Hymns to Uncertainty

Translated from the French, by myself from a post by DJ Barney @ La Blogotheque.

Without any worthy reason, this text has dragged out a good part of the year, in a drawer, refusing to come out and celebrate the last album by Animal Collective. One Merriweather Post Pavillion that finally finds itself, against all odds, amongst the discs that I’ve most listened to and loved this year. Thus, there’s much to do: instead of just schlucking it wholesale on a “Best of the Year” list.

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On coldness

Cold Cave

Recently I saw Cold Cave in Eagle Rock, Los Angeles & I’ve been putting much thought into their performance. They were cold and distant. Should the audience have been offended? Should they have recoiled in distaste?

The answer I feel is a bold yes, but not for the same reasons  as most would surmise.

i don’t

…and around this corner

a crushing normalcy.

long gray streets creep into the heart.

pragmatic, necessary, boring.

orange night skies…a dull murmor of heavy motors.

the night whispers everything, and the day says nothing.

y aquí te espero.

en esta tumba de lo banal. aquí te esperaré.

(taken from an old blog post.  Tuesday, February 15, 2005. unedited.)

my house doesn’t make any sense.
i pay. i eat. i sleep. i stay.
my house was built before i was born.
i watch. i meddle. i swoon. i don’t pray.

living my time: i grasp. i reach. i tried.
the sun before it rises still is bright somewhere,
out there in outer space.
it burns hot for no one and all.

(written Sept. 3  2009)

champagne laugh

amarillo

a escribir. la tarea.
el hecho. la verdad.
santos. heridos.
piel. sabor.
mujer. séptima.
vocina. rasposo.
hambre. aire.
cámara. lleno.
piso. botón.

(taken from an old blog post.  Monday, October 09, 2006. unedited.)

le dormeur du carrefour

mon ignorance sur le sujet était souligné quand je t’ai dit que c’était vous.
our coincidences made rendez-vous, when I always seemed to run into you.

i live in a world of sudden meaning and passing sadness.
of transient culture and epiphanic minutiae

(taken from an old blog post.  Monday, March 05, 2007. edited.)

nil

“Are we fallen angels who didn’t want to believe that nothing is nothing and so we were born to lose our loved ones and dear friends one by one and finally our own life, to see it proved?”

• Jack Kerouac The Dharma Bums

wasteland

Connection

I think I have finally realized why I tend to be rather irked/bothered by most explicitly *CHICANO* :

I tend to think of myself as being rather singular and un-pigeon-hole-able [but of course this is naive]. I’ve grown accustomed to feeling like an Other even amongst those that expouse feeling as an Other too. For instance, being at a MEChA meeting once in my first year of college brought this feeling on in waves. The notion that we should be united soley because of ethnic origin I began to see was dubious; what I later came to realize is that ethnic origin as a source of affilitaion is a false/invalid affiliation.

A much more profound and useful association/affiliation I’ve found is that found in equally angry/agitated people you meet every day. Those connections are found in shared emotion/feeling/experience transcend the alienation that can be found even within one’s ethnic group. So when I see someone extrapolating a certain behaviour or action as being “so Mexican” it can really irk me. For instance, hitting your kids with a chancla. I know that this seems to be common, but I was never hit with a chancla nor was any other sort of corporal punishment hurled my way. Does this reduce my Mexican-ness?

This is a can of worms which I’ll  reprise later…soon…