I saw Frida (in the picture above, proudly perched upon the signage at JFK) for the first time in a long time yesterday. Diego was off doing his thing, I guess. Frida was sitting there faithfully, pooping on passers-by whenever she got a chance, the little she-devil. The bench nearby was well-pooped upon, I can tell you that.

And the windows that look outbound look like Jackson Pollock spatter paintings, they’ve been so lovingly and artfully shat upon by the talented pigeons of Dot. In fact, here is an *actual* view through one of the windows that looks hauntingly like Pollock’s Lavender Mist:

They are working on a Mondrian in a window looking West, but it’s only about halfway done. Mondrian poses special challenges for pigeons. But it’s coming along.

Hopefully, the pieces of pigeon sticking out willy-nilly from vents above the tracks (in the picture below) are not remnants of Diego:

I have a feeling that without Diego, the Mondrian will never be completed. And although we know he’s a dirty bird in some respects, without his artistic vision, the JFK/UMass T station would not be the hallowed monument to pigeon poop that it is today.

Speaking of dirty birds, did anyone see the bird-flu “scenario” on Dateline, or whatever that evening news show where they do the “Perverted Justice” thing is? Here it is: “OUTBREAK! COULD IT HAPPEN HERE?” The answer is, “yes, if that frizzy-haired blonde passenger zero chick isn’t apprehended and locked away for good!” Personally, I don’t think they made it scary enough. They were acting like it was scary, but it wasn’t. Especially when it was up against Bride of Chucky over on the WB.

They gave the same tired advice they always give about a possible pandemic: keep lots of bottled water and canned food at home. Actually, one of the “experts” they had on said, “not a lot, just enough for six to eight weeks.” Who are these people and how big is their pantry? And what would your roommates say if you, like, came home one day with eight weeks’ worth of canned goods and bottled water? They’d be looking for the shotguns and ammo under your bed, thinking you’d gone all survivalist on ‘em.

Besides, the idea that anyone’s really got the extra cash around to spend on two months of canned goods when there are itunes and games for your xbox and marijuana and crystal to buy is lunacy. What are these people on? Why not just wait until it happens and then loot the supermarkets like everyone else?

I have this very sexy writer friend who has discovered podcasting. So she’s podcasting erotica for the masses now. She told me the other day that one of her secret fantasies was that on the T she’d be sitting next to someone listening to one of her racy podcasts. Rrrroowwwr!

I think it’s racy enough reading “Savage Love” in the Dig on the T. The truth is, people read all kinds of smut on the subway. It’s scandalous, really. But for the most part no one seems to mind. People do get a little nosy sometimes, though. I mean, I’m one to talk. I like to see what my fellow commuters are reading as much as the next guy.

But I’ve been more keenly aware of it lately, since for the past week or so my heavy T reading has been Roger Shattuck’s Forbidden Knowledge: From Prometheus to Pornography, and I always see people trying to read the title from the cover. It’s a little embarrassing, because the title and the cover kind of look like it could be some kind of sleezy potboiler, referring in the title to “knowledge” in the Biblical sense, when in fact it’s straight-laced lit crit from a well-respected, thoughtful, and sometimes prudish octogenarian (actually he died in December ‘05, and was in his seventies when he wrote the work in question).

I just finished the next-to-last chapter (I was tempted to say penultimate there, but I thought it would sound too snooty)–anyway, the climax of the book is Shattuck’s very frank discussion of the Marquis de Sade, with some unexpurgated excerpts from Justine and Philosophy of the Boudoir. This is not erotica, it’s straight-up porn. Shattuck admits that “pornography we shall always have with us. It serves a purpose and in its traditional forms poses no serious threat to decency and morals.” He goes on to say, “the healthiest reaction [to it] is usually laughter, not outrage.”

But Sade takes it too far, he says, and illustrates the point with references to the horrendous Moors Murders in the mid-sixties in England, and Ted Bundy’s killing spree in the following decade. Both cases involved unspeakable crimes, and murderers who claimed to have been influenced by Sade’s philosophy and works, which became widely available only after loosening of obscenity standards in the ’60s in Britain, France, and the US. (Nowadays with the world wide web, we can hardly imagine codes as restrictive as they were before that time.)

Sade’s rehabilitation among academics, marked in the 20th Century by his inclusion in the canon of great works of Western literature, essentially undermines everything the canon has come to represent, according to Shattuck. It has also paved the way for the mainstreaming of Sade. And while the book was published several years before Abu Ghraib, I think Shattuck would have seen that as the ultimate expression of Sade’s triumph over Western Culture. Quoting 19th Century English Historian Lord Acton, he sums up the Nietzschean ethos of the age we live in: “The strong man with the dagger is followed by the weak man with the sponge.”

As the title suggests, Shattuck’s study opens with the story of Prometheus, who, according to the Greeks, stole fire from the gods and gave it to man, for which he was bound to a rock, his liver eaten out by a vulture, repeatedly, forever. Try to do a good deed, and that’s what you get.

But that’s not the end of the story. According to Hesiod, Zeus was so hopping mad he’d been tricked that in retaliation he sent Pandora, the first female, with her “box” (ahem) to tempt Prometheus’s gullible little bro Epimetheus. Being the first stupid het, he took the bait, and upon opening her dowry discovered an endless supply of “grief, cares, and all evil,” which nicely canceled out all the mod cons Prometheus had managed to win for humanity. Ouch.

Then of course, there was Adam & Eve. The snake. The forbidden fruit. Crrruuunnnccchhhh. And now we’re stuck with the Marquis de Sade and Desperate Housewives. What can you do?

QOTD: What are you reading on the T, my naughty little minxes and metrosexuals?

Wow, “Missed Connections” on Craig’s List is picking up. Love is in the air, people!

Just a few of the most notable cries for help:

To My Bus Driver - m4m - 20

I hate it when you wear those blue reflective sunglasses - it completely hides your gorgeous blue eyes. I tried slipping you my number that one time - but I don’t think it worked. Are you not into guys - or just not into me? Either way - take it as a compliment - I think you’re HOT.

Karaoke Kween

There we were, at the bar. Karaoke night. You were so beautiful, you look like you could be the daughter of John Travolta. Our eyes connected more than once. Did you feel what I felt?

My Ganimide…

Tonight, our eyes locked and I knew it was love at first sight. Somehow, I feel like I know you from somewhere, like some forgotten realm of the universe where unicorns roam and theives run wild. Will you be my rougue? xoxo Inara

Bitchy Girl Who Tells Lies

Yeah, you. Fucking lying bitch. Had your fun?
You’re why I can’t stand women.

To the woman applying makeup on the Redline today at noon - w4w

1) Pumping your mascara wand introduces air into the tube, which makes your $30 mascara dry out really fast. 2) Using a METAL eyelash comb on the subway is a tragedy waiting to happen. Can’t you do your makeup at home? Or in the bathroom of wherever you’re going?

And finally, a poem (”Missed Connection” poetry is definitely not to be missed, people):

My beloved Tracy - m4w

They tell me you have died
But I don’t believe it, nor do I care
We will always be together

I feel so alive as I penetrate your sex
I can almost hear your moans of lust
I don’t think you are deceased
As I part your lips and feast
The way you smell
Is more delightful than ever
Again and again we consummate our love
Again and again you bring me to ecstasy
I feel you with my lust
You, you, you take it all

I revel in the touch of your flesh
To become one
Warm and cold skin joining again
And again to my desires I will succumb

I don’t care if you’re alive or dead
Lovingly your body I embrace
Your rotten lips still give head
I spill forth my love onto your rotting face

I hear them call me things
Which I don’t understand
But I don’t care what they will say
Your body belongs to me
To carry out my lusts
As I gaze upon your rotting face

(A Boston Baudelaire is born!)

In a couple of days I’ll be back in South Beach with my baby. And then, when I return, it’ll almost be time to get back out in the garden! I’ve got a plot in the Fenway. I’ll be starting a gardening blog, for those of you who might be interested: bostongrows.com. I’ll be sure to let you all know when it’s up and running.

You know, despite all the great fan mail I’ve been getting lately (thanks to “Christopher Walken,” who wrote this morning to tell me, simply: “You’re an idiot”–and a happy one at that, Chris!), I want you to know it’s not all fun and games here at chez T-fureur. We’ve had a mild winter, but a New England winter is a New England winter no matter what, and by March people tend to get a little testy. I know, my babies. I know. But here comes the sun. The thaw’s not far behind.

I mean, spring is six days away. SIX FREAKIN DAYS, PEOPLE! You feeling the love yet?

How about now? Feelin’ it?

Not yet?

There is, of course, no such thing as spring on the internet. And no such thing as love. Both spring and love have a smell, but the internet doesn’t smell like anything.

But guess what does.

That’s right: the T does.

There are all kinds of smells on the T, and with the thaw, and the sap running, soon, very soon, the brilliant bouquet of humanity will be in bloom again all over the Metro Boston area, from Alewife to Braintree! From Forest Hills to Oak Grove! Riverside to Lechmere! Bowdoin to Wonderland!

So get on out there add your stink to the mix!

On a tip from Jason I checked out the “missed connection” section of Craig’s List.

Hmm.

I have to admit the allure of electronic bulletin boards and chat rooms is totally lost on me. People post anonymous and innocuous enough comments and are then mercilessly slagged off by other chat room lurkers or denizens of the bulletin boards. People who would not dare speak up in real-life are emboldened to bite others’ heads off in cyberspace.

Aside from wingnuts who post treacly pop song lyrics and electronic chain letters a lot of the posts drift way, way, way off-topic. I mean, to the point it’s almost worthless having a “missed connections” category in the first place. For February 14th, of 25 posts, only 7 had anything to do with actual “missed connections”.

Sure, it’s amusing somehow. I mean, the guy who has to tell the world (and I quote): “I AM A LAW OBIDING CITIZEN AND I DON’T RESPECT THE FACT THAT I JOINED A BSC CLUB A FEW MONTHS AGO TO SHED SOME POUNDS AND ON A DAILY BASIS I HAVE TO DEAL WITH GUYS CHECKING OUT MY JUNK AND STARING AT ME IN THE MENS ROOM.” And wants to rally the troops: “LETS TAKE BACK OUR GUMS. LETS TAKE BACK OUR BCS GYMS ALL OVER THE AREA. GET BACK TO ME WITH IDEAS AND HELP KEEP THE LAW SAFE!!!” Let’s start a club! The He-Man Man-Junk-Lover-Haters Club of Boston!

I say just be happy anyone at all is interested in your nasty old “junk”. (I refer to mine as “jewels,” by the way.) This is a kind of paranoid double reverse voyeurism, isn’t it? There’s actually a lot of it about.

But to be honest, this kind of post is just what you expect when you log on, isn’t it? It’s the same psychology at play with reality TV. We don’t tune in to have our assumptions challenged, we tune in to have our misanthropy reinforced. I mean, this dude lurking on Craig’s List trying to stir up a shit-storm is just the kind of pathetic slob you’d expect to find there doing just that, isn’t it?

And, OK, sure, there’s something compelling about that, in and of itself, but it’s like when I was in college and I dropped acid for the first time. I was with this psych major friend of mine, and we were in the kitchen when I started to peak and I got totally lost in the litter box. And she rescued me. I mean, without her intervention I would have spent a night of revelations buried in the cat box, you know? A lot of things can be diverting, but not all are deserving of equal attention. Next time you’re about to dive into the litter box, think of your mental hygiene.

Anyway, none of this is to say that the concept behind “missed connections” isn’t a good one. I think there ought to be a section in the Metro dedicated to them. And I think people ought to cruise on the T. It should be encouraged. Anything that might facilitate a more loving underground.

I didn’t go off and look at porn after all. I mean, who would do such a thing on a special day like today, a day dedicated to love, not sex? Philistines. No, instead of rushing off to my standing date with porn, I went off with a big bag of Necco sweethearts, a bottle of Bull’s Blood, and a book of sonnets from one of my favorite sonneteers, Edna St. Vincent Millay, and bawled my eyes out. I mean, it is Valentine’s Day, after all. And it’s impossible, when you think of love, not to think of Millay’s sonnets, isn’t it? Sure, some prefer Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s “How do I love thee,” and blabidee-blah. Personally I’m not all that interested in the body count. But I’ll admit Browning is more appropriate than Millay. Browning is a Romance poet, and Valentine’s Day is steeped in the Romantic’s notion of love, although the tragedy has been wrung out of it for the most part. That’s the wee problem with it, in fact. Romance with a happy ending can hardly be called Romantic at all, can it? Even Browning’s sonnet ends “and, if God choose,/I shall but love thee better after death.” But, details, details. The thoroughly modern Millay puts it all in perspective, that’s for sure. (For some others who do, check out Former Poet Laureate Robert Pinsky’s list here.)

Anyway, it’s a pity sonnets don’t fit on your average Necco sweetheart. Guess we’ll just have to settle for “fax me” instead.

Here are four from Millay’s 1920 collection, A Few Figs From Thistles. Jot one down in your sweety’s V-Day card, if you dare.

I

Love, though for this you riddle me with darts,
And drag me at your chariot till I die,–
Oh, heavy prince! Oh, panderer of hearts!–
Yet hear me tell how in their throats they lie
Who shout you mighty: thick about my hair
Day in, day out, your ominous arrows purr
Who still am free, unto no querulous care
A fool, and in no temple worshiper!
I, that have bared me to your quiver’s fire,
Lifted my face into its puny rain,
Do wreathe you Impotent to Evoke Desire
As you are Powerless to Elicit Pain!
(Now will the god, for blasphemy so brave,
Punish me, surely, with the shaft I crave!)

II

I think I should have loved you presently,
And given in earnest words I flung in jest;
And lifted honest eyes for you to see,
And caught your hand against my cheek and breast;
And all my pretty follies flung aside
That won you to me, and beneath your gaze,
Naked of reticence and shorn of pride,
Spread like a chart my little wicked ways.
I, that had been to you, had you remained,
But one more waking from a recurrent dream,
Cherish no less the certain stakes I gained,
And walk your memory’s halls, austere, supreme,
A ghost in marble of a girl you knew
Who would have loved you in a day or two.

III

Oh, think not I am faithful to a vow!
Faithless am I save to love’s self alone.
Were you not lovely I would leave you now;
After the feet of beauty fly my own.
Were you not still my hunger’s rarest food,
And water ever to my wildest thirst,
I would desert you–think not but I would!–
And seek another as I sought you first.
But you are mobile as the veering air,
And all your charms more changeful than the tide,
Wherefore to be inconstant is no care:
I have but to continue at your side.
So wanton, light and false, my love, are you,
I am most faithless when I most am true.

IV

I shall forget you presently, my dear,
So make the most of this, your little day,
Your little month, your little half a year,
Ere I forget, or die, or move away,
And we are done forever; by and by
I shall forget you, as I said, but now,
If you entreat me with your loveliest lie
I will protest you with my favorite vow.
I would indeed that love were longer-lived,
And oaths were not so brittle as they are,
But so it is, and nature has contrived
To struggle on without a break thus far,–
Whether or not we find what we are seeking
Is idle, biologically speaking.

This special Valentine was a FULL-PAGE ad in this morning’s Metro! Yikes. I guess it’s romantic, but…it’s the Metro. I mean, imagine telling your grandkids, “I proposed to your grandma in the Metro.” Well, it’s poignant, somehow.

I guess I shouldn’t be knocking it. You take love where you find it. Maybe they met on the T or something. It could be their special place. And it is a special place. A lot of special things happen on the T.

In fact, I have a proposal myself. I propose more people fall in love on the T. I propose making it THE PLACE to fall in love. And Metro the place to tell the world.

I mean, think about it. Love and squalor. The T’s a perfect place for it. And don’t get the wrong impression: I’m not this “down with love!” type. Really. I’m all for love. I say, go ahead and open up that Pandora’s box of emotions. Let it turn your world upside-down! It’s a bumpy ride, but it’s worth it. Because love is transformation. And though life may look pretty good from the vantagepoint of the catepillar, think of how it looks to the butterfly.

That’s my Valentine’s Day thought for you. I mean, today, forget the squalor! Ignore this day the strange physics of the universe of love, where the distance between souls increases in direct proportion to the closeness of bodies. Don’t trouble yourself that I-Thous collapse inevitably into I-its. The incessant agitation of love, the monumental bother of it, the epic moodswings, the misery of separation, the constant angst of anticipating separation when you’re together. The utter incompatibility of love and everyday life. Forget about it. Butterflies die, but not on Saint Valentine’s Day.

Today we celebrate that hope which springs eternal in the human heart!

And on that note, I’m gonna go look at some porn.

I was on the train yesterday afternoon, looked over, and found a poem! You never know what you’ll find when you look up and around you. It was actually a line in a book the brainiac standing next to me was reading, a prose work on Lacan’s Theory (I have put the excerpt that jumped out at me in “poem form,” or “poemized” it):

“As long as you live like this
and weave a tapestry of falsehoods
the truth of your selfishness
will thrive in your heart.”

Ouch. Is Lacan trying to tell me something? No, I don’t think this has to do with me, personally. But I thought it was sound advice anyway, and wanted to pass it on. It would be great for a fortune cookie, too. I mean, wouldn’t that make you think. Maybe give you indigestion after your mu shu pork. Lacan is great for this sort of thing, actually. Here’s another found poem from him that actually rhymes (!):

“By a reversal that is not simply a negation of the negation,
The power of pure loss emerges from the residue of obliteration.”

Perfect for a Valentine’s Day card message, don’t you think? It’s from Lacan’s 1958 essay, “The signification of the phallus”. The passage continues, without the snappy rhythm and rhyme:

“For the unconditional element of demand, desire substitutes the absolute condition: this condition unties the knot of that element in the proof of love that is resistant to the satisfaction of a need. Thus desire is neither appetite for satisfaction, nor the demand for love, but the difference that results from the subtraction of the first from the second, the phenomenon of their splitting.”

I’d like to see that in PowerPoint, actually. I hardly understood a word of it. When I read the essay a couple years ago I thought it would be bawdy and fun, but it turns out the phallus isn’t all that fun in the final analysis. It is, in fact, “the signifier intended to designate as a whole the effects of the signified, in that the signifier conditions them by its presence as a signifier.” Mmm, very sexy.

The phallus is also “the privileged signifier of that mark in which the role of the logos is joined with the advent of desire.” Oh, OK. Well, that explains it.

“It might also be said that, by virtue of its turgidity, it is the image of the vital flow as it is transmitted in generation.” Oh, please stop, Dr. Lacan, you’re turning me on! “I shall also be using the phallus as an algorithm.” Doctor! I bet you say that to all the girls!

No, I guess his point is that the phallus is the signifier of the desire of the Other. Is this anything like Sartre’s “double reciprocal incarnation”? Another found poem, from Being and Nothingness:

“I make
myself
flesh in order
to impel the Other
to realize for herself
and for me
her own flesh,
and my caresses
cause my flesh
to be born
for me
in so far as it is
for the Other
flesh causing her
to be born
as flesh”

Yikes. Let’s fuck already, eh?

Meanwhile, back at Lacan’s phallus. Woman “finds the signifier of her own desire in the body of him to whom she addresses her demand for love.” In other words, if the dude’s got a woody, she’s happy.

For the man the signifier of the phallus “consitutes [woman] as giving in love what she does not have… his own desire for the phallus will make its signifier emerge in its persistent divergence towards ‘another woman’”—in other words, if the dude’s got a woody, he’s happy, too.

So everybody’s happy as long as the dude’s got a woody.

As for the rest of us: “male homosexuality, in accordance with the phallic mark that constitutes desire, is constituted on the side of desire, while female homosexuality, on the other hand, as observation shows, is oriented on a disappointment that reinforces the side of the demand for love.”

I only wish Lacan’s essays were illustrated.

Probably the best poem I’ve ever personally found is from a book called Eros Unveiled by Catherine Osborne. The book is just a little too something. But I thought this bit of prose, which I have poemized, was well worth the trouble of reading the first thirty pages:

“Of course it might seem harder to love,
Or to go on loving,
What ceases to be beautiful and good;
But that need not mean that the love
For what was once beautiful and lovely
Was selfish
Or motivated by acquisitive desire,
Or grasping
Or ungenerous,
Or less love than the love for the less lovely.”

Some words of wisdom I think we can all use this Saint Valentine’s season.