Affective Mask Training

[from: Daybook Near Daybed, by Donna]

Consulted with Hon. Reptily "La Chama" Mlaf re: [long story] on the couches in my living room with some big pillows and drinks, Persian cats.

SUMMARY: Rev. La Chama suspects (not psychotic/ hallucinatory) that she is being called to another world. It's not so much that she wants to go, but she feels it's a consensus of parties and interests beyond her control. More than ever, there is disregard, impatience, suspicion. She believes she is misunderstood by friends from California who keep telling her it's what she puts out into the universe. She tells them she must be a pretty shitty person then. They do not disagree. The Reverend concludes that she is responding to a real social phenomenon, not necessarily the supernatural decision of a supreme being, but she also understands how many parishioners conflate God and mob. I do not disagree.

RECOMMENDATION: Invent AMT, Affective Mask Training. Co-habitators of La Chama's environment not only resent her status as a goddess but are also off put by her ability to mirror exactly their emotions and sometimes secrets. This is because La Chama's emotional reaction to others is essentially sympathetic, and having at least one parent from the reptilian genus rhynchoedura ornata, even her color could change depending on a lunch companion's skirt/sweater set. Is she trying to gain intimacy with her freaked-out interlocutors? Does she seek to intimidate? We think particularly not, maybe secondary. Her principal aim, though a struggle, is understanding, to categorize and label. But when she senses hostility or fear, they are amplified by a natural flaring hormone common to her father's species. Hyperbolic mimesia can spiral into mutual hostility and mistrust. AMT, mounted in the eyeglass lens, could be the next Biofeedback, but through the use of emerging facial recognition technologies, and for a very specific purpose: cosmetic psychology, which could conceivably branch into studies of Forensic Cosmetology, but most importantly, save lives.


Dr. Donna Thong [Reinstatement Imminent]
Editorial Board Member
Journal of the Meta-Cognitive Talk Therapy Apologist Movement

Errata Omne Quod Scitur

Dear Jan and Ken:

Ever since you brought me back through The Crack to get help with your "pterodactyl problem" and in exchange kindly explained the spiritual tenets of the movement that I now control and oversee, I have pictured my own zen-like golden center, the other, the real Chama, as a man, the eternal me, on a throne floating in psychic space outside of matter and time. The man/ God/ thing/ horror who has always been peace itself in that seat, the objective yet sympathetic observer, the hub, fulcrum, axis, last word, arbiter of all, has now collapsed in place like one of those Disney characters on a little plastic pedestal with the button on the bottom connected to rubber bands inside that release the tension and make Goofy, for example, go limp when you press it with your thumb. He hangs his head between his knees like Urizen as if trying to keep sight of a universe plummeting ever further into a distance that is, relative to his position, directly below, sobbing into a sea, which is everything.

I'm faced, then, with a paradox; my understanding of the world, which I also gained from Mthyuh Mkidza Mlaf and her secret husband, our founder, is that there is always a benevolent body, always imminent and anxious to precipitate understanding, to soak and to dissolve invasive anti-meanings into waste, carrot peelings, menses, unnamed storms, farts, tics, blinks. Is this a singularity, apex of a static arc, the feet of which cannot be found? I don't understand why today, why that, or how. My three-dimensional omniscience, or my faith in that concept, or the signal that keeps us all together-- I'm getting flat. Issue of a fax machine. A report, front and back, bad news: your powers are waves without receptors. The gifts you stored and dispensed to so much urgent desperation of a starving planet now instead are only dust and they are blown.

If I can find my brother Ilyn I will follow him to the volcano and take his hand when next he hurls his broken figure into Her molten bath. If I can keep my open palms pressed tight to the extraordinary and inexplicable substance we think of as his flesh, he may let me continue on with him to other times and peoples, but as a lowly passenger, to share his miserable comfort in the cart with wooden wheels hewn square, his surrender to the passive voyage, the unknowable trajectory of Shab, of he who is a red-eyed beast of burden and a beast by manufacture; and a magic, unforgiving beast and a common house pet. When I can hear Shab's toenails scratching across the surface rock of my new life of total ascetic withdrawal, I will sprout this time rent and unwelcome and unfamiliar from the beginning with no illusions and nothing to bring along but the blood of birthing from stone.


Please file under: Errata Omne Quod Scitur
Reptily

nappy

it's not sustainable, girl

believe

Joe

Hank

redo: love pumping cancer

Chang K. Chang Chank Tank Chain Gang Grain Bank

On behalf of the Chang K. Chang Chank Tank Chain Gang Grain Bank, we grant you passage through our bowel. You have bled your Ked's in the bed for some bread and accepted a towelette, Jim. Now it's time to liven up to your debt and swim.

'F I Were on my Dethbed

care laden bells vid

Dog On Through

 

He doesn't need a mouth tumor operation,
the tumor about where a lymph node would
be on a man pushing in his cheek to where
it's conceivably more difficult for him to eat.

Dogs are prone to these, and they get them,
and they work it out, they deal with it, what
choice do they have-- they are dogs, without
the ability to organize a health care system.

He figures it out inside his own mouth and
no we're not so symbiotic that I've gotta
shell out for comfort surgery when all that
any of us can do is diggity-dog on through.


by Ken

sugary/ surgery

[Photo has been sequestered by MPS lab for mass spectrometry.]

when you say sugary, i'll say surgery, and when you say surgery, i'll say sugary.
then i'll ask you to try and say "popcorn fart" with a boston accent.
then every time i say they should..., you say but that would be too easy.
then i start naming the streets in palm springs, and you follow each one with ladies and gentleman.
when you agree i'll doubt my aptitude, and when you disagree i'll be a misunderstood genius.
when you say we're all out of corn, but... i'll say who's got a corn butt?
when you get too bold i'll act over demure, and when you are mild i'll feel unwanted.
if you say you like me it means you don't want to fuck, and if you want to fuck i don't really like you.
i'll say just got a job today, and you'll say really, and i'll say psyche, and you'll say fuck you.
whenever you say you do that, i'll answer don't tell me what to do.
if you say you'd think i wd know, i'll say you think i'm one of those mind readers.
i respect you for your disinterest and mistrust your interest in my trust.
if you say i'm mean and abusive, i'll tell you to fuck off.
if you say i'm keeping you slave, i'll say please fetch my slippers.
if you say i treat you like shit, then my answer is have some self respect and fuck off.
if you say all you ever say is fuck you, i fucking say fuck you, fuck you and fuck you.
if i say come on back, you make me wait and then come back.
if i say it's all for you, i want it all to be yours, you say you know I do.
when i say i'm not well it's not you, it's both you and i'm also not well.
if you say it's not me and it's better with he, i say tmi who asked you, congratulations.
if you say i'll always clean your pool, i'll say fuck off, anybody can clean my pool. 


"for Mike"
Love, Hoolie

over the hill, over the hump

they're doing fine, being their little snow selves
they're moving closer to another part of life that's
even more native than their old selves: old selves.

over the hump, over the hill, on the glory of time,
he lies in a drift as in a cradle, grooves his runs
into ice, appears to be passing in a swift gondola.

she can unfurl her mane by perking fwd her ears
she is ready to pounce on his signal or rescue him
our routines are faithful as the planets and stars.


Donna Thong

Juniper hovering in space

horn of dysthymia

two petite sirloins with 3/4 inch swells
two medium Idaho russets peeled and cubed
half an onion thin slices
basket of white mushrooms
above in grill pan
broc crown steamed with olive oil salt and paprika
carrot-orange juice
12 oz chocolate raisins
olive tapenade hummus and saltines
two pro-biotic yogurts blueberry/ peach


Peg

Snow blanket

under which i
rub my bones
finding safety
where no one goes
although it's cold
there's the weight of it


Tom

Soft molasses ginger faux-biscotti

End of kale

long shallow glass casserole pan, buttered thickly
drained eight-minute penne,
thin-sliced onion, chopped garlic and tomato
halved mushrooms, two big fists of kale, all thrown in raw
first lay down 3 raw hot italian sausage
dump the pasta mixture, tossed with grated parmesan
over the meat, sprinkle paprika, 1/2 C broth,
cumin seeds over all, smush bay leaves
in here and there, pat flat, cover with parmesan
topless in the oven 40 min, 375-400
sausages are juicy, as if boiled; pasta goes from
al dente w/crunchy above and below, as are the greens,
now dark purple


Peg
"meet me at the corner of life is shitty and nobody cares"

Kale samwich