I see through the Spectacles

A Hammock built for Two

Past Jim Morrison's Grave

Past Jim Morrison’s Grave

By Jonathan Falk

There was a glow in the sky as if great furnace doors were opened.

Come, let us drink wine, let us drink wine of the city of Rey, if we do not drink now, when should we drink?

Pilgrimage sanguine, kings queens house smoking in the wind, eternal pattern of canals crossing, neti flush wombed out the center.  This is an anapest, hasta la Victoria siempre.  Come, let us drink wine of the city of Rey.  Remembrance of Times past need I read to re-read, Swann’s Way only read, to the cinders of the dead.  Crow’s hooves widely thunder, wise guy sweeping the dawn.  Bergson sneezed in the terminal, a small death in the summer to be. Windmills sanguine, blister skies of Breslau, the gate’s closed.  Busker tout marionette waving at me, ecstasy, leafblowers quiet staggering Communards.  Their wall, I came here, why did you go there?  Why?  The Vikings or the Quislings?

Takes an instant to spot the roses circling the hall of the lizard king, knees folded scraped confined.  That box is too damn small, mouth pear, sidereal disorder, white thread tree silt Eluard’s slab, Maebashi-like, staff of the seeker to Hearn.   Hedayat’s not easy to find, like Cortez fanned cornea out when I stopped.  How’s the lodestone to monocular the writer’s onyx pyramid?  That can’t be him, no it is him, “he died too soon.”  We’re in war with them phantoms, compared slides on the Blind Owl, Caspian saint cornhusker. Tube chimney argent memory Dam square, robes of glory. The little sparrow the Strasbourgians next seek, I’d already seen her Grecian urn, a spot staked a little over the stupas of walled mortality, clustered in groves.  Roses darkened to hymns, I forget to bring from Helian’s grave an Austrian dirt cylinder.  Peeling orgone hinges, crustacean columbine cirrus, seeds encompassing the mausoleum.

Loie Fuller veils, scalloped mastodon flood, a little box of crumbled monocle tissue.  All this there is?  I take photos to remember them by, the stations of the cross to the fane, walked five miles to get to old Father Lachaise himself, unsure about the Metro process, train stop requisitioned by the Francos and by the Prussians, 1871, stiff collars halt crepuscular breezes, whinny of clock pendulum.  Grandfather Izambard, I fall back on the Metro, Pigalle the spleen, stop Stalingrad.  Some big stelae there, theirs are monumental.  The oracles of tuned planchettes, clam stems febrile in the piles of tombs, Oscar Chopin, erotic politics, is this all there is?  Mortified tissue buzzes, an Aeolian harp of formaldehyde.  All the dead flouted, upright incense petrified, yodeling above the abyss.  A funeral marching away, sachem’s casket strutted on shoulders, hush of pinions. 

   22 Feb. 2014

Child-proof

Tumbling Tumbleweeds

The Choppers

A sense of a vaudeville or early cinema comedy team holds about this one.  A female analogue of Olsen and Johnson, or other slapstick teams who never metamorphosed into icons.  On the Columbia River?

Mucha, spooky Masks

Stamps from Chad, Rwanda, Upper Volta, and Cold War-period Czechoslovakia and Hungary.

Singapore 1987

Dad card, Singapore, 1987

Body:  Dear J., the wildest week yet -- First to the elephant roundup at Surin, Thailand, then to Bangkok -- Started to Singapore on train -- train stopped middle of night -- sat there on train more than 2 days -- A friend and I got fed up and took a taxi driving thru quite a lot of water to the next town -- Then series of 3 buses to Hatyai -- Which had had 6 feet of water in streets but receded leaving streets filled wi piles of refuse thrown out by the casual Thais -- Then luckily got a flite to Sing. only to have my reserv. cancelled this AM so will lose my time in Seoul but am grateful to the Great Spirit that the train wasn't wrecked.  Its very hot here but have found a nice dorm for 5.00 (Sing.) daily -- about 2.70 -- Had wonderful at mad Abdullah's cave down the St (Lunch) this place run by Arabs who are very nice.  Hope things smooth out -- slept in pol. sta. in sm. town wi corpse drowned  policeman

Dad

Parson's Studio, Jenny Lind Street

Der Golem Mowjib

The vague possibility of heavy water Mongolian rippling

Cut up & writing by Jonathan Falk and Marc Myers, 1980s

Image:  from Iowa/ Nebraska 1994

Pony, Montana, 1909

Pony, Montana

Text

Pony, mont. oct. 13, 1909

Dear Mattie, well I got your postle card.  Well I am as good as boys can be, and you no how good that is?  When you get this card you will think that you are in Pony, at our house.  Tell aunt Jennie the next card I am going to write to her. I go to school every day. 

Yours lovingly Bert.

Addressed to Miss M. Ferguson

1126 Nevada Ave.

S. Butte

Mont.

1986 Trip Journal

I finished posting my 1986 A Trip Journal.

A Trip Journal

9 February, 1964

All right, only one of them here.

Hedy Lamarr and George Antheil

Patent for the spread spectrum torpedo guidance system of Hedy Lamarr and George Antheil

source:  patent

Collage by Jonathan

Hedy Lamarr:  actor and driver of communication technology, along with George Antheil:

 

Kwagiulth Chief's Daughter/ Potlatch

I attended a dance ceremony (ok, aimed mainly at tourists) put on by the Kwagiulth tribe in Victoria BC some years back.

Photo by Edward S. Curtis 

Whaddye mean I ain't a good provider?

You lobster why don't you write

 

 

 

 

 

 

CRAB

 

Some logographic concerns here....

 

Leather postcard sent from Pendleton, Oregon to Portland in 1906

Armchair Family Bookstore

On 18 January 2014 I dropped by Armchair Family Bookstore in Portland, Oregon, and inspected its offerings.  Remarkable, the survival of the improbable, that the store still exists in any sense. One writer, with a condescending tone, described the store as "boarded up," and that it's a place that used to "peddle" paperbacks. Well, Armchair never had windows in the first place, and it's still operating, if marginally. I first entered this establishment around 1979, and frequented it for many years after, although I had not been there in a very long while.  Dave Smith, the bearded, expressive proprietor associated with the golden age of Armchair, long ago passed to the other side.  I think of his arguments with his wife of those days, when he repeated her name in increasingly excited crescendos.  I recall his invariant warnings about keeping kids away from underground comics.  (This lecture occurred when a friend and I attempted to look at, or buy, Zap Comix or similar titles, kept among the frankincense pulp of Marvels and DCs, back issues of Playboys, Penthouses, Ouis, and Hustlers, National Lampoons in cramped confines behind Smith's perch, cash register, and counter.)  The bookshelves wrapped around the counter, and lined along small back corridors, held a quirky stock of paperbacks and old magazines.  

In more recent times, the repository maintained a vigorous trade in adult magazines, dvds, and videocassettes, apparently covering the entire "family" spectrum.  On this last visit, the stock had withered to an offering of random paperbacks, National Geographics, and odd items, many of the shelves only partly filled.  I picked up an Airmont Classics edition of Père Goriot and a few National Geographics from the 1960s.

But the bookstore survives, and the "Drink Hires" sign, and the attached Norman Bates house, just as when the world was created.

Armchair Family Bookstore

From the east side of Milwaukie Avenue

The eccentric Chuck would always speak of the tower in the distance, used (according to him) for training firefighters.  The scene is close to Armchair.

Nocturne, Autumn 1988

Symbolist, horror, and surrealist-infused magazine, which included work (some collaborative) by myself, Todd Mecklem, Denise Dumars, G. Sutton Breiding, Thomas Ligotti, Billy Wolfenbarger, i. arguelles, Bruce Boston, Steve Rasnic Tem, Jessica Amanda Salmonson, Thomas Wiloch, and others. Edited and published by Michael J. Lotus and Vincent L. Michael.  Also published in its pages: an annotated translation of de Nerval's El Desdichado by Eric Basso.  The publication contained  photographs, collage, and various artwork as well.  The cover looks to be a vision from Gustav Meyrink's or Kafka's Prague.  I am in touch with a few of the writers and poets;  others have vanished.

Jolly Bachelor

Leather postcard, 1906

Chust you vate

3 July 1913.  More "Dutch" humor.

Arcimboldo

Dad card from Vienna, 1986

Message:  Dear J, am now here in old Wien -- 5 1/2 hrs on der train -- in (?) from Innsbruck.  The wedder has turned worse -- there were snow clouds near Innsbruck and it's been solidly overcast and threatening snow here -- below 0 degrees c.  Went to the historical fine art museo today -- its great -- a room of Brueghels (both) many Rembrandts, some absolutely dazzling art objects made of gold, crystal, precious stones, Roman antiquities, Byzantine & Etruscan stuff etc. Too much to cover.  Had a couple Hungarians from Budapesht in my room last night -- They looked & acted like characters out of a bad spy movie -- Brown Leather coats, scarfs, shiny leather suitcases, the leader told me 'shower es verboten' It was a push-button model -- He just grunted when I showed him.  Had a horrible dream of 2 bats, a cat, and macabre voice calling 'Mortimer' hope nothing bad happens.  Also I lit a candle.  There was a ghostly voice calling when awoke.  Dad 

The Early Long: The Hounds of Tindalos (1978)

Just not long ago absorbed, or re-assimilated, The Hounds of Tindalos, by Frank Belknap Long:  wiki.  I recall the fundraiser to bury the author properly when he died in 1994.  I remember reading at the time (although this conflicts with the Wikipedia article) that Long's body was held for some time in cold storage at a funeral home.

I read only a few of the stories originally, reading the entire book this time.  The luminous cover by Rowena Morrill:  wiki, is as at least as memorable as the tome's contents.  

When I first read The Hounds of Tindalos and The Space Eaters as a youth, I ranked them on a level close to Lovecraft's own work.  Now, I see them as uneven pieces of writing.  The character of "Howard" in The Space Eaters, who is based on Lovecraft, is shrieking and supercilious (and "Frank" isn't much better). Were one to encounter "Howard" of The Space Eaters in real life, the person would invite a slap in the face.  If "Howard" is meant to have any similarity to Lovecraft, the portrait denigrates him.  The statements from the personage, dismissing Poe and Blackwood for instance, seem decidely out of character, when triangulated with HPL's actual letters.  The depiction is all the more puzzling when one considers that Long knew Lovecraft in person, and by correspondence, extremely well.  The description of one of the entities, like an thread-like, white arm reaching down from the stars, and running down a tree, and other moments, is effectively frightening. But the story possesses many clumsy turns and melodramatic touches as well. At the beginning, "Howard" discusses malign cosmic beings eating their way through space.  Just then, what do you know -- a guy appears out of the night who has encountered just such a creature.  What are the odds?

The Hounds of Tindalos is of a higher order than The Space Eaters.  Chalmers' description of his drug experience is febrile and transcendent.  The short story ends a bit too abruptly and choppily, though (although hey, James F. Morton shows up by proxy).  Some other pieces in the collection, such as Second Night Out, have their passages of effective supernatural writing.  But too often the work has flaws, at its worst becoming incoherently goofy, as with The Peeper (or for that matter in another book by Long, his HPL memoir, Dreamer on the Nightside). 

In with the new II

 

 

Francis Bacon

Yesterday I visited the Portland Art Museum, going through the samurai armor show, and the permanent collection.  The samurai collection is enthralling, with crazy stuff such as a half-face mask based on a Noh drama character, gold-antlered headpieces, and Buddhist iconography. The singular ornamentation contrasts with the austerity of European armor from similar periods. I also examined Francis Bacon's celebrated painting, paying attention to the details of Lucian Freud's painted snouts and the geometry of his enclosures:  Triptych .   Add some Magritte and Joseph Cornell, and others, in, and it was a good day.

In with the New

 

 

 Happy 2014!

Gathering Shot

 

The Mask of the Sun

 

 

The Mask of the Sun

 

Venus and Jupiter, occluded, sanguine notes through corridors fell.  Wild anguish of accordion, clarinet, cloud banks of frost and dusk.  Intention was to see the mummies, not the clavicle of coronas, Robert H. Barlow I guess hunting for alligators, goofballs snake charmer.  In its stead, creaked raven’s beak, essence of coals mummified in Sol’s face, humbling of Caesar’s petroglyphs, I have seen the yelling of bronze spokes in flooded Telemark.  Intent was, ceremonial mask whistling, bitumen lich crotch, the weasel head really stunk they said.  Cat fang trapped in ton of bombs.  A traveler gone elegant, Nosferatu bells pounded effortlessly, pasty lips still.

JF December 27, 2013

Untitled Painting, tempera on paper, 1986

"Dutch" humor, 1915

 

 

 

 

A couple more shots from Père Lachaise

 

 



Headstone of the Iranian author Sadegh Hedayat in Père Lachaise, and a view of the dense necropolis. Hedayat's novel The Blind Owl, with its mystical refrains and echoes of Poe, and some of his short stories affected me greatly when I read them years back.  After I took the photo, an Iranian fan of the writer appeared, also taking a picture.  I spoke with the man briefly.  He said, "There he is... He died much too soon."

Père Lachaise

Jim Morrison's grave;  the wall at which some of the holdouts of the Paris Commune were executed May 28, 1871;  and Marcel Proust's gravesite.  Some elderly woman came up to me, speaking in Italian, I think.  All I could get out of what she said was JEEM Morrison, interspersed with other things.  I thought she was looking for his resting place, and pointed in the general direction.  She shook her head, walking off saying JEEM Morrison.  Later I acted as an ad hoc tour guide, directing some guys from Strasbourg, France to the spot -- and it was the first time I had visited Père Lachaise.  I also showed up with the right timing to witness a coffin unloaded from a hearse, and marched up the hill by pallbearers to the decedent's final sleep, just like in the movies.  I did not take a picture, due to not getting my camera ready fast enough respect for the survivors.