SONG OF THE DAY: Meat Grinder

I got one of those 33 1/3 books about Madvillain but I haven’t read much of it yet because it’s somehow a little bit more than a zine but not quite a book, and mostly my brain has been in zine level of attention mode lately, and if I happen to get more than that on a rare night, I try to knock 10-15 pages out of an actual book laying beside the bed, gathering more dust than thumbing. This is no diss to 33 1/3 books, other than they are zines pretending to be books and every author should be forced to get some comic artist they knew 15 years ago to do wonderful doodles to go with it. Or cut and paste some shit out of old Spin magazines.

SONG OF THE DAY: Remember 02

The physical difference between typing a word into a computer or smart phone to find the meaning after clicking SEND for fairly immediate results, and that of walking into another room to pull a fat dictionary off a shelf to turn pages using guide words ‘til you narrow down the right page to read the printed words. The brain receives both pieces of information but the cells of the body experience the two receptions very differently. The former is immediate but requires little work and thus perhaps feels less necessary to retain; the latter takes physical effort of the body to send the information to the brain.

The physical difference of having printed books accumulated full of the information you feel necessary or enjoy having around piled around you to consult when you feel necessary to search for the chunks that feel relevant to your current needs, and that of oral histories shared over time from various elder sources that your mind slowly absorbs to retention if you are listening well enough or the story is relayed strongly enough so that later when you feel the need or the information is relevant you lean back on your memory of those oral sources. The brain receives both pieces of information but the cells of the mind have absorbed where that information is very differently. The former can always be accessed but is external and thus feels less necessary to retain; the latter takes mental effort of the body to keep the information in the mind.

Progress is a myth, but myth does not necessarily mean false. Mythology operates separate from a true/false binary to be honest. But progress can be more false than true, without being entirely one or the other, and the notion that we’ll prove it’s false to know it’s false is not something that occurs historically. More often than not, people know something to be false long before it’s proven to be false. Proof itself depends on a lot of progress as the process of proof, and all of that isn’t necessarily true itself. Throwing good science after bad.

The scientific western civilization human brain regards the human brain as unique and extraordinary, and thus scientifically justified in its dominion of the Earth (and eventually Space). Why nobody ever thinks it biased the human brain considers itself an extraordinary brain when it’s studying brains through the filter of the human brain has always boggled me. There are many spiritual traditions throughout human history (and still present) which regard the human brain and humans themselves as just a part of a larger whole, not any more or less special than everything else we share the Earth (and thus Space) with. I try to think about that a lot, not really in any specific way where I force my brain to come to conclusions, but more like listening to oral histories, repeating that story to myself, so that my brain knows it inside my mind, not just on the book shelves stacked around me. It’s easy to book shelf know things, but much harder to mind know things. And with all this progress we’re bombarded with, it’s even easier to click SEND know things than it was to book shelf know things. That’s why everything feels so wrong, because we “know” so much but it feels at our cellular experience like that knowing isn’t being retained or all that real.

SONG OF THE DAY: Calm Mall

Abandoned malls a place of tranquility, perfect locations for encampments and illegal flea markets and food distribution and machete shops and oh man the potential for permanent taco trucks driven into the middle of the abandoned just sitting there, lengua tacos for days. The sun still comes through the skylights, and we like to sit on milk crates in the old Foot Locker where the security gate is stuck halfway down so we put some milk crates in there and we sit and discuss nothing at all but also everything all at once. Where there used to be some sort of shitty Starbucks kiosk, we have a slew of big two gallon coffee dispensers, and all the hazelnut creamer a man could ever want. I have been dragging shelving from the old JC Penney to the main concourse by the now-free coffee kiosk, and I’m building a labyrinth of shelving, and asking everybody to donate the five most important books they think should be part of our super library. The goal is to have a library labyrinth that you can walk until you find the perfect book. I tested it out and ended up reading Mary Oliver in the vacant Gamestop for four days.

P3RF0RM4T1V3 L1BR4RY...

performative library

shelf, pretending that I still

spend time reading for leisure

DR34MS 0F B31NG 4 ST31NB3CK...

dreams of being a Steinbeck,

dreams of being a Rumi,

dreams of being an atom

STVDY1NG TH3 H41KV F0RM'S...

studying the haiku form's

historical precedents,

all while bastardizing them

ST4CKS 0F L1BR4RY B00KS SQV33Z3D...

stacks of library books squeezed

sideways into living room

shelf, at the top, overdue

G3N1VS3S 0F TH3 W3ST3RN...

geniuses of the western

tradition leave me feeling

empty, not entirely whole

G3TT1NG L0ST 1N L1BR4R13S...

getting lost in libraries

which rich folks put together,

stealing their hoarded knowledge

D3W3Y D3C1M4L CLVST3RS...

Dewey decimal clusters

scribbled like the cryptic codes

they are, in thin blood red ink

freestyle sonnet #095: CONTEMPLATING IBN ARABI'S SUPREME POLYMATH ALONG THE JAMES

I reckon my Meccan revelations will come 

walking along Rivanna subdivision tracks, 

thoughts pointed east, boots tapping boom bap, heartbeat drum 

synchronized to river crows cawwing as freight stacks 

clack-clack past. I reckon my Meccan most divine 

inspirations will come somewhere between Gladstone 

and Bremo, perhaps that milepost sixty-nine 

near Strathmore yard, crossing over to be alone 

on those solitary Seven Islands, soaking 

up Universal truth at my sub-atomic 

level, drunk of heart off mystical love cloaking 

mundane existence with fractal astro-logic 

adding magnificence to senseful solitude. 

My Meccan revelations are James River viewed. 

CR33P1NG THR0VGH 4M3R1C4...

creeping through America

in the middle of the night,

along least heat moon highways

T3D K4CZYNSK1'S SH1P 0F F00LS...

Ted Kaczynski's Ship of Fools

handwritten in pokeberry

ink, sent to local papers

D1STVRB1NGLY V10L3NT...

"disturbingly violent"

"volatile insurgent force"

"and this bird you cannot change..."

"the neon wilderness" as...

"the neon wilderness" as

Nelson Algren called it, been

scrubbed clean, turned to noir condos

not all words worth curation -

too many terabytes of

ego exist in this world

mystics and prophets never

make for good politicians

or presidents; too tapped in

absorbing ancient texts for

salvation from disconnect

felt in my daily travels

sources cited and courses sighted,

calculate worst possible

outcomes, then throw self forward

sitting underneath dead tree,

reading some old ass Ibn

al-Arabi raw bezels