Black Moth

Here's a music video for the song "Black Moth" by P.Anheier.

AREA MAN INSISTS ON READING SECOND PAGE OF ONION ARTICLE OUTLOUD

"I mean, if a joke is funny, there's nothing like hearing it read poorly and disjointedly ten times in a row," another area man, stuck in the same room, said. At which point, the man answered with another paragraph of stilted writing. Why are you still reading this?

third in the series about the denizens of PLANET X

have you told your friends about ENORMOUS ORANGE yet?

more of the denizens of PLANET X

from my notebook. via photoshop. again.

from my notebook. via photoshop.

from my notebook.

Under the Weather

From the Los Bichos album "Who's Afraid of the Midwest?"

Under The Weather (reprise)

From the Los Bichos album "Who's Afraid of the Midwest?"

fightin' crime?

a good and thoughtful read.

WATCH "LUNCH WITH PETER"

http://lunchwp.blogspot.com/

YOUTUBE, BLOGSPOT, PETERHAJINIAN.com

Dear Reader,

As I branch out into other mediums available to me on the internet, I long for the old format days of the Word document website. If I were proficient at frames or wordpress, I'd probably create a website like this:




But we can't all be really intelligent, so I've been toying with ceasing to post here, and only posting on a new page under the PETERHAJINIAN.com umbrella. If you read this and would give me an extra click to continue reading the MadExpress, let me know. If not, I'll assume there is a) little readership or b) lazy readership. I would be in category b.

Plenty of new content coming. Another spanish rock opera, music videos, sci-fi romances, and random images from my sketchbooks.

YOUTUBE

I've started a new channel on youtube: MonsoonMansoorTV.

here's the first post:

Who's Afraid of the Midwest pt. 3

Who's Afraid of the Midwest pt. 2

Who's Afraid of the Midwest pt. 1

Home Entertainment Center.

ENORMOUS ORANGE: the notes.

A friend of mine suggested we do a two-person show, with the inspiration as the Mighty Boosh. As I watched it, I wrote down everything that popped into my head for our show. For every 30 seconds of the show I’d watch, I’d stop and write down something and send it to my friend. It turned out what I was thinking wasn’t close to what he was thinking. here is a compilation of my emails to him.

* * *

so i've only watched the first :30, and this is where i think you're going:

we're an unlikely duo of misfit friends who are hosting a travel show.

1 min in: we're a duo trying to put on a show, and due to our
ineptitude you get to see how we try and put it together

1 min 30: we're not doing a mockumentary, we're doing a show that
descends into chaos and only feels like a mocumentary.

2 min: we're doing sketch comedy, with monty-python type cuts, and
it's called "ENORMOUS ORANGE"

2 min 30: we're like waldorf and cranston (or whoever the muppet show
guys are), taking apart our own show that is past it's prime, jumped
the shark, run out of juice, and we're just htere to accept pay checks
and dish out revenge for what we felt was a creatively stifling work
situation.

3 min: we're an old vaudeville crew that got transported to the future
(1991) and are trying to come to terms not only with modernity but
also with our inability to attract women. high point of each episode:
one of us keeps learning new terms that they decide should become the
centerpiece of the show in progress. (such as: dadaism). they think
that the live broadcast is just a run through, because there are no
people in the studio except for the producer and the cameramen.

3 min 30: we're too guys trying to put on a sketch comedy act, and we
think we're chameolonic and really good at slipping into different
characters, but we suck and are reduced to just acting out a
character's tic or "thing". and doing so poorly.

4 min: we pretend to be british on stage but everyone we interact with
thinks we're australian. or we get things like south america and south
africa mixed up.

4 min 30: our sponsor is WUNDERPLASTIC, a mysterious home kitchen storage product that we are forced to put into different sketches.

5 min: we’re trying to get out of a show that’s past it’s prime, and shamelessly discuss it on stage.


* * *

i wrote this last night

It has just rained
and everything is wet
I sit at home
and wiggle my toes
because that rhyme is convenient
At times like these,
these aftermaths, these wakes
it's always about what
isn't here anymore.
and i still am.

welcome to

HOW'D THEY DO THAT?

It looked interesting, so I cut it out out of the National Geographic I found next to Antonio's desk. Snowflakes at different temperatures, that's something to talk about with someone in the dead of winter when you're waiting for the bus. But as I pressed the business end of an Avery Permanent Glue Stic on the backside of the picture, I realized that it's not just the thoughts that count these days, but where you get them. There are no more anonymous fact checkers, no more wizards behind curtains. It's not just a pen, it's a black, felt tipped signing pen. It's not just a page, it's an onion-skin paged Moleskine, allowed to dry and scanned by an Epson 1680 on company time. People are just as interested in the process as they are the outcome.

Antarctic dreams

Last night I dreamt I was in Antartica there. Paul was there, and a few other people, but I didn’t recognize them. It was like being at an acquaintance’s wedding. The building was steel painted white, and looked like it came from an era when steel was cheap. The cushions on the seats were hard foam. Probably so they wouldn’t have to be upholstered ever. You could take an elevator down to the shore, where every morning the ice would melt from the sand, and every night freeze. But we still talked about swimming. It was early summer, so a third of the sky was always night. It always dropped off into black. That’s because the sun was moving north for the summer. Probably in a month or two, the whole place would be dark. My parents kept calling, and what I worried about the most was how I was going to pay for things. I assumed everything was going to be expensive. It didn't feel cold at all either.

A nice place to live.

Help the people out.

A Town of Talking Animals.

It’s a nice little town. Mr. Frog is a train conductor, and Missus Frog makes blueberry pie. Mr. Rat is a fisherrat, and he doesn’t have a wife. Mr. Owl is a professor, and Missus Owl is a lawyer. She has a big case in City Hall, because Mr. and Missus Bluebird owe $80,000 in back taxes. Poor Bluebirds. But that’s nothing like the Horses, who are dissolving their marriage after Mr. Horse came home early from his sales trip to find Missus Horse with Mr. Duck. Kluck a duck.

Mr. Toothpaste Goes to his High School Reunion

the Octopus

Aunt Edith

GREAT AMERICAN NOVEL pt. 1

Times were good, and bad, all at the same time. Eh, what can you do? Greetings! Those were the first two sentences of the Great American Novel. Where is the rest of it, you ask? It’s on its way. You can’t just make this stuff up. It has to be a very specifically written and thought out. Like the Great Russian Novels. If Shakespeare was not born so soon, I’m sure he would have stolen from Chekov. And Tolstoy. But not Pushkin. What am I doing? Back to the novel!

I have three manuscripts, and yet none of them are yet the Great American Novel. How can this be? I shunned my father's craft and studied at the university to learn to write. And why? To write the Great American Novel, of course! Even if you can't be there, you must help define it! America is the great discussion that goes on even when no one is paying attention. Which is most of the time. Who has time to listen anymore? I have three manuscripts, and yet none of them are yet the Great American Novel. But there are other pressing questions. What shall I eat tonight? What will I get my lady for her birthday? Is it enough to write a poem? But a poem is never enough! There always must be something behind the poem, or it will never sing. Melodious notes left to hang without a clef to cling to. One of my manuscripts is about poetry. It's about bad poetry, and an American who uses it to try and love a woman from South America. Why not? There's plenty of bad poetry in love everywhere. And even Americans want to talk about Americans. What else do they know? Hopefully my poetry will not be bad poetry. I will use my enthusiasm and her surprise as the clef to hang my words on. And hope that the melody is right.

What am I doing? I am getting nowhere closer to the Great American Novel! Already I’ve apparently lost my way on the keyboard. My father will ask why I went to study at the university. My mother will tell me they love me. My boss will ask me to stop wasting company time. But this is all a part of it, I tell you. I studied at a university, an American university. One that had foreign students everywhere learning things about science and engineering while I learned about parsing verse and could decipher English-inspired dystopian novels by their opening sentences. I became a harborer of turns-of-phrases and harbinger of liberal arts. But did I become any closer to the writing the Great American Novel?

Flawed characters! That’s what this is supposed to be about! Flawed characters and failed actors and the heroes that work the local drive through restaurant! But it has to be simple. It has to be something like electricity. Ubiquitous with ubiquitous messages and lessons to give. Or motorcycles. Loud and archaic. A manly holdover from the time of fedoras.

Postcard from Willy, Part 4

Postcard from Willy, Part 3

Postcard from Willy, Part 2

Postcard from Willy, Part 1

Guitar

Temptation had dried his mouth, and he stared through the window wondering if the ends justified the means. If he bought the guitar, would he just be giving into the machine? Would it be better if he stole it? Could he authentically write protest songs if he paid full price? But it was a means to another means. Because ends that are endless aren’t ends at all, but trends that we have to learn to live with. He pressed his head to the window, pulling his tongue from the roof of his mouth and breathing deep. He knew if he turned and walked down the street, the image was already burned into his mind. However he got the guitar, it didn’t matter. The music he’d write would be authentic, he reasoned with himself, because the guitar was a tool he’d master. And when he did, it would give up all of its promises to him. It would aid and be his inner voice. If only he had enough money to buy a soda.

Bill

On a train I sit, waiting to leave. Hearing the engine start up, the ventilators whirring is drowned out by a deeper, more insistent noise. Lights flash off, on again. One of the days when you're not doing anything, and it's creaking along, and it's going to be long. But at the same time i feel as though I might burst, to be cliche, and and if there were a woman sitting next to me I'd wrap my arms around her and tell her that it didn't matter where we were going, because I would be going with her.

And then I wake up, blinking for the last time as I realize we're beginning to move. Imperceptibly at first, but now we've gone on to a full speed, full pitch ahead. Archaic bells declare our tradition, and old and young smile while the jaded middle look disapprovingly at their guts and cringe.

Then I wake up again, and there is a woman next to me. I try to throw my arms around her and she says "I have a boyfriend." And so I say "Look, I'm not asking you to dance."

Chen

Chen lives and works at 142 W 16th St. Most people know it because of the beautiful chinese dragon that's climbing up the building with "CHEN" inscribed in neon on its side. On top of the building is a King Kong of King Kongs, though slightly faded from the sun. Standing tall and declaring himself "Bad Hunger. Real Bad."

Chen owned the building. He slept in the small apartment upstairs with his family, and managed the restaurant downstairs. People would come in and he'd start shouting "Yummy yummy chicken! Here!" or "Chicken! Chicken chicken!" It sounded less like a broke record and more like a dedicated train driver. Announcements of "No MSG!" and "Tofu good you for you!" punctuated the intense discussion of whether you could eat more rice or noodles in one sitting.

His children hated this diligence, because Chen never turned it off. They grew up with him interrupting TV shows with "Pollo! Pollo! Pollo! Hot!" or "Mira! Yummy yummy chicken!" He didn't know he was doing it. He just did.

His customers appreciated his dedication, because they were a dedicated bunch of blue collar workers and poets who wanted to die doing what they loved.

Which is how Chen did. He was standing outside his shop, telling the smokers how beautiful of a day it was. He threw in a "Pork! Moo!" or a "Pollo!" every now and then, but they were used to it and so didn't pay attention. Which was too bad, because in the middle of a sentence about dew points he yelled "Mira! Look!" right before King "Hunger Real Bad" Kong plummeted to the sidewalk, killing them and a lot of ants.

Andy

Andy is writing a letter. A love letter. First, he looks at Jill's picture, then at Maria's, then he writes his love like honey on a peanut butter and banana sandwich. Because she's as sweet as nectarine, as wonderful as the sunrise, which he's seen twice, and never on purpose. But he gets to the end and looks at Jill. You, he thinks, you will get a letter of love from the dregs of my heart. Then he looks at Maria. You, he thinks, you will get the tequila worm at the bottom of my heart. But that's not fair, he thinks, if Jill gets all the margaritas and Maria must prove her love by swallowing the worm. So he decides. And tears the letter in half, mailing each girl one half of the letter.

Amy

Amy used to paint Johnnys. But she didn't sell a single swatch of canvas until she started painting Phil. Why? Because, dear consumer, Phil is the new Scobie.

But she loved Johnny. She loved his eyes, the way his dimples disappeared when he caught his breath from laughing. She loved his look of contentment, partly because it was she who brought it to him. But people didn't want the Johnny, because he loved Amy, so they couldn't have his love. So they wanted Phil, because a Phil could always be loved. A Phil is always in need.

She sat down, didn't know whether to have coffee or tea. Coffee with cream, she chose. Because coffee laced with cream reminds her of her love with Johnny. And she loved Johnny, which is why she couldn't paint any more pictures of him. At least not to sell. Her love had become like coffee laced with cream, as extraordinary as anything ordinary could ever be. Let the others have their pantings of Phil. Every night she went home to Johnny.

Gilberto

Gilberto just moved in. To a house of Americans. But he was Portuguese, from Lisbon, spoke no English and they spoke no Portuguese. But they all shared the same hatred of geese and unclean kitchens.

He had left a girl in Lisbon, her name was Maya. He hired a very expensive tag artist to tag her name and "amante" on the side of a school she passed every day on her walk to work, And did he miss her.

But how was he supposed to say it? How could he express the complex thoughts inside of his head, or the aching that shook his marrow, or that he didn't appreciate who kept stealing all his butter? They spoke to him slowly and deliberately, as though he were retarded.

His pride endangered, his dignity wounded, he sat down and made a salad. A tomato was his heart, "heart" he said, holding it up. The way he cut it told them how he hurt, or why, or if, that day. The lettuce was his work, whether it was bitter or juicy, satisfying or leaving wont. Everything he laid the table he described deliberately so they could understand the way he truly felt.

And in this way his roommates could describe to him about their days. And in doing this, they learned each other's weeks, then months. He learned their insecurities, and how they dealt with their histories popping up in their daily lives. He did learn English, but he still preferred to conquer the language barrier with salad.

Robert

Robert was a robber who watered people's plants when he broke into their houses. That being said, he still knew his way around a safe, and a way around a t-bone sauteed with onions to perfectly pacify any great dane.

He was never caught. Well, once.

He was in a house. Came through the window, jimmied the lock with a paperclip, stepped down gently onto the table, and then the chair. It was as thought the kitchenette were a staircase the gods has placed in the house just for him.

But he didn't stop, his ears never burned, nor did the hair on the back of his neck stand up. When he found the photo, his hand dropped to the side, the other held the picture closer to his face. Closer to his eyes, just off his nose so the illusion wouldn't be broken or smudged by him smacking his nose onto the glass.

In it she was sitting on the grass, laughing off to her right. It wasn't her eyes, or her smile that screamed geometric perfection that caught his throat. It was her collarbone. It was, in his yes, both fragile and powerful, something to cradle in his arms, something to rest his forehead on. Delicate, graceful, he ran his eyes along it and made his fingers jealous.

It was in this state she found him.

Maggie

Maggie was running through the woods. It was a low-res woods, however, and it took a while for her to understand what was branch and what was twig and what was red squirrel spread between blocky leaves. She stopped to flip her black hair.

"I've never done that," she said to a quadrangled rabbit. It ran off, not because it was scared of her, but because it was on time. Early, to be exact. And it wanted to catch a pint.

But Maggie was late. She had an appointment, a date with a guy who had a tattoo that could only be seen with his shirt off. It was of a block. A block or the dot between "pixel" and "com." She didn't know if she could date him. And decided not to when he said, "Um... like, I gotta go practice with my band."

When he got up and left she muttered "BLOCKHEAD!"

Black Plague

He grew up as Xerxes MacArthur. He was an orphan, a foster child. He always knew that. There was no point in hiding that sort of knowledge in a world where genetics can be manufactured.

Not that he was a mutant. Or even an alta, a human who was the product of altered or manufactured DNA. He was all flesh, made by how people have always been making babies.

He just didn't know who his parents were.

He was a good student at school. He was fascinated with Earth history. Not ancient, but definitely the last millennium. The monolithic rise of science and rationalism was inspiring. Tyrannical, the evaporating religions of the world cried. No one really argued with this criticism, mainly because science was the religion that could deliver miracles on demand. And that, for anyone facing their own mortality, meant that you could mold and bend the shape of God, making the discipline of religion too much trouble for the planet's first space colonizing generation.

He gained most of his knowledge from the electroslates and interstellar web, but what he enjoyed most was going to the small libraries that still existed and stare at the books on the shelves. They were protected behind a force field to insure the claws of mold wouldn't destroy the remaining jewels in ancient humanity's intellectual crown.

Sometimes, he would convince the librarian to let him hold them. Running his fingers along the edges of the page and feeling the weight and balance of it on his open palm, he fell in love with them. A few times he snuck a duplicator in, and would make facsimile copies of the books, even some handwritten journals, so he could take them home. Slowly he amassed his library, and while other children were out playing, he was getting lost in the depths of history on an ink and paper gondola.

His luck would have it that he lives near a very historical place. The space disease that ravaged the planet almost four hundred years previously had broken out on a street that ran past his school to the hospital at the end of the row. A famous space explorer, Khaludun Burton, became ill on a light trip back from the Crow's Foot Nebula. No one knew what it was, and he was quarantined in his space craft as prescribed at the time. He was self medicating, self worshipping, and was able to convince the ruling powers of Earth that he was ready to land and receive his hero's welcome. Contact with alien life has only happened four times in the history of humanity, and with this summit in the Crow's Feet Nebula, Burton raised the number he was responsible for to three.

The hypermedia was in full swing, selling papers and interstellar web space like hot papaya, about whether the decorated explorer was carrying a disease. Religious groups jumped on it, claiming that the false religion of science was about to meet its doom. The ruling powers agreed to let him land, if he immediately went to a hospital. So he did.

But on his way from the spacecraft to the ambulance, a man ran up and shot him. Alan Ryback, on live visual feed to around the planet, assassinated a decorated explorer on his triumphant return. The body immediately disintegrated, and within twelve hours everyone at the landing was ill with an unidentifiable disease. It was neither virus, bacteria, nor any one of the many space pores on record. It was never proven to be transmitted by air, or by water, or by contact. Some said it was transmitted by light. Some said by gravity. It was preposterous, these were ridiculous claims, but there were no other likely answered found.

Ryback died in jail within hours. Others soon followed, and by the next day, it was found that the entire continent had fallen ill. Two days later, a quarter of the population of the entire planet was dead or dying. Half the world's population were dying, and all on live television. In some places, there was no one left to turn the cameras off.

Earth was quarantined. The ruling powers were decimated, and in a fit of divine retribution the survivors hunted down and killed all of Ryback's surviving family. Those who were left were giddy with divine rage, screaming that the ills of rationalism and science had finally angered God enough to have him send down the Angel of Death in the form of Ryback to pay out back judgments that had been accumulating since the Ascetic Tax implemented almost five hundred years before. Those who believed in science went on a pillage themselves. This time targeting the centers of science that had failed them. Hospitals were pulled apart. Universities were bombed. And libraries were all but torn apart, the fiction sections left like holy ground.

It was a macabre story, a psychotic break in the life of a politically unified planet. One that Xerxes, a pure rationalist, loved to read for the coda where science is triumphant again. A story that Xerxes soon hoped people would some how forget. He had to work some sort of miracle, on a grand scale.

Flipping through one of the handwritten journals, he found reference to a Ryback descendent. Which was impossible. It wasn't an alta. There was an estranged cousin, who escaped the slaughter by being off planet. He had a family, who had a family secret, and his journal was secretly passed down through the centuries from deathbeds. Each family member who bore the burden of the journal would put their name down on the blank pages in the back. Twenty-five generations, and the name MacArthur showed up.

Xerxes' ears began to burn. His father received the book from his father. And when his father was dying because a miracle didn't show up on time, he passed it to Xerxes' mother. Who, wishing for one miracle and got another, died giving birth to Xerxes, ended up donating her son to another family and an ancient family secret to a local library.

His ears where still burning. He rubbed them, then looked at himself in the mirror. He could see the blood pulsing in them, the crimson now rising up his neck. He didn't understand it, but he started moving. He didn't understand it, but his legs were taking him and his books outside. He didn't understand it, but he walked into the library. He didn't understand it, but he held his hands up in front of his face to shield it from the heat. He ran out of the library, praying for a miracle. One where the science of force fields fail.

An Essay on Michel Houellebecq’s “Elementary Particles”

Houellebecq has decided that humanity is doomed because the competing (but somehow parallel) paradigms that used to keep humanity together (religion & science) was flawed and would end in failure. Also, using the hippie and New Age movements of personal and sexual freedom as examples of the uselessness of men, the destructiveness (psychologically, socially) of sexual reproduction, and the futility/insatiability of sexuality itself, concludes that the only route for modern humanity to go is to be genetically reconstructed into a mass of asexual “twins.” Sharing the same genetic code but with individual personalities.

The two main characters are Michel and Bruno, two half brothers. Bruno exemplifies the futility of modern humans, men, and sexual reproduction. His brother, on the other hand, is an asexual prototype for the future human race. As a molecular biologist, Michel is very involved in genetic research, and is responsible for positivism, an idea that “logically” leads to Houellebecq’s conclusions.

Houellebecq demands a dramatic shift in society. He feels it can’t continue unless it shifts and sense of community, permanence and of the sacred is restored. He claims that discoveries in science made religion obsolete (materialism), and discoveries in physics made materialism obsolete. Without hope, Western society is doomed. And the world with it.

Is this narcissistic? Could be. The epilogue is a history of what happens with the genetic movement that is spawned by positivism (we’re not given a clear idea of what it is exactly), as told by the superhumans who succeed us. They describe us as an unhappy race, barely different from the apes, yet still carried a nobility within us. And, they say, it’s admirable that we chose who succeeded us. The narcissism is apparent in that we created gods and committed suicide as a species. Probably the biggest one off ending for a completely self absorbed society with a martyr complex.

Houellebecq also does not take into account other societies: China, South America, Africa, the Indian Subcontinent. He doesn’t discuss globalism as a movement (the book was published in 1998), but seems assured any cyanide Western Europe and North America swallow, the rest of the world will, too. Maybe his despair then, is caused by the loss of hope because he doesn’t see how societal mutations take over for one another. The end of Western society isn’t the end of the world, in the same way the Dark Ages weren’t, the collapse of the Ottoman Empire, the fall the Incas. His viewpoint then is based on narrowminded perceptions.

A number of characters in the book are said to be influenced by Aldous Huxley. Most specifically “Brave New World.” In fact, the world that is supposedly created by Michel’s positivism is the utopia/distopia that Huxley describes in his book. That book, as well, was flawed in the same way that this book is flawed: universal generalizations of the future of the planet do not take into account the complexity of the human race when it comes to organization. True, we may be at a point in history when it is possible for one part of the human race to subject the entire planet to its bidding (there have been more and more attempts in the last few centuries), but that is also a testament to our lack of true understanding of our own species.

An Examination of Roman Sarcophagi

I was at the museum the other day, and we started into the Roman and Greek section. This is always noted as antiquity, the ancient world with all its wonders and empires. One thing that I don't understand is how people today can consider themselves the pinnacle of history, when there are a lot of things we don't understand about ancient architecture. Or even attitudes to life. I don't agree with the philosophy to worship the ancients, and to glorify the past while the future dries up (thanks Bono). Nor do I agree that none of it matters, past present future and that all things just continue to get recycled through the great wheel of karma.

But at the same time, what does it say about our lack of knowledge of the ancients? Could we learn worthwhile lessons about the human experience through studying them? Or is it just academic calisthenics? There is a determination of all peoples throughout history to achieve immortality. It's wrapped up in religions in the form of an afterlife or reincarnation (this world might end, but you're not going to end with it). You can see it today in fringe groups that want to be cryogenically frozen until science can take care of the human body so it never deteriorates, and in the mainstream in the different health fads and crazes that offer "longer life." "Cheat death" is the modern mantra of not drug companies of today. And people are eating it up.

That's a discussion for another time, the whole economics that drive Merck and other drug companies to create more and more products to extend people's lives. But I want to look at the attitude of death that seems to prevail.

This all stems from looking at the ruins of a Roman sarcophagus at the Minnesota Institute of Art. The explanation on the card noted that the Romans built these intricate mausoleums to house their dead because they wanted to fight against the oblivion of death. That was 2000 years ago. The oblivion of death was scaring people long before anyone had thought of plastic surgery, or retirement funds, or vacations in the Caribbean. Which makes me wonder how many Romans sat around Testaccio and discussed the Sumerians and Hittites. Like, "Dudus, do you think that Ur ever saw it coming? That was like 2000 years ago. I wonder if anyone in Mesopotamia ever thought we'd be discussing them now." 4000 years later we have a vague sense of the Hittites, but more of a sense of Roman life. Because they built monuments to themselves so they wouldn't be swallowed by history. They have, in some way, achieved a form of immortality.

That's called legacy.

But is that good enough for our current culture. We seem to be obsessed by legacy, by our purpose in life. In a lot of ways, Arthur Miller's "Death of a Salesman" attempts to tackle these very questions in the American context some fifty years ago. The play is about American moral luck, and that ethical business decisions may insure your family's financial success, but at what price? A man makes a decision for financial gain, and in the end a lot of boys die and he loses the respect of his family. And his legacy is in ruins.

This attitude has pushed America forward to the forefront of global economic domination, but at what price? A lot of people champion the Protestant work ethic as the reason the west has achieved industrial domination of the world, and some even link it to the fall of communism. So what we're left with is a culture that is obsessed with legacy, from our presidents (Bush has made it no secret he wants to be in the history books) down to the average person on the street (one example would be "The Purpose Driven Life"'s domination of the NY Times bestseller list).

And yet we're still left with huge gaps of immorality in our culture: the Enron scandal being an example of moral luck going bad, but also the 80s culture of greediness that epitomizes itself in the juxtaposition between starving latin americans and people spending tens of thousands of dollars on plastic surgery.

I suppose this has put me in the position of a Protestant preacher, preaching the ills of society. But I find it fascinating the ways we've dealt with our mortality when compared to the Romans. Ours is almost entirely based in science, theirs in physical presence and religion. The question still remains: Dude, did they ever see it coming?

poetry iii

rome wasn't built in a day
but i wonder if it was built this way
invoices, tickets piled high
paper columns climbing to the sky
another Babel, a temple to Zeus
an obligation more than a thing of use
no one will touch it, despite its necesity
which is why they've hired me

I am the priest to this temple
the author of this memo
I am the one who keeps it up
policies sharp will cut your hand
but I am the Paper Sultan
I am the ice cubes for your cup

convenience is the thing emperors crave
it wasn't their sweat that made sure the roads were paved
it wasn't their blood that bought this city
it isn't their hand, mind, foot that remains ready
inch by inch, brick by brick
their authority fastened by a paperclip
it's a wonder all these things don't slip
their power relies on whether the column is steady

I am the Raj of Records
my fingers fast like feathers
I am like a bird who rises from the fire
I am Bilbo, my nemesis Golum
his greed tries to destroy my column
By giving me more to stack higher and higher

I am wondering, if I may
bring down Rome in a day
if I am the one with that kind of power
I work and the emperors get
they do not even know of me yet
but think quick, for nearer draws the hour

> * * * <


The Queen of Ibiza
said her name was Liza
but I know it's really Pilar

and the Prince of Texas
said he didn't need glasses
but I know he can't see that far

you might pretend
to be some stranger's friend
but i know who you really are

I'm the filer, the compiler
the one who waits a while'r
I drink at my desk
with only the best
like a rhymin', two timin' liar

The Sultan of Sweden
claimed to be beaten
only so he could hustle

and the Raj of Levant
would make the women faint
with just a twitch of his muscle

i'm no liar but my pants are on fire
if you were to call me dial "d-e-s-i-r-e"
i often try to grasp
that posionous asp
which is why i'm called the "de-Niler"

> * * * <

the single gets doubled
the doubled gets done
when the middle is cooked
put it on a bun

"would you like a stick of gum"
would you like a kind of stereroid
when you're breath gets glum
wintergreen hope
but you don't know where it's from

like pirates on the run
sailing for buried treasure
in the red setting sun
with a yo-ho-ho
and a bottle of rum

> * * * <

my breakfast is subtle
my breakfast is tall
i like it cooked by old russian women
who wear blue and grey shawls

the chicken is involved
the pig is committed
i'd swallow peaches whole
if they only came pitted

but russian women be damned
if my fruit comes from a can
because i'm not that kind of man
oh no, i'm not into cans

an omelet needs eggs
a walk requires legs
if you got a bottle
its best to drink it to the dregs

i like the organic
she digs the sarcastic
when we get together
it's very "oh!"

> * * * <

he called a lion "tiger"
a stupid misnomer
from a lone afrikaaner
the kind you invite over

with a swagger to his step
a directline to his rep
his favorite stooge was shep
he had this bright idea

it was born from where he came
destined for the movie frame
had a twin who spoke just the same
the greatest star from tanzania

she was a girl who fell in love
at her desk department.state.gov
her only quirk to remain gloved
with the star from tanzania

though the star had wanted to bang her
she had fallen for his doppelganger
the even division, no remainder
the one not addicted to the media

and so the star, who's name was ted
called up his brother, aptly named ed
and told him on the line "your dead"
and howled and hooted a "booya!"

but ed was also quite taken
with the gloved girl of washington
who liked to bring home the bacon
and would independantly dance the cha-cha

but it can't all be told
what happened that cold
winter and summer and mold
has gotten to my brain again-a

in the end, the babe with gloves
settled out of court for love
and extracted a loving pension
from ed the man with inertia

the movie man ted
tied himself to his bed
and cried till his ideas fled
such is the end of meglomania

let this be a lesson to all
who try to be players with no ball
who try to be collect with no call
who say “goodbye” without “see ya”

one brother mad, the other one hitched
and the grand idea left unpitched
the honeymoon had the light unswitched
and they drank a whole lot of franzia

now I hope you like my meandering tale
as crasy as a symphonic whale
as uncongruent as a four sided triangle
even my rhyming, I miss my own scale.

> * * * <

and a love
gone away
like a bottle
in a bag

elixir

i need to cure this cottonmouth
this indecision this indigestion
i need something to mix with my
rum and lemon rum and orange

is it time to fill the fridge
it just takes so much to just get up
do you think you could do it again?
i'm just not feeling i'm just not up to it

i wish i could say it was different
but laziness is just the half of it
i know my problems could all be solved
if i had my own elixir and it competed with coke

by the trees
lies the spring
of soda water

teach the paths
by the stars
to your daughters

didn't tell
but you might as well
you know you ought ta

poetry ii

saying west asian
perfect persuasion
for the occasion, baby

dressed like elvis
at a tom jones contest
red, dressed, and lazy

Orphanage

I was in Lebanon, traveling from Damascus to Beirut, when one of the guides told me about a local storyteller in the back of a tea shop in the town we were passing through.

“He does a good version of Babar,” he said to me after dinner, “but he also does a story I think you’d like better.”

After dinner, we left everyone else at the hotel to fan themselves to sleep, and twisted through the streets to a tea shop. In a small room in the back the grey bearded storyteller nodded for us to come in without opening his eyes. We sat and smoked in silence, the clouds of perfumed smoke crawled up from the hookah to the yellow ceiling. Someone turned the single lamp down low, and the storyteller began to chant in a slow, raspy Arabic.

The guide, perched on a stack of rugs, translated for me. I draw deep on the pipe, pulling my traveling boots in tighter to me as I leaned against the rug hanging from the wall.



Praise be to Allah, the Compassionate and Beneficent. This is a story about a Sufi, who wanted to reach spiritual oneness with Allah and so took the advice of his sheikh to work in an orphanage. He did so at a time when the infidel kings of Europe were pulling the hands of the Ottomans first one way, then another. And the Pashas, turning away from Allah’s compassion, pushed many Armenians in their land to their death. Although not believers, they are People of the Book, and so their spared children began to fill up the orphanages in Aleppo and her sisters.

This Sufi worked at one of these orphanages, cooking when there was food, washing when there was water, and teaching the young children about Mohammed (peace be upon him) and the Koran when there was light. A local farmer would bring by apples and dates from his orchards every week, and this was the main staple at the orphanage besides donated rice or odds and ends from the bazaar. The apples were usually rotten, but every now and then there would be a few that were ripe and not rotten.

Though the children listened to his recounting of Mohammed and Gabriel, and the hadith, and though some would sometimes pray with him during the day, none of them submitted to Allah. It seemed, to the Sufi, that they were too preoccupied with food.

The children, everyday, would talk about food. One day, when the Sufi was telling the tale of Mohammed’s first vision of Gabriel, a boy stopped him to tell him a story.

The boy’s father would go to the tea shops and play backgammon. Once, his father called him over and gave him a sip of his Turkish coffee. His father was proud of his son, because the next Sunday he was going to be the Moses of the church picnic, the madakh, the one who was sponsoring the shish kebab and would ask for the food to be blessed. The men sitting around in their fezzes chuckled at the boy, their smiling lips twisting their mustaches. Read his fortune, they called to the proprietor, a Greek named Nikos. He called his Muslim wife over, who studied the grounds on the bottom of the porcelain cup and gasped. ‘My dears,’ she said, ‘I hope you are hungry because the madakh is going to be the best you’ve had in a long time.’

’Do you not know,’ the Sufi asked of them, suspecting they were complaining of the apples and dates brought by a local farmer, and the donated rice or odds and ends from the bazaar, ‘that Allah will provide? That His Truth and Love are greater than the greatest banquet you could eat at? Look at the birds, does Allah not feed them?’

’Allah will provide,’ they said back to him. ‘We do not doubt. He sends apples every day.’ This did not keep them from discussing food with the Sufi. He went and asked his sheikh what to do, but the sheikh told him to be patient. It was a test from Allah. The Sufi didn’t tell his sheikh, but he had already suspected it was a test because the children’s stories were making him hungry all the time.

He also noticed the children were getting thinner and thinner, and begged the local merchants for more rice, but they told him to thicken the gruel with fat. He tried this, and other things, but the children just seemed to get thinner, and lighter. He read al-Arabye’s and Ibn Khaldun’s (as heretical as they were) prescriptions for healthy eating. He even began to listen to their stories to see if there were dietary secrets hidden in them.

‘I am thankful for the rice you make us,’ one girl said, ‘but you do not make it how my mother used to. She would take me to the market, and there we would search high and low for sweet powdered curry. We could only get a small amount because of its price. Then we would go home and she would show me how to cook the rice. That and dolma, sarma, boreks and shish kebabs. We would spend all day in the kitchen, sweating because it was so hot, with my aunts and sisters talking all the while about the hodja and who I should marry and other stories.’

’What else did your mother put in the rice?’ the Sufi asked.

’A little salt. But she would save that for the yogurt she would make. It was as white as her skin. I remember she had big eyes, dark like eggplants.’

This was all he could glean from the children when he started to ask for specifics about the secrets. They could only tell him a little thing he already knew about cooking, then they would talk about their missing parents.

’My father had a long moustache, and when he would think hard he would push his eyebrows together and pull at the ends of his moustache.’

’My mother had large, soft arms. They were strong, though, lifting huge pots of rice, or helping the neighbors push up the lattice to grow grape vines on.’

’My father would take me up in the mountains to hang the cured meat and dried fruits for the winter. He taught me the mountain paths, and the ways animals would make their paths to the storehouse, but how we designed the lock and door so they couldn’t get in.’

‘My mother would smile all the time, unless she was chastising me for not praying, or telling me not to talk to the Turkish soldiers.’

He tried all these secrets, including a few from his sheikh and the mothers in town that he ran into while on his way to get a ration of rice or a generous gift of vegetables. Nothing was working.

One day he noticed some of the children had small bumps on their backs. He called in the doctor, who looked at them and said there was nothing he could do. They didn’t seem to be harmful, the doctor said, but they were on the children’s shoulder blades so if they had trouble moving their arms that he should call the doctor again.

Having grown attached to the children, the Sufi could hardly bear the thought of them having some illness. He knew Allah was compassionate, and in His compassion wouldn’t allow these children to suffer more than they already had. He also knew that Allah rewarded those who were wise and productive. So he had the children help out now with their hands and arms: folding, knitting, lifting, anything to keep their arms from sitting idle and possibly becoming useless.

Instead of the exercise helping, more children started to grow bumps on their backs. And the bumps grew bigger and bigger, and longer down their back. The Sufi tried harder to get them to pray, but instead of praying they would tell more stories of growing up in the villages. They even started to sing the songs and dance the dances of the Armenian tradition in the orphanage yard. This worried the Sufi, for it was dangerous to promote an infidel culture. Not only would people not want to take the children from the orphanage, but they would also chastise him for not being able to teach them the ways of the Prophet.

His sheikh warned him that not everyone enjoyed dancing as Sufis did, and that he must be careful with this. Immediately he went back to the orphanage and found the children dancing and singing in the orphanage yard. He shouted at them, pushing them into the orphanage and shutting the door, telling them he wouldn’t open the door to the yard or let them out again until they promised to start praying and stop singing.

The children hung their heads for the rest of the day, but the next day the Sufi was woken by singing. He leapt out of bed and looked outside, but they weren’t there. The children were all gathered in the kitchen, singing and dancing an ancient Armenian folk song. This day was the Holy Day, and people from the outskirts of town were passing the house on their way to the mosque. On these days, the Sufi would try and get the children to go to the mosque. But today, heeding the warnings of his sheikh, he was trying his hardest to get the children to stop singing. He grabbed a switch and slammed tables and chairs until they were silent.

But before he could begin to punish them, there was a loud knocking sound at the door. It was the farmer who donated the dates and apples. He was demanding why there was infidel singing going on inside the orphanage.

‘It is the children,’ said the Sufi, ‘but it is okay, I am punishing them.’

‘Let them come out,’ shouted the farmer. ‘We will punish them!’

The Sufi looked behind the farmer and saw that a large crowd had gathered. They started to call for the children to come out.

‘Brothers! Sisters!’ the Sufi called out. ‘I have it all under control, they are to be punished in strict accordance to the hadith and Koran.’

‘You have failed us, Sufi,’ the crowd shouted back. ‘The doctor also tells they are sick! Send them out, that we might teach them the holy wrath of Allah! Let them fear Him and death!’

‘What do they want?’ the children called from behind the Sufi.

‘Silence!’ the Sufi called back. ‘The crowd wants to punish you harshly.’

‘Let us outside!’ they called back, coming up to the door. ‘Let us show them the good of our singing and dancing. Do you not understand? Allah has provided!’

‘What are you talking about?’ the Sufi asked as they pushed past him.

‘Here come the little brats now!’ called the farmer to the crowd. ‘Let us teach them a lesson.’

The children poured out into the orphanage yard, all the while the Sufi called to them to stay in the house. But he saw something that alarmed him. The bumps that had been growing on their backs were pushing out and cutting their shirts. Once the last child had passed out into the yard, they started to sing and dance in a large circle. The crowd shouted back, but dared not touch the children, for brilliant, white feathered wings were pushing their way out of their shirts. One by one, the children stretched their wings.

‘Sufi! Sufi!’ they called. ‘Do you see now? Allah has provided!’

And as they sang, they started to flap their pure white wings and ascended into the air. The crowd screamed and cowered from what they called a work of Shaitan. The children started to laugh, and ascended higher into the pale Syrian sky.”



The storyteller coughed, and then chanted a final line.

“The last thing the Sufi saw,” said the guide, letting the smoke crawl up from out of his mouth, “were pure white feathers on the ground. Then the crowd seized him.”