Capirotada and Menudo

Children wriggled and wailed as the man on the pulpit exalted the fantastic in fevers. With a few abra-cadabra's, the man in the suit and tie cued the crowd with a charisma and phraseology, and everyone applauded and danced and jumped, and pretty soon, even the adults joined the children in the wailing and wriggling. Everyone paid what they could; the show, after all, was free.

There was a funny looking man in the middle of it all, observing the whole thing from atop, watching everything go to and fro like a sea of hands. His sense of detachment made him feel egotistically maniacal, and he felt sorry for this. He got down and felt bad; he had no idea why, he just did, perhaps it occurred to him that everyone was fucked and everything was fucked, and even this idea gave him a sense of guilt, for what did he, this funny looking man, know about anything? to make such judgments? Who is who to say which is what and how much something means to someone if nothing to him?

He caught himself as a lump and moistness build up in his throat and eyes, he swallowed and breathed so as to contain the oceanic feeling. It passed; he felt regular now, meaning that he was again detached. He felt muddy on the inside, dry lips and skin on the outside.

He went to his Aunt's house afterwards. They ate Menudo and had Capirotada afterwards. Capirotada and Menudo. Most days were Capirotada and Menudo for this funny looking man. She showed him pictures of her younger days, but she couldn't explain most of them since she couldn't recall. Ay mijo, se me va la memoria. No worries Tia, he said, maybe it's better to not remember some times. She pointed out a picture where he was held by his mother, and his aunt was next to her; their hair was all fluffy; She combed her frail wires with her hand; she said, ay, would you look at that! my hair hasn't aged a bit! His uncle stepped into the living room and replied, me too! I'm as strong as an Ox! look. His uncle lifted the TV to show him. Now lift me, his Aunt said. Hmph! he replied, do you want to kill me woman!? beside, I'm tuckered out already. Then he disappeared into the kitchen to grab a Bud Light.

The funny looking man excused himself and stepped out into the porch; He remained in place for a while, thinking about Capirotada and Menudo. 

He recalled a time when the sirens were relentless, and where the helicopter would cut the air and send its' force thrashing down. And where the child next door, the one with ADD, always yelled weird things that no one understood but that made perfect sense to him, and he would hop the fence and find his way into the living room, perhaps in search of something he felt was missing. Where the phone would ring, and the telemarketer on the other side was but a mere a salesperson, and it was your neighbor, asking for a cup of sugar for their tea and coffee. A place where the wash would finish with a ping, and you'd throw it in the drier, which would whir and clank. And the stillness of the living room, where the television would be turned off, could still be heard calling you, so you would go to the computer and surf the net, but the dryer is done. ping. Then the house fire alarm would go off, fuck! you forgot about the tea kettle, as you would dash to turn off the bubbling the water and would run to the alarm and press the button on it to shut it off. Jesus! it's nothing, but it's everything. A place where you needed to stop the world.

it was odd feeling odd and feeling odd was odd, odd feelings, fee lingers

4:50 a.m. in a Denny's drinking coffee and eating fried dough balls called "pancake puppies." I read about the implosion of Capitalism and the commodification of spirituality. The state of affairs is in shit: violence, famine. I eat a pancake puppy and take a sip of warm coffee. It's all jacked and we've been hi-jacked. A pre-emptive manufactured condition raised on pop music and reality TV drama. The theater of operations indicates that we are losing the war, or is it that we are winning? I'm not even sure anymore; this uncertainty feels like an indication that my reality had been ruptured, dismantled, and reconfigured. The periphery lacks insight. My core vision lacks periphery. I am effectively blinded by too much. I can;t even describe the lamp that shines above me covered by some sort of 70's looking shade, meaning bell bottoms, meaning whatever 70's looking shade looks like.


4:55 a.m. it's been five minutes and my pancake puppies are getting colder. My coffee is now lukewarm. My toes are cold. no one is here. it is dark out. a few cars pass but I think it's only one car driving circles. Christmas songs play overhead: "joy to the world" etc.


I've not done enough to mistake my reality for a dream. I miss her warm touch. Her soft kiss. He laugh and smile. Her eyes grow distant when I try to talk to her; I am ineffective in the art of conversation and love. My relationship seems like a stroke of luck; i consider myself a lucky man despite the holes in the soles of my shoes. I tell no one of this hollow cold void. It grounds me and reminds me of the monolith beneath my boot. My pancake puppies are completely cold: 5:02 a.m. this coffee has grow colder. Tap water with food coloring and a teaspoon of creamer. Slurpee.


It's time for me to go; the sun rises. Today I did not sleep. A man desperate for some sort of help thought that I could help him and gave me some money for some advice. I doubt he heard what I had to say, but since he was entertained, he gave me more money. It was an odd feeling. and it was odd feeling odd.

Q

During the past 24 hours, movements and environments have gained a sharper distinction from my awareness. This has come from a breakneck shift. Jetlag disorientation.

I've noted:

Debris from crumbling buildings. Remnants of disappearing graffiti. Trace of repainted walls. Loose telephone wires. A helicopter that hovers still overhead, making its overbearing presence known to all below for 45 minutes. Dust and grime riddle the sidewalk. Wounded lug their belongings and drag their limbs across the rubble and cracked streets. Crushed cigarette packets and beer cans, empty artillery from a battle that's been waged carefully and gradually in war zones of Watts, East Los Angeles, Compton, South Central, and other communities. Glass shards and needles.

This occurs while everyone sleeps. During Spring, the chemical agent known as smog holds still, well into the Winter: the only difference is in visibility. This is simply one among many. 

Children of the ruins run around deserted landscapes; something feels wrong. Everyone is complacent. Conspiracy of silence. Everyone accustomed to everything. Desensitized. Numbified. Despiritualized. Someone should wage a battle for their conscious; Someone should wage a battle for mine; the only revolution. Que Viva...que...queue..quetza. Que que? 

Right outside of the L.A. County Jail on Cesar E. Chavez Avenue an ex-POW, a veterano, waits for the bus in his post-war uniform. He dons a pair of loc shades, perhaps from having seen too much and not enough, and he holds his head high and back, as though he has regained a sense of confidence and memory that bear down on his laid back strut. Leaning sideways, he lights a cigarette. On the back of his palm, the face of the sun sticks out its tongue, perhaps a reminder from a movida while in the pinta. He's full of cool and confidence. He's headed back home. He's headed to the Eastside. He's headed to Aztlan.

“I watched a snail crawl along the edge of a straight razor. That's my dream; that's my nightmare. Crawling, slithering, along the edge of a straight razor... and surviving.”

Image: Flesh & Body /// Likeness: Mind & Soul

Man's Origin: Image & Likeness

Genesis 1:26:

“Then God said, “Let us make mankind in our image, in our likeness, so that they may rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky, over the livestock and all the wild animals,and over all the creatures that move along the ground.”

:Image:

A. “An artificial imitation or representation of something” (OED)

B. “A constellation, regarded as a figure or delineation of a person, animal, or symbolic object”

From definition A and B, the following may be extracted: Delineation-> “tracing out something by lines”

• Trace; palimpsestic.
• Ghost-an absence that is paradoxically present through a haunting.

C. (a)as simulating the appearance of someone, or

considered as unreal; (b) as compared in some respect to a statue or idol;

From Definition C, the following may be extracted:

• Appearance; disappearance; reappearance; vanishing

Finally,

Imago (Latin) “copy, statue, picture” from imitari, “to copy; imitate”

Imagier (French) “to form a mental picture”

re-presenting: re-modeling : re-re: dada data.

An Image seems to mean a hollow copy. 

:Likeness:

Like:

A. “Having the same characteristics or qualities as some other person or thing; of approximately identical shape, size, colour, character, etc., with something else; similar; resembling; analogous

G. “Of two or more persons or things: Having the same or closely resembling characteristics; mutually similar; 

- “One who closely resembles another.”

A "likeness" seems to mean a close resemblance to the original.
what or which is the original?
In light of Genesis 1:26, I propose the following:
Image = Flesh & Body

Likeness = Mind & Soul (Corporeal)

The tautology of Genesis 1:26 seems redundant unless one takes image and likeness as different terms and not synonyms. The outline above illustrates a few definitions on the terms "image" and "likeness;" indeed, both mirror very similar definitions, yet it would be a mistake to discount the repetition of any word in a text considered holy scripture as mere wordiness. In this skein, the origin of humankind (in Judeo-Christian terms), one may interpret, finds its source in the image and likeness that God made mankind in.

what does this mean?

this might indicate that the mind and soul are connected to the likeness of humankind and that the flesh and body are connected to the Image of humankind. The original sin gave Adam and Eve awareness of their body and flesh (image); might they have lost their "likeness" to God at that moment? perhaps.

Main point:
the emptiness one perhaps feels might come from the lack of "likeness" to the original. Something's missing; we have the image, but have lost the likeness, and this is the quest that seems to torture, and which might be why we propitiate a holy nada. 

Your Happiness is Our Business

~We interrupt your daily programming to bring you a friendly message~ 

     A vast neuro-network of widespread contamination has been slowly seeping its leeching tentacles into the collective brain. Scentless as odor-eliminating aerosol sprays, this complex organism makes its seemingly invisible encroachment further and deeper into the air and water we consume¹.

    On Mondays it makes way through the a.m. alarm clock and into radio and tv advertisement. Everyone becomes effectively gridlocked in smog and noise while pointing a finger at one another and speaking in tongues. In reality, they're possessed by the heavy metal machine. Possessed by an obsession toward effective dissemination of the invisible presence perfectly executed over the past 5 decades (maybe more) which has polluted virtually everything – animate and inanimate.

     Household toxic management programs implemented by official in suits actively seek out extermination of deadly substances manufactured by the Waste industry; a clever tactic deployed by SamIam (yes we will have radioactive green eggs and ham). Sam that greasy soiled diaper mildew producing pest – honcho of fruit-fly moth-eaten sewage system of live and active cultures, exhaling commercial air fresheners that coat nasal passages that masks smells and deaden nerve cells & fibers; heavy soil; heavy air; dead air; heavy water; heavy metal machine.

     On Tuesdays the structure subsumes itself with razor-blade precision by growing completely implemented into the aero-electromagnetosphere; a virtuoso could not orchestrate a superior symphony. By Friday and Saturday, many provisionally primed individuals render unto lucid amnesia; the type of living that demands sleepwalking until one forgets they're dreaming in a socially engineered motorpsycho nightmare. Pay the ticket; all's well; your happiness is our business. 

Along with a daily dosage of permissible software applications, a continual fight for a pre-emptive surrender of mind and body is being waged regularly via daily programming schedules. Please be sure to tune into your local pleasure centers and be sure to take a dose of pain-o and discomfort-o avoider pill. thank you : )

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1I'm not crazy; I've got evidence. I perpetually hear a voice in my mind that is not mine. This infectious plasmatic fungus sends subversive signals that make me think my own body and voice antagonize me, how? By implanting thoughts not mine. My body feels the septic intrusion. I think I am therefore I think therefore etc.

Theoretheatrix--ology

Theoretheatrix--ology:
a performance that aims for re-cognition of condition (dis-ease), and thereby for a trance-formation of subjectivity.

Setting (The Social Space-Field):
A building in process of construction. Scaffolds and platforms. 

Characters (Players and their Practice):
Agents from the Fractal bureau of Instigation. 

Plot (Deployment Scheme Gameplay):
A group of agents infiltrate a construction site and plaster posters and racial slurs all over the concrete, afterwards, they cover their work with paint that blends, and thereby camouflages, their operation(s) into the construction site. (sequel: We see the future inhabitants of that building inhabit the very words that were plastered long ago by the FBI).

Theme (Infiltration):
Structures that become internalized, inconspicuously, on the body.

Coherence Addicts

Circumstantiality, or rather "Circumstantial Speech," refers to a type of particularized, exhaustively detailed, and thorough speech that, while deviating from the main topic at hand with minutia auxiliary tidbits (whether one may count these minutia auxiliaries as significant or not might be a question of intention, for small details tend to illustrate what the major details cannot. An example: a person wearing a watch at a coffee bistro. What kind of person wears a watch? if described, the watch may speak volumes, thus the minutia might be valuable in that the intention of the detailed tidbits is to achieve a statement about the watch wearer. is the individual task oriented? why? what is the individual keeping track of? is the individual fashionable? what status does the watch convey? etc.), ultimately returns to the main point.

The Oxford English Dictionary offers the following in regard to circumstantiality:
Circumstantial quality, attention to details, particularity. 

The Oxford English Dictionary seems to leave out, or rather, disregard a judgement value, for the "free online medical dictionary" defines the phenomena as "a disturbed pattern of speech or writing characterized by delay in getting to the point because of interpolation of unnecessary details and irrelevant parenthetical remarks." This particular dictionary also points to a synonymous idea called "flight of ideas," which is a "nearly continuous flow of rapid speech that jumps from topic to topic, usually based on discernible associations, distractions, or play on words, but sometimes disorganized and incoherent" (these definitions pack too many worms in their terms (where the hell does that expression even come from? Well i'll tell you briefly. From what I gather, fishermen used to purchase bait in metal cans c.1950, and when the can were opened, worms would try to escape, and when that occurred, the fishermen had many a problems on their hands but a fish wasn't one (:P) anyway...back to the main point: circumstantiality.) disorganized, incoherent, disturbed, irrelevant, play on words, are all terms which telegraph the point I raised above in regard to intention, for these seemingly erratic and disjointed coherences may indeed illustrate a point about coherence addicts under the grip of time. Circumstantuality? ain't nobody got time for that, time is money. Well...

Money is not time

Empires Collapse

the world is craking and laughing

uncertainty is the only certainty, which is no certainty at all

The sun will eventually burn out

no one will witness it

everything will wind down (the gyre unwires)

everything starts and ends with me and you

consumed and gasping

We are already on the way

did that "poem" above make any coherent sense? ever read a piece of literature or observed a piece of painting that contain too much "unnecessary" detail?

Though this be madness, yet there is method in 't.

Wikipedia (the most valid source on the internet) adds that this type of speech is often associated with schizophrenia and obsessive-compulsive disorder. Ah, Circum (around) stance (to stand) -tiality now comes full circle:

Basically, too many details in explanation suggests one is crazy, especially if there is no return to the original point, if there indeed ever was a point to begin with. 

"His situation, insofar as he was a machine, was complex, tragic, and laughable. But the sacred part of him, his awareness, remains an unwavering band of light"-Vonnegut, Bluebeard (1987).