pump, pump pump it out:

three scenes of the crime

10. “Everybody has a water buffalo.”  -Larry the Cucumber

9. When visiting another culture, it’s always a pleasure to see a drum.  Like a joyful chance encounter with a familiar friend-of-a-friend whom you’ve never actually met but feel you know so much about.  After a tentative introduction the familiar touch/feel/sound/response is quickly established.  Music, and rhythm in particular, is surely the common language of Creation.  I never met a drum I didn’t like.

       

8. The side-to-side Head Wag, used frequently by Indians and always bewildering.  According to my host, it means Yes.  It means No.  It means I Don’t Know.  It means I Hear You but Cannot Agree, or I Don’t Understand English, or Your Request is Absurd.  It means Whatever.  So You Figure it Out.

7. Not one single snake.  Thank you, Lord.

6. Children have so much in common in every culture: brilliant smile, cautious of a foreign stranger yet eager to perform, packed with potential yet sadly tragic.  They tug at the heart after the briefest contact.  Why?

 

5. “He didn’t know that in some places, like the country that Rahel came from, various kinds of despair competed for primacy.  And that personal despair could never be desperate enough.  That something happened when personal turmoil dropped by at the wayside shrine of the vast, violent, circling, driving, ridiculous, insane, unfeasible, public turmoil of a nation.  That Big God howled like a hot wind, and demanded obeisance.  Then Small God (cozy and contained, private and limited) came away cauterized, laughing numbly at his own temerity.  Inured by the confirmation of his own inconsequence, he became resilient and truly indifferent.  Nothing mattered much.  Nothing much mattered.  And the less it mattered, the less it mattered.  It was never important enough.  Because Worse Things had happened.  In the country that she came from, poised forever between the terror of war and the horror of peace, Worse Things kept happening.” –The God of Small Things

4. Tea, yes.  Coffee, no.  And a double order of garlic nan.

3. Masala chai.  In a bag, nothing special.  But prepared with careful attention from scratch right in front of your eyes, it’s an exotic liquid banquet for the senses.  The wondrous stick of gum in Willy Wonka that was an entire compact three-course meal in disguise?  This is the real deal.

2. Delhi traffic as a metaphor for society as a whole – “barely controlled chaos”.  Everyone manages to stay slightly out of the others’ path, avoiding disaster by centimeters.  I know there are Rules, just not ones I recognize.  But as long as everyone follows the Rule to some degree, no one gets hurt.  Or not seriously.  Or not often anyway.

1. Bollywood movies are subtly addicting.  And really no goofier than Hollywood films when you think about it.  Contrast with “Rambo”, the current American entertainment there.  This is how the world sees us?

not so sure:

1.  time line:

1961       
Haydée Tamara Bunke Bider moves from Berlin to Cuba to work alongside Che Guevara, takes the nom de guerre Tania

early 1970’s 
first Karaoke machine invented in Kobe, Japan by Tanio Koba, who is also considered to be the father of the Japanese model gun industry.

4 February 1974    
Patty Hearst kidnapped by the Symbionese Liberation Army, takes the nom de guerre Tania. 

15 April 1974    
Hearst photographed wielding an assault rifle in the lobby of San Francisco’s Hibernia Bank.  Witnesses report she repeatedly screamed “I’m Tania! Up against the wall, motherf***ers!”

January 2007
Joel Parsons is stranded in Delhi, India

2.  glass candy, a plot without a story, the big-eyed frantic feeling of geckos and fauns and other skittish animals who are always wetting and darting off into the underbrush

3.  don’t ever tell anybody anything.  if you do, you start missing everybody

5.  my apartment building is a historical landmark in the center of cape town.  Every day at least eight open-topped tourist buses hurtle down my street, allowing historically minded people in sensible shoes and fanny packs (also known as 'the elderly') to snap blurry pictures as their shoulders blister in the sun.  these buses have prerecorded commentary on the history of the street and its buildings, and i have completely memorized the segment that plays as the buses stop at the traffic light on my corner.  i will not reproduce that commentary here.  instead, here is the commentary that i quietly offer from my balcony for anyone who cares to listen:


6.  this freedom is still strangely seductive, wooing me over the strangest side of myself i've ever known.  if i want to buy a cake and eat the whole thing for diner, or even if i just want to lick the frosting off the top and squeeze the rest between my fingers while sitting on the floor of my kitchen, wearing nothing but my underwear and a lightning bolt shaped pendant necklace, singing Train in Vain through my nose, i can. not that i have, but i can.

i pay the bills. i worry at the window latches. i wash the knives. i make the rules.

i also worry about Making the Most of It, whatever that means.  probably not sleeping until two, then doodling with highlighters and gnawing on buffalo jerky in bed while listening to four reruns of This American Life in a row.  but, then again, when will i ever, in the normal, freedom bereft life i will someday return to, be able to do that?  probably never.  maybe wasting a little bit of my time is the best use of my time, for now. 

7.  the party starts with the associate of the driver throwing open the sliding door, launching his upper body out into the street as the van continues to travel at top speeds, and repeatedly yelling the name of the final destination.  sometimes he does it in time to the sternum-shaking bass that vibrates the windows.  inside, there are anywhere from five to twelve more people than were originally intended to ride in the vehicle.  plus, the minibus that plies the route that i travel between home and the gallery has been christened "The Panty Dropper."  I know this because it's airbrushed on the sides, front and back of the van, right on top of the fare schedule and the phone number that you can call if the driver is behaving erratically.  this should all be unsettling, i suppose.  i've heard a few cape town public transport horror stories involving assorted weaponry and various degrees of bodily harm occurring at frighteningly high speeds, but for some reason i trust the Panty Dropper.

8.  the economy of the following conversation:
-i just got out of prison.  i have a big knife.  don't make a scene just give me some rand.
-no thanks?
-ok.

9.  the congolese riflemen who guard my apartment building: deedee, womgami, bonagi, and elton

10.  to be the ira glass of the visual; also, a taxonomy of crazy

A new studio is kind of like a puppy - at first it's really exciting and fun and it smells fresh and you just want to spend all your time with it.  But it is important to realize that this initial excitement is just a phase.  You must allow some adjustment time before everything gets settled and a good routine is established. I guess the only difference between a new studio and a puppy, really, is that a studio doesn't feel like pure, warm joy when you put your feet inside it.


the 80's pool hall photographs in royal blue frames came down immediately after this photo was taken


my balcony with views of table mountain, partially obscured by a (german) church.  also, bling and Pause on the wall on the right, and proof on the lower left that the photos in fact did come down.


leftovers from india






old mattress in the corner: good for dramatic, pain-of-creation induced fainting spells, as well as equally dramatic struck-by-beauty swoons.

also, totally kidding about the puppy thing. that was just for you, tiff.  bless!

Terri Jones strikes again, this time in my Cape Town flat with a little help from the Bling Buddy.



Co-illumination at times occurs.

1.  stockholm { Patti Hearst standing in the lobby of a bank holding an assault rifle screaming "I'm Tania!" } syndrome             

  in { turnin me every way but loose and now I wear lungis and bobble my head } dia

2.  I know that gender is a social construction and I'm as down with Simon de Beauvoir as the next guy, but that indian tv show in which men and their very young sons dress up in gold lame' minis and compete with other men and their sons (also wearing minis) in a lip-synch and dance competition has shaken something at the core of me.  I don't think it's necessarily the costumes or general lack of skill, or even the faint whiff of pedo.  I think it's the injustice of it.  The best team never wins.  It's always the team with the shortest skirts and most lascivious gyrations.

3.

4.  as i leave:  the chill of wet sandlewood paste on my forehead; the taste of holy water from the ganga on my tongue - 100% pure, save the 1.5 million faecal coliform bacteria/100ml

5.  saffron, gold

6.  things i say now that i will not miss, but might secretly miss later:
     curry for breakfast
     haggling over nickels
     middle aged men expecting me to be totally ok with holding hands with them
     milk tea
    
     telling people my 'good name'
     being exotic

7.
    

8.  i feel as though number 6 (part 3) warrants an explanation.  in india men touch each other in ways that are not encouraged in american society.  basically anything just this side of first base is totally ok, and i have it on good authority that in some rural areas anything up to second is permitted.  it takes some getting used to.

9.   boarding pass?
     i don't really have one, but when i checked in they gave me this sheet of paper with some numbers written on it.
     hmm...i don't know if this...wait, is it signed?
     yeah, right there.  on the hand-drawn line at the bottom.
     oh, ok - i see.  the ramp is on your left.  enjoy your flight.

10.

How can it be described?  How can any of it be described?  The trip and the story of the trip are always two different things.  The narrator is the one who has stayed home, but then, afterwards, presses her mouth upon the traveler's mouth, in order to make the mouth work, to make the mouth say, say, say.  One cannot go to a place and speak of it; one cannot both see and say, not really.  One can go, and upon returning make a lot of hand motions and indications with the arms.  The mouth itself, working at the speed of light, at the eye's instructions, is necessarily struck still; so fast, so much to report, it hangs open and dumb as a gutted bell.  All that unsayable life!  That's where the narrator comes in.  The narrator comes with her kisses and mimicry and tidying up.  The narrator comes and makes a slow, fake song of the mouth's eager devotion.

-lorrie moore

                        

1.excerpt:  varanasi

I stand on the steps that lead down to the bottom of the Ganges and people come up from out of the river and push against me, wet with holy shit water, ash dead water, dead people, fingernails and babies water, because babies can die too.  I think that even people who know my name can die (Thank You).  There is smoke in the air.  I want desperately for the smoke to be so much incense, backyard barbecues, cheap cigars, but I know that the smoke is people.  It stains the buildings where they cook rice and wake up in the morning and fight with their wives and husbands - they, the living, they, who carry stretcher-bound bodies through the streets wrapped in goldred sheets.

The heads on the stretcher bodies loll from side to side as they're carried down the alleys, covered.  That's how you can tell.  That's what I learned from TV.  As soon as someone's head is covered they're gone and even Juliana Mgulies and George Clooney can't bring them back.  In TV they cut to commercial.  In India they carry them down to the holy Ganges to be burned.

Wealthy Indians who had fallen on hard times used to burn their clothes to extract the gold embroidery threads from them, they say. 

They also say dying is like taking off one set of clothes and putting on another.

I need to pick up my laundry from that woman.

At the burning ghats on the bank of the Ganges there are a lot of bodies to be burned, a real pile up, so there is a fair amount of waiting around.  Some of the young men (still soft) cry.  Old men play cards, as old men often do while death is waiting just over there.  They don't allow women here -  death is men's business.  I'm waiting too.  I wonder, how does a wet mound of flesh ever burn away?  Three hours or so.  Sizzle and some spit, puff and collapse.  Great green scales weigh the fire wood that will consume each body, pitting the fullness of a life against a few sticks.  It's rigged - the sticks always win.  Dead wood, dead weight on a scale.  Waiting, also.  Every once in a while a hollow pop shoots from the embers and the hollowness of my gut responds, like to like, ashes to ashes.

On top of the dead people, standing on every rooftop, kids fight tissue paper kites, laughing and dancing in the smoke to the rhythms of some New Smash Hit Bollywood Jams.  The kids fight with the kites and the kites fight with the wind.  A string snaps and a kite flies off toward the Ganges, then the fight is over - a looser and a winner.  The kite flies over the river as some untouchable man below scatters ashes into it.

2.  when the man on the platform told me that he would vote for ron paul if he could, I didn't think it was so strange.  this guy was weird and british, so I didn't really question it.  he started talking about the ron paul revolution and I conceded that it would be quite a change.  then I said I wasn't so sure if the country was ready for a six-foot tall african american drag queen to be commander in chief. 

oh. 

ron paul.  not rue paul.

my bad.


3.  q: a b?  a: a b.

4.  prone

5.  reading foucault, thinking about Darger

6.  pooja pooja
    pooja
    on the
    ganga
    ganga ganga

7. 

    this is shiva, destroyer of the universe.  someone knit him a sweet little cozy.


8.

don't judge me if you don't know me:  2pac
bling buddies 4 life, ya hurd?

8.

“–you know, I’ve either had a family, a job,
something has always been in the
way
but now
I’ve sold my house, I’ve found this
place, a large studio, you should see the space and
the light.
for the first time in my life I’m going to have
a place and the time to
create.”
no baby, if you’re going to create
you’re going to create whether you work
16 hours a day in a coal mine
or
you’re going to create in a small room with 3 children
while you’re on
welfare,
you’re going to create with part of your mind and your body blown
away,
you’re going to create blind
crippled
demented,
you’re going to create with a cat crawling up your
back while
the whole city trembles in earthquake, bombardment,
flood and fire.
baby, air and light and time and space
have nothing to do with it
and don’t create anything
except maybe a longer life to find
new excuses
for.

-bukowski

9.      I'm your people.

10.  why would anyone ever not eat another biscuit?

Hey Yall!

I'm totes back!  Long time no see!!!!

OMG ROTFL!   My cat just hit this thing with her pow.  She is SO cute.  Ok, First things are first what the crap is ten things?  I do not get this whole blog thing.  I mean, I just get paid to do Joel's work for him cuz I'm like his secratary or something, but I do not get this whole thing.  Ten things about what?  Is it like a puzzle or something?  Cuz if it is its to hard.  Maybe you could make Sudokus.  They have numbers to.  At least put some people in the pictures or something.  Or you could put some cats in them!  OMG! !!!  Cats around the world!!1!!  SOOOO cute!  Anyway, that's just me.

Numero 2) I may not know art but I know what I like and I like NO love this:



Mesh Sequin Circle Dress
This fancy dress features sequin dot detail throughout, satin bottom, double lined mesh material and scoop neck. Approximately 33 inches long.  From Wet Seal.com

    * Shell 100% Nylon
    * Lining 100% Polyester
    * Imported  

Imported!!  Foreign = hott!
Joel, u should make art like this dress then maybe people would buy it.  I'm just saying think about it.  LOL!!

G2G!

*mwah*
Bless!
<3 Tiff

PS Joel - don't hate me!!!

1. Nabokov's Lolita, like india:  turnin me every way but loose.

2.
    

3.







4.  the tagore/einstein conversations

5.  What fresh hell is this?

6. 

tibet?  ok.

7. 

8.  huckabee?  wait.  what?

9.  "hey, ajoel - put on something nice and meet me at the ham shop on the corner.  i hired a driver.  we're going to a new year's party at clarke'sexotica."

"ok, great!" internal monologue: is that, um...a porn thing or...something?  and, if so, what does 'nice' mean, specifically, in this context?"

turns out, clarke'sexotica isn't porny at all. turns out, it's a plush 'wellness resort' outside of bangalore chockablock with rich old men and their art collecting wives.  and paté.  coulda fooled me.  my new year's resolution?  not to wear that studded leather harness to any more formal events.

10.  I attended a court-mandated defensive driving course in 2001 which was taught by an elementary school teacher with a penchant for faux-naughty words.  I think she was looking for some street cred from the hardened criminals-cum-pupils who populated her course.  From this course I can recall a scant two things: 
    People use their horns a lot in India, and I think it bothers some people.  A fellow foreigner (British) asked me how I was handling "all the bloody blasting" which, I realized after an embarassingly unnecessary account of my recent bout with a stomach bug, is actually a charming way of referring to the incessant honking.  I like it.  I think this is because I know that it doesn't mean "eff off!"  It's an affirmation.  I am here.  I am here, in India, on this street.  I am here.  I am really effing here.