Part One

Repeater

Endtroducing

Cities of the perpetual white night. Snow and ice. Miles of cold. An old, stained mirror, smoke, a match being lit, flaring flame, as if in a movie, as if, not real, not her normal life. Cloudy. What was she watching? Someone with flowers, holding up hands, in black and white, moving behind her all the blood, all the fluid, sucked out.

This story started with Ann's death. Drug overdose. We, or I, did not see it coming, she was a good friend, should have been ongoing, always, more. Mentor, teacher, guide. Then suddenly and we did not know why, what happened, the details. No obituary, no notice of a funeral, nothing. It was weird, not right, what could we do?

I am telling this story, more or less, based on what I can remember, these flawed images. Actually that's not entirely true, part of me believes I remember everything exactly as if I were an advanced computer, as if computers were flawless, which they never will be, I don't think.

In Ohio, yes a long time ago. Back when there were trees, grass, almost everywhere. It was very warm then, unnaturally warm.

It was an email, John Richards, the director of the art department at Kent State, got it from somewhere in California, maybe. Ann Jackson died on such and such a date of a drug overdose.

That was it. I had not seen her in months, we knew of some problems, through our mutual friend Bob Walden, meds, depression, her new marriage. She was married in an LA ashram, nothing bad or weird, we just thought the marriage was sudden, and she kept it a secret for a while. We knew her through a healing ashram in Kent, Ohio, where we had all gone to get our lives back together. Some were worse than others, almost beyond hope, like Bob and I, but we got a lot better. 

Now she was dead, apparently, based on just the email, just what I heard, no funeral, nothing, no memorial, not for us anyway, I had no idea how much she meant to me. We had gotten close, she had become a mentor to me, as a painter, writer, maybe a spiritual guide. Teacher and friend. My best friend's girlfriend, partner, wife, ex-wife. Maybe I had a crush on her, so I was told later.

 I didn't know what to do, after the time period of almost mourning, wanting to mourn, wanting to know what happened, no recourse. Of course, I could write, make art, that’s all, language as conduit, as key, as prison, as virus, image, visuals as freedom, visions. I tried to describe my feelings for her. It was like some sliver of the blue Nile, of the diamond snake, the steel copper. I have no clear or definite explanation. I didn’t know what I was doing really, still don’t. No grasp of the rules, really, no comprehension.

Berkeley, California three years later. Hispanic guy across the street reaches under his shirt, scratching the side of his abdomen, as cool kids walk by. He worked today. My name is Mark and I am watching him as I drive by going up Hearst Ave to my room in the Berkeley Ashram.

 I got out of my old VW bus with the homemade lowering dock, out onto the quiet Berkeley street, a sunny morning after a run to the coffee shop for the mocha, now in its cup holder as I wheeled up the driveway, the softly lighted tunnel of old green trees with their warm July leaves and vines and bushes over broken concrete and gravel with a few small plants growing up in there. And rolled up the ramp around to the back of the house, worked my way through the clean but cluttered kitchen, and past the bathroom and into the computer room where I came to the laptop docking station.

“Do you still love me?” he said. They will talk together, trees, grass, moss, sound and silence, ripples in the mud, footprints. Alex talking to Ann.

She said over the phone to him before she expired, “drug overdose.” Was it accidental or intentional? He was lost now, saw the edge, moved past it. Disjointed hallucinatory worlds of past and future. Piece by piece.  Before she left her body. She was a guru to some. Became that way. After passing through fire, etc.

The gesture of the eyes avoiding desire, moving into fear, the looking away.

“I moved to Berkeley about 2 weeks before 9-11.” she said. That was in 2001, when terrorists opposing the US Government destroyed the World Trade Center using large jets as bombs. Ann was about 20 when she first moved to Berkeley and then San Francisco.  

She had a psychic connection to tsunamis. One year she dreamt of tsunamis every night. When the first big one hit in December 2004 she was very upset.

She read my first novel as painful record of my traumatic childhood. She was sensitive and strong, and was a foremother of the flaming chakra girls, a creative post-feminist art collective and political cell.

Heat and weather was a big concern then. Average temperature in San Francisco was 65, compared to around 57 when Ann first moved there in 2001.  Water levels had risen. Alex, my best friend, her lover, had done some research and decided that a runaway greenhouse effect was more and more likely. The planet Venus is believed to have experienced a runaway greenhouse effect, which led to its oceans boiling away.  He convinced me that this was a possibility.

The day after the inauguration, sitting in the back of the Vivekananda store. Nice to be able to sit. She'll be here for a while. I seem to be thinking about sex a lot, more than I thought, but I do like Alex, not just in a physical way? Or maybe just physical.

She had a band too, of course. Various names, settled finally on Rock This Bitch: a cross between Sonic Youth, Rage Against the Machine, and Godsmack, and they did a killer version of Pink Floyd's “In the Flesh”. Alex sang and played drums, Ann on bass. It was fun…as fun as the rocknroll lifestyle can be, drugs and all. Usually fun at first, at least for most. Not so much for me, only brief moments, then numbness.

I can't eat that apple right now. Need water. Back to work.

That was around the time, after she died, when I started to imagine a different world, a world of ice, machines, where almost everyone is gone. I knew that this was some way to help myself in my grief. Because what was happening with me was, as you will see, not so interesting, or painful, or both. The ice world, and my future as a cyborg, seemed to be much more interesting. I have only to ask myself what the relationship is between this real life and the world in my mind?

Ann had girlfriends and boyfriends then. Sometimes only girls. Her main focus was on becoming an artist, or using the talents she had. She began as a painter but soon moved into conceptual art and installation. She read as much theory as she had to for grad school. Beulard was the same age as her father, she had a truce with them both in a way...more feelings about her father, more annoyance with Beulard and other male theorists. She liked his idea of copies, or copies of copies, orders of simulacra. It made sense to her.

As Ann read Alex would make love to her: various books, once the old testament, the Torah, maybe genesis, later chapters. Said it was like a perfect fucked up fantasy as he fucked her. He did not feel left out: she never read aloud. But he never asked her to. He felt a little left out.

Waiting to see “No Exit” in the Tenderloin. A new production.

Now in this moment listening to Fatboy slim's version of magic carpet ride. Tall skinny blonde made me a chocolate heart. Hell is...all you have to write about is your unhappy childhood. Tomorrow I want to buy glitter and stars, but mainly I want to hang out with Lenina Crowne. Asian tattooed goth goddess. Actually she is half-Asian. Half green. Martian? She never told me. Beautiful.

He was cute, tall, Caucasian. Trendy metal glasses a little too small for his head. Skinny, probably early thirties, messy morning grayish hair, they had the same cute button nose although her died black hair matched her long black coat. Ann hated them for being together, comfortable, possibly happy a good chunk of the time.

Ann forgets how beautiful she is, doesn't believe compliments most of the time, just once in a while.  

Dig it a night of bands music blondes and alcohol, bleach and bass and drums, severe insecurity, realizing I am back in this thing with a bloody vengeance.

I lost the use of my legs in a climbing accident, crippling, wheelchair. 

It was an experimental film, Daphne filmed Alex's death by virtual overdose.

Ann is protective of her feelings...I try to be but still put my head on the chopping block.

She apologized for not swallowing...said that she didn't want to ingest all the drugs in my system into her.

Feeling fucked up on Sunday, day off. Waiting for mocha to kick in. The earth is partially covered in ice again. A new ice age. Ann and Alex are gone, more or less. They are no longer real in the sense you and I are, or were. I'm glad you're here.

Daphne said she was annoyed and acted annoyed about the video/short I just made of her. She was great though. Obviously a natural.

Online and in Eris I was usually eno23, a reference to a favorite film character, jumbled, a favorite musician/producer, and a favorite number pointing to the conspiracy behind all the others...

Alex asked me about my recording and writing and art making: what does this have to do with saving the world? Biding your time maybe? After his virtual death. You never know what's real anymore.

Shoes, chalkbag, that's all you need. I'm still a climber. Somewhat damaged, yeah.

Jump back and forth between life, writing and film.

Everything we have done and experienced has led up to this moment, the only reality. All is leading, leading to this, now. This is why I was born, quit ROTC, moved to California, got married and divorced to sit in the back of a cellphone store, reading and eating lunch.

In the future, when you take BART under the bay, the tunnel is clear, and you can see the fish. The express goes too fast of course. The slow people who don't take it don't always look but it's nice to know they can.

I have been around for over eight hundred years now. This fact is still amazing to me. Alive, not sure. 

Daphne Imd me: so what is your plan?

Me: go into eris

find alex and all his permutations

shut it alll down or disable key parts

try not to lose myself

daphne: it's hard not to lose yourself in here

me: yes we designed it that way

d: good luck

All Alex and Ann talked about was film: not in the sense that most of us do, as some focus of conversation or fun way to interact: they only used film as a way to communicate: if he was hungry he would say "how many times have we seen Babette's Feast" etc.

If he wanted to make a film he’d say what were we doing 8 and a half days ago?

She would say that’s pretty Bergman when she couldn’t relate to something or thought it was lame/flat.

Language is a virus and a prison from which I am trying to escape. Is there a cure? His gay/androgynous appearance mannerisms gestures were totally endearing to a select few.

I must ask that girl out, she flirted with me I think, maybe strongly. I must relish and adore the thought of the sweet pain of rejection. And be ecstatic over the thought of acceptance, the possibility.

What it is, what it shall be, memories, footfalls, down the hall, time forgot, forgetting, forgotten, soon. That was what he was like, soon, sooner, soonest. In the dark room, behind the keyhole, the tired metaphor, magic carpet. This was the keyhole, this was the key that fit. Fit, fitted, fitness. This was the day. Interested, introspective.  I thought of this story, as I tell it to you, as a keyhole, I can look through it, into the past, get some understanding of what happened, what has led up to this point, see things now more clearly. My thoughts have been frozen, like the earth, for a long time now.

When in doubt, here it goes. They spoke in films. He was nervous when he first spoke to her. "Have you seen any good films lately?"

Alex writes for magazines about anime and games...

Daphne's quote about games and porn. “Guys in San Francisco seem to be into one of two things,” she said, sitting on the stage of the Cafe du Nord. “Games or porn. Which one are you into Mark?”

I'm addicted to making art, I said.

Porn porn everywhere...

She said that when she used to live in San Francisco before she mostly knew drag queens on in the Castro and now she is meeting all these straight guys who are either into gaming or internet porn. The reality was yes I was addicted to women, relationships, but not porn so much.

That would change somewhat.

People at that time were so inclined to wear headphones everywhere in the city, on Bart, the subway, they became much less aware of their surroundings. People in cars were insulated. Windows up, radio on. Spoon fed mild centrist fragmented propaganda by public radio. But the rest of us, with earbuds, just as bad, music, podcasts, insulated, protected. I can't hear you. I'm on the phone. Shielded. Was it the same outside the cities? The suburbs, if they still exist? I don't know. All these divisions became irrelevant, more and more, later, as you can imagine. People walking around, talking to themselves, the air.

Rushing out the door, running for the bus. Nice lookin blonde punkish girl gets on, distant look of possible hangover. Daphne comes over tonight. I made the bus. Closer to the cell phone shop. Closer to Geary, the Richmond District, Golden Gate Park, the ocean.

I remember things, took photos, films, wrote things down. Fragments of journal, a novel, from then. Back then it was called Daydream Nation, after Sonic Youth.

Alex and I went to 16th and Guerrero to check out food, punks and tourists from all over. He was surprised when I told him that the girl in the grey dress was checking him out. There was a guy there checking me out. Indian/pakistani food. I wanted to sleep with the guy. Cat power, shiny black boots, I missed Lenina.

She had a psychiatric dream. Death is not the end, or the beginning.

It's chilly this morning. Too many puppies this morning means too many women...that is the key to the code. I am obsessed with women this week. (more than most weeks? Just out of perspective?) I feel sightly out of control. Keep looking at their bodies. Like turntables, beautiful, functional, curved. They speak in forked tongues of beautiful beats. Sisters of my lithium lens.

Waiting for Daphne at top of BART escalator, 16th and Mission, someone left small brown wooden chair here for me to sit in. Buses, Walgreens, a few people but it's quiet tonight. 16th and Mission in San Francisco, then and for many years after was a hub, like some shifting locations in the Tenderloin, of drugs, prostitution, poverty. Dark and dense. But close to chic restaurants and bars, so many diverse folks came by there to check out and partake the many varieties of interesting ways of checking out and going out.  [1] 

Lots of drama, conflict, pissy, ridiculous, walking away, Tom Waits, sex, touching, menstrual blood, Borges, talismans, the darkness, film festivals, Alex and Ann, talking, crazy hippy sushi place, overpriced. Long tortured silences, I've put up with worse, much worse, give her and her St Johns Wort a chance. And that toe sucking was out of this world. Long alley in the Mission of murals and other pieces of art.  Sushi and silence leading to drama again.

Warm here in the tunnel, Black Sabbath and resisting the urge to bail on her tonight. Who will it be? Why is that in spite of being happy being alone I prefer to be with a woman in spite of the difficulties? Soft, warm, hot, wet, smiling, challenging. That's what I like, apparently. The usual.

Ann and Alex pulled into the gas station on Geary and Stanyon, matching scarred white helmets and puffed black down jackets, he flipped up the seat of the scooter to put gas in while she went over to the washer fluid to clean her face shield.  They were pretty happy at that point. Before her depression started to really kick in.

I miss her now more than I thought I would. Thinking about women of the past a bit. What is the key, tying it all together?

Basic evil. Mysticism.

Blue diamond, destroyed and then rebuilt with nano, to bad effect considering it has mystic power.

Like the Frankenstein monster.

The lovely charming young man is possibly trans, it seems, maybe. It’s all good.

So based on reading a synopsis on back of Criterion Ikiru the Kurosawa film, I had the full idea for flashbacks, that my novel's present is actually the future and the present is the past...right before, after or during the next ice age. I speak about the distant past...hundreds of years...

Darling girl sits next to me at an ashram meeting, dog with 3 legs, Camille, Izzy, Alex in front of ATA doing radio pirate performance art about indecency vis a vis Janet Jackson. 80 kw and a big antenna. 

Talking to Daphne about 9-11 and greening houses made me feel more comfortable writing about environmentalism and the chickens roosting theory.

She felt like she had tsunami water moving in her veins, mixing with her own blood.

I'm actually in the mood for this version of Comfortably Numb this morning. With Daphne's drama I have been thinking of the ultimate drama queen, my old real actual friend Nadja, and the climbing gym.

I remember then having ideas for a novel: just add plot elements from “fasting” into “daydream”...blue diamond contains his personality in nanotech...hidden for a while in the blue gems of Julie's mobile...the actual prop of Blue...the film within the book.

The film and the production...

Embrace the idea of insanity and delusion as writer/protagonist allows his insanity to structure the novel in the same sense that he tries to control the illness: art, language as virus, plague, illness. The novel as an illness set out to infect society. Primitive idea of mental illness as contagious, still relevant? Boundaries, walls, fences, gates, gateless gates, spinning among fields like Mary Daly who asked me "What do you do? How do you make money?"

She saw a movie poster for "blue" in the goodwill and almost bought it for him but had to rush to work, she was late. When she went back it was gone.

Around that time he saw the body double for Binoche in Oakland, along with Michael, the double for Gere. Michael used to be a prominent heavy metal dude.

What kind of insanity is it? Delusions. Nonlinearity. ADD?

Why does he go insane? News of Ann's death by overdose, pushing him over the edge.  Sort of Pushing Alex, for sure, along with other things. The state of things in general. 

Ann seeks an absence of memory...the opposite of Proust. She doesn't believe in it.

Her voice, I can hear it in my mind, she’s not here, now. She is will be later and always as I create her now in my memory-mind.

Do you want this? She said, as she inserted her fingers in my ass. Yes I said, yes.

This is the way it is, we can’t go back and change it, spontaneous bop. I bought ribbed condoms today "for her pleasure" it’s warm in here, in my studio. Here, where it all happens, the writing, the dying. The disappearing. Hacking, coding, it all makes sense to me. Anything but make art. Like paintings, for example.

With her death/overdose/disappearance my ability to paint, that sensual of all arts, dropped off a precipitous fucking lot. Like the bass swallowing up the treble. Trembling in the needle dawn. And his works clattered about him. Yeah I did that but I was mostly a juicer. Alcoholic. I mean I loved lsd, special k, all that stuff. We were both clean, for years.

When I turn the glass of chamomile tea the bag wants to stay where it is, it doesn’t want to let me drink away from it. In the milk. It's time to blog, to tell the world, or at least the 100 or so people who read my blog that Daphne inspires me, that she is my muse of musical prose sounds. As I seek to escape language, the basis for our reality, the structure which is not really language but being which gives rise to language and all things in its image. Except painting, we can make painting not like a language. Maybe. It's worth a shot.

Shallow. I thought I was, was to some extent, true, needing that ornamental value, she was not attractive enough, to me, to fulfill that, to be part of the look good, the accessories, the watch, the gold chain. Must look good. Not something I even want to let go of, will not, it gets better, but not gone.

Like the crow, the comic, I am haunted by dead beauty, love, kindness, warmth, intelligence, tenderness.

I have to break out, be free of this isolation, hopping on Craigslist, Tribe, messaging women. K8 is bleach blond and bony and fiery and half Mexican and a poet goddammit and fuck you if ya got a problem with that. Moody as all hell yeah I’ll tell ya.

So the first time Ann looked at Alex it was out of a car, her yellow Alfa Romeo GT Veloce, eyes kind of locking into his, or trying to, he was focused on the job interview, then she seemed to ignore him, as she does now, mostly. Then the obsession, for both of them, the breaking down of the old, mostly good if tainted reality.

Then, eventually, they had to have this conversation.

I don’t expect you to stay, he said.

Well, what do you want? she said. He could hear the pain in her voice, of course, and see it on her face, in her large white brown and black shining eyes. She didn’t hide her feelings well and he didn’t either.

I want you to stay. Desperately.

And?

But I don’t expect you to.

You said that. Why?

Because you’re young, and I’m old.

That’s so patronizing.

I know. It sucks.

Fuck you.

So they fucked, again.

I was in my twenties, then, at the very beginning, in the wheelchair, dark hair, long, pulled back in a ponytail, Japanese-American, large frame, long arms, strong of course now that he used them for wheels, when he didn’t use the motor, which was most of the time, but even before, when he was a climber. Lines on his face, careworn, that look, tired, concerned, a good therapist look.

Like red-hot iron steel claws digging into his mind. Her mind. It was the same.

Daphne was thin, strong with pale skin, hair now shoulder length, blond with red and black streaks in it. Skin a bit dry from years of smoking, not healthy looking but tough, like it had been beaten. She was tall, elegant. Was about to get involved with the Flaming Lotus Girls, then eventually with the Flaming Chakra Girls.

Alex, good looking. Thin, fast movements, dark curly hair. Sharp, insane piercing eyes. Like a moon, like Jupiter, like a vampire. And he was a vampire, the kind that would drink your ideas, your vitality, your spirit, if you let him, if you weren’t on guard, and most people weren’t. Just manic enough. Like I was, could have continued to be, theoretically. Hypothetically.

This was who we were. Insane, but in different ways. Ann was short, dark short hair, often dressed in black, punked out. No tattoos, a few piercings. I had the tattoos. Dragons, cherry blossoms.

Long day of climbing in West Virginia, New River Gorge, sometime in August[2] . Saturday. Alex and I spent the day climbing in a climbing area called Kaymoor working on “Hardcore female thrash” a Dan Reel route that moved up to the left up the rock to a steep section, the hard move at the top, just could not get that move. And even after that it looked a little run out, no holds, no end in sight.

That night it rained. Not a lot. The next day they went to Summersville Lake. Started out on an easy crack that ended up being a little wet near the crux. “Black and tan”. As I was trying to make the hard move at the crux, a long reach up to the left off dime size footholds with a gaston in a finger crack, I fell, the last piece protecting me (a #2 cam) popping out, and Alex began to run back, to take in the slack in the rope, but it was not enough. I hit a rounded ledge, almost like a dish, but hard, my back, just before the rope tightened, a flash of pain, then "fuck, fuck, fuck" over and over again. Alex lowered me off the nut that had held, the second to last piece.

Then a few years later in grad school, working on a Masters in psychology. After the accident I had the usual depression, thoughts of drinking, suicide. But had pulled through, just like I often pulled myself up off the floor, because I had to, really, better than the alternative, depression, being a victim.

Then I wanted to try to understand why and how Alex died, after a recent move to California, the year before. They had been friends for a long time but things had changed. Ann's death was probably the crux.

Alex called Mark on his cellphone just a few weeks before his death, or virtual death.

Hey Marko, what's up, he said, signal just clear enough.

Not much. you?

Oh not bad, wrecked another car, got busted.

Nice. Using?

No. just drinking, a bit.

“Ok cool. Good to hear from you.” And that's ok. That’ll work. Was that how they drifted apart? The rapid cycling, the mixed episodes, the relationship problems? Was that it?  They were both in their fifties, both acting younger, feeling younger, not really much more mature than thirty years before.  Most people felt years younger these days, looked it, if you could get the decent anti-aging drugs. The good stuff would take 25 years off your life, but it had side effects, of course.

Film that Daphne took of Alex. Mark watches it on his computer screen. She was going retro in some ways at that time.

Alex is lying on the ground, sidewalk, syringe of jade near his arm, a few drops of purple liquid, on his arm, in the needle. The jeans, new, black sport coat with silver stripes down the arms, tribal tattoo around his neck, various piercings, very Oakland hipster boy. His body quivers and then is still, his arm starts to flatten as if it is a balloon, losing air, his body becomes red, then gray. His head separates from his body, rolls into an alley and then into a gutter. Berkeley. On the edge of People's Park...somewhere, filmed by Daphne, his death, modified, but how much? Whatever the fuck they were using, developed.

Stopped here july 21, revising going quite well as I capitalize things.

Stopped 9:20 7-22

stopped

Stopped here july 25, monday.  Going well, pretty strange story I have to admit. A lot happens/doesn't happen in the first 30 pp. Cleaning it up, capitals, very good. A great book.

Stopped aug 7, definitely a lot about daphne and his obsession with her. How does this relate to anne's death, or anything? We shall see..

Stopped here july 21, revising going quite well as I capitalize things.

Stopped 9:20 7-22

stopped

Stopped here july 25, monday.  Going well, pretty strange story I have to admit. A lot happens/doesn't happen in the first 30 pp. Cleaning it up, capitals, very good. A great book.

Stopped aug 7, definitely a lot about daphne and his obsession with her. How does this relate to anne's death, or anything? We shall see..