ONT vol 9 contents i. Day of the Locust / Triffids ii. we're wide on a Paramount soundstage iii. HOLLYWOOD, an ecologic history iv. yet one more site of end-time art v. he's "a bookworm with bulging lobes" vi. apartment is my state of being apart vii. enlightenment means a weight's release i. Day of the Locust / Triffids ends-of-world, and books unread, conflated in my head :  locust is a flowering shrub, and close to lotus or crocus. triffid sounds a plausible flower or insect.  apocalypse & postare indiscernibles. the Fallout comes in waves, non-regular. the dug-in survivors, the sparse & wandering tribes could ask: are we but last to succumb? ii. we're wide on a Paramount soundstage down the widening stairs they come: arm-in-arm, slow & decorous. draped in stoles & topped in kitschy epaulets. as the War goes global and their colonies defect, the elegant Euros are arriving: the dapper African prince, the Baroness & her Escort - and CUT. they're told where to go by a fat-ass man with a bullhorn. into the frame stream aides rolling potted palms and face-powder stations. iii. HOLLYWOOD, an ecologic history the famous Sign is salvage of a housing scheme that folded in the Crash of '29. the town Fathers took out LAND, and made it pure Promo. HOLLYWOOD, an ecologic history: of forest cleared to field, and field paved over into play-space. Once a quiet farming community, by 1910 barns were being converted into movie studios.1 1 Hollywood (n.) Online Etymology Dictionary at the Coastal rim of imperial reach, a sign goes up: a land-claim converted into fantasy. iv. yet one more site of end-time art How lucky I was, arriving in New York just as everything was about to go to hell.2 2 James Wolcott, Lucking Out: My Life Getting Down and Semi-Dirty In Seventies New York [Random House, 2011], p 3 his subject is the after-War debauch & its dwindling. he sets his easel / escritoire at party's edge, and watches. Th e no ve l f ol lo w s a y ou ng a rti st f ro m t he Y a le S ch oo l o f Fi ne A rts n a m ed T od H a ck et t, w ho h a s b ee n hi re d b y a H ol ly w oo d st ud io t o d o sc en ic d es ig n a nd p a in tin g. W hi le h e w or ks h e p la ns a n im p or ta nt p a in tin g to b e ca lle d " Th e Bu rn in g of L os A ng el es ," a p or tra ya l o f t he c ha ot ic a nd fi er y ho lo ca us t w hi ch w ill d es tro y th e ci ty . [ W ik ip ed ia : T he D a y of th e Lo cu st ] he's here to receive America's retinal after-flashes. it's his Isle of Patmos, his Yaddo-for-one where the only thing stirring are the resident spirits. The women in particular suggested minor characters in Dawn Powell novels who had slipped down several rungs in life and were left with nothing but late-inning rituals and brief flurries of bother.3 3 Lucking Out, p 1 as Hallorann warns Danny, the risk is mistaking them for Living. yet his name is really Danny, and Jack is really Jack in the uncanny casting. Leon Vitali handpicked the kid from a bevy of possibles himself the kid of a Kubrick Tyrant, survivor of a prior project. Jack could've had an insanely good book, an awesome Dies Irae had he only stayed sane & sober what stories they'd have fed him! v. he's "a bookworm with bulging lobes" neighbor to the Latham was the Prince George, "another low-profile holdover". Not that kind of swinging I said, implying unspoken volumes of decadence to which she would never be privy. I wasn't privy to them either, relying on picturesque hearsay of spiderlike couplings on the mats and the tentative, evolving etiquette of threesomes.4 4 Lucking Out, p 2 he's "a bookworm with bulging lobes" for whom "the actual act itself" was a perilous drop. he thought he'd fucked well, once, then a strand of her hair got caught in my wristband and extricating it brought me back to reality, where I was at a distinct disadvantage.5 he's crushing her, somewhat, is asked to get off. 5 Lucking Out, p 176-177 he's along the bar at CBGB's, among "the New Year's Eve hats and leis". it's "the me I once was, one of the milling crowd, part of the scene" tho not their Type: he's wider than "the lean, lunar faces".6 6 Lucking Out, p 105 his bulging frontal lobe as on the Grady girls, the Shining twins and more than flash-cuts of their mawled little bodies in the dead-end hallway, it's their fore-brains engorged that disturb me. i share their swollen empathy. i, too, am headacheprone, i know the pulse of telepathy. their party-dress is sad because their over-large heads disqualify them, sexually. they'll find their own monogamies yet they and i are kept from getting languorously into our bodies. more than murder, it's the 70s decor, the hotel's carpeting & semi-glossed walls like a hospital-spa that disturb me. vi. apartment is my state of being apart apartment is my state of being apart. is limbo on Floor 43 of a tower hardly occupied, abuzz still with cable guys & drywallers. the pool & sauna mine, for my morning laps & cleanse, and there's wire to run, laminate floor to set. mine had to be re-done, the whole 43rd, a month into my stay; and someone put me up The condo Corp? the builders? in a three-room suite at The Sutton Place. the condo was my stepping pad to King West & Kensington, the pick-up scenes i'd all my years abstained from. The Sutton Place Hotel was my holiday from that. the coffee table was an oblong slab of lucite - "good for doing lines & banging hookers on" i teased my sister who'd asked about my sudden new life; and while i never did coke out there, i did blow maybe twenty thousand on callgirls. apartment means a concierge and uber-virile tradesman think i'm some kind of musician some kinda cool guy, Miyoko giggled when i got her to come back with me from drinks in Kensington. i played her a loop on my synth-driven studio, then showed her lake & city from the balcony. i kissed her hard, once. i pinned her to the glowing glass and pushed my knee up into her crotch which was warm thru the denim. coming in, she confessed she had a boyfriend, a student in Miami from Ghana; then found her coat & awkward way out. leaving, she was sorry & relieved: sorry so to smoothly leave; and sorry, i believe, for being relieved, for rejecting me. the concierge was lately wed he & his wife an easy pair of RPG geeks, fans of Physics and was impressed & ingenuous, was not so convinced when i waved his hypothesis back with a laugh, striding past his desk to the elevators. all-black, i fit in well with the low-lit lounge & lobby, with the oven-glass fireplace flush with onyx panelling, with everything laminate onyx. the tradesman was hostile & sceptical. assized me with a sideways glance, a frankly-pissed assessing of my sleek & evil person as we waited for our elevators down. he was done, while my night was clearly just beginning. he stared ahead, eyes on the floor-count, deeply unpleased with my bouffant hair & slim black jeans. his arms hung wide and heaved in time with his massive thorax; and even from the side had a cockbulge like i've never seen a cumbersome mound, outward from his workjeans. i understood the camber of his stance, its honest function. pissed, i believe, at my faineance & vanity, at the City's stupidity; or was he an Ox-lord telling me to catch the fuck up to skip my little pleasure trip, to stop being pleased and start my assault on the slaughterhouse thirty blocks north. vii. enlightenment means a weight's release i'm hearing words better, lately. enlightenment means a weight's release, the conversion of flesh into felicity. i'm hearing better, every word an inter-lingual homonym, and funny. the exploded English of Finnegan's Wake. it's Terence i hear, when i hear Finnegan Finnegan, begin again, articulated slow for contemplative pleasure. Terence is one's default weight, one's emptiness is what i weighed before i had a mother.