ray gunn's revival

Who Is Jan Snupij?

Wed, 31 Aug 2005 16:48:42 GMT

Click to read entry viii.
Click to read entry vii.
Click to read entry vi.

v.

In the morning after my grandfather’s passing, my gunnysack is filled with dead ravens. I say good-bye-for-now to my friend Skinless Paul and I set out with my stolen walking stick. Borrowed? I can barely borrow from the living. A little shorter than me and gnarled, something organic worn smooth apiece at shoulder level.

Through the back roads and hills. All I ask is a road and continuous silence, save for the incidental company of passing travelers. Not that of the businessmen trapped in their little wheeled boxes snarling the turnpike with traffic. They talk to their watches. Or of the homeless. They sniff the breeze and are always in heat, gouging holes in the dirt to fuck.

Off the main thoroughfares, which are impassible, others like me are traveling with their gunnysacks. Some carry corpses for burial. Others write undecipherable words in small books. It gives me fleshy ideas. Our meeting and parting, the skin of cooking milk. Truly genial because tempered with distrust.

Passing these silent tests we speak of the road, but not the journey. It shows on our skin: flesh words. Fellowship is a lie and we know it. The corpses must be carried. Important things unsaid. Miles coiled and coiled into shoes. What's a small godless prayer between two passing bodies? It suffices as currency for tolls on dirt highways.

More Things in Heaven and Earth

Wed, 17 Aug 2005 20:54:10 GMT

Anyone wondering why there's been no activity under the revival tent lately? Well, I'll tell you brothers and sisters.

drsmax and I are in the process of moving into our new apartment. For a pair of minimalists, we sure have a lot of stuff!

I will get back to the regularly scheduled madness online, including a few story threads, as soon as the offline madness settles down a bit. Right now, finding underwear in the morning is a great achievement. Note to self: check under Gravity's Rainbow next time.

Meanwhile, I managed to pull a photomanipulation, and a lame Shakespeare reference, out of my hat. Enjoy!

"Your Philosophy"
Photomanipulation
(c) 2005

Who Is Jan Snupij?

Wed, 10 Aug 2005 14:36:34 GMT

Bonus Material

jackbabalon23 thinks he knows. He submitted this photo to me and, from what I can tell, it is a stunning likeness:

Stay tuned for more of the story.

Who Is Jan Snupij?

Tue, 09 Aug 2005 15:35:59 GMT

Click to read entry viii.
Click to read entry vii.

vi.

While the oom-pah band droned on, Jan Snupij sat and carefully folded his napkin into halves. He folded it into fourths. He considered folding it again but remembered his ale; he took a few gulps of that instead. He stared at the faux marble tabletop until the dark veins and clouds formed into patterns. A pirate ship. The Savior Jesus Christ's face. Jesus Christ on the pirate ship, waving a sword at a flying horse just off the prow...

"Sorry about taking off like that," said the curvy girl who slid breathlessly back into the seat across from him. "I just saw some friends over there I haven't seen in a long time." She waved across the crowded bar and laughed prettily.

"No problem at all." Jan Snupij did that thing with the bottom of his face that Skinless Paul assured him was a smile. "The waitress brought your drink," he said, motioning to the concoction on the table in front of her as if he had conjured it himself.

"Oh, good!" Her eyes sparkling in her round glowing face, she picked up the glass and sipped from it. That was the exact moment, watching her take a bit of ice into her mouth and crack it, that Jan Snupij saw the cosmic farce he was participating in. This brilliant, cheerful woman in front of him wasn't seeing him sitting there trying to smile at her. And worse she wasn't talking to him either; about her job, her “art” classes, her strange disgust with what she called her "body." There was another man sitting where Jan Snupij was, across the table from her in a bar much like this only it was inside her head. This usurper behind her eyes looked just like him, he supposed, or damn well close. It was to him she spoke, offering words chilled by crushed ice.

When the realization hit, he felt his body go deliciously slack. It was like the point right before you wake from a howling nightmare where you realize you're dreaming. He felt his smile swell against the onrushing words. I'm not even here, he told himself. He looked past her to the stage. The singer, a skinny redhead of indeterminate sex, seemed to be bobbing its head in agreement.

Jan Snupij threw himself into the conversation, feeling like a prisoner on the eve of release. He made small affirmative sounds at the back of his throat. Every time he opened his mouth to say more, he was silenced by another runaway train screaming from behind her teeth. She cut off one of these abruptly, making it fall off its ralis. She widened her eyes. "Oh, wow! Will you excuse me? I just saw someone else!"

"Go right ahead." Jan Snupij used this as an excuse to siphon off some of the laughter that had been building under his shirt. "You're quite the butterfly!" At this she laughed and rolled her eyes and hurried away. From somewhere behind him, he heard a long, pained “Hiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii,” followed quickly by another. He didn't turn to look (as a rule he never turned to look at anything) and imagined with a sudden shiver the tentative ghost-hugging going on back there.

Inside his head the flesh-words were waking up. He felt his spirits lift as his bones tuned to the pitch of their voices. They flew circles around the angles of his brain, some of the more restless ones riding his arteries out to the tiny holes at his wrists. He watched these march in tight spirals on his skin and laughed quietly.

You're still here? Fuck, we thought for sure you'd be done by the time we got up!

No, still here, he thought, But I'll tell you what, my friends: never again. Never. Fucking. Ever. He rmembered his ale again and cheerfully emptied the glass, then rolled down his sleeves, the flesh-words echoing with their laughter.

Who Is Jan Snupij?

Mon, 08 Aug 2005 17:05:29 GMT

Click to read entry viii.

vii.

Jan Snupij had been going to bed an hour later each night than he had the night before. At this rate, he thought, he will have trained himself to abolish the need for sleep altogether within the fortnight. He would find himself getting sleepy at precisely the time he grew sleepy the previous night. In order to stay awake an extra hour, Jan Snupij had the not-too-uncommon idea of writing an entry in a journal.

Here is an excerpt:

That which did not occur today (or current alternatives):

1. church bells
2. little seeds (strawberry)
3. the promise of a full day's work
4. the concommitant promise of a full night's rest
5. verbal communication
6. a close embrace
7. (semen)

the room shrinks, furniture elongates // becomes water soluble, expands upon touch // the ideas unwritten, prolonged

(in prolonging not unfelt--just changed, reprogrammed)

I am eating breath, getting fat.

A third promise: to make a place that can harbor the scene of the situation where the unwritten words come into the flesh. Walk to the park on the first day without sleep and telegraph the flesh-words to the little animals.

Who Is Jan Snupij?

Fri, 05 Aug 2005 16:39:52 GMT

drsmax has been following the directives of my journal and has submitted a theme for me. The theme is actually a question: "Who Is Jan Snupij?"

Over the next week or so I will be creating a portrait of Jan Snupij in eight parts.

In attempting to unravel the biography of a great man, sometimes one has to begin at the end and work backwards:

viii.

On the last day of Jan Snupij's life, a day that he had known was coming since the night before, he put on a hat that had once been a favorite of his grandfather's and walked to the park. He had always loved wearing the hat when he was younger, because of the contrast between itself in its well-constructed angular coarseness and his smooth, young face. Over the years, the contrast had vanished, but he still loved wearing the hat.

Experiments in Color: Waking Dreamscapes

Thu, 28 Jul 2005 21:16:33 GMT

The Hollow Men

Wed, 20 Jul 2005 15:52:01 GMT

Onward Sister Christian

Thu, 30 Jun 2005 15:27:16 GMT

Lampposts These Days, I Tell Ya

Tue, 21 Jun 2005 16:57:49 GMT

Reflections of What Used to Be

Fri, 10 Jun 2005 15:59:54 GMT

White Cranes

Tue, 07 Jun 2005 18:52:30 GMT

Kenneth you bastard, I saw you save Mrs. Awazaki last night. She was standing in that zen-garden yard she keeps, under the cherry closest to the streetlight. I’m dying, Kenneth my son, but it’s the eyes that will go last; the Pacific made a guard of me forever.

You tell me they leave their feet well enough alone now, but I say Okinawa forced her mind to lilies, however trouble bound it. Ten years across the street, and we’ve hardly spoke a word to one another—hobbled by whatever went on. I told you I helped her once, remember? When the gutters came loose. It was late spring, and they were full of cherry blossoms the rain had packed down and pooled upon, until the weight was too much to carry.

Kenneth, I saw you last night. You thought I was sleeping, the way dying men ought to when the doctors send them home for good. The liver’s beyond saving; there was liquor for memory. I chose to take this sofa for the bay window it faces. The last thing I see will be the weather, and Mrs. Awazaki on her front porch, sipping tea like it’s something she’s forgotten; all dignity, the old woman. That’s all I’ll see, I swear it, and I’ll be gone forever.

You put on my army jacket, but it didn’t hide you from me. There were white blossoms all around, and the white circle the streetlight throws down—you were the only dark thing. I’ll tell you what she was wearing, Kenneth my son—it was that old pink kimono with the fans and hummingbirds, and green bedroom slippers, and her hair was coming loose. If you’d left me here with the curtains closed, I could have told you just as well. Ten years across the street, and I’ve been watching her like she’d come specially for me, like I was the object of all that dignity.

They’d kept the sword hidden by wrapping it in straw; there was straw enough about. The husband was dead already; I’d shot him, or someone else had, caught in the many of it; the day was so full of unalterable things. All along the woman was in the doorway, very still. She just stood there with a cup of tea, I swear it, like we were each somebody she knew well. I tell you, she had dressed up just for our arrival—the clothes were old, maybe her grandmother’s, a pink kimono, a black cloak so long she might have been barefoot underneath, just waiting for our notice. Her husband had been holding the straw bundle in his arms, trying to rip it open, and he turned to yell something at her, maybe get back inside, or take off the damn cloak and run, or to hell with your honor, get out, get out, or just goodbye, like he was off to buy fish or cabbages—whatever it was she wanted from him. Then somebody killed him; his mouth was still full of last words. After that, the whole place was silent.

All at once she ran and tripped and fell, but got a hand on one end of that straw bundle; then I had a hand on the other, and it was the hilt-end. She pulled and I pulled, and then the katana was mine, and she was holding the sheath still wrapped in straw. Nobody fired. Everything was stunned, stilled, and she was on her knees in the cold wet, in that pink kimono, the cloak spread out wide behind her. The world was so quiet, and she was so still. Then I understood they were waiting for me. I stepped aside, and they fired like she’d killed me, until she fell over—to the right, the way the ground sloped. The teacup was lying in the dirt, and someone shot that too, so that only the katana wasn’t broken, and I wrapped it in a piece of her black cloak. The sheath and the straw I left for her.

Kenneth, you bastard, I saw you save Mrs. Awazaki last night. You thought I didn’t know how she’d been wandering. It’s been a month since you came home from Canada to watch me die; you know nothing of what I know. You dodged your jungle war—you think it was principle that made you do it? No, you were afraid of me, you were afraid of what it might do to you. That’s all. You think I don’t know she’d been wandering? I’ve been watching it happen for years, all the time you were away, the way she sometimes stopped midway to the mailbox in the morning, unable to remember why she’d come outside. She’d walk around the trees, searching the ground like she’d dropped something precious, pulling branches down toward her face from time to time, as if the trees could tell her what she’d lost.

And there she was last night, out in the road between us, starting across and turning back and starting across again. I saw you hurry to her, say whatever—you’ll get hit, go back inside, forget what you’re looking for, the dark’s not worth searching. She wouldn’t be still, kept moving forward; her eyes were toward my window. You put your hands lightly against her collarbones; I saw how she struggled to keep moving forward. You thought it would kill me even quicker, to know how age was working on Mrs. Awazaki—as though that terrible dignity of hers was only tea sipped from a small white cup.

Under this sofa there’s a bundle of black fabric, and the long sword inside it. Have you ever felt shark-skin in your hand? You haven’t. The handle’s crisscrossed by black strips of it. Even now I sometimes feel the cool grip it gave—I tell you the katana is too fine to ever put down for good, that Mrs. Awazaki was coming to free me from it, to tell me that whatever went on was beyond us, that even the many of it can be let go. You guided her back to her front door—you saved her, Kenneth my son, and I am lost.

(c) 2005

Making the Beast with Two Fronts

Wed, 25 May 2005 15:39:54 GMT

The Old Man Is Snoring

Fri, 20 May 2005 13:44:51 GMT

"Avenue of the Americas" (c) 2005

I've been thinking a lot about this lately.

As much personal distaste as I have for the ever-tacky, ever-bullish Donald Trump, I applaud him for his ballsy play to get the WTC re-built in its own image.

Most everyone agrees on two things:
1) The original towers were a pair of the ugliest buildings ever conceived in modern architecture.
2) All of Trump's architectural contributions to this city to date have been ugly, functionalist pieces of high-priced propaganda.

So who better to re-conceive the WTC? Some hoity-toity international design firm hell-bent on conceptual BS, or the man who embodies NYC's hard-nosed, brash, and extravagant attitude?

Let's hear it for The Donald!

The original towers may have been an eyesore, but they sure will be a sight for sore eyes if we can bring them back.

A Diamond Is Forever

Tue, 17 May 2005 18:39:46 GMT

Pharaoh stood at his bedroom door and watched the green sand pour out of the open closet. It had been coming in a steady stream for about ten minutes, time enough for the initial panic to subside and the incongruity to ripen into fact. The inside of your closet is gone, he could now tell himself, and it has been replaced by a light-resistant wall of shadow. Furthermore, green sand is streaming out from this shadow at the rate of what looks to be a few gallons per minute. It took him only ten minutes to be able to tell himself this in the same breath as ...and my television is on the fritz. He wasn't sure if this kind of adaptability was normal.

At first he thought Ellsworth might have something to do with this. Ellsworth "Eli" Glass, Maker of Ghosts and the nervous little shit next door. He had woken Pharaoh up early that morning, pounding on the door and blubbering some nonsense as usual. Could this be why? He decided this most likely had nothing to do with the ugly floating things Ellsworth obsessively sculpted out of æther. As a desiccated corpse himself, Pharaoh made it clear to Ellsworth to keep his ghost business far away from him. Pharaoh didn't go for that ghost shit at all.

The sand was now close to covering the whole floor, with a large dune collecting at the base of the closet. For a few seconds Pharaoh fought the urge to smooth out its distribution into an even blanket covering the whole room. "I can't figure this out now," he said, "I need the goddamn diamond for that." And as luck would have it, it was the fucking ruby in his skull, not the goddamn diamond.

He reached under his bed and pulled out the worn lacquered box from the Old Days. He riffled through the various gemstones with his twiglike fingers until he found the diamond. Sitting on the edge of the bed, he held it up and watched it carve slivers out of the light in the room, and a deep sigh blew through the tatters at his ribcage.

In the Old Days, Colonel Argyle was around to do this procedure safely. In the years since the colonel's death, it was getting harder and harder for Pharaoh to pull off. He had to be quick, or all was lost.

Holding the diamond tightly in his left hand, Pharaoh slipped his right index finger and thumb into the hole at the base of his skull, grasping dumbly for a moment before feeling the warm-edged surface of the ruby.

"Come on, Pharaoh," he told himself, wheezing. "One . . . two . . ." As he yanked the ruby from his head, the diamond jumped obstinately from his hand and tumbled to the floor before he could make the switch. The ruby clattered after it, rolling from his slackening grip. "Shit," he said.

In the last seconds of consciousness, Pharaoh had mind enough to grope madly at the box for another jewel, any jewel, but only succeeded in smacking it over the side of the bed. The awareness of this final fuck-up was the last thing he registered before blinking out like a TV set. Pharaoh's withered corpse, now quite empty, fell forward onto the floor. His right arm broke off at the shoulder with a puff of dust; his head snapped off and rolled an irregular trail across the thickening blanket of green sand.

© 2005

The Library of Babelicious

Fri, 13 May 2005 17:43:08 GMT

For the Congregation:

Pick out one of these books. Give me its coordinates and then tell me about what's on the inside.

Car Locked, Head Cocked

Thu, 12 May 2005 13:24:55 GMT

You Shoulda Heard 'Em Just Around Lunchtime

Tue, 10 May 2005 18:08:05 GMT

Sometimes I find myself cursing this city.

The exorbitant rents, the cutthroat competition, the tiny living spaces, the price of bananas, the hipsters, the models, the velvet-rope mentality, the privileged, the underprivileged, homeless people with pets...

But then there are days like today when I look out my office window and can see them setting up Lincoln Center pavilion for a press event.

OK, not just a press event. A mini-concert by the Rolling Stones:

*Start Me Up
*A new song from their new album's tour, which launches today
*Brown Sugar

My coworkers and I took a leisurely stroll across the street and stood about on a beautiful spring day and watched Mick and the boys play. People were climbing the carefully landscaped trees. Wading into the reflecting pool. Clapping like they had rhythm.

Sextagenarians still rock.

And I guess New York does too.

I'm now going to go spend too much for a banana.

Grounds Control to Major Tom

Thu, 05 May 2005 00:12:58 GMT

Discussion Questions

Mon, 25 Apr 2005 18:21:10 GMT

Discussion Questions for The Trans-Occipital Demonstration of Negligible Force, a novella as-yet-unwritten by me (and you).

1. The book opens and closes with a primordial lump, saying "obiter dicta" repeatedly. Have you ever seen a primordial lump on the bus? What route and time of day? Did it ever say "obiter dicta"? If not, what if anything did it say?

2. One of the most multifaceted characters is Aspirin Misericordia. What is the significance of the seven rabbit feet attached to her belt? Painting her rifle green? Genuflecting at the doorway of the Scary Automat? Why do you masturbate thinking of lice?

3. Turn to the person on your left and punch them as hard as you can in the mouth. Say to them, "I fucking hate you, and if I don't kill you now, that's because I have more important things to do." This appears during the "Mountain Eating Contest" sequence in the book. What are scalloped potatoes? Can I eat them if I am allergic to seafood?

4. In Chapter 29: "31st-Century Django", the character Django Chromeknuckle kills 3,000 people with his Plaid-Guns. Lie down, you're dead. Also: What is the plural of ficus?

5. Discuss? Discuss.

Bring the Boys Back Home

Thu, 21 Apr 2005 13:34:21 GMT

"День Защитника Отечества : Defenders of the Motherland Day" (c) 2005

In Russia there is a holiday called Defenders of the Motherland Day, also Man's Day. It is traditionally celebrated on February 23. Mark your calendars for next year.
Until recently this holiday was known as Soviet Army Day, but nowadays it has become a holiday for all men by analogy with the similar Women's Day. If they ever come home, men are congratulated and given presents. Like vodka-flavored neckties and Russian nesting rifles.

Mother's Day in the U.S. is almost upon us. What are you getting Mom?

Frankly, My Dear

Mon, 18 Apr 2005 20:15:46 GMT

"Meat: The Flesh Failures"

Thu, 14 Apr 2005 18:43:51 GMT

I liked it when he ________ my ________ while I ________ him. With the firebugs in my ribcage I projected my lung’s shadow onto his bare back. He’d lean over my prone body, the disguise of my prone body like a tundra on holiday doing backstrokes in capricornish water. Lean over just like that and the fish would evolve, as if he’d snuffed a candle between thumb and forefinger where the lightning bolts came out. That he died, I’m not certain; it may just be that I started to move backward and everything else stayed still. Fixtures in the scenery snort past when I stick my head out the window. I count each snort and catalog its shape. Even looking down I can’t tell which of us is moving.

It’s spring, and I’m so very tired of the con my body is running.

For example: There was the street that ran past his hovel, where I saw the parked car. The butcher in the backseat with the large dead pig. Through the open door I watched him ________ its ________ while he ________ it. It’s strange but blood can cloud as well as clot. Maybe it does both inside us. The sidewalk was uneven and he looked up. “The fuck you looking at?”

That the pig was dead, I’m not certain. That may have just been the con it was running.

© 2005

Blue Note

Tue, 12 Apr 2005 14:09:07 GMT

drsmax shared with me his secret trick to foolproof digital cross-processing, giving new life to a couple of my old photos. I sure do love that fella.

"Abflug: It Feels Like It Sounds" (c) 2005

"Rough Trade" (c) 2004-2005

Fears, Multiplied

Wed, 06 Apr 2005 14:15:47 GMT