ONT vol 2 contents i. maya means ii. short review: SANS SOLEIL iii. vocab iv. eros has an underside v. short review: In the Mood for Love i. maya means maya means: my whole world warps around women. what was it like to be ten? i knew less, but saw more, then: those i now pass over. maya means: i'm pulling right and up the stairs to street-level, why? some knee-high boots, a languid sway: a faceless dame draws me in her wake. to honour the Somali guy, i halt & pivot left. i reconvene, i center to whatever: a silver door i've never seen that brings me thru a tunnel under Bay into the bus station back into my seat & selfcontainment. i'm spacey on the outside, randy within. upskirtaggressive with the dreamy shopgirls, the single tellers on wandering lunchbreak. what was it like to be nine, again? i upsuck my gonads, train my cathexis on the super-thin Somali guy passing by. on mainland elders chatting over checkers in the foodcourt. ii. short review: SANS SOLEIL from heavy silk the hand extends the limb into a limpness that is zombie-like. their jumpstep is lovely, & frightening. is old or post-human, robotic / narcotic. detail: SANS SOLEIL. Chris Marker: France, 1983 finger cymbals organize the throng. they're passing thru as paradegirls ought to. inspire us to die into a future they're returning to. we're hearing now the sounds of, what, the late '70s? i'm sceptical of travel, of international food-fests down at Harbourfront so stay inside but this is new, i think. iii. vocab lissome is lovely, a thinning of lithesome. lithesome is lovely tho lingers mid-word, is lascivious, slightly. torc or torque, an Iron Age adornment on neck, ankle, or i hope a waist. Celtic, Illyrian, Scythian. Persian houris followed in fashion, with kohl around the eyes and a silver collar open at the throat. chuppah, chuppa, huppah, chipe: a nuptial canopy. the night's a kop, a hive upon a humming throng. gul rug, aneath: the huge, wonky octagons. gul may be the ghazal's gal, the persian phul, the rose or roundel. iv. eros has an underside a stencil on Gerrard, on the sidewalk east of Jorgenson: FIND WHAT YOU LOVE THEN LET IT KILL YOU follow till it folds into its opposite. extremes conjoin: the daoist dictum pkd so often cites. the primal scene disturbs & draws us. a single face, wide & tight, for ecstasy & heart-seizure. eros has an underside, a will to be done with it, to come apart. thanatos is older than eros, for Freud: vestige of the pre-organic in us.1 for William Irwin Thompson, personal death is the cost of sex, of producing genetic originals.2 1 Joanne Faulkner, Freud's Concept of the Death Drive and its Relation to the Superego. in Minerva An Internet Journal of Philosophy [ vol. 9, 2005 ] 2 William Irwin Thompson, Imaginary Landscapes: Making Worlds of Myth and Science [St. Martin's Press, 1989] p 24-25. to live is to strive - on life's behalf. dopamine may warp the strife into excitement, but we're wary in our depths. in pale dreams, in an a.m. grave it is life not death we seem to fear. dopamine may warp it but we tire to the same one sleep-wish: to dwindle down, get low with the immobile and senseless. v. short review: In the Mood for Love Wong Kar-Wai: Hong Kong, 2000 the era has passed : a title-card's lament. nothing that belongs to it exists, now: a mourner's words, not objective fact. he's lost both her [Maggie Cheung] and all proportion.