KRAFT
I tried to channel Samuel Beckett during an episode on my computer. I call times when I sit there episodes. Like schizophrenic breakdowns, or epileptic seizures. More and more I’ve come to see them as the psychic and hormonal anomalies that they are. For it makes no sense to sit here and pretend to create reality. The only reality: markings on paper. Burn them and that information would cease to exist. And they say information can’t be lost or destroyed. On the other hand, a perfect record of this exists in the hard-drive. Destroy the hard-drive and it would cease to exist.
“Time flies when you’re having fun.”
“Who says I’m having fun?”
“It’s an obsession, then.”
My annoying friend, whom I will not name, as this has gotten me pilloried in the past, is correct, to some degree. But to call my thing an obsession seems imprecise. I compare it, more accurately, to eating, or defecating, functions that hardly require obsessions to promote and validate them. I have no choice, plain and simple.
“You’ve painted yourself into an existential corner.”
“You can say that, yes. I’ve nowhere to turn.”
“And yet, it will never sustain you.”
Sustenance, an issue at the end of the day. Anyone can record their silly thoughts and call them art. That doesn’t necessarily make it art. But it also doesn’t negate that possibility. Who’s to say?
“Yeah, I am. Made macaroni and cheese.”
I can’t go on. I must go on . . .
VOYAGEUR
In some respects, the guided tour left much to be desired. I liked discovering things on my own, at my own pace. I had spent a month in Rome when I was a young man, by myself, with the guidance and counsel of no one. And though my Italian was poor, I managed just fine. The man beside me smells like borotalco, not a bad thing on its own, but blended with sweat and fecal matter, upchucking becomes a distinct possibility.
“Stop the bus! Stop the bus!”
A thousand hands shove me forward through the tunnel of the bus, into the harsh light of southern France. A Van Gogh field to my right blinds me with its uncanny blaze. A flock of black birds circle in the sky. I smell grape-pressings and sheep’s cheese.
“Shut the fuck up, you old fart.”
The voices grow distant. The painting grows smaller and smaller, the black birds descend.
“You stepped on my foot, ass-wipe.”
And then I feel a great peacefulness arrest me. I am breathing evenly, calmly. The earth is warm under my cheek. I hear the bleating of sheep in the distance. I will come, I will come to you, my pretties …
Salvatore Difalco
Bindweed Magazine 