jezebel

who's seen jezebel 
she was born to be 
the woman I would know 
and hold like the breeze 
half as tight as both eyes closed 

who's seen jezebel 
she went walking where 
the cedars line the road 
her blouse on the ground 
where the dogs were hungry roaming 

saying wait 
we swear we'll love you more 
and holy jezebel
it's we, we that you are for
only

who's seen jezebel 
she was born to be 
the woman we could blame 
make me a beast half as brave
i'd be the same

who's seen jezebel
she was gone before 
i ever got to say 
lay here my love 
you're the only shape i pray to 
jezebel 

who's seen jezebel 
will the mountain last 
as long as i can wait 
wait like the dawn how 
it aches to meet the day 

who's seen jezebel 
she was certainly 
the spark for all i've done 
the window was wide she could see 
the dogs come running 
saying wait 
we swear we'll love you more 
and holy jezebel
it's we, we that you are for
only 

so many thoughts crowded into such a small window

a) i don't know what it's like for other people (how could i, i'm only myself). for me, though, it's a necesary to be altered. whether it's drugs, booze or even something as little as cigarettes or caffeine i have to have something going on in my head that's not me. left to it's own devices my brain goes crazy, it creates thoughts to big transcribe into real life.

b) if our society truly wanted to destroy alchohalism it would do one of two things. either it would destroy that which is herioc in man, or it would allow us to reach it.

c) human interaction is base and vulgar. think back to all the times you've had to excuse yourself from something it always ends with long vowled single sylabled word that destroys the conversational chemistry in a way that your leaving could never do. we don't allow ourselves to be subtle.

d) i've met a tons of people that want to 'feel something.' these people go to great lengths in order to prove to themselves that they're still alive. i don't understand it. in all situations there is something that hurts me or digs at me or elates me or exonerates me. there is never a situation where i don't feel strongly. i love hard, i hate hard, i care hard, i ignore hard. i wish that i could just place myself outside the current of the world sometimes.

e) when i have my own home i want as few soft things in it as possible. i want it to be glass and steel and concrete and lacquered wood. then, maybe, there wouldn't be so many little places where dark things could hide.

f) why can't we triumph without playing by their rules. why can't a person just win because he's the best. why can't we have a world where workers work and where leaders lead and where thinkers think. we live in a world where you have to have a debilitating reason behind what you do. a teachers teaches because he can't do, a worker works because he can't think. shouldn't we be able to be who we are best and do what we do best just because those are the things we do best.

oh god my mind is eating my heart out, oh god my heart is beating my mind up

i've been reading through all the things i've written over the last couple years and i've discovered something interesting.  i'm obsessed with things being 'abandoned since the mines went dry and the railroads left town.'  look i love trains and mines just as much as any other dude with a boner for civilization driving heavy machinery.  there's just something about abandoned railroads, especially the bridges.  it's like people and nature got into a fight and they just kept punching each other until they were to tired to lift their hands.  and now they're just kinda sitting there looking at each other.  anyway i like them and wish it was warm enough to go climb on one.

the fear is coming clear, my dear, the fear is here

some nights i'm terrified.  i am so terrified i can't do anything but sit and shake and remember.  remember all those little hidey holes where things fed by human atrocities live.  all those little places where you would never go when you were little.  i sit there and remember them and try to remember what about them terrified me then and what about them terrifies me now.  and i can't.  so i come up with all these grim and ghastly things that could have happened there to make those dark spots on the human conscience.  and they're all horrible, but what's truly horrible is that they aren't real and the terror is.  and the terror is worse.  it's something hard and cold and ancient and primal.  and if you let it it will prise its way into you and it will devour you and leave behind a husk that is filled with an oily darkness.  a deathness.  and that deathness will follow you wherever you go and with every step you take a little more of the world will become tainted.  a little more of the innocence we have left will be lost.

those are the nights i refuse to sleep and i watch the seconds and minutes and hours slowly tick by until the sun rises and i feel safe.

these unlaunch'd voices

this is the list of the modern library's 100 best novels.  in high school i decided to read all of them well that was years ago and i'm only 11 in.  so over the course of this next year i will be reading them all a pace of a book every 4 days or so and updating you on whether they're truly worthwhile or not.

1. ULYSSES by James Joyce
2. THE GREAT GATSBY by F. Scott Fitzgerald
3. A PORTRAIT OF THE ARTIST AS A YOUNG MAN by James Joyce (read)
4. LOLITA by Vladimir Nabokov (read)
5. BRAVE NEW WORLD by Aldous Huxley (read)
6. THE SOUND AND THE FURY by William Faulkner
7. CATCH-22 by Joseph Heller (read)
8. DARKNESS AT NOON by Arthur Koestler
9. SONS AND LOVERS by D.H. Lawrence
10. THE GRAPES OF WRATH by John Steinbeck
11. UNDER THE VOLCANO by Malcolm Lowry
12. THE WAY OF ALL FLESH by Samuel Butler
13. 1984 by George Orwell (read)
14. I, CLAUDIUS by Robert Graves
15. TO THE LIGHTHOUSE by Virginia Woolf
16. AN AMERICAN TRAGEDY by Theodore Dreiser
17. THE HEART IS A LONELY HUNTER by Carson McCullers
18. SLAUGHTERHOUSE-FIVE by Kurt Vonnegut (read)
19. INVISIBLE MAN by Ralph Ellison
20. NATIVE SON by Richard Wright
21. HENDERSON THE RAIN KING by Saul Bellow
22. APPOINTMENT IN SAMARRA by John O'Hara
23. U.S.A. (trilogy) by John Dos Passos
24. WINESBURG, OHIO by Sherwood Anderson
25. A PASSAGE TO INDIA by E.M. Forster
26. THE WINGS OF THE DOVE by Henry James
27. THE AMBASSADORS by Henry James
28. TENDER IS THE NIGHT by F. Scott Fitzgerald
29. THE STUDS LONIGAN TRILOGY by James T. Farrell
30. THE GOOD SOLDIER by Ford Madox Ford
31. ANIMAL FARM by George Orwell (read)
32. THE GOLDEN BOWL by Henry James
33. SISTER CARRIE by Theodore Dreiser
34. A HANDFUL OF DUST by Evelyn Waugh
35. AS I LAY DYING by William Faulkner
36. ALL THE KING'S MEN by Robert Penn Warren
37. THE BRIDGE OF SAN LUIS REY by Thornton Wilder
38. HOWARDS END by E.M. Forster
39. GO TELL IT ON THE MOUNTAIN by James Baldwin
40. THE HEART OF THE MATTER by Graham Greene
41. LORD OF THE FLIES by William Golding
42. DELIVERANCE by James Dickey
43. A DANCE TO THE MUSIC OF TIME (series) by Anthony Powell
44. POINT COUNTER POINT by Aldous Huxley
45. THE SUN ALSO RISES by Ernest Hemingway
46. THE SECRET AGENT by Joseph Conrad
47. NOSTROMO by Joseph Conrad
48. THE RAINBOW by D.H. Lawrence
49. WOMEN IN LOVE by D.H. Lawrence
50. TROPIC OF CANCER by Henry Miller
51. THE NAKED AND THE DEAD by Norman Mailer
52. PORTNOY'S COMPLAINT by Philip Roth
53. PALE FIRE by Vladimir Nabokov
54. LIGHT IN AUGUST by William Faulkner
55. ON THE ROAD by Jack Kerouac (read)
56. THE MALTESE FALCON by Dashiell Hammett
57. PARADE'S END by Ford Madox Ford
58. THE AGE OF INNOCENCE by Edith Wharton
59. ZULEIKA DOBSON by Max Beerbohm
60. THE MOVIEGOER by Walker Percy
61. DEATH COMES FOR THE ARCHBISHOPby Willa Cather
62. FROM HERE TO ETERNITY by James Jones
63. THE WAPSHOT CHRONICLES by John Cheever
64. THE CATCHER IN THE RYE by J.D. Salinger (read)
65. A CLOCKWORK ORANGE by Anthony Burgess
66. OF HUMAN BONDAGE by W. Somerset Maugham
67. HEART OF DARKNESS by Joseph Conrad
68. MAIN STREET by Sinclair Lewis
69. THE HOUSE OF MIRTH by Edith Wharton
70. THE ALEXANDRIA QUARTET by Lawrence Durell
71. A HIGH WIND IN JAMAICA by Richard Hughes
72. A HOUSE FOR MR BISWAS by V.S. Naipaul
73. THE DAY OF THE LOCUST by Nathanael West
74. A FAREWELL TO ARMS by Ernest Hemingway (read)
75. SCOOP by Evelyn Waugh
76. THE PRIME OF MISS JEAN BRODIE by Muriel Spark
77. FINNEGANS WAKE by James Joyce
78. KIM by Rudyard Kipling
79. A ROOM WITH A VIEW by E.M. Forster
80. BRIDESHEAD REVISITED by Evelyn Waugh
81. THE ADVENTURES OF AUGIE MARCH by Saul Bellow
82. ANGLE OF REPOSE by Wallace Stegner
83. A BEND IN THE RIVER by V.S. Naipaul
84. THE DEATH OF THE HEART by Elizabeth Bowen
85. LORD JIM by Joseph Conrad
86. RAGTIME by E.L. Doctorow
87. THE OLD WIVES' TALE by Arnold Bennett
88. THE CALL OF THE WILD by Jack London (read)
89. LOVING by Henry Green
90. MIDNIGHT'S CHILDREN by Salman Rushdie
91. TOBACCO ROAD by Erskine Caldwell
92. IRONWEED by William Kennedy
93. THE MAGUS by John Fowles
94. WIDE SARGASSO SEA by Jean Rhys
95. UNDER THE NET by Iris Murdoch
96. SOPHIE'S CHOICE by William Styron
97. THE SHELTERING SKY by Paul Bowles
98. THE POSTMAN ALWAYS RINGS TWICEby James M. Cain
99. THE GINGER MAN by J.P. Donleavy
100. THE MAGNIFICENT AMBERSONS by Booth Tarkington

vamo quebrá tudo, vamo, vamo

things i am doing

book: pulphope by paul pope

music: montreux jazz ao vivo by hermeto pascoal

movie: paris je t'aime

website: http://www.anetakowalczyk.com/

avoiding: laundry

sing for last call, sing for last fall, such was it all

a couple things of note

1) for the first time in many, many months i feel like myself.  as far as i can tell this is due to booze, smokes, balkan folk music, and excitement about world fairs past, present and future.

2) http://thefartparty.blogspot.com/2008/10/boyfriends-suck.html this is a really enjoyable letter found in a prescott, arizona salvation army.  the lady who writes this blog is terribly funny and has a very nice journal comic at http://www.fartparty.org/

3) if you guys don't already know i'm so, so, so, so, so, so excited about world expos/fairs right now.  one of the things i hate most in the world is bleeding flag eagle bible belt americans whose jingoistic leanings have made it possible for america to allienate the whole fucking world.  maybe all we need is to try a little harder to understand the other people that live in this world with us.   http://www.expomuseum.com/2015/