IN THE ROOM

We lie awake at night and discuss the delusions, or truth that we are secret terminator robots controlled by some vast conspiracy of idiots and they are holding us hostage because the wiring has gone off.

The crazier he sounds the more I recognize my self in his delusions.   I’ve been that terminator on the fritz.

And I wonder at about a more poetic time when people thought they were Napoleon.  How great it would be to think you were secretly the emperor of France.  I mean it beats Shwazanegger by a mile.

John almost never goes to group.

He arrived as the teetering mute who kept shitting himself.  It’s a common side effect of withdrawl.  One of the more embarrassing things you can tell someone is that they’ve shat themselves, but in a closed ward full of rehabs and mental patients, no one is looking out for his feelings they just start yelling…

“Holy shit, you are covered in shit!”

The male nurse Montego comes and takes him off to shower and change again.  He won’t speak to anyone for days just mutter under his breath and draw complex geometrical studies.  He seems to have some sort of engineering back ground.  I’m drawing my complex webs of clues and he leaves me little schematic drawings of arches and towers  with equations in the margins all done on napkins and scrap paper.

I’m convinced he is a plant.  In on the Joke.  Ready to help rebuild the world in incase of plague or fire, but I can’t really tell if I’m right.  This guy is fabulously out of it and shitting yourself is a pretty big commitment to a role… who needs dialogue with that kind of performance?

After a couple of days he becomes more coherent and continent and they try to drag him to group and get him to open up, but nothing comes out of him but a stream of complaints and threats.

He says, “I don’t want to be here.  Mandingo threw me in the shower.  Mandingo stripped me down.  I don’t want Mandingo to touch me anymore! Mandingo tried to rape me.”

This is strange, but also hysterical.  I can even see Montego fighting back a smile.  For the next few days till he leaves the answer to every question is:

“Mandingo tried to rape me.  I don’t want to take a shower.
“Yes,” everyone says.  “But you stink.”

The Sly fox sends Mos Def off with words of advice:  “Say hello to your mother” is his joke.  It is from when Mark Wahlberg said hello to a chicken and and egg  on Saturday Night Live and says hey “say hello to your mother” and reminds Nos of the Paul Simon song  borne of a soup from a Chinese Restaurant:  The mother and child reunion.  And didn’t he call her chicken and he was the weasel chasing her about the barn, or bedroom.  Oh to be young and free and dumb.

On the ward they encourage you to attend daily work groups in the common room.  These appear to be more for controlling the group than doing any actual real therapy, but sometimes the conversations allow patients to do some hard work with each other… And probably this group dynamic is what makes behavorial psychologist cream their pants, but it leads to a sort of resentment among some of the more adept and empathetic patients.

Jeffey is spending hours a day with Michelle ma Belle.  No one knows what’s wrong with her.  She is withdrawn and morbidly depressed.  She cries at the drop of a dime.  She is terrified of most of the patients and staff…. particularly the men.  I begin to think she was molested.  I think she is Hatian or West African because she speaks French with me when I am with Jeffey… when I am alone she won’t talk to me.  Jeffey has become her on call therapist and alone at night in the room he is given to ranting about why isn’t he paid by the ward since he is doing the doctor’s and nurse’s work for them when It comes to Michelle Ma Belle.  He uses this feeling of entitlment as a excuse to blow off the suggested… but you are clearly scored on how you participate in groups… it is probably quite hard to get off the ward without doing the gourp work.  But Jeffey has had enough and who can blame him.

Todays group is about sound and healing and is done by one of those reiki types.  She is about four hundred pounds – morbidly obese and the first thought in my mind is “musician heal thyself.”

She plays some new age music whose sound scapes are so clearly inspired by late betles and brian Wilson with a soupcon of Eno, but no one wanted to pay for the rights to the originals and instead we now have pale, derivative imitations and the enormous woman goes about ringing gongs and tuning forks and putting the vibrations to you.  The real sounds are fairly amazing if you can get past the New Age Muzak and then she does Rieki on me and I vibrate like Linda Blair possessed.

I freak out Ronald with his Christianity and his OCD

Then we go have lunch.

A frank discuassion of the state of mental healthcare in the U.S.  Solutions sought.  All solutions, not just solutions of chemicals, but solutions of word, deed, experience and change.

Avoide the Red hooks… are these distractions or sacrafices?  Or just the area of Brooklyn known as Red Hook.  Is it the police? Or theAliens.

Burnt offerings and the temple mount.  Is this a good idea?

Tell the Hemmingwayesque story of Cash and the 99 bottles of beer on the wall.  All of them lost but for the ones Most Def took as brackets to hold his negotiation with nothing.  Bad form and areal no no, but all the reast lost to a theif only the stolen remain.  THe key to the bank (Banks Key is Becks in bippty boppty talk)  The case of Canada one could drink a case of and thanks to three xxx it looks like a kaws dead Mingus 3 smiley Alien.  Prince to Joni.  Purple to blue queen.  Heart is given not sold.

Benzo is the new tag for Leopold Bloomberg.  Homer.  Eternal return.  What if happy ending is just a cocktail?  Or is it water washing me down?  I think I know but I haven’t written it down yet.3LEVATOR UP>

The two faced outer gouter smiles and cries alternatively while Mr. Delicious  waits for  lunch time.  There is nothing to do but eat and figure out a means of escape, The Peruvian is marching the halls again sporting a face of rage.  I think he’s going to flip out and kill us all.  He is marching and marching like a soldier around the ward.  Is he a guard for Sophie, or an assassin?  Nothing better to do and growing pig gut sends Mr. Delicious marching right behind the Peruvian.  He catches up and marches past and for a brief second the severe face of the Peruvian melts into a smile.  Victory deosn’t smell of Napalm, but rather appears in the form of a smile.

The Peruvian speaks of the bands he played drums in and all the little rock bands that were on the scene back in his glory days.  He has a list he is composing of all the bands from the Peruvian scene.  I don’t know what he is talking about, but the bands have faboulous spansish names.  The Incas, the Aztecs, The Bastardos, El Submarinos, etc.

And when  the drugs come it like lowering the scope on a diving submarine… down down down and the voices cant get through the foggy water hidden in alps and dessert pyramids.  He can see all possible moves on the chess board of his delusion.  He dies, she dies, everybody dies in an elaborate auto de fe like Hamlet meats the Grand Inquisitor… or there is the so called Happy Ending in which the Ice Man Cometh… or maybe it’s just happy cause no one got hurt but that doesn’t seem real happy.  Rather I like the circus tent glass house concert… the charity ball fundraiser concert with Bowie and Bob and Neil and maybe Bruce.  Paid the cost to be the boss.  Raise the red tent.  No blood but wine, no torn body but bread and you know dancing.

Like any good sci fi there are aliens.  In this case it is all based off a twilight zone… to serve man is a cook book.  The invention of money has to do with the deal made by the illuminati with the three eyed pyrimid shaped aliens.  Earth feeds its poor to the aliens and they spare us the species.  We become sort of sacred cows for the Aliens.  But the aliens like the taste like the Japanese love whale blubber and humans are a great delicacy….plus the aliens shit gold after eating us!  A hard bargain and a hard rain… the money hides in the alps.  A deal struck in Basel with the Devil.  Hitler yes, but also blip blip bloop the Alien embassador to Earth.  He hides in plain sight as David Bowie, or maybe a Japaneses school girl?  A K pop idol?  A moony?

Solvents and secret potions.  Awakening the multiple truth in the mind…. Sophie is and isn’t Male and Female, Korean, or Swiss, Red or Blue.  It is a digital coding of the uneverse into choices 0 and 1 being all there need be in its infinite combinations.  Metampsychosis and Joyce blood line and Royal line and one made in the sand define a triangle name a circle.
Ace Hotel is one node All ends here or some such hotel.  The hotel as metaphor for home away from home and the VonBraun CIA space station is known by the key holders as The Hotel

Hotel Romeo Fox Trot shall we dance Wagner Max Wagner  Jew Eat?  I destinctly heard her…  Not did you eat, but Jew eat?

Body of Christ Body of Christ In Imago Speramus

Smell of Napalm = Smell Gasoline = Victory

As falls Victoria, so falls Victoria Falls

Red Queen, Blue Queen, White Queen, Black Queen

Let X =X=x=x, etc.

A Good Place to Die one, all, and no one

Five easy pieces.

Call me Sophie

From the fire of my mind  I have brought  fourth or back this  infinite spider’s web… like an idiot Star Wars.  Portrait of the Artist as a Young Wooh man… stop.  Babble bablle in cipher and code.  2001 as a rom com tear jerker.   Sci Fi which we know sells mixed with high concept Jungian psychosis.  It cant lose.

Sci Fi in the manor of Vonnegut in Dresden… babes in the woods  Romulus and Remus Asops fables.

Sophie gets a choice here…dark and white  every tendril another possible outcome.

Literature as video game. Hub with many wheels Eezikial, but mostly Blarney

The idea where danial day lewis makes a pair of boots for Christopher Walkin who dances in Flourece to Nancy Sinatra’s Boots are Made for Walkin

Imagine everything is exactly the same only played by famous actors.  God is digtal surveilance.  Know all your choices are marked like Hansel and Gretal in the Forest of your own mind, time, space and spot in the universe, or verses, versus other verses multiverses.

Four endings this one the happy one.  OMegg

In this one Stanley never dies, Orson never dies, spalding never dies… all put down on glass like silicon Jesus reborn and rebooted.  These boots were made for Christopher Walkin and we are all Christopher Walkin, or not.

We can’t drink so we go to the bar in the hall to be on point.   When she was a young Greenwich princess,Eileen trained as a dancer and was recruited by Jofferey and American Dance company  if you like. One time she got into an elevator in Rockefellor center and woman rode all the way up while rudely staring at her up and down and down and up.  Kathleen was afraid she was some sort of lesbian masher.  But when Eileen got our of the car the woman stopped her and said “I’m Eileen.”

and She said, “I”m Eileen too.”

“Yes but I’m Eileen Ford and I run a modeling agency.”

“I’m a dancer,” she said and daddy wouldn’t let her model because it wasn’t proper.  Mr. Delicious is uncertain he believes in any of this.  It’s a psych ward after all.  Unreliable narration is the rule but still she got a certain class about her and his job is not to question the script but to continue the improv.

Position 1 2 3 pliet.

She can’t shit.

Salt water cocktail didn’t work but still on point on the the bar and still filled with a fragile beauty. Mr. Delicious is convinced she is an actress.  In fact he is convinced she is Meryl Streep.  Meryl Streep in a deep method roll.  The roll of a lifetime: Eileen the patient.  It’s so secret they had to trap Mr. Delicious in the cuckoo bin just so he could get his first big roll acting with Meryl Streep.  Everyone is in the cast and he can Recall Sophie saying Imagine all you see is happening again in another room with slightly better looking more famous people.  The whole thing is an undercover Prank show in its fine art Version.  A conspiracy of Doc and Dave, or Joan and Bob, or Google, or facebook, or IBM… who knows who is directing, but it is certainly true that it is Meryl Streep talking about cancer and tragedy and bowel movements and drinking a gallon of salt water to try and force shit out and brutal, violent attacks by seventies New York lone man druggie criminals and Alzheimers father And Red dye Poisonings of the spine by Kodak medical imaging dye and fortunes lost and fortunes gained and the rich little brother who has washed his hands of her and it’s sort of impossible to believe even there on the psych ward that someone could actually be hit by all this shit storm of bad luck and tragedy and still be standing…

No.  It is impossible to believe this whole hotel and every story in it are real and taking place in a “REAL” world.  It is easier by far to believe this is some sort of tear jerker of a movie.  I laugh.  Sophie’s Choice.

and she looks like Meryl and I find that I’m a much more sympathetic person when I think I am talking with Oscar Winning Meryl Streep than I am when just dealing with civilians.

They want to dismiss her to a Hotel as she has no apparent reason to be on the psych ward, but she is afraid her intestines will explode from the constipated shit in her colon and she will die in the hotel.

To transfer her to the next circle of treatment hell they want to remove a previously cancer related porta cath.  So she can start a new virgin in the other crazy system.  Doing this she thinks will lower her blood pressure  till she bleeds out and dies.

She says that the salt cocktail will raise her blood pressure and also kill her.

At one point she says, “Go ahead.  Do what you want.  I’ll just die tonight and get it over with.”

“Don’t say that” I say

“baaah” she says

Later when she is calm we take another walk around the ward.  She tell me that her father’s baby brother was killed by a drunk doctor after an accident.  The doctor over dosed the child on anesthetic….

Years later the father encountered the doctor at a steak house…

He picked him up by the scruff and cast him to the floor like a rag doll and said in his Irish Brogue Do you be rememberin Ellis Gallagher?  He was my baby brother and you killed him.  And in a final act of bravery he spared the guy’s life and just walked out of the restaurant with the doctor still sitting on the floor humiliated.

The beer stein codex gets its name from a beer stein  graffiti that adorns the door to the 17frost shitter.

cover and vers0

Part of the idea was to play with drawing the way graff people play with stickers and do variations on tags that spell their name… so this one spells mine sometimes.

Sacre couer 3 tits tag I started doing in Paris in 1997 because sacre couer reminded me of the tajamahal somehow

you’re dreadin it

crowd variations

Click here to view the embedded video.

and here is a shot of the xt 300 i found on wikipedia.  I think this paper is from the time he was doing the users manual which was a ton of work plus he had to hire a copy writer who spoke French I think to come up with step by step pages for setting up and using the machine.  Plus he did all the in house marketing brochures and PR.  This terminal was our whole world for a year or two and I think GTE sold about a half a dozzen of thme.  LOL.

He hides in plain sight. The Alien, the free, the mason, the mea, the gold, and the rough diamond found at sunrise in the impossible grenade of Sunlight in fractured gold across the wall like his father’s paintings writ in

Some Regrets From Our youth

Ing:  The Jersey Girl Heavy Metal Head Korean in college once showed me her red lace panities.  It was in the context of a story about laundry and an ex boyfriend, or shopping,  or Valentine’s day or something.  I can’t recall.

She unbuttoned her pants shimmied them down  to reveal the miracle of red silk lace beneath, but she did it in a very matter of fact way.

At that moment, I wanted her so bad, but none of it had felt like a come on so I sat still

Lost Puzzle Soldier.  Lost up in one it.

All of it seems like an elaborate puzzle… a labyrinth.

The fickle pickle Queen with her tongue stuck out or in her cheek, or up her ass.

Impossible mega and mille foille like the crepe cake.

Debt all Prizes: Samson Rex Jawbone.com Fiat 500;

Still he finds dyptiques everywhere promising prizes… speakers and weed and cars and women and guitars and bars and stars.

Could it all be in his head or is it a confederacy of dunces?

He hides in plain sight. The Alien, the free, the mason, the mea, the gold, and the rough diamond found at sunrise in the impossible grenade of Sunlight in fractured gold across the wall like his father’s paintings writ in fire.

The Casket Concept:

Mos Def likes making little effigy diptyques of married couples kings and queens little red little blue queen red king, or the reverse it doesn’t matter.   There are rules but he is making them up as he goes along, or hacking them without the rule book little red little blue married couples as if somehow that could save the love of a Sly Fox…

And perhaps in some universe this bull shit works…It’s a pleasant thought…

So many couples Mos makes… But she keeps talking shit to Mos, but Mos won’t hear it.  He’s Def you see?  Mos Def hears none of that shit and fuck all the markers anyways.

Gas tanks and bic lighters and magic markers and nail polish and hacked in special ways to wear crowns or stand a blue grease lead and a red grease lead on the pin of a tack as a hack for toggle or piston:  Put it in the right hole it will toggle the switch the ark will launch and go right up to space to the station, but he doesn’t want to leave withour Sophie.  Red, purple and green.  Black and white…

The combinations become infinite and how does he have so many lighters?  A rainbow of fire in his back pack?

Spray paint.  Old bottles of Scotch put down in art to talk to father.

Shelter From The StormAnd in the end it is a football game that unites the men of the ward.  A perfect game that plays out into overtime when The Redskinss finally scalp The Cowboys.  Mos Def feels like he finally gets football.  It’s like a novel for people who don’t like fiction.

Mr. Delicious wakes up on the psych ward of Stamford Hospital and Mr. Delicious says:  “I don’t want to die.”

Mr. Delicious changes out of his mother moldy shirt and becomes Mos Def, or rather changes into the shirt from the day before.  Back in Black, he thinks.  Even Mos Def can hear Bad Vibrations on the ward.  A strange disturbance in the The Force.

He marches down the hall, past the nurses’ station, around the day room to the activity room.  There, the new clock radio is pinging away… a window open.

A paranoid thought dances to the front of his consciousness that this could be a signal.  If he can hear it so could an outside intruder, conspirator, whatever…CIA, NSA Google Glass Ninjas!

Just because you’re paranoid doesn’t mean that they’re not out to get you.

Twisted, drugged, limping in a rough footed teeter he returns to the glass cage and tells nurse Nathalia that something is wrong.  Nurse Nathalia is the precisely vague color of the caramel sauce on a vanilla sundae.  Her face the proverbial cherry on whole dessert.

“Something seems out of sorts in the group room,” he says.

“How so?”

“An alarm is going off… With the window open.  It could be a signal.  I assume it is.  It probably isn’t, but let’s assume it is a break out, or a break in?  What with Ebola as a vector, you know…”

“I’ll look into it,” she says and smiles and the world turns right side up for a precise toothsome moment of beauty.

But then she doesn’t look into it.  Instead, she sends Nurse Ratchet … not her perfect self.  Ratchet is Ratchet with an ass like a mini fridge but unlike Ratchet from cuckoo’s nest, she’s quiet and distant and vague and seemingly burnt out on crazy.  She’s not evil, she just doesn’t really pay much attention to the loonies any more.  It’s a job.  Like walking dogs… but less rewarding.

She opens the door and blamp blamp blamp it is the new clock radio.

“Thanks,” I say.
She shrugs.

I walk back up to the hall to see Nathalia sitting like a jewel in a  glass vitrine.  She smiles at me and all of a sudden life is infinite and worth living in.

“Where are you from?” Mos Def asks.

Harbor Point Nathalia said.  And Mos Def remembers the ALE chimney of the Yale Lock Factory and Jesus shot down in the street and Cowboy and the Lost Wax Residue paintings.

“No I mean ethnically.  Where are your PEOPLE from?” I ask.

“Jamaica,” Nathalia says..

“Ting.  Ting,” He says.  “There had to be a Jamaican named Nathalia on this ship.  Nice casting gentlemen… and Ladies.”

And then he walks on down the hall wondering who is playing her in the movie.

“She plays herself!  The Engenu roll,”  He announces to the surveillance equipment on the ceiling.

Maybe Mr. Delicious is directing?

Mr. Delicious wishes he’d packed a James Brown or a  Bruce Springsteen T. Shirt.  He has paid the cost to be the boss.  Maybe a Sinatra shirt… naaaah too Guido.

Later I ran into Prudence Le Roc, or Molly Ringworm, or whatever you call her.  Crystal Meth.  Prudence had on a fright face of makeup and pink silk pajamas and her fashion glasses.

She says in the phone, “I’m not going up to see you.  You owe me two dollars and fifty cents!”  She hangs up and tells me, “He likes his cigars, but he was supposed to pay me back.”

Click here to view the embedded video.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Finally doing the telling of the taling of asi in cali that blake whitman shot for me at the Disposable film festival

Sometimes it takes me four years to sit on a thing

may take a year to finish the egg now that it’s hatching.

Click here to view the embedded video.

I was downstairs watching t.v. in the very special room I’d set up  since getting a job.  It wasn’t really all that special.  It was just down in the basement, away from my old room upstairs where I’d lived as a kid.  My parents thought it was a good idea now that I had a job.  They said things like:  “We think tis a good idea no that you have a job.  It’s a damn good idea.  It can only help.”

There was another war movie on, so I was thinking about how glad I was that at least I wasn’t there and I had many thank yous to make.  Thank you I’m not in battle thank you thank you.

The blue t.v. light wrapped around the blanket that I’d wrapped around myself and this time the submarine had a Nazi battleship chugging behind and above it with all those sounds of ping, ping, ping.  The men in the sub sat still and quiet with beads of sweat that swelled and fell off the ends of their black and white close up noses.  I said aloud:  “Please don’t let them drop depth charges.”

Then I thought that it just didn’t seem right for people in boats to try to kill people in submarines.  Dying in a submarine is no way to go.  There is no where to swim to and not very far to sink.  Then The boat dropped depth charges.

Mom scurried about upstairs, sounding a bit like a pigeon trapped in a chimney and I swear I could almost hear her trying to smile.  She was doing a good job of it too.  You could tell by the rapid pitter patter.  Then dad fumbled about with slow grumbling steps and a scuff of leather on the linoleum.  He sounded much bigger and slower and with a smaller smile than mom’s.  I n this way it was a perfect family picture.

Back on the t.v., the captain of the sub had the great idea of stuffing all the crap he could find into the torpedo tube along with the extra oil.  It’s mostly the same in submarine movies.  The slick and the cushions and wood and food and even the corpses from the engine room would float to the surface and fool the Nazis above into thinking that the sub below had been hit.  They would have to be very quiet so that the Nazi sonar wouldn’t hear them and someone would probably almost drop a wrench  and catch it at the last minute.  You can pretty  much predict the course of events in a submarine movie.  Right down to the fact that the engine room will flood and provide the captain with the copses for the torpedo tubes.  There’s just something about the engine room that makes it flood… probably the engines, but it’s only a guess.

Still the film made me scared and I kept thinking about being in a submarine. So that I broke a  cold sweat.  I wrapped myself a little tighter in the yellow, flannel blanket and thought to myself about the good part coming up with the  wrench that would almost fall.  It came.  It  passed.  The sub floated on and the movie went on and I sort of stopped watching.  I’d either seen this film before, or they are all alike.  I wrapped myself tighter in the yellow blanket and fell sideways on the moldy smelling sofa.  I tried to stare off ino space, but kept getting lost along the lines of the cinder block basement wall, now painted yellow.

I could hear the handle on the door above the steps click and then twist and the creaking open door and mom yell, “Paul, your brothers here.  Come up now.  His Car’s in the driveway.”

I heard the front door open and the silence of my father waiting.  My brother’s car door opened and then my father yelled out the front door in my mother’s voice, “hi.”  It sounded far away.

I looked around the yellow basement and blinked my eyes real fast, waiting for the coming footsteps.  Then I heard the slam of the car door and then I heard the footsteps. I didn’t move.  I heard my brother say, “Hi.”  My mother came right back at him with, “hi”  Someone said, “how are you?” and I couldn’t tell who it was through the floor.  But my brother said, “I’m good.  Where’s Pauli?”

“Oh he’s coming,” mom said.  I told him you were here. He’s anxious to see you.”

“Go tell him again,” dad said.  No kidding.  Dad was down to business.  He was trying very hard.

Then I heard mom’s feet pitter patter and the door open again, “Paul,” she said.  “Didn’t you hear me?  Your brother’s here.   He wants to see you.”

Coming,” I said, but I didn’t move.  I knew I would go up soon, but I waited, or just didn’t move.

“Paul.  Come up now,” my father yelled.

But I waited and then they ignored me for a while and I could hear them talking, but it was quiet talk so I didn’t make out any of the words through the floor and the half open door like before.  I caught a little laughter and waited for the next call downstairs.  I promised myself I’d stop sweating, if only they wouldn’t call downstairs.  I thought that was a fair deal.  I would certainly stop sweating if they didn’t call down.  Maybe I needed a half hour.  If they gave me a half an hour.

Mom yelled first, “Honey.  Please.”  Something ridiculous possessed me and I yelled up, “I was going to come up if only you didn’t yell that one last time down.”
“Oh Paul, “ my mother tried to laugh.  “You make up all these rules in your head.”

“I was going to come up, you know, “ I said.

Then my brother came half way down the steps and peeked his head around the corner so I could see his face.  His hair was shorter and he might’ve put on some weight.  His face looked fuller and he had on a brand new sneaker.  I could only see the left sneaker, but it wasn’t like him to only buy the one sneaker.  He’d have the pair.  Sneakers.  Plural.

He said, “Shit head,” which is what we always called each other since we were kids.

I said, “Dana.”

“What’s up?”

“Nothing.  I’m watching a movie  It’s all about a submarine.”

“Great,” Dana said and he came the rest of the way down the stairs and said, “Move the fuck over then.”

I gathered up my blanket and sat up and pushed over a little.  Dana took a couple of big steps and then lept up in the air and let his butt crash down on the sofa.   It shook the sofa up like a wave and I sort of smiled, which was nice.

“What did I miss,” Dana asked and I heard the door close quietly upstairs and my parents walk back to the kitchen.

“There was the part where the captain puts all the stuff in the torpedo tube…”

“What a torpedo?”

“No.  You know…”

“Oh, you mean all the flotsam and jetsam and oil so that the captain uptop is fooled….”

“Right.   Right.”

“It always freaks me out when there’s the one guy who drops a clip board…”

“Wrench.”

“Wrench then… never get’s dull.”
“Yeah a wrench this time…”

Then my brother pulled off his parka and snuggled his butt deeper inot the cushions and got all comfortable and we watched the movie for while.  I liked the shots throguht the periscope.  He said they looked fake. I said I’d never looked through a periscope, so I didn’t know if they looked fake or not.  He said he knew it just instinctively.  I said I liked them all the same.

At some point I said, “ I bet mom even put out peanuts or whatever.”

“Don’t worry, Pauli, “my brother said.

“I’m not worried,” I said.  “But if you’d like some peanuts I’m sure she rolled out the red carpet.”

“So mom eats the peanuts and blames dad,”  Dana said.

I smiled a little. And it was pretty nice, so I just looked at my brother afor a long time.  It was true what mom had said:  he was  beginning to look more and more like me as he got older.  I felt proud and he tried to pretend I was looking at him… staring.

Then he said,  “Look, it’s one of those shots throught the periscope you claim to like so much.”

I looked back at the t.v. and it was a shot where they scan the horizon for boats.  They found a convoy, but this time t was an American convoy.  So they didn’t show the torpedo coming ou the front and swooshing through the water with the white bubble stream vehind.  This time they showed the the sub coming to the surface and all the guys on the boats waved at all the guys on the submarine who came ou on the deck in their vest sailor suits.  The guys on the sub waved back.  I waved at the t.v… I felt so elated.

I said, “Wave Dana.”

He waved too and the movie was over ad the credits rolled and the all the words got in the way of the waving Americans.  So I stopped waving and Dana followed my lead and stopped too.  Swe sat there and didn’t say anything and waited for a commercial.  I felt a little nervous, because I knew Dana would try to talk during the commercial.  I wasn’t so sure what he’d say, but I knw he’d try to talk.  So when the commercial came on with the woman holding a big bottle of detergent right next to a laundry machine, I said, “Hey that’s the exact same brand as mom uses.  Imagine that.”

Dana said, “Whatever.  I use it too.”

Yeah, “ said.  I used to use it too.  Funny how we all… I’m letting mom do my laundry now, so I guess technically…”  and I pointed to the jug of detergent on the laundry machine behind the t.v.set and the boiler.  “Dad says we might put up a wall there and make it a separate laundry room.  He said It’s been on his mind for years.”
“Really?”

“Yup.  That’s what he says.  Years.  But I don’t think it has been Dana.  Do you?”

“Sure.  Why not.  It’s a good idea.”

“You think? A laundry room just like that?”

“I think it’s a good idea for you to have your own space.  To pay some rent to get a job… I don’t know.”

“Sure whatever, but I don’t think dad’s been on this for years.  Do you? Be honest Dana.”
“I am honest.  You might want to live down here for a while.  They’re just trying to help you out.  It’s not some kind of conspiracy or anything.  Dad just doesn’t want to make you feel awkward.  That’s all.  He’s cat dancing all over your feelings.”

“Well it does make me feel awkward.”  Either he’s lying Dana, or he’s been keeping this laundry room idea a secret my whole life.    It makes me feel awkward alright.  Why didn’t he tell me about these plans before?”

“Hey maybe you just want to feel awkward, “ My brother said.

“That’s what they all say, “ I said.

Then we sat uietly for a minute and I couldn’t think of anything to say until Dana said, “It sure is yellow down here.”

I said, “Yep.”

The sofa was yellow, the walls were yellow, the light bulb like most light bulbs was sort of yellow, but the t.v. was black and white.

“Hey look, “ I said to my brother and I stood up and let the yellow blanket fall, I had on yellow boxer shorts.  “Pretty great? Huh?”

“They are yellow.”

“look Dana, “I said.  “I know you think I’m weird, but the yellow décor was mom’s idea.  She thought it might cheer me up.  Sunshine.  You know.”

“Yeah but I have a feeling you blew it all out of … I never said you’re weird Pauli.”

“She said it would cheer me up.  I swear.”

“Does it?”

“I don’t know,” I said.  “But it is yellow.  You have to admit that.”

“But are you feeling better?”

“Sure,” I said and I sat back and rewrapped myself in the blanket.  “I …. I got a job.”

“I know.  That’s why I’m here.  We’re celebrating.”

“That’s what they all say.”

Dana started to feidget and then he squeezed a roll of fat hanging over his belt  He’d gained a lot of weight, but he looked good and he looked down at the fat caught between his thumb and his four fingers and said, “Pauli, man,, you should really feel good about all this, you know?”

I wasn’t sure what he was talking about:  his roll of fat, my job, the yellow basement, or what?  So I tried to grab some blubber off my own gut and squeeze myselfl because it looked like okay fun… but there wasn’t any.  I was like a skelton.  I’d lost I guess the same amountof weight as Dana lost maybe.  So I just looked at him and said, “Dana this is no big deal.  It’s just a cruddy job you know.”

Then I got up and turned the channel and kept on turning it and there was news and a rerun sitcom and more news and another rerun sitcom and there was a commercial.  And then we don’t get a bunch of channels after that but I went around a few more times and then where there was the commercial was another war movie.  I stopped there and this time the Americans were in planes that swooped aover the Japanese who sat in fox holes very low to the ground.  When the bombs fell in z  fox hole the Japanese got blown through the air and it looked almost funny, but scary too.  The way their legs flailed and their arms flapped, they looked like crazy bloodstained birds.  I didn’t want to be there, but I imagined it was better by far than a submarine.

Still I offered the conversation, “Sure would hate to be there.”

“Death from above,” my brother said quoting something.

And we watched the movie for a while.  I liked the shots of the bombs falling.  They were beautiful before they hit the ground and blew u.  Dana said they were all real shots of real bombs from the real war.  I said they were beautiful all the same, but I could see what he meant  The film looked different when the bombs were falling than from when they hit the ground.  It was obvious there was something in the grain.

I looked at Dana and he had both hands on his roll of fat now, the poor bastard.  Then I watched the movie.  They showed a pretty fake shot of a Japanese guy who’d had his arm blown off.
I said, “Ouch.”

Dana said, ”So how is work?”

“Watch the movie.”

“I drove four hours to see you, Pauli.”

“And mom appreciates it…”

“Fuck you.  It was mom’s idea, okay, but I drove down here to see you.  Not mom, you.”

Watch the freakin’ movie Dana.  It’s not a big deal.  It’s a cruddy job.”

“Mom says you’re feeling better.  She said you come home laughing and stuff like a norm….al like the old days.  She says you’re starting to feel good again.”

“That’s what they all say, “ I said.

Dana sighed and then he said, “Do you want to go out, or something?  We could go to the diner and get some greasy food?”

“You’re fat enough,” I scold him.  “Besides, it’s Friday and I like to watch the movies on Fridays.”

“Mom says you aren’t watching so much T.V. anymore.”

“That’s cause I have a job, but on Fridays I still watch t.v..”

“So you’re keeping a tight schedule then?”

“Yeah,” I said.  “If you want to call it that.”

“That’s really good, Pauli.”

Then I looked at the t.v. and the American officers were planning something big.  I couldn’t tell what it was, but they had a map printed on glass with grease pencils.  And when the pencils got dull they’d rip the paper off its side ina  pink flesh color pig tail coils, exposing the black, greasy core.  Then they’d draw more dark lines like the interconnecting strands of a spider’s web.  These lines were probably courses for the airplanes, but they sure looked like a web to me.  Then they showed all these shots of the airplanes up there in the clouds the contrails and the flak.

I turned to Dana and I said, “Fuck  It’s not such a big deal, you know.”  I held my knees to my chest  “I don’t even have any scars.  I know plenty of people with the scars, Dana.  Fuck they’ve got Frankenstein stitchhes up their wrists…. Little punch scars at the throat from the trake.  Take you mind off that in group some time… but I mean I’m fine.  I know people with scars, but I don’t have any.”

I let myself go and my feet fell back towards the floor and now I could show my unscarred arms to Dana and then I put them down at my sides and said, “I just got a little fucked up.  That’s all.  That’s it, man.”

“I know, Pauli.”

“It’s a cruddy job, okay?  I’m settling for it.  I just walk around pouring glue into the binding machines, you know?  And I’ll admit it.. I was scared to death of it.  I came home every day all scared of it… that I’d spill the glue all over the machine, or who knows what?  High Anxiety… like Mel Brooks.  I was scared of filling the water cooler and filling out my W2 and okay I’m not so scarred any more.”

“That’s great,” my brother said.

“But I’m sick of mom talking about the glue in the bindery as being all symbolic and shit, Dana.  I’m sick of it.  It’s a cruddy job.  I like it, but it’s cruddy.  Moppin’ the floor is just that:  mopping the floor.  It is not cleaning the cob webs out of your head, Dana, or any of another tortured metaphors and what is a Meadow for.”

“To feed a cow,” my brother says perfectly.  “I know.  She means well.”

“SO do me a favor and tell mom I’m not sticking my life back together with the fucking binding glue, okay?  I’ve got a shitty job at a shitty printers…. That’s it.  There is nothing to fucking celebrate here.”

“Look mom just said it would be a good time now… you know just to come and visit…. You know with the shitty job and the yellow basement.  I  hadn’t seen you since… I wanted to you know, see you.”

I know, Dana,” I said.  And then I kind of laughed a little.  “I always thought you’d be the one to get fucked up, you know?   The way you had a gir’s name and all… Everyone always thought my little brother was a little sister, you know?  I was pretty certain that would fuck you up lather.”

“Yea?”

Then I looked back at the t.v. and said, “I don’t want to go out but you can watch t.v. down here if you want.”

Dana said that he hadn’t really talked with mom and dad yet so he should go back upstairs for a while.

I said that was fine, but he said he’d come down in a while.  He stood up and then I heard him walk up stairs and I turned the t.v. down and listened to little parts of their conversation coming the through the floor.  It was mostly the regular stuff about how they’d finally worried out the problems with my old landlord upstate and how its been three weeks since they’d seen me cry and two weeks since heard me.  Dad spoke again about Italian families and how sons would live with their parents over there in Italy till they were well into their thirties or something.  I don’ know where dad got his information on Italian families.  They talked a lot about my job and how happy I seemed in it and they told Dana that I was probably a little ashamed and that why I was hard to talk to.

I did feel a little ashamed that I really felt good just being alone and watching t.v..  Dana could come down later if he wanted, but I wouldn’t talk.  The good stuff is on really late.  I turned t.v. back up and stopped listening.  I’d lived through Dana’s visit also I stopped sweating and I wrapped myself up in the blanket and I watched the people die on the tv.  I felt superior to them.

I just had one of those days. Time for half a menthol cigarette a yin yang cheese course and Lagunitas Censored beer.

Every time a bell rings an angel gets his wings. Somebody ring a bell already. Arice is true D rooking gas crickets!

Goodnight Gracie
say herro to your mudder pour moi out.

Been managing so much info from the gopro and sony that is very difficult to color compress without making duplicate files and filling up my strainting hard drive…. so long story short, I thought I’d try some of Vimeo’s new “instagramstyle” filters for video.  THere are a  lot of options and I am lazy, but I like the saturation and contrast on this filter.  What say you, dear reader?

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munshani codex 2
late 90’s book pages

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Running around looking at street art in a new way after all that schoolin’ by ellis g.  Also hanging out with Yoav as the street artists pick up their work from the OUT Door Gallery NYC group show to celebrate the publishing of his book of the same name http://www.amazon.com/Outdoor-Gallery-New-York-City/dp/1584235535.  Also available at Strand and many of New York’s finer Museum gift shops, so next time you exit through said such same, pick up a copy.  It is a beautiful book full of great documentation of New York’s best street art murals, etc.  If you are a New Yorker there will be one or a hundred of your personal favs.  Also I watched Apox again.  PBR street gang.  Bravo rodger point 5.

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Codex munshani
late 90’s

Running around brooklyn shooting things and sitting around brooklyn watching things

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The opening for Outdoor Gallery NYC was epic.

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moving and shooting in brooklyn

helped my brother move a couple of years back and this footage has been sitting on my desktop since. Somehow now is the time to recut. For Xtian the best/worst big brother I ever had. It was a trip to remember so here is a souvenire. I think you should do a narration. I’m sick of my own voice.

God buffed Brooklyn with snow while man buffed my show off the walls.

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When I made the couch video there were two versions: one with Jim Dine’s poem that I eventually released and this one combining some Zipperhead whiteboard animations using this song I wrote with Natalie.  Finally got around to uploading the alternate take for Valentine’s day.  My ex referred tot he song as :  caterwalling,  but I still like it and want to recored it properly some day.

catching up with vlogs

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Last state of Collab with Ellis G And Beauty amongst the beasts:

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Cacthcing up witht the last few days at frost.

this state is gone.

Local coffe stop, bar and live performance venue Muchmore’s asked me to come up with some ideas for a mural on their facade.  Here’s my first thoughts.

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Last night Holdin took over the face of the Buddha

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LSG, CaanKnee, IT In, Yoko, and John collab

]]> http://futureofthebook.org/itinplace/2014/01/26/excelsior/ http://futureofthebook.org/itinplace/2014/01/26/excelsior/#comments Sun, 26 Jan 2014 15:40:13 +0000 http://futureofthebook.org/itinplace/?p=4859

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Working out at Frost with Ellis G and big sheets of salvaged luan and sheet rock.

Duchampian snap with UU from London.

Before and after the opening and premiere (was too buzy yammering to shoot the rest of the time).

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Ellis G came  by to help fix up the bathrooms and trash cans with fresh tags… then we drove the brooklyn back streets looking for old tags of long gone writers.  It was like a master class in street art history.  Plus we laughed a lot.

see you Saturday!

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We had a soft opening for Cage and Uncaged last night.  Some of my favorite Street Artists came by and borrowed the remaing cans of paint to knock up on a discarded matress from the luxury condo building next door.  I told Javi who did what and gave him my leather man to cut out the muslin…. I said do what you will, but I’m not touching a matress…. I got bud bug bit once in Reno and I won’t suffer if for art, money, or love.  Viva Slepton!  Viva BAM!

I was making some masks and a small foam cog when one of my favorite New York street artists, Ellis G dropped by and we got to painting. Later he drove me home and he was jonesing for a cigarette, so he would pull up to various bars in B.Burgh and ask to buy a cigarette in a very convincing Russian accent. People took pitty on the poor immigrant and we rode off into the night laughing as the smoke poured out the window into the frosty brooklyn night.

Oh and he went at the throne chair that Poster Boy and I many years back.  Viva the shadow king!

getting things done in a hurry

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beastly cold, but still making beasties and masks.

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and in other time and space issues….. New Years vlog

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A good wedding is a good time for all.  Thanks A and M

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raw time lapse of making a new cog sculpture out of expanding polyurethane foam (aka Good Stuff). Show opens Jan 18th. File subject to updating/editing. Lots of plumber crack…. lucky you.

First concept for invite

The snow came faintly falling on the Brooklyn Cog as I played around on the big white walls of Frost.

And Open To The Hound played a fare thee well show before going on tour:

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click me to watch me dance

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things in motion.

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Timelapsing the cog and installing some masks while my private little band seranades me:  Thanks, Steve, Javi, and Dave.

ch ch ch changes

I got to frost a little late today due to plumbing adventures… but got some good work in… From top:  A large cog study, Cog mural at night (with face now painted out),  Joe Monster with new figure drawing, and last but not least some more work on Dirty Hippy Jesus below.

Even as I was calling my mom about thaksgiving my Ex tried was trying to flag me down at the pass…. It’s my mom’s birthday…. and like the shitty son I am I spaced it again. So this time lapse is for MOM. You were born and so you are free and so Happy Birthday mom….just start talking at the sound of tone. This one will be Romulus and Venus… and this was the inspirado of little dogs yesterday.