I'm not heavy, I'm a sausage made from pork and beef

My brain is turning to pepperoni. I knew it would. And so what?

Heard a beautiful poem earlier, spoken in Gaelic. Made me really sad. Such a big mistake, not learning it, long ago. As it is, just fumbling about, thickly. Relating to the world outside—ostensible, ultimately unproveable—in this alien tongue, unsuited for my processes. Misshapen sounds, imprecise meaning.

Sometimes I feel as though there is a caul separating my selves, constructed entirely from the limitations of my understanding. As if the thing I'm looking for so desperately on that beach at Whithorn is me. And the roiling water between us is the symbol of my inability to reconcile my true self to the things I percieve outside it. It is the slave language I am filled with, it is the Roman idea I cannot abide. It is dissonance.

It is pepperoni, for fuck's sake.

And it, too, is finally me.

Transference: The dramatic finale

(quit whining. click the mufofo, and you can see it better. sheesh)

Transference, part 2

(click to enhance view. i mean it dammit)

M.K. Brown

I'm a big fan. More here.

This is "Transference" (panel one).

(To enhance your view—in other words, to ENLARGE THE PICTURE, for those of you with unruly minds—just click it)

Merry Christmas

Back from midnight mass few minutes ago. Watching It's a Wonderful Life, with Paula Jane.

Hope y'all're having a serene and blessed Christmas.

The great Pavarotti, first singing Ave Maria; then, O Holy Night; and finally, Adeste Fideles. Then, the magnificent Joan Sutherland, and her version of Ave Maria:

Shit

Had to fire a guy yesterday.

Yeah, I know. Two days before Christmas. Didn't wanta do it—I fucking hated doing it—but I had to. He was a terrible employee. He forced my hand, and it was really the only thing I could do.

Remember in Lonesome Dove, Augustus told the Man-Burner he was the sort it was a "pleasure to hang."

There have, occasionally, been a few that it's been a pleasure to fire. An idiot teenager at the Auburn, WA, Godfather's Pizza comes to mind. I had assumed control of that bloated, corrupt, out-of-control restaurant just a day or two previous. I was in the kitchen, watching her cut a pizza with a pizza knife that hadn't been cleaned since Clinton's first term. She said that she'd prefer I not stand there. I asked her to repeat what she said. She did. I told her she was fired. She said I couldn't fire her (still don't get that one), and I said, Lady, get the hell out of my restaurant before I have a cop drag you out. She pitched a hell of a fit, which was fun, and ended with the Auburn Police escorting her off the premises, and warning her about criminal trespass. So doing, she provided an object lesson for the staff that saved me weeks of time. Must say, didn't mind firing her too awfully much.

Most of the time, though, it's perfectly awful. Like killing someone, in a way, and it takes a hell of a lot out of me. (Doesn't do them a hell of a lot of good either, I realize).

If you're gonna be successful running a business, though, you must have standards. Certain types of personalities are poison. Destructive, to everything you're trying to do. Sometimes—most times, I expect—you even like em, personally. Isn't that fucking awful???

Shit.

Maud Gonne: O Love is the crooked thing

Yeats wrote that. Then he said, "there is nobody wise enough to find out all that is in it."

Me, I've seen all kinds of it. A blonde girl black and blue, carrying a tiny yapping rat-sized dog in a purse slung over her shoulder, eating french fries from a paper bag, maundering to an unfurnished trailer on the beach. A lanky, glowering dark-haired guy, undone by his best intentions, and events beyond his control. A small, quiet, chubby kid, who loved to laugh and fish and drink beer, too afraid to ever declare himself. He ran out of time one Saturday, the fast lane of south-bound 45, between Galveston and Texas City.

Seen other kinds, too. Passion enduring for decades, passion that wanes, passion that never was, at least the way we might think of it—there's no recipe, really—lives completed, interrupted, ruined—crushed, beneath gnarled metal—haunted, by ghosts.

Could Yeats have loved Maud Gonne as deeply as he claimed to love her, if she did not reciprocate, in kind? I have always doubted that. Perhaps his love, impossible as it seemed, was merely a tool, an extension of his artifice, like Plath's resentment of her father, or Steven's evocations of human feeling.

I've always thought unrequited love to be an illusion—a projection, i guess—expressing the desire of the projector, and having little to do with the projectee. It is a desire, too, that can come at an oppressive cost.

But what the hell do I know?

Maybe Dante really loved Beatrice—the essence of Beatrice—with a pure and simple heart. Maybe his idealized vision of her was some kind of fucking truth.

And maybe the best thing he could do, loving her so, was to stay the fuck out of her life, so that she could be really loved—good and loved, so to speak—by someone with a pulse.

Maud Gonne was born 145 years ago, today. God bless your constant heart, Maud—for living on your terms. For rejecting objectification. For not permitting the throbbings of the ravening, flailing, desperate sex to define you.

Dueling Statues

Okay, most likely you don't give a fuck. I get it.

Still, it bugs me that when people think Statue of a Fool, they think Ricky Van Shelton, with his little pig-eyes and his gynormous head, instead of Brian Collins, who has a much better intuitive understanding of the material, and who really nails that motherfucker at the end, you know? Not fucking fair, is all I'm sayin.


Now, I know what lazy motherfuckers y'all are. Don't bother denying it, alright, cause I'm the one's gotta post all these videos all the time, cause y'all can't be trusted to follow a link—Oh, no, might sprain one of your precious little fingers or something—might not be able to text for a few hours, or twitter your every fucking brain-fart and then where the fuck would the world be, right?


So, yeah. I'm sympathetic. Just this once, though—puh-leeeeeze?—follow this link:


http://www.myspace.com/briancollins1019


—After you've watched old scrunch-eyes sing it again (below), and then you tell me which one is better. Now, not only do you have to follow the link, you have to scroll down just a little, and click on the song (Statue of a Fool, if your attention is wandering). So, maybe set your cell-phone down, just for a moment or two? Gather your senses. Then, listen, and let the transcendence of it sorta wash over you. Maybe leave ol Brian a note letting him know you recognize the utter superiority of his version, compared to old lantern-head.


You'll feel better about yourself, and the world around you, too.


(Go to it—I can't very well click the fucking thing for you, can I?)

December 19

(This poem derives from the incomparable sensibility of Edward Estlin Cummings. Known to the lowbrows among you as e.e.)

(And who, no matter what you may have heard, is a poet of great sincerity)

a clown's smirk in the skull of a baboon
(where once good lips stalked or eyes firmly stirred)
my mirror gives me,on this afternoon;
i am a shape that can but eat and turd
ere with the dirt death shall him vastly gird,
a coward waiting clumsily to cease
whom every perfect thing meanwhile doth miss;
a hand's impression in an empty glove,
a soon forgotten tune,a house for lease.
I have never loved you dear as now i love

behold this fool who,in the month of June,
having certain stars and planets heard,
rose very slowly in a tight balloon
until the smallening world became absurd;
him did an archer spy(whose aim had erred
never)and by that little trick or this
he shot the aeronaut down,into the abyss
-and wonderfully i fell through the green groove
of twilight,striking into many a piece.
I have never loved you dear as now i love

god's terrible face,brighter than a spoon,
collects the image of one fatal word;
so that my life(which liked the sun and the moon)
resembles something that has not occurred:
i am a birdcage without any bird,
a collar looking for a dog,a kiss
without lips;a prayer lacking any knees
but something beats within my shirt to prove
he is undead who,living,noone is.
I have never loved you dear as now i love.

Hell(by most humble me which shall increase)
open thy fire!for i have had some bliss
of one small lady upon earth above;
to whom i cry,remembering her face,
i have never loved you dear as now i love

(happy 19th, Paula Jane)

Associations: Gap-toothed strangers, Pink Floyd, etc...

Contemplating one or other
lying noble Roman
searching the bottom of the row
of the history shelf
absently
even less aware
than usually i am

Turned abruptly to my right
not thinking or glancing
not giving a damn
for oncoming traffic
you know

Nearly plowed her to the ground
poor thing
nearly murdered randomly
on a Saturday afternoon
at Waldenbooks
by a book-drunk stranger who
should have had his browsing license
qualified
long ago.

A pretty one, she was
kind eyes, brown and wide
with an amused, ironic mouth.
And a smile that graced
even reckless men
who menace chain-store aisles.

Mumbled apologies
so little aware was i.
No problem, said she,
looking up at me,
still smiling
as she squeezed on by.

And i
and i
i looked at her

then began my descent
into my favored hell
nothing beneath
to break my fall
just fell

and fell
and fell

into the place
where's kept her face.
And i reduced.
And she was not.
And nothing

nothing
nothing

was all.

Contemplating Romans
at Waldenbooks

nothing
was all.


(then darkness, again...some's forever, it seems)