MOTIONLESSNESS ON THE PENINSULA

I’m very grateful that I found an exit strategy and got out of Central Florida. Simply put, I desired something more than the beaches, swamps, and strip malls of Central Florida could provide. Centered in a state of hyper polarity, the region doesn’t offer much in the way of options or potentialities. Yet, Florida is quite beautiful, from top to bottom.
While I’m friends with practically no one who stuck around the area, I still think of certain people from time to time. While doing semi-related research yesterday, I came across the Florida Department of Corrections website. The site has a database which contains public record information on felony offenders sentenced to the Department of Corrections. Additionally the site provides photos of inmates. I started punching in names of teen friends,acquaintances, and schoolmates. I came up with the results below.
Most of these people I haven't seen since I was 16 years old, or younger. Given the Sunshine State's prominence as a drug port, the police and courts are heavy handed on controlled substance violations. Florida's prison system (and many others) is largely populated by drug offenders. Florida's public records, especially arrest records, are always kept very accessible for some reason. While these photos and information (which includes arrest records, tattoos, weight, height and home address) are public, I chose to black bar the eyes.

If you type my name, this is the individual that appears.

I don't know if I'll ever see as severe of a reaction punch as I saw this guy deliver. From across a room I saw someone assault him. In a reflexive motion, he delivered a 1-2 punch to the dude's eye and dropped him to the ground. His reaction was so machine like, almost void of emotion or anger, just a complete return of energy. Always a really nice and mannerly fellow.

Always Mellow.

Total Damage.

In immediate response to his bullying me at a church fair, I threw the contents of my coca cola in his face and ran off. He found me later in the night and returned the gesture. Carbonated liquid forcibly entered my nostrils. He drew to punch me, but then didn't.

Once a tight bro who I met in Cub Scouts.

This guy was part of the jock crew in junior high. His crew was seen as a total nemesis. One time when we walked down the hall near each other, I watched his body stiffen with rage as he told me to get away from him. He went on to kill his newly estranged girlfriend. He is set to be released in a few days.

At the previous mentioned church fair, I ran into this guy. He was wearing an orange Family Man/Black Flag shirt which totally ruled at the time, and still does. He took me and my friend to see Rocky Horror that night and it was the latest I had ever stayed out. Later he would give me rides to High School in his 80's black mustang with red racing stripes. One time I was sitting on the back of his car drunk and crying alone and he came up and punched me in the face.

We went together to see the film Ghandi when it came out in theatres.

KING LOVE

While living in Tallahassee, Florida I met King Love. I used to see him on street corners holding up signs and props which declared that Love was the answer. King Love would perform political parodies and theatre making fun of Lawton Chiles, the presiding goverenor of Florida.
I initially met King Love through a lengthy interview I did for my fanzine. It was through the interview that I first heard King Love’s desire for people to be “Free HB’s” : free human beings. King Love lived in the local homeless shelter and in a car that was jam packed with props. He would often call me at 7am from Burger King.
Whenever someone would offer their home for King Love to sleep in, he would never leave. Since they had given him verbal consent to stay there, the police couldn’t force him to leave. He bummed a lot of people out that way. As a result, I never let him crash on our couch. But he slept on our porch frequently.
We had a minor falling out over him peeping in my windows. As a result I called his answering machine and left an angry message. He called me back saying fuck you and laughing uncontrollably for minutes. At the time I lived next to a Hare Krishna temple. During this period of ill will between King Love and I, he would wake me up every morning by screaming at me through a megaphone while sitting in his car. He would first verbally attack the Krishna’s for being full of shit. Then he would drive his car up a few feet and announce what a phony I was.
We became friends again and recorded some songs on my porch. Our best recording was a free jam where KL sang and I played accordion. We recorded over 30 minutes of free jams and soliloquies. I lent him the tapes for a radio interview and they were subsequently lost. I had a few songs saved from putting them on a mix tape for someone.
I would talk to King Love over the phone when I moved to San Francisco. He mentioned a major campaign he wanted to start called a return to Camelot. He wanted to organize a Love march that would start in San Francisco and end in Washington D.C. He wanted to come visit me. I knew if he came to visit me, he would never leave. I couldn’t do that to my roommates.
I came home one night and received a message from King Love. He told Reuben that he needed to come out and stay with me in San Francisco or he would die of depression. This was heavy. It got heavier when he died a month later.
King Love, born Kamal Youssef in Cairo, had worked successfully in the medical profession for years. He had a son and a wife in South Florida. He suffered from severe depression. The depression led him to be estranged from his family and work. Somewhere along the line Kamal Youssef moved to Tallahassee, lost his possessions, and became King Love.
As King Love he would stand on the busiest Tallahassee intersection with signs and props declaring Love is the Answer. He would also perform demonstrations at strip malls. As a result of making his love declarations at local strip malls he was charged with trespassing and often jailed.
King Love created a large number of props and flyers. I have a large file of these works. Some of them were letters sent to me while he was incarcerated for trespassing. He also made collages that presented himself in combat with the pervading oppressive conservative voices in the local and federal government.
King Love was a human being that was trying to follow his bliss and spread some joy in his life. He was a total human being and a person like no other I’ve experienced. His laughter sprang from an inexhaustible source. King Love followed his own ascetic trip. He abandoned everything to preach Love his own way. I miss you King Love.
I just digitized the few recordings I have left. I am not sure how to post MP3’s, so I made a video which contain a photo montage and the recordings we did together. I have started out the video with a quicktime movie I found online. As I delve deeper into my paper files I will post more of King Love’s collages.
PLEASE WATCH THE VIDEO HERE

A short video of the Equinox Ceremony has manifested on a popular video sharing service.
It can be seen HERE
And
The Entrance Into the Taurean Window
can be seen HERE

MORE FROM 09/23/06

PICS BY A.W. THANK YOU

The Slits, NY 1980

After having the show moved to 3 different venues in the course of one night,
The Slits and Erase Errata put on marvelous mega memorable performances. There was way too much chatter and cigarette smoke exhaling and not enough reverence when The Slits were on stage. The few who stayed past 3am to see EE perform got a real treat. EE keep getting better and better. A night amidst masters of their game.

One of the oils is a striking 40 x 60-inch painting of Allan Campbell's alleged spirit guide, Azur (figure 3). It was produced on June 15, 1898, in a single sitting lasting only an hour and a half. In a signed statement, six witnesses (all of them apparently spiritualists, some of them prominent) described the conditions under which the picture was produced:
On the evening mentioned we met at the cottage of the Campbell Brothers on the hill and proceeded to their Egyptian séance room. Across the bay window at the end of the room was hung a large silk curtain, where stood a small table and a canvas 40"360". Each one in turn went up to the canvas and magnetized it by passing his hands over the surface. We then placed whatever marks we pleased on the back, some placing names, some numbers, some marks to suit their fancy. Mr. A. Campbell then invited one of the circle to sit with him in the impromptu cabinet and the silken curtain enclosing them; each member of the circle in turn sat within the cabinet with Mr. Campbell. Every time the curtain was withdrawn we saw the partly finished picture of Azur. During the entire séance there was light enough for us to see everything perfectly and note the gradual growth of the painting on the canvas. Mr. A. Campbell was entranced and Azur, using his organism, gave us some very beautiful words of welcome and lessons of a high order. He spoke of the stars and their significance, which we fully realized afterwards.
After some music, additional lights were brought, the curtain withdrawn, and lo! The picture was complete. It represented Azur with arms uplifted as in the act of speaking and fully life size. While we were admiring it, there came at the back of the head a six-pointed star, which is now distinctly seen. (Prendergast et al. 1989)
Source

So Many Things I Knew I was Looking For
And
So Many Things I Knew Not I was Looking for
at
dinosaurgardens.com
THANKS M.E.

09/23/06

AS SEEN THROUGH THE LENS OF A.S.
THANK YOU

In view of the wonder of the Hubble Telescope,
How signifigant are our tribulations?


And now let us consider how the initial difficulty of fastening the interest on that which is unseen is to be overcome. Our gross senses refer only to that which is objective in the ordinary sense of the word; but just beyond this field of life there are finer sensations which appeal to finer senses. Here we find the first clew to the stepping-stones we need. Man looks from this point of view like a point where many rays or lines center; and if he has the courage or the interest to detach himself from the simplest form of life, the point, and explore but a little way along these lines or rays, his whole being at once inevitably widens and expands, the man begins to grow in greatness.
-Mabel Collins, Through The Gates of Gold 1887




Arising
then
Passing



Bhagavan Das

PUTTING FORWARD

An old chronicle. To seek out the upright. No fall but proceeded by a declination. He took great marching steps into the nothingness, counting them against his return. Eyes closed, arms soaring. Upright to what? Something nameless in the night, lode or matrix. To which he and the stars were common satellite. Like the great pendulum in its rotunda scribing through the long day movements of the universe of which you may say it knows nothing and yet know it must.

EVENING OF PERSONAL HEROES

October 7th, 2006, 20:15 Lincoln Center (NY Film Festival)
Kenneth Anger presenting 35mm blow up restorations of Rabbit's Moon, Fireworks, Scorpio Rising and Kustom Kar Kommandos.


October 8th, 2006, 0:00 Lincoln Center (NY Film Festival)
Alejandro Jodorowsky presenting The Holy Mountain



Eternal Gratitudes to A.W. and M.M. for making it happen!

IKLIMLER/CLIMATES

written & directed by Nuri Bilge Ceylan

THE FIRST LETTER

There are a good number of excellent art shows in Chelsea (some noteable faves included Steve Claydon's at White Columns, Keegan Mchargue's at Metro Pictures, Small Sculptures at Matthew Mark's and Barnaby Furnas at Marianne Boesky). But the best thing I saw was the Aleph Air van promoting the Kabbalistic Sephirot.