nasty old stuff #2

not so nasty, now that i think about it. just more blather. i remember scribbling fragments of what became the entry below of little scraps of paper, most of which got lost. it was the baguio arts festival 1999. we were mostly drunk or stoned or both. don't try this at home. or anywhere else. makes me wonder just how many lifetimes we're allowed to screw up.


still 27 november 1999

i dropped acid yesterday, the best of all days. not because of the acid which was a disappointment. the performances were good and i liked having fingers growing out of my forehead and later from my left hand. baby powder, beer and strawberries tell you if you can't take it anymore, try giving a little. [sairo circa 2005: something to do with the performanace art at the festival, i'm guessing] but i took a lot yesterday. never has substance abuse felt so good; it is only now that i realize the actual validity of addiction. or why people are afraid of being in such a state. (i missed having people around just now so i moved up into the dining room to sit with people i don't really know who chatter about things i don't really care about. But just the same, it is nice feeling alive and part of a group of humans. but as always when among others, i lose track of stuff and the ability to think inside my head. i have to get out.)

anyway. i am not sure if these chimes are annoying me. they are ringing in my head, scattering notes like hard bubbles that stick--shaking slightly--into the dark inner hollows of my skull. i can't stop drumming, even on the thin metal arms of my chair. it gets to me, all this percussion. the hide-covered hollow instruments seem to be extreme cruelty but they make such beautiful music. (digression: got a taste of tobacco from thailand, a cigar. the wrapping leaves are green and leaves a fresher taste in the mouth, less burnt. the singaporean artist guy says they come from the northern part of what used to siam. i am wondering if it is cold there now.)

on acid, everything becomes knife-sharp. sound solidifies into a solid force that can push at you in waves or jab you like jets of dry water. the drums again, the drums. last night they played endlessly, the hard notes falling lightly on me, bouncing off my skin like invisible rain, and my bones hollow, filling lightly with air. dancing becomes so much easier when you're high. i was dancing in circles but it felt like i wasn't moving at all. i've never felt this recreative. even the configuration of limbs seem essential and must be precise. oh but there are costs. my insides are sour. the cocktail of hash, acid, tapuey and betel brought about most interesting effects. and the cigarettes, all kinds it seems. menthols, kreteks, bidis, reds, local, lights. all of them taste somewhat nasty but leave me pleasant with a head full of smoky bubbles.

(i don't feel like writing about C and the breakup yet. it feels right, right now, to push him from my mind. under K's huge bamboo installation [someone told me he did it but i didn't bother to verify that], a sparse shelter more for the spirit or the mind than for the body, the quality of light changes the way things appear. C's baby pictures, the happy one where he wrinkles his nose, took on reddish tones that made him look either feirce or edible or both. i find it a conscious effort to think about him objectively, not as one who is [or was?] an integral part of my life.)

K looked beautiful last night, like a young white messiah. i wonder about the quality of salt i might taste if i licked his bony chest. i imagine it might taste of thin communion wafers, the flat roundness registering as shape, disappearing before i can identify a specific flavor. it might be the taste of shadows, only paler and frail as his bird-bones. under the installation--woven grass and green bamboo stretched high overhead--the outline of a man has been cut shallow into the earth. i feel i am sitting beside an invisible dead guy, or perhaps someone who had been asleep for so long, he blurred and faded away, leaving only the shape in the dirt to warn poeple walking in the park not to talk too loudly.

just a while ago. a family man pointed out to his son the importance of people working together, seeing overhead in the bunches and tufts of dry grass people describing a circle with their arms. i didn't notice that. all i saw were heads of grass, silent like the dead.

(there is a lot of order put into these gardens. they prepare the soil in grids, like an ice cube tray with dirt wells. some have small mounds of ash. here, they feed the earth in a rough geometric method. efficient too: the gardeners' huts or sheds have walls of packed dirt and what looks to be sawdust.) the sunlight reveals where shadows are supposed to fall. i must move again after a while. i've been sitting here for a while now, moving occasionally among the different swells of these gardens as noise and sunlight dictate.

so i am here again. people pass by and exclaim at the dead man beside me. to some, he is not here, only a physical imprint on the ground as lasting as the memory of something compelling or profound. to young boys, he is just a figure to measure themselves against, to see how much more they have to grow. one of them lay down, like many have before him in the past few days, looking at the patch of blinding blue within the circle of grassheads, the boy's thin arms extending only up to the man's elbows.