Domination Of Black
(By Wallace Stevens)

At night, by the fire,
The colors of the bushes
And of the fallen leaves,
Repeating themselves,
Turned in the room,
Like the leaves themselves
Turning in the wind.
Yes: but the color of the heavy hemlocks
Came striding.
And I remembered the cry of the peacocks.

The colors of their tails
Were like the leaves themselves
Turning in the wind,
In the twilight wind.
They swept over the room,
Just as they flew from the boughs of the hemlocks
Down to the ground.
I heard them cry -- the peacocks.
Was it a cry against the twilight
Or against the leaves themselves
Turning in the wind,
Turning as the flames
Turned in the fire,
Turning as the tails of the peacocks
Turned in the loud fire,
Loud as the hemlocks
Full of the cry of the peacocks?
Or was it a cry against the hemlocks?

Out of the window,
I saw how the planets gathered
Like the leaves themselves
Turning in the wind.
I saw how the night came,
Came striding like the color of the heavy hemlocks
I felt afraid.
And I remembered the cry of the peacocks.

Missing Chihuahua.

Please read the following link for more. Picture is on the page. The owner/guardian of the dog offers a reward and misses the dog terribly.

http://venacava.livejournal.com/511388.html

Are any of you LA people that I know going to Hex Hollywood on Halloween this year?

The new JK Rowling book "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows" is on presale at Amazon today, so I ordered it. Anyone know what the differences between teh UK and USA editions are?

You are Dream! Many people see you as living in

your own little world. Though you would never

try to harm someone needlessly, you are not

always aware of the consequences of your

actions.


Which Sandman Character are You?
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a lot has been said about how to prevent rape.
women should learn self-defense. women should lock themselves in their houses after dark. women shouldn't have long hair and women shouldn't wear short skirts. women shouldn't leave drinks unattended. fuck, they shouldn't dare to get drunk at all.

instead of that bullshit, how about:

if a woman is drunk, don't rape her.
if a woman is walking alone at night, don't rape her.
if a women is drugged and unconscious, don't rape her.
if a woman is wearing a short skirt, don't rape her.
if a woman is jogging in a park at 5 am, don't rape her.
if a woman looks like your ex-girlfriend you're still hung up on, don't rape her.
if a woman is asleep in her bed, don't rape her.
if a woman is asleep in your bed, don't rape her.
if a woman is doing her laundry, don't rape her.
if a woman is in a coma, don't rape her.
if a woman changes her mind in the middle of or about a particular activity, don't rape her.
if a woman has repeatedly refused a certain activity, don't rape her.

if a woman is not yet a woman, but a child, don't rape her.
if your girlfriend or wife is not in the mood, don't rape her.
if your step-daughter is watching tv, don't rape her.
if you break into a house and find a woman there, don't rape her.
if your friend thinks it's okay to rape someone, tell him it's not, and that he's not your friend.

if your "friend" tells you he raped someone, report him to the police.
if your frat-brother or another guy at the party tells you there's an unconscious woman upstairs and it's your turn, don't rape her, call the police and tell the guy he's a rapist.

tell your sons, god-sons, nephews, grandsons, sons of friends it's not okay to rape someone.

don't tell your women friends how to be safe and avoid rape.
don't imply that she could have avoided it if she'd only done/not done x.
don't imply that it's in any way her fault.
don't let silence imply agreement when someone tells you he "got some" with the drunk girl.
don't perpetuate a culture that tells you that you have no control over or responsibility for your actions. You can, too, help yourself.


If you agree, repost it. It's that important.

This journal is mostly "LJ-Friends Only." If you leave me a message saying you want me to add you, I probably will -- just ask! :) If you don't have an account, they're easy to get and you don't have to keep a blog, just sign in to read parts of mine, if you want. I'm doing this to avoid the sort of drama that posting online tends to provoke. Thanks.

The more I learn about the world, the more inclined I am to limit my commitments to humanity and humankind. Perception can be so very different, and malleable, and illusory. And the world is too big for me to take all of it in. This breaks me. Will I ever be able to do justice to the beauty of a single stem of a punk-orange blossom at the crux of the ether, or will it always remain on the other side of the fence, in order to remain alive? How can I write about the world when its incommunicable bliss has already been done to death? I want to disappear into the sublime. This was the moment I was longing for when I wanted to feel alive...and so quickly did it slip from my grasp. I am being intentionally cryptic because I don't know how to write the world, just now. I have discovered that I am in love with birds because they remind me of limitlessness, flight, horizons. I want to learn their language.

"All truly profound art requires its creator to abandon himself to certain powers which he invokes but cannot altogether control." -- Andre Malraux, "Goya."

I want to live in an olive-colored house with stucco walls and a reddish roof in Spanish Tile. It would have a verdant courtyard and a fountain and a library inside for all of my books and my writing desk where I would compose poems over the window overlooking bright bougainvillea and hibiscus. And inside, the parlor would be lavender-grey.

I don't know if I can ever have a house like this. Houston might allow it, but the rain would become a menace. In California, it would cost too much. Any Northern place would drain its vibrant face through mocking cold. Such a house belongs in Spain (Seville, Cordoba?), near orange groves. And besides...it seems unreal and unlikely that it could be something I would have...somehow, too Calvino-light.

So instead, I think I will create a character who lives in such a house. She can play the violin and her Abyssinian Blue cat would waver its thin tail in joy of music. She could write letters on cream-colored paper to her lover(s). And maybe I will give her a story...

Today, I will get the chance to read Angela Carter's book _The Magic Toyshop_ , which I am looking forward to reading and which I have chosen instead of _The Bloody Chamber_ in part because the latter was checked out of the library and in part because I've already read _Wise Children_. She is a fantastic writer and I hope I enjoy this book as much as I anticipate doing.

Realized something which has been running through my head for weeks in a different way, this afternoon, while envying a tangerine colored building with a green roof and a balcony jutting out over a dirty street: as Emily Dickinson says, "The Sailor cannot see the North, but knows the Needle can."

Apparently, this is what I am like, because I was born in January.

JANUARY:
Stubborn and hard-hearted. Ambitious and serious. Loves to teach and be taught. Always looking at people's flaws and weaknesses. Likes to criticize. Hardworking and productive. Smart, neat and organized. Sensitive and has deep thoughts. Knows how to make others happy. Quiet unless excited or tensed. Rather reserved. Highly attentive. Resistant to illnesses but prone to colds. Romantic but has difficulties expressing love. Loves children. Loyal. Has great social abilities yet easily jealous. Very Stubborn and money cautious.


What does your birth month say about you?
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This is so bizzarre! I am a fan of Lautreamont, too...but um...this makes no sense. Shouldn't a marriage be based on *mutual* choice?

http://www.warphead.com/modules/news/article.php?storyid=470

Utilizing an obscure clause in French law, New York based artist Shishaldin is seeking governmental approval of her impending marriage to a deceased writer.

March 29, 2004--An American artist marrying a French poet is hardly an unusual occurrence, unless, of course, the poet in question has been dead for 134 years. Utilizing an obscure clause in French law, an American artist, Shishaldin, has requested permission to marry Isidore Ducasse. Ducasse, writing under the nomme de guerre Comte De Lautréamont, is the author of "Les Chants De Maldoror", widely acknowledged as one of the masterpieces of 19th century French literature. His death at the age of 24, capped a short, controversial, and mysterious career.

Under French Civil Code 171, the President has the authority to sanction marriages between the dead and the living. The law was enacted in 1959 when then President Charles de Gaulle toured the town of Frejus where a dam had burst, killing hundreds. A young woman approached him with the request that she be able to marry her dead fiancée. A special law was passed and, to date, several hundred couples have been married as a result.

“As an artist, I feel compelled to make a bold stand in defense of marriage. I view marriage as a union that cannot be defined, a union of souls and minds, the sort of union celebrated by art and literature…in fact, a marriage of art and literature.” says the 23 year old bride to be.

The question of money is not an issue as the law prohibits financial gain that was not already provided for in a pre-existing will. Additionally, the author’s works have long since entered the public domain.

“This isn’t about money, this is about love and marriage and art. It is about enhancing the stature of a great artist through a spiritual partnership. This is the true spirit of marriage,” continues Shishaldin. “Our marriage would also be significant as a symbolic gesture of healing between our two great nations. This would be a marriage that spans across cultures, continents, centuries, and even the mortal plane itself.”

The marriage is still awaiting confirmation from French President Jacques Chirac but is scheduled for July of 2004.

Isidore Ducasse: Born in Montevideo, Uruguay, the French national is best known for his work under the pseudonym Comte de Lautréamont. His novel "Les Chants De Maldoror" is universally regarded as one of the masterpieces of French literature.

“The artist’s imagination is a world of potentialities that no work will succeed in realizing. What we experience by living is another world, answering to other forms of order and disorder. The layers of words that accumulate on the page, like the layers of colors on the canvas, are yet another world, also infinite but more easily controlled, less refractory to formulation. The link between the three worlds is the indefinable spoken of by Balzac: or, rather, I would call it the undecideable, the paradox of an infinite whole that contains other infinite wholes.”
--from Italo Calvino's "Six Memos for the Next Millenium"

A crescent of land cupping the LA metropolitan area, half-circle of suburbia, rises in flames, tonight. Today, it was 104 degrees Farenheit. A small area on the other side of the city, opposite the main arc of fire is also in flames -- right near the LA County Jail. In the news footage, the thread of fire looks more like a stream of lava, and I wonder if the citizens of Pompeii saw a similar burst of orange and ash just before the earth erupted and the sky came falling down.

http://www.squidi.net/viewcomic.php?date=04-03-16
http://www.squidi.net/viewcomic.php?date=04-01-05
Amusing.

http://www.blogskins.com/preview.php?sid=7055
A blog skin for Final Fantasy lovers.

www.squidi.net

http://stained.androidlust.com/

This video so rocks!!!
I'm in love.