#487

Man, I never thought I would say this, or anything like this, but I went to a gentleman's club yesterday night for the first time in my life, all by myself, and I had a nice time. Honestly it felt empowering in a feminist way, like, you know what, girl? Yes. Take my money, which I cannot afford to give you. This is a form of justice, and I'm ready to admit that. 

Either I misapprehended the ritual due to the distance I've maintained from it, or I simply had good luck plus my local place isn't some thrice-haunted slimehole. This fact means that I really can't afford to go very often at all--three times a year? If I'm really into it? The whole thing is a luxury experience, I have learned; like, I'm glad I had a nice button-down on, and it would really represent a badly sunk investment if one had a bad night; ruined by those unfit to call themselves gentlemen is primarily my concern. Certainly couldn't afford such a thing as a private room this time or basically ever. Next time I have zero debt and I own everything I own and I have more than a thousand dollars in the bank, I'll consider socking away the price of a private room. Good luck to me on that front. Signs point to fucking never.

But yeah. Told 'em up front it was my first time, asked for and got a rundown on etiquette and do's and dont's, learned the price of most things (the hidden charges must be seen as the price of admission and did not surprise me, but still), all very chill. The place smelled fresh and ventilated, which was really my main thing.

There were two girls on--Monday night, you know, place was just me and the one dude in there when I arrived, he left after awhile, I left a little after two other guys came in later.

This is one of those junctures where it would be easy to use ugly and misogynist language to dscribe kind of what was going on with staffing choices and how to work an entertainment space and serve the public--all dimensions I am acutely aware of as a professional and as a consumer--but it is just as apt to use much different words and ideas. The short and brutal, old-school way to describe it is they had a thoroughbred and a workhorse playing each to their strengths. The better way to formulate it is they had a professional exemplifying standards of rare physical perfection, performance expertise, and working near-silence and air of unavailable mystique (amplified wholly by copious tattoos from calf to neck), and another professional exemplifying hospitality, warmth, welcoming, relaxing the vibe, and putting all comers more physically at ease with a body more rubenesque, soft, and celebratory of physical flaws. The latter was my first on-the-clock stripper experience, and she made me feel at home very quickly--a talent not everyone possesses!

The funny way to say it is that they had the insanely hot girl who cut herself a lot but you really have to know how to see that, and the English major. Probably shouldn't say that.

When I say insanely hot, sadly, I mean that she was too beautiful, so beautiful that it messes up people and society. She even had short hair, a winning choice in my estimation. I been with a lot of beautiful people of all shapes and sizes, some so beautiful that I sort of expected to wake up at any second. She was perhaps the equal or superior of all comers in every respect, so the optimal dancer for my sequential life experience, I guess--I really didn't think it was possible to see something that remarkable on a Monday night. But there was an element of the pain of the reality of things underneath the fantasy she made so sublime.

Both of these women took amazing care of me and got a lot of my money, and I would like to celebrate that. They were gorgeous in every respect, and I honor their heart and their talent and their labor on my behalf. It was a pleasure to act as a gentleman before them, and to enjoy their company and craft.

 *

Beauty. Seen people destroyed by the beauty of another, which is sad but preventable and like, hm. I get it and it can even have a comedic streak, however dark the material. Yet to see people destroyed by their own beauty--that is merely tragic. 

Sometimes, when the world is done and the beauty it wanted is used up and irretreivable, there is nothing left, or close enough to nothing that the rest of the story is the most futile of epilogues. There's no good joke there that I can find. 

*

Beauty. Suppose I can rap this way, or want to, because I was born with a ravenous love for the stuff, an eye starved constantly for beauty, and because by chance I have beautiful parents who bestowed upon me a beauty of my own, just such one of those beauties the world gets weird around. 

Speaking as only a human can speak to other humans, human beings are uniquely beautiful. And when my eye, lover of beauty that it is, looks upon the world of humans, very few in general seem ugly to me, and it is my belief that the ugliness I am seeing is not of the body, but psychic and spiritual ugliness deforming the aspect of the physical. Roald Dahl talks about this in his little book The Twits--maybe this is the kind of occasion to even see if I can dig out a .jpeg I like to keep around to show folks.

copyrights, copyrights, mumbo-jumbo.  Does any of that shit still apply? Hasn't all human achievement been stolen, twice? Who gives a shit anymore. Roald Dahl's words, Quentin Blake's drawings. Mr. Dahl is dead, Mr. Blake draws on as of today.

Anyway!

Still and all, for reasons difficult to identify, some physiques are beautiful in a transcendental way, some faces composed in such a way as to alter reality. Some people have such beautiful eyes it is difficult to make and especially maintain eye contact. Some of these beauties are so total they remain alluring even when they house terrible thoughts and nothing but pain and boiling vengeance. 

It is a strange world, and the surface of things, beautiful though they are, remain nothing more than surfaces; as significant, as durable, and as real as the surface of a pond. The surface--the least pondlike part of the pond--the least real part of anything. Just a membrane, shifting from second to second.

Temporary, even fleeting; like all things, like everything else, like even this ancient, newborn universe.

*

Hey hey what what! Man, still can't believe I went to a strip club. Never in my life! 

My mom's voice and visage as it exists perpetually in my psyche, joined over time by other disapproving, judgmental women with their arms crossed who I have allowed to live in there, have all worked extremely, extremely hard to prevent this and are all very disppointed, trying to make me feel guilt about money and the whole rest of it, believe me--but I think they are wrong, despite my great esteem and love for them. It feels important to realize that they kind of have to be, in some fundamental ways.

*

Ok, ok. Lists tomorrow, rest assured. I know. Got you all salivating down your front like a little baby for some lists and then I pull some shit like this. Now your balls are bluer than a mandrill's face. 

Sorry to hurt you.

Once a girl told me that she had no choice but to masturbate because she'd been so wet and engorged for so long that it caused physical pain.

Sorry to hurt you.

--JL

*we were sexting. On farcebark messenger. A mistake of youth. If I ever piss off that mandroid or anyone working for that hideous obelisk, they're gonna embarass me badly. With a lot of collateral damage I guess, though it would be good if they could avoid that part. But I've said some real mean things about Meta over the years. Sometimes your opponent knows the best way to hurt you is through others, and God help those others if it's the only way.

Fuck you guys, though. I am not afraid of any of you. Computer nerds. Fucking losers.

#340

What an August it has been! So much has happened since last I pounded symbols into these pixels. Indeed, initially, I typed out three weeks, reflecting that it feels more like four. In fact, no! It has been only sixteen days, evidence that not all of life is lived in the same chronometrical rhythm. Veritable cascades of impressions, changes, and conversations, further remarkable in that I have, despite being on vacation, largely hewed to a simple routine, stable despite multitudinous modifiers and prevailing conditions.

Some examples? Why not!

*

August is fourteen days old today, which is a great and very old-school unit of time which makes it for me to measure some things by--a fortnight. In the fort of these nights and days of a two-week period, which is, besides a very sensible span by many utilitarian measures, a comfortable unit of memory to me--the glowing coal of the most recent discrete chunk of time, past, but not yet the past, speaking loosely and subjectively. Anyhow I've taken a dozen round-trips on my bicycle in that time, during which the air quality has been mercifully almost always good. 

Some have been absolutely incredible rides. The worst was merely great. Stuff has happened to me like yesterday a young buck burst out of the scrub not ten meters from me diagonally in full career off the left side of the street, bolted across it, and made as if to zag in my direction; in my zeal to get a good look at the buck in movement I forgot all caution and actually sped up. The buck zagged away, across the path, and into the woods on the right. An air show is in the area and yesterday, too, many strange planes were flying around making some truly remarkable noises, which I factor as a catalyst to the weird but exhilarating deer behavior I personally experienced. Apparently one of the planes crashed later in the day. Bunch of 'em still flying around.

Other things I have seen include many people going about their day in many different modes of being; riding bikes also, puttering about their yards, driving their cars, walking along, being with animals, doing chores or paid work or nothing at all; sometimes, doing bizarre shit, as is normal and expected. For example, one man was shirtless on his porch, delivering a kind of monotone, medium-volume rant which seemed to me the indication of a banked but potentially explosive rage. This interpretation may have colored the impression I received of his holding a large revolver loosely in his right hand. I was never closer than about seven meters and moving along at a good clip I saw no reason to slack on, so my perceptions are by no means certain. Saw a man wandering up and down the strip separating a thoroughfare from a long drive that runs parallel screaming on his cell phone to someody about everything he could see happening interspersed with the outline of a vast conspiracy arrayed against him. He was doing the same from within a car that sat there abandoned ever since that day--perhaps ten days ago--till at least three days ago. 

Many amazing birds--goldfinch pairs, mourning doves, hawks and eagles, turkey vultures, woodpeckers, bluejays, crows, grackles, sparrows, starlings. Some of the flights and activities I have caught glimpses of has been very satisfying indeed--painterly, jewel-bright, elements of a ride which elevate its nature. To ride at the same speed of a low-flying bird not two armslengths away is such a snapshot of motion in space, such a spontaneous unification with the great dance of those who ride the wind with just their bodies, who in that moment seem to be saying, in the language of movement, "hey, you almost could be flying." The memories are all very dear to me, incandescent with that feeling of being close to flight, which is the best part about riding a bicycle.

Could go on and on, but there's other kinds of stuff to it all, which I want to be sure and try and cover. Onwards!

*

Read the incredible History, Big History, & Metahistory, ed. David C. Krakauer, John Lewis Gaddis, & Kenneth Pomeranz, from the Santa Fe Institute Press. It really was fucking phenomenal. Pursuing the Giordano Bruno thread with a certain avidity, I am rereading Lucretius' On The Nature of Things, which is cool but I think I would like to try a different translation. Pursuing concepts from the first book mentioned, also reading the other SFI Press book I have, Worlds Hidden in Plain Sight: The Evolving Idea of Complexity at the Santa Fe Institute 1984-2019, ed. David C. Krakauer. Also Teaching to Transgress: Education as the Practice of Freedom, by bell hooks. If I get through those before my vacation is up, I should like to read a small book I have about Logic, or perhaps a book about Math.  

*

The Pontiac Vibe I drive finally shit the bed, so I've been driving Ezra to his job at summer camp in the van, which has been nice time together for us, and this amount of driving has resulted in listening to a lot of different music, following several programs of interest. Those pope teleplays were basically made by the music they wove into their picture, and consequently I have explored their soundtracks and gained an interest in recent electropop. Also this metal band Cattle Decapitation. Other recent trends inclue reacquainting myself with my CD collection and some of the stuff you can't really stream, like Cutting Room Floor's first album and its nested solo projects. Also a live Bob Marley & The Wailers show, Babylon by Bus, which presented its most enjoyable-ever listen--it had been a very long time, and I experienced many aspects and consequences of my maturation very positively through the sounds and ideas on this record. Beautiful. Plus I had never fully realized how amazing the guitar playing is.

*

On the gaming front, I concluded the storyline of Tears of the Kingdom. Absolutely phenomenal. There's a good thirty-five percent of the game still before what one might term true completion, and I have continued with some relish. The end of the story was one of the most gorgeous things that has ever happened to me. From the descent, which I performed from the highest reachable sky island, to the dazzling conclusion, it was perhaps the best ending to any Zelda game ever. Some finales have presented more of a challenge, some were mechanically denser, and the aesthetics of each places it firmly in a Golden Palace type situation, but for me, right now, this one leads the pack. Nintendo saw fit to release some Pokémon games on its official subscription ROM bank, and for some reason the Game Boy Color game featuring the Pokémon TCG really hooked me in. I've reached the Elite Four equivalent of that game.

*

On the social front, a friend I met during winter semester in class is staying with us while she figures out a housing situation. Been nice having a guest, some fun stuff. We saw Oppenheimer with her and her girlfriend, have shared many enlivening conversations, etc. That movie was super good, by the way. She even helped me move my dear friend Persephone's stuff from a storage unit to her new apartment, which was a nice fun time. 

Due to scholarly and transportation-rooted consideration, I've terminated my employment as a school bus driver on excellent terms, deciding that returning after vacation would finally present more logistical problems than it was worth. I'll get a more humble and less demanding position somehwere I can walk or bike to, just as I can walk or bike or bus to school. This is brought up by way of saying that this is why I could apparently so cold-bloodedly partake of ganja and trip on shrooms while in my position; I was fairly certain at the outset it would come to this. 

All that and I should make time for a few other friends, and perhaps my old friend Len, he with whom I am freshly shroom-communed should be playing and recording more soundscapes--one of the things we did on our trip--and perhaps even playing a show. We shall see! I know from wearying experience that one should never speak too confidently of such things are reality before their time, indeed, even up to mounting the stage at showtime. Strange to even entertain the idea of playing onstage again, but with Len, I think the thing may just be plausible. 

*

My spiritual condition has been boosted tremendously by this break, and by reuniting with the bicycle as near-daily practice. Every day a great joy is sustained within me; passes through me and moves around me. My heart is moved towards compassion towards each of the people that I see, however fleetingly. Love my husband and my cats, my digs and my tempos. I feel as though I am at the leading crest of a great vibration, a wave of energy that is clean and refreshing and tuneful. Listening to God's mighty silence I hear the universe, its great rushing whisper. It is infinite, as are we all, though this journey is brief, as all that exists in the universe is brief in the reckoning of infinite time.  

Our lives are an immutable part of an allness. No element of or perspective in the infinite narrative is unnecessary. Thus, all that exists, exists in a perfect balanace of equal meaning with everything else, from the infinitesimal to the cosmic, from the first to the last and in infinite recurrence. 

That's just some of the thinking I've been entertaining, along with its further implications. Possibly I am entirely off-base. 

*

Alright, fuckers! Signing off. Pray for this odd sinner.

--JL

#272

Ah, it's been a while since we encountered a number as good and perfect as 272. A real winner, in my opinion. The smallest amount of prime numbers that add up to the next prime. Beauty, eh?

So much beauty in this universe, and we hardly see or conceive the most infinitesimal fraction of it even collectively as a species all through infinite time, let alone individual perceivers in our own lifetimes. Tiny dreamers in an ocean unfathomable--subatomic particles in the surface layer.

We do not even feel the turbulent momentum flux. We do not feel how we float in a peace defined by the passing music of an almighty wind, sea and air composed of light--everything ultimately light.

One of the names of God: El, which is--Is, and every light, all light, omnipresent light. 

Just light. Every consciousness in the universe a light-recording machine made of light.

Astonishing, the concept of how necessary literally everything is, how totally and completely everything in creation needs to be. How essential our participation, however wayward or unwilling, in this infinite wholeness of which we are such an indispensable microcosm, containing infinite microcosms, part of macrocosms which are microcosms in their turn unto infinity, unto a great Radiance; a Radiance which gives infinite light and loses nothing of itself.

*

Cats be screaming for attention. Wanted to revisit each of the topics of this past year, but so it goes.

Peace, peace, PEACE BE UPON YE

--JL

#141

Today marks the first truly beautiful day of Spring around here. No doubt there is still horrid and antagonizing weather to come; wet snow, frozen mud, skinning winds. This day, though. Cloudless, sky so blue it striates at the edges of vision, leaps at you out of the corner of your eye, and overwhelms any direct gaze. Perfect comfort in a leather jacket, open over a t-shirt.

*

What a complete paragraph, eh? Totally did all of my jobs today. I am going to go back outside.


--JL

p.s. haha, not just a leather jacket, which is black! I wear black from shoulders to toes most days, except for colorful stripy socks, because I am an insufferable sadboy--except for my colorful stripy socks. The socks represent my joi de vivre. The black represents that you probably don't want to talk to me because I am weird or dangerous or both. Apparently. Personally, I am just honoring Ian Malcolm (fictional), Johnny Cash (he's got a song about it, it's corny as hell but real as fuck so here I am, wearing lots of black), and the Specter of Death. Also I like to keep things pretty simple.

#93

Man, it was a beautiful day today. A lot of beautiful light fell out of a beautiful blue sky, and that light lit up a lot of beautiful things a lot of different and beautiful ways. 

*

Forgot to mention! The first book I read this year, on New Year's Day, was Being There, by Jerzy Kosinski. It was hella dang good. It barely took an hour to read, too. Wanted to start the year with some concision.

*

Time for rest, people of the blog-reading community. Be kind to one another out there. Also, if you have a little extra money, buy my books! First plug of the new year! May this year render that link swollen with many more purchasing options.


--JL