Entries Tagged 'disturbing' ↓

5-21

I am lying beside PW in a hotel room bed where I  read a book and watch television simultaneously. I look to tell PW she is beautiful. A group of elegantly dressed ladies appear on television dancing. Their dresses are classical and shimmery. An announcer mentions that they are “voguing” as I notice that they all have tails like animals. PW makes a comment to herself about her bra. She says it’s far too tight. She knows this will excite me.

The bicycle has incredible torque in its gears which make the ascent of hills very easy and its speed impressively fast. I am traveling so fast in fact that I am losing consciousness as I travel down a giant hill. There is no air, or I have been mistakenly drugged. As I see the bottom of the hill my vision becomes blocked. I am unsure if I have shut my eyes. I can only see shadows of trees on the inside of my eyelids. The afternoon summer sunlight is orange and warm. I feel my sense of balance wavering as the speed increases until I blackout.

The department store intercom is telling a story as the elderly sex therapist shuffles in a slow circle. The story is about the ways a man shows his love for a woman. It says that when a man walks astray, he can hold his woman’s hand and lead her or he can forget his love and walk away until he returns, thinking of her all the time.

5-23

All my friends and I are in the back of a pick-up truck where we are instructed to take the first part of the test. We do not know how many parts of the test there are. As the truck drives down a street we are supposed to record everything that passes by our view. Every garbage can, every doorway, every light in every window. The town is a sleepy one, and it is in the after-hours. I find considerable anxiety in writing down what I see because I cannot concentrate. My friends find it easy. My jottings are barely coherent to me, let alone the instructor, who was once a terrible science teacher of mine. After just one pass down the street, we are supposed to have a complete description. I look at my piece of paper to find it blank. I know I am going to fail.

5-26

Connecting the two rooms is a hallway where a tremendous brown horse runs back and forth uncontrollably. It is the largest animal I have ever seen and I am trapped in the hallway with it.

5-30

I am considering a sculpture of the Ninth Circle of Dante’s Hell with a jealous husband. We examine the small model of Satan and the underside of the platform in which it is half submerged. We try to figure the logic involved, after Satan consumes someone.

6-3

A group of us are in a house with white walls. KKR directs us to paintings in the back which are representations of cartoons. As we look at the large black and white paintings, we discover that the Mob is killing all the witnesses involved, and that each one of us must go our separate ways, or risk torture and capture.

I begin my life on the run alone and still free. After disembarking on a trail in the woods, I come upon a split level house high in the hills. Within the cellar of the house is an incredible assortment of caves, and hiding places. The cellar was molded out of blue molten rock formations. Unfortunately for me, the owners of the house have cemented up all the openings. Local teen-age kids, full of rebellion and destructive angst, have spray painted the cement with swears. I know the teen-agers are wise and right somehow. I decide to break out and climb out of the cellar window to get outside, but I am unable to fit through the white window frame, I break it off as I go through.

Outside on the patio, there is a vicious light colored watchdog waiting to attack me. It approaches snarling, and before it bites I throw the old window frame into it’s mouth, and it becomes distracted long enough so that I might escape. However, also on the patio, is the owner of the dog, and the sheriff caretaker of the house. He can only yell, “Mr.” in a sly condescending voice, before I am gone from the scene.

Hours pass and I have dozens of other adventures all ending in escape. I finally end up jumping off a cliff to see if I can land in evergreen treetops.

Years later I am standing outside of myself in a bachelor pad where my cohorts and I listen to various jazz albums. The good old jazz albums with the colorful covers, and the scratchy vinyl sounds. We discuss meanings, and interpretations from our past. We look at the covers as we listen to the selections.

Grandfather lies in a dreaming state while shadows enter the hospital room and shake him awake. He sees his sons as small children. He will not eat. He speaks in his sleep to ghosts and drops his thin jaw. He is tethered down for his own good. At night they sometimes chain his feet to the bed. He is dreaming and his shut eyes move wildly. He occasionally rises in a state of horror, when his mind surfaces. All the voices he hears are forever in the distance. They are all speaking behind his back, looking towards him sadly. The television becomes a fluttering tedious landmark where consciousness begins and the world ends. The wiring he’s attached to spirals backwards and clashes with his alien gestures and moods. He dreams of fragrant rooms. They pass with iron machines down the hallway. He cannot perceive the final curve, and when it will spin him out, so when he returns from the depths, he whispers to the priest to have everyone there.

More attention should be paid to this man who may soon cease to be. He was gigantically strong once. Now one notices his skull. His recognitions and hearing are perfect inside while outside there is the panic and the heavy smothering air of losing touch. He tries to hold on. It’s so much safer back at home. It’s so much easier to slip away. He has a vision of his wife from fifty years ago. They first met at a swimming pool in Jersey City where he was a lifeguard. He said, “That’s the woman I will marry,” She said, “Who me?” with a marine bathing suit on.

X.F. Pine

I try not to be a fatalist. Fatalism is just so unpopular these days. I am tired of negativity just like everyone else. I try to support my negativity with facts and data.

In the middle of the fourth heat wave this July I needed to seek answers as I turned my AC up a notch.  I came across this fascinating data on weatherperspectives.com gleaned from NOAA and broken down by states in the U.S. over a hundred years or so.

It seems it’s not my imagination or my aging memory over the last  twenty years in the New York region.  There has been something strange going on.

What’s  fascinating  about this perspective is the spike which appears in the mid-1950s? Could this have been a latent result of WWII and huge industrial production or even firebombing in Europe?  Or could it have been due to the peak in  atomic testing that took place in the atmosphere. Or a combination or everything.  The ramp up starts in what looks like early 1942 so there must be a connection there.

In addition, there are other states listed and it’s interesting to see patterns in comparison. For instance it looks like Arizona is getting much hotter than other places.

But then places like Missippippi are getting cooler over decades.

The overall data of all the states looks like this.  I think the only long term solution as far as comfort goes is to move to Maine or Cape Breton to become a Mi’kmaq Indian. One must change and adapt to survive or die in the process.

X.F. Pine

When I worked at Weiser’s Bookstore on 24^th street I didn’t realize I was witnessing the end of something, but one never does.

The famous store had been around since the 1920s and specialized in Oriental Philosophy and the Occult.  It was an interesting period of time because it was at the beginning of the commercialization of the New Age movement, but the place had this older eccentric atmosphere. There were people who worked there who were practicing Rosicrucians and others associated with the Golden Dawn. Crystal hunters would come in to sell their finds. A customer would rage about the Planet X and be escorted to the door.

Now that I tend to collect books, I cannot even imagine what amazing obscurities the manager Chip had behind the counter towards the back. I realize that places like this in New York are more obscure than ever now. Places with old magical knowledge you could talk to people about in person. The Store is just online now.

Once I remember I went out for lunch and wondered down 23^rd street. I came across a card table where an old man sold used books. I immediately noticed the Burroughs’ classics Naked Lunch and Junky on the top. The copies were old worn paperbacks. When I picked up the copy of Junky, another man with serious eyes and who looked like a ghoul took notice of my interest and said, “That’s a good book.”

It took me a while to realize that the man was Herbert Huncke himself, one of the characters in Junky. I was spooked. Had he put the book there as bait? I believe I shook his hand and we had a discussion of where Burroughs was now. We talked about the bunker Burroughs’ had on the Bowery. He looked remarkably good for all he had been through. I believe I bought the copy of Naked Lunch to avoid feeling like I was being hustled. The idea of having Huncke sign the copy of Junky passed through my mind, but then I realized he didn’t write the book. He just lived it. I went back looking for him a couple of times, but never saw him again.

I find it disturbing that CORBIS owns the best pictures of Huncke via Allen Ginsburg. I’d like to think they are all somewhere laughing at the fact that their images are held by the one of the richest men in the world.

I encountered Ginsburg a few times. Once on the north side of Union Square. I recognized him and he smiled. He was just standing there. We were across the street from the old Max’s Kansas City which was now a deli. He looked like an old ghost passing through the city. The other time was at a New Year’s Day reading at the St. Mark’s church. He would be sitting there cross legged like a wise Buddha listening, always listening.

Another day when I was working on the floor at Weiser’s, a strange old man with a scrawny beard came in and started asking about books about pyramids and archeology. He had of stack of these books in his frail hands. He had glasses and a loud almost shrieking voice that got your attention instantly. He said he had a film card which gave him a discount. I am positive now that this man was Harry Smith. I believe he lived at the Chelsea Hotel at the time where he died a few years later.  For those who might not know, Smith was a polymath, ethnomusicologist, filmmaker and mystic. CORBIS has Ginsburg’s photos of him too. What would they all think of our strange world now?

X.F. Pine