Things Worth Noting

We're Moving

noreply@blogger.com (Fred) — Tue, 28 Apr 2009 19:52:00 +0000

new digs: www.worthnoting.org

tell your friends! change your bookmarks!

Mandala, Parts I-VI

noreply@blogger.com (Fred) — Mon, 20 Apr 2009 05:51:00 +0000

I stand up, brush the earth and grass and sunshine

from my knees. If only we could see the stars

at midday, if only the galaxy mixed with the spires of pine

of this forest, tar

mixed with salt and the venom of time.

I can feel the breeze tracing out its rivulets.

II.

The world, the whole world, is laid out in this garden

Everything important to me is here

the cracks in the slate paths, fallen leaves, hardened

and rattling, the ants in their stupid, ragged lines,

the crumbling bark and the itinerant birds

calling their intertwined destinies to each other.

III.

I have decided that my room does not want to be a room

anymore. Each wall is shot through with tiny fissures

I can hear the beams folding themselves like limbs.

I've begun to prepare a pyre in the center of the floor:

(ordinary things, nothing bold) orphan socks,

spent bottles, copies of some books I am better off without.

IV.

I can only recall disjoint bones of our conversations now.

I've picked them over

all the sinew and flesh is gone from them

I can't even remember what the skeleton looked like,

assembled. It's the kind of thing that I wake up thinking

about, wondering if I dreamt about it.

They fought all the wars already, our ancestors

did. There's nothing left for us to raise arms over.

Their battlefields are parks and museums, our schools

bear the names of old warriors and older murderers.

The swords are not plowshares exactly,

but they are rusted and useless. I abandoned them long ago.

VI.

I learned when I was young

that everything can be a solemn ritual,

letting my blood drip from my mouth,

tasting the dew before it binds itself to the ground,

the morning itself,

cold and crystal and silent.

we're writing a comics

noreply@blogger.com (Fred) — Tue, 31 Mar 2009 03:08:00 +0000

comics.tmwk.com

traces of ike

noreply@blogger.com (Becca) — Mon, 23 Mar 2009 22:02:00 +0000

SCHOLASTICS IS THE MARK OF THE BEATS

noreply@blogger.com (Fred) — Thu, 19 Mar 2009 20:23:00 +0000

Scholastics returns after a hiatus of about a year and a half! It isn't a perfect mixtape, but I've dedicated about as much time as is warranted to it - it's too nice of a day outside. Unfortunately, if you don't like hip hop, blog house, or radio pop, there probably won't be much for you here. (But listen anyway! Who knows, you could be surprised.) Conceptually, the mixtape is divided in half, with the first half being dedicated mostly to backpackers and conscious rap, and the second half being radio pop fluff. A parental advisory is probably warranted as well, especially for tracks 8 and 12.

SCHOLASTICS IS THE MARK OF THE BEATS

1. Liquid Swords (GZA)

2. Electric Swords - (music: GZA - Liquid Swords, words: Aesop Rock - NY Electric)

3. NY Heartless (music and hook: Kanye West - Heartless, verses: Aesop Rock)

4. Get With the Times (Cool Calm Pete)

5. Runaway Too (music: Clipse - Mr. Me Too, words: Ludacris - Runaway)

6. Battle for Beef - (music: Cannibal Ox - Battle for Asgard, words: Mos Def - Beef, GZA - Publicity)

7. What Goes Around - (music: Books On Tape - Unidentified, words: Nas - What Goes Around)

8. Ignorant Ladies - (music: Beyonce - Single Ladies, words: Jay-Z and Beanie Sigel - Ignorant Shit)

9. Womanizer Rink - (music: Wiley - Ice Rink, words: Britney Spears - Womanizer)

10. Maneater Autodrive - (music: Kavinsky - Testarossa Autodrive, words: Nelly Furtado - Maneater)

11. Countach URAQT - (music: Franz and Shape - Countach, words: MIA - URAQT)

12. Danger Kids - (music: Danger - 11h54, words: Ghostface and Raekwon - Apollo Kids)

13. Miami Horror - Make You Mine

Nick Doesn't Have Any Postit Notes

noreply@blogger.com (DrewTM) — Thu, 19 Mar 2009 16:50:00 +0000

There's Nothing in Front of You

noreply@blogger.com (DrewTM) — Tue, 24 Feb 2009 04:45:00 +0000

For seasons now I've been running
Under stars in silent clouds
Casual, like freckles
Killing every gasping sound

Through sun breaking--bending at least
Revealing gradients and stripes
Yellow. Green. Blue. Fantasy.
Indigo was made up by a teacher.
Never run longer than the light.
Give up on rainbows.

Thanks Fred, Now We Have to Post Stuff Too

noreply@blogger.com (DrewTM) — Sat, 21 Feb 2009 20:44:00 +0000

I am hereby starting another collaborative poem. To begin, I'll write six pairs of words, which the next person should, in some manner, make into a five-line stanza, throwing out one pair.

bask given

owl stern

ale (re)possess

round white

totem evidence

hungry dismiss

you shall not die, yet you will be remade

noreply@blogger.com (Fred) — Sat, 21 Feb 2009 19:54:00 +0000

The tern cut a thin circle from the sky,

all feather and wings and call.

It weathered the light, it wore its flesh

and its flight loosely as it curved

over the horizon, out of sight.

I imagine that it does not know the patterns it follows,

does not remember that it followed the same path

not a year ago, that its memory cannot trace

that same thin circle, loses its place in the seasons,

the annual reckonings, in the home of grounded sticks.

I dreamt in splinters and slivers that night,

carry through the day the notion that I can

follow in its wake, answer

its one note question with my own.

Seven days it took to cross this fiction,

measured in sheaves of seconds, quivers of hours.

I retain the suspicion that there is no melody

that I have not yet heard. I unfold my hands and spread them,

in front of me like a map. I wear this flesh loosely.

Essay on a Grease Tern

noreply@blogger.com (DrewTM) — Tue, 17 Feb 2009 05:06:00 +0000

I found this in my blog from 3 years ago.

I am now going to count a number of words. The only meaning that can be prescribed for this conundrum is to pronounce judgement on the works of fiction with which we surround ourselves. The number of words is also equal to the number of parts in the whole orchestra. But the orchestra has fewer parts than the word parts. Additionally, peanuts have the same parts as the orchestords’ calculus.

The end is very nearly the beginning, if you don’t count all the stops in between and the fire that rages on inside each of our minds. “Deltoids have faces too,” they say, but they are wrong. However, the fire and the deltoids do have one thing in common. They are both imaginary synchronizations and simulacra of the modern age.

Pottery

noreply@blogger.com (Daisy) — Wed, 11 Feb 2009 04:05:00 +0000

I just recently moved to San Jose after living in Southern California all my life. I don't have any friends out here so I decided to join a meetup group. Over the weekend, my group met and painted pottery at a studio. I'm really happy with the results. The inspiration was Gustav Klimt's "The Kiss" painting.

Happy Birthday

noreply@blogger.com (Dalia) — Wed, 04 Feb 2009 21:40:00 +0000

To Dan Quayle, Oscar De La Hoya, Alice Cooper, George Romero, Rosa Parks, Charles Lindbergh, Clyde Tombaugh, and this guy.

The Notice

noreply@blogger.com (DrewTM) — Fri, 30 Jan 2009 17:05:00 +0000

No. 2

noreply@blogger.com (Daisy) — Sat, 24 Jan 2009 20:42:00 +0000

Tandem Cantum

noreply@blogger.com (DrewTM) — Fri, 23 Jan 2009 23:07:00 +0000

I found a strange j-like shape in my sketchbook
so I drew this around it.
I don't know what any of it is.

No. 1

noreply@blogger.com (Daisy) — Fri, 23 Jan 2009 08:22:00 +0000

7x6 acrylic on wood

Orderly and august

noreply@blogger.com (Dalia) — Thu, 15 Jan 2009 08:57:00 +0000

Orderly and august, the quislings gather their pickets and banners.
The time-honored blockade is ritually de-wired.

The bullets don’t care, the suits don’t care,
the governments don’t care, the viruses don’t care
And they are it and we are it and this is it and that is that.

Not much unlike the Georgians,
they had not reached a talking point.

They threw clay jugs through glass ceilings
that protruded from the alleyway

Their senseless arts were like mad libels,
monkeying around while carrying a blowtorch.

They were not anesthetized,
Though there was something quite trodden
About the miniscule reason vanquished by their ancestors

They didn’t quite hammer out
that which was in store
but what they did know they could not see
for fierce winds blew down the alleyway

They jutted out face-first
Before lending themselves a spare moment to do as they pleased

It didn’t matter what they came for,
It was just the audience
for whom they paraded their nothings and their scorecards

And here we still are, suggesting that we might stop them.
And here we still are, donkeys pulling wheels.

Untitled and unfinished

noreply@blogger.com (Fred) — Tue, 13 Jan 2009 19:58:00 +0000

He takes off his shoes first, as usual. He carefully unlaces them, the better to put them on when he is through; it is a ritual, after all, not codified stupidity. The socks he places next to them on the ground, their laundry machine purity dingy against the unbleached fresh snow. It is as he unbuttons the fourth button of his outer coat that he feels the first real tremors of cold, as the residue of warmth from his house and the socks are washed away by the tiny eddies of air wrapping themselves around his feet and splashing against his ankles. He savors them, these first overtures, as he gently shrugs off the parka, looks thorugh the trees at the empty white sky, the sun devoured and scattered by the featureless clouds.

The parka stands upright for a moment, rigid for the impression of a wearer, before it crumples sideways with a slight crackle. His zippered jacket comes off quicker. It is here that he must always consciously force himself to keep his pace steady, to remember his purpose, as the cold passes through his shirt like oil through a sieve. The joy comes then, too, from his now tingling feet, trilling up his spine, his body answering with a trembling shudder. The delicate time has passed now, and he feels no difference on the surface of his skin as his shirt comes off, and his chest and arms taste the raw air. His dulled fingers wrestle with the top button on his pants briefly before falling back into rhythm again.

He breathes deliberately, his whole body breathes as he steps out of his pants, then out of his boxers, his breath appearing then disappearing like a chimera or a mystery, or life itself. The trees, they are now sacred somehow, silhouettes and monuments, he almost feels as if their tips are within reach again. He pulls the skin apart at the top of his sternum, and it splits easily to the bottom of his abdomen, the two flaps hanging at his side. He is shivering now in earnest, and his ribcage expands defiantly, a trace of blood tracing his thigh, then his shin. The joy comes almost between shivers in a silent call and response, arpeggiating down the length of his arm, to his fingertips. He can feel the air both in his lungs and on their surface. The clearing is a smaller place now, as the snow begins to fall again, his body more than naked, raging against winter.

Self Portrait

noreply@blogger.com (Daisy) — Thu, 08 Jan 2009 06:51:00 +0000

More Statistics, Slightly Less Noteworthy

noreply@blogger.com (DrewTM) — Tue, 06 Jan 2009 19:10:00 +0000

Daisy 3
Dalia 3
Mariko 3
Ambar 2
Anshul 2
Becca 2
Ryan 2
Drew 1
Fred 1
Greg 1
Matt 1
Nick 1

Noteworthy Statistics

noreply@blogger.com (DrewTM) — Sun, 04 Jan 2009 23:24:00 +0000

Fred 63
Drew 49
Dalia 42
Ryan 11
Daisy 8
Matt 8
Nick 3
Ambar 2
Anshul 2
Becca 2
Greg 2

Mariko 2

The Same Meteor 17 Galaxies Ago

noreply@blogger.com (DrewTM) — Sun, 04 Jan 2009 04:38:00 +0000

If it doesn’t strike us it will strike us later.

As though we were cheetahs, we run,

As though grey machines of steel, we stand,

The never-ending, piecemeal plot.

We are not challenged by gnostics.

This sweet Hippocrene pouring forth on Mount Helicon,

To us, reduces and sharpens us,

Agrees us into hollow troughs.

We wear our speech closely in this new plane of meetings.

Deadbolt nine-millimeter, we find dilapidated mineshafts

To anguishes, delights, to unspoken, purple-mouthed truths.

We squeeze tunnels through where we weren’t meant to meander.

Following smiles will be knowing, laced with milk-skins.

We are petering, teetering, blanched

Toward the white, misty abyss,

Its spidering ironies ever before our faces,

Our feet rooted in the salted snow of a vast empire.

We can’t come to our conclusion.

We shall come to it at another time.

We’ve got cherries and bunting,

I’ve made a bunt cake for the ride;

I can’t make certain what the time will be,

But we can feel electricity shock through us

Like electric needles piercing our veins

Whatever is hurtling before our nonchalant city brights,

Nine times out of ten a candle illuminates it for us,

Adventuring ever forward as though we knew naught.

I don’t know how to hurry out of here,

But if there was a pleasant theme tune I would hum it.

We carry on, we lag behind.

Baskets and scenery

Heralds and clauses

Fairly missing sadscapes and rocket-disasters.

We carry on. There is no ‘lag behind.’

We call it the coming and going,

The talking from east and west.

Dogs and cars are ashen to our call.

We elapse forward and scurry back.

It started with him and we have this world.

scraps/poems in progress (please comment)

noreply@blogger.com (Dalia) — Wed, 31 Dec 2008 08:42:00 +0000

The following was at one point the beginning of the poem I posted as "Seventeen galaxies ago there was a meteor-strike," but then I did some cutting:

This sweet Hippocrene pouring forth atop Mount Helicon
reduces and sharpens,
agrees us in this hollow trough.
We speak closer on this plane that meets us,
unifying irony, anguish, delights, and unspoken, purple-mouthed truth.

Following smiles will be knowing;
Here we are in the tubes worth knowing;
Beneath the salted snow in the vast empire,
Gatherings of milk-skins are set before the tables.

If it doesn’t strike us, it soon will,
And we are petering, teetering forward
Unto the great white depth
Ever before, with great spidered ironies

Like a rock-solid mold we want to run like the cheetah;
We once withheld this plot,
But now, now straightforward,
The never-ending piecemeal,

We can feel free to go unchallenged,
Marked smarted by those who know.

We find dilapidated mineshafts
And squeeze tunnels through where they wouldn’t be meant to meander;

______

Now I have this, which seemed to want to follow the above:

We’ve got cherries and bunting,
Bunt cake for the ride;
I haven’t made certain what the time will be,
But we can feel electricity shock through us
Like electric needles piercing our veins
We elapse forward and scurry back.

Nine times out of ten
We have a candle illuminating it for us
Yet we lag behind,
Adventuring ever forward as though we knew naught.

I don’t know how to hurry out of here,
But if there was a pleasant theme tune I would hum it;
As we carry on
Baskets and scenery
Heralds and clauses

Fairly missing in the sadscape
Hurtling before us like a rocket disaster
Deadbolt nine millimeter

We call it the coming and going,
The talking from east and west,
The nonchalant city brights
Ashen to our call;
It started with him and we have this world
We can’t come to a conclusion
We shall come to it at another time.

______

Does it work? Or better to re-arrange the first part with "Seventeen galaxies ago there was a meteor-strike?" Or...? Suggestions/re-arrangements/re-mixes encouraged.

Happy

noreply@blogger.com (Dalia) — Mon, 29 Dec 2008 07:50:00 +0000

birthday (I hope you like it)

noreply@blogger.com (Dalia) — Sat, 27 Dec 2008 23:11:00 +0000