Ferdydurke

Don't ask me to pronounce it. But it's what I am currently reading.
Ferdydurke by Witold Gombrowicz

Follows is the opening paragraph:

1. Abduction

Tuesday morning I awoke at that pale and lifeless hour when night is almost gone but dawn has not yet come into its own. Awakened suddenly, I wanted to take a taxi and dash to the railroad station, thinking I was due to leave, when, in the next minute, I realized to my chagrin that no train was waiting for me at the station, that no hour had stuck. I lay in the murky light while my body, unbearably frightened, crushed my spirit with fear, and my spirit crushed my body, whose tiniest fibers cringed in apprehension that nothing would ever happen, nothing ever change, that nothing would ever come to pass, and whatever I undertook, nothing, but nothing, would ever come of it. It was the dread of nonexistence, the terror of extinction, it was the angst of nonlife, the fear of unreality, a biological scream of all my cells in the face of an inner disintegration when all would be blown to pieces and scattered to the winds. It was the fear of unseemly pettiness and mediocrity, the fright of distraction, panic at fragmentation, the dread of rape from within and of rape that was threatening me from without-but most important, there was something that I would call a sense of inner, intermolecular mockery and derision, an inbred superlaugh of my bodily parts and the analogous parts of my spirit, all running wild.

###

Okay, it is passages like these that make me want to write and also dread to write. See, even that sounds crap, it came out all caveman, I am starstruck by a dead writer. He just sort up sums it up there...the angst of nonlife...inner, intermolecular mockery...Well, all of it really. And that is in translation. It makes me want to become fluent in Polish in the same way that Heidegger makes me want to become fluent in German. Ain't gonna happen, but its the thought that counts, right? Inspired and intimidated.

saturday moring in la

3rd November 2007 8am
I'm drinking a 5 dollar coffee by the pool @ The Standard on Sunset and Sweetzer. The ashtray is electric blue and sits on a zinc white table, which in turn sits on an acreage of electric blue AstroTurf. The maid, in a Pepto pink uniform, partially covered by a cheap navy blue windbreaker is vacuuming the AstroTurf. The vacuum is mostly putty colored and has an electric blue base and power cord which is plugged in to an impossibly long and infinitely kinked orange extension cord . The other worker, a man, is wearing the gas station attendant-like Standard uniform. Navy blue cotton Dickie's with a pale blue short sleeved shirt with soft navy vertical stripes. He is changing the butane canisters in the poolside heaters. In the pool are two clear pink plastic inner tubes. The water is perfectly still. The morning fog has yet to burn off and the towering palms and neighboring buildings look like awakening specters.

I don't know why but this weird combination, cheap windbreaker and all is making me really happy.

leaving the big smoke

Due to unforeseen circumstances I find myself in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma. And after nearly 12 years of being accustomed to having a Big Red Limo at my disposal 24/7/365 in London, I now find myself relegated to having to provide my own transportation, like some sort of regular person. The indignity does not stop there, however; I am currently living in my mother’s house, which at [##] is increasing the burden of humiliation that is mine to carry at this particular point in time. I find myself saying things like, “Mom, can I borrow the car?” Which will, no doubt, in time lead to getting caught making out on the sofa.

Here is how I try NOT to imagine it will go down: I will meet a Hot Guy and we will have “chemistry”. After a few coffees out, a movie and some phone calls we will go to a gig and engage in the Devil’s sport of dancing [OKC is in The Bible Belt] which in turn will lead to the following verbal transaction:

HG: want to come back to mine?

Me: ummm…

HG: or we could go to yours if you prefer…

Me: ermmmm…

CUT TO: Close-up of my alarmed face as I imagine how that would work out, then

FADE OUT AND UP TO:


NIGHT, INTERIOR: Camera pans across the darkened interior of my mother’s well-appointed home. Me and HG are locked in a clinch on The Celery Green Silk Sofa, The Needlepoint Pillows are on the floor and my shirt and bra are in a careless pile next to the Scalamandre Covered Louis XV Fauteuil. HG’s shirt is unbuttoned to the waist. The camera slowly zooms in on me and HG.

Me: mmmmschlurpahhh

HG: mfwgggrrrrr

Me; ooooohhh

HG: schlopmfwaaagahhh

From another place in the house the sound of a footstep is heard and the camera
CUTS TO:

The shadow of a be-robed woman slowly descending the stairs in the dark

Mom: [VO] Lovebug…? Darling…? Is that you...????

Here we do not fade to black. We CUT to BLACK quickly, quicklyquicklyquickly, because I don’t even want to go there or, go back there because there I have been before. Different house, different city but same Sofa, Pillows and Chair with a Fancy French Name:

To wit:

Ian in 6th Grade
Brad in 7th Grade
Lorenzo in 8th Grade
Ivan, Summer Break, Junior Year, College
Dietrich, Christmas Break, Senior Year College

Gentle Reader, I have the Gestalt on this scenario, good and proper. Let me enlighten you. My mother, who I love with all my heart probably more than anyone else in the world in fact, persists in referring to older divorced couples who are co-habitating as being “shacked-up.”

I need to find my own place, but before that can happen I have to buy a car.

Where to start?

Here is a list of things I have been thinking about writing but not writing:

First, a trek to Aspen with my four-years' dead dog Pigeon's cremated ashes to drop in our fave spot up Hunter Creek, where we used to swim and hike 12 years ago;

Trying to manifest a 70's Mercedes SL for my trip to LA;

But manifesting a rusted out '71 380CD instead.

Trying to de-manifest said Merc;

Starting my second [unfinished] novel to avoid rewriting my sitcom for the US market;

The pleasure of reading Malraux's Anti-memoirs aloud to myself [I'm not as pompous as that makes me sound, I'm just weird]

Madeleine Goes To Aspen Where She Meets Ötzi The Iceman

Aspen is surreal. I grew up here but I have never become inured to the whole Famous People thing.

Like waiting in line at Carl's Pharmacy for a prescription to be filled with Stephen Hawking,

or being asked by Tom Cruise and Emilio Estevez where the cool parties are on New Year's Eve the year after Repo Man came out. For example.

I see Famous People daily in London, but it is a roomy city. Perhaps, in Aspen, because it's such a small village there is an uncomfortable intimacy when The Illuminati and The Glitterati rock-up in their Lear jets and then start doing things we normal people do.

So, I'm here in Aspen for a 3-week visit and the climate is very dry. Aspen is, in fact classified as an alpine desert, and I have forgotten to pack my face creams. It's the middle of day 1 and I already need to get my hands on some Weleda products, namely Iris Day Cream and the über emollient Skin Food to lock in the moisturizing benefits of the IDC.

Rents are very high in Aspen and a lot of businesses don't make it. So year-in and year-out there is a constant turnover. Not a big problem if you live here full-time or visit frequently. But nothing is where it used to be since I moved to The Big Smoke 12 years ago, except for Carl's Pharmacy, which had already been here for 14 years when we arrived in '73. And Carl's has EVERYTHING, don't let the name fool you. And because its Aspen they even have caviar in their little grocery section. But they are sold out of my Weleda products, and nothing else will do. I know what I am talking about. So I am thinking I need a health food store, right? So I'm schlepping all over Aspen looking for places that do not exist. Prada is now in what used to be Andre's where we went for Sunday Brunch if we weren't going to Arthur's, the original one, before the Chinese people bought it. Dior, Gucci & Vuitton are where Poppycock's use to be before it moved to The Aspen Square where Scandinavian Design was after it moved from the place next door to The Epicure, but after the Epicure closed and the first Pour La France opened before moving next door and later became Farfalle, but now seems to be some sort of Asian-fusion place. The Cantina is STILL in the old Epicure spot from 12 years ago acting as North Star for my Ullysian Face Cream Adventure, thank God.

But back to my face. My skin is starting to feel tight. I can't see my face, so all I have to go on are the sensations emanating from behind the mask [hahahaha]. And I think: "This must be what Ötzi the Iceman, [the early man-dude some trekkers stumbled across in 1991 on a glacier somewhere between Italy and Austria] would have felt had he lived to see his discovery.

But then.

I see this lady! She has Purpose! She looks like She Knows Where She Is Going! And she even Looks Familiar! Aha! A longtime local, me thinks! My tightened hide relaxes in a Pavlovian anticipatory placebo response. So I make a bee-line for her. She clocks my moves, quickens her pace and ups her Purpose. But I friggin’ need to exfoliate, re-hydrate and lock in the goddamn moisture. I am hemorrhaging bodily liquids via my cutaneous and subcutaneous layers at an alarming rate. And whether she knows it or not she has been sent to me as a Guide from The Archangel of Youthful Dewy Skin, and I am not prepared to wait on the side of this [alpine] desert road for another opportunity like this to pass by:

Me: Excuse me, excuse me...do you...[woman ignores me, so I speak up and add a tone of Authority] Pardon me, would you happen to know where the health food store is...?

Woman: I'm sorry...?

Me: A health food store or, like, an organic spa that sells Weleda or Dr. Hauschka products...I need to get some moisturizer...its so dry here, an Alpine Desert I'm told. [Beat, then] I feel reptilian...

Woman: [Tersely] I can't help you, I'm visiting myself.

Me: [I pause and consider woman] Are you Madeleine Albright?

Woman: Yes.

Me: Oh. [Beat, then] Does your skin feel dry?

Avadhuts & Me

There is a class of being in India called an Avadhut, a kind of hyper-enlightened person that roams free living off alms. These singularities appear to be, on the mild end of the spectrum, slightly eccentric, and on the other end, just plain nuts.

About four years ago, before I had ever heard of Avadhuts, I was in Waterloo Station at the Costa Coffee waiting for a friend. As I was nursing my latte and enjoying the pageant of humanity that is Public Transportation I noticed this man in a shabby, shinny suit who was sort of bussing the tables and heckling the patrons. The staff seemed to be perfectly happy with this apparently ad hoc arrangement and I though maybe he was just some crazy old drunk that they were helping out. But his mumblings and hecklings were a bit unnerving and invasive. Not so much the what he was saying but the how: it was not the drone that most tin foil-lined hat-wearing nutters usually exude. His emissions sounded more like FOX NEWS, where the moderation of cadence and volume is so highly erratic and unpredictable you can't tune it out, even if they are talking about the weather in Des Moines on a fair day. I silently wished this man away from me, and the more and the harder I wished the faster and the closer he came. I was nervous, afraid and more than a little bit irritated that this dude was going to interrupt my few remaining moments of glorious self absorption.

But then my friend turned up and we headed off to the Hayward to see whatever was showing 4 years ago and I thought no more of it.

Now I've been in and out of Waterloo scores of times in the last four years. I'm sure I have even stopped in at least a couple of dozen times, especially when I was addicted to that of Pain au Chocolat sort of thing they do, and had to have one every morning to feel like I was going to have a good day, even if my boyfriend had bought me flowers, taken me to dinner and committed fully to the serious multi-tasking required to get me off the night before. No Pain [au chocolat] no gain.


So, last February I was again meeting a friend and suggested the Costa Coffee [I am now off of ANY FORM OF SUGAR] as a meeting place. I arrived early, got my latte, and was ready to indulge in some simultaneous people watching and self-absorption. And that man, that very same man showed up. Same suit, same greyed dress shirt, same mad mumblings and frantic table clearing. And inside of me I felt the same surge of irritation, fear and impatience to be done with the impending intrusion, especially as he was heading right for my table and no amount of mental force was deterring him. But now I knew, sort of, about Avadhuts. And a thought popped into my head, maybe as a way to mitigate my escalating irritation, etc. I though: "He is an Avadhut." At that moment he was standing right above me, and he very quietly and rhythmically started chanting my name: "Lisa, Lisa, Lisa, Lisa, Lisa" slowly getting louder and faster with each repetition. And before he reached a crescendo I looked up at him, and smiled. As I caught his eye his chanting reversed its course and he went back into his customary FOX NEWS babble and moved quickly away from my table.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Avadhut

The Spirit of Jarvis

So this morning I was thinking about Damien Hirst. And Michael Jackson. And what these two characters have in common: namely, at some point they both crossed The Line where people stopped telling them the truth.

Exhibit A: Michael Jackson's Face.

Exhibit B: Damian Hirst's Diamond Encrusted Scull.

Did DH stop running things by his Eminence Gris, Michael Craig-Martin, or has he simply passed The Invisible Line to the extent where even The August Presence that is MCM could tell him the truth?

Plain as the absence of nose on MJ's face it is clear that he crossed The Line years ago where highly skilled [and paid] professionals were able to say things like:

"Mr. Jackson there is not enough tissue left on your nose with which to work."
"I strongly advise against further procedures."
or
"For the love of God, please, please stop!"

In the case of DH, I have no problem with artists capitalizing on their considerable talents, in fact I'm all for it. And I am in no way asking the sophomorically naive and buttassedly stuuuuuuu-PID question: "But is it art?" And if you are asking that question I would like to invite you to direct your web browser Brian Sewell's site. You will enjoy one another.

What I really really really [that's 3 reallys] think we should be asking, or at least those of us who care about art, is, IS THIS GOOD ART?

The work in question definitely fits within DH's conceptual trajectory, namely an obsession with death on the grossest level (hahahaha). My first clue is that I feel a similar outrage towards The Skull, as I did towards his naiscent abattoir offerings (and I think these early dissections are some the finest work around). Now, with the Skull I can see that at the very least he is exposing the commercial underbelly of the art world, which is quite interesting to me. And in the writing of this I am feeling that perhaps this is the best piece he has made in a long, long time.

But then again, I really liked Earth Song.

I somehow think that The Spirit of Jarvis lies at the center of this matter. Maybe it's good art, maybe it's crap, maybe it's brilliant. But what is missing is that someone who is not afraid of crossing The Line, is in fact immune to The Line, and who preferably has some sort of meaningful credibility, needs to flash some asscrack at Hirst's skull to put things back into proper perspective.

http://www.contactmusic.com/news.nsf/article/cocker%20allowed%20back%20in%20after%20brits%20ban_1019286