sensory lit/art musings and peregrinating field experiments | ||  | ||| || |  |||  ||

¢ Birthday Scraps & Clippings from Marsupial & a Contest Even

Below the waist, the skin has a scaly appearance of undetermined causation. The hair is brown and 18 inches in length. The irides are hazel. The natural toothes are in good condision. Lips are hard into a bill struqure akin to a soft-bille duck or porpoise. The oral mucosa and tongue are free of in-sult or in-jury. Earlobe creases are notably absent. The fingernails are long and clean & partial webbed [ ... ]

¢ So Long & Thanks for the Samaki: Last Will & Lament

I might not have walked a mile in a typical Kenyan's shoes, but I've run many miles. And I have tried walking and biking to work, enough to know it's a deathwish. Sorry to harp on this, but the roads are a metaphor for life here, and the bottom line is these roads are the same roads built in colonial times, that's why they are so narrow and useless. [ ... ]

¢ I Say Wa, Dog-gone it, You Tell em' Tortoise : Dogon Country, Tellem Pygmy Bivouackers, Animist Beliefs, Sewa Sing-Song & the Art of Being Invisible

There's the art & fetish objects & musical instruments kept hidden for fear they lose their meaning when viewed, except by maybe the makers or the Hogon (the spiritual leader). We went into one Hogon home & saw a huge tortoise (his totem animal) that he kept in [ ... ]

¢ Djenné Mud Mosque & Dogon Architecture

From Timbuktu, we flew back to Mopti. From there we got a car and drove to Djenné, one of the oldest towns in West Africa. It was still hot and flat, with perhaps a bit more trees than up north and the occassional grove of mango trees. The architecture was also a bit different, more in the Dogon style. At times it was like being in Taos or Santa Fe, with a sort of Kon-tiki tribal flair. [ ... ]

¢ Around Timbuktu: The Millennium Village of Toya & a Niger Fish Camp

They set up camp along the river and have at it, an all hands on deck affair. A sort of slash and burn approach to fishing where they take all the fish they can get then move on to another spot. It was quite a spectatacular gathering to come across, especially considering we were near Timbuktu, what most people think of as the "middle of nowhere". [ ... ]

¢ The End of the Road in Timbuktu: City of Mud, Sand, Goats, Donkeys, Doors, Ancient Manuscripts & Indivisibility

Soon he felt himself standing on the last remaining patch of earth in the whole world. Soon he felt himself on the last edge of a precipice. Soon he felt his senses falling under the beautiful seduction of the abyss. Out of its enigma he hard soft susurrations and gentle whispers, as of voices murmuring consolations to the last man on earth, who thought himself damned. [ ... ]

¢ Mali Malaise: Lost ... & Found in Bamako, Obioma's Native Hurricane, Ohle, Fetish & the Art of Capturing ... & Stealing Images

You're better off without a preconceived image in your head. When you try to "capture" the image it precludes you from being in the image, from being absorbed into the scene. Stopping to find yourself on a map also prohibits you from being truly there, in that [ ... ]

¢ Abyssinian Chronicles II: Tigrayan Camelopards, Rock-hewn Churches, St. George the Dragon Slayer & May Day Plagues (ala J.M. Ledgard)

One guy started hacking at the exposed area with the knife, cutting deep into the neck with some elbow grease. The ox kept struggling even when it was half-way decapitated. The other three held it down. Another guy jabbed a knife into the gaping laceration, presumably trying to sever some arteries. I walked up close & there was thick bright blood gushing out onto the dry dirt & grass. [ ... ]

¢ Abyssinian Chronicles Revisited: Information Architecture & Ethiopian Homebrew

These one girls that were lugging jugs of water in the opposite direction, turned around & ran with me for a while carrying their waterjugs on top of it. I don't know what was more tiring, the running, or all the waving and grinning to every passerby yelling, "Farenji! Why are you running?! Where are you going?" [ ... ]

¢ Tsavo East to Tutuola's Wild Hunter in the Bush of Ghosts

It never ceases to amaze me, the shapes and forms and habits of the life forms that have evolved on this planet. Tutuola's realm, the Bush of Ghosts, is the antithesis of this in a sense—his ghosts perhaps represent dead lineages, extinctions that live in another realm, a realm beyond words, beyond thought even. But it's still a realm of possibility, of the imagination, this bush of ghosts. [ ... ]

¢ Mining ma(I)ze Tassel Retrazos for my Looming Natural Histories Loom

All I know right now is that it will start with the making of an ark and from here 39 threads will spin off, each relating somehow to a species of animal riding on this ark. Or more accurately, the anima within the animaL, the traits of the animaLs and what they represent in ourselves, in our own histories. Not the animaLs themselves, but the evolutionary morphological space in all it's [ ... ]

¢ Log of the S.S. Venus Drive Discovering Home: Airborne Juxtaposition of S. Crawford, S. Lipsyte & B. Wainaina

Against inner logic, I took a job working on a 110-foot ship called The Adelaar. It was a river barge that was converted into a triple mast schooner. The captain was some Dutch guy who burned his face off welding a railing on the ship. His hot Scandinavian wife was also on board, as were their two kids, all with different passports from being born in different places. A half dozen other back-packing vagabonds were also hitching a ride, "crewing" for passage and board. We sailed from Fiji to New Zealand through stormy waters. [ ... ]

¢ Residual Ramblings on Tom McCarthy’s Remainder, American Pie & Sidebrow Speculative Redux: The Recursive reenactment as Recombinant Ritual

This is a crisis of speculation, where people are living the good life, too good of a life, joy-riding on speculation. It’s a 401K issue more than a matter of eating or starving or having a shelter over your head. It's a futures issue more than an immediate issue [ ... ]

¢ Zero Sum Zenith: Shuffling the Fine Line Between Coming & Going, Exciting & Boring

I received a card shuffler once as a gift—one of the most memorable gifts I ever received. For weeks before, my father let me visit the present, which he had caged in a box in darkness so I could hear and smell it, but not open it. I think there was a sign on it that said "do not touch until Xmas." Actually I lie, this wasn’t the card shuffler gift. This was another memorable gift—a piggy bank in which [ ... ]

¢ Take the Lilongwe Home: Supertramping from Zomba to Gumulira and "Home" to Nairobi

We went down to the barn at milking time hoping we could lend a hand ("milk a cow" is still unchecked on my bucketlist), but alas, we only got to be voyeurs. Speaking of kicking buckets, we saw the cows do that a few times. They weren't crying over the spilt milk. [ ... ]

¢ Malawi Log: Zombie Baboons and Bottomless Holes of the Zomba Plateau & the Maize Makers of Mwandama

Not what you might imagine Africa to be like—misty and foggy with pine forests. Until troupes of baboons would emerge from the mist and then you knew the only place you could be was the Zomba Plateau. And the lodge itself... if ever there were a place to write an African take on The Shining, this was it. [ ... ]

¢ Mind-fucking Wittgenstein’s Mistress on a Lake Malawi Beach

Wittgenstein's Mistress is about as necessary as an empty coke bottle and I'm the bushman carrying it to the edge of the world. Thing is the world isn't flat. There is no edge to throw it off of. And they call bushmen something else these days. What I'm doing here is taking it to the middle of Africa and throwing it in a deep lake to see what floats to the surface. [ ... ]

¢ Modal Landscapes: the Tazara Line through Tanzania, Across the Border by Matatu & Boda-Boda to Lake Malawi

I counted some 25 adults, 10 kids, 5 chickens (under seats) and 1 rather pissed off goat in this matatu, of which I imagine the specs from Japan would say "seats 12 comfortably." The goat was pretty funny, he would throw a bleating fit every five minutes and everyone would laugh and look at me, as if they knew of my goat fetish. [ ... ]

¢ Heart of Darkness Failure: Reading Reader's Africa on the Central Line to Kigoma

“This capacity to visualize things that do not yet exist has been seen as the fundamental hallmark of culture, imagination.” Along with our big brains, our bi-pedalism and our efficient cooling systems. More than a book on Africa, Africa is a comprehensive book on life as we know it on this planet. [ ... ]

¢ A Day in the Life in the Millennium Village of Mbola, Tanzania, with Walter Willet

Tabora was our jumping off point to the Millennium Village of Mbola, where Jess and the Spicer were paying a site visit. Walter Willet (the preeminent nutritionist and author of Eat, Drink and Be Healthy) met us too. The usual disclaimer applies here in that I don't work for the Millennium Villages in an official capacity, and these photos and observations are strictly my own point of view as a [ ... ]

¢ Marabou Stork Nightmares, African Psycho, Freddy Mercury, Spice Touring and Flâneuring in Zanzibar

They say "hakuna matata" here a lot, but they are just words said to make you feel uptight because you won't fall prey to their scams. "My friend, I'm different from them, I just want to talk to you, find out where you are from. By the way, if you don't need a ferry ticket, what about some marijuana? Don't worry, be happy." The Bobby McFerrins of the world can kiss my tight-lipped ass. [ ... ]

2008

¢ Sensory End-of-Year Reflections on Monkey Fingers, The Body Artist, Deep Tissue Kayaking, Jellyfish, Metaphoric Exfoliation, Sleeping on Trains and the Art of War

We poked our heads above water to see if this was "normal," to see if anyone else was reacting. Most of the divers were wearing wet suits and were going under so were sort of immune (so much for my mocking the SCUBA divers). The only other snorkeler I saw [ ... ]

¢ Siamese Xmas: Flâneuring Thaixtures, Riding the Bamboo Snake, Reading Super Cell Anemia and Getting Inked at Bloodhound

We slept on the floor, some dozen us of us packed in a quonset hut. A couple of people were snoring so it was hard to sleep. The things people do for "fun." We got up and left the village and "trekked" back. After being crammed like cattle into a truck and then fed, [ ... ]

¢ So Wat: Eating and "Grasping" our Way from bangkok to Chiang Mai via Ayuthaya and Phitsanulok Reading Yasunari Kawabata

Photo-taking goes against the grain of Buddhism. Not that anyone minds—you can take a photo of someone taking a crap in Thailand and they'd likely pause to pose for you. Photography is a vain pursuit in the eyes of Buddha—trying to grasp something that isn't [ ... ]

¢ The Pisstown Chaos of Bangkok: A Siamese Dream

I seek out foreign immersion like some people seek out comfort food. I like being displaced, being a fish out of water. Maybe that's why I like Ohle. The residents of Pisstown are subject to forced relocation, or "shifting," as the pastorals here in Kenya also call it. We were flying over the pirate-infested waters of Somalia and over Mumbai (formerly known as Bombay) while I was traveling to Pisstown. [ ... ]

¢ Lakes Baringo and Bogoria w/ Leadbelly & Logo: Species Diversification, Kenya Cowboys (A.K.A S.O.M.F are like so K.C.), Hyena Sweetness and Furlion, R.I.P.

The best one though, was the one about the hare who enticed the hyena with some sweet meat, "something sweeter than sweetness itself," then tells hyena that "once you eat this sweetness, you should never piss or shit because then the sweetness gets lost," [ ... ]

¢ Ex-pat Chicken-scratch Black Bean Tortilla Soup

Always one to kill two birds with one stone, I used the bird for an art experiment before cooking it. I’ve been thinking about cover ideas for the Gary Lutz’ Stories in the Worst Way book which I’m reprinting soon under Calamari Press, and have decided that the perfect canvas for the image is our kitchen sink, though I haven’t quite figured out what will be in the sink yet. Gary suggested an article [ ... ]

¢ The Week in Review, from the Nursery: Noy Holland, Rudy Wilson & the De-Lish Gothic-Tropic of Hell's Gate

Nairobi doesn't have such dungeoness subterranean passages, but there's something about it that makes it ripe for a goth movement. Maybe it's because there's more death in the tropics. Not just more death, but when things die they stink and fester and brood. There's more disease, more pestilence, more chaos, more corruption, more of a tendency towards the "grotesque," whatever that means. [ ... ]

¢ Book Art Materials and Methods: Pushing Cruddy Swag for EVER by Blake Butler

There are no monkeys in Ever. Just a series of rooms and a narrator and people she thinks about but doesn't interact with much. She's not terribly reliable. I think Blake also said once he used to be fat. Like really fat. Unless I dreamt that. I'm kind of writing now like Blake might in his blog, but when it comes to writing writing, he's serious. I won't even try to imitate. I think his place was ransacked [ ... ]

¢ Pilgrimmage to Mama Obama's Village of Kogelo and the Millennium Village of Sauri, Kenya

And there was Mama Obama sitting under a tree talking to some people. The guard told us that if we waited a few minutes we could talk with her. Jess and I looked at each other in disbelief. It was all very surreal. I couldn't believe of all the homes on all the dusty backroads in the world, this was Obama's grandmother's. Barack's father's grave was set off to the side, as was his grandfather's grave. [ ... ]

¢ Reading Ngugi's Wizard of the Crow in Kenya: An INT/EXT Reflection of Tyranny, Chaos and Post-Colonialism

Sometimes you just wish somebody would kick the dirt and say, "have you seen any good movies lately?" Besides the corruption and dysfunctional inefficiencies, people are also tired of all the NGOs and do-gooders trying to save Africa. Fatigue is the dominant sentiment. It is hard to be positive and hopeful here. The positive people are living in la-la land. The problem is most African's have been [ ... ]

¢ S.P.Q.R. Study III: Feral River Brothers and Starlings in the Mud-Orange City

Rome was founded by Remus and Romulus, two feral brothers that like Oedipus were ordered killed for fear they would grow up to kill the king at the time. The servant ordered to kill Remus and Romulus couldn't go through with it, so instead put them in a basket and set them afloat on the Tiber river. They were then rescued and raised by a wolf, and eventually Romulus slew Remus, and Rome [ ... ]

¢ S.P.Q.R. Extrapolation II: The Baptismal Font, Graffiti and Street Memes of Rome

As I mentioned before, the word graffiti has origins with the Romans, meaning literally to scratch or scribble. The word "font" also has Latin origins and is related to fountains, fondue and foundries. When I think of "font" in this visceral sense, I think of Richard Serra slinging molten vaseline at the apex of Matthew Barney's Cremaster Cycle. In our digital world, we are losing sense with [ ... ]

¢ S.P.Q.R. Study I: The Linear Sequence of Events

If there's any word that summarizes what it is that Jess and I like to do it's flâneur. We flâneured our way through Trastevere, across the mighty Tiber river. Everywhere you look is ruin. Not ruin in a negative sense, but an arrested state of ruin, a ruin made ever [ ... ]

¢ There's More to Turin than Terra Madre and the Shroud (Like Books and Film) & Onward to Cinque Terre via Train

On a good train ride you'll forget where you've come from and where you're going and just enjoy it for the ride. Boats are cool too, and maybe when we got to to Genoa we could've taken a boat to Cinque Terre, but the train suits me just fine in Italy. [ ... ]

¢ Slow Food, Terra Madre & Salon Del Gusto: Eating Our Way Through Torino. Oct 23-25, 2008

The main reason we are in Turin is for the Slow Food meetings (Terra Madre) that Jess was chosen as a U.S. delegate for. I was fortunate enough to come along for the gastronomic ride. These are my impressions and thoughts. The meetings started [ ... ]

¢ Nairobi to Milan via Cairo reading Bataille, Oct 21-22, 2008

Our trip started at 2 a.m., a time on the border of being so early that you may as well stay up. It was raining and dark, still drunk from a bottle of red wine, our bodies confused as to why we were rousting them from the crib. I never really sleep deep though, [ ... ]

¢ Making Poisson Cru: A Recipe from Marsupial

We're headed to Turin tomorrow to go to Terra Madre, the annual Slow Food meeting. In anticipation, I leave you with a recipe-xcerpt from Marsupial. I call it a dream sequence, when in fact a lot of it is true: I did make poisson cru in the South Pacific (minus the ligation buffer). I did meet Albert Camus' grand daughter. Yes, she was riding a surfboard, and yes she was topless. We talked about [ ... ]

¢ Dertu Redux 1: Following the Nomadic Pastorals and Ditch Diggers from Nairobi to Dertu, Kenya

¢ Dertu Redux 2: Mobile Classrooms, Bore Holes, "Shifting" Lands, Biz Dev, Somali Shoat, Sleeping Camel Milk by Moonlight and More Dust

¢ Guest-blogging on urwhatueat: Matoke with Njahi beans, Sauteed Pumpkin Leaves and Tandoori Chicken

Telling someone to “eat dirt” elsewhere in the world is usually what you say (in the heat of competition) when you willfully want them to crash or wipe out. Well, in Kenya, and other parts of Africa, they do literally eat dirt. I think “geophagy” is the term [ ... ]

¢ More Songs About Buildings & Food: Stuffed & Starved, NYC Revisited, SSES, Bookfeast ... All in a Day's Work

Went back to New York last week. Didn't really know I was going until a few days before. I got an assignment to do a one day live blogging gig in exchange for the airfare. Not that I felt a need to surface for air or anything, especially in the States, but Jess was going and we've decided to make the Paul and Linda McCartney pact of never spending a night away from each other [ ... ]

¢ The Next Shell of the Hermit Crab Couple, Goiter, the Persistence of Indentured Servitude & Inhumanity, and the Importance of Telling People's Stories

But mostly that scene makes you realize how the dynamics of a situation, of a plan, or of an institutionalized system of subversion, change when you get to know the individual people. Both the hostages and the hostage-takers become individual humans. Then things become far more complex and harder to swallow. Like frogs and scorpions. [ ... ]

¢ Permanent Vacation: Musings on Mombasa, Redux, Jarmusch, Sampsell, Sex, Tides, Unferth, Fish, Hermit Cowries, Monkeys, Kenani, "Home" and Finding Beauty in Being Pretty, Pretty Vacant

I guess you could say I've been on "vacation" for one month now. Though saying you are in vacation in Nairobi is like saying you are on Holiday in Cambodia. Vacation is defined as: 1. an extended period of recreation, especially one spent away from home or in traveling. 2. the action of leaving something one previously occupied. [ ... ]

¢ Obama, We're Not In Kansas Anymore

People have been asking us to see pictures of Nairobi and whatnot. Jess is better at such things, taking pictures and providing a more conventional narrative. She posted some pics and talks about our day to day lives here.  Here's a few pictures I have to add, from in and around our neighborhood, Runda. I still feel somewhat like a fish out of water here. Not that that is a bad thing. [ ... ]

¢ Kwani? 04 and "How to Write About Africa" (a la Binyavanga Wainaina)

It has been a full week now since we've been in Nairobi. In my first days here, I got a hold of some Kwani? publications, figuring they would be a good introduction to what's going on in the Kenyan writing scene. I've read Kwani? 03 before and stuff on their site, but Kwani? publications are not easy (or cheap) to come by in America. There was actually a literary festival that Kwani? [ ... ]

¢ Hot-wiring the Etymological Customs of Packs and Nodes whilst Trying to Eat Blackberries with Blue Teeth (Still Sans Baggage) as a Newbie to Nairobi, Isn't it?

Words fascinate me. Dissecting their elemental and duplistic meanings. Especially semantic puns whose dual-meanings are disparate but strangely connected. For example, the word I used at the beginning of the last sentence, "especially," whose root lies in special... actually it might not be a good example for you, but for me, whenever I use the word "special" I think of the [ ... ]

¢ Leaving America Whilst Reading Don DeLillo's Americana

I started reading Don DeLillo's Americana the last day we were in Albuquerque. Our final day in America. Five pages into it I was experiencing an oddly familiar déjà vu. Ten pages into I realized I had already read it, or at least started to read it. Or maybe I read an excerpt somewhere, but I had definitely read it. My memory sucks. I can't imagine all the books I've read or worse yet, experiences I've had that I can't remember. Memory is a strange thing. You only remember the things you remember   [ ... ]

¢ X-Country Limbo: NYC to Nairobi by way of New Mexico

New York City already seems so far away. Now we're 350 miles and three states away near Cleveland, Ohio in some dingy hotel that smells like mildew. I awoke at dawn in NYC after our last night. The subways weren't running so I walked all the way from 74th street to 34th street to pick up our rental mini-van. [ ... ]

¢ NYC: The Final Countdown!

After over 8 years in New York City, we have 10 full days left here. To honor that, I plan on counting down and documenting our final days here. To honor this final countdown I think it's important that you first watch this video to put you in the mindset. Watch it loud. Just replace "Europe" or "Venus" with Africa. [ ... ]

¢ Rick Moody, Kate Hill Cantrill and David Hollander reading at the Sleepingfish Launch Party

To honor the launch of the new Sleepingfish issue zzz, we had a reading. For those that didn't get a chance to go, here's what went down under the Hotel D'Orsay sign in the Barbès backroom. [ ... ]

¢ From New England (Redux) to Africa by Way of Ancient Greece: Gathering Bookish Momentum & Sleeping in the 3rd bed (in the spirit of Carver's "Neighbors")

Last weekend was a weekend of shifting. Shifting weight. Shifting focus. Shifting cities. Shifting states. Switching places, figuratively. Shifting priorities in anticipation of our big move. Saturday morning, B and C came by in a U-haul and picked up [ ... ]

¢ Cover and opening excerpt from Marsupial: Our Mother for the Time Being

Back in 1994 I had the opportunity to work on a film in Nice, France called Mr. Stitch. The film ended up being a complete fiasco, but for me it was all the more interesting in that respect. It was written and directed by my cousin Roger Avary. Not that I'm particularly proud to admit that... for me it was a good opportunity to spend time with my brother Kevin who was the art   [ ... ]

¢ As Sure as the Sun: Northern California Roadtrip

Last week Jess and I went to California. We went for a wedding in Yosemite, but here's some other stuff we saw along the way. Jess put some pictures on her site as well.   [ ... ]

¢ Interview with Venus Bogardus: On Ohle, Punk, Smart Resilience, Kaspar Hauser, Art Rock, Repoman, P. Gabriel circa 1975, Blade Runner, Repatriation and Utopia, Texas

Venus Bogardus is this band out of the UK that has taken it upon themselves to put David Ohle's words to music. Their latest album Motorman is in fact a collaboration with David Ohle. [ ... ]

¢ Seeds, Fertilizer & Credit: The Economy of Words II, Revenge of the Bookeaters and a Proposition for a Slow Book Movement

As a writer and publisher (nocturnally), I couldn't help but to think of the parallels between agriculture and book-publishing, despite one being driven by necessity and the other, you could argue, being a decadent privilege unnecessary for survival. In particular, he kept stressing the importance of three things: seeds, fertilizer and credit. These three things were the key ingredients   [ ... ]

¢ Skyping to Tokyo & Minor Robberies: A Peregrinating Response to Deb Olin Unferth

I started reading Deb Olin Unferth's Minor Robberies a few months ago, then my wife got robbed and I started a new job and got distracted by a string of other things. I hadn't been able to finish it until the other night at 1 a.m. when I was stuck waiting for the subway. There's a few stories about robbery and travel inconveniences in her book. It's a pretty little green book. [ ... ]

¢ The Stigma of Googling 'Birthday Suicide'

What sticks out most was this guy trying to sell me stolen watches that he had all up his arm and in his briefcase. He really made an impression on me. I said I didn’t need one and that I was trying to sleep, but he saw that I couldn’t take my eyes off his glinting watches and kept insisting and getting all chummy with me, asking where I was going and I said back to Portland  [ ... ]

¢ Commutation #23 : Traversing Central Park & Underground to the Flatirons (in the Snow)

We've lived in 6 different apartments in Manhattan, and I've worked (for an extensive period of time) in 8 different locations. That makes for a lot of permutations of commutes, each route with it's own permutations. I typically bike or walk, though in winter months like now I'm wimpy and resort to the subway. Right now we live on 74th street on the west side and I work on 28 [ ... ]

¢ an excerpt from Tortoise by James Leweling

It was about this time last year that James Lewelling sent me his novel Tortoise. I had the faintest idea who he was. I printed out the manuscript one insomniac night, hoping it might lull me to sleep. But I ended up reading it all the way through, finishing it as the sun was rising. It was better than sleep. It will be out soon from Calamari Press, but here's an excerpt to tie you over [ ... ]

¢ The Making of J'Lyn Chapman's Bear Stories Chapbook

It's been a while since I've made a chapbook or homemade book. I thought I wouldn't miss all the stapling and printing hassles, but in a sick way I do. The driving force of publishing for me is replication, in the sense of meme propagation. By taking a backseat to the replication process you take the human element out of it—the fingerprint smudges and frayed trimmings that remind [ ... ]

¢ X Marks the Spot :: Read on Location < 2008 (cumulative recap)

I'm not big on 'best of' lists at the year's end for books. It's hard to quantify books and I rarely read books when they come out, nor do I feel a need to be current. I ususally wait for the right opportunity to arise. In the spirit of Field-Tested Books, here's all the books I've read where location and time was significant to the reading of it, with links to the blog entry where I "review" it [ ... ]