Ferox Erudition

Insatiable Memory Almanac * cfMC FEROX (1999)

Neutral Exchange

The tempo of the keyboard, his plastic horn, fingering one voice. Here where they bomb first we hardly can speak to anyone. Not your burden, to inspire aspirations, to survive.

I am reminded that it was one hundred years ago today when Marconi made first his wireless transmissions—as always, people remember what the devils do to them.

The questioner most days, now I advocate you concern yourself, hope, in this climate of gullibility, to encourage life and discourage slavery’s fascination.

What is it you’ve never seen anything like?

Commodified trinketism, I’m crying, have to have something—fundamentally inherit, unquestionably ours, not a matter for demons, or money, unbeautiful stores, covered in blood—but a beginning.

Grievous assauging (specified proportion of ill intent foisted), often in these circles employing emphatic “sir” address (I sur, vive; mediated at every turn—incomprehensibly, to our souls, should we discover our own methods for performing).

If we meet this which fascinates us, let us endeavor in all ways to appropriate it not in some predetermined fashion as would necessarily suit its case, but instead by regularly appending relations to it as our senses permit, especially so (primarily) as constitutes our overall awareness in flux of this situation, presupposing no mutual understandings; further, I insist nothing else facilitates the freedom of understanding, rather is indoctrination (slavery revealed).

Called into question, reason: not a flaw, a season. Conceptual breakthrough. The revelation that your life is life as ever, and only shamed by valuations.

DON’T FEAR ODD-FI

rememberless, not forget-full: insert gang symbol habit or attention span
a note for a conversational recording

Not allowed1 unregulated tonal whims? Steal Your Consciousness Back From The Enslaving Babylonians In Televised Chunks Which Elude Them As Inconsequential //: chaotic perceivers reconstruct initial instincts

AND PLEASE, PLEASE

try to walk as fast as you can while still remaining invisible—as important as actual movement may seem, the american dream is to ride waves well. define the grace of your actions (by allowing other monkeys to cue it up at their discretion?)
commercial/paid advertisement/(a word from your running technique)
1disallow the concept (disavow)

he last looks up when—and we were just tryin to keep on going.
Snack. Unfriendly fat man under shark. Damn sneaky. The way you square your shoulders makes me imagine boxing, dancing Hold still so I don’t get any on me What are you tryin to ah listen I don’t fuckin

wait a minute I can’t wanna live forever, before I was a raindrop contracting the top of a tree: no contact, only grace, choreography of wind and sky After when,
a hundred and ninety days without precipitation, i have a tempo but it’s not your job to follow it. conversation, your view, which although you learned it like that is not two dimensional—as every affectabe present becomes a realized past and future (all togethernow)—reveals what you are: un-sedentary by law of chaos, a greater network of synapses transpiring to concern your eyes in their glancing un-dry-eyedness, screaming until it wets your brain with hot blood

i’ll re-educate myself with it until i’m dense enough to transform. i’ll subscribe & track the waves you’re making, revelations in the occurrences of your 40% godlessness, orifso, regarding the amount & quality of the debris produced, correctly taken as un-american: sight unseen commissions for sale, what’s on display is given away but in everything still find something from someone to take, never to//steal//only//motions//to direct conglam-figurations, at any rate, hopefully at a rate as you see fit, that with which you can revel in, beat consciousness into with. not merely agitated by but screaming until it wets your brain with hot blood freedom2

or sally sadly forth right to speak—yes!—adroitly of positions after-digit, in salt rain mist argot less practiced by me, drawing on walls, posing for a drink, matador, fighting or fucking; escargot writing, as w/o a table precisely, is also difficult but not as hard as dancing, or standing still to explain, spinchiselingspinetinglingspangtangledho, until you mean what you say, and if you tire of paying attention to anyone other than yourself? maybe (instead) for a destructive portrait of a cartoon character (you’ll look at that!)—beaten—already reflected in four-bar intervals by which easterly witches divine the subtle nature of a space—standing in front of machines is currency (exchange, your) time, the basis of what % of your existence, famil-iar surrogations,3

a repeated image what makes you feel like a performance, an incomplete gesture reaction, proves. Consumption without expansion is a disintegrating authority, great ideas from stolen moments are better gods but the choreography of a scene is to be aware of the scene and further, further being the artistic instinct,

2how does it feel to never be alone?
3does anything beautiful ever know what it is?

that’s me in front of the tank: spoken
conversation is of less distinction between one dinosaur and another than how i hold my arms3 to communicate this to you. i know how to be quiet, over and over and over again to make it real. She was one of them dames that’s always the fastest thing in the room. so you learn that if you want for whatever variety of reasons to have this dame around you’d better make sure she believes that she is the fastest thing in the room. and even if you’re slow and careful enough to remember how she arranged what she said, and to make her voice unslient, i still wonder what you are revealing to me. You could ruin my present tense anytime you want to and you laugh and say, “I spend a lot of my life looking for things.” well I sing and to the moment that is me when i breathe with a certain direction, a toast—to instigation, and to those paralyzed by the reality of such an instinct and so stricken that they blink and gasp to exchange the trauma of their voyeurism assaulted for desire: a molested expression no one else was meant to see

self-proclamation: again and again and again, because, again and again and again

but things in their nature are also the easiest to ruin, and where’s too much percolation (worn), power not equaling grace, that’s me finding, unexpected, a wall, now for and to discover again how we take comfort in breaking things (foreign) into decipherable pieces. [with purpose, remedies, rooster artist to the king, as much for reference as any brushstroke, as is all fiction.] Picture now existing
in goethe’s frozen music of geometry (constantly ignoring, all the time arriving), one foot in the door, met on the street,—a writer’s brushstroke. one tiger says to the OTHER:
4tongue, sense of humor

“wanna change spots?” nonetheless she was proper and i knownothing. cattiatore if you adore me. i am an eater (ferozian). well received understandings improve penmanship—as an artist i may never get over it. bottle is a happy man
guitar is a woman

bellow//: hidden text (to Moriat): 1. kind of like dyoublong; 2. a fogdampened dim bar above Sutter St., presided over by a beefy red leatherclad chinese woman who may be a man.

confidentially, truth be told, i thought i’d meet an art crowd at the chelsea, not a purgatory of self recognition. laughter again. thank you for sharing our you. everytime you start smiling i lose more blood

you aint that guy in the creek tryin to catch a salmon—use a razor, not a butcher knife. i’ll show you the faceless clock here. Then, a second generation jazzman.

all right, if you got to do that in public. it’s so sad that I belong here. one foot in the door, met a writer on the street. you know why cows wear bells? their horns don’t work.

How’s the angle of my orange? asks a palindrome sniffer, you were able to control your shrieks like that? abortions, oil paintings, crop circles. laughter-language harmonica. at last he looks up when

twin bartenders with red cockers bend to make meet the ends of the shortest distance between two points. name your punches and listen to the sound of my heart beat. hieroglyphs are for further communication of tenacious realizations until
one true good thought a day (simple economics—a danger of improvisation). This grandfather clock is missing some element of time that i gave away in a

dream. the unions got it all sewed up, unless you’re a fuckin comedian, some neologismical peter piper. drat! era bar got to grab a retard (or accept this language before your monopolization imperils you).

i don’t needany fresh enemies today. i don’t know why i even came down here where i could be tempted. must have thought my confidence was working right again. here’s a guy hates you hey fuck so you’ll turn your5
civilization into a prison, left jab!
but not tonight. tonight, the mosquitos are institutionalized.
5 head and acknowledge his essay topics

but not tonight; tonight
Notes From The Interior Of The Funerary Chapel Of A Meroitic Queen:
Well i don’t always trust people’s opinions of my life as gleaned from conversations, if you only know who you are, when you think that you know who I am. love, so you set these buoys in place & see who they save,
whose genes learn to fly.

6Extra Space
Appendix
A Crooks’ soliloquy (Steinbeck, Of Mice and Men, pp71, 73)
B Chomsky not surprised: we allow our gaze to calcify from x y # of times per day: mediated: so you set these buoys in place and see who they save, whose genes learn to fly. This could probably be something like television, or a drug presence, or evangelicalism, or art, the other side of an uneven exchange, ever able to turn that exercised focus over again and again on top of itself—but of or from—until our modern (curse interest—charge!) is to reveal our consistencies, and to choreograph them as further efforts saved for something always more valuable. In spite of this their genius at any point is constant currency, the confidence of a soloist.

CIRCLEBIRD STROPHE

I. PAYMENT UBIQUITY

The most important thing that a monkey could do would be to eat with style or according to custom. And amateurs by comparison, as communications have become concentrated in awareness of influential scrutiny? Their expectancy is substituted, maximizing efficiency of attention in contemporary competition for access. I’ve had more and ruined it for less, such as when I thought how little you thought of me and so never suggested you get me some handwriting analysis for a birthday present.
Tragic confounding nonsense from the room above but dare I relate, exchange tones and gestures? Criminal communication, is that what we do to each other? They’re just a meteor.

II. VAMPIRE STORY

Here’s another ontology for you to do something about, mouthpiece, in game of naming all root causes, to ratify the time-appropriating lunacy of Want, your cipher: a treasure trove of lost civilizations, small offerings, burned, and monumental calendars, in new satellite images: no guarantee, eternity, being.

III. PALIMPSEST LOVERS

That part of myself, which you see I have been long unable to hold near you and which in my neglect abandons me, only trembles over the reality of all which has encompassed our expanding passion. I’ll pray.

IV. IMMEDIAPOLATION OF IMEQUATION’S FISSION

Vowelspace for everyone. The first oil coating of my preamble canvas is prehistoric, progressive familiarization with relativity, convinced of fluctuating design, recognizably existing.

Why I despise the prevention of genuine conviviality in your shocking, unsanitary accusation of my work (”drug writing”), if you have one, has less to do with preparedness than strenuinadaei (theatrenonnom), the sheer cosmic evil of mundane obstacles–enmity semeiotics–undefended triangles, and the protracted assembling, accumulating, economizing, and preserving that has preceded them–picture it, smile: “this is for the post office.” Meeting face-to-face is already the revolution. Are we not hyperboreans?

V. SOUTH AFRICA, BY TAXI

The desire to carve is time traveling, a tattoo.

Sirocco: a hot, oppressive wind blowing from the deserts of N Africa into S Europe

The absurdest gags involving monkeys. Chants and beats, everyone. Peace for with you. That’s why it’s magic, peace for with you. A kiss not a curse from a retard. What kind of a deal did you have in mind? Go on, get moving? Hornblower whistleblower.

Touch a baby lion get your finger back. Measured in light. Frank Buck? Bolo bolo unscairt man. Hoist ferocious! Boys, he had a head like that. Fevered nerves.

Chat, people are going around saying, Kittens! Are you afraid of big teeth? Your movie paralyzed, deteriorating?

Oh, my friend! Whatever will be, will be. Here again we’ve had a look at concurrent futures in arms which betray us. Shall we remain uncontested, scattered, alone? Do you even think I speak English anymore? Wipe your hands on my eternity, I’m the room you have to grow in.

Immobile, detached consciousness mediated through a technologic sieve. “Strange,” because they survived unexpectedly long, enduring the machine—not the terrible litany that Mayakovski advised against, for the artists classified as workers (“no need for itemizing”): particles visible in our view field when decaying.

Rosetta Koan
(Disordered by computers)

It’s a weakness, leadership.
a spring in your wave.
take it out on the truth and
titles follow.
(electronic kitten’s brilliant escape)
–got an open window & I see you.
would you take this way home?
–bootcamp lick out of uptown.

And now again if I must be absolutely frank with you
I would say Yes I am not
satisfied with myself for
the addictions that saddle
me or my slowness in
confusion or quickness to
rage but I have no desire
for blame, only understanding
which, aware of freedom,
knows peace, and is
by turn fascinated and dismayed
at the unwritten thought, perhaps fuel
too many, to many, are
unwilling. [with
psychoses in italic
where my voice is.] (in the verses)
–notebook RX
overawareness X times daily

Unprepared for our best,
they expect us to acknowledge,
but not our own,
authority
and attempt to corrupt our vigilance.
Who points a finger and why,
but to steal centers–
judge this angel’s behavior
before irreverence renders
your little time asunder.
god your breath and mine.

“you still in the way?”
but more like a declaration.

1. sealed in a concrete box,
deep beneath the earth.

2. So lives faded and ran
off tracks in accordance
with power’s appetite for
servitude & reverence, &
upon the rest who did or did not
know their place, sedations
were issued, and heartily consumed.

3. & they did raise them
with certain conceptions
in 30 minute televised
lessons but in time
hid these, creating despairs,

4. ask me again love,
standing on some tone
of serenity in my voice

5. & excercised their suitable needs
in broadcast of touchstones.

6. see it here, and hear it, &
teach your other senses their
happinesses

7. replaced secret hates with loves,
wakes up with yesses,
an everpresent burden if you’ve an opinion of what’s wrong
with their pointing guns at you.

8. of course part of what makes
them invaluable is the
magnificent way they encompass
my entire learning process
& document it
like clouds moving over the pacific
after

9. and the thoughts i had on
this matter which i now undertake
to comment on struggled to
free themselves from all manner
of enslavements &
exhaustions born thereof.

10. So all the while matters
affecting my place are contrived
and executed without consideration
except to contain it in unprescribed ends. But in other designs my
breath is not as short, &
pronounces, in layers, direction.

12. and you ask me why
i write still
when i don’t even know
the words

16. Because
of course it is.
music proves that much.
the rest i believe is our
license because brother that’s
celebrity, all history and slant.

17. and anyways, if you’re
already standing
you can go get it.

18. no need for rudeness
unless you’re aware of
that tool, whose user
would confuse you with
the theater.

19. I knew I had to make it more
plainly available.

22. of dialog urgency: big than what’s
normal. A combination of expressive techniques
to reflect associations more and less, further & additional.

25. opened fire on the party.
i call this one,
“graduated”.
all of these clubs had live music.
it’s a never ending study
which sustains me.

28. & in those blank unspoilt places,
you believe.
which is one
of the things I
could show her
vowelsound.

29. & regarding locations uninhabited
by subsequents ill-defined in suggestion,
and positional notation,
for reasons connected to their calendar,
or something beneath which
falls on to capture,
the definition of which
encompasses, whereas
unwarranted awareness capitulated,
sovereign copasetic pannonica.

30. Such as I will determine the veracity of the responses
and the intentions of the respondent,
inferential measurement of shadows & handwritten time direction cues,
in reserve, the campaign of the instigator of undefined character,
whose vast affirmation of occurrences
never just self

306. speaking on condition of anonymity,
faces charges, felony conspiracy
stop the bombing, eat the king

307. for large canvas or otherwise,
i’d want to show you as
only in so revealing being can i
share this.

308. the proximity in which you are moving.
As if we had never, and our breathing.

309. They come out for a funeral
to party. over this route man.
close by and tempting.

310. circle. this way, and stop,
then that.
everything’s like a prison
in this country.

311. Golden mean with spiral,
to bring to life
across the division of their
discovery and groupings, equivalating
capable harmony with full competence
and consistent excessive consideration.

312. add to this
the camouflage of concurrences between action
and transcription, and,
in a moment,
things become beautiful.

313. the scales you are enamored of creating,
armor born of positioning,
visible from space,

317. Attention modifiers, regularly.

318. portrayed, acting:
appropriation of interactive ritual,
tool for further communication,
single utterance revisited:
the minutiae of hand movement

319. It could be a scream play, really
anything you could. people
who are allowed to shoot you if
you supposedly point a gun at them
which i know by your character
that you would.

321. And I use it in other mudane-ish taskery about the place.

322. Galileo lived long enough
to inquire heavenward
because for 5 billion years
Jupiter’s mass has protected us by drawing
comets and the like to itself—
fantastic prevention—
allower of our reactions.

323. One second, half a foot
from where predicted,
years earlier in a pile of stars

324. Destigmatizing the forbidden:
let us make a table of all their estimates,
though it is speedier to measure them
by displacement

327. What the villagers saw that night:
excess past, where there is always a rhythm
there to rest understanding

328. a salt upon the earth:
the agent’s perspective.
taxonomic artifacts,
protecting the water

330. a country on the moon, a
constellation visible only from
the southern hemisphere,

331. cast demonstration for the museum library.
selective-allowance evolution, the frequency of your economy of radiation,
whose time would be less of a villain:
nobody ever got out
just in time.
The comfort of control in a multi-instrument assault.

334. hand me your money Charlie

337. possession, portions of the whole from
the center of the senses

388.
Festive, she loves people, to facilliate discussion,
the poet

500. this is what we were talking
about. and don’t brush too hard.
and crack in yo mouth.
i knew how to get around in that,
slain for land.

501. buy, repeatedly.
hidden lies and victor histories

900. & she kept one of my paintings.
I hope that she is somewhere safe and hapy.

A Dedication (Haunted House)

Grand Junction, or, the canyon opens its doors to you. Domesticated it: just an excuse to hunt it. Love it dearly!

Dante’s Inferno: when the entire process is eugenized, that is, mediated—why of course we will ask the parents, couldn’t you have done something? Didn’t you see the signs? We did.

Unforsake. A dedication, vows between us. In my excitement I did not notice the damage. At half the speed I extend more graciously. There is a story I would like to tell you. What it is, is connected with wires. Translated from the long and short imagined. Shaken and led.

This uncoerced importance is for you and yours in this, our time, friends whose vigilance to life’s encouragement preserves tomorrow’s revelations.

Most people have never heard of Takashi Nagai, the Saint of Urakami. But his is a name that every American Christian in particular should know. Here is a brief overview of Nagai and his place in bringing peace to our dark world.

Christianity came to Japan by way of Portuguese Roman Catholic missionaries who sailed ashore at Nagasaki in 1543. The teachings of Christ spread rapidly, and in less than a hundred years the Shogunate found the new Christian converts to be a threat to his rule. The result was a bloody purge that attempted to kill every last missionary and Christian in Japan. The depths of depravity of these campaigns of murder can be seen in the life of St. Paulo Miki, crucified along with many of his fellow Christians in Nagasaki by the shogun, and in the historical novel Silence by Shusaku Endo, which details the tortures inflicted on Japanese Christians in order to get them to renounce Christ and turn over their fellow Christians for execution.

To the shogun, the campaign appeared to wipe out Christianity in Japan. In reality, survivors of the purge took the church underground and practiced in secret for hundreds of years. Nagasaki remained the capital of Christianity in Japan, and its followers known as “Kakure Kirishitans” (hidden Christians), as they worshiped in secret rooms and veiled their prayers and icons with eastern religious trappings.

Prior to the opening of Japanese ports to the West in the 19th century, the vast scope of hidden Christianity in Japan became apparent to the shogun, and resulted in another decade of brutal purges. Many thousand more secret Christians were murdered, even as American warships appeared in Tokyo Bay. Eventually US President Ulysses S. Grant made the end of such brutality and persecution a key condition to the opening of Japan to the West. The era of the shoguns was over, and Christianity openly legalized in Japan.

This new era of open Christianity in Japan began with the return of hostage Kakure Kirishitans to Nagasaki. Having escaped the purge, they built the first public cathedral in Japan on the site of the earlier massacre of St. Paul Miki and his followers. Urakami Cathedral soon became the largest center of Christian worship in all of Asia, but still the followers of Christ were considered second class citizens in Japan. In 1930, Polish priest Maximilian Kolbe came to Nagasaki and founded the first successful monastery in Japan. Owing to local discrimination, the monastery was built in a part of town considered impure by Shinto standards. With the advent of World War II, Kolbe returned to Poland, where he was martyred in Auschwitz, and eventually canonized and called the patron saint of our difficult (21st) century by Pope John Paul II. When the atomic bomb fell on Nagasaki, Kolbe’s monastery was one of the only buildings left untouched by the devastation.

Indeed, the atomic bombing of Nagasaki by the USA was a Catholic holocaust of unprecedented scale. While Nagasaki was a legitimate military target, the bomb did not fall on any munitions factory. In fact several other targets for the bomb were first discounted by the US bomber team because of weather factors, before the city of Nagasaki was chosen. Further, when the bomb fell on Nagasaki it drifted many miles away from the military factories before detonating directly above Urakami Cathedral, the center of Christianity in Asia. Such is the backdrop for the story of Dr. Takashi Nagai, who is perhaps the patron saint to guide us in the 22nd century.

Nagai was born of samurai lineage and raised Shinto in rural Japan. In 1928 he moved to Nagasaki to become a physician like his father, but a bout of meningitis left him unfit to practice as a medical doctor. Instead he dedicated himself to the new field of x-rays, even knowing that safety in the field was poorly understood and the mortality rate high among practitioners. While studying, Nagai began to question the atheism rampant in the medical field, and the cold bedside manners of the healthcare professionals. The death of his mother further fueled his interest in the notion of soul, and he studied the theology of Blaise Pascal.

While studying, Nagai boarded with a family in Nagasaki. Unbeknownst to him, the Moriyama family had been the hereditary leaders of the hidden Christians in Japan for seven generations. Nagai had a deeply spiritual experience when invited to Midnight Mass on Christmas with the Moriyamas; the next night he risked his life to save their daughter Midori from a medical emergency.

Soon after, Nagai was sent to China for military service, and despaired to see the reality of the wholesale violence inflicted upon the Chinese by the Japanese army. Nagai was strengthened by a package of Catholic catechism sent by Midori Moriyama, and dedicated himself to healing the wounded, especially the Chinese. Upon his return to Nagasaki, Nagai converted to Catholicism. He and Midori married and had children; Nagai continued his work in the radiation field in Nagasaki. During this time, Nagai worked closely with Fr. Kolbe in ministering to those in need. However, intensification of the war in China brought this time to a close and Nagai was sent back to the war front.

Nagai’s father and daughter died while he ministered in China. Upon his return again to Nagasaki, Nagai continued his spiritual and scientific work, and in 1945 was diagnosed with terminal leukemia (result of his work) and given a short time to live. When the first a-bomb was dropped on Hiroshima, Nagai and Midori sent their children to the mountains for safety. Days later, as Nagai treated war victims at his hospital, the second a-bomb was dropped on Nagasaki.

Nagai’s hospital was near the Urakami Cathedral ground zero, and he was seriously injured, but survived and spent the next 3 days and nights attempting to help survivors in the vicinity. Making his way to his home, he found pure devastation. In the ashes of his home he found the bones of Midori clutching the family crucifix which had been an icon of the hidden Christians for hundreds of years.

Between his leukemia and the effects of the nuclear bomb, Nagai was soon bedridden and given hours to live. During this time Nagai believed he was visited by his old friend Fr. Kolbe. He had no way of knowing that Kolbe was no longer in Nagasaki, and in fact had already been martyred in Auschwitz. Nonetheless, Nagai experienced a miraculous recovery.

Nagai built a small hut on the ashes of his home in Urakami and called it Nyokodo, which means to love your neighbor as yourself, and dedicated his life to prayer and contemplation. His life became a sign for all that nuclear holocaust would not be the end. In time for Christmas, survivors unearthed the main bell from Urakami cathedral, virtually all that remained of that physical epicenter of Asian Christianity. The bell was rung at the services, and Nagai gave a profound speech to the gathered survivors in which he equated the nuclear bombing with a holy holocaust offering to God to ensure peace. Many were outraged, but this speech sewed the seeds of recovery for Nagasaki, and can be traced today to the widely-held impression that Nagasaki has recovered in peace, while Hiroshima is “like a closed fist.”

Nagai then wrote several theological works, including the immensely popular Bells Of Nagasaki, becoming a key figure in the healing of a broken nation. He planted one thousand cherry trees in Urakami as a sign of peace. The trees still bloom in Nagasaki today. Visitors to his hermitage prior to his death in 1951 included Emperor Hirohito, Helen Keller, and the Pope’s emisary.

This summary of Takashi Nagai’s life does a great disservice to the granular details of his extraordinary spiritual experience. It is my hope that you are encouraged to find out more about this great man.

Takashi Nagai on wikipedia

Dr Nagai and the Rosary

The message of Dr Nagai

City of Nagasaki – Nagai site

The Bells Of Nagasaki

A Song For Nagasaki

Silence – Shusaku Endo

All That Remains (2012)

2011: formal process of canonization for sainthood of Takashi Nagai begins

Beatification of Christian martyrs in Japan

THE CRYPT RAN RED

As I get older I find I can come by fewer great examples of the genre that I haven’t at least heard of. Which is why I am thrilled to expose you to NIGHTMARE IN BLOOD (1978), a virtually unknown and largely disowned exploitation classic out of San Francisco’s Creature Features era.

I knew NIGHTMARE IN BLOOD was for me as soon as I saw the cover from the 1985 VHS release, reprinted in HorrorHound Magazine #31 (September/October 2011) in an article covering the long-defunct Oakland, CA based Video City VHS label. The box cover was a painting of Dracula with a nubile victim in a cemetery with the Golden Gate Bridge and downtown San Francisco in the full-moonlit background. I knew I had to see it.

I fired up Google and learned that NIGHTMARE IN BLOOD was made by John Stanley, host of the San Francisco KTVU Creature Feature horror movie shows on Friday and Saturday nights in the 1970s and 80s. Reading various synopses of the plot, I figured (correctly, as it turns out) that I was possibly in for a sublime experience. In a nutshell, the plot is thus:

A Scooby Doo trio of (approximately) Sherlock Holmes, Iceberg Slim, & Sandy Duncan put on San Francisco’s 1st ever Annual Horror Convention, featuring the top Hollywood Dracula of the day as their special guest. Unfortunately, it turns out that it really is Dracula, and hilarity ensues as his bumbling henchmen (19th graverobbers Burke and Hare, kept undead by Dracula with chemical concoction fixes directly into their brains) murder up some blood for him and deal with those meddling kids.

Did I mention the Israeli Nazi-hunter hot on Dracula’s trail, and that subplot’s attendant hardcore exploitation misappropriation of actual WWII footage? How about the perfectly Jesus-like comic book store owner? The convention kids in Planet of the Apes masks? Dracula’s secret portable laboratory for filtering out the impurities rampant in the blood of modern hippies?

The movie stars numerous awesome unknown 70s character actors like Ray K. Goman (Streets of San Francisco, Emergency!, Escape From Alcatraz), Hy Pyke (Dolemite, Blade Runner), and Jerry Walter (Star Wars, The Enforcer, Invasion of the Body Snatchers). The film came and went in theaters in 1978, but apparently screened at a lot of Drive-Ins before they all died out. It was released on VHS in 1985, and then on DVD in 2004.

One of my favorite bits is set in Lincoln Golf Course in The Richmond District, in which an old lady trying to find her golf ball in the brush instead picks up an eyeball from one of Dracula’s victims! Another big movie-within-the-movie scenes was filmed in the old Presidio artillery embankments at the nearby V.A. Hospital.

Here’s an essay John Stanley wrote about making NIGHTMARE IN BLOOD, called “Want to direct a movie? Then read this and cry!”

NIGHTMARE IN BLOOD on IMDB
NIGHTMARE IN BLOOD on Wikipedia

Here’s another nice synopsis I saw online:

In a San Francisco theatre an audience is held spellbound watching the latest epic starring Malakai (Jerry Walter), Hollywood’s top box office horror star.

Nearby, in a rundown picture palace of the 1920’s, three people are planning the First Annual Horror Convention. They are mystery novelist Professor Seabrook (Dan Caldwell), amateur sleuth Scotty (John H. Cochran) and the lovely fashion designer Cindy (Barrie Youngfellow). Little do they know what is in store!
Underneath, in his secret laboratory is Malakai himself, dressed as a vampire! Why is he talking to his two sinister men about bodies? What is the secret of these two men known as B.B. (Ray K. Gorman) and Harris (Hy Pyke)?

There follows a series of brutal, gruesome murders and the Professor and his two willing helpers find themselves in a nightmare situation as they try to resolve the murders. They are aided and abetted by the mysterious Nazi-hunter Ben-Halik (Mark Anger), known as the “Avenger”. Finally realising they are up against the forces of evil, they prepare for the final showdown. Armed with wooden stakes they enter the secret lair beneath the eerie theatre to do battle. Duels to the death follow but does good triumph over evil in the last frame?”

And here’s a very recent great review from an IMDB user who probably found this from reading HorrorHound also:

Nightmare in Blood, 1 October 2011
Author: Scarecrow-88 from United States
*** This review may contain spoilers ***

There’s nothing cooler to a horror buff like me than to, on opening day of Rocktober (this year, 2011), discover, upon my very first viewing for Halloween month, a nice surprise certain to become a favorite I will watch every year. What’s neat about this film is that it predates the horror conventions that now pop up all over the world, not just in America—they are now all the rage. In San Francisco, a horror novelist, Professor Seabrook (Dan Caldwell) is able to bring to life the very first Horror Con, with an established horror icon as the featured guest, Malaki (Jerry Walters who is a blast), known for his many vampire films. Malaki takes his status in the genre (and, refreshingly, the genre itself) very seriously, and when horror show hosts, like George Wilson (Morgan Upton), poke gleeful fun at schlock or other horror films featured prominently on his line-ups, his ire is inflamed. What Seabrook and his friends behind the invention of the San Francisco Horror Con couldn’t possibly expect is that their star is an actual centuries-old vampire! Yeah, imagine if a horror con presented a star attraction who was actually the very monster he supposedly portrayed fictitiously! Oh, it doesn’t end there, this movie even throws in Burke and Hare (!), still alive and kicking thanks to Malaki, hunting his prey so that they can keep their master happy.

I really miss the way films could shoot on authentic city streets, using actors who look like the kind of folks who would populate San Francisco. There’s this one fellow who runs a comic store and bases his whole life’s philosophy around the art and stories of the books that line the shelves. He’s very soft-spoken, stolid, and serious, much like Malaki is about his beloved horror genre. The script is chock full of loving nods to, and acknowledgment of, the horror genre and the many stars and movies that we fans know and love. Being that the film is set in contemporary San Francisco in 1978, the likes of Bela Lugosi, Christopher Lee, and Lon Chaney come up in conversations often, which brought a smile to my face time and again. For those who love their gore, “Nightmare in Blood” has lots of blood-letting (that thick bright red Herschel Gordon Lewis film blood I adore) as Burke and Hare hunt down characters associated with the Horror Con. The Van Helsing of this film is a Jew Nazi Hunter (!) who thought Malaki was a member of Hitler’s Reich, only to discover that his quarry was a vampire instead! This guy goes by the name “Avenger” (or that is what Malaki refers to him as) and is a nuisance, an absolute thorn in the side, to Malaki. As long as Avenger lives, Malaki knows his existence is threatened. When a colleague of Seabrook’s, Scotty (John Cochran) loses a girlfriend to the dastardly trio, hears a conversation between Burke and Hare that’s more than a bit suspicious, and starts putting two-and-two together, the Avenger (Mark Anger) may finally have a legitimate ally in his fight to stop Malaki. The Mina of this film is Barrie Youngfellow, as Seabrook’s girlfriend, Cindy. You just know her life will be in jeopardy before the film is through. I definitely believe horror fans and devotees to our genre owe it to themselves to check out “Nightmare in Blood”, it is, in my mind, the very definition of a sleeper. Walters really “sinks his teeth” into the role, with the posture and thick accent mimicking Lugosi effortlessly—I considered him a pleasure to watch in the role of a bloodsucker easily offended by those who slander his movies and the genre, his reactions of repulsion towards Wilson especially funny.

Patrons of the lurid arts could do worse than read former LAPD detective Steve Hodel’s MOST EVIL (2009), in which the author makes the case that his father, the late Dr. George Hill Hodel, was a deranged, amoral, prolific serial killer who labored to elevate murder to the realm of fine art until he died in San Francisco in 1999 at the age of ninety-one. The character of Dr. Hodel rivals any fictional psychopathic genius, whether or not the accusations made by Steve Hodel are indeed accurate; meanwhile the reality-show aspect intensifies the mystery in ways even Dan Simmons’s pulp-fact-ion cannot.

The author recalls that his father suddenly left California for Asia in 1950, sporadically returning to the USA over the next 40 years as he built a new career abroad as a marketing researcher. In 1990, Dr. Hodel moved his research company (International Research Associates) to San Francisco, where he lived until he died in 1999. After his father’s death, the author uncovered evidence that strongly suggested Dr. Hodel was responsible for the infamous Black Dahlia murder in Hollywood in 1947. In fact, in 2003, the LA District Attorney’s office declared the case closed in light of evidence published by Steve Hodel in his first book, Black Dahlia Avenger (2003). Hodel’s new book is a follow-up review of additional evidence that suggests Dr. Hodel’s life of crime was far more monstrous than even the perpetration of the gruesome Elizabeth Short murder might imply.

According to Steve Hodel, his father was a boy genius with a 186 IQ, a musical child prodigy of Los Angeles who received Rachmaninoff at the Shrine Auditorium in 1917. Off to Caltech at an early age, he knocked up some professor’s wife and was expelled in disgrace; this led to an underage life as a Yellow Cab driver and prohibition-era vice reporter for the Los Angeles Record. George Hodel’s best friend was one-day-to-be-legendary Hollywood filmmaker John Huston, with whom he frequented opium dens in Chinatown; in this bohemian existential existence he also launched a literary magazine called Fantasia, and DJ’d hip mixes of classical music on the Southern California Gas Company’s Music Hour.

Eventually George married one of John Huston’s ex-girlfriends, and got a job writing an irreverent, precursor-to-Herb-Caen column for the San Francisco Chronicle. At the same time he obtained a medical degree from the University of California at Berkeley, subsequently interning at San Francisco General Hospital, and then on Hopi and Navajo reservations in New Mexico, before returning with his new family to LA in the early 1940s, where he assumed the position of senior VD control office for LA county, living in a house designed by Frank Lloyd Wright and hobnobbing with the likes of Henry Miller, Man Ray, Kenneth Rexrof, and other surrealist artists.

In the mid 1940s, Dr. Hodel spent time in Chicago training in Chinese for a UN assignment at the end of WWII. But he cut short his time in China after less than a year, returning to LA in 1946, before leaving the country more permanently in 1950. The retired LAPD detective was only to piece together the horrible truth much later, in the decade after his father’s death.

It seems Dr. Hodel’s life was well and truly ruined at a young age. His strict, child-prodigy upbringing by an over-bearing mother ended in sexual controversy that was made all the worse for being unrequited true love as well. It seems Dr. Hodel’s misanthropy stems from this time. By the 1940s in LA, he was murdering one woman after the next, and he would continue to do so across the globe for another 50 years!

In the post Civil War turn of the century industrial era it seems that Birge Harrison’s book LANDSCAPE PAINTING was widely popular among alchemists, and referred to as a bible in some artistic circles for years. At first I didn’t recognize the pedigree, but then, it’s only been since 1828 that chemical ultramarine replaced lapis-lazuli (sar-i-sang afghani rock mine purest). It cost me a quarter at the old man’s garage sale. He eyed me carefully when I told him to keep the whole dollar, and then asked me if I was going to use the book myself. Of course I was, I said. Just now I looked online, and somebody is asking $646 for this early edition (although this once-rare, possibly-suppressed book returned to print in 2008).

First thing when I opened the book I was put off by an outburst of modern learned-man eugenic and racial profile musings. Later I came to accept this in the fuller context of the particular historical lunacy, but it was many months before I got around again to flipping though, whereupon I discovered several concise lectures on the subtle features of classic oil-painting wizardry, workmanship, and technique, in fundamentally pragmatic detail.

I was amazed at the carefully detailed descriptions of the execution of noted styles and techniques, the broad knowledge of the related special history, and the unique perspective of one who was witnessing firsthand the effect of the modern marketplace’s chemicalization of the human condition. Harrison was no scientist, he was an artist, but he was well aware of the implications of the world’s technological advancements as they related to his time.

Harrison witnessed the first photographs (doubtless unaware that the Shroud of Turin was Leonardo’s own first photograph), and had the master’s eye for employing the first action-sequenced photos (precursors of film) as a draftsman’s tool. He was thinking of the very big picture, like Tesla. Concerned with the spectrum of visible and invisible light, vibrations and waves, hoping to live to see the colors of sound. The power of it.

Here are, in my opinion, the key lessons from Birge Harrison, in his own words. The accompanying headlines are my own.

Birge Harrison’s Lapis-Lazuli Necronomicon

Art Is A Golden Ratio
If it is held that a wise providence, at the beginning of things, limited our sensory nerves to the record of such impressions as were essential to the physical existence of the primal creature, thereby confining our later aesthetic activities to the exploitation of a given range of sensations, a certain regret is nevertheless permissible when one thinks of the bewildering color-feast that might await us in a Wagner overture or a Beethoven sonata. What a fascinating problem it would be, for instance, to work out the color probabilities of some great masterpiece of music, and fling them glowing upon the translucent page of a vast cathedral window.

How The Old Masters Did It Without Vibration
First we may mention the method used by the old masters, which consisted in a solid underpainting in black and white with a slight mixture of red. In this method the whole scheme of the pictures was built up with these three pigments, and all of the drawing and modeling was accomplished without any attempt at color. Then, after a very thorough drying, the work was completed and the color obtained by a series of very thin glazes drawn over the dried and hardened surface. This method, although wonderfully sound in itself and lasting in its results, must of course be discarded by the modern painter for the reason that it precludes all possibility of vibration.

Industrial Age Heralds First New Pigments Since 16th Century
The manufacturers of print goods all over the world are insisting upon pigments which will remain permanent under the strong rays of the tropical sun, and which will at the same time resist the action of the various alkalis and acids they are sure to encounter in the wash tub. To meet this demand one great firm of colormakers has a hundred expert chemists employed upon the problem. Already they have yielded one definite and splendid result–a synthetic red, which is absolutely neutral, chemically considered, and ten times more powerful than the best vermillion. As an artist’s color, it replaces almost all the other red pigments which we have inherited from the past. The same chemists have an equally powerful yellow and blue under careful observation.

The Perfect Palette Begins With Eight Globs Of Paint
It is evident that if painters can secure Red, Yellow, Blue primary colors in two values, a light and a dark shade, they will, with the addition of white and black, have a perfect palette; as all of the secondary and tertiary colors, such as orange, green, violet, and their various derivatives can be compounded by an admixture of these original pigments.

You Don’t Have Any Idea What It Takes To Be An Artist
Conditions of artistic creation often demand that a painter shall frequently work far beyond the limits of his strength during a long period–shall draw heavy drafts upon the future; and these must either be paid by a shortened life, or made up later by prolonged periods of rest. As it is not possible for the artist to work as other men work, a given number of hours each day, this hardest of all workers frequently gains the reputation of being an idler.

Brutus, grandson of Aeneas, that Trojan refugee who presaged the Roman empire, organized a massive celebration to the Gods at the port of Totnes, where he had first landed on the island of Albion in 1115 B.C.

From the look of the landscaped farms and villages by then, his people already seemed indigenous. On this bright day in Britain his forces reveled in merriment and indulgence, but it was to their misfortune, as the island had not been altogether uninhabited when they arrived. Although they had quickly run lingering creatures off to caves and beyond, there was yet to be a reckoning.

A horde of giants collaborated amongst each other and determined to drive the newcomers back into the sea. They attacked Brutus’ unsuspecting celebration and commenced to crush the skulls of many Britons. The monsters were formidable: their leader, Gogmagog, was over twelve feet tall, and given to uprooting oak trees with which to smash ten or more of Brutus’ soldiers at a time. The men were in disarray and hundreds fell, tossed limb by limb into piles by the paganist inclinations of these splendidly prehistoric anachronisms of the remote island’s evolutionary preserve.

Brutus, aided by his chief general Corineus, then launched a counter-attack and was able to destroy all the beasts save one, Gogmagog, who Brutus ordered spared, that he might see a wrestling match between the monster and Corineus.

Corineus then wrestled the monster, which cracked his ribs and drew a shameful amount of blood, enough so that Corineus lost his temper and displayed inhuman strength in lifting the giant above his head and tossing him over a cliff into the sea.

And there in the reddening foam, finality before him, Gogmagog perished on a sharp reef in the surf, broken to pieces by the fall, and did sink into the depths and was eaten by krakens.

Conceived, unfathomably, the giant left an heir. A child born to a British girl who had, one night, been disfavored by by her violent husband, and who had foolishly sought solace with herself in the darkened woods beyond the walls of their encampment. There she was accosted by the giants, who would have eaten her alive had it not been for the pleasure Gogmagog sought to have with her. Driven to the brink of insanity by her predicament, the girl wandered around the forest in a stupor for days until recovered by some of Brutus’ men, who returned her to her husband.

The girl later died in childbirth, never speaking another comprehensible sentence, and the boy she bore was raised brutally by slaves to the soldiers. He was called Crooked, after his askew and ragged sharpened teeth, and he grew into an uncommonly large and unruly man with a penchant for eating living creatures.

He fought in the army led by Corineus, the general who slew his father, without ever guessing his heritage, and fathered many children of his own. But though he didn’t know the truth of his birth, something in his blood guessed, and drove him to commit heinous crimes against his fellow Britons at every opportunity.

So it went as his progeny descended. Each male child was heir to Gogmagog, and in each the thickened blood seethed and was quieted only when unspeakable terrors were performed on the invaders.

Crooked himself was eventually apprehended in the act of unscrewing a fellow soldier’s head with his bare hands; the deed, done hastily in the midst of fierce battle with known enemies of Briton, should have gone unnoticed; but that the soldier’s head was particularly well-set on his shoulders and Crooked, unfaltering in his desire to unscrew it even to the point of his own downfall, continued to pry at it this way and that even after the other soldiers discovered him and placed him among their enemies.

(1995)

Her shoes were shaped like saddle shoes but they were covered in crushed green velvet. Her dress swished over them.

After we fed a strong beaked raven some donuts she went home to make some more pies & I continued up the beach with my headphones. I got a corndog & ate it & jumped a protective fence & climbed halfway down the ruins but not the whole way down before I sat where I could see the uncontained spectacle of crashing waves & rubble & dogs chasing ducks and sticks.

oh and they talk. they talk and they talk and they talk. and he is easily swayed along into committing unjustifiable acts of inappropriate comraderie. Fortunately, no one was shot. He says it will be worse when it’s in the paper but it will be much worse if he goes to jail. I hope that you discourage his fleeing to California. It’s what we do to each other. It’s not them, it’s us–they’re just a meteor.

Suspecting what passes for gold, strangers by day, he was aware of this, his most consistent declaration of profound seductiveness. For myself, I stretch and whistle grandly, my dear, it’s just marvelous, bite my tongue. About then, likely as not, there were cameras to record the eccentricity of the evening commute out of the skyscrapered gulley. Ready to follow home anyone who hollered back at the shouting. As if they don’t have enough on you already.

Now I got food in the kitchen, that’s better than money in your pocket, a pot to piss in, and a roof over your head. I got a sign language of continuous movement and noticeable stops. I got courtesy regarding the proximity in which you are moving. I got refueling in the dark.

& one day he thought, why, who was I to scold her, as if it would do her no harm, when it’s god your breath & mine. Before everything’s like a prison in this country, enslaved by a conviction in our lack of self discipline.

They come out for a funeral to party. Over this route man. There is time traveling. Close by and tempting. Like south africa, by taxi. this is what we were talking about. and don’t brush too hard but thoroughly. and no crack in yo mouth. i know how to get around in that. slain for land. circle. this way, and stop, then that.

California pizza kitchen hollywood naked in the parking lot.

Across the street from the A.C.T. theater there’s a hamburger jointplace with a guy in an apron smoking out front, he says, “all the ribs ya can eat plus a baked potato. it’s a fersh potato.” puff. lean. “it’s all the ribs you can eat.” he works at the hamburger place, you can see the grill man in the window behind him outlined in stream. next door just beyond the muni stop there’s another barker at the jack in the box, less inviting, screaming, not especially at the other 2 bums beside him, the bitches, but sounding out a great hope for those who insist on repunctuating all of the texts they read.

and in some ways, the question already became what is this huge, immemorial thing you are enamored of engaging to create, visible from space, commonsense certain, against you, not admiting any of the improvements learned, you have the right to remain silent, and doctors just laugh. Sealed in a concret box, deep beneath the earth. I’ve had more and ruined it for less, when i knew how little you thought of me and never suggested you get me some handwriting analysis for a birthday present.

It’s all he he he but she’s talking. Honey, we got to wait for that light, she says. They couldn’t teach me this useage because they themselves were not aware of it. Everybody else got it while I was still breaking it down. But you reap what you sow.

Flying over my head and spitting on me–that’s my big night out and what I learnt. I’m asking for your reassurances, too, mac–Gallileo lived long enough to inquire about the heavens because for 5 billion years Jupiter’s mass has protected earth, drawing //:(v.s Hale-Bopp)Shoemaeker-Levy (setc) and the like unto itself, preventing earth’s destruction, allowing our reaction. One second and half a foot from where it was predicted to be 2 years earlier. Yes I am a slave to it myself. You might say, all that love & all he wants to do is write his name on her, sharing the rest of me. Too bad for you if all you got to do is ignore it or visit it with scorn. The real damage is all these hidden lies and victor histories, repeatedly cilivization, used in mundane taskery all about the place.

in a glen, quiet as if ghosts or misplaced in time, with spiders clawling weepily along heretofor unnoticed sunny ivies, and happy they’re sitting easy on needles, she writes a letter to her mother about josephine returning to france. He counts the tops of the trees to ring dem bells and considers wa thiongo again. Josephine has a dog and hitchhikes around after concerts and is told by the man that she can’t stand here and does she have an id, other such hassles. Bullwinkle moose, a children’s ride their bike allup and along, back and forth. He makes as if to kiss her again from a different glance, and stands to devise a new approach, he

Moves from the right hip to here and with that calf steps thus, now this way from the left, and, and, in a circle, she says, she had to run for the bus until it was all she could do to keep going, like once you’ve been dancing until, but she caught it. He puts the radio away and then they take a switchback up the hill, across a street full of rollerbladers and it seems like everybody’s in line for a hot dog or posibly even some ice cream, so she says why not artichoke but they have to hurry because she’s working tonight, right left right to the store,

But first getting Sammy Davis Jr. feature Robin and the Seven Hoods on video, which they didn’t watch from making it on the floor.

First I steamed the artichoke and the shrimps in the bamboo steamer, and breaded the sole with egg and crumbs and fried it in onion and lemon, and baked the crabcakes, and cut up some feta, and baked some bread with the crab cakes, and drank a few pepsis while I did that, and mixed some mayo and relish and black pepper, and put some old bay on the sole and some dill in the shrimp, and put out some b&w cocktail sauce in a shot glass, and the butter, on the table. And when it was all done she had to make her own damn lemon butter condiment because I forgot about that, although she had in fact mentioned it, I just goddamn forgot.

We played mille bornes and I dealt first and I dealt him all four coup faires and then on the next hand he almost shut me out. He really seems to enjoy that. I wish he-how long can I take it? I wonder where I’ll stay tonight. His sister is almost my age.

Oh my god would you look at that. Welcome.

This light is getting brighter and at once lays open the scene to my eyes, which actively recruit from its knowing landscapes. Such muches are seldom softly overwhelming eternity, still resolving my right correct truthes to delightedly continue their goings on with various yesses existing as freedoms.

And with any luck we wake up together like that.

So, my onliest sadness, who sits after drinks on the twilighted roof of the crocker galleria, waiting for my kiss, to whom I could speak a true thought aloud with grace before dying, always said to me or of me to you if you’ll look at her and listen. And rocked to sleep and breathed awake.

Later on as tonight turns into tomorrow I’ll have a dream about running from the law, in a boat, in a car, in a plane, hiding under the floorboards, driven madly through the swamp dodging crocodiles, elevated to great importance: this radio station, this card game, the serious study of vocal birds-as if you don’t understand it, to give it any room.

These dreams mostly are set in brightly lit industrial wastelands with grain elevators and holes in the ceiling and pits in the floor, bottomless, and japanese robots coming in from all sides. Do I have special powers? Can I avoid their teeth by taking this vine somewhere out of the scene?

She handed him a cookbook. “You can read can’t you,” she said.

“I don’t (sirens reeling) make things happen just by reading them do I!” he screeched.

“Well not as slow as you are anyway, that takes practice. There’s a rehearsal to it.

“The thing is I wouldn’t wanna hurt you. Get distracted and just look from word to word and get tricked into making something happen unintentionally.

“Hey are there any polacks in here tonight? Cause I don’t wanna hafta explain this over and over.

“Hey! Hey you yeah you ya fat bastid! (Oh no! Not that rude mouse!) You so damn fat your ass got its own zip code, I got to roll over five times to get off you once I’m through fuckin ya, ya one ass cheek got one zipcode & ya other ass cheek got another one, I never seen such a fat motherfucker, boy they sure don’t make em as fat as you anymore.

She trails her, and stops singing everytime she turns around, investigating everyone for anyone’s reaction to the march. A little bulldog plucks a cloth frisbee from the air in anticipation of this explanation.

A whistles, his the sign language of stretching, the reach and various kinds of walkings and runnings and continuous movements, or noticeable stops.

An irresponsible poem for someone who will never read it. Who has all of that incidental mail. While you can still assume a position to inquire, “what kind of a man will I be?”

I worry about alternate universes where I would have written timeless songs but here in this world I just get a little melody & fuck it up & it fades out of earshot.

Lost it all as ever I knew it, down to the sand and gravel. I don’t think I’ll ever be able to answer to anyone at all. She’s so near that it seems she’ll disappear if I take back a routine all my own.

What I did was I took my two bags from the closet, the ones with all the letters, the ones from my life as it had been, and I read them all and I drank Aberlour and I saw in that way who I’d been.

I started to burn the letters–by then I was tight–and I made a mess with fire in the kitchen on the floor. When I got that under control I took what was left of the letters and put them back in one bag and went out into the snow and night and took them down the concrete staircase at the end of the block and past the last houses and down the road through the bramble along the traintracks to the pond at Panther Hollow and threw them out there as far as I could but there was ice under a certain deceptive layer of melted water and so eventually I had to find rocks and throw them at the bag until I sank it.

A certain theme was inserted into everything he played: Chained to the helm ash whe wor, what wit incantated flow of intensely fetishized words (“wishful insulation of language from action”), Pola rised upon the narrow common frontier of two immeasurable stretches. “What is important in life is life and not a result of life,” but that will be true of any complex system, before it comes to be understood, and its principles of organization and function are discovered.

I hope you enjoy this evening’s presentation. By way of further intriduction, I’d like to say a few words about my latest subject matter. You may be familiar with great figures. Many of them including If you are somehow desperate, you can read my copy. I have also given important consideration to work regarding those worlds of associated inquiry impressed, fully irradiated, by neutron imagined death machines appropriated and You will also find in this collection, plainly spoken, an Important Manifesto, a transposition of the life and times, insprations for which I am eternally greatful. A selection of positions on matters of current urgency is also provided, and when we meet I wish

Living on a modest inheritance and making only infrequent forays into the public arena-in short, the existence of a private scholar, once a familiar species, now almost extinct (or something by which you are happy to be measured). Blessed as I am able to cast this white noise dream for you, of no more want for address than you or I know, within the foreigner’s compound,

So son, instead of crying, be strong, so as to be able to comfort your mother. take her for a long walk in the quiet country, gathering wild flowers here and there. But remember always, Dante, in the play of happiness, don’t use all for yourself only. help the persecuted and the victim because they are your better friend. in this struggle of life you will find more and love and you will be loved. (Sacco)

Instead I relax, in it for the long haul

A terrible demon. A malignant power. A miracle to even be aware of it–tourtures unvisited on ignoranter ilk–call it all genius, or at any rate, the product of our collective rampant overwraught–to the gas chambers! to the landfills! We shall undream every cataclysm, this why I cry.

Repetitive Pneumatic Task Chair. Nowadays, these trainloads of bodies will just turn up anywhere. Probably later, a third man will be arrested. So, get to know your neighbors.

I was very clever and had ideas which were called for. I carefully collect the alphabet, presume preservers, recognitions of patterns or representations implying movements which imply circles.

Josephine Baker–they called her a vampyre & she went away empty handed. Oh! the stars and bars my Carmen. Service the visiting merchant.

Turpenoid sunsets. Matters of building & substance, unperturbed directness, uncouth deletions–one sketch after the other. I’ll fill them in later.

Echoes of the glass-jawed demagogue & the elusive art of conversation. Ever older, uncommitted. Uncalled for. Smaller phrases. But listen to me bitching. How much time do you need and for what? Standing stones? The hapless fugitive’s conversation piece, is a convex diction conviction: undenied indescribed assurance.

On my way here this evening I missed the first 5 Fulton for walking down to the stop instead of running, there it goes, & the 2nd for then immediately stepping up into the park astride the senior center for a pissdrag, which I did not even get because of picnic-table-sitting park workers nearby over thermoses. Uncivil misobedience. This will happen. Familiarly, I went right back and into the bus stop shelter & sat down on the slanty seat & didn’t even fire up because there was a guy right there in his car with the hood up & two kids playin ball with a tennis ball on the Avenue around traffic.

Then this old lady with no dentures came slanting across the crosswalk asking me but at the same time telling me that the 2nd bus had been Out of Service/Garage, & I didn’t feel it would make her feel any better to tell her about the 1st one we had missed.

Her grandson had been taken by her in-laws because last night her daughter had been arrested for driving with a suspended license. And you know when your kids young like you it’s like you growin up with them. Even she herself was now not stumbling around. Just a taste. She had gone to collect her pay, not even to work, just to collect her pay, and been fired. And she was just going to get her pay but they said it was no good for the children. As if they didn’t drink themselves with all that finest liquor in the cabinet. Every weekend when she cleaned and watched the children she tasted some of it all and it was all the best, he is a lawyer with a German car. But these hypocrites with their slave names say they never drink with the children around, maybe they lock them in another room at that time, but anyway he said to his wife, told her to “just mail it to her, she’s too drunk to be walking around with that cash on her.” And already by now the boy’s grandfather was going to probably have him. Where is that damn bus.

A study of real & imagined windmills, comets, overdue novae, Parisian millennial nightlife (including doorway graffiti found across the street from the Picasso museum, as refracted (barker-ed) through longest-standing English booksellers), handmade Italian saxophones from the 1940s, and which is dedicated to Irish/Lithuanian wedding bonds in particular; with love, friendship, interpretation, and understanding in general.

There’s her dresser covered in shells and pebbles. There’s her collage of dogs and promises mistaken for love. There are her three b&w photos of abandoned brick buildings and there is her moon mirror, her green plate, her flat square ceramic clock.

I asked her again to clear out of my room. She told me that she had already told me that it would be August not July before she could move.

I meant to tell her that she was going to make the lives of people around her tough in life but what I told her was that she was going to have a tough life. “The only time my life has been tough has been the last 3 years,” she said.

Later she tells me she wants to tell me she’s sorry to have said that.

Once you have stakes, now it’s a contest. I sure hated to be the one to tell ya. But I guess it’s good that is was me. I want to show people how to make as much as they can out of what they have.

The moon is a fossil. A swarm of yellow flies. Shaved my head and got a sunburn. The rarity of the assemblage led me to believe that I’d actually been elsewhere, amnesiated.

The closet is closed, so her wardrobe, decorated inside with drawings of an operatic dream she once had night after night, does not emphasize my complicity. Who knows what she will take from the bathroom.

as I retire from this uniquely spectacular visage to preserve: the cannonshot surf, luminescent green waves, foaming spray oxygenated sky of solid, uninterrupted blue, suspended with pelican birds & ocean ducks

my seat in the cavernous inlet a smooth stone among much bouldered rubble of landslide into the sea. occasionally, splashed by the largest waves 18 feet down in the cauldron, saltwater steam. row after row, unceasing current, white topped turbulence.

in front of me, guarding and directing the sunset, an indication, obtrusive, massive barometer of our precious fury.

kissing rock.

the birds higher, as in the sinking sun.

to my north, two ridges and the sheer jagged headland cliffs. bay black sand beaches hidden by distant fog, by soft shadowed churn, taller as the moon rises.

explodes & emancipates. scatters the breath. unprepared soup.

fifty miles offshore, towering, the bank waits, hungry for sun. when the sun drops, all of this will change in seconds.

(2000)

Coherent catastrophism holds that evolution (particularly human civilization) has been affected by earth-impacting cosmic events far more frequently than previously understood.

This theory is not new. The historic record shows us that many societies practiced astronomy in conjunction with tales of destruction from the sky. But in the 20th century, as humanity mastered industrialization and the atom, these records from antiquity seemed quite unbelievably out of place and were rarely considered in the appropriate context.

The root of the modern resurgence and re-examination of the notion of cosmic catastrophe can be traced primarily to the widespread acceptance in the early 1980s of the Yucatan impact event as being responsible for the extinction that killed off the dinosaurs. Prior to this notion entering the mainstream there was little societal awareness of extra-terrestrial events having had such an effect on evolution, despite increased understanding of the cometary cause of the 1908 Tunguska event (in which a comet caused an enormous nuclear blast in a remote area of Siberia).

However, it was not until the Shoemaker-Levy comet impact event on Jupiter in 1994 that science was forced to accept that this kind of destructive event was not limited to a 65 million year timeframe, and the Tunguska event was more properly understood as a close call for civilization. Additionally, our understanding of the asteroid belt, Kuiper belt, Oort cloud, scattered disc, and interstellar space per se has increased greatly thanks to the Hubble space telescope and other recent satellites, which has had the ultimate effect of humbling any perception that we can somehow track all of the dangers we face from on high. While NASA makes an effort to document objects in the asteroid belt, the greater danger is from comets, which do not lie in a convenient solar system plane. In addition to approaching us from any angle, comets are pitch black until they get very close to our sun, at which time they begin to melt and so become visible– we can’t see them until they are practically on top of us.

New Light On The Black Death (2006) suggests contemporary 14th century AD accounts of comets, fiery meteors, earthquakes, destruction, infected air, and vast clouds of noxious vapors correspond to a major earthquake on January 25, 1348, which most likely was not a tectonic earthquake but rather one generated by a series of comet impacts. These impact events were in turn responsible for the greatest pandemic known to humanity, the Black Death, which killed 2/3 of mankind in a few short years. The contemporary accounts jive with several comet indicators (not the least of which was the observation in 1347 of Comet Negra, the “Black Comet”): a global tree-ring downturn followed by a universal recovery; a change in the frequency of long-period comet observations (i.e., after humanity almost gets wiped out by a comet, people pay more attention to noting and tracking comets); a sub-peak in tsunami occurrence and increase in carbon dioxide (suggestive of ocean turnover generated by impactors); and ammonia in the atmosphere in 1348 (suggestive of extra-terrestrial biological agents). As interesting as the author’s case for solving the Black Death mystery, the more pressing point is that any number of destructive events from the historic record have never been tested for signs of extra-terrestrial impact origin– a serious oversight.

Indeed, the impact event of 1348 AD appears to be but one of many that have happened during human history (the author in this case also provides evidence to suggest the Justinian plague of AD 542 and the plague of Athens in AD 430 may also have been precipitated by cosmic impacts). Advances in satellite imaging are increasing our knowledge in this area, as demonstrated by the Holocene Impact Working Group.

Most recently, multi-discipline evidence points to a comet storm impact event on earth about 13,000 years ago, known as Younger Dryas Impact Event. This event wiped out most of the world’s remaining megafauna (mastadons, sabre tooth tigers), as well as early human societies such as the Clovis people. Richard Firestone, Victor Clube, and others have built strong cases that this event was the source of a worldwide fire and flood disaster that is at the heart of the creation mythology of many cultures, including the biblical tale of Noah and Plato’s story of the destruction of Atlantis. Further, the case is made that civilization as we know it was humanity’s response to this worldwide disaster: it is soon after this time that mankind changed from hunter-gatherer to agricultural based civilization, and the beginning of history as we know it. The theory is that an explosion of language, writing, and science occurred among the survivors of this disaster as a collective method to persevere.

Human civilization on Earth has faced the most impact danger from the Taurids. It is theorized that this annual meteor shower is the remnants of a super-comet that was captured in orbit between Jupiter and the sun some 30,000 years ago, and broken into pieces. Comet Encke is one of the pieces; it is thought that a fragment in turn of Encke was responsible for the Tunguska blast. Many past civilizations (for example, the Bronze Age peoples) have destruction mythologies specifically linked to the Taurids.

There were certainly other events before and after the Dryas that illustrate the importance of catastrophe in evolution. The Toba Catastrophe Theory, for example, points to a supervolcanic event (precipitated by a cosmic impactor?) in Indonesia 70,000 years ago–not long after homo sapiens first ventured out of Africa– which killed off every human being on earth down to perhaps as few as a hundred breeding pairs. Every one of us can trace our DNA to this bottleneck of evolution.

Another theory regards the Geminga supernova in the constellation Gemini (which is next to Taurus). This is now a pulsar remnant, but it was likely a very close star (between 80-800 light years away) when it went supernova sometime between 300,000 – 40,000 years ago. In any case, our Stone Age ancestors saw it. The explosion was so large that it blew a huge hole in the space around it, a 300-light-year-wide “bubble” vacuum where the density of atomic particles is 1/10th that of normal interstellar space. Our solar system is well within this cavity.

The Geminga supernova traces back to some of the earliest human legends about a twin blue sun that suddenly appeared in the sky, sometimes with the sun, sometimes with the moon. A close supernova would have battered earth with waves of radiation and cosmic debris (including sending existing debris such as comets on new, earth-impacting courses) over tens of thousands of years. Thus the major extinction that has been underway these past 10,000 years (and is considered by many scientists to be the largest such event in the history of life on earth) can be seen to have its genesis in a supernova, which killed via irradiation as well as fires and floods associated with related waves of impact events. The massive irradiation also caused genetic mutations among survivors. The likely mutations among human beings were new blood types (A and B), larger brains, and the genetic bottleneck associated with the Toba eruption: all of which ultimately coincide with the explosion of human creativity which brought about civilization as we know it. Further, as in previous extinction events, this allowed for one species (in this case, humans) to overpopulate the earth, to disastrous environmental effects– furthering along the extinction event.

Life on earth itself is now traced to a period about 4 billion years ago known as the Late Heavy Bombardment, whereupon the alignment of planets in our solar system was such to hurtle millions of objects from the Kuiper belt into the inner solar system. You can see the effects of this disaster on the face of the moon any given night. Theory is that this bombardment of interstellar material brought both water and eventually, life to earth.

Prior to the Late Heavy Bombardment was the biggest catastrophic impact in earth’s history: the formation of the moon. The moon formation theory in favor holds that the early earth was impacted by a proto-planet nearly half the size of earth itself, which resulted in the formation of the moon. Scientists refer to this as “time zero” as it completely eliminated any and all geological formations that were present on earth prior to the impact. Whatever was on earth before the moon formation, we’ll never know!

More reading and related, on-going articles from the media:

Contemporary impact tracking, and more essays on coherent catastrophism.

Did an asteroid cause this ancient tsunami?

Comet Encke and the Taurid Streams

Meteor Impact Sickens Peruvian Viallagers

2006 Norway Impact

Panspermia theory

Comet Swift-Tuttle

The Cosmic Serpent by Victor Clube

The Cosmic Winter by Victor Clube

(2002) Duncan Steel Coherent Catastrophism

Coherent Catastrophism and the Clovis Comet

Uriel’s Machine: Uncovering the Secrets of Stonehenge, Noah’s Flood and the Dawn of Civilization by Christopher Knight

The Cycle of Cosmic Catastrophes: How a Stone-Age Comet Changed the Course of World Culture by Richard Firestone

Worlds In Collision by Immanuel Velikovsky

Rain of Iron and Ice: The Very Real Threat of Comet and Asteroid Bombardment by John Lewis

Death From The Skies by Phil Plait

Return of the Mega Tsunami

Exactly 15 years after the original Shoemaker-Levy comet impacts on Jupiter, which jump-started the debate on coherent catastrophism, Jupiter is impacted again.

Supernovas have scoured most life off the earth before, and will do it again. Massive white dwarf in our galaxy may go supernova

Building block of life found on comet – “The discovery of glycine in a comet supports the idea that the fundamental building blocks of life are prevalent in space, and strengthens the argument that life in the universe may be common rather than rare,” said Carl Pilcher, the director of the NASA Astrobiology Institute in California, which co-funded the research.”

Second Toba-like human population bottleneck occurred 1MYA

11,500 year old Turkish temple thought to be oldest human monument, post-hunter-gatherer, but pre-civilization. Timing = Younger Dryas Impact Event

Questioning the role of other planets in directing asteroid trajectories

WISE telescope to search for the Sun’s brown dwarf Nemesis (26M year coherent catastrophism cycle)

King Tut’s jewelery made from glass produced by Tunguska-type meteor burst 800K YA

early migrations that died out are always interesting. Gogmagog and other Nephilim type pre-Toban-eruption-DNA-bottleneck survivors?

2009: super-supernova SN2007bi – is coherent catastrophism why we can’t find extraterrestrial life?

Comet McNaught (2007) revealed to leave enormous, chemically complex wake

(2010) The Shocking Size Of Comet McNaught

Comet Storm Across North America 13,000 Years Ago

Fresh evidence for comet impact impetus in Younger Dryas extinction event

(2010) W.M. Napier Palaeolithic extinctions and the Taurid Complex “Sub-kilometre bodies in meteor streams may present the greatest regional impact hazard on timescales of human concern.”

Human civilization initiated by a shower of nuclear bombs across North America in 10,890BC

June 2010: another enormous impact explosion detected on Jupiter

June 2010: Third known impact on Jupiter in 16 years

November 2011: Giant asteroid passes between earth and moon, closest known event in 30 years

November 2011: Giant asteroid nearly hits earth

Panspermia: DNA from space confirmed

March 2012: Massive Extraterrestrial Rock Hit Earth 13 Millennia Ago, According to Nano-Evidence

March 2012: Evidence found for huge asteroid strike

March 2012: Comet May Have Collided With Earth 13,000 Years Ago

March 2012: Mexican Lake Bears Witness To Ancient Impact

Vela Supernova and Younger Dryas

Geminga and Vela supernova in human evolution

June 2012: New evidence for Younger Dryas Impact Event