¢ SPQR P.S: Bruno Munari, Roman StarLINGs & a coloSSal PostScript to «Poste Restante»

... started DEVEloping the silver emulsIONS in my bRain | but the deSCRIPTion in «Coliseum, Wyoming» refers to BATS: «I look up again and the pixels grow in size and number until they assemble into a dark cloud. The swarm takes the form of undulating, swooping vectors dancing in the charged borealis wind. The pixels amalgamate into an image of one living entity, a colony whose existence [ ... ]

¢ S.P.Q.R. V. series giornalE: rubBEing Rome & proCESSing Pynchon

the exciting thing about rubBEing is you ACTually have physical contACT with the objects/SURfaces encountered—public monuments, statues, plaques, inscriptions in churches, sewer grates, metro maps [in braille], tombstone engravings, etc. | you are still just «scratching the surface» of the real thing—not truly capturing, touching—but in the proCESS—in the act—you REALize the gHOST[ ... ]

¢ London II: The Falling Bridge, The Drowned World, The Tate & Typographic Art Books in Shoreditch

...call it psychogeographical fiction...as the world regresses into a dreamy, swampy state, so do the mindsets of it's inhabitants...the ontogeny of humanity recapitulates environmental evolution...the flooding, the erosion, the deposition of silt—it not only takes place in the landscape, but in the minds of those who occupy it... these lofty & often brooding or repressed sentiments, while typically sub[ ... ]

¢ London I: Infusing Electric Flesh into my Ani-meme Wax Museum [thru a Critical Pineal Eye]

...if it all sounds perverse & sick, what you have to remember is that it's not Claro that's sick, but all of mankind is what's sick & Claro is only the messenger...i mean, really, what kind of animals kill their own kind with contraptions like electric chairs?..capital punishment & institutionalized torture are fucked up & Claro is only [strapping us in leather &] making us chew on these things, [ ... ]

¢ Last Days in Japan: Horsemeat Sashimi, Harajuku Girls, Kawaguchi Tatsuo, Xiaolu Guo, Shōchū Hangovers & Eating an Eye for the Ark Figurehead

... all sorts of surprises [after determining we were "hardcore" enough on his taste scale]...the first thing that came out was deep-fried & mushy, like deep-fried cottage cheese...he asked what we thought it was & i said oysters [in my mind thinking Rocky Mountain [ ... ]

¢ Stamping my Pilgrim's Passport in a Kyoto Typhoon

which meant taking that outside escalator up 9 flights & going through a doorway marked "そして次に他のテキストの&の束; 単語、グリフ私達は英語に書かれヌードルだけ読むことができ[、覚えているかどれがについて話す: ヌードルを尊重しなさい!" & sure enough, inside was seriously a dozen places specializing in nothing but ramen ... as close to heaven as you can get if buddhists believed in such things [ ... ]

¢ Tokyo 2 [私達はカンザスに関してもうある]: ARCiTEXTure, Toilets, Snow Men [雪の人の土地], "Crab Hosts," Tsukiji Fish Market & the Bullet Train to Kyoto

... they are outfitted with all sorts of bells & whistles ... they are heated, they automatically half-flush when you sit on it [to avoid undue embarrassment] & then when you are done you have the option of a bidet or spray [though it might take a discriminating derrière to discern the difference] ... i test-drove it [though i wasn't brave enough for the "nozzle cleaning"] & it was quite exhil[ ... ]

¢ Tokyo 1: Murakami, Character Analysis, Irreadability, the Importance of Presentation & Respecting the Noodle

almost anywhere else in the world you visit to vicariously experience their culture as it USED to be [which is almost inevitably corrupted]. you want to witness the ancient temples & eat traditional foods & see the traditional & historic things as they were BEFORE corruption by industrialization & western ways. with Japan though, you feel you are vicariously experiencing the FUTURE of humanity. not just in technology, but in design & culture & how to preserve it all within the framework of modernization & stay true to itself & [ ... ]

¢ Afflicted with Archive Fever [transmitted via memetic contagion] in the foreskin of my Bangkok

WHO SEEDed the DATAbase? reMINDs me of a poster i had when i was young of the Creature from the Black Lagoon saying, "who peed in the pool?" i wish i had that poster now, i can't even find it on the internet, it's become part of my archive to reSURface at a later date. this instinct, this WILL to surVIVE is sumthing that propagated from genes into our beings & has now manifested itself [ ... ]

¢ s'I AM REvisitED [reading GALCHEN & LOCK]: shadowplaying in-flight disILLUSIONment thru tourICTIONS

i'm not bored in that i expect more but bored in that i expect LESS. storytelling often adds another layer of crap to the obfuscation, not a veil to the art. it puts you another layer removed from the good stuff. i'd rather drink water straight from the source. or blindly drink or eat not knowing what it is & experience the surprise when it hits your taste bud [without being told what it will taste like ahead[ ... ]

¢ methOD ACTing Deleuze & Guattari's Anti-Œdipus whil st untRAVELing [deTERRItorializing [re\VERSEnC0DING]] X-country ' hatCHing cLams & calaMARii

there's a dotted i in iDEA buthere's no dotted i in eYe | there are eYe's in eYes & 'n th' verb to see | our bodhies eVOLVing for to carry our eye & i | here's D&G on what we [perHAPs] glorify as flâneuring: "As for the schizo, continually wandering about, migrating here, there, and everywhere at best he can, he plunges further and further into the realim of deterritorializiation, reaching the furthest [ ... ]

¢ I Dream of GENiEmorphEMEology II: Postmodern Indian Sprints in th' Marsupial Age of Wire & String

in th' surge to DistANCE hiss'elf [or POSTulate a theory that Ben Marcus & I are breaking aWAY] he ' WE ' get gob bled back up by th' Postmodern peloton ' but he per haps makes th' peloton pedal a bit harder to reel us in | this reeling ' pushing of th' ENVELOPE is ' o should be a fundaMENTAL tenet of any Postmodern peloton | not all is lost | along th' course ' Brown DISCUSses in an interesting [ ... ]

¢ I dream of GENiEmorphEMEology I: DERRIDA the colonel linguist: gene- SSES ' ANALogies ' RES & IUS SECRETing from CIXOUS' ARChive

a bout what Derrida unCOVERs in her CoNT EXtS ' what it does ' did to him | she was his ARChival MUSE ummm ' his lingual MAP ping deFIBrillator | this is sumthing Cixous herSELF might say ' 'her' BEing the suMMM of her biFURcating bits: "Why have I never tossed out 'the incriminating bits'? I never set foot in either the cellar or the attic [ ... ]

¢ Images and video inspired by and for David Ohle's dueling novellas: Boons & The Camp

There's two novellas, both exactly 49 pages, so in memory of the old school two-sided vinyl records, I decided to have each novella read on equal footing (arbitrarily + & - instead of A & B) in their own directions, upside-down to and opposing each other, meeting in the middle, so you'd flip over to read the other yarn the other way, if that makes any sense. The art probably won't make sense [ ... ]

¢ CASTing A HEXaGRAM : NEXT ∃XIsT ∀mPIRE ARK N j∩NY

LET the RIGHT ONEs IN, singing Esta decision me molesta knowing All roads lead to ROAM | the inFORMatION-- .- - -.-. .-.. | .--. .. -.-. -. .. - --. | ..-. --- .-. | - .... . | ... .- -.- . | --- ..-. | ... --- -- . - ....-. --. | ..-. .-. . . .-.-.- | .--. .-..-- . -.. [no longer] The Bush of Ghosts but it's hard to TELL [ALL wearing white] Sleepless in own skin, woke up to the smell of crescent moons north of equator. Rinse. [ ... ]

¢ 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 [ ... ]

¢ 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 [ ... ]

¢ 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 water[ ... ]

¢ 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 [ ... ]

¢ 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. [ ... ]

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DISCLAIMER: 5¢ense Reviews are seeped in direct sensory experience. They do not pretend to be objective or conventional. By definition, they are inevitably subjective, and in fact may be completely arbitrary, biased or fictitious. The subjects of the reviews are also somewhat random: literature, art, music, food, movies, travel destinations, or any experiences that transcend, meld or deconstruct form or genre, or that engage or inspire the visual, aural, gustatory, olfactory and tactile senses (or simultaneously none of the above). This is not to say that 5¢ense Reviews need to make any sense.

Unless stated otherwise, these reviews, blatherings and ephemera are the opinionated 5 cents of Derek White 

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(c) 2009 Derek White / Sleepingfish / Calamari Press.