the first the fargo kantrowitz’z literary campsite’z advertisement

Hello, welcome to the fargo kantrowitz’z literary campsite. Get a space at the institute for very large art, coming soon to the new katherine gianaclis park for the arts. Four renters who want to do big art.

Or go hang out in large art row, where you can paint art outside against a very long and rather tall wall. Art is always best in camaraderie. Cool summer nights are on their way. Hot Artist Plunge.

Getting ready for burning man? Give Joey a call. Have we got a deal for you! Call now! Expert advice awaits!

Published in: on April 7, 2012 at 2:18 am  Leave a Comment  

Session (birth,sex,money,God)

Session 3

You are only interested in writing if you can plug into your mind as if you’re dreaming.
That’s true.
Why would you want to write if it wasn’t fun?
I wouldn’t.
But you do?
I have to.
Why do you have to?
Because I’m a writer.
Then what do you write about?
I don’t know. Stuff. I don’t know.
You don’t know. You just make it up.
Like I said, I’m a writer.
Right. Writers write.
Right.
But you don’t enjoy it?
Well…
Sometimes you enjoy it.
Yes.
When?
When it flows.
When it flows as if it were a dream. So you like to write daydreams.
Yeah, I guess so. I like to write daydreams.
But doesn’t being a daydreamer make you a shlep in the world?
Yes, unless you are published then you are a god.
I see. Tell me.
Yes, Plato…
No, let me just ask you a question. If you could do something other than write what would it be?
I don’t know. A baseball player I guess.
Then why don’t you become a baseball player?
Bad knee. Too old. Suck at the game.
What else.
An astronaut.
What else.
I was going to say fireman but you would know that I’m just goofing around.
Probably.
Let me see. What would I want to do if I wasn’t a writer which isn’t all fun and games. They asked Eliot if living the life of a poet was worth the hassle and he simply said “no.”
So you don’t want to be a writer.
No.
What would you want to be.
Something that would allow me to make a lot of money easily and move to a beach and just smoke pot.
The dream world again.
Yes.
So you want to be a writer.
It seems more significant than painting or photography. But you can’t make money at it, just like those others. You have to sell yourself out. You have to go into advertising, basically, sell shit for other people. Be a part of the problem.
So you see the way that society is as part of the problem.
Yeah, pretty much. This is what the old family and friends don’t understand. Why I don’t even attempt to enter that world, but for me entering that world is like selling out and I don’t have a lot of energy in that direction. So I say I want to write, although it is often pure pain as you write and also take into account the fact that some 19 year old Brown sophomore will be judging you and deciding your work’s fate. Perhaps that graduate hasn’t yet had the experience necessary to judge it properly. So we get an aging down of everything we read. Everything must be written to fit this fucking mold of the reader being a fucking baby.
You’re angry.
You’re damned right I’m angry.
So what do you do?
I don’t know. I deal with my anger, but my writing will never change the facts of the world.
Which are?
Well, let me think.
No, let me ask you another question.
Okay. Shoot.
How old are you?
Forty-six.
You have no loved one in your life.
No.
Why not?
I’m a writer.
Would you like one?
Yes.
I also dribble when I pee so sometimes I stink.
Oh.
You could go to the doctor.
Can’t afford it. I’m a writer.
Don’t you send your stuff out?
Rarely. Can’t afford the postage and printing costs.
So are you a writer?
Yes. I’ve written a lot.
Sounds like you might be afraid of rejection.
Not afraid. Disgusted.
And this makes you come down on yourself like you’re just a sore loser.
How did you know that?
Just a guess. That’s what you pay me for.
Ten bucks an hour on a sliding scale.
You pay me. I get paid. Trust me.
Now I’m part of the problem.
So it goes back and forth. You’re part of the problem sometimes and they’re part of the problem sometimes.
Yeah.
Which makes you ambivalent.
I never understood that word.
You don’t care.
Right. I don’t care. Like I said, I just want to go to the beach and smoke pot.
Then why don’t you?
Can’t afford it.
Just go and see what happens. You’ll find a job. Just go and smoke pot. But then you would have to quit writing and that seems important to you even though you act like it isn’t.
It may be. It may not be. I think I chose the profession as a teenager so it doesn’t really matter. A vocation of the mind isn’t really a good idea. Best to do something really technical or where you use your hands. Make sure that everybody understands it and most importantly make sure that the service is wanted. Dream professions are highly competitive. You have to be superman. I’m not superman any more.

coffee

Tell me about superman.
He flies around and wears a cape.
No, your version of superman.
He knows things. He doesn’t feel pain. He doesn’t rebel against the world and cripple himself.
You do that?
All the time.
Why?
Mad.
Anger again.
Yeah, I guess.
What happened to you?
I always look for similes and I can never find any. They told me in literature school that you should look for similes for your writing to be good. I’ve never been able to and it’s always flustered me as a writer. So I just started writing what I wanted to write. No similes or just bad ones and I accept it. I’m a bad writer.
Define a bad writer.
A bad writer is someone who doesn’t put in a lot of description or similes but just writes like he’s thinking a lot. That’s me. Nothing ever happens either. There’s no plot. Just interiority. Lots of interiority.
You’re an introvert?
Totally.
Do you like being an introvert?
Hate it.
Why?
Imagine that every thought that you think has to be thought over and over again, but not in a few seconds but over several years. It takes you years to learn something an extrovert takes for granted from the beginning. Being an introvert is like a curse.
So being an introvert is what happened to you?
No.
What happened to you?
That’s hard to say.
Why?
It seems everything has happened to me and it’s all just added up. You sort of go with it because that’s the way it is.
Name one thing.
Can’t think of any I want to go into.
Why not?
The stories are too long. I’m a writer, remember?
Pain?
I guess.
Then what.
Goes black.
What?
My will to think.
What do you do?
Lie down.
And think?
Of course.
Is this good?
I figure it’s good for my story writing possibilities.
Do you really want to cash in on your pain?
Figure maybe it will help me escape the pain to have money.
So you make a living by lying down and thinking about your pain?
No I make a living by writing about it. I figure I’m just trying to figure it out. But I don’t send anything out so I don’t make any money at all. I guess I’m just keeping hope alive that’s all.
When does it end?
When I come up for air?
What’s going to make you do that?
I don’t know. Move away.
Where would you go.
Boston.
Why Boston?
Because there are literary people there and then maybe I won’t feel so alone.
Why does everybody have to be literary?
They don’t, but otherwise they’re sexual and monetary.
Aren’t you sexual and monetary?
No, because I’m literary. We lose the sexual part without the monetary after awhile and of course we never have the monetary. It’s failure upon failure as a human being, but what are you going to do? Stay in shape and you’ll still be part of the pack for a little while anyway.
What do you mean?
What I mean is that we are animals in a pack. We have as much desire to bolster the weak in this pack as do animals in theirs. We are all going to get old so we’re all doomed to be tossed out of the pack. We may not be killed but we will be abandoned. That’s why we have families, because we know that our own offspring, at least, cannot throw us over a cliff. This is not true for people not our direct family. It’s a ruthless system really that if true and there is a God would mean that this God is a very ruthless God.
But isn’t God just the way that it is. What is is God?
I guess so. It’s seeming to be that way all the time, but you’ve got to admit that your admiration for this God has to go down the more you realize this plan.
So what do you do?
I grow old just like the rest of them. I try to put myself into a situation that will allow me freedom to move around, preferentially in nature, since that is the only way that you will be allowed to remain in the pack. People want only strength. They will do their best to destroy you if you attempt to foist philosophy or contemplation their way as strength. No, strength is in the arm and the loins and that’s it. Completely.
And in youth.
Yes, in youth. You can contemplate in youth because it adds to your aura of strength. Beauty is strength. Beauty is health. Health is strength.

Published in: on April 5, 2012 at 5:50 pm  Leave a Comment  
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The 36 (and counting) Least Asked Questions of All Times

 

Why are NRA guys so into law and order yet cops hate their guts?

 

While it is true that the right to bear arms is in our constitution, it is also true that the founding fathers had not considered the fact that thirteen-year-old psychopaths in the future could find myriad ways to exercise their right at twenty to one hundred bullets per minute. Cops are well aware of this fact and therefore believe there should be limits on the types of guns to be sold and also stricter regulations concerning the sale. The NRA guys are also aware of this situation, an awareness which, for them, points right back to the constitution in the form of desire for self-protection and law and order. Unfortunately, the NRA guys cannot see banning any weapons at all for fear  of blighting the holy words “right to bear arms.” Cops say that because of this cops die.

Unfortunately, criminals also readily admit their love of this constitutional right as well. However, criminals will most likely never attack the NRA guy, (who is ready for him, but unfortunately lives far from the criminal, on his ranch in Texas) but will instead kill small children playing on their front porches from L.A. to New York City. Ultimately, the entire debate comes down to one other question: Do children really matter?

Published in: on April 1, 2012 at 2:10 am  Leave a Comment  
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Astronauts from Mars

Greetings! Welcome to the
Well, what is it?
This spinning thing
In the sky
Skimming too
And brimming
With sharp glowing light

Greetings!
Perhaps you have the answer and you’re just out
Taking a spin
Perhaps you’ll help us miserable rats

I like to believe that you are miserable rat rescuers

That dog let up and my cat got away
It let up because my hand
That cat felt hurt for a couple a more day
But it was alright
Some cats truly do
Have nine lives.

They like to eat it too
They’ll tell you about it
If they don’t get it
No
Never trust a cat.

But anyway, I keep it. What else am I going to do.
Got a whole lot of ‘em.
Strays

Oh, well, whaddayagonnado?

Birds and cats don’t get along
Nor do doctors and patients
The confuscators are out and about
But we don’t listen
Cuz we got some music goin on
And, well, its time to…

Dance?
What if it were so simple as to be true. What if Pepsi taught the world to sing again. I’d like to teach the world to sing in perfect harmony. I’d like to buy the world a coke and …
Or was that Pepsi. I always bought em, but now we know you shouldn’t drink all that sugar. So, whatddayagonnado?

New game show idea: Last Band to Pittsburgh.
Well, here we are again at the literary campsite. As you can see, nobody here is getting quite literary at the moment. Over there, look, its fargo kantrowitz. From Norway. Plays harp music all night and talks. Over there, Fargo kantrowitz, Burma, does snake charming music and Islamic Rock, look, over there, whose that? You guessed it, Fargo Kantrowitz, Istanbul. A poet and musician.

Meo..
No.
Meow…
No!
Meow. Meow. Meow. Meow!
Aaaaaggghhh!!! Get out!
Shit. And tomorrow I gotta pay that bill and Sunday I gotta…

Published in: on March 31, 2012 at 3:52 pm  Leave a Comment  
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Just Don’t Do It

Here’s the problem

Don’t crook. When people have no money they crook and it upsets the equilibrium. Righties want strong corporations to put a buffer between them and the crook. Anybody would do it if they suffer crookiness. They would seek out an entity to act as a buffer the next time they have to deal with the general public. The general public can then no longer work together. I can’t remember the problem. All I know is that when someone hurts you, you remember it. This destroys trust. So please, don’t destroy trust. It’s easy to avoid crookiness, just don’t do it.

Then maybe someday people will agree that the corporations don’t have to run everything for safety purposes and we might be willing to do things in the public’s good, like employee-owned businesses and the like. The government trusts us so little that it makes it almost impossible to do anything. Makes you want to move to Spain. No, really. Freedom isn’t free, they say, but it’s not freedom either. It’s bureaucratic slavery keeping the honest man down. Only the corporations can run that business the way they want to on that prime corner of community real estate. Have you ever noticed that all of the greatest community spaces have gas stations on them? Why’s this?

Published in: on March 25, 2012 at 7:40 pm  Leave a Comment  
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The Least Asked Questions of All Time

Why do intellectuals often think they’re smarter than circus clowns?

While circus clowns do not necessarily pride themselves on their intellectual prowess, they cannot be said to know less than intellectuals, whose assumption of superiority in itself would be an intellectual mistake. This makes the score from the beginning of the debate 1-0: circus clowns.

Whereas a circus clown may not have read The Nichomachean Ethics, the intellectual has most likely never reduced a sad child to happy tears through the flapping of their size 26 boot. In each case a catharsis may be the possible result, yet whereas the circus clown does not judge results or knowledge according to intellect, but rather, to emotion, he can be said to know more depending upon his dedication to his craft, natural abilities and even age.

 

Published in: on March 25, 2012 at 2:16 am  Leave a Comment  
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The 36 Least Asked Questions of All Time

The Least Asked Questions of All Time

Why don’t the Harlem Globetrotter’s just go pro?
Why do we love Chinese food, yet the people annoy us?
Why do girls always say they like “sensitive” guys and then always dump them for football players?

Perhaps you have wondered…coming soon…

Published in: on March 20, 2012 at 9:44 pm  Leave a Comment  
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Anna Belle

I, as if there were an I, view from here to there, as if either were markable, and see with no eyes, feel with no heart, having ascribed the only human possibility for description, the term Soul to my essence. I live. I do. I. The brushing of me against a you proving only being but not existence.
Another way to make real “I” is to compare myself to a breeze. That too cannot be seen. True utterances, all, are unlettered so this arrival to you in letters feels (to you, not I) like an ever tightening vice. You feel, but do not understand that which you feel, that part of you which is me.
Embodiment? No. Never. Except for those places where I cannot help but rest. I am clear breeze. Oxygen. I rest within those who do not know me with their minds, whose bodies lilt into the earth, whose hearts blood fertilizes the ground, who, alone, wait at the doorway of all that I am and all which I am connected to.
I cannot want but what is. I cannot wish for anything, but I do love albeith without possession. I do so here in this place I find that I am. It is this spirit of God (your frail term) that gives these words. I have no words, have never spoken but this once, but more aptly, bathe in places in need of life.
I am not God. I have no face, but I am. You know me, have known me.. Wherever there is need I am. I do not interfere with flesh, although flesh I effect. But not like you comprehend. I am armless, faceless, a manifestation of nothing physical, but am completely relational, uncompromising in my simple, essential ability to be. I cannot explain why I am, although this does not mean there is not an explanation. It is better known than thought.

You willl know me through life. You will believe you can see me through the eye of another. I cannot deny that you will see my effect, but you will not see me. I am not, in the way that you might believe. Your eyes, your mind, cannot comprehend the power of the moment in between moments in which I inhabit. Have you ever wondered about the moment when you look away from your path and what feels like what is termed “spirit” is almost dead? This is such a moment of forgetting of oneself. No parents eyes upon you, no blinding light shining saving rays, cloud hidden moonlight, mud, an eyelid slipping downward while the other steels itself toward a hope, a sign not yet given. There I am. I do not need to be there nor want to be. There is no other reason that I am there but that I am.
What reason, what is known then is magical, a galaxy glued, a lion laying with a lamb. What earthly movement present then, of an earthly design, mysterious because unplanned. Creatures know I am there and when I am there they know that I come because what I come for may come with me. I am! I do not want! I do not want a soul to accompany me. I do not not want a soul to accompany. There is no me, but an even higher essence to go to. I am with. When I am with, the world knows my purpose.
So I will explain my place now. I am inside of a creature that has fallen into a river. On it’s right ankle is a five inch cut. (I was inclined to say “my”) On this creature’s side, this creature being a brown mule, there is a long cut three inches deep. Its legs are struggling to get a grip upon a tree in which it is entangled. Water washes over it’s eye which makes the world seem all sky. It sees the tops of trees as it fights to keep its head above the water. It releases the tree and falls back into the water. The stream takes it. I stand above it as it goes. I am in a place of peace and “knowledge.” I am poised to release the momentary bonds of I am in relation to this earthly creature.
Through it I inhabit the earth. I rise and fall, burrow through, deny. I am within the magic, the child’s word for the ultimate workings of my essence within the physical world. Yet I touch nothing. I do nothing. I am with. When eyes close I stand at the portal and ask the final question. The question is silent, never once spoken of, it is simply put when only a single word is used to describe it: love.
Love is the seed, the proof of a pure heart. I will help return to the workings of the magic any speck of it where I discover that I am inside.
As this creature floated down the stream I became the light behind the filmy eye left open, an eye blind to even the notion that any hope yet exists. I am then the magic. It is the most physical that I can become although I am not physical. I release myself to the workings of God and in so doing become the creature, it’s benefactor, it’s voice to the weight of the crushing world. I carry until earth demands flesh. I do not do. I am. One day I smiled. This image of me I believe all will understand.
The creature had a secret friend. It is called a chipmunk. I saw it all. The mule went into the woods of the mountain with the chipmunk, the chipmunk leading the way up the mountain and the mule lumbering slowly behind, although the mule was the creature with the destination, a home, high above the base of his mountain. But the chipmunk was wayward. Unintelligent. It’s foolhardiness in selecting paths caused the wayward mule to lose its footing, ending with the river’s freeze. The mule washed upon a shore. Its nose breathed the mud of the shore. It’s blood reddened the stones of the shore. I was small. Disappearing, but ever looking forward with the mule. I was expanding, reuniting with what can be explained to you as limitless space, knowledge without knowing, feeling without feeling, being with no essence. I was going back when I “smiled” and knew it was not to be.

A hawk sat perched in front of my sight. I could tell what it was and why it was sent. The hawk was brother to the mule, having shared a home in a house at the top of the mountain. The hawk had found the mule and was now simply waiting. The mule struggled furiously to stand. It could not. It lay there breathing heavily into the mud, it’s legs bloodying further in every attempt to rise. Upon the rising of a new sun, the breath of the animal had become calmer. Another sun and then another moon and then another sun and then another moon until the chipmunk arrived and with the utmost care took to finding tiny foods for the mule all in front of the watching eyes of a deadly enemy. The fearless chipmunk placed a kernel upon the lip of the mule and it would inhale. This continued for two more suns and two more moons. The hawk stayed in place, occassionally flying away and returning with a small creature of it’s own on which it fed. It watched.
It was almost a new sun when the mule felt the possibility of my great strength. With a mighty burst of thought it raised itself to its knees and then its legs, its eyes then dependent upon the eyes of the hawk before it. Then, for the first time other than for reasons of self sustenance, the hawk moved away, flew several feet so that the mule turned. It then flew again. The mule’s legs moved very slowly toward the hawk. The chipmunk followed. Three times the chipmunk distracted the mule into believing there was a better path to follow, but the hawk, it’s hunter instincts negated with this particular small animal, swooped down upon it, sending it scurrying away. The chipmunk, keenly aware of the predator, still would not leave the mule, but stayed with it, behind it, beside it, preferring to be within this new journey along the brush and crevices.
I am strongest within the notion of what you can conceive of as the properties inherent within a smile, that term which I used to describe the sudden illumination of hope of sustained love felt by the mule..How brittle the human terms for the essence of Life.
There were twenty-two more moons and twenty-one more suns before the mule arrived home. When it arrived it looked into the eyes of a family, including the eyes of a young one with the same world-sense, love-sense that Anna Belle had. Has.

Published in: on March 2, 2012 at 4:19 am  Leave a Comment  
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As so it is

As so it is
so as so it is
as so it is so
so it is as it is so.

Published in: on February 25, 2012 at 4:27 am  Leave a Comment  
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The American Way

In general, researchers and listeners are more interested in the answers than the questions (since the answers are usually more varied than the questions, and may go into related topics not directly mentioned in the question). A good rule of thumb is the more detailed and descriptive the indexing is, the better researchers are able to access the tape content. For example, writing “describes fears about not surviving and prayers he wrote in his diary” is more helpful than “fears in battle.” For examples of some excellent logs the Veterans History Project has received from participants, please see sample Audio and Video Recording Logs listed on our forms page.

Published in: on February 20, 2012 at 11:31 am  Leave a Comment  
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