does the beef salute the butcher?

breathe in

the other day i re-read the midnight meat train by clive barker. every time i read clive barker i get inspired myself, his style and themes reminding me of some of my own writing. i write this with a sort of assumption that you, my one or two intelligent readers, have had the pleasure of reading the story itself, which is effectively a treatise on secret worlds, secret identities, on the craziness that pervades our everyday lives given form. i wish i could be kaufman, indoctrinated in a baptism of blood into the world that lives beneath ours yet affects ours so much. then a thought came to me.

the city fathers are in fact a direct metaphor for the gay community.

a society of cannibals that lives just below the surface, that have been there since time immeasurable, feeding on those that they give life to not out of hunger, but out of need. the first father that talks to kaufman says that he despises the taste, but then only a moment later smiles wickedly as the gore of that nights feast trickles down his breast. presented as grotesque caricatures, but definitely human, the fathers sustain society, represented by the hulking other that lurks in the shadows just out of sight, through a grotesque ritual unspeakable by those that it benefits.

every night, just on the fringes, queers run amok just under the surface of popular culture, interacting beneath the gaze of the straight majority yet right in front of their eyes. we pull their strings, our music evolving into their music, our trends becoming their trends. in modern times it can be traced back to the dot-com boom, the gays being at the forefront with catchy ideas and a broader technical knowledge than others at the time. and the concept goes beyond culture, the gay community being outcast and frowned upon and therefore always striving for acceptance through financial and professional success. that success, although translating to a mediocre level of acceptance, always seems to be miscredited, or, to warp the old adage, it seemed behind every good man was a good fag.

to go back to the similarities, the most baffling part is that the surface world denies, even criminalizes, the very machine which keeps it going. and it may not be homosexuality in particular, but sexuality in general. the taboos of bondage, rough trade, group sex, fetishism (in all its forms, too numerous to mention), looked at as anathaema yet always lurking. and maybe it is homosexuality because many homosexuals embrace these things as a part of life, sometimes as part of their everyday routine. and that scares the majority. in effect, they may as well be hanging from a hook in a slaughterhouse subway car, fresh for consumption by the very things they fear, the very things that keep them alive.

breathe out

enough with the book report babble. i did find that the film for the story is in production, slated for a 2008 release with clive barkers full consent. not really much info yet, but hopefully it will be a triumphant reminder to all the saw and japanese ripoff fanboys out there that there really aren't any new stories, just new ways of telling them.




and just a side note. in the story in the hills, the cities clive barker originated the line stolen by trent reznor in sin: "i told you, i don't want to see another church; the smell of the places makes me sick. stale incense, old sweat and lies...."

if you listen, mr 'i'm clean like jesus now' reznor has stolen a lot from mr. barker, but he still makes good music.

nebulize

nin - help me i am in hell

there are fields of fire behind your eyes

breathe in

i have seen a lot today. i have seen the past 5 years summed up in 2 minutes of video. rather than rehash things that have been repeated thousands of times, i have found a couple of things that give a different perspective.

first: the end



second: the paradigm

"Self-reinforcing cycles are engines of change, for better or worse. They get more and more extreme, until either some new constraint enters to impose a new equilibrium, or they crash. Hurricanes suck up energy from the heat in the sea, and grow bigger, sucking more energy, which makes them bigger still, until they hit land and blow themselves out. Addicts keep taking more of what they’re addicted to, until they hit bottom, whether the addiction is to alcohol or heroin or military intervention.

This quality of systems does not bode well—either for the children of Beirut or those of Haifa. Europe and the UN might make some weak attempts to intervene, but as long as the U.S. is cheering the Israeli government on, no serious constraints will be imposed. And why shouldn’t we cheer them on, when Israel’s addiction to force as a solution is the mirror of ours? We’re the big guy and the small guy, standing each other drinks at the pub and throwing the chairs at anyone who threatens us, until we smash the place.

It is this very self-reinforcing cycle that keeps power in the hands of the neo-cons, whose answer to every fear and insecurity is more force. Force which creates more fear, which generates more violence, which requires more force to keep down. It’s an inherent aspect of being caught in this sort of system that as it begins to spiral out of control, and starts to break apart, the only solution you can see is more of the same. An alcoholic gets fired for drinking on the job, and drinks more to forget. Iraq is not working out well for Bush and the neocons, so bring in more troops, or expand the war—Lebanon, Syria, Iran.

You can’t change a self-reinforcing system by changing amounts. Recovering alcoholics know this, generals and politicians don’t. Try to limit yourself to one drink before dinner, and somehow you still end up behind the wheel of the car that careens into the bus full of schoolchildren on the road. Tell yourself that you are using a measured, limited response for well-thought out political aims, and you still end up with blackened torsos and the severed limbs of infants in smoking piles on the motorway.

Here’s some other things we know about these cycles—they are expensive. They consume resources. Drinking up the children’s milk money down at the local. Starving every social program to fund our military. And when they crash, they often fall hardest on the undeserving. The drunk behind the wheel rolls out of the crushed car, unharmed, while the family of five lies dead. The policy makers are not cringing in tenements as bombs fall, or crying over the bleeding body of their most beloved child. Nor are most of those who support the policies. Yet.

To change the system, you need to change the paradigm, the way you frame the situation and think about it, the deep assumptions that shape your viewpoint. That’s Donella Meadows’ most effective way to intervene—changing the world view and the constructs that support the system. It’s also, generally, a hard and painful process. A new paradigm, a new construct of self and world, goes against everything we know and believe. If I’m telling myself that I’m a fun-loving, party kind of a gal—how painful to instead admit that I’m an alcoholic! If I’m justifying the deaths of children by telling myself that I’m bringing democracy to the region, or safeguarding my sister’s children in Hadera, or fulfilling God’s plan, how painful to look at the broken bodies on the pavement and say, “I did that. I have blood on my hands.”"

read the full article here

some of you may think that my posting of dr. strangelove is a dark attempt at comedy, but i post this in all seriousness. this is the place where we are heading, this is the road that the construct has led us down. i have been immersing myself in my own dark world, my post apocalyptic vision of a world in an endless spiral of rage and pain and hope, with heroes that aren't quite heroes and villians that have reasons to act on their rage. and i now see that all i write comes from the headlines, all i dream acts out on the stage of my mind as a revival of the stage of the world.

my darkness doesn't come from an angsty childhood or repressed desires. my darkness comes from the world without, from the lips of a puppet president, from the eyes of a dying infant, from the bodies of the countless dead. the death of this world has infected our hearts, maybe mine moreso.

i hope the next world is better.

breathe out

darkness in your breath old monkey... darkness in your breath

nebulize

requiem for a dream

and there is sweet pain

breathe in

it comes in waves. this little bit of autobiographical stuff. it comes and i exaggerate.

it comes.

nebulize

bt- dark heart dawning

ruby slippers

ventilate


she remembers wearing red shoes. her ruby slippers as she has come to think of them these days. after all they are what sent her home. they are what took her away from the fantastic and cast her back in the world of black and white, back in the world that she only missed once she was away. as she straps them on tonight, as she straightens her stockings, as she makes sure that the last touches on her face are holding up perfect, as she loads her shotguns, her mind goes to his face. she wonders where he is now, what part of the horizon that he still needs to touch in his endless journey to find a place in this world. she wonders if he thinks of her while he wanders between twilights, in the darklights, in the whitelights. with a smack of her lips and a tug of her skirt she slings the guns over her shoulders and begins the 515 steps back into a world of color and all the greys that go between.

there is a corner in a city, the towers that sit there overlook unnatural greenery that seems to stretch like a verdant sea whose shores are lined with spires and glittering windows. this is a corner of envy and greed, of hope and faith. there is a vacant storefront, a blank marquee lined by green stars the only remnant of its last incarnation. considered an eyesore to some it stands as a grim reminder of the unchangable truth of the one city. decay. most tend to forget its presence, tend to overlook the eyesore in uptown. that may be why the woman with the twin shotguns walks unnoticed out of the taxi that idles on the curb, and no one notices the severed arm of a young man that only stopped to give a pretty girl a ride.
she takes her first step.

she steps through the plate glass, its solidity fading for but a moment as she walks closer. 20 steps down. inside are the remains of broken bar stools and tables, rat feces and cardboard. here and there is the sound of the chittering, the rats paying homage to the godess in the black dress as she makes her way toward the back.

20 more steps and there is the door. from somewhere beyond there is a light and music softly playing, maybe kate bush or tori amos screaming about the rape of the mystic, the ignorance of the devine. somewhere there is a shriek of pain followed by a bellow of pleasure. she pauses and listens to the symphony of decay, the cacaphony of the divine. she thinks once more of the ruby slippers. will glinda wait behind that door?

67 more steps and there is a stairway covered in a film of dust and filth. a skelatal hand rests at the foot, a beckoning finger inviting all to step forward. there is no banister. from the walls faces sneer from the rose colored patterns.

12 more steps, what a magic number. there is a landing with a window, the window overlooking the street. a crowd of people sit in an alley, betting their lives on the roll of the dice. their eyes are hollow, their souls spinning restlessly above their heads praying for escape. after all this is the one city. no one wants to stay lest they become apart of the eternity of it.

23 more steps another corridor. doors line the debris strewn wood floor more rats silently praying to the rat god that this girl thing has not come for them, is not their end. she nods at each with reverence, knowing they are her only allies in these hallowed halls that lead her farther into and away from the one city.

over the next 56 steps she glances into each door where scenes from the city play themselves out to her, tempting and beckoning. she sees two pairs of eyes peer through a doorway, a smile illuminated by the quick flash of a lighter and sweet smelling smoke. the music here is louder, hundreds of songs jumbled together, a passion of the sound. there is a woman, her legs spread in a pair of metal stirrups, her insides pulsing and wanting to push out the dead unwanted flesh that has gestated inside her for years. men feeding each other bowls of their own urine, smiling as it drips down their festering chests that glow with the sweet stench of radiation.

103 steps through hell after heaven, through saints and sinners intertwined in comprimising situations. 104 more steps of darkness. 105 steps past doorways into lives and heartaches and hopes. and then there are more stairs

5 steps and there is a human skull that leers up from the floor.

10 steps and the stairs turn back, another hallway, another world of hurt.

and the door. she looks at the slippers and the world begins to slide again. she thought that she had picked her side when she let him go into the sunset. the sunset welcomed him and she rejected the light. darkness had become her, and she had become the darkness. its weapon, its wrath. this was not a war that she wanted, not the war that she had signed up for. once upon a time she fought causes that mattered. the continued suffering of the innocents so that maybe once in their future that they can feel happiness. the continued confusion so that maybe one day they can see clarity. chaos to make order.

and now the world becomes colorful. black and white taken over by brilliant blues and reds and purples. and the shades of grey in the shadows.

from all sides the walls seem to pulse as she gets closer. there are no more steps, her feet just seem to glide. the door stands sturdy as if built yesterday, its brass handle glinting under the ever brightening red light.
she takes the first shell and cocks a shotgun.

lungs and water and the effects thereafter

breathe in

i haven't felt this way in a long time. i should just say that, because i had a longer sentence that sounded like utter bullshit. you know. drunk sort of stupid shit. i should say that i saw him and wanted so bad just to tell him that i could relate... now that its not so bad. now that i have at least something that i can offer him besides bedside sarcasm and a note saying see you next week. i could say that i'm independently wealthy... that would go over good.

i could say that i love him.

i could sit here and write about it and never do a fucking thing because the coward that i am won't let me admit those things basic to my being.

what did i say before... its only flesh.

i think i'll start reading clive barker again