Things that I thought I had just thought of, but which after a quick google search, turned out to be pretty unoriginal:

Neckbeard the Pirate.

As above, so below. As within, so without

Passing a bunch of men unloading stuff from a large moving van, I remembered reading a list somewhere that of the ten most stressful events in life, moving house was near the top-- right up there with death and divorce. For the first time it struck me how most every time you see people moving in or out of a place, you're witnessing a paradigm event in their lives. Beginnings and endings. Great happiness or anticipation ("We're moving to Rio!"), or at the other end of the scale failure and fear of a future they never anticipated but has now arrived. I'm thinking about all those people in the US who are losing their homes because of the mortgage crisis. When we see a moving van or hear someone is giving up their flat we usually shrug or ignore it. But the reality is in one way or the other, it is proof that lives are about to change profoundly. You've experienced it yourself whenever you've moved. Almost every van we see represents some kind of intense human drama.

- from Jonathan Carroll's blog

Whatever you've got going on in your life will become manifest in the world when you move. If your internal life is orderly and well tended, your move will express that. It's never easy, but it won't be as hard.

But if you've neglected your life, put things off, tried to kill your best impulses and avoided making hard decisions about what to keep and what to discard, it will be so much more difficult that you can imagine. Karma always comes back.

That's what I learned in March.

Lovecraft in Brooklyn - by the Mountain Goats

Gonna be too hot to breathe today
But everybody is out here on the streets
Somebody has opened up the fire hydrant
Cold water rushing out in sheets

Some kid in a Marcus Allen jersey
Asks me for a cigarette
Companionship is where you find it
So I take what I can get

Hubcaps on the cars like fun house mirrors
Stick to the shadows when I can

Lovecraft in Brooklyn

Well the sun goes down
The armies of the voiceless
Several hundred-thousand strong
Come without their bandages
Their voices raised in song

When the street lights sputter out
They make this awful sizzling sound
I cast my gaze towards the pavement
Too many blood stains on the ground

Rhode Island drops into the ocean
No place to call home anymore

Lovecraft in Brooklyn

Head outside most everyday to try to keep the wolves away
Imagine nice things I might say, if company should come

Woke up afraid of my own shadow
Like, genuinely afraid
Headed for the pawnshop
To buy myself a switchblade
Someday something's coming
From way out beyond the stars
To kill us while we stand here
It will store our brains in mason jars
And then the girl behind the counter
She asks me how I feel today.

I feel like Lovecraft in Brooklyn.

---------------------------------------------

(cf. The Horror at Red Hook and this.)

Muscle'n Flo - by Menomena

Oh in the morning
I stumble
my way towards
the mirror and my makeup
it's light out
and I now
face just what I'm made of

There's so much more
left to do
Well I'm not young
But I'm not through

Oh in the evening
I stumble
my way towards another day
we struggle
it's dark out
it's time now
that I pick up my hustle

Make a call
make some cash
make your mark
make it last
tiny scores
tiny rooms
lofty goals
met too soon
too soon

Well here I stand
a broken man
If I could I would raise my hands
I come before you humbly
If I could I'd be on my knees

Come lay down your head upon my chest
feel my heart beat feel my unrest
If Jesus could only wash my feet
Then I'd get up strong and muscle on
Oh in the morning
I stumble
my way towards
the mirror and my makeup
it's light out
and I now
face just what I'm made of

There's so much more
left to do
Well I'm not young
But I'm not through

tiny scores
tiny rooms
lofty goals
met too soon

Love, Love, Love - by the Mountain Goats

King Saul fell on his sword when it all went wrong
And Joseph's brothers sold him down the river for a song
Sonny Liston rubbed some Tiger Balm into his glove
Some things you do for money
And some you do for love, love, love

Raskalnikov felt sick but he couldn't say why
When he saw his face reflected in his victim's twinkling eye
Some things you do for money
And some you do for fun
But the things you do for love are gonna come back to you one by one

Love love is gonna lead you by the hand
into a white and soundless place
Now we see things as in a mirror darkly
Then we shall see each other face to face

Somewhere in Seattle, young Kurt Cobain
Snuck out to the greenhouse put a bullet in his brain
snakes in the grass beneath our feet, rain in the clouds above
some moments last forever, but some flare up with love, love, love

I will f-ing get through Ulysses this time

I mean it. Damnnit.

The only time I've been able to get further than 90 pages into this book was in college once when going up on acid. I managed to read a good hundred pages, but I just found I couldn't maintain interest after the sparkle faded from the universe.

Well, I found an awesome service, which I will recommend to my fellow cubemates. Please to follow the link to the Daily Lit Website. There you will find a great number of books, most of them free, which they will be kind enough to send to you in daily installments to your email account or blog-reader. I found Ulysses (320 some segments! - I'll finish it around the end of the year, I guess) and also Don Quixote. I am a bit leery of reading public domain translations, but what the hell, right? This is a prime example of "chunking" a large task into smaller tasks and doing each of those as you go.

I guess I'm adding "Ulysses" to my list of things to do in 2008. Wish they had "Finnegan's Wake", though.

Actors are important?

Great post over here at Isaac Butler's blog about the importance of actors and how training may have a place outside academia.

And it's not just great for his agreeing with me about the primacy of actors and audiences to the playmaking process.

It's part of a series of posts on his blog that I'm still digesting, and I'll probably have something to say about it later. That is all.