Tuesday, March 31, 2020

ELLA WHEELER WILCOX
“My Grave”
____________________

If, when I die, I must be buried, let
No cemetery engulf me – no lone grot,
Where the great palpitating world comes not,
Save when, with heart bowed down and eyelids wet,
It pays its last sad melancholy debt
To some outjourneying pilgrim. May my lot
Be rather to lie in some much-used spot,
Where human life, with all its noise and fret,
Throbs about me. Let the roll of wheels,
With all earth’s sounds of pleasure, commerce, love,
And rush of hurrying feet surge o’er my head.
Even in my grave I shall be one who feels
Close kinship with the pulsing world above;
And too deep silence would distress me, dead.
DakhaBrakha
ALEMBARI
 

Monday, March 30, 2020

MILAN KUNDERA
The Unbearable Lightness of Being
____________________

After pausing for a moment, she added, “On the surface, an intelligible lie; underneath, the unintelligible truth.”

Sunday, March 29, 2020


DOWNRIVER

Grant Scicluna
Australia, 2015

THE WILDING

Grant Scicluna
Australia, 2012

BLOKES

Marialy Rivas
Chile, 2010

WREN BOYS

Harry Lighton
Ireland, 2017
BONNIE 'PRINCE' BILLY
“You Want That Picture”
____________________

What did you do when you saw that I’d gone
did you stand very still and did tears come falling?

O you want that picture don’t you darling
of poor little me standing there bawling?
well it’s true that I cried
but then I went outside
and I stood very still in the night
and I looked at the sky
and knew someday I’d die
and then everything would be all right

it’s all right
and everything comes
down to this
that everything there ever was
or will be
is all there is

Where did you go once you’d wrote me that note
was a weight lifted off of your shoulders did you fly?

O you want that picture, don’t you darling
of heartless cold me
flying not falling?
well, it’s true that I soared
but then I went outdoors
and I stood very still in the night
and I looked at the sky
and knew someday I’d die
and then everything would be all right

it’s all right
and everything comes
down to this
that everything there ever was
or will be
is all there is

Saturday, March 28, 2020


ONCE UPON A TIME IN ... HOLLYWOOD

Quentin Tarantino
USA, 2019
CHEN CHING-IN
“Self-Portrait, New City Replicant”
____________________

To heat a sister                      House a burn
          adjust the replica body
                     in the yesterday travel rain
no sister locks the door          at the highest temperature
three hours still parked          still comfortable to eat          sugar by force
only because each house keeps a burn together
          drinks the page                          An unseasoned tree
chosen to go to the sea
THE RICE SEEDLING SUTRA
Buddha's Teachings on Dependent Arising

Geshe Yeshe Thabkhe
Translation by Joshua and Diane Cutler
Wisdom Publications, 2020

Friday, March 27, 2020

MADALYN MURRAY O'HAIR
____________________

Religion has ever been anti-human, anti-women, anti-life, anti-peace, anti-reason, and anti-science. The god idea has been detrimental not only to humankind, but to the earth. It is time now for reason, education, and science to take over.

Thursday, March 26, 2020

HARRY BROWN

Daniel Barber
UK, 2010


WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS
The Western Lands
____________________

There may be people who like centipedes. Personally, I would regard such an individual with deep suspicion.

I have just petted my cat: “And how is this good little cat beast?“

Now what sort of man or woman or monster would stroke a centipede on his underbelly? "And here is my good big centipede!”

If such a man exists, I say kill him without more ado. He is a traitor to the human race.

Wednesday, March 25, 2020


PASOLINI

Abel Ferrara
France/Belgium, 2014
DANA MILBANK
From "The Nation Comes Together - Without Trump"
The Washington Post - March 25, 2020

... as Trump pits states against each other and announces a reckless plan to reopen American workplaces by Easter with the virus still raging, Democratic and Republican governors, filling the leadership vacuum, have united in rejecting his ludicrous plan.

Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan, a Republican and head of the National Governors Association, dismissed “this imaginary clock,” while Republican governors in Texas, Arizona, Ohio and South Dakota joined Democratic governors coast to coast in insisting that public health come first.

A better president could unify us in common purpose. But while Trump declares himself a “wartime president,” he seems most skilled at civil warfare. He contributes false assurances, disinformation and attacks on Democratic governors.

It’s a blessing, then, that, as The Post’s Philip Rucker reports, Trump has been playing “a back-seat role” in key areas that “belies his omnipresence in the national media.” The president largely left the stimulus bill to lawmakers and Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin.

This suggests a welcome, if tacit, recognition that Trump doesn’t have what it takes to lead in crisis. His greatest service would be to get out of the way. While our head of state plays talking head, our headless state would carry on better without him.

On Wednesday, Trump governed by Twitter. In addition to messages about the virus, he tweeted or retweeted: a video purporting to show [Joe] Biden coughing and “confused” (“The Democrat’s (sic) Best & Finest!” Trump wrote); a message calling [Adam] Schiff a “moron” and a hypocrite”; one stating “There’s a lot of mud on Robert Muellers face” and mocking the “feeble” former special counsel’s “stammering”; a mock expression of relief that the “terrible” “RINO” [Mitt] Romney doesn’t have coronavirus; a boast about his poll numbers; and more.

This came after Trump’s false claim Tuesday on Fox News that New York Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo (D) “had a chance to buy, in 2015, 16,000 ventilators at a very low price and he turned it down,” and instead “established death panels and lotteries.”

While Trump used the power of the presidency for self-aggrandizement and petty grievances, the governors governed. Cuomo, in his daily news conference, thanked Trump for his “cooperation” and Trump son-in-law Jared Kushner for being “extraordinarily helpful” in their “common challenge.”

He proposed a nationwide plan to share scarce medical supplies, invoking the words of his late father, Mario Cuomo, on “what a proper government should be: the idea of family, mutuality, the sharing of benefits and burdens for the good of all.”

Other governors have likewise been the voices of responsibility in lieu of the president’s. As Trump moved recklessly toward reopening workplaces as the virus spreads, Ohio’s Mike DeWine, a Republican, said, “The fact is we save our economy by first saving lives, and we have to do it in that order.”

And while Trump salivates over the “Trumpbux” he’ll get to spend in the emergency legislation, lawmakers blocked him from spending the funds on his own business. While Trump lobs political grenades, senators are speaking like statesmen ...
GEORGE BERNARD SHAW
Writing in The World (15 November 1893)
____________________

Patriotism is a conviction that a particular country is the best in the world because you were born in it.

Tuesday, March 24, 2020


DISCREET

Travis Matthews
USA, 2017
THE NINES

John August
USA, 2007
YUL BRYNNER
____________________

People don’t know my real self, and they’re not about to find out.

Monday, March 23, 2020

HENRY MILLER
Tropic of Cancer
____________________

It’s like I’m two people, and one of them is watching me all the time.

Sunday, March 22, 2020

BETTIE PAGE
____________________

I was not trying to be shocking, or to be a pioneer. I wasn’t trying to change society, or to be ahead of my time. I didn’t think of myself as liberated, and I don’t believe that I did anything important. I was just myself. I didn’t know any other way to be, or any other way to live. 

Saturday, March 21, 2020


SENNENTUNTSCHI - 
THE CURSE OF THE ALPS

Michael Steiner
Switzerland, 2011
THE ALCHEMIST COOKBOOK

Joel Potrykus
USA, 2016
SAMUEL BECKETT
Molloy
____________________

And then I should be sorry to give a wrong idea of my health which, if it was not exactly rude, to the extent of my bursting with it, was at bottom of an incredible robustness. For otherwise how could I have reached the enormous age I have reached. Thanks to moral qualities? Hygienic habits? Fresh air? Starvation? Lack of sleep? Solitude? Persecution? The long silent screams (dangerous to scream)? The daily longing for the earth to swallow me up? Come come. Fate is rancorous, but not to that extent.

Friday, March 20, 2020


THE NINTH CONFIGURATION

William Peter Blatty
USA, 1980

CREEPY
-
クリーピー 偽りの隣人

Kiyoshi Kurosawa
Japan, 2016
FEN-KAN
____________________

Sinking like a rock in the sea
drifting through the Three Worlds
poor ethereal creature
ever immersed in scenes
until a flash of lightning shows
life and death are dust in space

Thursday, March 19, 2020

NOSFERATU
THE VAMPYRE

Werner Herzog
West Germany, 1979

THE SEVENTH SEAL
-
DET SJUNDE INSGELET

Ingmar Bergman
Sweden, 1957


 
YESHÉ TSOGYAL
____________________

The princess entered the jungle full of lotuses and sandalwood trees. Searching far and wide, she saw a mother tigress covering her eighteen cubs. The cubs nuzzled close to her, but her milk was finished and they had nothing to drink. Exhausted, they were close to dying. The mother tigress was also on the brink of death; her flesh and blood had wasted away.

Seeing this, the princess felt unbearable compassion and thought, “I will offer them my own flesh and blood.” Drawing closer, she made this aspiration:
Triumphant buddhas of the past, present, and future—bear witness.

When I offer my own body as a gift,
may the tigress over there live and thrive!
May my wish be fully accomplished.
May I free all beings, as many as I can imagine,
from the depths of the round of rebirth.


Translated by Chönyi Drolma

Wednesday, March 18, 2020


I SPIT ON YOUR GRAVE 2

Steven R. Monroe
USA, 2013


I SPIT ON YOUR GRAVE

Steven R. Monroe
USA, 2010
VIRGINIA WOOLF
Mrs. Dalloway
____________________

And it was awfully strange, he thought, how she still had the power, as she came tinkling, rustling, still had the power as she came across the room, to make the moon, which he detested, rise at Bourton on the terrace in the summer sky. 

Tuesday, March 17, 2020


FINAL CUT

Joe Reizer
USA, 2019

THE COOL KIDS

Jamall J Robinson and Rock Jacobs
USA, 2016
HAROLD PINTER
One For The Road
____________________

Do you think we have nuns upstairs?

Monday, March 16, 2020


TEMPTATION

Richard J. Mohr
UK, 2018
PIZZA

Karthik Subbaraj
India (Tamil), 2010
SAMUEL R. DELANY
The Mad Man
____________________

Suppose I was researching, not the life of some genius philosopher with his books and articles and a wake of articulate friends and acquaintances, but rather, a homeless kid in and out of mental hospitals for chronic masturbation and indecent exposure? … How would I even start?

Sunday, March 15, 2020


SLEEPAWAY CAMP

Robert Hiltzik
USA, 1983

-

Thank you, Anita Bryant. You fucking piece of shit.

THE SLUMBER PARTY MASSACRE

Amy Jones
USA, 1982
SUSAN ERTZ
____________________

Millions long for immortality who do not know what to do with themselves on a rainy Sunday afternoon.

Saturday, March 14, 2020

CZESŁAW MIŁOSZ
“And Yet the Books”

And yet the books will be there on the shelves, separate beings,
That appeared once, still wet
As shining chestnuts under a tree in autumn,
And, touched, coddled, began to live
In spite of fires on the horizon, castles blown up,
Tribes on the march, planets in motion.
“We are,” they said, even as their pages
Were being torn out, or a buzzing flame
Licked away their letters. So much more durable
Than we are, whose frail warmth
Cools down with memory, disperses, perishes.
I imagine the earth when I am no more:
Nothing happens, no loss, it’s still a strange pageant,
Women’s dresses, dewy lilacs, a song in the valley.
Yet the books will be there on the shelves, well born,
Derived from people, but also from radiance, heights.

VERÓNICA

Paco Plaza
Spain, 2017

Friday, March 13, 2020

TEXAS DEATH TRIPPIN'

Robbie Lopex
USA, 2019
BADASS MONSTER KILLER

Darin Wood
USA, 2015



Bitch, please. 


Baikal Nomads
MIXTAPE 34
Steffen Kirchhoff

Downtempo / Electronic / Multicultural / Ethnic / Deep House




MAE WEST

____________________


I’ll try anything once, twice if I like it, three times to make sure.

Thursday, March 12, 2020


UNCUT GEMS

Benny Safdie and Josh Safdie
USA, 2018

Lessons on Leadership
by Donnie J. Trump

(Only applies to black leaders.)
SAMUEL BECKETT
The Unnamable
_____________________

Method or no method I shall have to banish them in the end, the beings, things, shapes, sounds and lights with which my haste to speak has encumbered this place.

Wednesday, March 11, 2020


LET THE CORPSES TAN
-
LAISSEZ BRONZER LES CADAVRES

Hélène Cattet and Bruno Forzani
Belgium, 2017
PIER PAOLO PASOLINI
____________________

Discovery of the void brings with it new implications: not only that they must continue on in their actions and diligence, no longer considered as duties but as gratuitous, senseless routines, but also the exhilarating realization that all is nothing but a game.

Tuesday, March 10, 2020

THOMAS BERNHARD
The Loser
____________________

In theory we understand people, but in practice we can’t put up with them, I thought, deal with them for the most part reluctantly and always treat them from our point of view. We should observe and treat people not from our point of view but from all angles, I thought, associate with them in such a way that we can say we associate with them so to speak in a completely unbiased way, which however isn’t possible, since we actually are always biased against everybody.
CARL SAGAN
____________________

If it can be destroyed by the truth, it deserves to be destroyed by the truth.

-

DOROTHY ALLISON
____________________

If it’s true, I have the absolute right to terrify you with it.

THE STRANGE COLOR OF YOUR BODY'S TEARS
-
L'ÉTRANGE COULEUR DES LARMES DE TON CORPS

Hélène Cattet and Bruno Forzani
Belgium, 2013

Monday, March 9, 2020


AMER

Hélène Cattet and Bruno Forzani
Belgium, 2009

Om Gan Ganapataye Namo Namah
Shree Siddhi Vinayak Namo Namah
Ashtavinayak Namo Namah
Ganapati Bappa Moraya


Sunday, March 8, 2020


THE DESCENT: PART 2

Jon Harris
UK, 2009

THE DESCENT

Neil Marshall
UK, 2006

THE YEAR-ROUND HOOPHOUSE
Polytunnels for All Seasons and Climates

Pam Dawling

SAMUEL BECKETT
Happy Days

Strange feeling that someone is looking at me. I am clear, then dim, then gone, then dim again, then clear again, and so on, back and forth, in and out of someone’s eye.


Saturday, March 7, 2020

ELDRIGE CLEAVER
____________________

You don’t have to teach people how to be human.

You have to teach them how to stop being inhuman.

Friday, March 6, 2020

PIER PAOLO PASOLINI
____________________

The Church is the merciless heart of the State.


Baikal Nomads
MIXTAPE 33
Chingis

Deep House / Ethnic / World / Multiculture / Electronic


MUSIC OF A DISTANT DRUM
Classical Arabic, Persian, Turkish, and Hebrew Poems

Bernard Lewis

Thursday, March 5, 2020

OLIVER SACKS
Gratitude
____________________

I thought I would die at 41, when I had a bad fall and broke a leg while mountaineering alone. I splinted the leg as best I could and started to lever myself down the mountain, clumsily, with my arms. In the long hours that followed, I was assailed by memories, both good and bad. Most were in a mode of gratitude — gratitude for what I had been given by others, gratitude too that I had been able to give something back.

At nearly 80, with a scattering of medical and surgical problems, none disabling, I feel glad to be alive — “I’m glad I’m not dead!” sometimes bursts out of me when the weather is perfect. (This is in contrast to a story I heard from a friend who, walking with Samuel Beckett in Paris on a perfect spring morning, said to him, “Doesn’t a day like this make you glad to be alive?” to which Beckett answered, “I wouldn’t go as far as that.”) I am grateful that I have experienced many things — some wonderful, some horrible — and that I have been able to write a dozen books, to receive innumerable letters from friends, colleagues, and readers, and to enjoy what Nathaniel Hawthorne called ‘an intercourse with the world.’

-

EURYTHMICS
from "I've Got a Lover (Back in Japan)"
____________________

I've got a lover back in japan
He's got tattoos
He's my Superman
I try to call him up from time to time
We can talk about the weather
Is the weather fine?

WINTER KILLS

William Richart
USA, 1979

Wednesday, March 4, 2020


INHERITANCE

Laura E. Davis and Jessica Kaye
USA, 2017

HATRED

Brian Patrick Butler
USA, 2015

EMIL CIORAN
The Trouble with Being Born
____________________

Suffering makes you live time in detail, moment after moment. Which is to say that it exists for you: over the others, the ones who don't suffer, time flows, so that they don't live in time, in fact they never have.


Tuesday, March 3, 2020




EMIL CIORAN

The Trouble with Being Born
____________________

A book is a suicide postponed.


Monday, March 2, 2020


A TALE OF TWO SISTERS
-
장화, 홍련

Kim Jee-woon
Korea, 2003