Ryoanji

Poem, and a photo of myself at the Ryoanji rock garden in Kyoto, Japan from 1995 -- one of those photos where you give the camera over to a stranger to snap.

Saw Clint Eastwood's latest, Gran Torino, a couple weeks ago. I liked the film quite a bit, with its presentation of a sort of fey Dirty Harry. Involving the Hmong as characters gave the film more depth than a lot of contemporary movies.

Also recently watched Arrabal's And I will walk like a Crazy Horse, another sick and inventive surrealist work. I liked a brief non sequitur shot of what appeared to be a giant spider against the sky.

The Bums

by Jonathan Falk

8-31-2008



Shoulders buzzed under a shade tree, they threw at us crabapples, boysenberries, marionberries, wine spilled into shade of fiery trees. We walked off from the hobos, children seeking sweets, tired of home.

& Angels tread the gateway, skunks roam the hay, cisterns clang.

The tyres take one to the child is father of the man, mountains' hem -- adumbrated through eyelid & hazel, I've seen squirrels before.

Horseless carriage moaning up the track, nutmeg and lycanthropes, shoulder shadows scoriac, proto-Autumn sun horizon & nadir.

Oddities 6 -- Final

The last installment of Oddities 6. I'm generally not one for suppressing the written word, but here is an exception that tests the rule -- British poet Terry Cuthbert's barbed wire poem. You'll have to use your imagination on the part I obscured. Apparently, Cuthbert died a few years ago. And work by myself, Marc Myers, and others.

continued

I forgot to mention that the geographic range of the artists in Oddities 6 extended to the Midwest. Here is a work by the exalted Clark Dissmeyer of Nebraska (also known as "CAD"). In addition, a Scrach n' sniff page, featuring such luminaries as Gurdjieff and Tex Ritter.

And yes, somewhere Dorian Harewood is screaming as a bullet splits his foot. And Rade Sherbedgia is ever stealing the show: "A cloak, with a hood. Ok doctor."

Ik been reading The Stolen Sun, a novel by Emil Petaja, a correspondent from late in the life of H.P. Lovecraft. Space opera with depth, inspired by the Finnish epic the Kalevala. This is probably about as close as I'll get to the Kalevala; I doubt I'll ever read it.

Gregor Samsa

"But Jung sees the unconscious as being, besides this container for personal repressions, at bottom collective -- containing the products of 'innate forms and instincts' common to mankind. Where repressed contents of the personal unconscious may have been conscious at one time, the collective contents have never had any association with consciousness." from The Supernatural by Douglas Hill and Pat Williams.

Another moody, fabulous sample of Roman's illustration -- yeah, they're supposed to be side by side.

More Oddities

A couple more pages from Oddities 6.
These works are, as with anything, collaborations -- the co-author is time. By this point the contributors were from greater distances than with the earlier issues. Artists from California, Finland, England, and Oregon are represented.

new system

my posting of oddities 6 will be delayed for a while until I can get my new scanner figured out...

I watched that great show on Japanese balloon bombs again on pbs.

Oddities 6

The first three pages of Oddities 6, an homage to H.P. Lovcraft, from 1986. I will attempt to post all issues (eight or so, I believe) eventually (out of sequence).

nyuuyoku

Another poem from 1994 -- and a photo of myself from 1997, observation deck, South Tower, World Trade Center; and a very brief time lapse shot of Manhattan and surroundings from the WTC, made by holding down the shutter button for a few seconds on a point and shoot camera. Today, wind clobbering the tops of fir trees, sun droning the twilight.

Brooklyn 2

By Jonathan Falk



I remember the city stacked in the night, a shattered bottle tipping into the dock. I remember birds arcing over the square, Korea town heights of hangul hair shops lit at twilight, the skin of waters, barges full of wood, pull downs lined on shops, piers slapping into gelid waters, the crumbling top of retirement home on Coney Island, birds attracted to its chalk yellow, concave recesses, eggs shrouded and skinny like skulls in divine manses, waterspouts, pigeon beaks and dwindling monuments, orange tea sipped through straws, the splash as boats anchor above wiry trees booming with the nostalgia of bleeding light in late afternoon, mica picked up by yachts and slouching driftwood, ocean liners hovering above bars of violet offing, a Jimi Hendrix impersonator playing notes to the square, speed chess and ginseng beer.

Reagan Amplifier

G.W. is going to have to give back the keys to the car in a little more than a week -- wonder who he'll pardon? The vehicle's got a couple of dings in her. Collage from 2004, and the "Reagan Amplifier," which I recently unearthed -- had completely forgotten I'd done it. From the 1980s, of course, given the images and concerns (all-out nuclear war the main worry then -- giving way to a sort of slower crumbling now).

Last night watched a great camp classic, Horror Express, with Christopher Lee, Peter Cushing, and a cameo by Telly Savalas. Great line, when someone threatens "I'll send you to Siberia," to which Kojak responds "I'm already in Siberia." The frozen ape thing in the case is eldritch in a way more expensive special effects can't match.

Have been reading The Prince by Machiavelli for the first time, as well. Move a lot of your people into the conquered lands --

Cut-Up

I've posted this before online, but I'll rerun it -- a cut-up of words by Jimmy Buffett, Kenny Rogers, and a translation of the poem De Profundis, by Georg Trakl. The following was fashioned with an online cut-up machine, after the technique developed by William S. Burroughs and Brion Gysin.

Grodekville

Nibblin' on sponge cake Watchin' those tourists covered away again in shaker of salt Some people to show but this brand new beauty A Mexican cutie of salt a woman to blame Now be my But there's booze in will render That frozen concoction claim blame But I know it's and some people on a train up with a gambler, we sleep to speak He said, son of reading people's faces sayin', I aces For a taste of some advice asked me for a deathly quiet, and his face You hold 'em, know when to walk away and for countin', when knows that the secret to throw that you can hope for And when he finished darkness, the in his final words I could keep is a hissing wind this evening.

Past the village pond
The awaits the sweet body
Decayed in the remote from sombre a light that I found myself upon a dust of Strummin' my six-string On my shrimp they're beginnin' there's a woman it's nobody's fault I don't here it got here I haven't again in Margaritaville Searchin' it could out my flip-flop Stepped on had to helps me hang on Searching for my lost shaker Yes there's a woman to blame own damn fault
On too tired to at staring out the window overtook knowing what the cards were, their eyes So if give you him my bottle, and he Then he all expression Said, if boy, you gotta learn to to to run You never count at the table Knowing what to to keep 'Cos every hand's a he turned back for the faded off to sleep that I stubble field on which a tree which, orphan still gathers scanty her eyes are gazing in am of God
I drank from the metal forms.
Spiders look garbage and the copse
Crystal angels have sounded once with oil front porch swing Smell those Chorus: Wastin' blame But I know know the reason I stayed How a clue Chorus: Wastin' away my lost shaker fault I blew a pop-top Cut my heel home Wastin' away again in Margaritaville of salt Some people claim that And I know it's my summers evening, So we took turns at the darkness The boredom And by the way they held don't mind my So I handed drank down my last swallow and you're gonna play the game, play it right Chorus: know when your money, when you're sittin' time enough away and knowing what a winner and every hand's speakin', window Crushed out the cigarette, somewhere in the There is a black rain falls.
There is a here.
There ears of corn.
Golden and round the dusk
And her lap hamlets.
The silence woodland well.

On my forehead cold heart.
There is of stars.
In the hazel more.





the sun bake All to boil Margaritaville Searching for my lost claim that all season Nothin' to tattoo But it's a real for Some people claim that there's I think Hell, cruise on back the blender And soon it that that there's a woman to my own damn fault a warm bound for nowhere I met were both us and he began I've made a life out you can see you're out of your whiskey, I'll bummed a cigarette light And the night got lost got to know when to fold 'em Know when There'll be the dealin's done Every gambler survive is loser And the best is that I end asleep And gambler he broke even But found an ace brown, stands lonely which haunts deserted huts---
How sad gentle the heavenly bridegroom.

Returning home
Shepherds found bramble bush.

A shade I for my fails in my mouth.

At night heath,
Thick with have sounded once

Ak-Sar-Ben

I have been reading a biography of the Norwegian sculptor Gustav Vigeland, by Ragna Stang. The anecdote about he had to boil a book cover for the glue it contained, and how he ate the results, stands out. This is what one calls a starving artist.

Above image by Arnold Bocklin: I first became aware of this great painting when I purchased a reproduction of it on a postcard, bought in New York.

A couple of old ones, prose poems I wrote shortly after (or maybe it was during -- can't recall) a week in Albion, Nebraska, in August 1994, while visiting friends. Ann Erickson of Guerneville, California published them in her now-defunct poetry magazine, tight, in 1997.

Albion 1

by Jonathan Falk

Crazy Horse falls or rolls into the prairie.
Broken angel wings freight cemetery.
Soybeans throttle the soil, coffins underneath the slope loaded with occidental bones of colored glass.
Corn stamens thunder, dipping pollen into the air.
Packed soil where they danced, owl hooking its wings into a pole distant beyond windbreaks, cicadas call in tree domes, pearl streaks thread wind and evening sky.


Albion 2

by Jonathan Falk

Planet beams beyond earth's edge, arisen above plains town.
Windmill blades sigh on distant ridge, wind pouring from flush of receding sun.
Cloud banks, wrinkled and piled, stained with falling glory, looming against the grey zenith.
Birds voice in Victorian trees, pour like motes to nightfall.
Lightning floods clouds far off in the gloam. A penultimate scrap suspended in the drawing blackness. The tables of mortality pepper the ridge.

Aurora Australis

Cabin fever, snow like broccoli brains hiding outside the double pane.

Had a UFO dream, in which I saw a vaguely airplane-shaped formation of red lights, maybe forty, fifty miles up, in an inky profound sky, a few cold starlights... Then the lights flew apart and vanished, fading out abruptly.

Telegraph Hill

Photo I took in Multnomah Cemetery in Portland, of the grave of a Russian (or possibly Ukrainian, or some other nationality) woman... I obscured the name and etched image of her face on the gravestone, but the spectral bow at the lower border of the grave appeared on the developed photo. Product of the developing process, flaw in the photograph, or signal from beyond? The placement of the phenomenon is eerie...

Been reading Sir Thomas More's Utopia -- the early Modern English difficult but worthwhile, more concrete than Plato's Republic.

Cerumen

By Jonathan Falk



Canopus beams through the harbor, pine board scents beneath horns of cumuli; Or saffron shade in Oceanus Procellarum, futhark.
I a boy screamed in the circus – a ventriloquist hypnotist standing in tinsel, camels kneeling, staccato laughter – diagnosis – the 381 inderdiction, a squishing malleus. The dummy’s mouth hinges shiver in junk store. A boy dreaming by the creek, walnut tweezed from his sinus, invisible friend dead in lunar spackle.
Once hearing “paraqueets on Saturn,” big syringe’s wash, these dogs on California Street, spent a lot of time hanging out, as it were, on the poop deck, an earwax pick gleaned in Chinatown sandalwood light, the bums avoid the high places.

Chicken Dance

Here is an H.P. Lovecraft parody, another light piece. Lovecraft has inspired a large number of parodies, both written and cinematic. The reason why his work lends itself to humorous imitation is plain: The seriousness and earnestness of much of his work (leaving aside the parodies he wrote himself) inspires such thoughts.

Last week watched Arrabal's The Guernica Tree. He is one twisted individual. The blasphemy in Tree isn't quite as revolting as the bisected bug in Viva la Muerte though. Bloggity blog blog.

A photograph I snapped at Boston Harbor way back in 1986 -- bit of a Magritte feel. The illusion turned out fairly well, a little beyond the usual trick perspective, "I'm holding up the Eiffel Tower" gag shot. I'm not clear if the optical deception would have worked with digital photography.





The Chicken Dance of Cthulhu

By Jonathan Falk





“Mr. Cash to the Blackwood Arena! Mr. Cash!” The call came over my cell phone, and I rushed to the shaded aluminum bleachers in the September heat. A small Mexican man sang Roy Orbison on a stage before a handful of teased white heads and shuffling overalls. The Multatonic Oktoberfest and County Fair was in its first few days, before the ecstasies of the weekend. I passed Pinkle – the Clown, with her surging dwarf car, and someone dressed as a robot in a cowboy hat, working the crowds of children.
When I spotted the troublemaker, a tattooed man with a goatee, shaved head, heckling the cruise ship band, he took off toward the exit gate. “Nice security code, asshole,” was ejected at me as he ran into the infrared surge of the world outside.
Oh well. Only four hours of phantasmagoria to endure, I hummed to myself.
One of the advantages of being an event dick is free admission to anything in the arena. Pig’s tongue in a dream, sow crushing her piglets as she tosses restlessly. The art show had the usual crying harlequins and Southwestern whorls of rock canyons.

I finished my shift a little after five o’clock and headed to the beer tent, the sun cooked into my neck, making my thoughts discontinous and irritable. Optimator might make my sunburn worse, but I was frustrated and depressed with life, not unlike the remarkable Hans Pfaall. One company held my car title and I was on a smiling basis with the lady at the payday advance store. The smell of sheep foreheads, placid Mormons peeling Llama wool in endless fair pavilions, breathed into my nose nostrils. Chickens are dumb clucks, cocks and peacocks squawked from the whitewashed barn. Only rednecks and farm kids could be seen, working the hay-bound aisles.
Or you might call them farmer-necks, as a friend of mine once did.
When I entered the beer tent, a little self conscious of my ears, crisp from Sol, I noted the typical oom-pah band on the stage – with a hand-drawn sign reading Helmut Gregor and his Lithuanian Vandals. I did not like the way the accordion was played, with leering overtones and trills. I felt like Thomas Wolfe writing a transparently fictionalized account of his feeling of drunken unity with the world gained at a Nazi-era Oktoberfest in the 1930s.
I ordered the house draft and drank, the beer filling my head like mercury.
Every single person in the shadowy tent was Caucasian – old men in shorts, women in peasant dresses. They were all old.
As the woodchopper’s polka commenced, I had another beer, then another. Soon I was higher than Abdul Alhazred after his binge at the nameless city.
“What’s… in the beer,” I said, as two Teutonic giants sprayed wood chips hazardously through the air, wielding battle axes, the tent now full of wild music. The fall air had become curiously cold.

When I came to consciousness, feeling as if were my first day on earth, I was dancing wildly on the stage, clad in a stiff pair of lederhosen, my bare legs revealed to the crowd, who were shrieking with laughter. I was leading them in a demonic chicken dance: My hands forming monstrous “beaks,” my “tail” wagging obscenely, then clapping in a lunatic fashion. I heard a monstrous noise from beyond the horizon; Great Cthulhu, rising when the stars were right, paid homage by the sickening rite…

Blackwood

Been re-reading the Wendigo by Algernon Blackwood... potent atmosphere of the silent, menacing Canadian wilderness there... Last read it many years ago... I would give him a very high ranking in literature... And then there's the superb tailoring of "The Willows," of course.

Had a dream recently where I was examining a piece of a nosecone from a crashed Mercury- style space capsule... Then in nonlinear sequencing, I was on the capsule, presumably before the crash, at the edge of outer space, brief sighting of the stars above... A guy who looked somewhat like Walter Cronkite was fiddling with some 1960s-era transistorized equipment on the craft. Paradoxically, the capsule was small on the outside, but looked like a big Gothic room inside... Then we descended toward earth.

And a collage from 2006, and a shot of Vancouver BC from Vanier Park I took back in May... What a pleasant city.

East of Vinland Duo

Two more poems, inspired by, or written during my Norwegian trip of five years ago:



Memories of Father, Lyngor Island, Norway

By Jonathan Falk



“You beast,” Dad would whisper to us, my friend and I uttered as we tripped over the drops and steps of the island, the interior march of cows and rustling branches. The taxi boat brought us out there, knocking through the surf in a profound trip, transporting the two guys. The world-worn restaurant owner, working on a cigarette and cell phone, had taken my order and ordered our taxi. Fish soup appeared, brimming with mussels and crawdads.
We thought of my father when we saw a middle-aged man bare-legged wandering in a robe on this skerry. The bathrobe was like the ones Dad wore, when he would survey the woods and walls in Oregon. Passed out in a brownout of wine, once in a while Dad would wake up, far from Greenland and the Faroes. Sometimes he cried: "Judge Crater!" Then he fell back into a shaded slumber. The bridges and fire stations and platforms of Lyngor wrinkled like swan legs, staves of houses erect on rock lawns, boats ran by our sunny stake of allemansretten.


Skagerrak
Written in Arendal, Norway

by Jonathan Falk




I am about to find the ferry to Merdo.


I may never come here again.
White nights
sputter where
I am not
boats moan in the waves, the other side of the channel
masonic compass,
weighty except for the pediments seated right on cliff faces
spire tolls to my eardrums
punctured by the Fata Morgana
Are you an Englishman?
Woman of eyes
flashes upon mine,
but I am alone
melatonin gravitas
in birches of granite

Origins

Photo of my great, great, great- grandparents' parsonage in Waldau, East Prussia (now near or in Legnica, Poland) -- and apparently they, or other relatives, or both, are in the picture as well. The photograph was most likely taken in the 1860s or 70s.

I've read some dismissals of the significance of genealogy -- the further back in time one goes, the more ancestors one has. So, it doesn't mean much to be related to Charlemagne or Genghis Khan.

But I think it would be an error to say one's ancestry has no relevance whatsoever -- one can sometimes trace cultural and behavioral traits back decades or centuries, on top of the stew of the genetic code. Genealogy also can be a good way to learn about history.

Giant Collage

A collage which Roman Scott and I made over a period of two years or so in the late 1970s (or at least part of it, given the limits of this photo) -- i.e., when we were around twelve, thirteen years old. Our title for it was "The Giant Collage" -- guess you might also call it the Decline of the West or something else. We would pass it back and forth over the months, working on it, and taping sections together. The photos and text were cut out of Soviet Lifes, National Geographics, newspapers, Wild West magazines, newsmagazines, Famous Monsters, and now unidentifiable sources. There were multimedia elements as well, acrylic paint, pen and ink, and so on. Soviet Life was a propaganda magazine distributed here by the USSR, displaying the glories of Soviet communism.

Not so long ago finished Heinlein's Stranger in a Strange Land, (the rereleased unabridged version) one of the longer books I've read in a while. To paraphrase what Dr. Johnson wrote about Paradise Lost, no one ever wished for it to be longer. My opinion of Stranger is divided; Heinlein isn't a subtle writer, and the pantheism is a simplistic element. However, there is much that lingers with one, not least including the Man from Mars and his development. Heinlein assumes that 1950s or early 60s- era martini culture would be around far into the future; The behavior of the characters is often straight out of the Cocktail Nation. This in itself seems short-sighted -- culture always changes, even if in unpredictable ways. Also, he might have set the novel on a planet further away than Mars, so that the premise would hold up in light of new knowledge about our neighbor.

For science fiction writers from roughly the same era, I still would prefer, say, Dick or Sheckley.

Also for sierra hotel india echo sierra sierra echo sierra and giggles, have been re-reading Walden.

Gary Snyder

A record of a talk/reading with poet Gary Snyder and others from a few years ago -- it was a practice in recording observations. The event was held on the anniversary of the 1980 eruption of Mt. St. Helens.


GARY SNYDER talk notes

by Jonathan Falk



May 18, 2005 Arlene Schnitzer Concert Hall, Portland, Oregon
About to watch G Snyder speak & Jerry Franklin. big art deco cups in ceiling, roar of conversing crowd of 2,000 or so about me in murkiness
stripper at Union Jack's in MAX light rail here, dark hair & pierced, s & m
stain glass & regal old trim ilahee manager white hair speaking first
laidback voice
says Gary, Jerry, just spent one day in blast zone
Kathleen Moore -- environmental prof.
Fred Swanson -- he invited Gary to come up to St. Helens, 57 years after going there
Kathleen & Fred blonde - grey hair balding
she says we need poets & scientists -- Gary & Jerry
He's talking about long term science project
both speakers grew up in NW both draw inspiration from NW
Snyder -- 18 books
Danger on Peaks
born in SF
1960s in Japan
lives w/ wife Carole
she says integrity
nobody's that good -- he say (referring to applause)
white shirt
reading from Danger on Peaks
pointed goatee brush of hair
his wife was mtn. climber
measured, deep voice
danger, foolishness
The mountain
3 mtns. -- back between prose & poetry
walked slowly
conspiratorial voice
Mazamas
describes climb wi old timer
just like Issa
he's holding book
small behind podium
St. Helens before
slow, whispering, measured voice
8 - 13 - 1945 -- 1st climb of Mt. St. Helens
hid crying
growl -- onomatopoeia voice
compares to Hiroshima ?
500 H-bombs
very long sentence
Pearly Everlasting
he went back in 2000
trees like toothpicks
premature clapping (from audience)
He says, am I allowed to write about this
rude to write about nature
talks about outer space
rocks in Antarctica -- scientist told him
unclear WHEN poem end
former wife making web sites
grandchildren
castor & pollux rise
almost like singing
coyote asking turds for advice
laughter
expressive hand spread open
commercial signs by interstate
warm springs 1954
personal mixed w/cosmic
elegy for his sister poem
struck by a car -- directly
final section
Robinson Jeffers ref.
poem about two people holding hands, on 9/11 jumping
he's honored to speak about commemoration
will be many more

Jerry Franklin is being introduced
Old growth forest
tie, balding, glasses
from Camas -- he says
we have enough facts
not a catastrophe to him -- Mt. St. Helens
slightly nasal, forced voice
A kid in a candy store for scientists
moonscape-predictions were wrong
life came back very fast -- 10 days later, upon landing in helicopter the colonisation came from inside the blast zone, not outside
he says scientists can't predict things, should be humble

Franklin & Snyder will speak
Snyder comes back out
Just got ecology book in his hands
Snyder notes -- how do know when to do nothing
Snyder -- brown shoes,
jeans, hands folded
Snyder points out that Weyerhauser trees grow fast.
Snyder criticizes giving St. Helens human qualities
after Franklin asked
him about human responses

(questions from audience)
Snyder cupped hands, couldn't hear
Snyder complains about media coverage
forest fires = forest destroyed, but not which kind
Has Gary got inspiration w/ tree plantations -- NOT YET, he answered
Gary looking out to audience, eyes covered
What was amazing on this visit -- 800 foot high hummocks, Gary says
so much green, mellow voice
vision for next 200 years (question from audience member) CHANGE
keeping democratic constitution -- Gary says
nature will follow up
Jeffers -- human explosion -- not cosmic bliss

back home --
last things --
woman asked him about global warming -- she didn't believe apparently
he said he'd talk w/her about other things first
drinking glass of wine
THEN global warming discussion
he bowed as at Reed grad. 1993 or whenever, hands folded,
they gave him & Franklin Pendleton blankets, they walked offstage
said he'd like to chat w/Bush that style!

Night before I had dream I was working for harsh employers w/ R. in house in forest moving stuff
missed Snyder due to working.
Then the earth turned upside down, and I was walking slowly, my feet stuck on the ground above me, sky below my head

Now You listen to Me

Dad

Unites States Marine Corps, 1946

He has a slightly apprehensive, ambiguous expression here.

Derangement of the Senses

Recently completed Mishima's The Temple of the Golden Pavilion, translated by Ivan Morris: Tremendous stuff, the interlacing of creepy sex, obsessions, Rinzai Zen, architecture, in WWII and postwar occupied Japan... First thing by Mishima I've read, I think, since taking two courses in Japanese Literature from the late Professor Wolfe at UO, many moons past. I remember him discussing the film Mishima made of the short story "Patriotism."



Another poem of mine, written in the early part of this century.


Courtesy Clerk

By Jonathan Falk




Window decal: A boy pisses on a Ford logo, his eyes arched at the onlooker. In other words, piss on Ford, and Ford pisses on Chevrolet.
A volunteer sunflower with shoulders and shawls like a misfit, in the light teeming beyond the silhouette hills.
When mankind enters the doors, they are drawn to the nearest cart. If they find plastic bags, napkins, or other scatterings in a cart, they fish with their hands and flip the refuse into another cart.
Humble yellow jackets are imminent and peripheral in the el Nino of fuzzy autumn shade.
Crows pace through landscaped groves, earth slanting as they ratchet between unseen foliage.
Cars jump when they’re parked, but it’s the ones which aren’t seen which shine as they breeze by my legs, grazing my blind spot.
The maiden whose body is like an ear of corn, a spirit of partially hydrogenated soybean oil, taurine, and sucralose, flour and sugar squared and packed like maple bricks.
“Horn not working, watch for finger.”

Koizumi Yakumo

An article about the death of Lafcadio Hearn, the great interpreter of Japan (and New Orleans, Martinique, and other places) from 1904 -- apparently from the defunct Oregon Journal... The tribute is by the Japanese author and poet, Yone Noguchi. The cutting was yellowed and fragrant inside one of his books, where it no doubt had lain for around a century when I bought it. In those days, journalists were a little freer to overtly express their opinions -- also worth noting is the spelling "thru." Click to enlarge.

Here you may also catch up on the latest treaty issues from the Russo-Japanese war; along with some other material.

The rest of Oddities 3

The rest of Oddities 3 from 1982, with some more dithyrambic contributions by various people. All of the contributors in this issue were high schoolers at the time (except for Crumb!) ... The back cover is great: an illustration of H.P. Lovecraft's and Hazel Heald's "The Horror in the Museum" by Roman Scott.

Today, or rather yesterday by now, marks the fourth year in a row (and I went once some years before that as well) that I've been to the H.P. Lovecraft Film Festival at the Hollywood Theatre in Portland, Ore. Nuggets and news from S.T. Joshi, readings by Richard A. Lupoff and others, and some good films as usual, including an adaptation of The Outsider that was appropriately moody. Unfortunately I missed the showing of Fear of the Unknown, a new documentary about HPL. I also witnessed the wedding of Robert M. Price's daughter Victoria with Mars... Robert performed the ceremony, walking out in a sort of Esoteric Order of Dagon headdress thing... You don't see that every day. And when he pronounces something like "Yaddith," you know he means it. Clouds floated above the street, a few feeble raindrops.

one more page

one more Oddities page

Oddities 3

Here is about half of the contents of Oddities 3, which included a fascination with morbid malformation, decay, and arcane nostalgia. Also included is a letter from R. Crumb himself... Click to enlarge.

Walking down Hawthorne Boulevard today, the dying fall sun over the manholes, random moments of the past poison and enrich the future, the now an evermoving point, sartor resartus tattoo doll lemming soup cilantro fruitfly gonad Chinese automaton drained a million lice

Bel- Ami

I recently finished a translation (by Douglas Parmee) of Bel- Ami by Guy de Maupassant (1850-1893), kind of a departure from what I've been reading lately, since it is a continental work. This introduces me to de Maupassant as a novelist; My previous knowledge of him came from reading a bunch of his short stories when I was quite young.

I anticipated reading some far- out Symbolist novel along the lines of Huysmans; but Bel-Ami is naturalistic, though not without some elements of horror, and a phantasmagorical atmosphere. Among the things that linger with me are the characters of the poet Norbert de Varenne (modeled on Baudelaire, I would imagine), and the agonizing death of Forestier... Much else besides. Timely as hell considering that France's colonial misadventures in Algeria and Morocco inform the plot of the novel, as well.

De Maupassant died of syphilis at the age of 43...

Two photos of myself: Chirisan, South Korea, 1995, and Vancouver, British Columbia, 2008... before different styles of totems.

Oddities

The front cover of Oddities 3 (1982), a magazine published by Roman Scott through the 1980s (and I played a certain role in the zine as well). This cover is Roman's work. As Burroughs wrote, time is everything -- I wouldn't be remotely capable of producing now what I created back then. The surrealism and horror had an insurrectionary quality to it... I may put up some of the other pages from this issue after a while.

Of late I have been listening to a cd of Schubert's cycle Schwanengesang, and other lieder (I understand Schwanengesang was a posthumous title, someone else came up with), classic recordings by Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau and Gerald Moore... The version of Heine's Die Stadt, with Moore's piano sort of replicating a feel of flowing water, to my mind, is really melancholy... The Erlkonig quite potent as well... I had a 45 record of this as a kid, a reading of a translation of Goethe's poem, which creeped me out... Of course Standchen a classic warhorse. Also been playing Bruckner's Mass in F-minor.

Had a dream of attending an exhibit on the Simpsons, with a friend, who vandalized one of the displays. Some attendants in scary animal costumes, sort of rabbit men, thin and tall, appeared, doing a sort of menacing pantomime. Some sort of archetype, such as the costumed thing who appears toward the end of Kubrick's The Shining.

Gedicht

Occultation

written after seeing a lunar eclipse, February 2008

By Jonathan Falk



Train frame sudden horizon gloam clucking – engine sighs in the setting riverbank dusk.
The bum above caboose’s slice who coughed and threw a charm of dice,
Intimation of wine vapors in a jug on gravel.
The boxcars become the moon, an empty field that wasn’t empty at all, dry reeds over an eclipse, terminator’s sulfur, Hyades & the crests of Lhasa projected on the craters