Today I Received My First Teacher Apple.

The Ate Her

Part 1
Part 2

Here's To Slight Mania, or Up Ends The Fall

Dems Fo Sho


Sons navel, post-cutting
Ah blood, zat hussy jackrubied up
I = a.m. tumbled aft evenin
Crow shuttered eyes

(& we’ll shookins
Dem
Off)

Are you eyes open or closed my
fingerprints, theys era dissolvein

Back when you nigged the lake & dived sump
Pump you dirty

Squalid blue collar show
It all don't you jury lacquer us

Humble Seeks Polar Eyeinsky
So come in close, Lee

(zen we rookies
Made
Out)

Hear say
You got a piece o' Babe Blueox
She spread open well as eyeinsky?

Nassir, no tearin

But miss it, someday sure you'll

Up the blinds, whydontcha

Two cuss don't make

A’ight

The Conjoining

“No wonder you didn’t fit together. After all, you met in a grocery store,” she told me. “What was the conjoining like?”

“He met us by a white airplane named ‘Paradise.’ He had an old Italian/Romanian face – a little grey and weathered – and spoke sparsely. He directed us into the pilot pit and stood just outside the hatch. He said ‘You’re Almost Infinite,’ closed the hatch, and the plane took off without controls.”

“Then what?”

“We were split up. We didn’t stay together, as I thought. The plane dissipated and I fell through fog – yes, fog, not clouds. I thought, ‘This is just like life, because you can’t see what’s in front of you.’ When I realized that, pockets of cold air started pelting me all over, shooting through the fog. Then I thought, ‘This is just like life, because you never know what’s coming next.’ Because I couldn’t tell a difference between that and this, I decided to come back. I ‘woke up.’ I never finished the conjoining.”

“I knew you didn’t fit together,” she said, shaking her head.

“I was afraid I’d picked the wrong one,” I said.

“Yep. After all, you met in a grocery store,” she said.

Yay! A Surrealist Game! Involving George W.!

Analogy Cards

Rules:

As large a group of players as possible.

This game is a more complex version of the game "Portraits," in which one player assumes the identity of a famous person and the others must guess who it is by asking questions such as: "What mineral are you?" or "What animal are you?" In Analogy Cards, the situation is reversed: the identity of the person is known, having been chosen before the game begins. The aim of the game is to arrive at a portrait of this chosen person based on the categories which feature on passports or identity cards. These categories, which describe the person's attributes, are given in the form of various animals, objects, etc.

Remember, because this is a surrealist game, it is to be played as quickly as possible without the unwanted visitors logic, reason, or consciousness.

The categories of the card, and the equivalent objects or events into which they are to be translated, are a constant of the game. They consist of the following:

Photograph: an animal
Father and Mother: born of the union of
Place of Birth: a geographical location
Date of Birth: a historical event
Nationality: a civilisation or culture
Profession: a pastime
Domicile: a painting
Height: a vegetable
Hair: a colour
Appearance: a romantic or legendary hero
Eyes: a mineral
Complexion: a meterological phenomenon
Nose: a perfume
Voice: a poem
Distinguishing Characteristics: sexual preference
Change of Address: means of transport
Religion: conception of the world
Fingerprint: unique signature, or ???

The above is taken nearly word for word from Alastair Brotchie and Mel Gooding's A Book of Surrealist Games.

Here's what my Comp I class discovered about George W. Bush:

Photograph: Egg
Father and Mother: Blood moon (asexual reproduction)
Place of Birth: 6th circle of hell
Date of Birth: Columbus Day
Nationality: Black
Profession: Cowboys & Indians
Domicile: Dogs Playing Poker
Height: Rutebega
Hair: Flaming orange
Appearance: Jesus
Eyes: Dirt
Complexion: Acid Rain
Nose: Girls
Voice: Eminem's "White America"
Distinguishing Characteristics: Date rape.
Change of Address: Movie (they say reading is an adventure, right? this is too?)
Religion: Unabashed hedonism.
Fingerprint: Atheist.

Draw your own conclusions, young Freudians.

Women's Room Graffiti At Columbia College

JESUS IS JEALOUS FOR YOU TODAY

There Are Things We Live Among And To Know Them Is To Know Them

Sun?
1. A 100 watt bulb flicked on after evening shuteye.
2. A navel, post-op.
3. The polar opposite of the Eye in the Sky

Q: Are your eyes open or closed?
A: My fingerprints are dissolving.

Lake ?
1. Swarming bacterium.
2. A landing pad for horseflies.
3. A kin of tropical storms, at base level.

Q: Who am I?
A: Qui c’est.

Pier?
1. A matchstick mansion of splinters.
2. One million horsehairs.
3. Juicy prime cut of Babe the Blue Ox, tender & tearable with fingers.

Q: Don’t you miss it at all, motion =ing exertion?
A: A Greek root of nostalgia is ALGOS, or pain.

Funny Sentence From An English Primer. . .

Concerning Words That Appeal To The Five Senses.

Quote:

Without Sensory Images
The computer room is eerie.

With Sensory Images
In the computer room, keys click and printers grate while row after row of students stare into screens that glow without shedding any light.

Endquote.

I would have preferred the second sentence to read as follows:
In the humming electronic and florescent hell of the computer room, students' pastegrey faces stared gapemouthed as a lowerclass, muddy demonface appeared on every monitor and proclaimed in a rising tremble whisper, "You have no soul. You have no soul."

My Unconscious Is Fascinated With Murder & Sewing, or, Murder & Sewing Dream #2 This Week

I'm just off the square in Sullivan, my hometown, walking with Jill Farris†, when I see a sewing shop. I go in to buy needles and thread. The needles I choose are cheap, 80 cents, in a small plastic vial labelled by an old woman's shaky hand "Attic" and "Apples" (the two words shift as I study the vial) and preserved in formaldyhyde. When I twist the lid of the vial open, the previous owner appears in my mind, a fat old lady clad in red velvet, her hands in knitting position, her face like Queen Elizabeth II. I pry a needle out. Although they seemed to have eyes before, they are now nothing more than hairpins.

* * *

Jill & I open the doors of a small, busy cafe with lots of light, and head to where we were sitting two nights prior. To our surprise, the table had not yet been cleared. It was littered with chunks of pie, greasy napkins, and a ton of cash - there must have been $2000 there - where it came from, we couldn't remember.

* * *

Two nights prior we were sitting at the table with several others, including Onur∞. He was in drunk and laughing with his mouth wide open, and he invited all of us to come back to his house for Ouzo. I declined, because my boyfriend wanted to go home, but Jill accepted. Somebody offered to pay the tab, which looked like this:

_____________

xjiod 12.95
xjiod 12.95
cjioge 5.95
huio 5.95
huio 5.95
huio 5.95
huio 5.95
huio 5.95
guiue 10.95
guiue 10.95
guiue 10.95
guiue 10.95
cjiges 27.95
ceghx 25.95
cugyy 29.95
yrteuy 33.95
ghie 1.95
ghie 1.95
cgheh 1.95
cgheh 1.95
eoir 1.95
murder 290.00
______________

* * *

The tab was limp on the table and my stomach was queasy. I pocketed the cash, took the tab, and went to the register. "We'll get rid of this," I said to Jill, who had murdered Onur two nights ago for motives unknown and unquestioned. The woman behind the counter rang up our order and told us we'd have to wait until the Police Chief arrived for questioning because we were being held as murderers.

"You know, I went straight home. I had nothing to do with this," I said. "What are you going to tell them?" I was afraid that we'd have mixed stories, as you hear about so often in books and movies, and they'd catch us.

She rolled her eyes at me but said nothing.

"I'm going to tell them I went home," I said. I could tell she wasn't pleased with my decision and wondered if she'd murder me, too.

* * *

I walk outside to have a smoke (all I can find are crumpled, thin cloves in a Camel Wides pack). The cafe's exterior has turned into a grassy patch where lots of teenagers are hanging out, leaning on each other and the ground. A little girl with a hose complains that her feet are dirty, a teenage girl wearing a very fancy dress comments that kids shouldn't think such things, and the little girl turns the hose at me, chasing me back inside.


†I knew this girl from the age of 6. We were very good friends with a larger group of girls until junior high, when I was chosen as the group's outcast, deemed a slut, and put into popularity exile. While my current self thanks her/them, my junior high self missed her old friends. Jill still frequently appears in my dreams.

∞Fellow grad assistant at EIU.

Years Old Between Wake & Sleep Image

An elevator the size of a city block. On the ceiling, hundreds of bikers are stationary, yet pedalling madly.

Apocalypse Dream #3 This Month

From where I stood still on the busy streets, the crowd parted like a velvet theater curtain, and a tall man in plaid strode up to me and handed me a card that read:
________________________

6,446,131,400 murderers =

0 people.
________________________

These days, soothsayers were spreading their words through business cards, flyers, pamphlets. It was impossible to tell the ones with vision from the ones without.

* * *

Phrases rendered obscene because of their inability to produce meaning were shouted repetitiously around me: "Neffort, neffort, neffort!" "Aski, aski, aski!" I was huddled near the passenger side headlight in 50s movie atom bomb position in the middle of an alley. At least ten men and women filtered in and out of the car, blood splattered, some with hatchets, some with guns, some with bare hands, all ridding the world of each other. I don't even feel anything anymore. I just want away from this. Booted feet and ragged jeans dripping blood appeared in front of my eyes and I ran to the end of the alley.

There is a man waiting there who motions to a machine gunner at the other end of the alley. "Rid her of her misery," he shouts. "Do away with her." The machine gunner aims and I run.

* * *

The streets are real, city, grey, corporate. A gaunt, shaved head cop with bloody cheeks stands still amidst more murderous chaos in the left rule of thirds photography position. A sign for Quick Lube flickers in the background. An upturned car burns. I turn and leave the view.

* * *

I need a needle and thread. The city is wasted, unholy, in shambles. Grey, again. I step over cement stumps in a parking lot and hear a wounded child screaming. At this point, I am too numb to care and choose to avoid the sound rather than help the child. I get to the post, a small counter at the edge of the parking lot, and tell the woman what I need. She charges me an unexpectedly high amount. These supplies are dear.