essay

Sometimes I feel like I am going mad, slowly. Lately, I have been keeping in a lot. I seem to be punishing myself for something. For something. But I don't quite know what. I have been reading an autobiography by Mark Vonnegut called Eden Express which is about the slow slip into madness and back again of Kurt Vonnegut's son, mark, in the late 60's.

To him and me, a lot of the time, madness is the result of man seeing nirvana or attaining oneness with the spirit but not being able to live well with his community afterwards.

Nirvana is easy, a snap, you have to just look and you will quickly discover all the workings are right there -- the drama, the stage... just look away from the set, or behind, or stay for after the lights come on, and you can see the set is made of papier mache and not wood and glass.

The hard part and the reason why so many people are medicated and in the asylum is because Nirvana or the Rapture is NOT a "linking out" and people who do want to like out are being "universally rude" insofar as its not our place to point out loudly the cardboard walls and garish stage makeup. Just rude.

The hard part is to continue cutting wood And carrying water.

The Nirvana is easy; the staying is difficult.

When one realizes that matter is conceptual, what interest is there in keeping up the charade?

Well, since this is a consensus reality here, and since we are all watching the same play so to speak, it is supremely rude to yell out

"fire"

Did you know that is is criminal, seriously criminal to yell "fire" in a cinema? And I have discovered that it is the staying that is the hell, when one realizes how much of an absurd construct -- elegant yes -- but a construct none-the-less -- its either wonderfully facile to play about like a flittering butterfly or merely drole -- the most insane waste of finite time and energy.

But, there is magic too -- the most liberating thing is that it is not so much a play, but more of a dance -- it is a dance wherein you are being led by the universe and yet you can easily suggest your desire to lead. When one desires to lead, one must know how to dance or be willing to learn.

no one gets too much heaven no more -- and then the girl goes and runs off with the boy and i am in bed alone this morning and yes she is just a friend but i worry i worry byt i had a great sleep on my lonesome because sometimes she gets groovy and i can't see why people get so bloody incensed all the time as though they were bothered intentionally and i was thinking that so many so many people so many people are convinced that in so many way there is not global conspiracy the theory is hate and the hate pervades and it was fun to see the swoosh in her hair the blush in her cheek because honestly i have never seen her flirt not even a little bit this large prodding stoic cock tall and erect and sticking out of the pentagram all day every day so long that there vitriol against men has made my journey challenging at the least and yet when a pretty boy says hi all the rules go out the window -- be docile around superiors and lovers, be the sweet little daddy's girl the sweet little lover because you and i know that in so many ways you like it when your superiors are your lovers and then it is all because you are a female bam bam breaking the faucet with you brute strength with the hairy legs that keep you running ahead when i am trying to take pictures while i am trying to take images for my work and it was a promise you made to me that you would assist me a little bit byt now you say you don't wanna and you art not my slave not my slave byt why are you such a good slave otherwise such a good slice when you want something you think you can't have and I hear so many voices cry out: why didn't he want to fuck me why didn't he want to fuck me why didn't he want to fuck me? we hell i don't know -- he never found you very attractive? never found you anything byt a big strong man with breasts you are the big strong man with breast? why is that? why do you saunter challenging all them men to have a coneest: i bet you don't have a bigger cock than me! I bet you can't bench press as much as I can! I bet you I wear bigger pants I bet you I hang to the left and the right, I bet you I am not impotent are you? i want to measure i want to see you stand taller want longer and then i will disfigure and only then will my cock turn into a clit only then will my manly chest soften and only then will the nipples turn soft and pink.walking with the woman and her man, walking around singapore walking together looking at her body looking at the soft down of the blond hairs at the base of her head falling from her french twist hearing her soft english rose cadence and seeing the way her clothes cling to her pale flanks and the way they touched and the friendliness between them and their insistence that I come along so that we would look at nikons looking for the f5 looking for the filters looking for marks and spencer and he is roberto a good looking italian living in paris and every weekend she goes to him from londres or he to her in londres -- a paris london relationship and she reminds me so much of liz looking at her supple body was like ants eating away my eyes ants eating away my eyes and since they look so similar in kent i have a feeling that it is in the water -- we talked about how italian women often after the age of 18-23 there is a change a sudden perm, blue eye liner, too many accessories and the clothes every piece at once and how the young girls are au natural and s. the kentian rose sat there in a gray tank, tight white shorts and keds and she had not a lick of makeup and her eyes were naked and she had a french twist and you know -- no makeup in the world could have improved and then i felt such the outsider such the leper and it was all i long for, this urbane relationship where time is spent byt also the passion and the work is spent and raffles costs $750/night and you know it seams to me worth every penny every penny to be seduced and sedated by royalty by kings by the scent of brunei by the lovemaking of emperors and I am oft convinced that I am unwilling to be anything byt the third wheel the observer... the journalistic gadfly who smells the flowers of another for i find myself around another's flowers always wanting to seduce another flower away another away and it is by far easily the fear of commitment the fear of the commit for when I had the fear I had the fear and knew no serious marriageable before 30 no way no how and the house comes rumbling down and then there is mim and jim and liz and john and this is what I learned:

to have a lover, to have a mate to have a soulmate is not to have spent ones life then find the soulmate, byt that the soulmate the loverfriend and you should be spending that life together, finding those passions together -- not two wholes touching byt two wholes merging and you know i thought it was complete byll shit byt now I am no t too sure I am not too sure if it doesn't exist and there must be une petite femme with the desire to create to make to shoot to travel to explore and to make love incessantly as well, to swim,surf, hike, explore mountain bike and in addition to love the world of the digital of the future of the literate -- and this is not too far byt when will my knight in shining armour arrive?

and then i laugh and then i laugh because my life is so rife full of these petty dramas and it is a self deprecation, a fun way to whittle away at myself for I write better and explore better when feeling the melancholia the melancholia and here I am sitting on the boat quay in singapore and it is only because this is one thing in my life not 100% sussed, that is why I am obsessing about it...

a welshman told me after i had had many strange dreams about my ex s, he asked me how long had it been since YOU broke up with HER, and I said about a year -- well, he said, invariable, at about a year's time a man if he had broken up with his lover, will start to begin to forget the bad of the love affair and only remember the good and will become lonely ;lonely lonely and then after a while he will say out loud for his very soul to hear and those around him:

fuck! she wasn't that very bad after all now what was I thinking when I got rid of her???

and here I am travelling around the world, getting choked up and lonely yes i guess it is loneliness byt by god i am not feeling sorry for myself no not at all because i am doing so much cool stuff -- 52 rolls of film -- if you wanna go over to my mum's house to check them out -- feel free, just call 703-807-2163 before you go and give the old girl a big hug for me -- and ask her to see the boomerang that I sent myself by post -- it'll be a keepsake and will make many generations chuckle aimlessly and here: