With the new day, my body
has turned hostile. Even my fingernails
have it out for me. My lips make shapes
I find ugly and embarrassing. My nose
can’t shake the smell of turnips.
My ears have started plotting
to take control of my head.
Everything tastes like Mondays.
Why can’t I be Oprah in a girdle?
Her body always behaves,
unless she’s wearing yellow. I think I lost
my foot, the single leg of impatient
seconds twitching. Running late
leads to percussive elbows.
Where’d I put my thingamabob?
Time to saddle up my donkey,
if my ass will cooperate.
Passing a mirror, I catch a glimpse of my
tangled breasts. The bra will set them straight.
¿En dónde están mis pantalones flacos,
los derretimiento?
My hands never fail to materialize.
My body and I always handle these incidents
gingerly and without witness.

Words: “oh, my rebellious body” by Dana Guthrie Martin
Image: “result of subcutaneous injection” by H.H. Kane (Philadelphia, 1881.)

Here dear. Let’s string you up. Wheel out the air conditionning for us. Cool air and hot tea, buddy. Be dragooning soon, rolling droll to the moon for ice cream cake.

Anatomical fugitive sheet (Viscerum, 1539) bound at the end of Valverde, (Vivae imagines partium corporis humani, 1566). Part of the engraving is composed of printed paper flaps that, when lifted, reveal the internal organs of the figure. This is one of a pair of male and female figures.

1566 engraving, by Lambert van Noort, Frans Huys, Pieter Huys, Gaspar Beccera and Nicolas Beatrizet.

I never had had.

One who fingers savagely at a material knot and yet cannot undo it. To myself adding: “Have I?” A task in part the tissue of doubt.

I speak, too, of multiple larynxes.

Am I now happy to be able to tell stories and surround others with knotted space and endangered equilibrium?

Talk is conditional.

When do I ever suppose that my words sustain themselves within inner multitudes?

Reflective anonymous designs contribute to the development of one sweet sum which expresses itself as a bursting forth flame in the shanty a voice telling of them.

tracing of a genital tattoo taken from the body of Rangi-Tea-Pakura, a Maori woman of rank
(drawing by Dr. Shortland)

left: tattoos on the right arm of a French thief expelled from France.
right: tattoos on the body of a French sailor and deserter.
(ink drawing 19th century)

inside pages from ‘Chodo Zue’, a book showing a collection of monochrome decorative designs for ‘tansu’ and acessories like boxes for combs and writing sets.
(the compiler Aoki Hisakuni is otherwise unknown)

illustration showing white magnolia blossom (Magnolia altifima) and its seed pod.
(18th century)

oriental Manuscript in Burmese-Pali

New Zealand: Maori wooden club (mere).
(albumen print, 18th century)

plaster cast of the face of Tauque Te Whanoa, a Rotorua native, of the Arawa tribe showing Maori tattooing, ‘Moko’, performed with a serrated chisel and mallet with soot rubbed into the open wound to provide colouring.
plaster cast taken by Sir G. Guy (?)
(1851)

tattoo on a piece of human skin showing a female face
(late 19th century)

tattoo on a piece of human skin showing a male bust and a flower stem
(late 19th century)

Taawattaa, the Priest from Madison Island (Nuku Hiva)
(engraving c. 1813)

human head containing jostling human figures.
(crayon drawing, 1929)

Yantra mediation uses shapes and symbols engraved on to plaques to focus the mind. Mediation and yoga are recommended as part of an Ayurvedic lifestyle. Ayurveda is a Hindu medical traditional that aims to preserve and restore balance in the body through holistic treatments including diet and exercise.
(unkown maker, made bwn 1801-1900 in India)

Te Kuha: a carver and warrior
(watercolour by H.G. Robley)

Mike Tyson’s abandoned Ohio mansion is not only one of the finest examples or early-American hyper-pimp, but it’s hard to find someone with 1) such exquisite taste and 2) with enough money to make such a masterpiece happen.

The property, a total of 60 acres, it has been sitting abandoned in this desolate area for years. Tyson’s former home is a considerable 20,000 sq. feet with 15 bedrooms. Indoor pool, lavish bathrooms, big chef’s kitchen, 6+ car garages, large entertainment room. As you can see, it’s very well appointed with zebra stripe carpet, gold plating and boasts a large facility for lions that Tyson used to keep as pets.

According to my vague cyber-research, the deserted property was purchased in 1999 by Paul Monea (in blue, who made much of his fortune from selling Billy Blanks’ “Taebo tapes”) for $1.3 million dollars and was seized shortly after by feds investigating him for money laundering issues.

If my sources are right, in January 2010, the mansion was then purchased by Ron Hemelgarn (in black, owner of the “Indy Racing League”) for only $600,000.

During the 10 years that separated the two owners, hundreds (thousands?) of curious, fans and fetishists penetrated the property and carefully documented the rotting and vandalizing processes. An amazing amount of images can still be found on the web, with detailed indications on how to access the house. (3737 State Route 534, Southington, Ohio)

Finally, what is “Iron” Mike Tyson up to these days?
He has a Twitter account and a few Facebook pages that he updates on a near daily basis. He was just recently included on ballot for class of 2011 Boxing Hall of Fame. And life goes on.

This morning I had to undergo a tiny tiny surgical operation. The kind of operation you don’t even need to be fully anesthetized for. A local thing, and I guess that’s the stake here. You are long gone and yet still looking exactly like you in the mirror. Mirrors at every corner, to make sure you would startle yourself enough to stay shattered.
And you are amputated as you are almost still walking, so suddenly you cannot not take any step further. It is a weird quality of exhaustion that the experience of impotence. It can create a sensation of potentiality of a different type. It is no longer a potentiality connected to the power to act, but one linked to the radical affirmation of passion and passivity.
So I was there, fully awake and yet partly extinguished, figuring out: Infirmity is an offer you can never refuse. Besides, the gesture of embracing weakness makes the passion of the exhausted body seem like a potential pathway to bliss. Above you a helicopter you scream at. Your sky has other eyes that hammer their headless wrath into your head. How long would you stay awake to your half-inhabited, half-abandonned body? Is the concept of redemption any real?

Contemporary life produces all forms of waste, it exhausts and amputates things, amasses litter and drains the meaning out of signs through their prolific hyper-use. We pretend you cannot feel the operation but you take each cut all the way in. We try to shake what is ours out of you, but it breaks on your skin.

Happy Easter!