Yayoi Kusama Fireflies on Water.

So…my pledge is to blog more. And to study more. And to participate more. So it starts now. My lame attempt at studying today was stymied by pandora radio, where I wrote down many things to add to the ‘pod. I’ve had many blogging plans…usually made on the bus, subway, street level, etc…. let me tell you: it is harder than it looks to find a coffeeshop in NYC with free wireless….where there aren’t 10,000 people waiting on line for coffee. In NYC people wait “on line”, not “in line.”

So, I’ve finished Roberto Bolano’s Last Evenings on Earth and Gabriel Garcia-Marquez’s Of Love and Other Demons. I’m still reading Murakami’s Dance, Dance, Dance. I’ve been meaning to quote and cite songs and I just can’t keep up with my own brain. I just can’t. I sat down to study 3 hours ago and here I am. I will say that Bolano’s short stories are magnificent and that Garcia-Marquez’s novella is less magical realism than religious mysticisim, which is nice. My favorite image in the Murakami is when the protagonist is exhausted and instead of merely falling into a deep sleep, a grey gorilla enters the room and whacks him in the head with a mallet. Its funny.

I think Ani sums it up nicely for us:

“the sun is setting on the century
and we are armed to the teeth
we are all working together now
to make our lives mercifully brief
schoolkids keep trying to teach us
what guns are all about
confuse liberty with weaponry
and watch your kids act it out
every year now like Christmas
some boy gets the milk-fed sub-urban blues
reaches for the available arsenal
and saunters off to make the news
and women in the middle
are learning what poor women have always known
that the edge is closer than you think
when your men bring the guns home

look at where the profits are
that’s how you’ll find the source
of the big lie that you and i
both know so well
in the time it takes this cultural
death wish to run its course
they’re gonna make a pretty penny
and then they’re all going to hell
he said the chickens all come home to roost
yeah, malcom forecasted this flood
are we really gonna sleep through another century
while the rich profit off our blood?
true, it may take some doing
to see this undoing done
but in my humble opinion
here’s what i suggest we do:

open fire on hollywood
open fire on MTV
open fire on NBC
and CBS and ABC
open fire on the NRA
and all the lies they told us
along the way
open fire on each weapons manufacturer
while he’s giving head
to some republican senator

and if i hear one more time
about fool’s rights
to his tools of rage
I’m gonna take all my friends
and I’m gonna move to Canada
and we’re gonna die of old age.”

I’m going to la la la and maybe blog some more tomorrow. Love, Jessica