'her life/timeline'

From Europe Central

Behind the wall, rubberized black tentacles spread across Europe. Military maps depict them as fronts, trenches, salients and pincer movements. Politicians encode them as borders (destroyed, razed, utterly smashed). Administrators imagine that they're roads and rivers. Public health officials see them as the black trickles of people dwindling day by day on Leningrad's frozen streets. Poets know them as the veins of Partisan Zoya's martyred body. They're anything. They can do anything.

William T. Vollmann (photo via postpacific)

'Making Architects'

How About An Actual Blog Post

Well, I've had this blog for over four years and I don't think I've even done one actual blog-style post. So, here's a little start... Um, recorded three new Aiko Planetarium demos this morning, each shortish vocal and guitar songs. "Pocket" started out as a sort of calypso thing but ended up being very much like my other songs once recorded, no calypso. "Mia!" was a song I'd written maybe four years ago but had lost. Since I'm working on the second Aiko record now, and this song was originally on it, I was trying to find it but since I couldn't I rewrote it from my memory of its gist. A love song of sorts, or love-lorn rather. The last song, "Kvlt Boy", was inspired by this black metal mp3 blog I came across that had only lasted a handful of posts and died back in 2008. The poster seemed very sweet and well, inspired my song about a boy who quietly in his room is very troo and grim, but also polite and well... isolated and depressed? And.... before that I recorded a few ambient tracks, two I posted about here.

I'm also working on a gaggle of picture books I'd done but had left unfinished, some of these go back six years. The opening pic here is from the one I'm completing a dummy for. It's about a boy and his dad and, um, feelings. It's actually looking really good, which is exciting. As I go through and work on these books it's been surprising how much stuff I've done. I think I'll feel a lot healthier once I get it out there.

This summer I put on some weight which is really bothering me. Since I was little I've had serious body image issues and I just want to be skinny again. And I guess that ties into all of this, both renewed creativity and everything else. So, I was at Kinkos tonight doing some copying for the picture book and there was this really cute girl there, only as I was copying I overheard her talking on her cellphone as she was behind me slicing papers. She was saying something about having dropped off her kids. It struck me that even though she looked young to me she was probably my age. Yet, another weird dose of getting older. Afterwards I went to Barnes and Noble across the street to see if there were any interesting picture books on imprints I might want to query. There was a girl out front that totally dumbfounded me. She was writing at a little table, and had a little guitar case at her feet. I had to force myself to remember I was still driving. I parked so I would have to walk by her to go inside. That was sort of just her squirming and me trying not to spazz out. After finding two winners amongst a hundred or so picture books I made notes and, already feeling screwed up inside, started walking out... only to see that girl, well young woman, bent over. She stood up and we sort of smiled at each other. Her face seemed very different than the glance I had caught before and I tried to use that to distance myself from my interest in talking to her and how lousy I felt about not doing that which I tried to explain away as being from my current body image problems. But while driving away I did think that at least there are people out there who I would get along with better than my recent relationships... Once home I poured a gin and coke and had that and a smoke.

Money is a problem too, which may be why I'm trying to do all I can to get a writing career going somewhat, even if I really think that has more to do with trying to be honest with what I want, or something... For one, I don't imagine I'll make anything from the poems I'm submitting this week were they to be published. But, I'll feel a lot better about myself either way because I'll be on track. It's all so complicated though. And lately I've really been keeping a great distance between myself and most of my handful of friends. I even finally had the chance for a date with a girl I'd had a crush on for years but sort of realized it wasn't what I really wanted, weird. But, like going back and reconnecting with my music from years ago, and the stuff I'm doing now, as well as those picture books and my poetry now is this really huge thing for me, it connects to so many parts of my life that had sort of been, um swirling into nowhere?

Okay that felt sort of lame. But, there's so much more to say so maybe these will become more frequent than every four years?

'dawn owl'

Another Aiko P. ambient missive posted this morning over at the Japanese Alice blog, this one is even shorter and more guitar oriented. Very good, though Panda? said I over think things too much whilst I was doing it.

'access temporary'

(photo by Simen Johan via oh, lover)

This morning I posted a new little Aiko Planetairum ambient missive on Japanese Alice. It's not meant to be indicative of Aiko P.'s current direction or anything like that, just a little soothing noise when it was needed.

If you haven't checked it out yet the first Aiko Planetarium LP is still available to download and check out for free at the Japanese Alice catalog, here. So far I've heard really nice things from the few who have been interested.

Missing MySpace Moods

abused
anorexic
dead
fasting
furious
ghostly
suicidal
unloved
unwanted
uptight
violent

"I'd Rather Be Planting Seeds"

Many years ago, Charles Manson realized that while he hiked through the forests of California with his walking stick, that if he hollowed out that stick, he could put seeds inside of it, and thus be able to plant new life in the ground. Today, there are such devices available, called Seed Sticks. While this idea of his has been patented by others as a gardening tool, Charlie is working with friends to create his own functional Seed Stick. You can make your own Seed Stick with the directions below. As Charlie’s first love is ATWA, this Seed Stick is a way to redeem Earth.

via atwa interactive

Human Landscapes

via a cell lab

Is this the end of zombie childhood?

Finally beat, er... completed (?) ... 'A Link to the Past' (you have been Linked!)... This was the first game I got for the SNES as a seven year old but my mother was convinced on Christmas morning by our landlord's son that it was evil. So eventually she decided I couldn't have it. Though I had already fallen in love, of sorts, with it before that happened. So it loomed, liminally or something...

Nearly twenty years later I, with the help of my brother, beat it. It struck me that my obsessions with occult things a few years later may have been a direct result of the overreaction of that fellow (his name was Ran) and my mother's um, decision.

Tom Servo Plushes, Legos

via ~silentorchid



(with Crow!) via Andrew Colunga

Rosebud (From a review of "To Mega Therion")

The Citizen Kane of Extreme Metal Albums - 96% Written by blackthrash84 on July 26th, 2009

I'll admit right away I've yet to see the film Citizen Kane, but every way in which I've heard it described, praised and criticized - as well as it's historic significance - correlates perfectly to C.F.'s masterpiece full length. Long, boring, monotonous, excessive, innovative, original, unique, genre-defining, classic. These are all adjectives that come to mind when discussing either work. The only real difference lies in the scope of each piece's influence. But is influencing the entire extreme metal world really that far from influencing the entire world of film? I like to think not.

from metal-archives (read the rest there if you'd like)

I found the above... amusing? S. M. Jenkins wrote of the album,

"Metal Jousters"--a must-own!

WAIS...

"If you want to count me, count me out"

''Oh, the snot has caked against my pants,
--it has turned into crystal…''

Kiwi Something

An operative from East Indian Tea approached me last night for travel, no bags. The shop sold dyed carnations. He had a pocket fakir passed down from his grandfather. Paternal side had the goods. It was a bicycle mechanic's Ecclesiastes, For every time there is a season, for every wheel a spoke. We moved fast and ate well, as well as we could from gift shops and lobbies. I gained weight like a parent's trust. Thunder thighs and seven inch hail cellulite. In every station fellow passers I might have loved. Two young women who liked to run. One of them did it all, she organized coffee hours and walked out of her tracksuit like a chrysanthemum petal falling on Tuesday.

This album put me in a special place tonight

THOUGHTS OF A YOUNG GIRL

-
“It is such a beautiful day I had to write you a letter
From the tower, and to show I'm not mad:
I only slipped on the cake of soap of the air
And drowned in the bathtub of the world.
You were too good to cry much over me.
And now I let you go. Signed, The Dwarf.”

I passed by late in the afternoon
And the smile still played about her lips
As it has for centuries. She always knows
How to be utterly delightful. Oh my daughter,
My sweetheart, daughter of my late employer, princess,
May you not be long on the way!

John Ashbery, 1962, from The Tennis Court Oath.

(the ha modeled as the ha-ha)

-----------------------------------------------------------------I don't see too much humor in any of the knots in this thread, so might I remind you all that the red and white corpuscles are at constant battle with each other. The friends of these corpuscles live in the bloodstream and are making constant whoopie. Having tired of both the corpuscles and the friends of the corpuscles the blood in the bloodstream rushes down to the feet, gets a look at those feet and rushes right back up to the head. Seeing that the blood must contain itself it turns over and gets real cold. Once attaining a state of coldbloodedness the blood proceeds to mock red and white and even blue corpuscles by having an all American dinner in the middle of an all American house. After the blood has boiled, it simmers for two hours and begins to drag on and on and on. Sometimes it fragments. Itself. Some, times. And in the dead of night it waits silently as the March of the Corpuscles fills the stream and then it says to the corpuscles, Yonder comes the rush of even more blood, rushing rushing through the stream... perhaps you should go home. But, the corpuscles persist and establish a new nation within the bloodstream, where you and little Johnny can grow up happily and without any oppression. You'd like that, huh? Well, how do you think little Johnny feels? How do you think big Johnny feels? I bet he feels something too, probably we all do. Probably just gravity though.
------------------------------------------------------------

A second poem from Thoughts and Other Girdles (2001).
Images via jhpjapan.com and nature.com, respectively.

Thoughts and Other Girdles

Well not exactly the most, but certainly the hairiest. Harried lakes. And Fred gone out for lunch. Huh, asked the bartender. Just tending my bar. Looks more like a post, you should stop and go home, spoke Joseph as he pulled out his crowbar. What are you doing, asked the bartender. Just tending my bar you riff raff, now beat it or I smash your post in. Its not very post like d od od od. Oki said smoki. Lots a friendly folk round here all in one place. all in one little place. dis is one tiny place for all these friendly people.

Title poem from my first chapbook, from 2001. Below are the front and back covers for the handmade edition.

You turned me around

bizcarlito via ponyXpress

Map Ref 41°N 93°W

Off my wall

My friend Lynn and I drew this, it was a game.

From Comfort and Critique by Peter Sotos

Parents trust reject-magic. Especially. Maybe. When their children are hurt by something unfair and completely out of their control. They look for messages and bent reason and talk about bonds and clarifying connections. Purity. Love that is tangible. Electric. It has to be. And the superstitious shrimp that don't grab for something pathetic like god and nature are the sicknesses that sink back into themselves only to ask you later to excuse their repulsive frailty.

Tits, Drinks, Etc...

To all my readers (Alan I'm lookin' at you!) I want to be a Marxist but I can't escape the economics. I know he had Jenny, or so I'm told via the English reader... I'm not part of the proletariat, I don't work at the moment, or in recent memory (at least when I did it was unpaid and one-on-one, ie tutoring, and before that at a becoming-shit video rental shop). But, my professors and instructors have told me I'm smart. I'm a great guy, I'm told. Even my teachers said so! Now that -or/-er contrast is important. Think of the difference in base praise, or interpretation, of a professor versus plumber. '-er' versus '-or'. Teacher versus instructor, the title has been fought over, I've seen this on a college campus. The problem comes to a bump, a hazard for the train of thought, at 'builder'. For what is an architect? An '-echt'?



So yes, I'm left feeling a smidge closer to being an anarchist. What is that '-ist'? I'd share it with a Marxist. No 'or' or 'er' in sight. Something to do with Latin I think. Emperor over teacher. God versus Made. Lowercase.

But tits, they were once a source of fun, as the Maels' song says. Perhaps I think of that more in the sense of heartbreak. But what is heartbreak but a symptom of a non-local culture? Oh, wait, not quantum physics, I mean: neo-locailty.




Yes, drink some more. Till you can't see anymore. I saw with marriage, in a neo-local culture, we are forced, if part of said culture, contemporary America (re: USA), to ask of one human what we would have asked prior (or in a different set-up) of a hundred people. Sad, sad, sadly I'm very used to this. We all are. We being those reading this, surely (or should I say: Shirley? Shirley if you're my type, email!).

I know I'm obsessed with Japanese women. To a lesser extant: Chinese women. I've dated them! Depressingly that's the least of this. There's this whole temple of light where a book sits on a pulpit, you can read about how other people can become representations of your desires, needs, that whole hole...

Anyway, you see, I can be one to group humans under titles too! I know that race is a cultural construct, I've learned it the hard way over and over, Marxism confronts this where?, and what can I say besides, "Are you familiar with the construction of race, specifically that of being 'white', in the United States 20th century historical period?" To which they can't help but not answer, surely.

I would not have been white a hundred years ago, most currently white people would be in the same boat (to Ellis island or San Francisco?).

So back to tits,



No! That is NOT what I wanted. Perhaps that is why I selected a picture where she covers her chest with her arms, plaid, flannel, balancing a gremlin on her head. It's all gremlins over here. Here or her? I was thinking of this model I have a crush on, though she is far too athletic, so then I was think, Rinko Kikuchi in 'Babel' yes a Japanese girl going for suicide topless. Gosh, I'm so predictable, an (for lack of a better term, again...) American film of all things! (Why not grab something from my infinite JAV archive you ask? You may go unanswered). But this is from a German magazine, I'm thinking... So, Kai I'm looking at you. Because your girlfriend is gorgeous, and a genius, and you're a genius, at least (forgive me), so help a friend out (if we're still friends!).

At least that pic only cuts off the woman's legs. That's something cultural anthropology taught me (hello Beth) that pictures are to be interrogated. Of course I'd read that before, but that class showed me what it meant in a real way. So if I displayed 'tits' I'd be cutting a girl into sixths, at least. Not that I've never gazed at guro.

Oh, that's not what I wanted help with. And this isn't calypso.

I'm just heartbroke drunk with a vague awareness of what he was born and aged into.



I'm nowhere near that athletic, if you saw her stomach. The girl I wasn't sincere enough wasn't either. But, of course, that didn't matter! I only thought, hoped (?), my subtexts were understood by her. Just as hers were by me, or so I thought. My brain recapitulates it, if last night was any gauge.

Marxism, help me out dear readers.

p.s.: i wasn't thinking so much of a the above model i have a crush on, or even rinko, so much as past t.a.'s who i saw either fall in love or get their hearts' broken (or both) by other 'white' males. er, or even at worst some one i let go by while i was in proxy love. sigh. surely regret is heard simply by the publishing of a post.

Go See The Aiko Planetarium LP

Dear readers, for we are circles. Nine years, so many holes in the moon. May I present to you the debut by Aiko Planetarium, gift horsies I make myself. Songs, songs, songs. It has been a very singular trip, more so than simply strangely so. Oh, how crazy it has been! In all honesty, this is the thing I am happiest with so far.

Please, destroy, take its hand, that sort of thing. Enter the Aiko Planetarium, see the constelations! Join the Astro Navy, Hear the Americana Eskaton Army.

Love a bird, be a worm.

Etc.

Aiko Planetarium Lp

Faked UFOs for James Champagne (aka SYpHA_69)

These are two photos I took back around 1994. They've always been favorites of mine. My best friend at the time helped.

Lion's Club

I was doing something you didn't want me to and you were telling me that. Thinking I was being clever I said, I remember when I used to care what you think. But it didn't hurt you enough. Actually, it just seemed sort of funny.

The hangovers caught up with me but not as much as you shifted the past into arbitrariness. That was the worst. I imagined the cuts coming down on me, across my arms. Trying to go the other way, this time from funny to cruelty, I told myself things will get better. There's always tomorrow. The world is your oyster.

I can't say something that will hurt you enough. Cuts seem more appealing than obesity because cuts are judged more harshly. Stretch marks don't go away either but a cut can be on an otherwise attractive frame. It means you are hurting. Whereas a fat belly just means you eat too much and are fat. There's the pains of finding that my clothes are getting too small. I can't buy new ones. But, with cuts I can do so much worse.

Both help in one way though, they both affirm how stupid the world is out of the judgment they bring. You're fat, you cut. Or you combine. Let's be positive. Finally, I stopped doing something you didn't want me to do. You kept doing what I didn't want you to do. I kept doing what I didn't want to do too.

Japanese Alice First Release: PACIFIC BLUSH!

Stop Press! Cancel Flights!
Call in Sick! Fluff the Pillow!
Drain the Tub!
Roll Your Socks Together!




YES!! It's the inaugural release from Japanese Alice, the tiny virtual label of Matt and I. And, BOY! It's a killer. Please go there and check it out, download and rock this awesome wave that will have your cheeks turning red across the Atlantic.

Really, it's a wonderful album.

Floating World, Floating Uterus

The idea of a floating uterus, a wandering womb, goes back to Egypt. Even the supposed great thinking Plato wrote about it, it could even kill.



Ukiyo-e print via noisedup

5. hysteria

once termed to be a disorder of only women (thus the root words being hyster, as it was originally thought that the uterus was a free floating object in a woman's body, and when lost would cause her to be hysterical), the original cure was for the doctor to masturbate the woman.

via urbandictionary.

Thus also the term 'hysterectomy'. Why hasn't that been renamed? Answer: lack of medical naming activism.

See also the short film 'Hysterica & the Wandering Womb...'

bluebird's box iii

WOOL 100%

Lesson: アミナオシ (knit-again)

Screen via Mai Tominaga's Wool 100%

It's true/µuo

by GU! (via ponyXpress - specifically here)

bluebird's box 2

bluebird box

Faye Wong (王菲) Plist

picture via here

"I'm lazy, only manage to jog for 2 days. I smoke, an act of damaging health. I'm a straightforward person, therefore offending someone becomes part of everyday life. I love to throw my temper around, not knowing how to control them. I'm an impatient person; especially to things that does not interest me. I'm confident yet feel inferior, very contradicting. Facing my fans, I'll feel embarrass. I'm not motivated, always thinking of holidays. I'm not an obedient person, even my mum can't change this fact. I'm not an idol, please don't treat me as one. Thanks to all who loves me. Hope that I'll reach my definition of perfection one day; you'll still be proud of me."

- Faye Wong as quoted on a l l a b o u t f a y e (wongfaye.org)

from Chungking Express (1994) via CinemaSounds

off the hook 2

Q: Anything interesting out there?
A: The Spiral Jetty.




As is probably obvious by now, I quite like the band Destroyer, especially their song 'what road' off the Your Blues album, a quote from which I used to open my expository essay: 'How To Lose Shin'. Anyway, there's a line in the song, in the verse after the one I quoted in that essay, that I found myself singing, but not really knowing what I was saying. Destroyer's songs often reference many things with an emphasis on women (or simply female characters), other songs (including other Destroyer songs), cities and so on. Dan Bejar, who simply burned a golden bridge, has his own metaphorical vocabulary as well that he's developed over the course of seven or so album. His lyrics have been referred to as hyper-literate. The lines I found myself singing were,

Able, willing, ready!
Fuck the Spiral Jetty!
Tonight we work large! We aim high! Pillars stare at a sky
Designed to come down upon
Everyone at once...

The piece which seemed to evoke a space that I couldn't specifically visualize was in the second line, spiral jetty. I know what a jetty is but wasn't quite sure if this was a metaphor, or what. So one night while browsing the Destroyer wiki I found that exact phrase hyperlinked in the lyrics (as anything referential is apt to be) and clicked it. It turned out that the Spiral Jetty is a land art sculpture by the artist Robert Smithson which is an actual spiral jetty off the shore and into the Great Salt Lake. It was completed in 1970.

Whether Dan Bejar is really saying fuck that piece of art, as in let's not be weighed down by this or let it rot, or not, is delightfully up for debate. However, I was thinking he meant it like to hell with it, while at the same time conversely drawing attention to it.

I clicked on and read the article on the Spiral Jetty at Wikipedia, where I saw two photos of the work and was frankly wowed by this thing. It's exactly what it sounds like, a plane curve tracing a point to its center. It's gorgeous, amazing, inspiring, and other hyperbolic terms – however in this case those words are pretty much right on the money. Or were at the time. Smithson died three years after the work was finished, and shortly thereafter the water levels rose and the piece was covered until 1999. It's expected that the work will go back under and eventually be ruined unless it's preserved. Currently it's owned by some art gallery in New York. I'm not sure if it's open to the public, though apparently you can walk to a location where the jetty is visible from. I hope I can go see it before it becomes more of an underwater adventure, and hopefully run out and walk to it's center.

I'm sure it'll be something, because, god, it's sublime. Will I say, fuck you? Probably. It will be at least half meant endearingly. To respond to the lyrics, well I think they're great. Inspiring, even vaguely revolutionary in a fatalistic socialist way or whatever. Fuck that, the lyrics are poetic, political only in envisioning some cloud like dream where we rise up. Maybe it's a scene from a play. Or god, what do I know?

For more: What Road and Smithson's Spiral Jetty

Athena Nike Adjusting Her Sandal

Athena Nike Adjusting Her Sandal, marble relief from the Temple of Athena Nike, Acropolis, Athens (now destroyed). 410-470 BCE. 1.07 m. Acropolis Museum, Athens.

One of my favorite pieces of erotic art. Intelligence, independent action, the beauty of her body, look at her feet. Her legs, her breasts, her fingers, her shoulder as the drapery falls.

Zombie Joke

"Me hungry long time."

via Matt from scratchdilemma while watching Night Of the Living Dead

Louis Wain's "Cat in the Flowers"

'I've bided my time for many a day
And passed by many fine cats
But the finest of all, the one I love the most
Is elsewhere worrying about rats.'

As quoted in Louis Wain's Edwardian Cats

picture via Catland

St. Teresa of Ávila

St Teresa of Avila (1515-1582) as a Young Woman (detail) by François Gerard (1827) via earlywomenmasters.


"1. What I shall now speak of was, I believe, the beginning of great harm to me. I often think how wrong it is of parents not to be very careful that their children should always, and in every way, see only that which is good; for though my mother was, as I have just said, so good herself, nevertheless I, when I came to the use of reason, did not derive so much good from her as I ought to have done--almost none at all; and the evil I learned did me much harm. She was very fond of books of chivalry; but this pastime did not hurt her so much as it hurt me, because she never wasted her time on them; only we, her children, were left at liberty to read them; and perhaps she did this to distract her thoughts from her great sufferings, and occupy her children, that they might not go astray in other ways. It annoyed my father so much, that we had to be careful he never saw us. I contracted a habit of reading these books; and this little fault which I observed in my mother was the beginning of lukewarmness in my good desires, and the occasion of my falling away in other respects. I thought there was no harm in it when I wasted many hours night and day in so vain an occupation, even when I kept it a secret from my father. So completely was I mastered by this passion, that I thought I could never be happy without a new book."

From The Life of St. Teresa of Jesus, by Teresa of Avila (here)

ceremony

for Alan (and his purest-of-treats) via wwwjdic

s. paper

14 Years Of Sexual Frustration

It was a slice of onion
curled in the rain
that reminded me of
the glow worm

and eleven years of
that thing called a crush,
mood swings, chocolate,
drifting into the netherworld,
outbursts, jaw pain,
happier than happy
or sexual frustration.

I was fourteen then
I'm doing math now

for a green card
and another year and a half,
this time with more sex.

Bearded/Clothed

Object 5 is listed as being done in gypsum, a soft stone. No date is given. This slab stands nearly 6' and is the color of a California beach on an overcast afternoon, gray but with some whitish splotches, a bit like concrete. On it is a naturalistic relief of two male figures who take up nearly the whole height save a horizontal abstract border defined near the bottom which they appear to be standing on. On the extreme left of the relief, rising from behind the left figure's right foot, are thirteen flowers stacked individually, the top one being mostly outside the frame of the relief. Above this is the right half of a wing, to the end feathers; it appears to be spread perfectly horizontally. In the lower-mid register, a block of text, unlegible to these eyes, running on top of the figures, for about twenty some lines. Returning to the figures, they are both bearded.

The figure on the right has wings and his right calf is exposed to reveal some inhuman like definitions. Both figures are facing towards the left. Their beards are both long, flowing down to their chests, and appear to be twisted into columns, looking a bit like rafts. This characteristic carries over to each figure's hair, the length of which mirrors that of their beards. They are both clothed in robes. The man's robe opens over his chest revealing a necklace with four visible pendants, his robe is tied at his waist. His left arm is partially concealed in his robe. The winged-godman's robe has a detailed hem, and both his arms are covered to just above the elbow. He appears to be guiding the man, who is in front of him. The figures are both in sandals, with straps, and they have their legs spread apart as if they might be walking. Both have their right arms bent with their hands up and pointing forward. There are some distinctions to be made here. The man has his right hand closed with only his index finger pointing forward. The winged-godman has his hand open, palm down, making a gesture similar to our current one signaling, all-okay; but instead of forming a circle with his index finger and thumb he is using his middle finger and thumb. Both figures are carrying something in their left hands, the man is carrying a long thin scepter looking object and the winged-god man is carrying, via a handle, what appears to be a small purse or bucket.

This piece has no similarities to paleolithic or neolithic art, for one the figures are naturalistic and there is use of a written language. Nor does it have anything in common with Egyptian art, as the figures are too muscular for their regal air, and the hats are wrong. Right off the bat when I saw this object I was reminded of the art of later Mesopotamian cultures.

The poetry of Object 5 feels so obviously ancient. But, if it was done today out of Play-Doh by Tom Friedman it might blow my mind. While tributes and processions, and the ancient music I hear when looking at this relief are beautiful to me, it is only in the context of a personal poetic abstraction of love in the neo-locality of our current society. Which I guess might have been an occurrence to someone who was around to see this actual image, maybe even the people who worked on it. People who were powerless, making art that was part of a canon they had no control over. Maybe I saw what they saw in it, and maybe they were somehow Persian, born or conquered – if there's a difference.