feast of tear-stuffed time and thistles

(cactus-shopping successes, dirty evening lighting, handmade cushion covers from wonderful friends, a week of mondria(a)n and velasquez readings and impending essay deadlines)

Purge // Michael Mlekoday

[purj]

-verb

1. to try and be a storm, as in the way

it always storms the day you leave a place

2. to try and be a saint, as in the forgetting

of the body, its blush and rushes of blood

3. to leave the party early and alone

4. to abandon, as in watching ivy

crawl up the side of a house

5. to set the house or body on fire

6. to kneel on the porch at midnight

until the joints ignore their own whimpers

7. to keep exhaling until the chest is empty

and no longer burning

all swallowed in their coats

(here's to the celebration of grey sky glory, unknown source)

A Supermarket in California, Allen Ginsberg

What thoughts I have of you tonight, Walt Whitman, for I walked down the streets under the trees with a headache self-conscious looking at the full moon.
In my hungry fatigue, and shopping for images, I went into the neon fruit supermarket, dreaming of your enumerations!
What peaches and what penumbras! Whole families shopping at night! Aisles full of husbands! Wives in the avocados, babies in the tomatoes! --- and you, Garcia Lorca, what were you doing down by the watermelons?
I saw you, Walt Whitman, childless, lonely old grubber, poking among the meats in the refrigerator and eyeing the grocery boys.
I heard you asking questions of each: Who killed the pork chops? What price bananas? Are you my Angel?
I wandered in and out of the brilliant stacks of cans following you, and followed in my imagination by the store detective.
We strode down the open corridors together in our solitary fancy tasting artichokes, possessing every frozen delicacy, and never passing the cashier.

Where are we going, Walt Whitman? The doors close in an hour. Which way does your beard point tonight?
(I touch your book and dream of our odyssey in the supermarket and f el absurd.)
Will we walk all night through solitary streets? The trees add shade to shade, lights out in the houses, we'll both be lonely.
Will we stroll dreaming of the lost America of love past blue automobiles in driveways, home to our silent cottage?
Ah, dear father, graybeard, lonely old courage-teacher, what America did you have when Charon quit poling his ferry and you got out on a smoking bank and stood watching the boat disappear on the black waters of Lethe?

idiosyncrasies and such

(untitled, 1979, john stezaker)

how to get a degree -

wander around the city gallery painting-gazing, before rushing back to crash a jewish society lunch, make it to lectures and read beowulf in two hours flat (introduction included, of course), walk into town for free pizza and recuperate on coffee after a massive sunday shop of frozen crumpets, listen to bowie and ignore the growing pile of laundry on the hazy seafoam green carpet in an artificially-lit room that's still managing to be cleaner than the kitchen, revel in your monday-freedom to come and the lack of rain so far.

haunted graffiti

(a partial shot of diango hernandez's drawing (there are many things in the air and all of them are for free), from a summer of art-tripping)

following a week point five of meetings and nights filled with youthful enthusiasm of sleep-drained eyes and new environments, there's not so much to say. unlike the two years of india, which still leak over into the now of here with run-ins with other uwc alumni and hanging out with indians, there isn't a bassline of the 'exotic' which can be described, or at least, not yet. so here, in the gap of music talks and lecture dashing and football tryouts, is all i could find.

myth of fingerprints

(on the way to a very northern corner of norway this summer)

the odd tinkling buzz of my phone prods its way through my sleep at the somewhat ungodly hour of four. the haziness of having spent multiple days amongst piles of clothing and a tiny collection of cooking implements makes this required get-up not all too difficult, mainly because i'm still in some strange trance of limbo-state-senses. this has happened before, of course, in my multiple journeys to and from the sub-continent; the stumbling out of bed to see a last-minute to-do list and a pile of well-if-there's-space items. showers of slow-motion, dressing in pre-prepared outfits, and still somehow managing to make my mother wait in the car whilst i collect myself and my many pieces in a haste is how i do it.

this time around though, i'm not off on my long-haul to heat, but on a far shorter trip across the channel. being so used to the process of overweight baggage-fear (without fail, every single piece of luggage i've carried has been overweight in the past two years, and furthermore, i've lost my luggage twice too) and mental and physical prep for sitting/staring/leaving/arriving, it's going to be weird to just be there in an hour. packing for my university beginning (i can't believe i've gotten this far!) was difficult for similar reasons; i kept assuming that i'd be returning to a campus in the countryside, where i'd need my own supplies of shampoo, dutch cheese and clothing. in my mind, 'big packing' is now strongly linked to 'packing for a hot, isolated hilltop community' - something that meant i often packed very comfortable clothing and always assumed i could stock up on scarves once i got there. now, however, it's packing for seasons i haven't seen in quite a while - and winterwear is considerably heavier than the indian summer stuff i wore for so long. it's packing for a country i already know, where i'll be able to buy food in supermarkets down the road and where people may care a little bit more about wandering barefoot students in boxershorts. i don't know yet, nor am i sure how much i'll mind others minding (then again, i doubt bare feet and boxers are a great ensemble for temperatures lower than fifteen degrees), but where i haven't a clue on what sort of person to expect or what the overriding ideology of the community is.

so now i'm at the airport, wading in transit-time, which i feel is really one of the few spaces in which one can simply sit, reflect maybe (oh the habits of being part of the triveni (cas (extra-curricular activities)) coordination committee die hard) or just zone out. of course, there's the worry of outsized handluggage to come (will i ever not be overpacked for journeys?), and then the adventure really starts. for now, i'm intrigued by the atmosphere of a passing-through space like this, where you can go anywhere and with anyone, and the gates are lit up and everything is bare. not undecorated perhaps, but in an attempt to reach efficiency, the moving pavements softly whir, the hallways gleam and the check-in desks even have automated luggage drop-offs now (these are, by the way, awful for any overpackers, because you can't even attempt the 'but i'm a student' card with them), and you know you won't leave an imprint here. and with everyone here coming from and going to everywhere, it's funny when you're completely off guessing their destination. on my way to the gate, i spotted a group of indians, and, assuming they were going home, i checked the board to see which city. birmingham.

and so the traveling continues.

years of nights

how i feel about taking passport-style photos and packing, choices and changes being the double-edged knives of always.

disassemble the parts and frame

(by Juliane Eirich)

and sometimes days crush together the wonderful, the mundane and the completely horrible, and sometimes you can sense the physical distances. but it's a mixed bag of nuts, this whole thing, and i guess it's autumn and life's still changing.

In Autumn - Mark Irwin

The extinct animals are still looking for home
Their eyes full of cotton

Now they will
Never arrive

The stars are like that

Moving on without memory
Without having been near turning elsewhere climbing
Nothing the wall

The hours their shadows

The lights are going on in the leaves nothing to do with evening

Those are cities
Where I had hoped to live.