If I were a dog in the mid-17th century...

What demon elixir, what cheer. Before bed I swallowed "nite time" cold medicine because it was the closest thing I had to sinus meds to tame racing sinus fluids. Also, I wanted to be knocked out. At 3:30 pm the next day I continue to experience sleep inertia* and fuzz-brain. Who is the alchemist who conjured this poison?

Christopher Wren, who is remembered today as a great architect, was known in the mid-1600s as an astronomer who could remove the spleen from a dog. His next experiment: inject poison into the dog’s bloodstream to understand circulation.**

This morning I woke up one minute before the alarm sounded, a Tom Waits song (from Real Gone, paraphrasing "Everybody wants to know the same thing, how’s it going to end…") swaggering a loop in my head. The air was red and dry and fuzz-muted like a photograph.

A footnote must sound like something, a map, a chart in sonic motion. Here (via Bookslut) is what David Foster Wallace has to say about recording the audio version of Consider the Lobster, muted footnotes and all:

"Most poetry is written to ride on the breath, and getting to hear the poet read it is kind of a revelation and makes the poetry more alive. But with certain literary narrative writers like me, we want the writing to sound like a brain voice, like the sound of the voice inside of the head, and the brain voice is faster, is absent any breath, and it holds together grammatically rather than sonically."


*(words in blood are mine) Sleep inertia is the feeling of grogginess after awakening and temporarily reduces your ability to perform even simple tasks. (like a double back-flip with a twist)

Sleep inertia can last from 1 minute to 4 hours, but typically lasts 15-30 minutes. (or 6 hours, 33 minutes, and 10 seconds)

The severity of sleep inertia is dependent on how long you have been asleep and the stage of sleep at awakening.3 Effects can be severe if a person is very sleep deprived or has been woken from a deep sleep stage. However, sleep inertia can usually be reversed within 15 minutes by activity and noise. (such as being pinned to the ground by an army of clowns bearing bells on their limbs at sunrise)

Sleep inertia can cause impairment of motor and cognitive functions and can affect a person's ability to drive safely. Sleep inertia can be very dangerous for people who drive in the early morning hours and shortly after waking up from a sleep. (Christopher Wren's belly was a map of a dog's innard island chain in a room where the lava lamp was too dim and the tires on the car too wide to make turns.)

**I’m reading Soul Made Flesh by Carl Zimmer. See inside.

Freedom of jaw movement: allow the monkey to sleep

Is it possible that consumption of soy causes the cessation of the development of male sexual organs? Is it possible that early consumption of soy cause bush and breast on girls before the age of three?

Earlier I was researching soy as I ate soy yogurt, realizing I wasn’t as informed as I could be. There are as many web sites on the dangers as on the benefits. I never know what to believe about nutrition-related (or government-related or physics-related or train-related or germ-related or handshake-related…you see) news. Egg yolk is good, egg yolk is bad. In theory, I say eat everything in moderation, though I rarely deviate from a stock of salad, soup, pizza, burrito, ice cream though less often in recent days, meat on scant occasion, probably more alcohol than required.

I aim to think critically, synthesize intelligently, from the gamut of given information, but infinituedes of information both arrive and change quickly with little time for source-verification before a new baby is born. Presentation—of web site, of spoken delivery—is a start but still potentially represents the dubious. It isn’t difficult to concoct slick, and I can’t help but allow for the possibility that each nugget is power-/money-driven. (I haven’t read extensively yet. I only began and then leapt here.)

Without full knowledge of this New Zealand source, say, I don’t know how funny it is to include this quote on the opening page of their site "elucidating" the dangers of soy: "...If you only knew the power of the dark side" -Darth Vader. Who would quote Darth Vader on a web site intending to inform the public of serious matters? Or maybe that’s a way of extending a sense of common understanding. A terrible line of poetry works quite well given a uniquely proper context.

A little self-critique: Get a grip, Sara. You have to assess and decide, There is nothing else, It’s part of being human. Living is a constant act of exploration because nobody knows anything for certain, and to move forward we have to lean at least a little on what has gained acceptance as knowledge or as at least being so. Still, look at all the people who saw enough merit to vote for Bush. (I am not as politically informed as I could be either, but I pay attention to course and effect.)

This lack of verifiable foundation drives me as mad as when I think about everything in and around me being composed of atoms (if those even exist). There is always a foot out the door in case the world is shapeless, in case all my friends are actually stick figures drawn on the wall. How lunately fragile.

I think of a recent transience post: fuck "less"—I want my stuff. Maybe I want less. Maybe not. Maybe a glass of wine. By less and the implied more I transfer the meaning to more and less information/detail/confounding factors/evidence. Of course, in this sense, I always want as much as possible. How lunately* masochistic.

I bank on experience when I can, but it could be decades before I know that high or even moderate soy consumption has caused my body to fill with worms. I bank on my gut, rest on its headless command. Shake my hand. I’m germ-free. Loose the preventative tension, please.

(whine, whine, whine, whine, whine)

* I made this word up out of necessity and long-during desire, which, yes, is another confounding factor, compounding both masochism and lunacy.

- - - - -

I wish I didn’t have amnesia or compartmental memory drivers or whatever it is that gets me excited about doing or learning something only to abandon it without recall shortly after beginning it.

Wishes are fruitless. More later once William Carlos Williams finishes snaking into my ear.

red wine with moog backlight: a gymnastic transmission

Wine rides a bicycle named arbitrarily, whine on a bicycle broken.

In the arboretum, dine a tricycle crazy.

Refine tricyclen, pattern-sensitive chicken, with wine.

This week is chocolate and afternoon,
wine on a red wagon once having been a bicycle.

A bicycle can either read or be read
with pedals like Braille fingers before pedals turn brown and fall.

Poulet, chocolate smear on wine-dyed lips is a putrid shade.

Thank god for oak trees who do not care to weep.

February is upon us and it, monsieur, is the cruelest month.


The volume rose and bulbs poked through the screen:

There is only one way to skin a rabbit, one way to make chili, one way to get from NY to CA, one way to let a person know what you think of them. Nothing in this article feels like a cane-handle.

The Octagon on Roosevelt Island—lunatic asylums fascinate me, particularly those which are old and abandoned. This one’s being revamped as a housing complex.

Thank you, Google, for keeping the cameras out of my bathroom—so far.

So it’s true. College degrees are handed out like department store fliers, and our future looks bleak. Uh, begin the War on Stupid.

Indiana, poor ninny-timed Indiana.

ooby dooby and the early car that drives the worm

Today my favorite sound is Roy Orbison singin’ "Zig Zag" to me. Boy does it please me. Let’s hear it again. Again. Let’s drown in its dancing catch the woman next door to me who continues to complain in her loud Jersey voice day after fucking day. Heck, let’s just drown the woman next door.*


Let the fractaled brain muse:

There just isn’t time or belly enough to drink orange juice and soy milk on nights when the contract with the wine god is active.

Today I gave the doctor a poem and gained 20 years on my life. He exists independent of time.

Secretaries don’t have time to be nice to patients on the phone.

If weeks expanded within themselves infinitesimally, then piles of papers would become house plants.

In the end, time-dependent association between indices of iron store and mortality in hemodialysis patients is really what gets my reels to reeling.

Some people never get around to it.

In the words of my roommate, One can always use a handjob.

Everything will be all right. (People repeatedly need to hear this.)


Let’s go places:

Make time this Saturday, Jan 21, for The Teenage Prayers at The Knitting Factory.

The Supreme Court leaves it up to state to decide whether to allow assisted suicide.

Get a grip, Mr Cruise.

Farmer’s wife breaks husband’s penis. She was that hot.

Man mistakenly declared dead loses job. An old article, but still—What’s up with people mistakenly being declared dead? Trust nothing.

*I didn’t mean that.

belly candor and the walking dead

This morning my friend B stopped by my office. While she was there, K, a young pregnant girl who works in billing walked by, stopped inside the door and said, "I’m just stopping by because I saw B in here." Oh, welcome then. That’s why I’m here. To help other people connect.

Conversation ensued. K showed us her swollen pregnant belly, then told us her nipples were turning black. Her husband likes them, though, so it’s ok. "He really liked them last night," she told us. "But that’s it for the dirty talk, though."

Then she looked at me with big eyes, then back at B. "Poor Sara. She’s not used to talk like that." Oh right. I’m a 29-year-old puritanical virgin. I forget sometimes.

K left and I said to B, "Why is it universal that people think I’m pure and innocent? People act surprised when I say ‘fuck’."

She shut the door. "That’s why I like you," she said. "It’s your face, young and sweet. That’s why people think that."

"Hm," I said. I s'posed so. "That makes it easy to surprise people." Baby games really.

I forget sometimes, being rather inverted and introverted. The picture I have of myself is rather dark and profane. I forget what people on the outside see.

Later a bathroom epiphany showed me I probably perpetuate the lie. Because I know myself not to be a puritanical virgin (PV) but rather a person who pretty frequently has crass and grimy thoughts, it’s funny to me to respond like a PV in conversation. But I forget that that’s what many people actually expect from me, so that it isn’t funny at all, except maybe in that, to them, it’s true.

Months ago I attended my first post-work bar gathering in honor of someone I liked who was leaving for another job. I was very tired and had only a couple of beers (also, I suppose I get a kick out of upholding a certain distant identity in the workplace). The others had many beers, shots of whiskey and tequila, and various fruity alcoholic beverages. The following Monday several people gave me shame-filled looks, apologized for my having had to have seen them "like that" and hoped I didn’t think poorly of them.

Eyebrows furrow in perplexity.

Tomorrow we will fucking talk about pierced rosy nipples, why some vibrators are shaped like elephants, and whether or not Jesus was well hung.

* * * * *

This (from Mr Anigans) reminds me of when I called maintenance to hang a picture on my wall. They insisted they had paperwork to prove it had been done. I told them I had a picture on the floor to prove it had not. Who’s correct? Is the man dead or alive?

"Can you smoke in a cubicle in a sex shop? Or in a room in a brothel? Or in a morgue? Can you light up a joint of grass in a place where tobacco is forbidden? The answers, respectively, appear to be: no, yes, no and probably not a good idea." How will Spaniards handle this cultural blow?

Exercise might help delay dementia. Tomorrow will it induce dementia?

conducting the racist-hospital chronicles: The Musical

LET ME CONTROL THIS MACHINE, YOU TYRANTS!

Fuck me and this loud music in my head. I went into the bathroom earlier and came out with Whitney Houston singing about the greatest love of all—in my noggin. There wasn’t music playing in the bathroom, so evidently the song freely generated itself in the dungeon in my head.

During the weekend, I noticed that football on the tv seems to put the needle on the Christmas records in my head. "Winter Wonderland" was a regular, with "Jingle Bells" following close behind.

The Fiery Furnaces is the only reprieve. Recently I bought Rehearsing My Choir and since then have been listening much to Blueberry Boat and Gallowsbird’s Bark too. (Now that I’ve got them sorted out--I was a victim of superenthusiasm after having bought a laptop and importing CDs from friends before I had internet access, thus leaving me with many unidentified sounds. I was a kid rolling naked in a chocolatier’s display window. What a mess.) Pieces of all three albums interrupt and spot my thoughts.

TAKE IT EASY, KEMOSABE!

The guy who delivers mail within the hospital, who says, There she is (w/optional Miss America!)!, to nearly every woman he sees said to me, Is it cold enough for you? I told him, "No. It isn’t cold enough. I’d like it ten degrees cooler." Was the laughter real or fear-driven? This is the same guy who claims he used to be a college-level English teacher but for some reason now, as I said, delivers mail within the hospital and also claims to have done outlandish things like invent staples and host beauty pageants.

I HAVE LOCATED THE PEANUT BUTTER!

Once again my fashion sense gets kicked:
a) Last Friday one of my favorite doctors (He asked me if I thought The Good Doctor was a madman. Most definitely, I told him. How so?, he asked. It is so rare that anyone here asks me a thought-provoking question and, to top it off, wants to hear the answer, that he became one of my favorite people here. Plus, his odd fashion sense is second next to that of The Good Doctor who can often be seen wearing a mix of plaid, paisley, stripes and solids in a variety of sometimes intersecting shades) was wearing a purple and white small-checkered shirt—with a bright yellow bow-tie. I told him, You’re wearing my favorite shirt. He thanked me and said that earlier his wife had called him color-blind and one of his patients had told him he looked like the Easter Bunny.

b) About an hour later, a woman from the front desk came over wearing a badass cardigan. It was bright fuschia and cobalt and looked like a shag rug with arms. I told her I liked it. She thanked me and said, 12 dollars at Marshalls. The Comedian said, You paid 12 dollars for that? The woman walked around the corner and asked her friend if she liked her new cardigan. The voice rang out, laughless, an affirmative No.

HOORAY FOR DARK CHOCOLATE!

An Italian sexologists studies TV in the bedroom--bad news.

Medicine in South Korea these days--iffy at best: wrong surgery, wrong body; the researcher who "fixed" data for personal gain...alack and alas.

Parrot helps capture a burglar. What does this mean? It means Twin Peaks is the new bible; what happened in the series will happen to us. That gum you like is going to come back into style and midgets will whisper disturbing things in your ears. There is always music in the air.

propietorship and the rug

Liza Minnelli tried to steal my truck.

I don’t remember what had been going on before this scene at lakeside. It had something to do with new albums I was giving first listen and opinion to. Lighting was tawny, albums were suspended at abstract angles in tawny air. Then I was sitting in my new Ford SUV in a parking lot behind the beach at a pretty blue lake.

Apparently my parents had just bought me this truck (Note: if anyone has information that this gift is to be given, please encourage them to keep their money). It was long, brown and dark blue. Looked as though I was moving or at least relocating a sizeable chunk of my belongings. Bags and boxes were in the front and back seats. Magazines and posters were in the very back.

Liza Minnelli pulled up next to my driver’s side in a shiny white car. She wore a frightening smile. I smiled back and loaded more items into the truck. I have no idea where these items were coming from, since I was at lakeside. The tangible place from where I was retrieving things is unknown to me. Some invisible storage bin.

Liza asked if I wanted any help. "No thanks," I said. "I only have a couple more things to load." She smiled another frighteningly lip-sticked smile. I smiled back and hopped in the truck to drive away. The truck had reversed directions to be parked back-end out.

I started the truck and rolled forward a few feet, when I glanced in the rearview and saw that the back hatch was open. The magazines and posters would fly out.

Liza was standing behind the truck, smiling in the sunshine. She’d asked if she could help, and I was already belted in, so I leaned out and asked her if she’d close the hatch. She smiled, nodded agreeably and said sunnily, "No."

Oh. Well, ok. I threw the truck in park and got out. The truck was long. As I walked toward its back end, Liza began walking, with a smiley bounce, toward the passenger’s side, her hand reaching for the door. It wasn’t locked.

She was going to steal my truck.

A horrific pit formed in my belly and I forced myself awake, scared paralyzed by the impending theft.

* * * *

cookies:

Cyclops, the one-eyed cat How ecstatically, sadly Homeric.

Americans drinkin’ on the job Yeah, I'll "spice" my coffee.

US-Mexico tunnel Tunnels excite me.

The difference between fact and fiction is a candy bar. This guy’s not on trial. Frey knowingly exaggerated events. I don’t see the point of investigating the truth of these events, particularly not after the book has been printed, and particularly because he isn’t reporting on, say, a war. I guess people feel deceived.

This morning I heard on the radio about a recent finding that plants emit methane gas, a greenhouse gas, which throws a wrench into plans to curb global warming, given one idea is to plant trees to absorb carbon dioxide. Having trouble locating a link for it in a quick few minutes before doing work at work. This post is from yesterday, which work at work kept me from posting. I believe this is still being investigated. At first, scientists reviewing the article on it thought it was ridiculous (flat-earth syndrome?).

evident distrust of bone and flesh

A salt bagel is a foul creation. I’m glad I’m not a celebrity marrying and divorcing as frequently as day turns to night and especially not under a spotlight. My lips are numb.

Until I’m no longer a busy motherfucker at work, here’s bits and pieces:

Woman mummifies, having died and upon her wishes been left in front of her TV—for 2 and a half years.

Update on the fraudulent stem-cell researcher from South Korea. Apparently he verifiably cloned a dog but nevertheless lied and inked mal-data. Apparently he also made use of the eggs of one of his research assistants. Even accompanied her to the hospital for the procurement. He stands by his findings. This story fascinates me.

So whose skull is it, and what’s it matter? Further confirmation that rugs will always be slipped out from under the house’s foundation. And that it doesn't matter really. I don’t believe anything, except that salt bagels are foul.

Go here to see a stunning photograph.

* * * *

God Has Wheels prompted the following (I love lists):

Four jobs I've had in my past:
1. English teacher at community college
2. backroom monkey at Borders bookstore
3. reader for potential question theft in LSAT prep books
4. air conditioner factory worker

Four things I want to do before 2006 is over:
1. move from Belle Mead to Brooklyn
2. put together a book’s worth of poems
3. gain back sureness with one of the foreign languages I learned and have been losing
4. learn more about the way the brain functions

Four things I say a lot:
1. Wow. (to my chagrin)
2. That’s a bunch of baloney. (I enjoy its cartoonishness)
3. It’s weird. (also to my chagrin, so be it)
4. Evidently, ____. (or so I’m told)

Four things I don't trust:
1. Language (as much as I love it, I don’t trust it written or spoken; always something is hiding behind it)
2. Salespeople of any kind (their agendas by nature are ill-focused)
3. People who smile all the time (obviously it isn’t possible to do so sincerely)
4. Zealots

(Government is sort of a given I figure, like r s t l n e in the final puzzle on Wheel of Fortune.)

(In one way or another, all of these come down to sales of some kind and the language that is used in the act of it.)

Four things I do trust:
1. My intuition
2. Eyes
3. My closest friends and some family members
4. Memories from my sandbox

Four people from history I'd like to meet:
1. Charlie Chaplin: Thanks for making me laugh and think, when those activities seem otherwise impossible.
2. William Faulkner: How in the hell did you write The Sound and the Fury?
3. Galen: Weren’t you tempted to cut open a human body just once--cross the prohibitions of religion just once--to see how the thing worked? I must know.
4. Sophocles: Read aloud to me your Theban cycle while I lie here on the couch; afterward we will have a discussion morality and the viable coexistence of perfectly conflicting ideologies.

Four best movies of 2005:
1. Broken Flowers
2. A Very Long Engagement (in the common 2004, but in my 2005)
3. Sideways
4. The Constant Gardner

(As stated in a previous post, I have a horrible memory regarding the timeframe of a year; the last five years seem like last year.)

Four best books I read in 2005:
1. Infinite Jest
2. The Magus
3. Incompleteness: The Proof and Paradox of Kurt Gödel
4. Mind Wide Open: Your Brain and the Neuroscience of Everyday Life

preliminary notes in the new year; or, sometimes a bird shits pretty

The door was open and early Michael Jackson played loudly in the office, remixed by Mixmaster Shitty Printer and Fax. What a weird scene in the hospital. I forgot where I was for a moment and had to tame the volume. She’s a very kicky girl and she just loves performing outdoor activities (performing?), particularly when everybody is kung fu fighting. A whistle blows and a train whizzes past. But enough about me.

Today I woke up with Extreme Bedhead which I made no effort to tame. When I arrived at work, the first words spoken to me were these: Your hair looks really good today. Did you blow dry? Similarly, when I haven’t done laundry in a while and am forced to awkwardly concoct an ensemble, somebody tells me my outfit looks great. Therefore, I conclude I have no taste. Just expert timing like a funky Chinaman.

Popcorn burning in a microwave assaults the hallway. Then urine. Sexy things pass out right and left. They’d rather be performing outdoor activities so that they might be chosen to live in the apartment with Larry the fit guy. Even doctors read Cliff notes to study up on statistics. I am neither here nor there. At least nobody smells like patchouli or paint today. Touch of vomit, however, inside the yellow walls.

The surrogate faxer looks pretty in yellow and apparently crime is down in New York, at least murders. With eight million people around, murder is inevitable. And brick house ideology. And mighty mighty mice. Rats rather. Rats like fat midgets. It’s ok to plant a garden in January if you live in a biblical inn or at least fancy the sauce, the infinite mystery and its opposite.

This is what the new year has hauled in headfirst: the sound of a gritty factory winding equally in hover and spin with mary poppins, a whistle that settles into a chalk drawing. I’d like to be more clear about the future of the universe but until I make the revamp list my medulla is a supernatural thing and Iceland sounds like diamonds dropping.

Tell me anything. My heart is not heavy because it is growing.