Tuesday, April 25, 2006

Ego Avulsion: The Comedown


“I’m high... and you’re gonna listen.”

The scene abounds with clamoring clowns, who pontificate on matters they know little about. This person is not unique even in that regard. Yeah, people want to communicate with others about their feelings, joys, sorrows and imagination. However, the psychological loadsharing in a pharma-social interface exacerbates this already annoying tendency. Simply being passionate does not make them right, wasted or not. Many of these people fashion themselves as experts, however they have nil to say. It is common sense that those who overplay their ‘knowledge’ usually have the least of it. Witness the Subtotal Resection of Social Skillz.

The Conversational Hostage is given brief respite as the tongue of our interlocutor unfurls at the sight of Tittling Tail. This would be a prime escape opportunity, except for the fact that you are too distracted by this hot side dish.

GANJO-PONTIFICATORS may sidle up, analyzing things so deeply that the entire picture misses them, delving into crypto-meanings, plunging into some abyss, where their fixation-sparing lenses can’t focus on the reality under their noses. They are usually bitter, haughty types who consider themselves on a more nuanced plane than the rest of us.


Then there are the ones who are a step beyond the Easy Breathers. There is no glory in dealing with people who sidle up like this. Recreational chemistry renders any remains of social acuity defunct, subsumed by the Animosity of the Correct. While that may win him lateral component attention for incredibly bad manners and see-saw logic, it offers little more. The subject’s claims of Increased Alertness erroneously frame his psychological state as Active Perceiver. In reality, he is misidentifying social cues or wholly superimposing delusions upon his orientation grid, resulting in violently motile response sequelæ.

The night ends with all bridges burned and nothing to show; herein lies the Wanton Gestalt. The hazy chemical curtain is swept aside by the dawn, leaving our hard partier to gaze soberly at the clown in the mirror...

Thursday, April 13, 2006

Pavone della Cristallo in Assisi


la bagascia in il luongo sacro esponendo al sole?

The basilica...
attracting pilgrims worldwide...
The saint... the animals he looks upon... his stigmata... and century’s remembrance.


And today there is one animal on monastery grounds...
a crystal peacock
preening fowl attracting light
refracting rays, attracting eyes?
distracting the reverent?

in human form
supine figure sprawled atop the wall
back of hand blocking brown eyes from the glare
beads of sweat gleaming on midriff
a languid arm hangs
a knee bends to the sky
soaking in the rays and breeze


Yes, a sensual spectacle amid the sanctity of Franciscans. But is not this act in the spirit of the Order itself -- free of restraint and routine, mindful of joy? Perhaps, but the essence of the Order’s vocation is still poverty -- the living of a tramp.
Our peacock, on the other hand, is another kind of... (ahem) ...tramp.

When warned in the past against strutting herself in strange lands, she would defiantly sashay forth anyway, ruffling more than a few feathers.
Attracting the clamorous attention of i lupi di Firenze is her goal. Man-hungry, she knows how to play to the gallery -- it’s the same in any land, isn’t it?
“Eccoci! Eccoci! Che ragazza!”
The howling creeps closer, the eyes of dozens gaping at her supple body...
moving closer...
closer...

E poi...
And then...
Ancora senza pericolo!
The baying beasts are then beasts at bay
After vamping with brutes our peacock is once again safe.


Back to the present, we see the crystal peacock still reposed upon a centuries-old wall.
Still basking before the basilica with the sun glistening on her skin.
And one has to wonder...
Is it sheer luck that this bird escapes every scrape with fangs hungry for her flesh?
or is there an invisible, intervening hand at work...?


As Francis himself did once tame the wolf, perhaps the Lord works through this Saint to ever watch over...
...to guard beauty from the beast...

Stai attento, per amor del cielo

Monday, April 03, 2006

Que de farce: The Fame They Want


Consumer demand for quality monitoring of celebrity goings-on drives today’s Important Journalist to seek only the best dirt on Big Name Quarry.

And so insecure celebrities leverage their artistic output with naughtiness, contumacy, and other morsels of pretense against the opinions of critics, whose whims dictate when said notables should fret about their 15 minutes of notoriety. The result...?

• Scandal-Inspired Paparazzi
• Paparazzi-Induced Paranoia


Très évident!


An attention-starved treadmill chase towards Nielsen acknowledgement of celebrity in essence gives the voyeur consent to trail ‘the story’ for the benefit of fans, propagating paranoid delusions that started initially with the star himself.