IT'S MONDAY AND WE ARE ALL OPPRESSED.

The present author is no philosopher, he has not understood the System, nor does he know if there really is one, or if it has been completed. As far as his own weak head is concerned the thought of what huge heads everyone must have in order to have such huge thoughts is already enough. Even if one were able to render the whole of the content of faith into conceptual form, it would not follow that one had grasped faith, grasped how one came to it, or how it came to one. The present author is no philosopher, he is poetice et eleganter [to put it in poetic and well-chosen terms], a freelancer who neither writes the System nor makes any promises about it, who pledges neither anything about the System nor himself to it. He writes because for him doing so is a luxury, the more agreeable and conspicuous the fewer who buy and read what he writes. In an age where passion has been done away with for the sake of science he easily forsees his fate – in an age when an author who wants readers must be careful to write in a way that he can be comfortably leafed through during the after-dinner nap, and be sure to present himself to the world like the polite gardener's boy in the Advertiser who, hat in hand and with good references from his previous place of employment, recommends himself to a much-esteemed public. He foresees his fate will be to be completely ignored; has a dreadful foreboding that the scourge of zealous criticism will more than once make itself felt; and shudders at what terrifies him even more, that some enterprising recorder, a paragraph swallower who to rescue learning is always willing to do to others' writings what, to `preserve good taste`, Trop nobly did to The Destruction of the Human Race, will slice him into sections as ruthlessly as the man who, in the service of the science of punctuation, divided up his speech by counting the words and putting a full-stop after every fifty and a semi-colon after every thirty-five. No, i prostrate myself before any systematic bag-searcher; this is not the System, it hasn't the slightest thing to do with the System. I wish all good on the System and on the Danish shareholders in that omnibus; for it will hardly become a tower. I wish them good luck and prosperity one and all.

Respectfully,
Johannes De Silentio

Here's an online version of fear and trembling. I don't like the translation much. But it is free.

SHAVE YOUR PUSSY IN THE DARK

Interview with Paula Bomer up at Dark Sky Magazine. Once, I told Paula I wanted to make a mold of her vagina and place it on my mantle. She wrote something about me soon after. It was the most beautiful thing written about me.

She's one of my favorite birds. Check her wing.

I CAN FASHION A SWITCHBLADE OUT OF TWO POPSICLE STICKS, A RUBBERBAND AND THE SIDEWALK.

Man, I feel like a supreme shit. Sam Pink is reading. Like now. Some other dudes tomorrow.

I am bad at promotional efforts. I am not a worthwhile human being.

OHIO:

THROAT POUNDER

fuck.

sententia2.

tits out of my mind:

ML PRESS. 2011 BLIND FAITH SUBSCRIPTION DRIVE

Mud Luscious Press is offering a ‘Blind Faith’ subscription deal: If you are willing to trust us on the titles & authors of our 2011 catalogue without any cover takes or blurbs, then we’ll reward you by knocking the price down. So until mid-October, we’ll give you all the 2011 titles for $35, including

GRIM TALES by Norman Lock, THE HIEROGLYPHICS by Michael Stewart, I AM A VERY PRODUCTIVE ENTREPRENEUR by Mathias Svalina, [ C. ] an mlp stamp stories anthology, plus handmade chapbook volumes from Jessica Newman, Stephen Gropp-Hess, Neila Mezynski, Kristina Marie Darling, John H. Henry, Andrew Borgstrom, Ani Smith, & others

Get in on this deal here: www.mudlusciouspress.com/subscribe

Thanks and thanks and thanks again. If you have questions, email me anytime.

J. A. Tyler, Founding Editor

www.mudlusciouspress.com

BE MY MELVILLE GIRL

Q: What do you think about your films?

A: I don't.

BOOKS I READ THIS WEEK

I gotta say (and if you know me you know it pains me to say this, but if you know me well you know it doesn't), out of this bunch, Indian Killer was the big winner. I mean, there's nothing literary about it. Pure pop-fiction. There were times when it even felt a little Scooby-Dooish, but holy fuck. When I got to the end I was completely satisfied. I felt good. I felt ready to read more Sherman Alexie.

Although currently, I'm not a runner, I did a lot of it the six or seven plus years I spent in martial arts and boxing, so I got into this book quickly. I love how Tanzer was able to weave domestic relations, his sincere feelings about being a writer, and the zany affairs of his officemates, alongside valuable lessons in breathing, foot work, and pacing. Tanzer is careful how much information he gives out and when, sometimes I wanted to know more, to go a little deeper, but that day's run was over, and I was left craving his next insight.

This is a pretty beautiful book. I learned a lot from it. I can't say what I mean because I'm in the student lounge and it's loud and so many college girls in south jersey shorts, its not a good environment for intellectualizing. It's a solid look into the lives of 1950's semi-elite/celebrity. It feels to me a lot like some of Hunter S. Thompson's better stuff, but I prefer the quickness of Thompson. Sometimes Mailer drags on and on. He says in 400 pages what could be said better in 250. He can take three or four pages to describe one feeling. Which is alright I suppose, but it's not my preference.

I can't even think of one good justification why this was even published. A long way from some of Alexie's early stuff that had an abundance of flavor (Indian Killer, Tonto and Lone Ranger, Business of Fancydancing) This is lifeless.

I'm much more familiar with Hank's prose then I am poetry, but this seems to be typical of what I've read of his. The stuff I really loved broke my heart and the stuff I didn't felt like a shitty rant from a high school kid. But say what you say brotha, the man's got soul.

I hope

There's a wildfire burning in the hills, north of my cubicle and over my car and across the parking lot and above a few streets and currently a mile south of my house. I, like many other twenty-something failures have moved back into my father's place, about a month ago. I can still afford to pay a landlord for rent and pay all my bills, but I decided not to. I let a lease run up at the beginning of August and tucked my tail back between my legs and asked dear old father if I could live with him.

I borrowed his truck for a weekend, filled it with repeated loads of furniture, books, electronics, and clothes. I gave 3 couches to the Salvation Army. I threw out a lot of bullshit I decided I no longer needed or had the energy to donate or sell. I packed my childhood room with expensive bullshit and technology I would have creamed myself over at the age of sixteen when I had originally left, and I looked around and felt nothing.

I moved everything I owned and loved and believed I needed into this house and a month later I can see the fires pushing over the hills and down the canyons and over the mountain and I can almost smell my flatscreen burning. I can almost hear the whir of my harddrives failing in intense heat and choking on smoke. I can almost imagine watching the manuscript to my novel disappear forever.

Yesterday, I skipped out of work on a long lunch when the fire first started threatening my bullshit I love and my 'life' and everything I was so convinced I needed. I walked out of my cubicle and jogged through the courtyard and ran through the parking lot to my car. I drove across the parking lot and through a few streets and over some hills and arrived at a road block as thick smoke poured over the canyon. I argued with a cop and was promptly turned away. I didn't try very hard to argue with him.

I turned around and headed into a parking lot and behind a warehouse and over a median and through a neighborhood and past the roadblock and drove up the hill as fast as my four-banger could take me. I kept the windows tightly rolled up and watched the sky turn steadily more and more brown and I could stare into the sun without discomfort. I reached my house pretty quickly and called out to my cat, and ran across the deck and flung open the door and hopped down the steps and looked around at my bullshit.

I thought about taking pictures of everything and then ferrying my most expensive possessions up the driveway to my car, packing it full and then collecting doubles from the insurance anyway. I thought about pouring gasoline all over the place before I left. I thought about where I was going to go.

I ran my fingers over my flatscreen and listened to the low hum of my quadcore and kicked my lovesac and ran my eyes over the harddrives and ps3 and games and books and clothes and called out for my cat again. He woke and lazily walked up to flick his tail across my shin and I thought about what I could carry to the car and how many trips I could make before the road block got more strict and without thinking about it any harder I picked up my cat and left.

I hope it fucking burns.

I hope it all fucking burns and I hope it's tragic as fuck.

I CAN HEAR THE FILTH OF YOUR ORGAN

Pank has an interview with Gena Mohwish.

Her photography is like a fallen viking in the snow:
(click on each picture to make it go oreo)

The War in Iraq is Over, Baby! Everything's Good Now, Right?

THE GAKULAN RIDER OF YOUR VIRGIN SECOND ORGASM

LET'S GET NAKED AND FEEL ALONE TOGETHER

"ZARATHUSTRA HAD gone to the mountains in search of aloneness. In the crowd you can find yourself lonely, but never alone.

Loneliness is a kind of hunger for the other. You are missing the other. You are not enough unto yourself – you are empty. Hence everybody wants to be in the crowd, and weaves around himself many kinds of relationships just to deceive himself, to forget that he is lonely. But that loneliness erupts again and again. No relationship can hide it. All relationships are so thin and so fragile. Deep inside you know perfectly well that even though you are in the crowd, you are amongst strangers.

You are a stranger to yourself too.

Zarathustra and all the mystics have gone to the mountains in search of aloneness.

Aloneness is a positive feeling, the feeling of your own being and the feeling that you are enough unto yourself – that you don’t need anyone.

Loneliness is a sickness of the heart.

Aloneness is a healing.

Those who know aloneness have gone beyond loneliness forever. Whether they are alone or with people, they are centered within themselves. In the mountains they are alone, in the crowd they are alone, because this is their realization: that aloneness is our nature. We have come into the world alone and we will be leaving the world again alone.
Between these two alonenesses, between birth and death, you are still alone; but you have not understood the beauty of aloneness, and hence you have fallen into a kind of fallacy – the fallacy of loneliness.

To discover one’s aloneness one has to go out of the crowd. Slowly, slowly as he forgets the world, all his awareness becomes concentrated on himself, and there is an explosion of light.

For the first time he comes to know the beauty and the blessing of being alone, the tremendous freedom and the wisdom of being alone."

From OSHO's Zarathustra: A God That Can Dance

GRANDPA HY

My grandpa will not be remembered in any history books. He did nothing society particularly values. He sold suits in a modest men's clothing shop and listened to his wife verbally abuse him that he didn't have more ambition to give them a better life. I remember sleeping over their house on the softest mattress I had ever felt then waking up in the morning to a lavish breakfast of eggs, bagels, and cream of wheat. I have no memory of him ever scolding me or even raising his voice. Not once. He was nice to me and if I took his hat and put it on my head, he let me. He accepted me. My heart swells with love every time I think of him, but also sadness because: what little boy ever really shows his appreciation for his grandpa? It's only as an adult that I've come to realize just how great a man he really was.

He also had terrible O.C.D. and eventually lost his mind and died from lupus, but I never saw any of that. I never once thought he was weird. I think he must have hid that from me out of love. But it wasn't even his actions that touch me the most. It's something almost too simple to put into words. He smiled at me a lot. Like in this picture. He loved me and I knew he loved me because I could feel it. Rest in peace, Grandpa Hy.