People
I like to think of people as people.
I like to think of women for example
as people before I think of them as women. I am a man. When I think
of a person, 'woman,' I tend to think of my own self, 'man.' I don't
like to think like that. When I meet a man, I like to encounter
him as a person, before I encounter him as a man. As soon as I think
of him, 'man,' I begin to treat him as a man might treat a man.
As a man might treat a straight or a gay man. Or woman. As a straight
man might treat a straight or gay man or woman. I am a straight
man. When I encounter a gay or straight man or woman, I like to
think of him or her as a person, and not as a straight or gay man
or woman. Or as a likable gay or straight man or woman. Or unlikable.
I like to think of unlikable people, 'people,' before I decide that
I do not like them. I am an unlikable straight and white man. And
unfashionable. I am an unlikable and unfashionable straight and
white man. When I encounter a fashionably gay or fashionably straight
white or black or Latino or a fashionably gay or straight south
east Asian man or woman wearing easily recognizable apparel for
example, in SoHo, for which apparel they have exchanged borrowed
money at ridiculously inflated rates to become the walking advertisement
of, I try to think of them, initially, as people, before I think
of them as an advertising campaign.
I try to think of people as people
before I think of people as advertising campaigns. Or billboards.
When I think of a person as a streaming ad campaign, or a billboard,
or a projection screen, I tend not to like them. I often end up
thinking of people as commercial accessories, but only after I have
thought of them as people. After I have thought of a person as a
marketing symbol, I cease thinking my own thoughts, and begin thinking,
instead, in symbols.
I like to think of myself as a person
who thinks his own thoughts, before I start thinking in symbols.
I don't like thinking in symbols.
South of Houston
I am standing south of Houston, I mean only two or three short steps
south of Houston, on Broadway, when a person whom I think of at
first as a person approaches me. As she is approaching me, I begin
to think of her as a woman. As soon as I think of her, 'woman,'
I think of my own self, 'man.' And then I notice how she is bent
at the neck and studying the imperfections on the sidewalk as if
the sidewalk is a great peril that she could fall into, so the thought
occurs to me, of her, 'old,' and, consequently, to and of myself,
'young.' And then I get her scent, which is an artificial scent,
which she has sprayed upon herself, from a bottle. Or a can. Or
which she has rubbed on herself, under her arms on her self, with
a stick. Or which scent she has sprayed above herself into the air,
and then let the scent settle into her brittle hair.
I'm not sure what to make of her
artificial scent, but she's got Upper East Side written all over
her apparel. I watch television, and the people that I have seen
on my television who are made to appear Upper East Side, dress precisely
as this bent old artificially scented woman is dressed, and as such,
I think of and to myself, 'downtown.'
'I am,' I say to myself, 'so downtown.'
I mean, I like to think of myself as a person, using my own thoughts,
before I think of myself as a symbol, but right now my impending
interaction with this Upper East Side hag is causing me to use culturally
contrived thoughts, in my own head. I don't like what these thoughts
are thinking of her, for me, as she begins to speak to me.
She is speaking to me I would like
to think using her very own thoughts, conjured in the tumultuous
cavern of her very own head, but she is also speaking to me as if
I am here for this express purpose. To be spoken at by her. I think
she thinks of me like that. Like this. Like a thing which is not
me. By which I mean to say, symbolically. She needn't say, 'Pardon
me,' or, 'Excuse me,' or, 'May I ask you something,' or, 'My apologies,
young man,' - the function of our introduction has already occurred
in each of us independently, symbolically - she says, instead, "Where's
that film festival?" and I'll have to admit, this is not an inappropriate
question. This is a perfectly reasonable question asked of me two
or three short steps south of Houston, and I am asking her in return,
"You mean the TriBeCa film festival?" and she is telling me, "Yes."
"That would be," I am telling her,
"In TriBeCa," and I didn't mean for it to come out like that. I
didn't intend to give it a tone. I'd really rather get along with
this person, but she isn't a person, she's an entitled old Upper
East Side bitch, and I am a precocious young and presentationally
strung out cog of the over-lubricated down town machine who has
apparently been placed on this particular intersection at this particular
time in her life in a state of suspended animation by the farting
and weary Upper East Side deities for the express purpose of fielding
the wheezing inquiries of their skittish, earthen born snitch, and
so we're kind of forced to speak to each other like that. Like this.
In these opposing tones. Confrontationally.
"You'll have to go," I am telling
her, "Downtown," and she is telling me, "But I am downtown," and
then I say, "Well, you'll need to go farther down town," and I point
to her in that direction, which she stares into as into the abyss,
or through the gates of hell, or into the fringe of an enchanted
forest, into the dark and dangerous fringe, and then she looks right
back at me, and I look into her eyes as if into the eye of a hurricane,
or into the white foam of a tsunami, and I am standing on that beach,
and then she says, "I am South," she is telling me, "of Houston," and I can't really disagree with that.
There is some truth to that.
The truth to that sweeps over me,
like a fierce wind.
We are precisely three feet south
of Houston.
I can't think of anything to say
in response to that.
We kind of leave it like that.
People whom I have Never Met
I'll have to say that I actually like people. I think its safe to
say that I like all people, especially the one's I've never met.
There are all kinds of people, and I am particularly fond of that
kind of person whom I have never met.
These are all kind people, these
people whom I have never met.
I've never met a person that I didn't
like until I met them.
Chinatown
I've tried the door, but the door won't open, so I'm pressing my
face against a tinted window to the right of the door, in Chinatown.
I am holding my hands to the left and to the right of my face in
the way that people hold their hands, when people hope to see through
tinted windows. Forsythe is standing several feet behind me, staring
into the glass.
My eyes are against the tinted window,
and my hands are keeping the sun out of my eyes, but all I can make
out about this window is its tint.
"I can't see."
What I need, Forsythe has informed
me, more than anything else, is a drink, but we are in Chinatown.
We have walked up Chinatown and we have walked down Chinatown -
we've been all over Chinatown - in pursuit of a drink, and we were
beginning to believe that drinking, for the Chinese, is not a destination.
Then we were drawn to this glass window by white Chinese lettering
and a picture of a martini glass, which symbolic sentence reads,
from our perspective at least:
HIEROGLYPHIC, HIEROGLYPHIC, HIEROGLYPHIC...MARTINI
GLASS
"I can't see anything in there."
The martini glass is painted in a
fixed topple with an infinite and I'll have to say an alluring drop
of white martini juice dripping from its tipping lip. Forsythe was
right about my need for a drink, at least. I am drawn to this drink.
The drop of this drink is drawn in white outline and is a little
larger then my head. I have placed my smallish head literally and
with some metaphoric hope inside of a splash of martini juice, and
now I am hanging, like this, from Forsythe's perspective at least,
from the tipped lip of a martini glass.
"Don't these people drink?"
"Cultural differentiation," Forsythe
is telling me, "is the consequence of symbolic representation of
meaning." When Forsythe speaks, he most often speaks aphoristically,
and we all try to forgive him for that. He speaks infrequently,
so we are most often pleased to hear him speak, bearing little mind
to what he actually says with his speaking.
I step back and can see him reflected
from behind me off of the window in front of me, behind which window
a Chinese woman or two Chinese women or perhaps even three Chinese
women entertain a singular Chinese business man with a stiffly gestured
impersonation of two under-groomed white men engaged in a barren
exercise in destination therapy, in Chinatown.
"There's probably some people in
there."
I am pointing at the window and Forsythe
is smiling at me, at my reflection of me, from behind me.
"They're probably enjoying some martini
juice."
In reflection, Forsythe is a composition
of light.
"There's probably a man in a business
suit with a white shirt and a red tie sipping on martini juice on
the other side of that glass."
Forsythe is staring at the window
as if he can see through the window - as if he is light, passing
through the window - and is meeting the eyes of a Chinese man who
is learning all about the advantages of Advanced Capitalism in a
Chinese bar in Chinatown, in America.
"Why don't you ring the bell?"
"There's a bell?"
"Why don't you ring it?"
"Where?"
"There's a door bell."
There is a bell on the door that
I have been unable to open.
"Do you think that I should ring
it?"
Forsythe is silent, making eye contact
on a ray of light with a man whom I have imagined in a bar in Chinatown.
"What if they don't open it?"
"They will."
"What if they don't?"
"What if they do or don't? What if
they let us in and sell us a drink? What if they ignore us? What
if they're laughing at us right now, and the doorbell sends them
into fits of hysteria, which will sound distant to us, out here,
on the sidewalk. Alone. What if the bell awakens an ancient samurai,
who will come from the door as from a space-time portal, and take
our breath away.
"What if a salmon steak, curing on
the rooftop in the Chinese manner, falls from the roof, and hits
you on the head."
Sometimes, we are not so pleased
with Forsythe when he speaks.
I ring the bell.
No samurai are awakened.
No salmon steaks fall.
We hear a lock release, in chorus
with a steady buzz, which sounds distant to us, out here, on the
sidewalk.
We open the door and enter into a
lesser light, accompanied by a bright beam of sunlight.
After the door closes, and as our
eyes adjust to the lesser light, in the absence of sunlight, suspended
bottles of clear and brown spirits actualize before our wide white
eyes.
And now a pair of eyes, also, actualize.
These spirits and these eyes are
not the spirit and eyes of a samurai, but nonetheless they do seem
to come from another dimension. Forsythe was right about that at
least. They do manage to take our breath away.
We are breathless, for a moment,
as we see the bartender, and his two actual eyes, in this new light.
Tribes
Sometimes, when I am trying to locate my position within humanity-
when I am lost in this humanity, and am trying to understand myself
as a person of humanity, and not as a person individuated from humanity
- when my individuation from the humanity that I am lost in leaves
me feeling like a symbol of myself - an abstraction from my essential
self - and not my actual self - I like to think of humanity in tribes.
Sometimes, when I am trying to pass off my symbolic self as my actual
self to the humanity that I have become abstracted from, I like
to think about the origins of humanity, when humanity was running
around in tribes.
When I am walking, at times, down
Broadway, as now, crossing Canal, and am immersed in all of these
other individuals also walking, walking and shopping, walking and
shopping and without regard talking, talking into cell phones, or
to one another, or to themselves, or speaking occasionally also
to me, offering me hot dogs, or hand bags, or 'organic products',
or offering me insights into their particular understandings of
the organization of the cosmos, or into the importance of their
own abstracted selves, or presenting me relevant evidence regarding
an impending paradigm shift in second comings, or in unidentified
flying objects, or other events otherwise evidentiary of the end
of the world, I like to think of the origins of humanity, when humanity
was organized by tribes and not by ideas. Or by ideologies also
organized. Or nations. Or economy. Or corporations. Or by ideas
structured in time. Or, well, I like to think of humanity running
around with his franks and his beans hanging out, discovering fire.
I like to think of him, if he is
a man, warming his testicles before an open fire, when all he could
know about fire was that fire was a mystery that he could not describe.
I like to think of the origins of
humanity displaying her breasts, before her breasts were removed
from her, by primordial advertising executives, and used to sell
automobiles. Don't get me wrong: I happen to rather like breasts.
I am attracted to breasts, but I wonder if I would be less attracted
to breasts than to the women they are attached to, if breasts had
not been removed from women, as the Essence of Woman, by our Cro-Magnon
advertising men, and used to sell wristwatches.
I am not attracted to wristwatches.
I would like to think there was a
time in the history of humanity when all we could understand about
time was that time was a mystery, before we began to wear it on
our wrists. I wonder if we began to measure time around the same
time that we began to represent women as breasts, and ourselves
as symbols, to expanding societies. I'll bet there was a moment
in the history of humanity, I mean some insignificant moment, some
forty thousand years or so, some small stutter, so to speak, in
the discourse of infinity, some one hundred and sixty thousand generations
or so, a long time ago, before we were able to take parts of ourselves
and present them as our actual selves, to expanding societies. I
wonder if our own essential selves were once a mystery.
I wonder if our own mysterious selves
were once enough to warm us, before an open fire.
I'll bet we once were crouched, cradled
by the rhythm of time, before a mysterious fire, when we ceased,
suddenly, to experience time as a rhythm, and began to think of
it, instead, as a sequence. I'm no anthropologist, but I like to
think of that precise time, if indeed there was such a time, as
the end, also, of essential time. I like to think that time as the
beginning of sequential time, and, consequently, I like to think
of the present culture as sequential time's end.
I'm not sure what this is doing for
my location in humanity, but I am presenting relevant evidence regarding
the end of the world.
Pay attention.
TriBeCa
I am attempting to incorporate, into my day, a carefree, structure
free, tumbleweed ideology. I am trying out this life-as-in-origins
naiveté, this carpe diem, rolling stone, dusty wind sort of day;
what I'm after here is a let-the-day-take-you-wherever-the-day-may
day, which is an exercise, I am finding, in intellectual cowardice,
I mean a profoundly bankrupt excursion into moral irresponsibility,
because these wide-eyed desert winds have just tumbled me out of
the desert and directly into the path of a stampeding rush hour,
in TriBeCa.
We have this hour in Advanced Capitalism,
in excessive population pockets in Advanced Capitalism, which we
like to call rush hour. This is not an actual
hour, but nonetheless the rhythm of
time has cycled me into it. This rush hour is a predetermined and
sustained moment of controlled commuter chaos, at the end of a market
driven day, which is not, of course, an actual day, but which is
a part of the day that I might have avoided, if I had bothered to
stop and think about it. This contrived hour at the end of these
contrived days is a programmed, proto-cataclysmic redistribution
of humanity, which is not a force of nature, but which exacts on
us the same sort of force exacted on us, from outside of us, by
nature.
If this is a flooding river, then
I am being drawn into it. It is composed of people, not running
water, but we are caught up in it. We accept it as an inevitable
force, even though we're the one's that have created it. I am submitting
to it as listlessly as to any old external force, even though I
am a member of the culture that has created it.
These are raging waters, these waters
I've had a hand in creating.
They are taking me in ass to pelvis
and elbow to elbow. I am ass to elbow with all of this other rushing
flood debris. My ass is to the masses and I am making faces. I am
making faces at all these other people here, other people also making
faces.
We all wear this look on our faces
of grim determination, that we will survive the madness we've created.
I wonder what sort of madness led
me to believe that I could live an original life, by which I mean
to say, a life-as-in-origins life, in the context of a culture that
can create a force as great as nature.
Mine is a madness as great as the
madness that has created me.
I am a Stutter
I am racing around after nightfall with Forsythe, replacing the
American flags we find on Suburban Utility Vehicles with these little
flags we've made of Saudi Arabia, which is an idea recommended to
Forsythe in a counter culture magazine. Forsythe said that the drivers
of these SUV's are confused about what nation they are representing,
when they are driving their SUV's. We should offer them, he told
me, a little symbolic clarity, as a gesture of our humanity.
Forsythe said that you should always
call a thing what it is. Although Forsythe said that you should
always call a thing what it is, he also has stated that the nature
of things can never be stated.
Forsythe is an Essencest. Which is
a religion. Or a philosophy. Or something. In any case, it's something
you can believe in. And it's something that he believes in. Even
though "its precepts," he is telling me, "are not accessible to
the language of the culture in the mind. It cannot," he is telling
me, "be articulated.
"It cannot be understood."
Forsythe is scaring me.
"It can only be accepted."
He is staring at me. He is staring
into me.
There is a thin film of silver moonlight
on his eyes, and I am a stutter.
I am a stutter in the discourse of
infinity.
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