Light hurts the eyes in a gloomy age.



from: notebooks: 11/19/87
published in my collection: *The Boundary of Blur* ((Roof, 1993)
*********************************************************

"I wish to stay
Without the engineered thought forms..."
Alex Cumberbatch

This just in-
he's back on line!
new blog name LX {click here}(Libretti Xzentriques?- perhaps)
with more of the provocative, engaging writing
I, and many others, have come to very much
look forward to from Alexander Cumberbatch:

"When to tree horror to cure acid racists constructions
Wishing subject of sorrows lynch mobs panic panaceas of purity"
********************************************************
"Never trust anyone over 30"
"Right on!"

A memoir from
Ron Silliman {click here} concerning a stirring, political era: 40 years ago
to be celebrated next week in Berkeley.

I'd like to say how disappointed I feel,
but discreetly I don't. I'd like to say how
proud I am that nonelheless I push on
but modestly I won't. Then the two cancel
each other out.


notebooks: 4/9/92
published in *The Boundary of Blur*
(Roof, 1993)

It is very possible that as human beings
we are accumulating illusions faster than
we are shedding them, despite our
well-intentioned efforts to reverse this
process.

notebook: 3/4/90
published in *The Boundary of Blur*
(Roof Books, 1993)

When In Rome...

It's a pleasure to travel,
albeit virtually, with the Never Neutral
Ernesto Priego {click here}

The greatest pleasure is to discover a system
in what appeared as only disconnected insights.

**

The solution to an idea is a feeling; the answer
to a feeling is a thought.

from *Theoretical Objects* (Green Integer, 1999)
****************************************************

"The Box"
a poem by Michael Z. Gates
involving memory, time, adolescence and sci-fi

Twists and Turns {click here}
****************************************************
"The freedom of conversation is being lost.
If it was earlier a matter of course for conversation
to take interest in one's partner, this is now replaced
by inquiry into the price of his shoes or his umbrella.
Irresistably intruding on any convivial exchange is
the theme of the conditions of life, of money. What this
theme involves is not so much the conccerns and
sorrows of individuals, in which they might be able
to help one another, as the overall picture. It is as if
one were trapped in a theatre and had to follow the
events on the stage whether one wanted to or not,
had to make them again and again, willingly or
unwillingly, the subject of one's thought and speech."

from *One-way Street*
*Imperial Panorama*
Walter Benjamin
translated by Edmund Jephcott and
Kingley Shorter
******************************************************
The Unbearable Lilghtness of Blogging

The eclipse of the personal in everyday life continues
apace since Benjamin's time. The mere mention
of some intimate issue causes the friend to
pull out his watch and hurry on. Or to change the
topic to some broader "social" issue; the "election," or the movies.
With blogging, the personal has been given new life:
on a one way street into the personal lives of countless,
often anonymous others; many of whom find the time to respond.

from *Automatic Manifesto #1*

...Must confess secrets, get attention. Must conceal
embarassments, create embarassments. Must
mystify, satisfy, entertain, beguile, charm, remember,
enlighten, soothe, relax, inspire, challenge, attract,
impress, confuse, enrapture, mobilize. I must
rebel, I must gather, I must disseminate, I must
canonize, be canonized. I must never be literal,
romanticize, hate too much or love too much,
or reveal my undesirable or questionable values.
I must not be ingenuous or native, too intellectual
or theoretical, too simplistic or bombastic, too
sententious or litigious. I must not be blank or silent,
outrageously moralistic. I must be more sexual, I
must not dwell on my personal identity, and never
get too involved with feelings. I must not think too
much about my audience. I must be spontaneous,
I must record faithfully the dialogues and events of
my time, like a combination tape recorder and
camera. I must be funny and use language in a witty,
inspired, telegraphic and rhythmic way. I must be aware
of the group process and not overly dwell on simplistic
psychological issues in enormous, repetitive, boring
detail as frequently as possible. I must use images,
images of life and death, of youthful sexuality, of
corporate power and greed- and, most of all,
naked violence. I must mention the police. I must
plunder my diary writings- but disguise them and
efface them. I must divide my text into ever more
digestible sub-headings. I must copy and plagiarize,
I must appropriate. I must create ironies, within
ironies, within ironies. I must reflect form. I must
create more snappy dialogue. I must be publicized
more, write more letters, be discussed more, be
anthologized more. I must be seen at fashionable
parties. I must befriend the famous, woo them, flatter
them, flirt with them. I must dress befitting my artistic
accomplishments. I must be calm, I must be cool, I must
conceal my emotional nature. I must not dwell on my
mistakes. I must be witty, I must be charming, I must learn
to ignore cheerfully accusations of literary imitation or
influence. I must not commit literary or social suicide.

I must create new forms, I must create new words, I must
allude to many levels, many literatures. I must go mad,
I must make sane. I must create, I must destroy. I must make
to live. I must let die.


first published in *Ribot* edited by Paul Vangelisti, 1994
published in *Theoretical Objects* (Green Integer, 1999)

You Can't Fool Mother Nature
(Paths of recent Florida Hurricanes
as compared with year 2000 voting patterns
for Gore and Bush)
Guaranteed to make you smile!
from Whimsy Speaks {click here}

Having heard only lies all our lives,
we must assume the truth is
unintelligible and start from there.
It's like panning for gold and not
knowing what gold is.

from my collection *Theoretical Objects*
(Green Integer, 1999)
********************************************

from "After A Lost Original"
in *After A Lost Original*
by David Shapiro (Overlook, 1994)

"When the translation and the original meet
The doubtful original and the strong mistranslation
The original feels lost like a triple pun
And the translation cries, Without me you are lost
Then be my dream, thin as the definition
Of a trance in a garden
The ambiguous friend responds, Perhaps I do astonish you
Like a boy confused with a butterfly's dream
But you are my dream now, after all..."
*****************************************************************
from "Drawing After Summer"
in *After A Lost Original*
by David Shapiro

"I saw the ruins of poetry, of a poetry
Of a parody and it was a late copy bright as candy
I approach your metal mouth, you put it close to me..."
******************************************

"These are days when no one should rely unduly on his
"competence." Strength lies in improvisations. All the
decisive blows are struck left-handed."

*Chinese Curios"- Walter Benjamin from *One-way Street*
*****************************************************************
"The construction of life is at present in the power of facts far
more than that of convictions, and of such facts as have
scarcely ever become the basis of convictions. Under these
conditions true literary activity cannot aspire to take place within
a literary framework- that is, rather, the habitual expression of
its sterility. Significant literary work can only come into being
in a strict alternation between action and writing; it must nurture
the inconspicuous forms that better fit its influence in
active communities than does the pretentious, universal
gesture of the book- its leaflets, brochures, articles and placards.
Only this prompt language shows itself actively equal to the moment..."

W.B. from One-way Street: *Filling Station*
*****************************************************************
"You do not need to leave your room. Remain sitting at
your table and listen. Do not even listen, simply wait.
Do not even wait, be quite still and solitary. The world
will quite freely offer itself to you to be unmasked, it has no
choice, it will roll in ecstacy at your feet."

Kafka
Aphorisms (104)

The Unbearable Lightness of Blogging

Blogs are rich in references, facts, presences,
responses, interactions, opinions, humor,
history, politics, poetry, prose, seriousness,
silliness, dailiness, discontinuity, irritations,
exultations- in other words, all things human
- but, thankfully- they are silent.
************************************************
The Sophist's Birthday

Originally published September 1, 1986 by Sun and Moon,
Charles Bernstein is celebrating the reissue of this classic
by Salt Publishing at

The Bowery Poetry Club
on Saturday, October 2cd
at 4 p.m..

In addition to readings from *The Sophist*
Bernstein will be reading "mostly new work."

The "official" announcement:


Saturday: 4:00 - 6:00 PM
308 BOWERY, just north of Houston, New York City
$5 admission goes to support the readers

The Segue Reading Series is made possible by the support of The Segue
Foundation. For more information, please visit www.segue.org/calendar,
http://bowerypoetry.com/midsection.htm or call (212) 614-0505. These events
are made possible in part, with public funds from The New York State Council
on the Arts, a state agencyCurators: Oct.-Nov. Nada Gordon & Gary Sullivan,


OCTOBER 2 CHARLES BERNSTEIN and CAROLEE SCHNEEMANN
Charles Bernstein's The Sophist has just been reissued by Salt Publishing,
with an introduction by Ron Silliman. Controlling Interests was reissued
last Spring by Roof Books. Bernstein teaches at the Univ. of Pennsylvania.
His author page is at http://epc.buffalo.edu. Carolee Schneemann is a
multidisciplinary artist who has transformed the very definition of art,
especially with regard to integrations of the body, sexuality and
technology. Her video, film, painting, photography, performance art and
installation works have been widely shown in the United States and Europe.
In 2002, the MIT Press published Imaging Her Erotics ˆ Essays, Interviews,
Projects.