ghost town

my heart is populated with ghosts -- they walk right through each other
i wonder if they even notice
when one of them gets more restless i always feel it ---
which just seems to be a sudden explosion of memories --
--- as if a file fell out of the cabinet and burst open
spilling the contents
seemingly so random it circumvents the logic and reason
following the ghost's elegant glide -- the intangible touch
the airy step --- the silent blood curdling scream
what troubles you, dear?

night flight

It's 2:30 am
i've already turned off the computer and then remembered, and turned it back on ---
i was going to write this, and only the night time is right for this ---
so it was 1988 i think... in st petersburg, russia --- no wait it was still leningrad --- yes it was
i was sitting in somebody's aprtment listening to an acoustic gig
a would-be cardiologist from siberia
gorgeous jewish-russian boy with more wavy long black hair than you can possibly imagine
he got kicked out of med school for playing guitar, a year short of graduating ---
then harassed by KGB fleeing from city to city
he could play guitar and make it sound like two

his spoken voice the sweetest loveliest sound i ever heard -- it's like he spoke directly from the heart
but why am i talking past tense? he still is like that
only i can't find his phone number...
i'm not even going to venture to describe his lyrics here
so far above and far out of reach, in the topmost layer of the poetic stratosphere
earth shattering and mind blowing are just feeble cliches unable to reflect his magic in words
i wish i could translate some of it... but it's beyond daunting, sorry...
...
i was sitting in the hallway away from everybody else
because i had a nasty annoying cough which interfered with everyone's listening to the music
i remember he was playing night flight when it was still a very new song
and i was staring at the wallpaper, which was all stripey, and thought
bloody hell, this is insane... he is playing the rain! how can a guitar paint the rain so perfectly?
it's impossible, folks, it damn well should be, yet i could hear the rain so clearly
not just a light drizzle, it was a heavy, steady, unrelenting downpour
i never heard anything like that before nor ever again
all versions of this song i find are somehow way below the mark
maybe it's his guitar that's different --- i don't know but something is lost
quite irreversibly

unintended magic

i went into the electric night still chasing the fog -- it hung around most of the day, the distant backdrop delightfully milky -- there's no way these photos can really convey the amazing glow of the fog highlighted by the electric light...
i love the strangest things -- the fog and the dark stormy clouds and the branches of trees suspended against the background of the gray moody sky -- i love them deeply and intensely but can photography really do them justice? maybe i'll have to paint them to really bring out the power within... like my "magical" chair. oh dear. what silliness. it's just a chair on someone's balcony. but the lighting behind it is breathtaking -- there's the silvery blue light on the left wall, obviously from a tv, and a rosy-yellow diffuse glow on the right, must be a table lamp... all of this seeps across and over the vertical blinds on the balcony, coloring them gentle and light as air, and the chair is just a slim dark silhouette. it's so simple yet stunning. and whoever lives in that apartment is quite certainly oblivious to this unintended magic.

Eastbound

my grip on western hemisphere is slipping
i'm going east, east, east
it's exhilarating and frightening at once--
dear god, it's been 14 years since the last time
anxiety and apprehension freeze my mind
so much ridiculous bewildering retarded paperwork--
it's staggering
but i'm strangely happy
it's less strange than it seems--
in the spring of 2012
i'll get to see my mom again

Лёничка

Oh yes how effin dare i use this affectionate form... his first wife used it. alexandra --- the only one he had true intrinsic connection with which transcended flesh ---
i didn't know about the three suicide attempts. or was it four? lying between the railroad tracks? thought i remembered it as a bet...
"his enemies regarded him as a mature and malignant satan when he was actually a kind of brilliant, bewildered schoolboy, craving affection"
"given a stronger constitution, a more searching temper, he could easily have become gteater than dostoevsky. the temperament was there but not the strength, the perception bu not the will. he remains perhaps the most interesting artistic failure of our century"

and there you have it. failure? his writing was magical. who cares if it had anything to do with reality? is magic alone not worth anything?


____________
all quotes from: The strength to dream: literature and the imagination
By Colin Wilson

a blind stick

ran off suddenly, barely dressed, didn't even turn off the computer and lock the door. on a whim. poor timing though. sat on the bus stop waiting for the bus that never came. why so lazy? just walk to the ocean. it's only 17 minutes.
listen to the sweet voice singing in your ear: she said to me -- take my hand, walk to the ocean, to the ocean... you'll hear this voice in december again -- two weeks late for his birthday -- still give him presents, as always...
the guys give you way too many stairs, can never climb so many -- whacha looking at, never seen a women with all proper anatomy? good grief, looking fuckable is too weird a thing to be a real compliment, especially because the intent has nothing to do with that whatsoever. please, people, i'm just trying to get some epidermal melanin release secondary to solar radiation. yes, i'll walk to the ocean, and listen to something very moody. nothing like 3mp in that department. if you cross, red sensing, silver monkey syndicate and some others. let this flow and saturate non-dominant hemisphere

SD may be not SF, but...

I love local independent papers. Reader and especially City Beat. Seems like such columns as SD on QT in Reader, Backwards in High Heels, Enrique's Experience and Sordid Tales features in CB are designed to piss off the philistines. Which alone justifies the existence of the said papers.