http://search.deviantart.com/?q=by:sprat&section=today deviantART RSS for by:sprat en-us Copyright 2009, deviantART.com Sat, 19 Dec 2009 08:34:53 PST deviantART.com http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/tech/rss http://s.deviantart.com/minish/widgets/apple-touch-icon-precomposed.png http://sprat.deviantart.com/journal/28302910/ http://sprat.deviantart.com/journal/28302910/ Wed, 11 Nov 2009 20:37:58 PST "I have nothing to say, but I'll tell you everything."
-Some random ass note I stumbled upon

I am going to be as literal as possible here, for once.

Hey to everyone on dA. And hey to all the people scattered across the Southwest that I gave this web address to and then forgot about, and hey to my friends on Facebook that I gave this web address to and forgot about, and hey to whoever else reads this that I don't know about . . . you know it's occurred to me before to just get a blog, or censor some of the things I write in this journal, or think about them more carefully but . . . I honestly don't regret anything I've written in here. I just wish I would have elaborated more on certain things, wish I could have written more, been clear headed enough to remember everything.

That said, in the future I think I'll just keep everything in my notebooks, or write letters, or get another account on some other service to blog things. This is supposed to be for my "art". And, while I could make a case for the inseparability of art and life, and argue that my life is really just a twisted arts and crafts project that's gotten way out of hand (which it IS) all these notes and quotes and stories probably belong somewhere else. My mind throws things together in pretty haphazard ways, and I think that people, maybe especially people that actually know me, don't really understand what I've been trying to do with this thing, and assume the worst. I don't really want to be misunderstood, and I don't really want to play out the tortured artist stereotype so much, but shit happens. I started writing in this journal just because, and then I began to write it as open letters, and then I wrote in it to remember strange and/or entertaining things, and then I wrote in it just to remember anything. It was, and is, just as much for me as it is for you.

All that aside. I don't make enough art, and I need to get more serious about it. Start getting into figure drawing, start painting, quit drawing these zany tableaus that really go nowhere and confuse people. Maybe even go to art school (gasp). Though not yet.

I sold the guitar that I called Inkorruptible. I didn't even break even on the expense of lacquering and repair. The money paid for a few important things, like my next bus ticket out of Texas. I had a dream that finally convinced me to go through with the sale. The owner of the shop had a laminated copy of this newspaper article about a guitar show from a few years back with a picture of me in it that I didn't even know existed. That made me feel kinda cool. He says he's gonna give the guitar to his daughter. I didn't meet her, but I think she's meant to have it. I wasn't supposed to own that guitar in the first place.

I haven't done any drugs, or drank, or smoked cigarettes, or even had any coffee for about a month now. I seriously wanted to kill myself for about a week, but I've started to feel much better recently. I'm looking forward to traveling again, because it's gonna get cold as a motherfucker up here by winter time, and Ima be GONE.

I may write some more things, and it would be nice to get back to that short story I started, but that's a pretty ambitious piece, and I don't have much faith in my abilities as a writer, to be honest.

]]> ~sprat http://sprat.deviantart.com/journal/27942988/ http://sprat.deviantart.com/journal/27942988/ Sat, 24 Oct 2009 14:25:49 PDT "For a dream cometh through the
multitude of business; and a fool's
voice is known by multitude of words."
-Ecclesiastes 5:3

SACRIFICES:
*Equilibrium
*Car Keys
*Pride

And for what?
Why(,/?)this recursive discursive
equation.
This glorified toddler's toy; fit
the carved shapes into their respective
ni(etz)ches.
It's you and me
It's they and we
reducible to parody.
Approaches to the game of life:
Now accepting any applications
sung for supper to the tune of
CEASE all frivolity.
Any things and/or thoughts
thought genuinely fancy
be banished!. . .
. . . But send them somewhere
other than the trash heap so we
don't have to sift through them in
search of the old product packaging
and pathos we need to produce
professionally lacquered retro-
simulacra.
MY CONSCIENCE JUST RAN INTO
AN INVISIBLE WALL.
And you must mash melodrama
into mirth before you can spoon
feed it to the masses.
And life likes to toss us ropes of
gnosis while I tie my nooses of nous.
Only through a kind of selective
collective forgetting can we continue
to wage our wars over that
taxonomy of rumor called
history that we blend so judiciously
and deliciously with pageantry
and memory.

-Like a single pinball among
6,000,000,000+ others in a machine
currently played by a childish, candy
hungry, gunpowder snorting demiurge
coming down off the tail end of a 4,000
year PCP binge.

Yours Truly,
XOXOXO
Tic Tac Toe
Three in a row

. . . now, where was I? Oh yes, the photos.

]]> ~sprat http://sprat.deviantart.com/journal/27600488/ http://sprat.deviantart.com/journal/27600488/ Mon, 05 Oct 2009 15:59:26 PDT "THE STREET OF CROCODILES was a concession of our city to modernity and metropolitan corruption. The misfortune of that area is that nothing ever succeeds there, nothing can ever reach a definite conclusion. Obviously, we were unable to afford anything better than a cardboard imitation; a photo montage cut out from last year's mouldering newspapers."
-Bruno Schulz

I can only trace the events that led me here back about a month, and there's one in particular that sparked the chain; I was in San Antonio, wandering around on the river walk, when I saw a pigeon, sleeping. I guessed it must have been a female, because male pigeons are larger, and have rings of iridescent feathers that mark their necks, but it wasn't much more than a fledgling, so I might have been wrong. Anyways, she was sleeping, at the edge of the sidewalk, while all the tourists and businesspeople passed by on their way to bars and restaurants.

She seemed healthy enough, and her wings weren't broken as far as I could tell, but she obviously couldn't fly. I was glad, because I'd tried to take care of another bird that I'd found earlier this year in Denver who apparently had avian polio; wings were fine, no parasites, but she had paralyzed legs. I probably should've broken her neck when I saw her flopping around in the alley, but I couldn't do it. I carried her around in a shoebox for about a week before I left the box on the front porch of a speakeasy in five points, and a cat ate her. I felt terrible after that, and figured that I had something karmic to work out with this new one, who seemed to at least have a fighting chance. I nudged her with my hand; she ruffled her sparse, grimy feathers and looked up at me. I extended my arm and nudged her again. She stepped up onto my arm, so then I put her on my shoulder, and went on walking.

She refused to eat at first, but after a day or two, I could feed her from my palm; a paste of crushed potato chips and fries, sometimes bugs. She'd try to fly sometimes, but couldn't get very far, so she'd always come back to my shoulder. Everyone I passed on the street gave me really strange looks; lots of people made comments about the bird man of Alcatraz or some shit like that.

About three days after I found her, I turned a corner on the square across from the Alamo, in front of Ripley's Odditorium. A guy standing outside stopped me:

"Why do you have a pigeon on your shoulder?"
"I'm taking care of her"

He thought this was pretty curious. Surprising for anyone who spends much time around Ripley's, much less someone who (may or may not have) worked there. I told him that I'd been traveling, explained that I'd walked from Austin, that my guitar had been stolen (not the one in the gallery) that I was looking for some work, told him about my general experience, plans etc. He said he knew someone who owned a carnival ride, and was getting ready to set up for the state fair, that she would pay me $350 a week and take care of my living expenses for the month, including food.

You should know that, cynical as I am, I'm still willing to take someone at their word, mostly because I have nothing to lose if they're lying to me anymore; good faith, non-contractual (under the table if you wanna call a spade a spade) agreements have formed the basis of most of my lifetime earnings. If I have to use money at all, I like cash. It sounded like a great deal, but I really didn't understand what I was getting into. I acknowledged as much when I accepted the offer, but hey, it's the fuckin' fair. I had to check this out. Besides, now that I had no guitar, and no ink drawings, selling shitty poems that I'd never see again for a quarter apiece and sharing tips with the pigeon was only getting me so much to eat, and I was tired of sardines and chips and gas station food.

We drove up to Dallas about a week later. If you've never been to Dallas, or seen it, you're missing a lot, in two ways. You're also not really missing much at all. I think that if Gotham city were real, it would probably be Dallas; the whole city is nothing but cement, steel, skyscrapers, mirrored glass panes, and angled architecture that makes a person feel small and rather insignificant. It's like Ayn Rand and Frank Lloyd Wright had some really intense mind sex that somehow spawned a major metropolis. The Deep Ellum club district is legendary, so is the city's crime rate. If you've lived in the place for more than 6 months without having your car or house broken into, you are in the statistical minority. I won't say there's not fun to be had and things to experience, because there most definitely are, but the fun is limited to commerce of some kind or another; very few places there are pleasant enough to just hang out, and there are no sights to see.

As soon as I got there, I had to learn, in two days, how to set up and operate a carnival ride. S... ]]> ~sprat http://sprat.deviantart.com/journal/27112052/ http://sprat.deviantart.com/journal/27112052/ Wed, 09 Sep 2009 11:19:46 PDT
"I just want a girlfriend and an apartment. Is that so much to ask? And if I can't have that, then I just want God, Jesus, Jehovah, Yahweh, Elohim to come and crack the sky!"
-Francisco the prophet*
*Age:19
Hometown: Brooklyn, NY

"Why do you like chess so much?"
"I don't really, but, I just think it's so much like life. Also, it's like art."
"You mean like strategy?"
"Not even, I mean, strategy is one thing. But . . . like yesterday I was playing with this one dude at the park and . . . it got really intense. There was a fight. That's why Francisco's shirt is ripped. But then, we sat down again to play. I created this really beautiful sequence of moves that completely turned the game around, and it was like everything that had happened in the previous 20 minutes repeated itself on the board."
-Jared the chess player*
*Age:26
Hometown: Flint, MI

You should know this about me, if you know anything:

The utter contempt and disgust that I feel towards the world, humanity, those close to me, and myself is tempered only by my undying love and gratitude for all of the same, and that depends on how much I've slept, the quantity and quality of food in my stomach, and whatever superfluous chemicals I have or haven't ingested. This is the truth, as best I can tell it. If that makes me anything, I just hope it's human.

]]> ~sprat http://sprat.deviantart.com/journal/27033021/ http://sprat.deviantart.com/journal/27033021/ Sat, 05 Sep 2009 10:33:08 PDT
1. An aluminum "book" style sign that fell off the back of a big truck designed to transport industrial chemicals. It's diamond shaped, and it flips and locks down to warn people about the contents of the tank, or just describe them, the signs are: RADIOACTIVE, FLAMMABLE SOLID, FLAMMABLE GAS, NON-FLAMMABLE GAS, FLAMMABLE, OXIDIZER, DANGEROUS, POISONOUS, CORROSIVE. By the time I got to town there was a big political demonstration about universal healthcare or taxes or some such. I just held up the sign that said radioactive, since everyone else seemed to have a sign or picket of some sort.
2. A fork and a spoon.
3.Half a pack of fresh cigarettes (SCORE!!)
4.Three bandannas (that brings the total I own to 4)
5.Two ballcaps (one is a Harley Davidson cap, the other one just says "Don't Mess With Texas").
6.One of those studded rubber finger cots for turning book pages faster.
7.Three pipes; 2 aluminum cigarette one-hitter bats and a sneak a toke.
8.A black rubber belt with studs and washers on it (doesn't fit me).
9.CD: Sublime's Greatest Hits (don't know why anyone would throw this out a window).
10.A porno DVD (I decided to leave this one alone, since I don't have accesss to a DVD player, and don't count anal gangbangs among my admittedly not so carnal fetishes).
11. Twenty five feet of electrical wire.
12.Some shiny southwestern style engraved belt decorations; a lone star motif and a bullrider.
13. About 5 marbles.
14. A POLISHED chunk of amethyst (no shit!)

I love the way it feels to crush ice between your teeth when it's 100+ degrees Farenheit and 80% humidity. I love the way your mind clears and you stop thinking with words after walking more than 10 miles in a stretch. I love the way your feet start to hurt so bad that they just stop hurting and all you know is to put one in front of the other. I love the way that semi-trucks leave a strong gust of "wind wake" like land boats when they pass you at 80+ mph. I love the way the screaming noise of traffic whizzing past blurs together into a soothing hum that starts to rival OM. I love balancing on the rails of overpasses and walking over them like a balance beam when the shoulder of the road is too small to walk on safely. I love the way bananas taste when you haven't eaten one in over 2 months and you're starving; like the best banana you've ever eaten, like it's supposed to taste; like it tasted when you were 3 years old. I love the way your shirt can get so soaked with sweat that you stop being hot and start to cool down. And I'm well aware that authenticity is dead, but you know something? Fuck that.

]]> ~sprat http://sprat.deviantart.com/journal/26814651/ http://sprat.deviantart.com/journal/26814651/ Tue, 25 Aug 2009 10:54:08 PDT
"There are two kinds of prisons. In one kind, a man is behind bars, and the things he desires are all outside. In the other kind, the things are behind bars." -Upton Sinclair

"Man I see all these fuckin' people everywhere runnin' around all the time and I wonder why I don't just kill 'em all like the PYRAMID man just cut the TOP right off fuck the eye! Naw . . . hm. Hmmmmmmmm. nyungh. OK, maybe leave the eye. Damncommunistsman. Sure. Sure. Let 'em play with computers man." -This guy that sat next to me for awhile

"Aaah yes. Compassion. That is what one feels for a caterpillar that has been squished." -Ayn Rand

"I woke up this morning. It's raining. I'm homeless and my heart hurts. Fuck this zen bullshit. I need a beer." -Anonymous

"[pink slip] [depression] [no middle class]
[welfare check $] [suicide is shameless]
[see you on my corner] [dreams do come true]
[MHMR] [factory closed] [is anyone listening?]
[streetcorner artist] [no parties]
[no hiking zone] [POSTED]
[Blind] [do not feed the bears] [bank closure]
[no open containers]
[POT] [no loitering]
[deep within the hundred acre wood]
[GREAT AMERICAN BUYOUT] [no littering]
[a manic state] [no smoking]
[group home junkie]
[no picnic baskets]
[no trespassing] [lover's leap] [DON'T BURN]
[don't feed the squirrels]
[the price of being free] [Dog walk] [no graffiti]
[no nudity permitted]
[CRACK] [wind warning] [fire danger]
[no children] [danger zone] [going backwards]
[no motor vehicles]
[street whore] [Children's area]
[Who gives a damn?] [fried] [certified dumpster diver]
[ASH REJECT] [curfew: park closed at 10 PM]
[Don't pick the daisies] [hippie hollow] [no beer]
[nowhere to hide]
[ARCH] [SCHIZO-AFFECTIVE w/ BI-POLAR TENDENCIES]
[the American Vet] [lost in the land of milk and honey]
[Quiet Zone]" - Jeremiah Hurta Jr. (it was a drawing first)

Last night I went for a walk in the cemetery. I got hung up on one of the spiky points on the fence (it almost got my nuts); it still hurts today.
I walked for awhile and stopped at a large white marble tomb that apparently belonged to a former governor. I tried to rest under an oak tree but a larval cicada dropped down onto my shirt and clung to it. I scooped him up into an empty cigarette box and took him to the governor's grave; he walked a circle around the rim of this urn type thing that's supposed to hold a torch and then went back to the grass:

"This above all: to thine own self be true, And it must follow, as the night the day, thou canst not then be false to any man."

I tried to lie back down under the tree again but another cicada dropped out of it. So I went back downtown. I found an unopened bottle of wheat beer on the side of the street. It was warm so I got a big cup of ice to put it in; it tasted like fruity pebbles soda that gets you drunk. I realized that I was missing a file folder full of important things, and that it was still at the cemetery. So I walked a mile back to it, hopped the fence again, and got the file folder. But the beer and the walking had made me drowsy, so I fell asleep for a few hours (away from a tree) and had really weird dreams; the sprinklers woke me up.

]]> ~sprat http://sprat.deviantart.com/journal/26587852/ http://sprat.deviantart.com/journal/26587852/ Fri, 14 Aug 2009 11:04:56 PDT
I was gonna write one when I submitted another guitar (just finished one) and make a big deal over breaking the 3,000 pageview mark. Thanks so so much to R3LIC28 and Kitten-of-Woe for the DD. Made my week. Go check their pages. Now I guess I really owe R3LIC28 that commission piece.

Ummm, for everyone who's been asking, I'll spill the not so secret trade secrets on modding the acoustic guitars, 'cause I wanna see more of them, and I hope it becomes a folk art movement (I'm a total geek for Antiques Roadshow, it's awesome):

Step 1: Start with an acoustic guitar; any will do, but spruce tops are a bit better than cedar; remove the pick guard for more space to cover if you want to.

Step 2: Sand the finish down some with sandpaper (400 grit seems to work just fine), but only if it is a gloss finish. Don't sand it down ALL the way to the wood, it gets too porous. Acoustic guitars have gloss (french lacquer), or matte (satin) finishes. You can work directly on top of a satin finish.

Step 3: Sharpie it up. Don't use fine tip black Sharpies for this; they're not true black, more like a dark, coppery maroon, and they don't hold well. Just buy a pack of 5 regular sharpies and switch them out as the tips get dull (you won't use up all the ink in any one marker). I've never used colors. Don't smudge it! Wash your hands before and while you work, wood absorbs oils pretty readily. You can also cut the fingertips off of some latex gloves, or put a paper towel under your hand. Should you happen to screw something up, keep an X-acto knife on hand (but seriously, just don't screw up).

Step 4: Take the guitar to a PROFESSIONAL and have them do the finishing; gloss looks best. You may have to touch up some of the work during the finishing process, since it goes through multiple coats and buffering. I don't recommend that you do this part yourself, because polyurethane in a spray can has a solvent to keep it in liquid form, which will probably make the ink bleed. Also, putting to much on will compromise the tone of the guitar; a luthier will know what to do. Ought to run you $80-120.

So, that's that. I'm really excited to look through all these galleries and fave cool stuff and comment. Thanks to everyone for the faves and watches and whatnot. Will have pics of the next guitar up pretty soon, and hopefully the last ink drawing I did in Colorado.

In general news . . . I made $40 busking last night. Not bad; will probably go out again tonight. I think I could've made more if I'd stayed out later. I'm still in Texas. I might stay. I dunno. There's only one reason I've stayed this long, and I've yet to see how things will go with that. I need to find a comfy spot under a tree for a nap pretty soon here, and get something to eat.

Also, if you've been digging around in my journals . . . good luck with that. Don't assume anything.

Love y'all.

]]> ~sprat http://sprat.deviantart.com/journal/26467889/ http://sprat.deviantart.com/journal/26467889/ Sat, 08 Aug 2009 16:10:38 PDT "Ok, so we'll start like this. Here's some saline solution. Do you have a mirror? We'll both take a quarter, and then rail another eighth. That ought to get things in gear."

"Are you happy?"
"Right now? No, just elevated."

"I've been drawing for 15 hours without even getting up, and I'm only halfway done. My hand is cramped, my arm aches so bad I can hardly lift it."
"It looks good. Finish it."
"I feel . . . transparent. just barely here. Ghostlike. Everything seems . . . pale, bright, hollow. You too. I want to sleep so badly, but I can tell it's not going to happen."


THE FOUNDATION
"It's like a website. People access it, and they all process the information differently, take different things away. But the information is the same. This thing we are experiencing is a website accessible through a chemical channel. What are you going to do with the information?"

"We stop forest fires, but some trees need fire to reproduce, need heat to open their cones and release pollen. When you don't allow a good burn, certain species of tree overrun the forest, and choke out the others."

"I almost forgot, I've got cool rocks!! Here's one for you, and one for you, and one for you!"
"What are these?"
"That's tiger eye, the other one's amethyst, that last one is like flint or something, good for starting fires and making arrowheads."
'Where'd you get these?"
"The tiger eye was a gift, I found the amethyst outside that girl's apartment. I found the flint outside of yours."

"Yeah, I see you watchdog, and you've done well, but you've got a master too, and he's got a master. We're all under someone's thumb."

"If you had a spirit animal, what would it be?"
"A platypus."
"What?"
"Yeah dude, an egg laying aquatic mammal with poisonous claws, a duck's bill, and a beaver's tail. Could anything be cooler?"
"You know you're not supposed to tell anyone what it is."
"I don't care if anyone knows."
"Why the Platypus?"
"They say it's proof that God has a sense of humor."

"Dude, check out the graffiti that someone left at this place."
"What's it say?"
"ARE YOUR IDEAS REAL, OR ARE YOU JUST FUCKING STUPID?"
"Perfect place to write that, out here with this view of the city."
"Well, what do you think?"
"What, about that statement?"
"Yeah, what's your response?"
"Mmmm . . . I'd say both."


GEISHA(3:00 AM)
"Has she come out of the bathroom yet?"
"Not since you left, I've just been out here on the patio . . . she's been soaking in the tub listening to death metal for about 3 hours now. Seems kinda odd, I mean, death metal isn't really soaking in the tub kinda music."
"Well, to each their own. Maybe she figured it would keep her awake. She took half a Xanax earlier and I think she drank about 3 cans of Mickey's."
"Why the fuck didn't you tell me that? GO CHECK ON HER."
(3 minutes later)
"She's passed out on the bathroom floor with a towel wrapped around her."
"Shit. Check her head. Make sure she didn't fall and hit it. Talk to her, see if she's responsive. I really don't want to go to the hospital tonight."
. . .
"She's talking, barely."
"Well, see if you can get some clothes on her and put her to bed, if she can walk. I'll help you carry her if necessary. Here, take my stopwatch and check her heart rate."
"What should it be? 120 beats per minute?"
"No, 120 bpm is about twice the human heart rate, that's more like a dance induced trance state; resting should be between 60 and 100."
. . .
"87 beats per minute. She's in bed."
"She'll be fine. She's just gonna feel like shit tomorrow."


DAY LABOR
"For awhile I been sleepin' over there down the street behind that building on this couch that someone threw out. Never had no trouble with cops, 'cept every once in awhile they would wake me up, askin' 'How're you doin? Anybody botherin' you? You hungry?'. Nowadays these young fucks kick me in the side an' ask 'What the fuck are you doin' out here? You drunk? GET UP'"
"Yeah, I caught tuberculosis in Colorado a few years back. Didn't even know I had it until I was at a carnival one day doin' one of those strong man games with the hammer and one of the bells that rings when you hit it real good. My lung blew out, hurt like hell. I didn't even know what had happened so I went to go smoke a joint with this girl in her car. Just kept gettin' worse after that, started hackin'. Eventually I got to the hospital and they figured out what was wron... ]]> ~sprat http://sprat.deviantart.com/journal/25822686/ http://sprat.deviantart.com/journal/25822686/ Wed, 08 Jul 2009 17:11:08 PDT
"That's not soup, that's laundry!!"

"Don't throw that bucket of fruit pieces away, we're saving that to make hooch!"

"What did you have for breakfast?"
-"Ummm . . . a ball of hash, some gingko, B vitamins, green tea, and adderall."

"If you'll help clear all the shit out from under that awning so we can use it for vendors' space, I will PERSONALLY take you to town so you can get a real shower."

***An entire bag of reading glasses? There must be like, at least 80 pairs of these damn things in here . . . What the fuck?***

"That's not normal dust, that's Mesa dust. Try to avoid sweeping it across the room, or you'll stir it into a cloud and it'll coat every surface. It's also got tons of mold and fungus spores in it. Just sweep it into small piles, and deal with those, one at a time."

"This is not a good time to make ganja butter and start cooking food, everyone is already sitting around smoking pot and not working, and we have less than a week to get the site ready . . ."

"Can I put my thumbprint on the tickets?"
"That would probably be a better anti-counterfeiting measure than this monkey stamp, so sure."

"Someone's coming in with a backhoe to push all that junk to the perimeter of the land."
"Why?"
"To make a wall out of it, so no one can get in without paying."

"Where'd you sleep last night?"
"On top of the school bus."

]]> ~sprat http://sprat.deviantart.com/journal/25476697/ http://sprat.deviantart.com/journal/25476697/ Mon, 22 Jun 2009 14:59:13 PDT -Rudyard Kipling, from "Verses"

"Quotation is a serviceable substitute for wit"
-Oscar Wilde

]]> ~sprat http://sprat.deviantart.com/journal/25290220/ http://sprat.deviantart.com/journal/25290220/ Sat, 13 Jun 2009 11:54:50 PDT and changed position in the sky
fear flooded in and panic
lit the world from inside."
-Anonymous

"I want God, I want poetry
I want danger, I want freedom,
I want goodness, I want sin."
-Aldous Huxley

"Sometimes naked
Sometimes mad
Now the scholar
Now the fool
Thus they appear on earth:
The free men"
-Hindu verse

"To the maids struggling to comprehend, he pointed out the cage and its gaudy occupant. It was there in the snapshot. Switters on the left, Maestra in the middle, Sailor on the right. Or, as Maestra had written in a wavering hand on the lower border of the photo: the Slacker, the Hacker, and the Polly-Wanna-Cracker."
-Tom Robbins, from "Fierce Invalids Home From Hot Climates"

]]> ~sprat http://sprat.deviantart.com/journal/25031202/ http://sprat.deviantart.com/journal/25031202/ Sat, 30 May 2009 10:40:14 PDT By Shane Hinton

TEARING AWAY THE SPINES FROM ALL OF THE BOOKS EVERYWHERE
I don't know what to say to make these words mean what they were intended to mean; I don't know how to give them back. They have lost their way somehow, been distorted and scaled, been taken out of context. Small parts of them have been magnified and grotesque, other parts have fallen from the edge of the glass.

These books have pushed us to and fro; they have dictated our lives and our emotions up to this hollow point. They have mired us into this explosion and keep us going through it endlessly. They have sucked us down drain pipes, through garbage disposals, and ultimately into sewers where we simmer and wait; where we stew. They have formed us, given us sympathetic voices, given us hope.

But they just aren't enough. No words that I or anyone else could ever write could explain where we are right now. These words, coming from the past, do not take into account what we are seeing manifested in front of us this very second, in mornings that leave us woeful and weary, in evenings that bring us to mountainsides and thundering river banks.

These words are mediation. They were written with the best possible intentions: to open our eyes, to make us see things that we were blind to. However, they have become blinders themselves, limiting our experience to comparisons and contrasting moments. They have tied us down and slammed our faces into headboards and used us and left us on sidewalks that mirror our naked anticipation. They have told us that these days are useless and that we have no voices and that we are to measure ourselves by what has come before us, but we know that these are lies. We are ready for truths, and I...

I think we already know them. We have caught a flickering glimpse from the corners of our eyes, and it is the stopper hiding behind the murky bathwater that these words have been trying to sell us on for so long. It is waiting to release the floods.

So let's forget everything we've ever known about anyone or anything and let these days come to us as perfectly new and untouched as they wish. Let's let these days burn with the passions that pour from every pore and not try to stop them up with wine corks and spark plugs; let's let them consume us.

And let's run through the halls of all of the libraries and schools, tearing the spines from every book that has ever been printed and throwing the pages into the wind to be scattered like our thoughts and beliefs... to be distributed into the dirt. Let's let the boundaries of the past blur and drip out-of-focus to show something far more complete. Let's let today stand alone in a front room, not bound in leather or cardboard, not printed on parchment or wood pulp, not written in inks or charcoals or lines in the sand.

And as we look into the sky and the sun is obscured by a whirlwind of words, as the light is blotted out in a literary eclipse, as the day is plastered and strung up in grand hues of grey and orange, we will look into jaded eyes and see that there was nothing to fear all along, that we are simply growing into each other and there's nothing that anyone can do to stop that. We will finally realize it here, in streets that have gone silent, in alleyways that swallow us in wretched waves of waste. We will find that all these goddamn books have done is make us question what we know in patterns of our heartbeats to be truer than any words ever spoken or printed--and all that we can do is believe ourselves.


WINDOW PANES, SILICON DREAMS
Spittle flung from parched lips dries silently on the window pane as I wait patiently, staring out at a horizon overlain by clouds, and yet...

Somewhere in the distance a thin slit of light breaks through and sears itself into my retinas, lingering like a portrait of a fallen soldier. Composure falters and I find comfort in the incandescent potency outside myself. In unknowing; in purposeful ignorance. This somehow becomes omniscience... a circle of intellectual stumbling blocks. A misguided parade.

The window shivers and I can see the noise from the traffic passing below. Windshields, faces, screams, tires... rising in shattering rhythms that soar over, under, around and through all of us, here in this filthy city; drive us all insane. Push us closer to windowsills and forty-story leaps. We're dancing to it. It brings forth shallow emotions that stumble and rust in rainy season solitudes. It tries to define us with lines on a page, but we are non-linear and we are pages and we are volumes and we are libraries in length.

We are different. If you've made it this far and you're still standing, then at least we have something in common. We've found our melodies somewhere... and I can imagine that they might sound just fine if superimposed on one another...
~sprat http://sprat.deviantart.com/journal/24751743/ http://sprat.deviantart.com/journal/24751743/ Thu, 14 May 2009 10:36:37 PDT
"No, it couldn't be . . ."

I thought to myself before picking it up, all the while trying to figure out (hypothetically) just what one does with a crack rock other than ingest it somehow. I mean, surely you don't let such a commodity go to waste, right? (don't answer that) I figured maybe I could find someone and offer it to them in exchange for a cigarette or something.

"Uuuh, say dude, I just found some CRACK on my daily whistlin' walkabout . . . do YOU want it? I mean, you look like you might smoke crack. Got a cigarette? Awesome . . . have a nice day, enjoy."

But you can rarely tell that sort of thing just from a casual glance, unless you see the individual in question scratching up a storm, happen to notice funky white residue on their lips, and/or see them rambling incoherently, in which case they're good on that shit for the time being. But I digress, heavily, as usual.

However, upon closer inspection, said "crack rock" revealed its true identity; alas, it was an honest to god ROCK, to be more specific, a pebble, not so cleverly disguised as crack cocaine.

"Seriously?"

I thought, puzzled at this absurd yet quite linguistically appropriate hoax.

"Say playa, you smoke rocks? I gotcha. I got that shit right here."
(15 minutes later)
"Damn, how come this shit ain't burnin'?"

Somebody did not get their kicks yesterday, somebody else probably got their ass kicked, and I just got a kick out of the whole scenario. It all goes to show; we all wanna rock, but who wants a rock? Damn, just . . . damn.

]]> ~sprat http://sprat.deviantart.com/journal/24689008/ http://sprat.deviantart.com/journal/24689008/ Sun, 10 May 2009 15:16:36 PDT The blue glow screens never warned me
Life streaks by like shadows on glass
and time in 12 packs
like children sneezing
My eyes are my own
But my ears are 4 HEADPHONES.
Open it^"
-Anonymous

(written on the door to an antiquated
elevator machinery room in an equally
antiquated parking garage in downtown Denver)

]]> ~sprat http://sprat.deviantart.com/journal/23897461/ http://sprat.deviantart.com/journal/23897461/ Thu, 26 Mar 2009 10:30:49 PDT "O Why should the spirit of mortal be proud?"
The which is a typical poet's question
Born of temper or indigestion,
For poets, when their affairs go wrong,
Take it out in satiric song;
If all on their own they fall from grace,
They blast the whole of the human race;
They resent, when mocked by a passport photo,
Not their face, but mankind in toto.
Poets believe in pixies and elves
And blaming everyone but themselves.
Such was the poet who asked out loud
"O Why should the spirit of mortal be proud?"
A notable piece of rhymed invective,
Which proves the poet had no perspective.
His argument wins for the other side;
For the spirit of mortal should swell with pride
At producing the poet who asked out loud
"O why should the spirit of mortal be proud?"
The more annoyed that a poet gets,
The deeper he's buried in duns and debts,
The more he's flouted and jeered and jilted,
The further his cup of woe is tilted,
The more his liver is misbehaving,
The more he cuts himself while shaving,
The further his collar buttons roll,
The blacker the clouds that shadow his soul,
Why, the greater his scorn for his fellow man,
And a wasp is what he is busier than;
Apoplexy he's on the brink of,
He writes the nastiest he can think of.
Yet the more the world by him is scorned,
The more is the world by him adorned,
And the more at mortals he bites his thumbs,
The more immortal he becomes,
For people share through all creation
One weakness of the American nation;
The books they prize upon their shelves
Say the horridest things about themselves.
Is this fact hidden from the poet,
Or does the unscrupulous scribbler know it?

-Ogden Nash, circa 1935
selected from "I'm a Stranger Here Myself"

]]> ~sprat http://sprat.deviantart.com/journal/23222550/ http://sprat.deviantart.com/journal/23222550/ Sun, 15 Feb 2009 19:03:49 PST
go to an extreme,
move back to a more comfortable
position.

Oh, and;

Faced with a choice, do both.

]]> ~sprat http://sprat.deviantart.com/journal/21997215/ http://sprat.deviantart.com/journal/21997215/ Mon, 15 Dec 2008 12:55:48 PST
I was looking at the cactus on my back porch this morning; I collected him from a field in West Texas about three years ago and named him James. He doesn't need much of anything to keep growing; just to get set out in the rainy season. Otherwise, he just chills, and I consider him one of my friends. He needs a bigger pot though . . . I think I'll have to get on that.

]]> ~sprat