7 January 2018

I want to write an honest sentence. The word for emptiness in Sanskrit signifies rotten fruit. Looks good on the outside, but erupts over your hand when you press it. We brace ourselves for the next twitter rant, the cant that masquerades as can, a can can by the president dressed in loud feathers dancing in a cabaret of one. He requires high surfaces, a table genius on which to prance and whinny, entertain the carrot and the sugar cube before adjourning to watch reality TV. It took the reality out of it, really, these shows about ordinary people doing ordinary things that suddenly escalated into a Duchamps wet dream. Beside the urinal a woman told her grandson that this was the piece that had ended art. He was maybe five years old, dressed up for the museum trip, and she was tripping him up already in an aesthetic code that ripped art from use value. The golden shower video may be as beautiful as Piss Christ, though one wonders. It may be real, but is it reality-based? Or the imitation of a parody of a mafia hit that is our current politics? At least Tony Soprano watched the History Channel, you know, and talked about panic attacks with the other woman that he loved. She was raped later on, while he had done nothing to prevent it, and his guilt turned him into a harder man than he was. Murder in the woods is an art, while murder at the dump is not. Or am I a murder snob? Having no memory for narrative, I cannot piece together an argument either way. Each time line falls to the ground like the drone at Sunset Beach that smacked into a palm tree, only to fall to the ground in many white pieces. To see without putting your body at risk is one way to do it. Another is to take the risk without seeing, because that inspires caution we leave on the sand like the blue plastic bottle a monk seal nestled herself against. Her nose was plugged with sand, her eyelids rimmed with it. The tiny head curled back toward her bulbous gray body. Hours later, she still lay inert on the beach, while another gaggle of people watched her sleep. The rainbow over her body promises something else.

--7 January 2018