ephemera

Will send you

some shots of me

~and poetry

because you see

I can be here in this moment

and forget the past

let all the ugly breathe it’s last

Take a long, long time to admire —

the future us, will sigh at the plumpness in our skin

-I take a thousand moments to look for the fleeting is fast

so quickly we are frail and thin

ever is the wage of sin

where once we had forever

all we have is ticking time

only ever in the now can you can be mine

but now we always are apart

unbreak my heart, re-start

go back

to where you were when they made you snap–

please, because, yes

-that is how the moments pass

photographs and tears and laughs

and memories we barely grasp

but trust -our flesh and our blood

was called forth from the word

and our hearts were the wells used for the ink

our bones– these images on repeat

what we get, we can’t see

all above

and more beneath

poetry is not enough

but never was it meant to be

neither is -only these- images of me

“It’s grimy, it’s dirty” : For Ninja and Yo-Landi of Die Antwoord

I am your Butterfly

(I fall to the ground like a wingless)

You are my Samurai

I need your protection, need your protection…*

Blend this moment with the deathbed.

Reckon up the children of men.

Transform your injurers into your benefactors.

Walk the great streets that reek melancholy.

Surrender is no more and heaven tides alongside minds who deserve to die fuck you
Surrender is fuck you
in the rain at the grave cold rain and lightening back dropping kick stopping Fuck you surrender is fuck you

The polarity shifts to An implied understanding.

Negotiation successful.

What your broken plaything is -As to my birth, I am.

She has no name.

I have no name.

A woman is more dangerous than a loaded pistol

A doomsday angel

Snuffing a cigarette
Before the curtain is called

Predators wearing spittle grins
A gaping hole left by them

You thought your love would save her

Change her,

chain her to your bed

but it breaked her Instead

Pretty Wise

Surrender is

ice cold crow ca-caw caw

fire in the chakra

Evening tide

Sunsets wide

Surrender is my alibi

Into your hands deliver eyes

of Ra

How Can an Angel Break My Heart?

Scorched and tumbling earth

You are the muse’s favorite

You are an angel

and I am blind

We are irreconcilable

though compasses align

Hot syrup from the spoon is anodyne

*Italics by Die Antwoord

“unveiling nature”

Sophia's Bubbles, Detail, Mark Ryden

Definitely ancient tongue

God’s plan is never done,

day is won but night is come – canines, vulpines, lupines

lurking in the shadows up the hill

Baying at whose hearts are beating still against their ribs

when blood runs chill, sensing unseen force is sleeping,

Like a dragon in a cave, hoarding gold, our future keeping

secrets leveled at the dooms day broadcast on repeat

“warning, warning” trick or treat Monsters wear a mask

To lead the sheep, to bedroom suites,

a side of meat

She’s incomplete and he is offering complete

discretion His profession is aggression and oppression

Thinks she is in love but is mistaken,

The weakness in her knees is caused by spiritual starvation

like cataclysmic tragedies happening interdimensionally,

and global catastrophe: shifting tectonic plates

tsunamis, forests burning, poison lakes

Her psyche crying out for Psyche’s sake

So Zephyrus and Jupiter can come and take

Away the pain

and make the ties that bind and never break away

freedom swaddled in restraint –

so We have free will

but are bound by fate

Sophia's Bubbles by Mark Ryden

Verse for Monday

 

Got a mouth full of

Second hand smoke, child

Broken to mild

Figure out today while

You smile and I

Free fall fly with hand grenades

Packed inside a secret suitcase

In case

I need to move quick

Shrapnel bits

Picked over by the crow

Woe

To reap what I sow

So destiny is so slow

Wanna know what I know

Oh no

You stay here, grow

I’ll go

I got this

Born with

witches mark

Stark hills burn

Tides turn

Lessons learned

Go back to where

Everything is gone

Verses of the song

Lost in refrain

Edges of my brain

Caught in the lightening caught in the rain

Bring me your blood

Bring me your love

Bring me a cigarette

Bring me a dove

Tie the blind tight

In the light I see God

A firing squad

A stream of ego-consciousness : Is the concept of culture an ego based system?

What I mostly find disturbing/annoying is how high culture and dominant power structure culture (in any part of the world) has a way of making other cultures feel crappy. As if they are the mean girl in math class, who’s nice long enough to get your homework…She doesn’t know anything about you or your life and she doesn’t ever make much of an effort to learn anything about you or your life or ever will, but damned if you don’t know a lot about her and mostly so you can avoid her probably.

That’s the way I see  *any* high culture / dominant culture and the sub-culture reaction to it *can* sometimes be avoidance…And definitely we see a very successful avoidance by American sub-cultures of American dominant culture by maintaining different language groups.

So culture is really interesting in terms of language. Why? Because, as Tan puts it, “all the forms of standard English that I had learned in school and through books, [were] the forms of English I did not use at home with my mother. (3) It is when Tan’s mother is in the room listening to her polished mean-girl vernacular that Tan’s loyalty switches to the American sub-culture group, which for Tan *is* her dominant power-structure culture. So we can see that high culture has a large investment in making people feel crappy about their (sub-) culture, because to that group, quite often that is where their loyalty lies, inherently, deep in their breast, unexplainably. For example, I literally know no N(on)N(ative)S(peaker) who doesn’t go into their native tongue when feeling passionate about something.

I’m personally quite disillusioned with language and think it’s a virus from space (a’la William Burroughs) but it certainly is a good trick for the ego to get hung up on, this idea that language is something that informs who we are, well, it certainly defines for our ego who the ego would like to think it is, and I think high-culture / dominant power structure culture is quite busy manufacturing little toys like language groups for ego to get hung up on because it ensures that so long as there are these *obvious* differences among us that we will be quite too busy to notice the *obvious* samenesses.

So race and ethnicity fit into the dominant power structure culture’s nefarious plans to keep us divided and separated as well. The high culture, the dominant power structure culture is all about defining life and humanity at this really surface, flimsy, arbitrary, level based on the concepts of “ISMS” and most detrimentally “nationalism” because EGO loves to be loved. It rejoices to be part of a group and our high culture gets that, so whether a person accepts the American culture as their own, or whether they identify against American culture or somewhere in the middle, like many of us, we are allowing our ego to compartmentalize ourselves and other HUMAN BEINGS ~ and linguists, btw, the smartest people among us, say, that that is just so, so silly.

America was not founded on religious freedom. We all know that by now. It was for the Puritans to have their own freedom, but they didn’t cotton to none other than their own. Our government officials bow and fawn to the British throne, always have, always will.

Americans, and by that I mean people who physically occupy the 50 states, are two inches away at any given time to having the boot in their face for the rest of their days. Then it doesn’t really matter what culture anyone’s ego subscribes to.

So culture in general is just like a little script I suppose for us to read off of…and since we all have one we have to pay attention and know when it’s our time to read I guess. And in that regard it is unavoidable that every individual American’s relationship with ego-based American high- culture, dominant power structure culture is going to be dependent upon the different experience one’s ego has with a set of sub-cultures.

Primarily speaking the dominant power structures in America would seem to have set most of the high culture; however, we have seen throughout history that sub-culture can rise to status of pop culture and usurp Manhattan as the center of American culture, for a little while at least. For instance, the Harlem renaissance, the Beat Poets, hippie culture, etc., are all examples of fringe, sub-culture elbowing it’s way in to the mainstream and taking center stage for long enough for the world to take notice.

Furthermore, American culture is not relegated as we all know to just being in America. A recent complaint I read on a Middle Eastern blogger’s Web site pontificated on the detrimental effects that “Desperate Housewives” playing on Middle Eastern television sets is having on the Islamic culture, particularly the youth. And when we hear those words, “Islamic culture” as Americans we automatically think of them as being part of a sub-culture, but indeed to much of the world, Islam is high culture / dominant power structure culture and interestingly enough, for many people, there is little in the way of our imagination to understanding what that Islamic culture could possibly even be. We might be able to try and define Islamic culture by thinking what it is not, American culture, Chinese culture, Vietnamese culture, etc..  That is the point of this ego-based system. We cannot define what is a culture, we are much more able to define what it is not, and even then it becomes murky.

The culture of humanity is pretty simple, Maslow pointed it out in his hierarchy, and academia’s incessant need to continually define this thing that no one can define, to me, makes the academy guilty of being boot-wearing henchmen for the high culture / dominant power structure.

Tan, Amy, “Mother Tongue.”

Bri, Blondie, Brendan and the Boyfriend

I would be lying if I told you I remember anything about the day this picture was taken. It’s 2010 now, so this picture was taken some ten years ago and a lot has happened since then…but I keep thinking there should be something here in my memory about this…

I don’t remember that store, I don’t remember picking out the hat, or who took the photo.

And why I chose to take center stage in a photo from a moment in my life I can’t remember, even with photographic proof of its existance is curious.

Catty and yet self retrospectively, I might say that all the girls in that photo were sometimes stupid and slutty.

I don’t remember the girl on the left. Her ability to sell magazines — completely non-existent– makes me forget her as default.

That one in the middle is, well I’ll call her Bri. She’s eighteen years old in this photo, gorgeous, and bouncy —  a mag crew’s favorite new hire in the universe.

The one on the far right is Debbie (who is a whole other blog). We stole her from her job as a bartender at one of Leona Helmsley’s hotels in Columbus, Ohio and convinced her to be our boss’ secretary.

We (as in the whole mag crew) corrupted Bri so absolutely.

I don’t remember where she was from. I kind of hated her.

Well, Love/Hate. Just before she fucked my boyfriend and lied to my face about it, her and I were great friends.

I didn’t hire her, but I totally trained her to sell the shit out of magazines. She was sharp and everyone knew it but no one was putting her across.

I was bent on winning another contest at the time and wanted to go pick up my quota before lunch and be done with it, I didn’t want to be dragged down with learnin’ some new little bright eye…

…but I took pity on Bri, because she acted sooo innocent and everyone believed the act so I thought she just needs to see how I sell magazines.

It was lunch time and we were in Brendan’s car which meant we had a half hour gas station break.

I spent it with Bri. I took her to the pumps where I immediately spotted a young stud with a sporty car, filling up his gas tank. (Key here is, pretty men don’t get hit on, girls are WAY too shy, and I knew this, so I always sold the shit out of mags to pretty men).

“Hi!” I grabbed Bri’s elbow and made her run up to him with me. “We’re in a contest! Do you want to help us win? If you don’t help us beat the boys, tonight we’re going to get pied in the face! Help us!” (Jump, bounce, flirt, smile, wink) “Oh my God, your car is sooo wicked cool, you must be really successful at your job!” (Lounge, touch, shimmy, grind) “Bri, show him your contest list!” (Jump, smile, leg kick) “Oh my God, you probably already get Maxim, huh? God I bet you get so many girls, you’re so cute, this car is so amazing! Oh my God! You must be soooo good at what you do….you must make so much money…Bri show him how many points he can help us with if he gets Car and Driver.”

SLAM!

So now she has an order on the day, she’s two weeks into the job, Brendan no longer completely hates everyone because there’s still time to make our car average if this new girl can at least pull it out and get five today.

“Alea,” Brendan pulled me aside, “Take Bri out with you and get her going, get some orders.”

“O.k.”

It was another hot day in Florida. I remember getting dropped off in some apartment complex.

Brendan’s rule as car handler was neighborhoods in the morning, if you have five by lunch you get apartments at night.

Bri was getting spoiled by being dropped with me in apartments. As a new girl with two weeks she counted towards our car average but she hadn’t had her first five yet, so in Brendan’s car that meant two things, one, he hated her and wanted her to die, second, she would never see an apartment complex.

So the sale at lunch really made him happy I guess.

We split two orders that drop.

When we met Brendan at pick up he said,“O.k. you two stay in here and split it up. Go alone for the rest of the night, though. I’ll check on you, right here at 6:30.”

Bri came back that drop with three and ended her day with eight sales: It was her “High day,” her “first five day” and her “first seven day” which a person’s first seven sale day also equaled a “steak dinner” on Belo’s crew. (Mine was in the revolving thingie in Seattle, that’s for another blog).

So that day ended well, I remember. Our car was high on crew, I was in the front seat, all was well with the world and Brendan shared some beer with me on the way home.

(Please pretend like there’s a segue here.)

I can’t blame Bri and my boyfriend for sleeping together. They were both so hot!

She was young, but I know she knew better, I knew she was lying when one day, in the bathroom before morning meeting she said, “If I was fucking him I would tell you.”

This in reply to the whole crew finding out the morning my boyfriend left for a few weeks that he had carried on with some other girl, a girl I actually did hire and also trained to sell the shit out of magazines (and in a minute will be telling you about the time her, Bri and me all went to Miami and met Blondie).

I remember thinking, “You just did tell me, Bri.” But I was reeling from too much information already that day.

Mag crews, just like any group of people, maybe more than other groups of people, always strive to protect the status quo. Everyone kept quiet what everyone knew. And that included me and my boyfriend.

My boyfriend was the boss’ son, I was a contest winner. We were together. That was it. Didn’t matter how much it wasn’t working with us, it worked for the crew.

We both did what we did with other people and tried to keep it quiet.

We lied to each other so what does it matter that Bri lied to me?

One time before all of it was out in the open, my boss sent me to lead my first and only spur crew.

I got to pick two girls who would go with me. I picked the two that would make me the most money, it wasn’t my fault I also happened to want to get close to the two girls I remember being pretty sure my boyfriend wanted to make the sexy time with.

I did just totally admit to that. I kept my enemies close to me, I thought that’s what I was supposed to do?

We were being sent to Miami, (a whole other blog, trust me, which involves getting lost in Hialeah, having to stay the night in a hotel where the front desk guy cussed me out and called me a stupid, fucking American as he was handing me the room key, having to sneak in one of the girls because we only had enough money for two of us to rent the room, the weird, yellow-sweat stained guy who opened the door to peer at us, the non-locking door, the only channel, porn, no blanket on the bed) to work the University of Miami.

So back to the Love part of the Love /Hate.

We were working these awesome rich kid dorms at U of Miami.

The student parking lot was filled with Boxsters and Beamers.

The dorms filled with head’s of states kids and ambassador’s kids and Saudi national’s kids and by noon all three of us had ten sales each and that’s with working for two hours. Cake money.

We called it a day.

Duh.

Our hotel was on the A1A and we were going to go back, change into our bikinis, get some Cuban coffee and go lay on the beach when we heard that Blondie was going to be at the Jackie Gleason theater that night …. literally right down the street from our hotel, we could walk.

Tickets were fifty bucks, we went straight away and bought them.

We were like the only girls there that weren’t boys and weren’t gay and after the (most awesome) show, Bri ran outside, around the building to where the limos were and struck up conversation with one of the limo drivers, she worked out an invite from the drummer, and then she hailed me and the other girl to jump in and off we went…

…to an exclusive, roped off section, in a night club, in Southbeach, with Blondie. Bienvenido a Miami, poppy.

Photographers were asking us, “Who are you?”

Dom Perignon

“Hahahaa we sell magazines, now about that bottle of Dom, you’re standing in the waiter’s way, move MTVeejay person so he can pour me a glass, ugh.”

Drummer dude was working it on Bri, trying to convince her to go on tour with them. I was like, “GO BITCH ARE YOU FUCKING KIDDING ME?”

But I guess Bri’s daddy issues aren’t / weren’t as big as mine and / or it’s true what she said, that she wouldn’t leave me and the other girl alone for anything in the world.

Drummer dude gave Bri a hundred dollar bill for a cab. We went home (what other people call a hotel), changed into our bikinis, went Domified / Blondified swimming in the ocean.

We laughed about how awesome we were.

The next day we went shopping and Bri bought this outfit with what was left over with drummer dude’s hundred dollar bill. I wonder if she still has it.

And I kind of wonder how she tells this story.

Because you KNOW she does.

Untitled Reading List: Becoming one with the Tao de Frack

Mr. Constant makes it                                                                                                                                                         Clear                                                                                                                                                                                    Not to care ‘bout                                                                                                                                                      What is there                                                                                                                                                               T.S. Eliot had no doubt That choice was illusion                                                                                                     Turned inside out                                                                                                                     Angel Island Poetry                                                                                                      Reminding me

people suck                                                                                                 &no one’s free                                                                                                                     Troia brings me to my knees                                                                                              I’m writing my thesis on Tariq Ali                                                                                                     lately it occurs to me                                                                                             I’ll never be Carolyn Cassady                                                                                           me and Ms Cowen Have too much in common: not just Allen

The Snow Man by Wallace Stevens; a multimedia interpretation of a sentence, by LaLa

original paintings Acrylic on 8X10 printer paper w ransom note style courier new font; Video filming, production, directing, reading, editing by LaLa. Sentence by Wallace Stevens.

 

Fire Poi: last thing I did in 2010, first thing I did in 2011

This is a special video for me. It goes between NYE 2010 at Nathan J’s to an after midnight private party January 1, 2011.

DJ NaDi and La La at Nathan J’s MI AMOUR NYE party 2010

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Nadi and La LaNadi and La La