the power to change our perception of reality into anything we choose, combined with our belief that we are, no matter the era, at the pinnacle of understanding - that we know what is 'right' and that those who disagree or those who are in the past are 'wrong' - that makes us so powerful as a herd.  And when that power is leveraged with fear - that is when we become devastating.  And we act and believe like it's not happening at all.  That is what scares me.

Have you ever been to the Holocaust museum in DC?

And now we are surrounded by instant feeds of thought, all produced by the same handful of people:  The television which tells us what we should be thinking and talking about, and we feel informed, and the radio which tells us the television is lying to us, and then we feel informed and smart, and so we stop thinking.  And we're managed.  And we give up choice, and we believe it is freedom.  And we ignore, believing we are truthful.  And we kill, believing we are saviours. 

And we shop.

And we obsess over the death a woman who may or may not have been in a vegetative state for a decade, and conscious people, albeit crazy or confused, for want of a few dollars and a few hours of attention die in dumpsters and fields and bus stops, and not a word is spoken.  We cut funding.  And we act like nothing is happening.

And we spend billions to shoot and explode people in another country, and we act like it must be done.  That discussing it annoys us, that we don't want to know, or that it's just silly - or offensive.

Offensive.

Or people say "Oh, get real."

Real? Which real? I've learned that if I'm sure, I'm probably wrong.

And you? How sure are you?

.
Current Mood: Wonderous.
Current Music: True Faith (94), New Order

Deadlock Sep. 22nd, 2004 @ 02:00 am
I watched the beheading of Eugene Armstrong today.

And if you are like 57% of America, you'll stop reading now.

If that's you, then go now.

And don't come back.

Because I'm going to talk about what happened today, and I need someone who gives a damn. And if you don't, then what the fuck are you doing here anyway.

The video is at ogrish.com, among other places. Someone sent me the link when Eric Berg was beheaded.

This one affected me more than Eric Berg. It stuck with me all evening and wanted to write and didn't want to write; it all seemed so pointless and I felt so powerless.

As God would have it, I met a man named Matt at the Magnet web opening tonight who told me to write anyway. I'm glad he did. What was I thinking not to?

And so:

I was running at Crunch tonight. My legs were stretching and I was getting just the right pressure sensation heel to toe and great lift and it was flowing with ease, and it was up at 8.2 which is unusual for me for a 3 minute warmup but I was full of energy.

Full of Rage.

And I couldn't stop thinking of Eugene Armstrong and my roommate William. They were one face.

I saw the face of Eugene in the footage of his death. It was filmed with better clarity and sound than Eric Berg's, but the moment was just as simple. It was a task completed by three men. Just an activity that might occur like moving furniture or something that might require a little exhertion but was over pretty quickly. I guess afterward they probably rewound the tape and watched it to see how it turned out.

Eugene was blindfolded and in an orange jumpsuit. His hands were tied behind his back and he was kneeling. While a statement was being made by one of the other men in the room, he sort of nodded his head and twisted his body. I tried to figure those movements out.

What would provoke him to shuffle like that? What would I be thinking right then? Is it absurd for me even to wonder? Isn't it the kind of thing that only happens to other people? Or maybe to me, but only because I've done something to deserve it? Was that his perception too?

I thought he probably knew what was up, and it's as if he couldn't make up his mind to try to bolt or not. Could he even understand what the men were saying? What if it wasn't happening today? Maybe if he tried to run it would be worse, or if he just stayed still and did what he was told, it wouldn't happen at all. The indecision raced. It may have been panic.

Kind of an action deadlock.

Who really thinks what was going to happen would happen? He had to have kept his spirits up the last few days by hoping for his release or some other resolution. How do you accept the switch from that fervently held hope to the reality of your end?

The camera zoomed to his face and a hand took ahold of his hair and another pulled up on his chin. Eugene now knew the knife was coming; he had to have seen the video of Eric Berg on Al Jazeera if he'd been over there long. He scrunched his chin to his chest and tried to curl up as he was pushed to the floor. While a third hand tried to work the knife into the tight space between his chin and the orange fabric pressed to his chest, the hands holding his head tried to pull his chin up.

Eugene did his best to clench his neck down, but it didn't last long. You could tell he wanted to scream at the same time he wanted to clench his neck. He was saying something guttural and angry like "no" or maybe just a hard deep scream. Because his chin was being held up, his jaw was shut tight. But if he let go of the pressure of clenching his head down there'd be easier access to his neck.

If he let go, he wouldn't have time to say what he wanted desperately to say, the last thing his mind could think of to maybe, slimly, change the mind of the hand with the knife. Maybe it would be the angry indignant "no" by which any human would abide, right?

But his mind knew that wouldn't happen. So it kept his jaw clenched and gambled on that protection while trying to pursuade with the guttural noise.

Then his neck was exposed and blood was drawn. It was work to keep it exposed and so the hand with the knife moved quickly and forcefully back and forth. That's when the sound changed.

It reminded me of William.

It hurt. I pushed the buttons of the treadmill up from 8.2 to somewhere past nine, and focused out the window of Crunch past the backs of sculptures and friezes of solid, dead men on the exterior of the building. I looked further across Van Ness to nothing in particular.

What came to me about William was a few years ago. It was after one of his motorcycle spills. I had come home from work to see him on the sofa in a shredded red motorcycle jacket.

This was a time right after 2001 when his hours at work had been cut back and he was out all over town working these smaller gigs that weren't paying anything. Everything had gone wrong for him the last few months. Like totally fucking everything. Now he had somersaulted on an onramp near Potrero Hill. He couldn't afford a tow or a cab, so he pushed his broken bike under an overpass and walked from the highway to a bus stop. He didn't have insurance, so he didn't know what else to do and came home, sat on the sofa and turned on the TV.

He was badly banged up. His riding jacket and pants were ruined, one leg was almost entirely a bruise, his ribs were too sensitive to touch and the skin of his calf was grated.

He was acting like it was no big deal, but I told him he should go to a doctor. He told me he couldn't afford it and it'd be better in a little bit anyway. Then he changed the channel on the TV.

I looked at him for a minute. That's all he had, was the hope "that it would be better in a minute anyway". I knew he didn't have any money and he was behind on the bills. I knew his next paycheck was going to be even smaller than the last. The only thing he had of value was his ride to work and it was wrecked and hidden under an overpass across town. Things did not look good. And now it hurt to stand up.

So he sat on the sofa and watched other peoples' lives for a while, and said "it would be better in a minute anyway".

Kind of an action deadlock.

And I told him not to worry about the bills, that I make enough money and go to the ER at Davies and we'll worry about the cost later. And he said no no and I said yes yes and he thought about it for a minute, and you could tell he kinda let go and accepted the help and then he got all small and weak and he tried to stand up, just tried to lean into an upright sit, and then he whimpered.

And it was the kind of whimper that we've all done, where you wonder why this is happening and what did you do? What did you do wrong? And it's frustration too. And fear that it might not get better.

His eyes watered up but he didn't cry, and it was just for a minute that he made that noise and I had helped him up and he was carefully, slowly on his way, and he was back to himself. Banged up, but himself. That's all it took.

But for a moment he was a child. He was totally innocent.

And it isn't that Eugene made the same noise when it was a reality that the knife was passing his esophagus and the hot blood was pushing around his chin and chest and splashing more reality on his face and throat.

It was not the same noise.

But the quality was the same. The quality was so exactly the same I couldn't keep the two images from crashing together. It was the same child.

Eugene's angry, scared, mad "no" became a noise that said "this is real and I'm going to be hurt really bad and you have to stop it now guys or it's really really serious please!" and then it was a really desperate clenched high in the throat terrified scream of someone who knows help isn't coming and then it was a noise that was everything that was in William's tone and the two slammed together right then in my mind and I wanted to cry.

And replaying it in my head on the treadmill I did cry. I ran and I sweated and I cried. Quietly, so no one would notice. Tears. Sweat. Running.

My parents call a person who did what I did for William "A Bleeding Heart".

They don't mean it like a compliment.

Eugene needed a whole country of Bleeding Hearts.

There are 43% of them. Not 57%.

Did that math go through his mind? Probably not. There were probably a lot of other thoughts running through his head in those last moments.

Probably he wondered what the fuck he was doing there. He probably wanted to be home.

Was he even a nice guy? I don't know. He was a child for a second, though. He had the same common denominator as me, you and William.

There was a woman the other day who took a plain T shirt, probably a Hanes or maybe a Beefy T and printed "President Bush You Killed My Son" on it. I don't know if she did it with markers, or if maybe she went to one of those T Shirt places in the mall, but she did it.

Her son was dead, and she made a T shirt.

His name was Seth. He died in February in Iraq.

What are you gonna do? She put it on, went to see Laura Bush give a campaign speech and started shouting questions at her. I don't know what they were. I don't know that it really matters.

I mean, what if she was yelling for the square root of pi? What if she wanted to know how many licks it takes to get the center of a Tootsie Roll Fucking Tootsie Pop?

Her son is dead. He blew up diffusing a bomb.

Console her.

The crowd drowned her out by shouting "four more years".

Four more years.

Laura didn't stop to acknowledge her. She didn't even change her speech. The speech mentioned 911 several times and the successful campaign in Iraq.

Successful.

911 and Iraq have nothing to do with each other.

Fox News no longer provides reasons for the war, but has lately been running a number of articles on the amount of cash Saddam was funneling out of the oil for food program, and somehow that money funneled through the same places Al Qaeda money funneled. So that's the connection to Al Qaeda, and therefore Saddam represented a threat.

Oh.

I wonder where the Carlysle group keeps it's money? Probably not the same place. Well, not the Bush money anyway. The Bin Laden money probably runs through the same houses. But they are no longer the news. Iraq is the news. Mostly.

Seth's mom was arrested and charged with "defiant trespass" and released.

She had a ticket to the speech.

This isn't how I was raised.

Why is this happening? Where is America?

George Bush says "Freedom is on the march".

Why was it Eugene? Why was it Eric? I guess it'll be Jack Hensley next.

This was shit and I was tired of these same circles in my mind and I had already ramped the buttons on the treadmill down to 5 something. Then realized I couldn't run at all anymore and I hit "cool down". Cool down takes you to a nice walk timed for a few minutes. You don't have to think about anything because it stops itself and you can just catch your breath and feel good about your run.

I pressed a towel to my face. I wasn't crying anymore, but that just meant I was mad again. Those were my options this evening.

It was dark behind my towel; dark as a blindfold.

I would like to trade Laura Bush for Jack.

I mean, somebody has to die for freedom, right? Why not Laura? In Jack's photo there's a small child. Laura's children are grown. Sort of.

Now I'm just being silly.

What has Laura done? What would she even be doing over there?

Why isn't she over there?

Or at least why isn't she consoling Seth's mom?

What if she really, really, really gave these absurd questions some thought? Would it break her? Would it make that child come out?

Just suppose, in a topsy turvy world, if she did go and Jack came back, and George saw the video of Laura's child come out.

Laura would make the same noise as Jack. Of that I am certain.

Would George cry, or would he think about his own neck?

I wonder.

And suburbia. Would suburbia get it then?

When does that levee break?

And do you get it? That slim chance that you who didn't get it at the start is still reading... do you get it?

Can you put away the Swift Boats and the Flip Flops and the Freedom Fries and the price of oil... oil that is speeding it's way down a brand new pipeline right across Afghanistan...

Can you see it's not about any of that individually but about all of that at once and so much power it should make a sane man's head explode?

But it hasn't.

But there's a severed one sitting on a body that's still hot.

And I don't know what to do.

I hurt so much and rage so much and all I can do is run on a treadmill.

And I still don't know what to do.

Kind of an action deadlock.

And they're counting on it.

...54, 55, 56, 57.

But I'd rather be like this than numb. I'm awake and I'm paying attention, and it makes my heart bleed.


My Thoughts Exactly


It means I'm alive.

It means I'm sane.

And I've written.

Have you read?




.
Current Music: True Colors, Cindi Lauper

Keeping On Sep. 14th, 2004 @ 12:49 am
FabKae sent me this. I love it.


KEEPING ON

But of course he couldn’t decide.
One thing always led to another.
Like the way the lady drove down the street.
No, more like the way the dog. . .
Well, whatever it was, it was
not nearly as traumatic as the way
the man two blocks over . . .
or was it yesterday’s mail? He was
lost, or so it seemed, until he learned
to plant onions amid the hollyhocks
and realized that sticking spoons
in one part of the garden attracted moonlight
long after the flowers had faded. And so,
he bought a hundred more spoons and
arranged them throughout the flowers.
He watered them. And watched them
stay the same. And let them
take the moonlight. One day he realized
he’d forgotten about the lady
and the way the dog and the man two blocks
over and the mail, and found himself
smiling, sprinkling the spoons.


© Jack R. Ridl 1996
.
Current Mood: pleased
Current Music: William's Sewing Machine

The Finer Things Jul. 14th, 2004 @ 01:06 am
I saw a woman brushing her hair today. She was sitting on the train facing me, though I was standing in my usual spot between the cars. I was leaning against the joining wall and had my head turned toward the front of the car. She was in the aisle seat just past the door. I noticed her as we pulled from Castro towards Church. The underground moved freely and the gentle rocking of an on time train lulled the morning attendees.

She was in delight. Her dress was a simple large floral of hues of violet-blue. A step in, it reached near her ankles and comfortable loafers. She wore a wrap of some kind unremarkable, and a worn backpack on the floor by her feet. Her face was round and her chin pronounced and her body plump. Not plump or round in the shape of the emotional appetite, but plump and round in the way of one who enjoys food. In my mind I could see her eating with the expressions she had now.

Her skin was Northern pale and lightly lightly freckled. The hair she brushed framed her face in straight brown lines, running over her shoulders, bosom and into her lap. It had only the slightest wave. Her face had a smile just for her. It was her inner voice expressed. She was the Mona Lisa.

I had caught her in the final phases of the left side. She had worked through the tangles and the long strokes of the brush and fingers got longer and her smile more broad and she stroked butterflies in my belly with each pass.

Her eyes were the curious outward-in personal reflection of the blind from birth, and the pleasure she experienced was distressingly beautiful, intimate and alive. She was in the moment. For her, the entire scene was the smooth hard comfort of the seat, her backpack snug between her ankles, the roar and lull of the train, and the declining resistance of a brush passing the oils of the hair down the long course to its ends.

She stopped and asked the air in a too-loud but unashamed voice "what stop is this?!" She was not panicked, she simply didn't know how close the nearest English speaker was. We were not at a stop, but approaching one, and a 30-Stockton Asian woman across the aisle from her spoke something I could not hear, followed by the voice of a corduroy jacketed Ichabod neighboring the 30-Stockton.

Satisfied and unrepentant, she laid the left of her hair behind her shoulder and pulled the right around. She began with a sense of pleasant anticipation, almost an excited expression, at the ends of that lock. As she moved through time and towards Van Ness, her expression turned to one of certain delight to come. She had faith in the coming of the final pure strokes, and the brush made longer passes along the hair. It began to shimmer and wave as the finish of a wooden stringed instrument, and her hand holding the hair moved fingers independently for and during each stroke.

She played her hair, and her lips smiled and sometimes moved with an inner passing thought. Her eyes were outward turned in and the car rocked and all were in limbo and she was in bliss and I wondered. And her hair was finished.

And she was beautiful.

And I don't remember her stop, but her absence relinquished my senses and there was silence in the roaring Breda. My headphones were in since my station, but I had not yet pressed the play button.

I play random. It has been a month since I was able to listen to Then Postal Service. Nothing Better popped in my iPod, and I enjoyed it for itself before I realized I enjoyed it for itself.

Faith and time.

And it was beautiful again:

"You've got a lure I can't deny,
But you've had your chance so say good bye,
Say good bye."

Not about him,

but it did remind me of him.

And it was just

Another new, beautiful, illustrated page. The book is bigger.

Another day.

.
Current Mood: content
Current Music: The X Files

Let X = X II Jun. 18th, 2004 @ 01:02 pm
It's a sky blue sky
satellites are out tonight
Let X = X

You know I could write a book
and this book would be thick enough
to starve an ox

'Cause I can see the future
and it's a place
about 70 miles east of here
where it's lighter
lingering on over here

Got the time?

Let X = X

Love and kisses,

X X X X 0 0 0 0
Current Mood: Brilliant
Current Music: Laurie Anderson

Advertisement

Advertisement
Top of Page Powered by LiveJournal.com