Ha And man being makes from an opera to a chair communicates som  ha ha ha ething-- and so is thus a kind of text.  unicates-- and everything that a huHAman being makes ha from anby texts Ily it coha hammAnd by texts I don't just mean writing-- I mean anything that communiHcates anything, however vaguely it commhahaunicates-- and everything that a hicates anythingu opera tha ha ha o a chair communicates something-- and so is thus a kind oAnd by texts I don't just mera to a chair communicates something-- and so is thus a kind of text.   don't just mean writing-- I mean anything that ha communicates anything, however vaguely it comean writing-- I mean anything that comm  icates anything, , however ha ha ha vaguef text.  And by texts I don't just ha ha mean writing-- I mean anything that communicates anything, however vaguely it communiha ha ha ha h cates-- and everything that a ha ha ha makes from an opera to a chair communiing HA that communicates anything, however vaguely it communicates-- and everything that a human being makes from an opera to a chair communicates ha -- and so is thus a kind of text.  cates somethingHAa -- and so is thus haa kind of text.  hhowever vaguely it hahamunicates-- and everything that a human being makes from an opmunicates-- and everything that a human being makes from an opera to a chair communicates something-- and so is thus a kind of text.  And by texts I don't just mean writing-- I mean aHAthing that cohahahahahahammun
                  --The Book Of Revelation

I have spread my dreams
under your feet tread
softly because
you tread on
my dreams

Idea for a movie, I can shoot it on my digital camera:
        Lots of shots of walls and corners, no people to speak of.
        Maybe occasionally the corner of the face of somebody like Kim or someone like that, but only for a fraction of a second.  Then more bare walls.
        Call it "My Story: the story of my life, by Brian Cotts."
        Make it at least 3 hours long.
 

At the University, two incredibly pierced and tattooed guys wearing Skinny Puppy t-shirts and talking about how innocent Saddam Hussein is, and what a paradise Iraq was before the "war" on "terror" began.
        These two have seemingly forgotten (if they even ever knew) that the Industrial Music Heroes whose t-shirts they're sporting, on their VIVIsectVI album, with the song "VX Gas Attack," condemned Hussein for committing mass genocide against the Kurds in the late 1980s-- this way back when Iraq was everybody's pal and the Western World was more than willing to let the slaughter of countless thousands go unnoticed for whatever hypocritical reason was in the air back then.  Thus making Skinny Puppy's song extremely politically significant.
        I find these two neo-IndustriGoths and their naively mangled politics gently, soothingly, even quaintly funny.
 

-- another cold blue sky.
-- think I'm getting an ulcer: a ripping, burning pain in my stomach, burping up acid
        -- when that doesn't happen my right side just aches
 

IN A MALL: some dialogue.  2 guys, maybe in their early 20s:
        "What?"
        "What."
        "Whadd'you mean 'what?'"
        "You said 'what.'"
        "No, you said 'what.'"
        "Fuck you, you said 'what' so I said 'what."
        "No."
        "Yeah."
        "No."
        "Yeah, yeah you did."
        "No."
        "YEAH!"
        "Fuck you!"
        "Fuck you!"
        "Asshole."
        "You're the asshole, asshole."
        "Fuck you, asshole."
        "Fuck you, dick."
        "Asshole."
        "Dick."
        "Fuck you, you piece of shit."
        "No, fuck you!"
        "Asshole."
        "Dick hole."
        "Fuck you you fuck.  Fuckin' fuck."
        "Fuckin' cocksucker."
        "Tea baggin' fuck-prick!"
        "Stupid cocksuckin' fuck."
        "Fuck you!"
        "Fuck you!"
and so on....
 

WINTER AFTERNOON:
Driving, she's sitting beside me in the car, beautiful like she always is, beautiful and smart and funny in my eyes, snow on the ground, me wanting to tell her how I feel, even though I know she'll reject me, even though I know she won't really understand, and I know that she'll reject me, but still hoping because I have to, counting on the unknown, that leap from now into something else utterly unknowable, tangible almost, almost like a wall, like a crossing, a quantum miracle from this state to that, counting, from here to there with an infinity between but somehow Zeno be damned you do reach the other shore, arrow hits its mark, driving, snow on ground, desperately holding onto that slim sliver of hope that she'll accept me, that she'll say yes and understand, that there won't be a wall between us any more, that tiny thread of hope that I will really, and for once, do it, win, I'll win, I really will, she'll smile and I'll really find happiness.
 

Sedna: a tiny, dark object at the furthest reaches of our solar system, past Pluto, three quarters the size of Pluto, 13 billion kilometers away, with an orbit of 10000 years.  Planet-like, cold, moonless, and dead.
 

-- idea for a tv show:  1984 as a weekly "mystery"
        -- join Winston Smith as he tracks down thoughtcriminals and sends them to The Ministry Of Love for reeducation
        -- the theme could be a Neubautenesque banging sound, the show would be shot in sepia tones
        -- when the show runs its course you can just dramatize the novel in a 5-part arc where Winston starts to doubt the system and then ends up, himself, sent to The Ministry Of Love
        -- as a related aside a while ago someone in the US military seriously considered changing the name of the American Ministry Of War to the Ministry Of Peace because the idea of calling it the "Ministry Of War" just sounded too negative, and after all, all the USA wants to do is establish a "world peace"
 

This country, this continent, does not respect its intellectuals, and that's where it falls apart, where the hollowness shows through.  The USA was founded by freethinkers but soon was overrun by religious fanatics and the borderline retarded, and so they can't stand actual thinking.  The just want concrete, "empirical" results.  Canada was founded by corporations and if there's one thing corporations can't stand is unchecked thought.  If they all start to think, they might not do their jobs and then where would the profit margins be?  So, again, the emphasis is on do-ers not thinkers.  And do-ers are fine, because they, well, they do things.  But very often do-ers just do what they're told, follow the formulae, produce concrete results, but the never really think.  If it can't be immediately grasped simply and "logical", it's of no interest to the do-ers.  Of course, if you just do things nothing new gets done.  You need thinkers to tell what the do-ers what to do-- or, in an ideal situation you need people who are both thinkers and doers.
        Unfortunately, do-ers usually end up thinking they're thinkers because they generate concrete results that acne be readily assimilated by the general public.  And the general public (usually groups of stupid masses who are in their own limited way, low-grade do-ers, or have dreams of becoming do-ers because then you don't have to think (which is hard) and the money is usually good) accepts the fallacy that do-ers, because they've done something, and also thinkers (because, they erroneously believe that you have to be able to think in order to do).  The situation is similar to comic book artists who think that they can write because ether can draw pictures, when in reality the majority of artists can't tell a coherent (or even interestingly abstract) narrative even if their lives depended on it.  Because they're focused on the empty image, they either ignore, or maybe even have no concept of, the idea of idea, or the depth that a narrative needs in order to command extended interest.  Pretty pictures are just fine, but there has to be more or the world becomes boring and flat very quickly.
 

"I want there to be Infinity.  Real Infinity, not just some sort of mathematical puzzle.  Not just an abstract.  I WANT there to be so much more than this, than all this rot and bodies and flesh and stink.  I want more than this.  I need there to be more than this, because this is all just such a massive disappointment.  Rebecca once told me that there is no separation between mind and body, and how she knows this for a fact, I don't know.  I think she's just guessing.  But she's probably right.  There is no separation between mind and body and everything is just a part of a mechanical, physical process that can, and will be, eventually, probably boiled down to genetics and neurochemistry and that, as far as I'm concerned, is a massive betrayal of all we are.  There is no Infinity, it's all just a joke, a lie, a huge gob of pointless masturbation-- just like love and hope, which can also be reduced to simple, reproducible neurochemical events, and which don't mean anything at all.  Or rather, they mean what we make them mean.  Which is the same as saying that they don't mean anything at all.  Just more mounting evidence that the world is a miserable pile of shit and that all the human race ever strove for is just a big, self-deluded joke.  I need there to be more, but there isn't more.  And so I wallow in my self, and feel betrayed by the very air I breathe."
        -- When we're teenagers, and we say things like this, adults criticize us and call us overly dramatic, and pretentious, and filled with unfocussed angst.  That's because they're afraid to admit to us, and to themselves, that we're right.  That we figured it all out when we were 15.  And then the rest of our lives is the process of forcing ourselves to forget the truth.
 

-- furries/furverts:
        -- people laugh at them, and yeah, the images of two people dressed as cartoon weasels copulating is kind of strange, but is it really any stranger than dressing up in leather?
                -- or bondage?
                -- or a fantasy where someone calls you by another name?
                -- or tattoos
                -- or surgical augmentation (large breasts, penises, etc.)?
        -- no, it's not.
        -- in fact, it's more interesting because here are people pretending not only to be other kinds of people (like men and women who dress up in leather or dawn other "normal" costumes like lingerie or role-playing, or whatever)
                -- but the furries are pretending to be things that actually do not, and cannot exist (anthropomorphic cats, mice, etc.)
                -- they are trying to escape into a pure virtual, a virtual that's even more pure than people who simply want to be other kinds of "real" people (movies stars, firemen, etc.) BECAUSE of the ultimate unreality of "funny animals"
                -- and this is also not the same as bestiality because bestiality involves sexual attraction to a real object.  A sheep exists in this world, not as a cartoon character
                -- and even though a guy in a pig suit is still a guy in a pig suit, it's still a significant attempt by that individual to become a cartoon character, and to fuse with this character at a sexual level, which is the most basic human level, the prime mover underscoring everything we do from fucking to society building to technology to theology and physics
        -- and then there are the people who are aroused by drawings of furries.  an even purer virtual.
        -- the same also goes for the anime fetish
 

[memory of being in highschool reading wsb and listening to cabaret voltaire (maybe one of the coolest and important and under appreciated bands in the world) -- and trying to explain how cabaret voltaire is so much better than the new madonna and / or stryper albums and how this stuff -- this weird electronic sample music with noise and bizarre rhythms is going to be the future because the future is going to be cutups and noise and rhythm -- and like no one really listening]
 

        Hallways at university.
        Fluorescent lights.
        Nobody around.
        Letting myself into the English office with my key.
        Night: the computer on in the corner.
        The hum of the computer, the sound of the fan.
        The hiss of the air system circulating air.
        Looking up at the ceiling.  Someone told me they were thinking of installing cameras up there.
        Surveillance outside, now.  Been cameras outside for a few years.
        The cameras were installed because of rapes.
        There are still rapes on campus, though.
        Grad school is isolating.
        Completely isolating.
        I used to think that maybe there would have been a community, here.
        (Did that sentence make any sense?)
        A community, some sort of camaraderie.
        Instead of politics and bullshit and people putting each other down because they think each other's projects are beneath them.
        As if the real world cares about yet another essay on Chaucer, Milton, Shakespeare, Austin, Dickens, Faulkner, Pound, Eliot, Joyce, Williams, Atwood, Fielding, Swift, Cervantes, Weibe, Greene, Gibson, Cummings, Rich.
        Or an essay on the rich oral rhythms found in Ancient Icelandic epic poetry.
        I thought people would hang out, have fun, enjoy the fact that really all they have to do is read some stuff and they can hold the real world at bay for years.
        So there would be a community, here sharing ideas and friendship.  Not just a bunch of absurd isolationists secretly putting each other down.
        I was wrong.
 

BRIEF DIALOGUE:
-- The world is doomed.
-- Good!
 

-- another idea for a show:  THE TALENTED MR. RIPLEY
        -- every week, gentle, unassuming Tom Ripley can encounter an innocent person, feel strangely attracted to him, and then calmly murder him and all potential witnesses for no real discernible reason
        -- now THAT would be a good show!!!
 

Driving at night.  Rhythms.
 

That offensive cover to Will They Ever Trust Us Again?
        -- Michael Moore looking all falsely "sensitive" white holding a folded American flag in his open hands.  How can no one see through this guy?  That cover looks like something that you'd find in the Self Help section.  And it's not ironic, or funny.  Moore looking so "caring," like a sad puppy
        -- if any preacher from the Religious Right was ever that transparently manipulative he'd be ground up into hamburger by the "liberal" media.
 

-- People who don't watch tv but only watch documentaries because they think that somehow documentaries are somehow more "true," more "real" than the fictions on tv.
        -- And they think that things don't change between episode to episode
        -- and they think that every episode is self-contained because it has to be able to be seen in any order during rerun cycles
        -- or because the people who make tv shows somehow have less integrity, or something.
        -- OLD INFORMATION
-- People who don't watch tv and yet judge it on information they received a decade or more ago, back some aspects of tv fell within the parameters of their myopia
-- people who judge tv based on old information.
[part of this might be because they can't assimilate the information on tv, because a good television show requires as much concentration as a movie -- if not more because you have to be able to keep each episode's data in storage, and you have to be able to recall it week after week, episode after episode, and if you're not paying attention you can get lost in the narrative.  -- eg. shows like Farscape and Lost, which function like elaborate, intricate, novels]
-->  BOTTOM LINE:
        People who don't watch tv at all are fools.
        -- They are cutting themselves out of the culture.  They are hurting themselves.  They are getting ready to be old before their times, early retirees who can't relate to what they see around them outdoors because they don't have an eye on the culture that surrounds them because they're shutting themselves off from the media.  And this hurts their minds and hurts their art, if they have art.  If they have minds.
        And even reality tv
        -- yes it's garbage
        -- but its still a window on what the average person out there is like: what he or she wants dreams about, how he or she would like to escape.  The entertainment of a people shows you what that people are.
        People who don't watch tv:
        They might not know it, but they are in the process of giving up, and in the process of becoming less vital, and soon the world will leave them behind and they won't even notice it.  Which is okay, I suppose, in the long run.
        -- If they can delude themselves into thinking they have a culture of their own.
        -- If they can delude themselves into believing that they're happy, and not hopelessly confused, scared, and threatened by what they can no longer relate to.
-- and yet they think that by denying tv they're so much more sophisticated than the masses.
 

-- People who think that there's some sort of real referent to the news.  That what the left and the right say contains some sort of truth value.
 

Art is the only thing.  It is primary.
        When friends are gone, when hope is gone, music, books, tv, movies, art-- this keeps the gun out of the mouth, the bullet from the brain.
        Without it life is even more pointless than it seems.  It generates meaning and emotion, and then forces you into another space.
 

-- People who do nothing all day but sit and wait to die.
 

Dead art forms:
        -- reading, writing
        -- painting
        -- ballet, opera
        -- sculpture
Dying art forms:
        -- music
        -- comic books
Art forms soon to be very sick:
        -- television
        -- videogames
 

Wind/snow
 

MANTRA FOR NOW, THIS ETERNAL NOW, THIS MOMENT I FIND MYSELF IN WITH NO BEGINNING MIDDLE AND END, PRESSURE ON ALL SIDES, AIR CRUSHING ME INTO A SINGLE NONDIMENSIONAL POINT, A SWEATING, EYES FRANTIC, DESPERATE NOW:
        Do not collapse.  Do not rest.
        Do not collapse.  Do not rest.
        Do not collapse.  Do not rest.
        Do not collapse.  Do not rest.
        Do not collapse.  Do not rest.
        Do not collapse.  Do not rest.
        Do not collapse.  Do not rest.
        Do not collapse.  Do not rest.
        Do not collapse.  Do not rest.
        Do not collapse.  Do not rest.

(repeat as required)

Next:  Part Five....
 

Epilogue 73o.
Epilogue 73m.
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