Chagrin

All night I dreamt of my home,

of the roads that tangle and weave, confused

until they strangle and suffocate

strung out and bloody,

cul-de-sac.

It's over, tonight I'll kill off Kowalski.

When you wake up tomorrow, I'll be on my way to London, Ontario.

My sojourn in this here fair city is over.

An ode to this last year - records with high therapeutic capabilities: (one note - the universe has no centre and edges, as a result lists and the numbering systems are inherently arbitrary, yet following in a tradition of human affliction for segregation, there shall be an outer core, and then the seed; so here is a list without numbers)

The Outer Core

baroness - blue record

Progressions with variation, an album rich with southern drawl and heavy handed in doling out offerings to the riff.

hope sandoval and the warm inventions - through the devil softly

Never louder than a whisper/ Never so piercing.

timber timbre - s/t

Slow, waltzing, and courting death at every corner. The lyrics stand, imposing in the foreground.

atlas sound - logos

Fell asleep to the sound of water gurgling underneath my window.

jodis - secret house

Disjunct drums allow the lyrics to build like a prayer - my mind seeps into memories of self-flagellation for the third imam.

raekwon - only built 4 cuban linx II

A little scale, some baggies, and a mean ratchet.

evening hymns - spirit guides

"My life is now built upon wheels/ which means I'm always moving on/ through the forest in out to the desert/ where my head will finally clear."

---

The Seed

animal collective - merriweather post pavillion

mastodon - crack the skye

isis - wavering radiant

Don't look back, press on.

Deluge

Separate reason from your thoughts. Allow them, room.

I remember the warmth of our carpets, against the hardwood floors – so Scandinavian and sterile – in the middle of January or maybe February. The sky was so grandiose. Large, and occupying so much of the canvas. In Iran, there are buildings, tall, obtuse, and all set at different angles, against a backdrop of mountains. They do the talking, they’ve seen it all, and they occupy your eyes. Sure the azure sky is there, on a good windy day. But, it’s the mountains, jagged, changing colours with season that command your synapses.

I related this to my mother. She agreed. The sky held sway over low-lying coniferous trees.

Acres of blue/grey,

Thick line of green,

And then ice.

So was the tripartite division of finnish landscape.

And then this:

An object that

tells of the loss, destruction, disappearance of objects. Does not speak of itself. Tells of others. Will it include them?

Deluge.

Jasper Johns

(art as idea as idea)

photocopy on wood

HaRishon

I pushed the bar of the fire door and fell into: the street, pulsing and groaning, dragging its wretched, cracked face like the furrowed worker, fluorescent jumpsuit, who stands behind, manning the atavistic street gouger, spitting old asphalt into the rear of a truck, biting and chewing, large mechanical mastication, to remove, peel the old offensive scalp of Madison Avenue.

“The cycle starts anew, lets start with 6:9 Bereshit, 1:1 Genesis...” Rabbi Richman utters, as his grizzled beard capers and cavorts after each syllable that is spoken.

HaRishon, stirred envy and admiration amongst the angels; but he was rooted, rooted in something tangible, physical and sexual. And thus his superiority.

Lets return to the cyclical revolutions of "street dermatology"!

But before, I must digress (prudently, as digressions often assume their own vitality and consequently, hubris.)

Ah... well at some other point, I pushed another door and fell out again, this time onto a bustling Bloor. With one fell swoop, I amassed the pedestrians and hurled 'em across the street, yes I changed the colours, red to green. See? More cycles.

Yes. I go up to my bicycle. Me all wrapped up and holding something with cinnamon, providing succor for my parched palate and respite from the iron taste of my tongue.

Whenever someone asks: “Hey this is really good. What’s in it?” the answer invariably is: Cinnamon.

Cinnamon and Caramel. Woooh. As I bend my knees and reach for my combo bike lock, I turn and see him, jump up and perch on the hood of his truck. He's got a toque on, gloves holding a cup of joe. His day is over. I turn to him.

Long day?

- Uh, yeah, man. Been working at it all day.

Shit, well... what you got back there?

-Huh? Oh yeah... I'm in the scrap metal business.

I twist my neck to see jagged and corrugated metal, huddled in the back, looking dark and hopeless. Like shit-out-of-luck mexicans, waiting for the promises of mañana and the next white farmer’s fields that might offer some work for wandering labourers.

How’s that going?

- Well apart from the Waiting… I guess it’s OK.

The waiting?

- The Waiting. We’re waiting for… You don’t understand we are operating at the limit Man! (He was getting worked up. Paused, got off the hood, and addressed me, holding the brown cup to his mouth, like a microphone.) We’re hitting the pavement ‘fore the cracka dawn. (Arms akimbo, twitching his right hand – free of coffee and gesturing like a historian at the podium). My brother, I know the ‘alf of us, “scraps” are shootin’, basing or snorting sulphate. All hours behind that black wheel can do things to a man. Fried, man, and spat out (like old asphalt obviously). We’re operating at a diff’rent level of traffic man. We gotta mutate to survive.

Wow. Uh man… shit... I didn’t realize.

- *chuckles*. So you working at this coffeeshop, aren’t ya? How’s that?

Uh…(mumbles something about lower lumbar pains from standing up all day)…shit man. What can I say.

- Say you ain’t scrappin’ for metal and thank the lord!

Amen!

// Understand the wait, and persuade yourself that you’re merely waiting to turn the corner, from this odd job, onto the real thing, you’re coming up to that juncture, where:

“The Imminent meets the Immanent”

Dark Pools

Excerpt, slipped out of print:

"Charming were the thoughts that pierced my heart. My mind had bred them. Apparelled so becomingly, they danced along and scarcely touched the ground. A ball, a fashionable ball. In pairs they went gliding through the moonlight. Cowardice with Courage, Lies with Uprightness, Wretchedness with Strength, Malice with Valour. Only Reason and Understanding did not join in the dance. Reason and Understanding were wretchedly drunk. They had lost their virtue. But the dance went on, and I listened to the music.

A song of the streets - the song of filth.

According to language, race and nation, we set ourselves apart, and each pile up our filth to overtower the other's.

Filth - for manure - for the earth, so that something may grow. Not flowers, but rather bread. Yes! But do not worship it - the filth of which you've eaten. "

Heat

When I was seven, I stared at my fair and fleshy palms, red

and today turned towards the kitchen, flooded with light - the satiety box - and from within the cavernous depths of the cupboard directly below the sink, sprawled a grand, rotund belly, Black. I hovered over, still staring at my palms, red in the sun. He was beyond comprehension, Old Brain, wisdom that transcends books - the kind his young daughter of a second wife, does not have - jabbering away. Bolts, washers, and a torch littered the cheap tile floor. He's let himself go, volumes of fat spill over his belt buckle as he turns the screw. Reebok basketball shoes, old, flail in the sunlight. I stand over, staring at the black pepper grinder.

Mr. C was fixing the faucet, when his digestive tract got caught, the heat lulled the great gut: an extension of the kitchen pipings it became. I bent over the sink, and turned on the tap. Behold, his breakfast gushed out first, then his innards, running red and black. I gasped in excitement, biting my tongue.

Now, I am cloaked in a white apron. Hovering, floating over, as the gut-pipe, convulses in spasms of fear, four hundred years, blood wells up and over, covering my face, like a triumphant warrior, I bring down my foot on his body, stamping out his dignity. Forever a slave.

"How long will the trial last?"

Pinchas was a good Zealot

Zealotry, must be wielded to destroy the sin. You can not, and shall not attempt to destroy the sinners - the sin shall rise again, as the sun upon the eastern shore - and the harlots gaze is ever-vengeful, when it falls upon her assailants, whom yesterday shared her insidious bed.

But,

stand upright in the assembly, Pinchas, your righteous spear shall drive into the heart of this licentious cavorting that is debasing your tribe.

Raise your arm up in antiquated pathos! Higher! Strike, and turn the tide of my wrath that would undoubtedly consume your people.

This fille de joie shall make a ripe sacrifice.

Your tenure on this earth has been granted a new lease.

"Therefore say: behold, I have given him my covenant of peace."

Poison Pier

walk from cherry street to poison pier - reads a poor boy's strip of paper.

Polson/Poison

A pier, a-ppear-s,

ah-peer through the side window;

//all off the bus!

hesitation, this isn't our stop? but the people have decided to get off. peers decide for peers. a man, "these people must not be from around here... don't know how to get off a bus". "oh that's an insult" sez a boy,

indignant.

//foreshadowing

walking in groups to polson pier, past large cylinders of industry - the cranks and shafts beat out a rhythm, very "fireworks"-esque - wonder if SENSUOUS-X in the apparel acid-wash digs, hears it?

//go-karts

past the go-karts, not long left now. picks up the pace, now the line-up, now strangers eye your passport, YES, the date IS at the bottom. two looks down, one look at yer face. all good. past the gates, around the corner into the venue. people milling around. that tea is brewing in yer stomach kid, head to the room marked MENS. pissing....... pissing..................................piss...sss......... - somebody opens the door - AH - siiiiingggg

// ambient drones for a room-full of drunks and heads

standing near the bar was never a good idea, but don't want to hassle the kids standing so stoic. the money clinks and dudes with drinks make their way for friends engulfed in a sea......of people..... "PEOPLE PASS THE POT!!!! WHERE'S THE POT??? I SEE IT THERE..AND THERE....man everyone's blazing, hey buddy c'mon pass us the bone, we'll pay you five bucks!"

// alvy singer vs. the guy who called fellini "indulgent" in the lineup for the sorrow and the pity

"see spinoza writes stuff that is all about angst about philosophy -- see all the dudes who are in philosophy but don't like all the crap...like spinoza, coz he cuts through all the shit", booms BIG-BLAZE, as he leans into BAT-FOR-LASHES' ear. she unknowingly nods her bangs and agrees with big-blaze as he raves on and on like he's actually read Spinoza. he dons an anti-flag shirt and blazer over that... he will soon light up a bone and pass it to grateful bat-for-lashes. he booms and booms... louder and louder over the drones of GROUPER on stage, right into my poor ear. Why? Come on man.

"hey you should ask yer swedish profs about that!!". "oh I'm not in school anymore". way to kill it girl. get the bone 'n get outta blazer country!

//BODY-ODOUR and KATE-THE-BAIT

he's big, he stinks, and breaks the unspoken equilibrium of the crowd at the start of the collective's set - to stand and perceive, most of the crowd are still, not digging the vibrations - he's bouncing from side to side and grabs kate to sing-along into her ear. they crash and dance, stepping on my feet, I care not, for at that moment I am all into my zen-out-this-crowd vibe. I have cancelled all the bad trips and negative vibes.. head swimming around, tapping my feet - hear fireworks coming four minutes before the rest of the crowd applaud in appreciation. this is brilliant. they are playing panda bear material now! ah jesus! but when they get into "my girls", ah the Blazers that read about it in eyeweekly or heard it thinking they heard the next mgmt single, start dancing and jumping...their negative vibes and jabber throughout the experimental tunes gather now into a rally cry. AND NOW BODY-ODOUR RAISES HIS BLAZERED ARM FLAILING IT AROUND LIKE A FLAG - pumping it up and down and grabbing kate-the-bait. YES!!! I KNOW THIS SONG! right on... oh no! they crash into BAT-FOR-LASHES! she is perturbed and turns a hateful stare at body-odour and demands that they not disturb her RIGHT TO STAND STILL AT A MUSIC CONCERT! she will not give into the vibrations. she remains staunchly, firmly rooted in the ground. standing still. striking a pose like Franco and Mussolini. no dancing around her!

//visuals and escape

did I speak of the visuals? oh how rude of me! well the visuals were fantastic - straight out of the acid tests in Watts - after the blacks burnt it down and the whites partied on with the aid of kool-aid. there was a great big white inflatable ball o'erhead the collective and projections were cast onto this great white ball. magnificent! they screamed and gave birth to new beasts out of old songs - no album versions here - six minute intros into lion in a coma! brilliant! YES, YES!

but then the lights went and they went off stage. i did not stay for the encore. yes the music was brilliant but the cauldron of decrepit, drunk, hollows was unbearable. out of the fire... and into the blissful chills!

//clank-a-clank and stop!

I walked towards the cylinders of industry once more...they were still beating out that fireworks beat, UNTIL MY FEET WERE ALLIGNED WITH THEIR BASE... AND STOP! they stopped, as if they knew and were saying... "hey friend, our entertainment for the night is over, follow yer trip elsewhere, but you must carry on with the good vibes".

//paranoid trips

now I feel released and euphoric. I pick up the beat to brothersport and rap-it-on for a while, underneath bridges and highways. now I pick up the chatter from before but louder, since there is not a living soul around 'cept for the fools in their iron carriages on the highway! rap-a-rap... a-pier-appear-a-peer.. bop-a-top...cop-a-piss-a-piss-a-piss-a-piss-a-piss-aaaaaaaaaaaaah scream into the night, and WHY NOT?! I am in full merry mode, as-if CHIEF-CHINOOK was here. now I look across the road, there is a breach in the railing, I will jump onto the 6-lane highway and go across. no cars.. LETS GO!! ACROSS - FURTHER - ADRENALINE! now that I'm on the other side, I realize there is no sidewalk, just gravel! Shitters. That's OK! I jump around nimbly, taut, agile and keep on rappin' away nonsensical collective tunes. derivations of brothersport. oh----

shit!

is that a bum, wrapped completely in a sleeping bag under the highway?? I cannot see a face, but the rappin' stops and I continue on faster. SHIT! I cannot be so reckless! needles? there could be aids-needles anywhere in this silvery gravel ... OK, jump around like you're on hot embers!

past the gravel patch of paranoia.

//MOOO-NDANE creeps back in!

a long walk to union from poison pier this has been, but the warm, loving embrace of the underground metro awaits. methinkst to my myself... hmm that concert would come in at three k's, with the newly improved système kowalski. brilliant music weighed down by characters such as big-blaze, body-odour, kate-the-bait... bad-trips-folk. zen allowed me to overcome: "fireworks" was dazzling live, to respond to an inquisitive text from trois-rivieres.

//up to bloor

hot chocolate sipping, PLAID-CLAD waits for his buds - it's a pub-crawl on bloor - yes! we have brought fish.

THIS HAS BEEN A KOWALSKI FEATURE PRESENTATION

Fauna of Central Toronto

The "cringe-reflex". A contortion of the face and sudden, involuntary collapse of the upper eyelid. Followed by a convulsive one-eighty jerk of the neck. A feeling of repulsion lingers.

I am walking home past the usual cantankerous old white folk. The sun is on the demise. See the subway sign, and my eyes fall upon the bench just outside the automatic doors.

Moby Dick lies on said bench. Moby, the she-bum; naked belly basking in the last, unfortunate rays of sunlight. She is the matron bum of the Spadina-Bloor intersection. Layers upon layers of fat, coalescing into one planetary formation. This april evening she was trying desperately - well, effortlessly - to drive her gut temperature up to an optimum. She knows it will rain soon.

Please, I do not intend to make light of this situation, but let me go on. Her pillar-like legs are calloused and purple, from annual exposure to the harshest of winters. I cannot begin to fathom her tragic existence, but I see it, see her, Moby; the guy with the big trench coat and boots, with the strange gait; the black bum with the headphones and shopping bags; the younger girl who reads books outside scotia, asking for money in return for "good karma", etc. There is a large and seemingly growing homeless fauna, with new species erupting everyday from the concrete and asphalt expanses of Toronto, pregnant with the seeds of misfortune and injustice. Crumbling and decomposing, these neanderthals seek safety and warmth.

Rummaging through our green bins: Procyon lotor and Homo Sapien. Post-modern competition. Darwin never saw this coming.

Left-field Tapes vs. Persistent Vacuum

Time and Space sprawl before me, like the bird I ran over the other day. A red-breasted robin of unparalleled beauty.

My room, the chamber, where entropy ran supreme, is now reduced to minimalist sterility. An obvious reflection of the empty cassettes I gather. One day they shall complete the metamorphosis into an experimental tape collage. I will capture the pulsating, throbbing night out on Spadina, as it seeps in through the open windows of my alcove. Endless possibilities, dashed by the vast, expansive time that I have ahead of me. My brain yearns for the temporal confines of deadlines and exams.

My proposed self-renewing left-field musical experimentation is experiencing Zimbabwean stagflation. Thoughts have grown independent. I can no longer bare the teratology of my being as it separates like oil from water, rejecting my sincere proposal to supplant this room into the burgeoning cassette recording network. Dim, dim, dim.

I shall resign this dim mind to a dwindling and atrophied existence.

Shrine-building Nation

We took out a war film, cut out the words, and let the sound run on.

The men, their bodies, became extensions of the sound; migrant workers from all reaches of the empire, who neither understood each other, nor spoke the same tongue. The aural detritus of bomb blasts and artillery fire, kept the wheelbarrows rolling and the hammers smashing and clattering in quick succession. Images of mushroom clouds loomed overhead. The ukrainian workers, belted with passion. A high-strung bunch, wishing they had stayed home with their mothers. Any distractions were pulverized once their ears were adequately saturated with war drums. They worked like negroes!

One million hands are ready today. This week they are tasked with chiseling her gilded lips. An artist's rendition is blown up on a large screen in the middle of the gardens. Every meal is served under her panopticon gaze.

No incantations and no mantra, She only demands mute exaltation. Our lips do not part in reverence, our work here is a silent wind-born hymn, rising and swirling with every addition, floating across burnt-out fields and brackish waters, up to the purple mountains.

I kneel before the deity; her eyes and lips have that narcotized tranquility of assured omniscience.

Sanitation

Depression struck me low and hard that night. I was perched on my bed, with a glow in my face and in the center of that source a news emerged that had me floored, desperate for the destitute and other miserable beings on Bloor, I fled.

There is no treatment for psychosis

Flight, endless flight!

Began, down Madison

Past a line of cabs: a funeral procession

They will absolve the empty puppets

Thrown up, from the belly of a maddened beast

A carnivore pouring out vomit onto the sidewalk,

Strike out the dirge

Lament for the years of folly, the lager, and grub

Spent, spent, spent is the cow of enlightenment; her poor tits have gone dry.

A negation of everything living and spontaneous

The human being moved out long ago,

The rigid doll faces, the angry lout are here to stay.

And in all this madness, I turn and look at old Tengye Ling, across the street from the Madison Pub. I ask him for an explanation. How? How does he get up in the morning after the brawls and vanities of the night across the street, to wash his face and begin the Puja? Your face, it is so, placid and attentive. How?

"Quiet is a state of mind", he replies, pensively. No! I cry he is not in deep thought! This man, Tengye, he is clearly doped on Rohypnol! Sedatives! YES YES!

Elms on Lowther

The white van parked outside their newly renovated Victorian house reads, "Hartt & Son - Certified Technician & Chimney Sweep".

She opens the door for him - a pause at the threshold - reaches for his hand and leads him past her lazy-eyed brother, who is engrossed with his Nintendo DS. Up the stairs they go. Last wednesday it was the Pizza Pizza delivery guy, today it's Kevin. Her mother is out enjoying the all-inclusive spa package her husband got her to quell suspicions of an affair with the realtor.

As Kevin unbuttons his coveralls, Judie dreams of the day when the guy on the fifth row of her thursday class, "Introduction to Frederico Fellini", finally turns around to ask her for notes on La Dolca Vita. She would comply graciously with a flutter of her long eyelashes. Then maybe after the ritual coffee date, she could ask him to return a favour, and walk her to 15 Lowther. They would walk through the Huron street playground, where they would stop for fifteen pristine minutes; Judie would take out D.H. Lawrence - in the deep, strange-scented shade of the great dark elm tree - and read it to him.

O' but till the day that these dreams come to fruition, she will carry on in anonymity, for she does not know his name, and him hers. She will slip out every thursday before the end of class, during the 10 minute break, and walk over to the Manulife Centre, pay 11 bucks, and watch the images flicker across the great wide screen, in solitude.

She will heave a great sigh as her lungs, like the trees, fill with air.

Vomitus

The shifting tectonics of my thoughts are dangerous tonight.

It all finally snapped the other day, when I stepped out of his truck onto the cold asphalt at the corner of Lippincott and something. She greets my approach with an accusing stare. I have something written down on a napkin that I intend to hand over to her, tonight before I leave for FSJ - the last laugh.

I yell, "you're looking radiant today, love".

She responds angrily, channelling all her banner-wielding female empowerment, "all objects in the universe radiate energy. "

"Is that right, well let's see to it that you're chock-full of the stuff. C'mon I know a place; they serve freshly squeezed OJ and right sizzlin' bacon."

"NO! I'm not going to hear you indulge about the fields and self-apathy. I'm going with the girls to Donna LaFramboise's book signing, over on the eastend."

"There will be plenty more opportunities to trade tips on growing out your armpits... [trail of low-brow humor].."

"You are INSUFFERABLE!"

"Aaaaaaaaaaah, insufferable! That's why I love you."

"That's it, I won't be buttered over by you. I lost you a long time ago. Now I won't render myself useless and sit around moping, because you have decided to up and leave us."

"I'm glad, your fatalism will keep you company, while I'm gone."

She turns around, but before she does, I grab her and we embrace. I feel her tears soak right through my denim lapel. I decide to hold onto the napkin. We separate.

Saturated

My nose and sinuses have had enough! They have been raped and annexed pugnaciously, by the putrid smell of fried burgers, again and again. How can I come home after witnessing my team throw away a lead in the 89th minute, at home, when my house is infested with bastards devoid of culinary skills? Rancid... rancid fucks!

Last Night

Last night sleep refused me entrance into its anodynic domain with increasing resistance. Intermittently I would turn on my side, reach for my bedside lamp, turn it on, and read Headbirths. The Turks and Asians are milling around in the Führer's room. They are setting up their Döner Kebab stalls and selling six tees for ten marks, respectively; as Helmut Schimdt pontificates on the virtues of the pill. The non-practicing Lutheran has taken over the pulpit and the altar will remain, barren.

They keep a cat and still have no child.

They give birth to Athene at the crest of their skull. They shall nurture her. An immaculate conception.

Why push little Karl or Gerhard out of the poor unsuspecting cervix, when Germany is severed at the head by ideologies: communism and capitalism. No, once conceived, let them fall off the precipice, desperately grasping at the inhospitable uterus. They shall all meet again in the Rheine.

Thirty years later, give or take, I sit here contemplating the rise of Jewry, and how Europeans are still grappling with their sterile wombs after all these years. Take a pill, once more, vanquish this thought, take these palpitations and allow me to sleep.

Auto De Fé

When 'me' became rapt in my immediate carnal desires, and myself was the end of those desires, the raison d'être; I sought and intended to exhaust my flesh.

To rid myself of these demons. In the process I pierced my eyes, wore gloves over my hands, stuffed my ears with bright orange ear plugs, and held my nose with my right hand. My tongue I held too dear. Instead I walked with a pair of black sunglasses over my bandaged eyes, holding a cane and a top hat to boot, and I walked to the nearest tea house. There I sat down at the furthest table from the entrance. I asked my good friend, the waitress, Luise Dorothea, a large stout lady of Bavarian descent, to bring me a cupful of earl grey tea every hour on the strike of the grand clock behind her ancient Samovar.

I asked her to describe the tea with her powers of perception that I had so willfully forsaken. She said the tremor over the surface of the tea was like that of a great stygian lake, fuming with prehistoric fumes that would surely scald and incense my tongue. I nodded. She knew that 'it' had started. I was undergoing the last procedure.

You see, Dorothea had been the ear to many of my musings and eyes to the chalk sketches in my large notebook. She fought it first, tried to persuade me, but she learnt very soon that "my flesh had to go." My heart could not bear to beat underneath all this sin. It had to be shed.

My cerebral hemispheres, they alone were capable of instructing me. I yielded to them.

Frozen

On my way home: my muscles and sinews cling to my bones longingly, dreaming of summer days sprawled on the beach, in the good company of Les chemins de la liberté, my body bare to the radiant features of Apollo, except for my groins and face, the latter cool and shaded by the undulant brim of an emerald green bucket hat.

I walk past a white land-owner as he waits in the glacial conditions; waiting patiently to deny the bare grass, the warmth of his dog's shit. He will place the polyethylene bag carefully over his hands, nonchalantly thrusting his hand to grasp the newly produced excrement of this overtly fecund, recto-anal canal. I see four separate pieces of shit aligned like the stars on the curbside grass. The dog moves along a bit, not caring to inspect the colour or shape of his production, but to sniff the grass further ahead. Likely to spare himself the stench of a close encounter. This man, however, willingly stoops to clasp the brown manifestations of digestion. Shit, dog shit on the ground, yet he will laugh and scorn at the immigrants who wash their own ass instead of wiping it. He will sit around his poker table, enjoying his brew, speaking of his "paki friend" who uses water to clean his ass.

I walk along, making my observations, moving hurriedly past Cody, outside the frathouse. I move swiftly to the sound of an orchestra, raging in my ears. Here's Mike, he's got a job, he drives a car manufactured in Canada. He stands, slothful, outside the rehabilitation centre for alcoholics. His wife is not with him. She pays a man. Enters a room, decorated to resemble a Hindu temple, as accurately as it can be perceived on Queen street. She's wearing her tight-fitting yoga pants, purchased on Bloor. Now she's doing the upside down dog, and learning the eight pillars of Ashtanga, from the Swami. Swami, goes and takes a bathroom break, as he charges Mike's wife 30 dollars an hour. Swami now washes his ass with water.

I look at Mike, and then move along, still swaying to the voices and instruments in my head.

To Marcel Duchamp

18th of March, 79

//page 1

I slipped the newspaper clipping from yesterday's Le Monde, into the pocket of my blue thrift-store blazer. 

DEPARTURE from Marseilles in a violent wind. 

I am trying to leave my years of devotion to gospel teachings. I am in barbaric pursuit of the girl sitting beside me, clad in a soft, airy red dress. We will spend our days along the coastline, subsisting on her trust fund. Absorbing Sartre and Gide.

No! No money for records! She loves swing and she loves chanson. She has an ear for the blues and tears for algerian folk. She will spend all our money on polyvinyl chloride. My stomach begs her to eke out our existence on the coast, 'til our blue fiat reaches the cobblestones of old Milan.

The sun is choleric and offers no respite to my mounting qualms, perspiring onto my poor, weary forehead. We drive into a local ESSO. I walk into the magasin (store) to buy a pack of marlboro reds. As he swipes the black and white code, I tinker with a cassette rack full of "essentials": essential mod, essential elvis, essential bop...etc. Meanwhile the guy is waiting for me to pay up. He has silky long hair, flowing down onto his blue esso collared shirt, concealing a purple tie-die tee underneath. This guy must know time. Maybe he can afford me some advice on my current folly; does my destiny meander with a red dress in Milan? He sways from side to side to a tune, uncomfortably self-conscious of my burning gaze. Most people must walk right past him. But this kid, and he's just a kid in his early twenties, he's adding some momentum to the turbulence in my carotid artery, shooting up to my brain. I almost crush the pack in my palm, with a sudden pang of acid distrust. I place five francs on the counter and run out .

Calm, Fervour

I walk her to the subway wherefrom she came. I was only going out to get some air... only going out to come back in. 

Great large murky puddles fill this road,

Great large blue skies fill the dome above, 

I whistle the tune to a loney, dear song. 

Life is beautiful. 

Oh, why have you not understood that all happiness is a chance encounter and at every moment stands beside you like a beggar by the roadside.

It's Not Me, It's You

A phone goes off with a cheery ringer, in the middle of an embryology lecture. Prof turns around with a smile, "better pick that up, could be your dealer!"

Being an older citizen, he must've had an acid lapse and reminisced back on the 60's when he would drive up clad in leather on his bike, up to the intersection of Huron and Bloor: the drug haven of the north (before they were shut down, dragged out, beaten dead into a petrified stone edifice, only for Uxbridge to become the heir to their throne). Yes thats right, thanks to a good linkster provided by an avid reader of this blog, I've been made aware of the dark history that surrounds my neighbourhood and the University. 

With a little research I found out that Burroughs wrote the script to a Junky's Christmas, right here. In fact, his dealer was a grad student in the Dept. of Anatomy! It all comes together.

Two days from now, they're going to paint a new building-length advertisement along the side of the rochdale project, now named after a dead senator, who was in cahoots with the drug trade and was integral in committing canadians to a north atlantic treaty of infamy.

I'm not a fan of this new Lily Allen record. I need a new teapot! Damnit.

Hazy Days

Plants have integrity too, he says!

When confronted with harsh iniquity, oppressive heat, they transiently produce a small little fucker of a molecule, a four carbon chain bastard that exited his mother's womb abruptly, prematurely and was christened, Isoprene. So this spade... beset on all sides with a glut of siblings, lodges himself, perhaps for a couple of hours in the lipid bilayer of the leaves of... say Aspen, for the sake of integrity. 

But when the heat subsides, when all fear is gone, what do you do with this spawn of adulterous copulation? It evaporates profusely from the leaves of the said tree, no longer of use, dissipating into the flowing cosmos. Blue haze from this congregation of Isoprene brotherhood, give jagged rocks, their name: Blue-Ridge Mountains.

Ah recalled in mah infinite solitude, a lonely molecule, ripped from mah berth, the words of the prophet Isaiah:

But draw near hither, ye child of the sorceress,

the seed of the adulterer and the whore.

Against whom do ye sport yourself?

Against whom make ye a wide mouth, and draw out the tongue?

Are ye not a child of transgression, a seed of falsehood?

Add These To Your Jukebox

In the year 2008, Cannibals ransacked Fort Knox; tales of their pillages were broadcasted on flatscreen, in high definition and on Sharp TVs. 

I witnessed from a safe distance, as the tumultous waters rose higher, I witnessed the turn of the screw...

...I waited seven more days and again sent out the dove from the ark. When the dove returned to me in the evening...

in its beak it held a string attached to a basket, containing no more than 10 records. I retired to my study, and played these tunes on my old Kenwood stereo receiver (KR-7600, with wood casing).

The songs that I heard, offered some respite to my visions of post-pre-apocalyptic carnage. The ten records are as follows:

10 - GZA/Genius - Pro Tools: 

The perfect soundtrack to the Way of the Samurai. Imagine black assassins with full fro's, dressed in black robes, meditating inevitable death.

9 - Fleet Foxes - Fleet Foxes:

Heard it in the summer, envisioned today: nursing a cup full of the maddie mocha and peering out of my window, onto snow-draped landscapes.

8 - Bison B.C. - Quiet Earth:

Local (Canadian) gnarlsters dream up visions of an earthbound mammoth, and its heavy!

7 - Genghis Tron - Board up the House:

They whipped us in the face with their brutal blend of metal, affectionately known as cybergrind.

6 - Boris - Smile:

Cult Japanese psych metal gods, dressed in leather pants and silky shirts, with double-neck guitars and a gong, no seriously. Best live act of this god forsaken year.

5 - Gojira - The Way of All Flesh:

French metal never tasted better, the addition of Randy Blythe (LoG) was the "fancy sauce" to my french fries. Fuck the naysayers... I'm going to join in with the earth/life mantra.

4 - Dungen - Four

Their music is the furthest thing from the symmetry of their artwork. I hope Ikea catches onto their buzz and names a chair or a shelf after them.

3 - The Mars Volta - Bedlam in Goliath

Five songs on in I felt a miscarriage coming

2 - Grails - Doomsdayer's Holiday

Pictures worth a thousand drones? yes. Imagine a tibetan monk, one minute in absolute serenity, the next being chased by a half wolf/half topless woman riding a boar. I remember purchasing this at soundscapes, walking all the way home, and listening to it, sipping on Al-Wazaah tea, with dale sprawled on the floor on his towel...totally spaced out.

1 - Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds - Dig, Lazarus, Dig!!!

Chanting incantations, guru-ing down the streets, juxtaposing a poor fella who never asked to be brought back from the dead with New York bordellos... 

Here comes Alina with two black eyes, she's given herself a transfusion

She's filled herself with panda blood to avoid all the confusion...

and its getting strange in here

Yeah its getting stranger every year!