look out for that big ant just north of your foot

"It is not easy for us to conceive how Guugu Yimithirr speakers experience the world, with a crisscrossing of cardinal directions imposed on any mental picture and any piece of graphic memory. Nor is it easy to speculate about how geographic languages affect areas of experience other than spatial orientation — whether they influence the speaker’s sense of identity, for instance, or bring about a less-egocentric outlook on life. But one piece of evidence is telling: if you saw a Guugu Yimithirr speaker pointing at himself, you would naturally assume he meant to draw attention to himself. In fact, he is pointing at a cardinal direction that happens to be behind his back. While we are always at the center of the world, and it would never occur to us that pointing in the direction of our chest could mean anything other than to draw attention to ourselves, a Guugu Yimithirr speaker points through himself, as if he were thin air and his own existence were irrelevant."

-"does your language shape how you think?", new york times, 8.26.2010

everybody knows i'm a monster

a motherfucking monster.

neither a doctor nor a scientist

but just like that i was bestowed a Ph.D.

naked but wearing a map

lane smith for rolling stone. record review of talking heads, 1988.

the scent is burned into the pillow case
the bedding the mattress. no number
of washes removes it--the memory
can't be cleaned

only buried.
but the brain--a maniac--flings
dirt shovelfulls to the top, uncovering
what it will greedily bury hours later like
a rabid dog hiding a hallucination. like a sisyphus
of the graveyard.


the only thing worse than the memory of the scent
is the memory of the silence--the roaring answer. the
comforting executioner.

almost there

Almost There (promo #1) from Almost There on Vimeo.

the shifting

there is the sunset on the brick of the building across the street. there are the evening shadows fading out. there is the opaque moon waking herself up for work. there was a breeze, dancing with the flag but now it hangs.

overheard

cam, get the music ready. this song is going to end soon and the album’s going to be done, and i want more music. no silence. don’t want to hear my thoughts.