erasure.

Time passes.

Memory fades, memory adjusts, memory conforms to what we think we remember.

– Joan Didion, Blue Nights
quoted in an LARB review

I’m thinking now of erasure. That way that you can disappear from someone’s world even though you’ve just met them.

I often felt like this. Invisible and ghostlike. That great passions, intimate dreams and rare inspiration can so quickly evaporate in morning light. This last time reduced to a text message.

I’ve evaporated. Like so much red wine left at the bottom of a glass… Given a week, where angsty recollection, dreamy midnight pauses and the soft stubbornness not to clean the glasses and clear the table leave that time spent together a rippled dry plum red at the bottom of a glass.

Blood. Dead and dried, two metres away clinging to glass like the memory; but when approached still have the scent of that initial romance. Still, in it’s deadness when breathed recall that rarer time.

I have five poems.

But I know from too much experience that any effort to recall this time- To fix it in words, is its end. That drawing a mask from the feminine mystique constitutes a definitive symbolic violence– driving real love away with a symbolic replacement. Is it too much to turn a real moment into forms? Or is it never enough?

modern new wave

Those of you who know me might know that i have an unnatural attachment to mixtapes, whatever form they turn up in. Here is a find. I stumbled across this playlist rolled together by a guy(girl?) that calls him(her?)self ‘Datasuck‘ … I love being rewarded when I click blithely around, and the serendipity of this little find endears me to it all the more: The only reason I wound up discovering their cute sense of humour, and delicious sonic tastes was that it included what is now my favourite track from the new Smashing Pumpkins album.

This mix is wonderfully put together, passing through cute almost self effacing almost 8bit, through a driving polished house remix’, then reaching a sad creshendo in the final few tracks, finising on that new SP favourite of mine. I has left me simultaneously elated and nostalgic.

I don’t know if it’s ‘New Wave’, but if it is then it’s definitely more ‘modern’ for all the extra texture there wasnt in 1989.

And I love it.

It’s well timed. For me at least. It’s been a tough couple of weeks for me (or months? or years?) so it’s particularly pleasing to be reminded, right now, of how I adore the witching hour, and all these dreamy droning tones.

I’m wondering if I shouldn’t put up a little listening station with a microfm transmitter somewhere…

Consume

Rom:  …Then love-devouring death do what he dare;
It is enough I may but call her mine.

Friar:            These violent delights have violent ends
And in their triumph die, like fire and powder,
Which, as they kiss, consume. The sweetest honey
Is loathsome in his own deliciousness
And in the taste confounds the appetite.

Therefore love moderately; long love doth so;
Too swift arrives as tardy as too slow.

– W.S. R & J 2,vii 

i flipped on Baz’ version of R&J
and half paid attention
treating it more like background radio
not having a radio here

these words leapt out
for some fairly obvious reasons

and reminded me of every old love
(and one or two)
(particular painful)
(in particular 

fire and powder
as they kiss
consume

The second line of final couplet
strikes me as forced

(but i’m probably just resistant)
(to restraint)

Vindication for Jupiter, best and greatest

IOVI OPTIMO MAXIMO VINDICTA
(word by word) to Jupiter, the best and greatest, vindication

QUOD LICET IOVI, NON LICET BOVI
that permitted to Jupiter, is not permitted to the ox

– Latin Proverbs

I get bombarded with “love and light” messages and posts, particularly on the theme of “forgiving and letting go” of negative experiences, interactions and emotions as the path to happiness. Superficially, that seems like a lovely idea – but does it really work in a practical sense?

– ‘Negative’ emotions and how to use them, Kate Douchkov, Inspire Achive

Too often our laid-back country we are held hostage to the idea that ‘She’ll Be Right’, or a downright English notion that we should just wear a stiff upper lip in the face of our troubles. Inevitably life, or fate, or God, or the great absence of God… Life, laughs at such cliché. For all of us there comes a day when we are called to face the true depths of our humanity. To question our faith, if we even had any to begin with.

In these times, the platitudes offered by common-sense, pop-psychology or a pseudo-Christian subservience fail us. They hurt us. And when they do, they do it a lot.

I approve wholeheartedly of the sentiment in the above-quoted article in this regard.

Deep feelings can’t be dealt with so shallowly, they must be met with depth.

A Place to Stay

(Prose! Who thought i’d sully this with that. It’s almost a journal entry ffs!)

They keep moving. Always moving. All these places to stay. And I, with them.

Nicci and Nicky think I’m a wanderer, and had a song, and some vino, and a bed that we all shared– though not all at the same time. It wasn’t like that. Nicole thinks something else entirely.

They’re wanderers, all three of these three Νίκης. They are. Maybe in the Tolkienesque way, that ‘not all who wander are lost’. They’re searching for something.

I’m not.

I’m different. I don’t wander. Or wonder. I wait. I’ve been known to drift. Waiting for the wind to come. I know where I’m going. I have my compass and the stars. It’s just a matter of time, and who will be on the boat with me, and what clothes or whose uniform I’ll be wearing when I get there…. After all these uncountable and unaccountable roadblocks. Or the wind.

NIHIL TIMORE, OMNES AMANDA

 

Gif of Poster, click to increase size

Fearing No-one, one may love everyone — And so, the Vampire Mercury, a Master Benjamin George Griffin, esq. invites you to share in his 300th Birthday Celebrations.

Click here for a PDF the Open Invitation poster

An Open Invitation

Fearing no-one, one may Love everyone— and so, The Vampire Mercury, Master Benjamin George Griffin, esq. cordially invites you to his 300th Birthday.

Thank you to all who came, for making this years Halloween. It was my favourite of all time– particular gratitude to all the new people I met for making me feel at home in my new home.

For those of you that couldn’t make it, I can only offer my pity. You should have been there.

As consolation, I’ll be doing it all again exactly two weeks later, for my birthday. And you’re invited.

BLACK FRIDAY XIII DAYS AFTER ALL SAINTS DAY, NOVEMBER MDCLXXXI ANNO DOMINI, WHILE THE DEMONS OF THE HALLOWS EVER WERE WALKING, AB VITA CON FIDES. NIHIL TIMORE, OMNES AMANDA.

Saturday 12th November, 730pm sharp at Chez Cocoon 8/56 Paradise Island, Paradise Island, QLD 4217

Dress is Formal attire, 18th Century
I, myself, will be in my usual black three piece suit with an Asian Collar, and my fangs proudly on display.
You, yourself, will be dressed to match– I was born on black Friday, so for christs sake try and work in with that.

In lieu of gifts or costume, you may supply Brandy or Foreign Currency. No worthless Australian Dollars please, Australian Pounds are acceptable.

The night begins with Champagne, Cognac and Cocktails. I will be mixing, so bring your favourite spirit, fruit or herb.

The evening will, after the exchange of witticisms and outlandish boasts, a poem or two performed by myself and, almost certainly a lengthy speech

The Imperfectionistic Advices of Kid Sigma

All for one, one for all? The Makeup; The Breakup? A gift I gave to a Great Lover? I Memory I took from a Bad one? -- Pair IV, John Stezacker

<snip!>

break-ups are awesome. my friend said that all relationships are different, but all break-ups are the same. I’m pretty sure I believe the opposite; after all, Tolstoy said, “all happy families are alike, but each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.” her break-up with her boyfriend, Kyall, is vastly different to mine with Rob. we are different people, all of us, & Rob & I were dating for months, then long-distance for a year, then living together, & we continued to live together after we had those series of all-out door-slamming, name-calling arguments where we couldn’t stand to communicate with each other or even be in the same room together. but we still love each other now, & we always will. if I cannot be with him, I’m honestly not sure what I will do. write, I suppose, like always, & be successful, & live my life of boats & cats. I will rent a houseboat on the Hamsterdam canals for a week just to taste heaven.

please, just follow your mind & your heart, not your dick or your stomach. wait two years. love waits. tattoos wait. newcastle waits. the rest of the world does not. never ask someone to do for you what you can do for yourself, don’t fucking get anyone fucking pregnant for a good ten years, & try to avoid joining the circus for any real length of time. good men go with good men; good women, too. education is the key to better living! poetry can save the world! Obama For President of the Universe! never! say! die! & so on & so forth. be good, is what I’m saying, & always do your best. trust & respect yourself & others & I’m pretty sure you get like good karma & whatever.

<snip!>

-Σ

(Australian) National Cultural Policy Submission

There is still a week to go if you want to Have Your Say on the mooted National Cultural Policy, due out 2012 sometime. And you should, reading-type-blogger-person that you are… you should have your say.

• Take just (6) minutes to fill out the quick survey, then when ticking boxes and writing three sentence responses infuriates you…
• Submit a fuller response to the 5 or so questions below.
• If you’re exceptionally lazy, feel free to crib my submission for ideas. I know that imitation is the highest form of compliment, but try to resist the urge nakedly plagiarize, it will make my efforts look bad, and baby Jesus will cry.
• N.B. You don’t have to be part of, or represent an organisation to respond. They want to hear from individual artists, and (more to the point) I want them to hear from individual artists… *Ahem*

The Death of a Violinist

Multās per gentēs et multa per aequora vectus
adveniō hās miserās, frāter, ad īnferiās,
ut tē postrēmō dōnārem mūnere mortis
et mūtam nēquīquam alloquerer cinerem,
quandoquidem fortūna mihī tētē abstulit ipsum.
heu miser indignē frāter adēmpte mihi,
nunc tamen intereā haec, prīscō quae mōre parentum
trādita sunt trīstī mūnere ad īnferiās,
accipe frāternō multum mānantia flētū,
atque in perpetuum, frāter, avē atque valē.
- Gaius Valerius Catullus, Carmina CI

A note died in my ear, here, at your … funeral.
I need to call it that, a funeral, even if the program here says Celebration.
It is a sad day for me. And for H. And I want to feel it all.

A note died in my ear today. My left ear. It hummed to a singular pitch, just moments ago. This note held itself there, in this ear, sharp and clear, a direct line to my brain… then died. A hair in a cochlea sang its last song, and hummed to a tremble, then ….