Snippets/Scraps/Clips/Pieces/Fragments/Junk/Leftovers/ False Starts/Ideas/Transmissions/Odds/Ends/Stuff

I know that my life

has consisted of many false starts,

that it is fiction, but not

fiction that can be put down,

like when, twelve years old,

I played The Elder Scrolls: Oblivion

and messed up my first character so bad

the game was actually unplayable

and needed to be restarted,

the first character nothing but a blocked vestige,

whom I’d revisit from time to time,

a sort of pleasure taken from the impossibility

of progression.

I know this (or

I think I know it)

that in modernity something changed:

We started making The Choice to Die,

which is, more or less,

the premise of Existentialism,

which somehow morphed into this:

To Make the Most of One’s Life,

which I think one can only believe

if they have not dreamed their death.

In modernity, all Romantic notions of immortality

had to be vanquished to prove that death

is good.

Not a necessary thing.

Not something we must accept though we’d prefer not to.

Good.

And not heavenly death.

Scientific death,

the kind that is pure darkness,

with just a tint of red.

And it needed to be learned, taught, and expressed

in numerous ways:

Existentialism;

Psychoanalysis;

Monster Movies;

the point always being this:

Rationality means choosing the inevitable.

Death became an idea

that could support the other idea

of a solitary self.

And both were good.

Both had to be good.

As far as the modernists and I go:

I woke up one morning,

having dreamt my death,

and finally, I understood.

***

Where’s Waldo in the free market?

the exchange value of an iconic sweater is not

a sweater but a code a whistling sound

made by a generator that is a masquerade

after all: the subject’s pleasure is

to see an object that cannot be seen:

to imagine something that is not there

cannot be hidden but a mask might suggest

***

I realize that you can look at something for a long time

and not see anything new in it, but that a passing glance

can change everything, turn you around, turn things around,

upside down, whichever way. That’s the nature of temporality,

in a world that is nature-less. Things are not hard,

but they aren’t soft, either. And they aren’t in-between.

Form is both form-less and unsparingly exact;

abject and normal.

But this is also because the glance has become one

of the most common, if not the most common,

ways of seeing. The glance is a means of taking in,

a semi-controlled persistence of vision,

the creation of a composite image.

The glance almost always takes place

through glass.

One’s reflection is part of the composite.

To remain fixed on one image is abject.

To wait indefinitely is out of tune, disturbing, sharp.

Speed,

particularly of consumption and assumption,

to suggest that one is temporally large,

having amassed data,

is normal,

analytic,

amphetaminic.

***

Sometimes I think about all the little kids

who can do 360 flips on flat ground (a trick

that grown men used to think was near impossible,

harder than an impossible), while I can hardly

do anything but roll around, ollie, pop-shuvit,

and even those basic tricks are becoming harder,

because I am getting older and I can’t practice

without feeling certain that I look like a massive

idiot.

***

You can do whatever

just so long as it’s stylish

so just keep it to yourself

just keep it for your mother

just give it up and say,

“this isn’t going to last”

and tear it up and say,

“how many times will

you ask me that?”

I’ve already had enough;

get on, just do it, move along,

get by, ascend and assent;

all this is at best a rental car,

manual transmission,

a little flaw that means

you can’t run the heat

and the radio,

or you’ll asphyxiate.

Get some tools,

but they won’t last.

Get a winter coat,

and move to Los Angeles.

Even if heat death the

roaches will be fed:

things keep moving,

getting on, getting by,

consenting and dissenting,

already more than enough,

there is music playing and I’m cozy warm.

***

To survive an unlivable

situation/system by putting

one’s head in the dirt is to

incur a severe emotional debt.

Our fiduciary of affect

will later say enough is enough,

the interest has superseded what we borrowed.

***

There are strands

and streams of

things that are

poisonous, undrinkable,

and tasteless, and yet

here we are

wading.

***

I’m not at all certain

that this space is mine

or that it is separable

from me, but I offer it

to you anyway, because

I want you to have it.

I need you to have it.

To be free I must be

beholden.

***

Ideas are at best very

temporary dwellings.