Sometimes I want to write as if I were painting but not the representational way or the nearly photorealistic way I usually do it but more like, say, throwing paint against a canvas as with Jackson Pollock recently corked from the bar after a long demanding day of technically accurate spyrographing. Of course, with little mind for success, and little interest for posterity, the Dadaists attempted something of the sort. Mondrian, the colorful squares guy, didn’t start painting his geometry paintings; he started with docks and piers. Or perhaps this is crap too, a grown and tired person’s way of filling up his journal entry with nonsense words.

Writing nonsense on purpose is not very easy. Has anybody else been getting these emails hawking Cialis or Viagra or diplomas but the bottom is usually long-winded gibberish? I’m fascinated by this gibberish. I’m sure there must be a reason for it but I can’t figure out what it is. Does anybody know what the reason is?

I sit here chain smoking trying to pick up multiple radio signals in my brain or, like, channel-flipping in my head but I’m a poor cipher. I try to edit too much. It’s different visually, you still have the principles of design, you still have balance and harmony of color and space but these things you don’t really have in words. Words try to hard to mean something. Words try too hard to blend like painting with drops of water.

A pointless experiment. I put the TV on autoscan. Friday night, Saturday morning TV is awful. Without editing — well except the Portuguese and the Asian channel which I can’t manage to write out — I transcribe what I hear:

One day. Yes. What? Malcolm, you and me pal, a couple of things I want to mention, delightful showing of this item. Here we go, one of the necklaces on the way, not around, the only sound is your heartbeat, 100, 200, 300 dollars or more, Sportsnet, Ottawa. Thank you, Ian. Though you will see some, for him to do that, 900, you die, explosions. Saying now is, we don’t want no black kid.

No, I’m having it, he’s paying for it, the therapeutic properties of copper to relieve pain, so there is a difference there. I like it. She wants to know, why is it this way? It doesn’t have to be this way and before you could say is it because he’s blind no it’s because he’s just great. Anastasia wont’ be embarrassed by her dad anymore, just saying. Five years, you’ll die. Stereotypes from the airport food court. This is where the plot really falls apart. At first. You in the movies, then? Alright? I thought I recognized you. So great to have you here. Happy generating their own tiny current, this voltage brought back to this. Window, huh? Killer puppets. Killer comedy. A lion roaring. Vegas would have faith in you again. I love the headboard. Frankfurter: 75 cents. What’s a matter, you don’t? I know you were going to tell him it was all the car. When he gets that good he could win. The new Subaru. You don’t have much argument here. It depends on the legs of course. I just sat there and think to myself. And now we’ll just kind of do this here again. And our premiums are only. That’s a good a getaway. I’m so let’s go. And, ah, look at the cast in a country mile. Catching more fish. Watch the movie network on demand. Stop cleaning. Start swiffering. Showing off my tongue ring 祖ause I have one. Wanted to complain to Rhonda about their husbands. Announce the beheading of…We’ll be right back.

But that was very technical and incidental. Abstract only because of chance. But there has to be a way to order and unify the abstract. It didn’t clean my palette. It didn’t amuse me. And I still wanted to edit. I still added some punctuation. I should drink more. Or perhaps less.

I’ve left the TV on. There’s a biography of Liza Minelli I’m not quite listening to. She’s so comically tragic. Her life is a crying clown on black velvet. Kill Flanders. Kill Flanders. Kill Flanders.

(That’s a Simpsons reference, Jellybean. I don’t know anybody named Flanders, anybody real that is, and if I did, I probably wouldn’t wish him dead, and if I did, I wouldn’t confess that here.)

SS