My Companion

            A remote curiosity to those that knew of him, the dog, unkempt and domesticated but unclaimed, is still yet to emit a sound in his fifteen years of living. Coal black and panting, he becomes caught by a fire built by a tired man in a semi remote forest of the diminishing northwest. He paces and sways unseen in the shadows, growling soundlessly in mourning for his vision and olfaction impaired. The crackling of foraged and felled wood is his hearing. From his parted lips, asymmetrical barred teeth shed a stranded bead, salivated, which itself undulates as a metronome might for some oddly conjured and silent symphony.  His cage incommunicable, he has no sense but to feel. He feels and so he feels smoke and ash. And the ash, a billowing carbonic nuisance in his nostrils and eyes, is blinding. He feels the dirt uneven beneath him and the bead finally departing drifts down to the sprouting ground, greens springing through thawed earth in search of the touch of sunlight. A food unknown to him and not his own. The new mucilage evaporates and he feels the heat of the fire growing. Seeing the flame, he sways and lays down and feels himself lighter. The earth cold and the fire hot. In silence he pleads for relief. He is hungry and can taste smoke and gagging he gnashes his teeth, writhing and dizzy. From his dangling jaw his ephemeral saliva slides, first fumigated then vanishing by the thirsty flame. He is hungry and from his flesh emerge smoldering boils and he feels them. 

            The man, unmoving through these minutes, stirs and regards the dog with distracted indifference. In a moment he stands and produces a piece of meat, cooked by the fire and without ceremony or speech he slices with a knife a portion and casts it aside. The dog is hungry. With his blemished sense the discarded flesh is detected faintly yet with the imperative of living. From the earth he seeks his ration, all writhing and fury. As his hunger guides him he can only feel. Nearly senseless he feels. His jaws finds earth and embers. He encases in his teeth anything near enough to touch and the fire is hot. His teeth find flesh and he feeds and he eats. Indiscriminately he eats and he feels the burning of his own flesh in the fire as he feasts. And there is flesh in his teeth and the man no longer moves. And the dog eats and he feels as he burns finally with the fire. He bears himself up and he feels as he descends to the earth and as he falls he howls.

A Short Tragedy of the Current Past

photo by Colette Anderson

1. These days, I cant remember How I Got Over The Suburbs. Was it through the Courage of Others? Perhaps I Swung from the Branches through the Wild Nothing. I dont recall that time; all I remember is our Teen Dream. We met in the Heartland at Expo '86. Your Twin Sister pointed to you and whispered “Thank Me Later” so I went to you and said “I’m New Here.” You handed me some Square Shells and said “Have One on Me. Happy Birthday.”

You were a Tomboy but I couldn't Say No to Love. I was Crazy for You. True Devotion. We Made the Harbor and did Acid and Everything. We had a Summer HeartBeat Connection. Here, High Violet was a Real Life Color and there were Nitetime Rainbows.

And then. One day you had a Disconnect from Desire. You looked at our Skin Collision Past and said “Romance is Boring,” you said I was Clinging to a Scheme. And then you left with the Pigeons yelling, “Blackbird Blackbird.”


2. Before Today, in the suburbs, there once was an Active Child who was called The Son of Chico Dusty. He lived on the Grey Oceans where there was no water. Only a Plastic Beach and many ArchAndroid Guards On Patrol. It was a cold White Hinterland. All the Sleigh Bells had become Broken Bells and he had no Bliss Release. He began to Fight Softly. In the empty Baths, the active child built Fossil Cities (he called them Secret Cities) using the Beach Fossils collected At Echo Lake.

He put his ear to the Innerspeaker and prayed to Saint Bartlett, the Tallest Man on Earth and practitioner of White Magic. The child asked him to show The Way Out. The saint came to him and said “There is Love in You. I Will Be a False Priest if I do not help your Prison Break. But you must know, it will be Rough Travels for a Rare Thing.”

But child said he wanted to see Hidden Lands, to Swim in Bodies of Water. To Go, to Search.
The saint gave a Wild Smile and said “you have Gone Blind.”

3. There are Heavy Ghost Appendices here now. King Night rules all but there are no Covers. After you left, my blood became Odd Blood. I was delusional, thinking I was the King of the Beach. I said “Tomorrow is Alright” and got Stoned Alone. Eventually, I traveled to the Golden Archipelago and built a Memoryhouse for you. For Four More Years, I obsessively made Memory Tapes. Libraries full. Like your memory was a Hypnotist, guiding my actions. The tapes said:

This was our One Life Stand

If Love is All, where are you?

Congratulations, Everlasting.

The Fear is Excruciating,

But Therein Lies the Answer

I learned the Hard Way,

We are the Causers of This Wise Blood

So Runs the World Away

There was Recovery and Rebirth:

A Frightened Rabbit and Mare

The Creatures in the Garden of Lady Walton

…And They Have Escaped

the Weight of Darkness,

the Dream was a Big Echo.

4. He lives disassociated from mechanical time.

On a bus with a seat to myself, surrounded by oncestrangers and soonfriends we leave the Czech Republic and enter Poland. Correspondingly, the weather shifts. The CR was luminous. Like the sky was overflowing with blueberries and the sun was grinning to be stuck in the middle of it. As we enter Poland it starts raining immediately. The sky is uneven in its encompassing greyness and I feel solemn. This is how I have always known Poland to be. I just never thought it actually would be as I knew it. A tired fog obscures the rolling hills in the distance which now appear not green but a muddy black and it is not hard to doubt their existence. Yet, it is hard to find the strength to.

Kundera claims that countries in middle Europe suffer from “small nation syndrome” – that is, they are always stuck in between aggressors, superpowers. They must always doubt their continuing existence. I somehow feel a deep empathy here. As if I was acclimated to this mindset without my assent. Without my knowledge. This anxiety about existing is familiar. Comfortable. It seems so illogical that one should be and yet here one is. My reaction is at once grateful and skeptical. It is not that I fear for my existence but there is more to life than existing, is there not? If Poland became part of Germany, the USSR, did its people stop living. No. Only, they stopped living as Polish. Their existence as such no longer held any significance for they had been usurped. Others required their lives. Needed them to exist otherwise. Needed to eliminate them and create them anew. What is it to live in constant fear of this? How else to be but anxious? Empathetic?

Post script. As we roll into Krakow, graffiti on a wall informs me “this is a good day to have a good day”…The water falls in sheets.

1. As problematic as he is enigmatic: Traveling to Prague.

-To The Plane:

So I get all my stuff together and whatnot and I am pretty sure I have everything packed (although one never has everything they thought that had packed when traveling, naturally), and my parents come to pick me up. On the way to the airport, I remember that I forgot one book I need for class, my Prague travel guide and my aeropress coffee maker. Nothing too drastic so I feel good. I get through security and everything fine and go get some food. I am a little upset that my terminal has a Seattle's Best Coffee as their only coffee option. They are definitely not Seattle's best coffee...So I get some food and start reading the other book for class, which is a little depressing. Kind of like Elie Weisel's Night mixed with the dark undertones of Bulgakov's Master and Margarita. That's ok. Eventually my two classmates who are sharing this flight arrive and we talk for a little while. When time to board we do so and we are away!

-On the plane:

The seats are arranged with two together by the window on either side and a row of four in the middle. I am on an aisle seat in the middle, which is nice and roomy. I continue reading for awhile and decide to check (czech) out the movies they on the flight. They have "on demand" and a selection of about 30 movies. I end up watching "the hangover" (which was pretty bad), the new Alice in Wonderland which was pretty good and part of Sherlock Holmes, which was ok. In between each of these movies I try to sleep for a little while but the terrified infant in the lap of the person next to me has other ideas. I have always marveled at how such small creatures as babies can make such gargantuan noises. Anyhow, I don't sleep all that much but the flight seems shorter than it was (9 hours). The food is actually really good too. Lasagna and such. Complimentary Heinekens. Some watery coffee. Not so bad.

Get to Amsterdam with about an hour layover and locate our gate really quickly. I was planning on getting some food at this point and using the internet but unfortunately the line for security is huge. After about 45 minutes we finally get through but by this time food is not possible. Get on the plane, quick hour and a half flight to Prague and all is well.

-Landed --> Stranded:

On the ground we check the reader board for arrivals and locate the terminal that are luggage arrives at. We head there and stand for about half an hour until we realize that our flight is not listed on the screen at that terminal. I am a little worried because I am supposed to meet my roommate whose flight landed five minutes after mine. After finding out that her terminal is in another section of the airport entirely and that I would have to go through customs to get there, I decide to sit tight and wait for our luggage. Again I check the main reader board. Flight 3121. Check. Terminal 24. Check. I wander back to terminal 24 and there is nothing listed. After about another hour of this we head to the "Baggage Claim" area and inquire. Seems like our luggage never made the flight from amsterdam and there are about 15 people from our flight in a similar spot. They take our info. We give them the school address and our Prague guide's (Veronica) info. My friends leave to find a taxi to their apartment and I am alone in Prague.

I get some coffee (Charbucks) and take out my info packets. Ok. Bus 119 to subway. Greenline route A to Musteka station. I use the change from my coffee to buy a bus ticket (they have little pay stations at the actual bus stop. Way faster than doing it on the bus. U.S. pay attention) and wait for the bus. It comes quickly and we are off. The subway station is the last stop so I just follow the crowd downstairs. I almost get on the subway going the wrong direction, figure it out and board the right way. There are little reader boards that announce the upcoming stops (also really helpful) so I have no issue finding my stop. I get off and head up the stairs.

Now here is another problem. My directions say when I get off the subway I will be in Wenceslas Square. There is a big square in front of me. Check. But then it says head "up" the street 100m. Everything is pretty flat so I can't really tell what "up" is. Being an old city, Prague is not exactly laid out in a logical manner. Suffice it to say that I wander around in 25 degree (celsius) heat (which is like 80 degrees) for about two hours. I am quite exhausted by this time and am quite glad my luggage got lost. I finally locate Stepanksa 36 and see a sign for a carpet store, a mini market, a liquor store. I head into this little hallway like thing and see the mini mart and liquor store. To my right are a couple rickety glass doors with the word "apartment" on them so I figure I am finally home. I joyously force the door open and head inside.

Mine is apartment ten. I am a little confused when the ground floor apartments are labeled 1a 1b and 1c. The first floor apartments are labeled 4 and 5. I get up to the second floor and there is 2a and two unlabeled ones. Third floor has apartments has an unlabeled one and another marked "1". The fourth floor has two unmarked and one marked 11. Suddenly I am worried I am not even in the right building and so I dont want to just knock on all these doors. I head downstairs to ask the mini-mart guy if I am in the right building. He says I am. Score. I go to head back in and the rickety glass doors are somehow locked. Score. So I locate veronicas's phone number and find a pay phone. She knows about the luggage (it will be delivered to my other classmates place) and she says I was at the right building too. She does not know what to do about the doors as none of us have phones yet. I tell her I will figure it out. I go back to the building and the doors are open now. I head back to the apartment labeled "1" and knock. Someone yells my name. Home.

More coming soon. Class starts in about an hour. Of course since I leave Seattle it has been rather gorgeous there. Pouring down rain in huge drops here. When they said the weather was like Seattle in Prague I thought they just meant temperature. Hm. Good thing I packed an umbrella for some reason. Talk to you soon.

Much Love,

Brandon Paul Weaver

Why Vinyl is Still the best

Vinyl Fantasy II
The NyTimes has a great article on the increasing economic resurgence of Vinyls and turntables. I know for me, if I want to support a band I will probably buy their album on vinyl. There is something warm, familiar and nostalgic about the whole affair. Vinyls, compared to cds, are less immediately technological; there are not all the buttons, lcd displays, etc that can overwhelm in a way that removes you from the music. And yet it is still satisfyingly sensory in a way that mp3s cannot be. The whole process of taking a record out of its sleeve and carefully loading it onto the turntable, moving the needle over and gently dropping it onto the revolving disk; this connects you to the music that you choose to play in a way that demands attention. With Vinyl, it is impossible to download 50 songs at once, listen to the first 5 seconds and make some uninformed judgement that is probably more reflective of your mood at the time than anything else. The process of listening to records requires a certain effort on the part of the listener that ultimately allows for a more intimate connection with the music.

Kid Suspended for Wearing Skinny Jeans

Some kid gets suspended for 'skinny jeans' in Texas (duh). Apparently, they were too 'distracting' (cause hipsters are rebels, duh). But seriously, I was reading Althusser earlier today and he writes about the role of Ideological State Apparatuses, which are basically the ways in which the dominant powers maintain power. The ruling class is able to sustain itself through economic exploitation of the lower classes without using force via these ideological state apparatuses (ISAs). He specifically cites the educational-apparatus as the main ISA in the modern era. He argues that schools serve to prepare/condition people for their future participation in the system of production (which ensures the 'rule' of the ruling class) by normalizing behavior that sustains the system of production. This is readily apparent in this particular school's dress code, part of which reads:

The Standard Dress Policy is a vital step toward furthering excellence and better preparing our students for college, careers, and life as adults.

Oh Texas, you never cease to amaze (depress) me. In the video, the mother is all upset that the school is letting 'dress' get in the way of her son's 'education.' But, if you view the issue in terms of normalization, the adherence to a dress code is actually part of her son's 'education' itself. Another portion of the dress code states "Top and bottom (e.g. shirt and pants) may not be the same color." This doesn't even make sense in terms of the rest of the dress code. They state that the goal is to avoid 'distracting' appearance in order to facilitate an educational environment. Is it really distracting to have the same color top and bottom? This just seems like an exercise in submission.

Interpellated.