He used it as an icebreaker at the bar; saying, “Believe it or not, I have a mirror over my bed…. Creepy right? It was there when I moved in.”

And sometimes a woman would come back to the flat to confirm the story and they would laugh and speculate about the previous tenant: Maybe a sex pervert from the cocaine 80’s? Maybe a kinky gay man? Maybe an exotic prostitute? Maybe a cocaine addled, gay, exotic prostitute from the 80’s?.

They would laugh and think about the tawdry reflections the mirror might have cast once upon a time and it all became too funny and ridiculous and they would fall into the bed with ironic laughter and a sort of lonely, drunk, narcissistic curiosity. He would watch the women watching themselves laughing and then not laughing and then kissing him and then stripping and eventually he watched them watch themselves fuck him. The kitsch and the irony falling away to “oh what the hell?” experimentation. The mirror was meant to be ironic, but it worked like a charm none the less.

He got his nick name, Rabbit, from a mousy girl named Alice. She had a strange Lacanian response to the mirror and regressed into ridiculous baby talk at the sight of herself floating on the ceiling. She kept calling out his name during the act, “Robert oh Robert.”

But it grew softer and softer, smaller and smaller into baby talk: “Robert, oh Rabert, oh Waabbit, Oh rabbit…”

“Did you just call me Rabbit?” he asked. “What is this an Updike novel?”

“Rabbit want to go in the hole?” she asked.

“What?”

“Wabbit want go in de hole?” she repeated.

“What?… Yes. Sure. I guess.”

“guess what wabbit?”

“Go in the hole,” he said sort of disgusted.

“Say it right.”

“Yes I would like to go in the hole…. sounds retarded.”

“Say it.”

“Wabbit want go im de hole,” he said in an infantile voice and she fell upon him like cupid at a Roman orgy and it was perfect and magical, if slightly bizarre.

Like an idiot, he’d told his friends the story and the name stuck,… but not Alice. Not any of them. They all came to the mirror an then never returned. He was left like the third wheel of a menage a trois. He was left all alone on the ceiling now floating in the white sheet clouds.

“Fucking Lonesome,” he thought. “No one but me and some asshole named Rabbit.”

gee don’t I sound like king lear?

Well a house devided, etc.

The player here is Veho because I burnt most of my megs at vimeo. Nice thing about Veoh is that you can play the vid full screen and it allows you to run longish vids with fairly high rez. I con’t much like the player bar at thebottom, but it’s servicable for todays blog diptyque.

The Video is from today when I dropped the dog off to cut a summer trim (and stop the pant pant) I went walkabout to the park and museum and Library (there to check on possibly showing the Library Project collabs… got to contact the currator). I found the Technology Share Fair for Brooklyn Schools while walking the halls of Brooklyn Museum… I ran into Cash while wanting something to quench my thirst. He offered up lemon ginger ale… it has been the basis of my ever evolving liquids all day (adding coke and lemon juice and wine sorbet and only leaving it for Miller Time).

The music here is from Dave Chapelle’s Block Party CD (from Brooklyn Public Library) and is Mos Def and posse. Bill Batson gave me Mos Def shirt years ago when the Queen kicked me out of the Kingdom and had me Siddhartha sleeping on couches without clothes or money. I always wore it with pride… but am only learning why now. Mos Def is most def…. Busy Bee me. No sleep in Brooklyn.

Once I saw the changing of command on the USS Pittsburgh at Grotton, CT with my brother from a Bolex mother. When The Captain leaves the ship they blow a dog whistle and say: “Pittsburgh going Ashore.” It is as if the soul of the boat has left the boat. When The new Captain walks the gangplank, the dog whistle is blown in opposite progression and the Ensign speaks these magic jazz hand words: “Pittsburgh Coming Aboard!” and it is as if the boat is born again.

Me and Pat call melady Young Pas (or green onion in Korean, or Sly to the Midwesterners or Sylvie to you… etc.): Pittsburgh. She is the Captain my Captain. She is the queen of that little steel Swiss, but rusting Town in the middle of the Eastern Sea Board. I was throwing out all my old clothes yesterday and getting rid of all the wire and plastic hangers… nothing but wood is good quoath Pittsburgh and I concurred while wearing the buddhist Stettson and the silk guns and the Star Wars blasters still in the a tiny casket to be burried by the IRA somwhere beside the river Liffey. I tripped and fell upon a Bazooka shell full of old memories of Pittsburgh’s youth and there were steller shots of her as Stella amongst the stars and my street car named desire and some calling cards from old beaux and a shot of her leaning away from a dire wolf… him stealling kisses and trying to eat her heart out and I realize it is good to walk with pax but always have silk guns in a silk casket somewhere… the silent big stick as the Church on the Hill said, or was it The Mac daddy Author, or Ike? Yes Ike who I like if only because he said, “Beware the military industrial complex”… The king can speak the truth, but the wolves are still there… stealing kisses, and hearts, and gold, and souls.

I became quite green with jealousy looking at the explosive contents of the shell… and then I found a receipt for the first futon we ever shared and a letter I wrote to fair Pittsburgh in Pittsburgh when I was in the Tower of Pain and hats and song. It was not the most regal of things… a manic all night scrawl on yellow legal paper… but you know what? It was really a very romantic letter. It brought a single tear to my eye that dropped into the vast Atlantic… How can a shell hold such wealth I thought? For in that moment I realized that this was a contract signed thirteen years ago… So Why has it taken me so long to honor it and honor fair Pittsburgh?

… Because you see, I have been hiding in plain sight, playing the fool on the hill. Now it is time to wear the purple robes and take the crown that is mine. Today Pittsburgh. Tomorrow the world. It is my job to be her knight in shining armor coming to her emotional rescue on a fine Arab charger. It is my job to keep the dire wolves at bay. Hail Pittsburgh hail the Queen.

I was at Freddy’s the night Sly Fox left for Las Vegas and I gave two guys my moleskin and said, “Make me a drawing, buy me a beer…sort of as a joke…and I went outside to smoke… when I got back they had drawn this and bought me a magic hat #9… it is names of the superbowl champion (two years in a row) Steelers from the seventies when I used to wear the black and gold slicker to protect me from the hard rain…. Coin see dances coincidences…. They were Pittsburgher… friends from many moons ago… reunited in the city on a drunkes Spree… fiddle di di.

This is more or less a birthday gift to myself. I’ve been drawing it on every page of Moby Dick (using two books to get both sides of each page) for months. The soundtrack is built from searching “moby dick” on You Tube (I was looking for Orson’s Preacher from the the John Huston film), I couldn’t find the preacer, but you find tons of Led Zep and drummers doing Bonzo and a little Orson reading from the Novel for a failed Italian T.V. film…… makes for a nice Melville in the end.

Cinqo de Mayo I turn Forty. Ahhhhhhh the French Champagne.

finish of a puzzle map started by Jade Peggler.

An old portrait/study of Tom Otterness’ work meets a collaboration started by Jade Peggler.Jade from the The Library Project.

I thought I’d reshow Remmy’s
Moby Bop video in honor of it making the daily reel top ten. It fits in nicely with some recent Library work from:
1 godalwayshungry and Tony Van Den Boomen 2
gundunasu u zeneize 3 potsrme1962 4 Neuk

A Tom Waits track (from Sonja) tops some Asian Library Scrolls? from Neuk in Japan and Tan Jun in China. The vlog shows the Brooklyn Bridge lit up along with the Verizon (read ATT BELL) building, the Manhattan Bridge… along with various fills on clouds and buildings. It was my Arc set lit large by some Action movie staring Will Smith (aka The Fresh Prince)… Parents just don’t understand…. also some Royal Wylds stuff including the shoes of guitarist who just got off touring with the Misfits. This guy used to play with Richard Hell who I was just watching about in some BBC documentary on the history of Rock and Roll. It’s showing on VH1 two…. I hightly recommend it.

When she comes back through the restaurant, she sees Pat making a ridiculous show of tasting the wine and then he nearly chokes on it and turns bright red in embarassment and blots his nose just as she comes through the glass door hiding a smile. She loves him at this moment more than ever. She can see the vulnerable little boy he was and not the cocky young man he has become. It is this frailty beneath his polished exterior that she is falling in love with: the delicate, breakable part of him. The thing that, infact, may already be broken.

the top two images are Library collabs fromSonja’s
starts. Here’s one before I got to it.

The video I made after midnight on New Years using various bits of stuff I’m working on… I was pretty loopy, but there’s something nice about its precise randomness. The last part is from the return from the PITTS when we wound up in Bethlehem on Christmas day looking for an angry gasoline fix. Alas, the pumbs, like the inn, were closed so we headed under mountains through tunnels, tilting at windmills looking for a washing basin crown . Happy New Year.

Somehow the devil talked me into getting Christmas Eve dinner at a Japanese Hibachi steak house. It was one of those places that serves any kind of Asian food – from Sushi to chow mein, but also cooks your surf and turf on a hot Hobart grill right in front of you with a weird mixture of soy sauce and butter. I mean, it wasnâ€t real authentic, or anything. It was Asian food for white people. Scratch that, it was Asian food for white people who still call Asians Orientals. Yeah. It was Oriental food and the devil mostly liked it for the waitresses dressed up like Geisha and the drinks that came with tiny paper parasols.

By the time I got there, the grill was already warm and the devil was half crocked on mai tais. He was wearing a parasol behind his horn like a Polynesian virgin and talking smack about the Buddha.

“Sit down,” he said. “Donâ€t be so passive. What are you the freakin†buddha.”
“No,” I said. “Iâ€m Ishmael.”
“Youâ€re an A hole is what you are,” the devil laughed, waving me to sit down with his red, claw hand. I slid in behind the grill table and the Korean chef came over to cook like a Japanese guy. It was all a weird sort of theater where nothing was what it appeared…. I mean from a historical or cultural perspective. Mr. Lee was chopping away with the sharp knives and making a James Brown rhythm on the griddle with a pepper shaker and the devil ordered me up a mai tai with extra umbrellas from the pretty cocktail waitress, who was half Peurto Rican, Chinese Filipina dressed up like I said, as a Geisha… cute too.
“I could fall for her,” the devil said.
“Shit, Youâ€ve already fallen.”
“Must you curse at the table,” the devil scolded.
“What the fuck,” I said.
”Please,” said the devil. “There are ladies present.” and the waitress came with the cocktails and the devil took a long pull and so did I and he ordered a round of Kamikaze.
“Come on,” I said. “The waitresses are dressed as Japanese whores.”
“Geisha are not prostitutes,” he said. “They are artists… granted their medium is eros.”
“Fuck me.” I said. “Youâ€re the fucking devil.”
”You forget, that I am an angel too. Just because my father thinks Iâ€m no good, doesnâ€t mean I AM no good. Iâ€m a freakin†angel and stop swearing before I get angry. ITâ€S Fuc….ITâ€S CHRISTMAS.”
“What do you care for Christmas? Youâ€re the devil.”
“Jesus is my freakin†cousin, okay and heâ€s next in line… Show some respect.”
”You make religion sound like the mafia.”
”Well it sort of is.”
“And youâ€re Fredo.”
“Yeah… I guess I am… but I am really smart you know?”

“Sure,” I said and the kamikazes came and then we had more and few more mai tais and the chef made a volcano out of a stack of onion rings and burning liquor. It made the devil homesick and he started getting drunk and pinching the ass of the cute Chinese/Filipina and whispering dirty things in her ear and calling Mr. Lee the best knife chink in the business and just really getting loud and out of control and I was sort of embarrassed as he kept throwing the food around the table like a spaz. He couldn’t keep anything on his chopsticks.
“Who fucking invented these things?!” he yelled at Mr. Lee.
“Maybe Chinese,” Mr. Lee said in a flourish of knife work.
“Bullshit Chinkboy, I did. Who else but the devil cold invent these fucking things? Useless. Give me a fork. I’m a god damned devil and I like pitchforks and forks and…. I hate fucking devil sticks…chop chop chinaman,” he said.
“Me Korean,” said Mr. Lee.
“You get me fork, or you be Solly,” said the devil.
“Cool it,” I said. “Youâ€re acting like a real…as… A hole.”
“Fuck You,” he said. “Whoâ€s paying for this fucking dinner anyway? Me, asshole. You donâ€t have any money.”
It was true. I hadnâ€t sold a story since the whale thing, so I was the devilâ€s guest.
“Right…so Iâ€ll fucking act like I fuckin†want to act,” the devil said.
”Hey the language,”I said. “I thought you said you were an angel.”
“Sure sure. Most of the time Iâ€m a fuckin†angel, but listen…” and he dragged me close with the red claw and said in a whisper, ”Iâ€m a god damn devil when I drink. How the fuck do you think I fell out of heaven anyway? I fuckin†tripped on a cumulous cloud, drunk on Rum and pineapple juice… A funapple , I called it. A God Damn Fun Apple.”
He ordered a round of funapples and dumped the rest of his kamikaze on the griddle and it exploded in fire and heat.
“Thatâ€s more like it,” he said. “Just like home.”
It was that kind of night all the way into Christmas morning when the devil stumbled out of a strip club and tried to pick a fight with Santa Claus, but santa just tried to give him a stuffed bear.
“You fucking Buddhist,” he yelled at Santa and. then he tried to fuck the stuffed bear. He couldn’t find a viable orifice and made a lunge at Prancer. I grabbed him by the left horn and I dragged him away. I walked him back to the gates of hell.
“Merry Fuckin†Christmas,” the devil said.
“Merry Fuckin†Crhistmas to you too,” I said and he slurred something and fell down the hellacious stairs.
I heard him yell up from hell in a bruised hoof groan, “I’ll be an angel in the morning and you’ll still be an asshole, out of work writer!”
I realized then that those who’ve known the heights of heaven, always think they’re above you. They look down on you, even when their drunk asses are falling down the stairway to hell, you know? I was good enough for hibachi Christmas Eve, but you know… I wasn’t really good enough. Anyway, I bet they use chopsticks in heaven… I mean if they eat or anything, I just bet you they use chopsticks.

One of those impossible days, with too much to mail, too much to scan, too much to wash, too much to clean, to much to make a mess with, and too much to edit. In the back of my mind I keep remembering that the characters are sitting in a cafe (either in Geneva, or Brooklyn) and Pat is about to order some wine. Remember that… I’m too tired and getting sick to go any further with it.

So many people are participating in the Library Project and I love watching it grow. I don’t know what everyone’s motivations in participating are, but I wanted to state clearly, that for me, the library project is more or less a way of making another circle around the old collider of ideas, trying to get more speed into all the particles of the story… only now I’m writing this draft with a little help from my friends (visual, metaphorical, musical, dialog… ideas aboutd in The Library) and I’m writing it out in the open. It’s fun to fail in public. Isn’t that the American dream these days?

Here’s the second book Sharon Drum tossed from her library:

This is a sort of ARC redux. A revisitation on the death of kings and fathers and Lear and M. Tristan, which turned out to be extremely clairvoyant on my part, but more on that in another post. Yesterday, I went for a run across the brooklyn bridge to go see the graffiti mecca, 11 Spring Street that is not long for this world. The building has been vacant for over twenty years and become a sort of beacon for the internatinal “urban art” movement. But like every other square inch of NYC, it’s going condo. As a cool last hurrah, however, the developers have invited graffiti people from all around the world to tag the exterior one last time and then also tag up the interior. The whole work of collaborative art will stay on the naked brick walls and will be sealed up like a time capsue behind the sheetrock. The building opens today and will be open for a week or so before the sheetrocking starts, so go see this. I suppose some day, if urban art proves it’s potential as the next big thing, all the developers have to do, is gut the fake walls, and voila the world’s biggest masterpiece since the Sistine Chapel… call it the Cistern Shrapnel.


Ran back over the Big Blue and visted with Major Tom and the wife of the party, Ms. Drum, the semi-official Library Science Consultant for TheLibrary Project. I’m planning on doing a portrait of her in her Library, but we thought it might be fun to do an interview talking about her own library of personal books. The real subject was “Weeding” the term for culling old books from a collection. Her point was that “all things must pass” and she started with the question, “Of these ten books, which two would you throw out?” No doubt we’ll be seeing and hearing more from Sharron and this interview. I even walked away with the two books she declared were unsuitable for shelving: yellowing paperbacks that are, however, suitiable for reading on train rides home with aching feet and legs and spent battery in the camera. The thing is dead: book, camera, king. Long live the thing.

Images from the library (from top down):
1. My video on running the route of Arc Along The Watchtower in time lapse.
2. The death of King Lear from Francesco.
3. Morte End: a collab of Brian Raszka and Machinewithnoname.
4. Collab from Tara and Snappy Dresser.
5. (below)Fawcett World Library: Best Short Stories of the Modern Age back cover. A DISCARD from the Sharron Drum Library.

I am thinking about Tristan as a sort of Lear figure. I don’t think he has kids, like I said, but I like to think that he took a sort of pater familias approach to his board who have begun to try and force him out of power as anything but a figure head (with good reason as Tristan is a bit raving in a wind storm like Lear). He is obsessed with a new set of psychoactive pharmeceuticals that have the ability to created instant experience of emotion. He is also working on a form of chemical jungian knowledge… to convey archetypes through carbon based molecules… sort of chemical computer chips… you eat them and know how to porgram your VCR lets say.. but if you mix pills, you might know how to program your VCR but when you do, it makes you weep, or dance for joy. Tristan is melomaniacal about this innovation, his life’s work, and at times is a bit like a mad scientist threatening to dose the world into self destrucition, etc.

There is something about Quantum Mechanics and String Theory that is involved with the manufactureof these pharmeceuticals and so The Cern Collider coming on line is important to making the drugs work. Maybe they need a quark or two?


Top is a completion of a Collab with Double You in a book entitled Ameryka Lancinska… Russian? The rest are starts by me.

Here are some finished by me Library collabs with Double You and Tara Ross (inner and cover). This is nice as Tara’s cover brings us back to the start of The Library Project:Magic and Loss. Some how the light in the park yesterday got me thinking about an F. Scott Fitzgerald story called: A Diamond As Big As The Ritz. I like to think that Tristan lives on such a stone… impossible wealth… not only hard assests, but knowledge… It is a sort of funny conceit to think that there is a mountain that is all crystal and that harmonizes with Pete Townsend’s mystical pure and easy note. It is particularly interesing in light of string theory’s notion of vibrations and the Cern Large Hadron Collider…least wise it’s interesting to me… A great trick would be to make it interesing to you, dear reader.

He has no children.
He is brilliant.
He is sick
He is given to moments of lucidity.
He is given to mad hallucinations
He is rich
no one tells him which is which because he is rich.

He is Nietzche at the end in the alps.
He is Zarathustra also…
He is Chaplin
He is Keaton
He is Groucho
He is Robin Williams on a good day and Steve Martin too.
He is Mao
He is Pinochet
He is Pynchon
He is Joyce
He is Hitler
He is Luther
He is Martin luther
He is Martin Luther King Jr.
He is Max Von Sydow.

Collabs from the Library:
godalways hungry and Tony Van denBooman and Bella and Brian Raszka