Wednesday, February 15, 2006

Notes from going underground

Across the silk-covered room, the fairy tale begins swiftly, a flowing iridescent current. A failed thought pauses in distraction and then floats harmlessly by.

Somehow before it fades, an Asian police officer wearing a green gray uniform urges a speedy retreat from the scene of the crime yet to happen. An unavoidable anticipation pervades and hangs thicker than fog as I follow. The trap is being baited though to what extent remains very uncertain as a frightful deja vu lurks from behind the shadow of a wooden door left ajar. Through it lies our sole means of escape, some think, salvation. But from what or whom? No one directly says, however.

And we move fast through the door and descend an impossibly linear spiral staircase, three steps at a time in a blur. Seen from above, it is a dizzying funnel of steps headed to a central vanishing point. The tessellated perspective distorts any sense of reality, elongating our legs in slow motion until frozen in Futurist space as if a rare Marcel Duchamp canvas. The hunter becomes the hunted, lost in the rabbit hole. Trin T. Minh Ha whispers from the balcony above, something mouthed disguised as words. Who do we run from now? Are they immediately behind us?

Upstairs a clear light shines through the gauze window curtain but from the inside outward, a luminous air permeating thin skins. A mysterious figure is about to appear. The silent cinematographer moves aside, his 35mm camera rolling and shoots from a wide angle, unnoticed.

She calls out without reply.

Tuesday, February 14, 2006

The tao of poo

Incessant caterwauling squeakily reverberates over the partition so much so that it fazes the normally plastic Yao Ming leaning in mid-dribble, shoulder lowered into the beige receiver, clearing room for a running hook. One hundred t-bone steaks dancing a waltz with one hundred bacon strips along the wall, watch in silence.

Behind the leaden wall sit two aliens of the nookie persuasion, jabbering static in gesticulations. Finally the words, "...dancing on a minefield" become discernable causing consternation among government officials monitoring the exchange from the broadcast booth above the netted homeplate area. Who is the sleeper?

Suddenly a confused Woody Allen appears onstage telepathically repeating that old joke of a bear and a rabbit shitting in the woods where the bear asks the rabbit, "Rabbit, does shit stick to your fur?" to which the rabbit answers, "Why, no, Bear" prompting the bear to grab the rabbit to wipe his ass.

The scatology of chili infiltrates the collective consciousness.

Monday, February 13, 2006

Notes on not eating mussels

Wonder ugly and hop a leaf. A ponytailed girl with fish lips, puckering wood-grained graffiti is left hoisting a tangled ball of orange extension cords. Noguchi using Japanese paper instead, smirks. Are the cut-ups really enough to arouse guffaws? Hopefully under a pseudonym, Chow Yun Fat displaces the neon cool of the John Woo ilk. And the hapa haoles surface en masse, driven from their cubbyholes to seek the daughter of a man whose paintings live only overseas, an indictment on the previous administration fumbling the football.

Beads of plastic sweat cling to the pigmented surface but who knew how to figure out the complicated formula to figure out square footage? Murakami can, though and proceeds on a superflat beeline to that imaginary vanishing point. No one sees Toulouse Lautrec drinking out of the blue-faced lady, his beard shorn.

Six males of Asian descent, mildly drunk but majorly aghast, rant about an impending catfight, placing bets of varying odds. Go ahead and order the duck brioche as the Earl of Sandwich.