All the Rest Divine

(c) Bonny Finberg

If I Were a Hacker Pop Ups

You dream and the outside comes in,
so inseparable you forget
you can turn it off.

This is a Free Fly Zone.

Maximize.

You never know how long it will work.

Maybe you can stay longer.

Your phone is ringing.

Tomorrow you will have a dream about eyes. 

When you wake up you will remember something about water. 

Then you will plug in and see me. 

What is it you're looking at? 

(c) Bonny Finberg

SACRED HEART

Poor gorillas, poor,

and even the hated and miraculous,

whose tongues have children

whose feet water their plants,

and even the hated

vanished in the ground,

a song for disaster,

and all we do

recorded in the blood of roots,

and people who this is a song of love for,

a song of cruelty,

a song for those who come after

who believe that life conquers disaster,

and all we do recorded in the blood.

(c) Bonny Finberg

COHABITATION

(c) Bonny Finberg

ALVIN GREENE -- THE CHIPMUNK CANDIDATE?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hxnTYPZOmK0

DEAR PRESIDENT OBAMA

Dear President Obama,
  This is the thing i keep hearing/reading over and over from you:
 "...we are putting in place aggressive new operating standards for offshore drilling. And I have appointed a bipartisan commission to look into the causes of this spill. If laws are inadequate, they will be changed. If oversight was lacking, it will be strengthened. And if laws were broken, those responsible will be brought to justice."
  The fact is, accidents happen because they're "accidents." They are unexpected occurrences. Thus one always weighs risks against advantages when proceeding with questionable decisions. In the case of off shore drilling the potential, as so tragically clear from this catastrophe, is that we will poison the food and water supply to a degree that will end our very existence. What will it take to understand this? No amount of human regulation can prevent human error (at best) and human stupidity and greed (at its worst.) We, the citizens of the world must change our way of thinking about energy. Not only must we find new sources, but we absolutely must change our use and end taking resources for granted. We must see our own culpability when we drive SUVs, leave the water running, create synthetic products for consumption in all areas of our lives, and have the hubris and arrogance to think all our problems are caused by powers beyond our control like big oil companies and ineffective government (though these are definitely players.)
  Please reconsider allowing off-shore drilling in any form. Neither in deep nor shallow waters. This earth belongs to all of us. Maybe most people don't understand their own participation in its abuse and destruction. Maybe if the reality of oil's expense hits home, not only in dollars, but in the quality of life everyone is always so vocal in trying to protect, maybe if it's not so primary in keeping our lives in "order," people will have to come up with other means of doing so. It's a painful thing to consider. Perhaps we have to set priorities as to where oil will be utilized in order to sustain our lives. Nuclear medicine has been put to great use. Does that mean that every citizen should have it in their bathroom medicine cabinet?
  I live in a place that's heated by electric heaters which are expensive to run. I have taken to keeping the heat on only when necessary. Wearing a sweater if i have to keeps me comfortably warm. If electricity were cheaper in the city where i live, perhaps I'd keep the heat on more. But maybe not. In New York City I worked in a building that was so highly airconditioned in the summer that people ran electric heaters in their offices to keep warm. That was one office in one skyscraper in a city full of them. No matter how much we complained, the management was slow, if ever, to respond. Air conditioning is little used in most apartments in Paris. The buildings are built of thick stone and keep the apartments relatively cool in summer and warm in winter. Upgrading windows for better insulation is given a 30% stipend by the government. Still imperfect, it's a step in the right direction.
I think the United States has set the bar high for "quality of life." It seems as "developing countries" find an increased "quality of life" they find themselves following the U.S. model of waste, pollution and selfish consumption. We may have more regulations than they do at this point in time and can point our collective finger at them for being where we were maybe decades, or even a century, ago in terms of government oversight. However, this latest catastrophe underscores how ineffective so-called regulation and government oversight are in the face of global industry and corporate goals, even in our own "advanced" society.
  I was under the assumption that you understood these things when I listened to you speak in those inspiring days before the election; when I voted for you; when I stood with pride in Union Square Park that evening in November 2008, celebrating what people can accomplish when they come together. Please stand up and take the risks necessary to curtail these powerful interests. Take the risk of displeasing large amounts of U.S. citizens who will grump and gripe about losing their privileged lifestyle that cannot be sustained without destroying us all. Please do the job we sent you to Washington to do.
With all respect and hope for true change, Bonny Finberg

WALL SHADOWS

FLOOD

I’m sitting at a window, watching the street,
unable to awaken to the logic in a sentence,
the nightmare of your magnificence.
the beginning,
the middle,
the question at the end,
dangling, waiting for an explanation

Review of "DOPE" on A GATHERING OF TRIBES

My Review of "Dope" the 1968 Documentary by Diane Rochlin (Flame Schon) and Sheldon Rochlin

JOHN ZORN'S ALEPH TRIO PLAYS FOR WALLACE BERMAN

Performance at the Musée d'art et histoire du Judaisme
May 16, 2010 as part of the RADICAL JEWISH CULTURE:Scène New York.
John Zorn (saxophone), Trevor Dunn (contrebasse), Joey Baron (drums) play in front of Beat Generation artist Wallace Berman's first and only film, Aleph. Berman worked on the film from 1956-1966. He was killed in a car accident by a drunk driver in 1976, just before his 50th birthday.

“History is merely gossip. But scandal is gossip made tedious by morality.” -Oscar Wilde

OPEN LETTER TO THE UNBEARABLES

http://www.thevillager.com/villager_358/literaryroles.html

The publication of this piece in the current Villager exposes the Unbearable's idea of creating Temporary Autonomous Zones void of self-interest or lust for celebrity as just a lot of elitist talk. John Bayles and his employer, The Villager, eager to make a buck, has them mooning the Literary World with their self-satisfied grins. Self-promotion is an understatement. Their portrait portrays a group of naval-contemplating wannabes playing to the cameras. Yes--step right up you bunch of self-declared a-holes. If that isn't a bit of pretentious humility, I don't know what is.
Respectfully,
Buffy Porker

Read my review of Patti Smith's "Just Kids" on A GATHERING OF TRIBES

http://www.tribes.org/web/2010/02/17/patti-smiths-just-kids-reviewed-by-bonny-finberg/

We Can Stay Local

“We can stay local—have crêpes or French food or fuck off—”
“I’d rather have crêpes or French food, then fuck off.”
“Or do that and get pissed.”
“Stay local, have French food. Can have a crêpe tomorrow—French food.”
“How do we get home?”
“We’re supposed to get a cab…or a bus.”
“The drug you just took—the drugs are part of your mind.”
“We have to find a way to get home.”

April 8, 2005, rue Ravignan, Paris

Tonight on Radio Joy

I'll be reading work with a soundscape by Berni Simons on RADIO JOY, the online radio show by Band of Holy Joy. 8pm GMT, 3pm EST. http://bandofholyjoy.co.uk/radio.html

A BOOK ABOUT DEATH.

Here's the piece I'll have in the "A Book About Death" exhibition at the Emily Harvey Gallery, curated by Matthew Rose. http://abookaboutdeath.blogspot.com/2009/08/bonny-finberg-381.html#links

WATCHING PIGEONS ON A ROOF

Watching pigeons on a roof. He is round, with a pouffed neck and pale gray feathers. She is the same color with a thin, sleek neck, her small tear shaped head converging into a thin yellow beak. She walks along the peak. He walks behind. She doesn't turn. He stops and preens every so often, his head bobbing up to see her with the eye that faces south. She preens then lifts her head towards him, who is now too busy digging into himself to look at her. She walks away. He stands and looks out at the hills, then takes a few steps towards her. She retreats behind the brass chortens and trident that sit at the roof's center. He walks quickly toward her, moving behind the chorten until they're both out of view. She walks out along the roof. He follows. She quickens her pace. He turns to go the other way, but not too far.
They stand this way for a while. Then he flies down to the eave and looks up at her, but she doesn't move. A deep gurgling rises from his throat. She stays still. He croons more gently. She waits, then turns and flies down to him. They lock beaks, looking into each other's eyes, pulling and twisting their necks back and forth. He stops to take something from under his wing feathers and puts it in her mouth with his beak. She grasps his beak with hers. They stay fastened this way for a while, then root around each other's bodies. Another male comes, and she retreats to a ledge. The two males flutter and swell. Her lover flaps once, flies over and stands beside her. The other male swoops away to another roof.
They fly to the ledge below this window and look across at an old pigeon who is now on the roof. He settles deeply into his oily feathers. The young male looks at him and gurgles. The older one stands tall and plumps his feathers into a plush of gray and black, suddenly looking much better. The other puffs up and flies over to face him.
The female hops down to a lower ledge and stands there watching the males. She retreats, then approaches.
The young one looks at the older, who is the more plumped of the two. There is a preening contest, then sudden hostile contact.
The female takes off, and then a sudden crack of thunder. Every pigeon and crow in the city soars into ordered rank except for a few who are either confused or prefer to fly solo.

(C) Bonny Finberg
Bhaktapur, Nepal, 2000

WRITTEN ON THE EYES

I write with my eyes. I stop whatever I’m doing, put down my pen, my cup, lick the jam from my fingers, but my eyes never stop. Sometimes my eyes play tricks. I sense something in my periphery, maybe only a glint of light off my glasses, which signifies like a misheard word.
The black lacquered cabinet in my childhood living room was painted with enameled scenes in the Chinese style. I spent hours studying its scenery: a world of pagoda bridges over gilded streams, temples, a colt beside a yellow boulder, a blue sea bird with spread wings, strange trees with curling limbs and modest foliage. What interested me most was a man poling a small covered boat with a woman inside. The woman had a look of surprise, as if she had just woken up to find herself drifting through this dark world animated by the creatures and plants moving past in eternal stillness.
All is told on a seamless scroll of transparency that I shake open and unfurl beneath my feet when I can no longer walk. Ever since I first became aware of windows I realized there are exits and through the exits is the world. I’ve read my life through them, remembering other spaces without language.
I pile junk upon layers of important things until there's no difference. This creates a chaos so splendid that I'm paralyzed by its beauty and have to avert my eyes. Beauty has become a painful thing. I stay away from windows where the movement of clouds across the sky threatens the rhythm of my heart. Alone in front of windows I feel danger. I’ve hung crude curtains, which fall from the walls each time I breathe. I go from room to room to avoid the wash of sunlight on the objects I’ve placed like sentences and paragraphs. Color and shadow change their meanings depending on the light or where I sit. A bird’s song or baby’s wail can distract me momentarily but invariably I go back to constructing this dangerous lie of beauty and order.
I’ve tried going outside to determine whether I mistook the world for something else, but three hundred sixty degrees makes me dizzy. Although at first it lifts me to be walking in a bright world I quickly tire and go back home to lie down. Drugs and drink make the horrible beauty more tolerable, but this is only temporary. They make me stay up all night until the sky begins to lighten and I have to close my eyes or be killed. Inevitably, the sun shakes me awake through my curtainless windows. I ask myself again what will I do today? and it’s always the same.
In the end I will succumb to beauty. All this chaos will be put in order as I drift through a black suspended world without sky or clouds, only wordless water flowing in eternal stillness.
* * *

FRIENDS

Rene was pissed because she thought Marsha had caused a big fight between her best friend and her best friend’s boyfriend, who’s also an old friend of Rene’s, besides being René’s other best friend’s ex-husband, by re-telling a story to Rene’s best-friend’s boyfriend and getting it all mixed up and sending the boyfriend back to his girlfriend in a jealous rage.
René and Marsha hadn’t spoken in three years and it got back to Marsha that René had told some confusing version of a perfectly innocent and normal situation having to do with Marsha’s best friend which in the telling implied something else, or at least left a few things open for question.
It was one night when René was sitting around with her oldest best friend, Sherry, who happened to be Rene’s best friend’s boyfriend’s ex-wife, drinking red wine and cognac.
Marsha used to be almost-best-friends with René, but three years ago Marsha tried to take advantage of the good nature beneath Rene’s coarse exterior, because beneath Marsha’s smooth exterior lies a cauldron of fear and envy, which cooks up to a pretty deadly stew.
René said to Sherry, “Have you ever seen Marsha with a pretty woman?
Are any of her friends pretty?“
“Well you’re pretty,” Sherry answered.
“Oh, I’m acceptable, but have you ever seen Marsha be friends with a beautiful woman? No! Never!”
Sherry considered Rene’s thesis.
Marsha had gotten a nose job about five years ago. She’d had a magnificent nose, very large and positively sculptural. It was her signature feature. When you thought “Marsha,” there was a deeper more subliminal thought: Nose.
About a year before the nose job, probably in preparation for what she had planned as a complete overhaul, Marsha got braces. That was unfortunate because the way her teeth protruded a little had given her an even more distinctive look.
It wasn’t just her quirky looks, either. She’d had an ironic sensibility, an eccentric sense of humor, both of which informed the conceptual art objects she produced, as well as making her an entertaining dinner guest.
After her braces and nose job she looked like everybody’s idea of attractive, and she slowly molded her personality to accommodate the bland features that she’d neatly organized, like a mannequin, around her messy human core.
She gave up making art and took a job at a bank. At dinner parties she talked, with little irony, about other people and clothes. René stayed friends with her because she was one of her oldest friends. Rene’s like that.
But Marsha, not fully satisfied with the course her life was taking despite all her physical adjustments, started cooking up a big soup of disappointment and despair, until she was completely transformed by hate.
One day, after Rene confronted Marsha, saying she was pissed about the incident with Rene’s best friend and her best friend’s boyfriend, Marsha wrote a letter to René:

Dear René,
If you ever mention my name in public again I’ll tell your boss you’re giving clients a 25% discount for your services and seeing them from your home.

Marsha

René never cries. She never cries in public anyway. You could know her for thirty years and never see her cry. But when she told this story that night to her best friend, Sherry, as she’d downed a couple of bottles of red wine and smoked a pack of Rothman’s Mild while Sherry drank green tea and smoked a joint, Rene cried.
Sherry, who loved René dearly because she knew her true nature, and also knew how much she loathed crying in public, listened.
Then René said to Sherry, “And you went to her wedding!”
Sherry protested: “But you never told me about the letter, how could I have known?”
René explained through tears and sobs that she hadn’t told anyone, until now,
how scared she’d been, but now that she had a new job she was free to tell whoever she felt like.
Sherry said, “René-e…I’m a single woman. It was a chance to go out and….”
“But she hardly ever saw you. She saw you, what? two? maybe three times a year? She invited people she saw three times in her life! She has no friends!”
“I’m sorry, Sherry said, eyes wide. I didn’t know. You didn’t tell me.”
“Do you know how scared I was? I couldn’t say anything to anyone. She said I should never say her name in public again. I could have lost my job. I could have lost everything. My co-op. Everything.”
Then they went to the movies.

© Bonny Finberg