Van Stanley

The Rite Of Spring

     You may only find a thing if you are looking for it, one might say.  But chance and self-proclaimed fate do not match up at times.  Life.  Art.  Life.  Imitation.  Art.  If you like art, you’ll love the imitation of life.  Or is it vice versa?  To make a thing takes knowing a thing.  How do you make a thing without knowing a thing? Without knowing anything?  It would probably be a paradox if not for time’s passage, error’s allowance, practice’s necessity.  Practice makes mistakes before it makes perfect.  It’s okay.  What you need to do, the weight you must add to your own investments (think: long-term), the trials you must suffer — they are okay.  It’s okay.  No one, no one, and I mean no one is watching.  Pick yourself up from the trippings, the trimmings.  No one is watching you fail.  So you, you self-conscious freak, you stop watching as well.  All you can do now is release every which waything until there is enough dirt to sift for some grit and an idea.

     Every writer I’ve personally known, every writer that writes about a woman (that I’ve known of) writes about ALL women (that they’ve known).  Is love exclusive?  Is it limited to a single, solitary, isolated emotion expressed and focused towards a single solitary, isolated instance of Woman?  Towards an individual?  What do we seek?  If only—

     Typing.  T-t-t-typing.  To the rhythm.  Of the piano.  I once sketched the nude figure of a sixty-something-or-older man named Henri.  Henri was a French ex-patriot spending his days and making his living as a proud and professional nude model for art studios and workshops in Houston.  His testes were entirely too massive and the bloated tip of his penis would drip involuntarily with semen although he never appeared to be aroused by his own exposed movements.  Once, he sat regally upon a cushioned seat, hunched back leaning against the studio wall, feet planted firmly upon the cold concrete floor, eyes straight ahead over the spray of students sketching and sitting Indian-style before him.  His bulbous nose blared like a beacon, a clenched fist, or a royal French crest.  One student felt inclined — as I’m sure we all felt inclined — to ask: “So, do you paint or draw at all?  Do you make art, Henri?”  He replied, with chucked laughter: “No, no.  I do not paint.  For, you see, you have your piano players and you have your dancers.  And the piano player cannot dance so long as the dancer will not play piano.”  Every time I meet a new person, on the street or in a cafe, I wonder to myself: “Are you a piano player? or a dancer?”  The answer doesn’t matter.  What matters, however, is the interpretation of the question.  I want to write a song considering a blind dancer and a deaf piano player, the one depending on the other to produce their art.

     There is another story, inspired by Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring: in an older Russia, young virgins would ritualistically dance themselves to death as a sacrifice.  The prize for payment was a much-valued spring in Russia.  One year, a girl named Olga is chosen for the occasion as the dance-to-the-death virgin, mainly because the village reasons that she is hardly attractive anyhow.  Olga is designated her bare patch of dirt.  The village elders adjust the wraps of their fur coats as they nod for the girl, young and naked, as she was, before them, to start.  A boy taps a solid beat with a calf’s dry thighbone.  Olga bends and her belly heaves to the ground as if she might faint.  She begins to dance.  The entire village has its eyes set on her and its hopes set on the possibility of springtime.  Olga’s toes twist awkwardly at first.  Her calves turn and lift and extend as her heels rise from the ground in rhythm, her knees seem to buckle before retracting firmly, her thighs spread and expose their inner sides and then press together, bumping her knees together, her waist jumps and churns within and without itself, her torso pounds, her breasts wave, her arms waft the crisp Russian winter air, her neck circles, her eyes never open.  Olga’s hair catches the wind and tames it.  Olga danced because everybody wanted spring.  But Olga danced and everybody wanted Olga.  “Oh, Olga, darling, forget spring. I’ll spend a winter with you, Olga.”  Olga kept dancing.  My friend, if you thought she looked beautiful dancing, you cannot imagine how beautiful she FELT while dancing.  Olga’s every joint caught fire, she was a perpetual piston churning and yearning for the first time, she was living and thriving off of her own freedom, the grace in her movement radiated so deeply that even she, in each humble feature of her looks, could not deny it.  No, Olga could not- Olga would not stop dancing.  Not for the life of her.

     Springtime was never so haunted by loss.  It came, as it would have, as did the rest of the year, as it would have, but no elementary sustenance, no amount of fortunate weather, could fill or erase the void Olga left behind.  She was eventually, after nearly two and a half decades of trial in the Eastern Orthodox Church, canonized as a saint.  No further miracles were necessary as proof of her holiness: Olga destroyed spring.

(Source: vanstanley)

Some Sort Of Shameless Optimism

     I truly admire those who’ve come to a profound awareness of the limitless variability of existence; those who’ve, then, mastered the “art” of specifying themselves, as if perfectly, to it.

     I call it an art because “being yourself” is not a requirement to live, nor is it in itself an especially extraordinary benchmark before death, no, not any more than whistling a tune or wearing a necktie is required to walk down the street, not any more than biting a pen or taking coffee black is required to sit down, nor any more than a look in the mirror is in itself extraordinary.

     No, it is an art because one’s place & one’s presence is well-placed & well-presented; we as witnesses fail to deny its intrigue & in inspired pro-activity take it as a model to be repeated.  It is the stuff of proverbs, upon which we formulate the verb: human-being.

     It is neither in-the-moment nor out of it, it finds no shame in weaknesses to emotion, it is not discouraged by the some-times futility of empathy, it does not mistake interrelation or omni-philia for solubility, nor does it approach the narrow-minded with narrow-mindedness, nor is it so impartial as to be all things at once, nor all but one extreme (including the extreme of moderation), nor defined by the simplicity of this/that indulgence, nor ascetic.

     It finds in the potential for cliché a reiteration of the universal, that an old hat might say a word for those who’ve worn it.  It finds that every expression is one step in the dance of mankind, that a revolution is a pirouette & that the constant call for revolution causes dizzying.

     It finds that truth is a thing one bargains for, but it bargains neither to obtain truth nor to give it another name.  It is in the bargaining (the seduction, the heckling, the compromise) of truth that one produces one’s means for trading.  It is in the bargaining of trade that one identifies one’s style of speech.  It is in one’s style of speech that one identifies one’s manner of reasoning.  It is in one’s manner of reasoning that one finds one’s (call it spiritual) rhythm.  It is in one’s own rhythm that one impresses upon every one & every thing else.

     I truly admire the actors & the pundits & the makers & the curved lines & the types of currents & the movements — mostly the movements: the movements within us, the movements between us, the movements we make whenever we make them wherever.

(Source: vanstanley, via vanstanley)

American Pietà

     You’re living your days as if you’ll be famous when you’re dead.  Why is that?  I don’t like that.  First of all: it makes the assumption that we’ll be digging through your garbage when the croak comes, & second of all: it’s just plain lazy.

     You lie on your couch, you jingle potentials between the cushions like loose change, you think dying will take care of your greatest achievement: a lasting mark of the memory: a stone carving of a figure, immortally cradled on the couch.

What’s so bad about identity theft?  Who wants to be stuck with their own records & bank accounts, anyway?  Maybe the issue in such a rug-pull as identity theft is that, in the bargain, your identity loss is not curbed by a replacement with anyone else’s identity.  It’s frightening because you’ve lost your papers, & you’ve got no one else’s.  Because someone’s taken yr shoes & yr really staring at yr toes, now, aren’t you?  No suit, no tie — just like you always wanted it — only now, you are more naked than you are free.

Behind You, No Less

On the up & the up & the up & the wonder: “up” signifies a “down”, behind you, no less.  Growing up, is it always nearly so bad as growing out of something? of the past, always as behind you as the hairs on your back? or like a hanging question, as soon as the conversation shifts?  What did I devour last night, and does it constitute me now?  The flecks of skin & downy hairs I’d lost in those hours, do they constitute that wool sweater on the floor of my room?  I’ve little time to write & the message is short: When you remember me — in my death, friends — will you’ve the facilities to recall how I sought to present myself to you?  I am wrestling, friends, as you are, every day — & when I die, where does the energy of it go?

Bones, Like Me

     It is dark & windy in Houston today & being so far from downtown feels a lot like vacation.  I am sitting in Michelle’s kitchen typing on my typewriter with my sunglasses on & it’s one of those things where there’s nothing left you can think to do but have another cigarette.  Last night the prospect of death came upon me but only as the least of solutions — the last of solutions — the very last item on the itinerary, naturally, & never to be further down the list than that.

     I ran shop the while, thinking it may not be my face that moves someone to kiss it but rather that she simply enjoys the movement towards a face, that she simply enjoys the posture of love-making — lifting her shoulders, tucking her elbows close in a hug about her diaphragm — any face, & so I tore off the black rubber bracelet she said had come to her from a man who was like the devil, then gave me, & I threw it into a wastebasket in the men’s room.  & I ran home & snapped the wood-board painting I’d made senior year of high school — with its naked lean angel-headed hipsters flying about with sharp angles on their bodies, a vomiting child in a purple hooded sweater, a sheep in a top hat, blue clouds over an orange sunset — that, lying in bed beneath it, I told her was hers.  Destruction is one thing, but destruction of one’s own treasured creations?  It felt so… artistic!  The feeling of an instance’s being more important than even those objects that significantly inhabit the instance — in the fire of it, everything must go.  Like god, I gazed upon what I had done — the poor jagged quadrants of the painting humped like slats on the wood floor — & saw that it was good.  & so I woke this morning & soberly broke another piece in two.

      I drove down to Agora, the cafe, & yelled with Walt at a drugged & long-gone bum who’d been kicked out & who was, at that moment, pissing not a foot away from Walt’s driver-side door:
     ”Are you pissing on my car?”
     ”Hey, what are you doing!  Get it together, man!”
     & the man looks us square in the eyes as he zips up his fly & two drops of urine take to the ground & he makes his way on the sidewalk toward our table on the patio:
     ”I didn’t piss on yr car,” real scruffy, the way a mouth gets when it’s on the verge of vomiting but is instead speaking, “I-I’m sorry, man!  I was pissing on the curb, I swear.”  He reaches out a hand to take Walt’s, “I’m the drudge of society, I’m stuck shit at the bottom, man, I’m sorry… I’m the drudge of society, man…” 
     ”Yeah, I can see that…” 

     On the way to IKEA with Michelle & Vivian (who’ve been playing like two lesbians shopping together all afternoon), I roll up a spliff in the car & my sunglasses play against the slight tint of the windows, turning it into one film of iridescents — you know the ones — indigo & violet & gold & clear — so the sky backdrops like some great trip of the mood.  We take the escalators up to the cafeteria & I devise a way to get the 15-meatball combo while only paying for the 10-meatball plate.  The eaters seated about us are, presumably, all in process of furnishing a newer environment — turning a page on the chapter, so to speak — we swear we could all be in an airport together.  There is a woman walking around in a — let me tell you — clown costume so SUBTLE that we at first wonder if she’s really a crazy person in her every day-wear.  On our way out, I see her performing magic tricks for the children.

     Michelle & Vivian & I drive to Home Depot to buy some painting materials.  Vivian & I aren’t the ones who need the painting materials, so we leave Michelle to discuss the rare topic of mini-blinds & plan to purchase a fancy window only to store it in a closet, leaning against a wall.  Vivian wants to buy a cactus, but there are none in the landscaping/greenery department & on the way back inside, the power has gone out in half the warehouse & a siren is pulsing.

     At Michelle’s the wind is picking upward & doors swing & slam as if to keep time.  It is chilly & this suburb reminds me of Plano.  We film a video of her painting skylines on large wood-boards, giggling back pizza & sceletium tea, & mid-way through the recording there is, typed, on my typewriter’s black roller, in white correction ink: “I see your skin — I know your skin.  But I want your bones.  Do you have bones, like me?”

Ask yourself how many toes you’ve got especially for other people to step on.

I’m tired.

Some days, man,

you just feel like any actual action you commit upon an otherwise stable-in-itself world full of its own never-mind-you-dynamic, some days, man, any molecules you move in this universe, any levers you pull, anything you do is a flag for regret.