¬ g o l d s t a r s # 1

  Note to the reader.
This is written from memory, unfortunately.
This is a true story but I can't believe it's happening.
What I shall have to say here is neither difficult nor contentious; the only merit I should make to claim for is that
of being true, at least in parts.

  For the greater part of its course the river flows through narrow gorges between steep mountains or through deep ravines with precipitous banks.
There were places among the crowded trees where the birdsong dropped away to nothing, shaded clearings with a sound vacuum:
once you had stepped in no noise could reach you from the outside world except the rustling summer breeze,
and you did not want to listen to that too carefully, for if you were alone your mind began to play tricks and it was more than
just the grass that you could hear whispering.
The space of war.

  Today a rare sun of spring.
The Blue sky above us is the optical layer of atmosphere, the great lens of the terrestrial globe, its brillant retina.
Lead the commotion into a lighted canopy. Turn off the lights at any description.
Before the beginning is the void and the void belongs in neither time nor space and is therefore beyond our imagination.
From this moment there were double meanings and everything was in the present.
Pious little boys pass much of the time on the hard pews of churches playing war with pencil and paper.

  We live in a world populated by structures - a complex mixture of geological, biological, social, and linguistic
constructions that are nothing but accumulations of materials shaped by history.
I live in a house built entirely from tin, with four tin walls, a roof of tin. A chimney and a door. Entirely from tin.
Four years and seven months have passed since I had seen the white-pillared house, with the austere pediment that gave it the serenity of a court house; now, among the furniture and decorations, whose positions never varied, I had the distressing sensation that time had turned back.
After all, the emptiness he might experience in the interior of his room after it had been denuded off all his possessions, stripped of all the the things he had clung to with such persistence, such tenacy, such great effort, as if his entire life depended on it.
A voice in the shape of a window.
This is what you always wanted, isn't it, a house that talks.

  The Painter is standing back a little bit from his canvas.
When I was four, he liked to stand on the piano bench while his mother, a painter of abstracts, played the only song she knew.
She smiled so curiously I could not keep my eyes from her pale face, and it may be that in sppite of myself I answered her smile as one would a mirror.
My mother began to love at the same moment in her life that she began to search for who she was.
She identifies me, observes me, is me. There is no end to this.
She is not exempt: Instead she is lucky, suddenly, finally, she's overflowing with luck, it's this luck holding her up.
Maybe just to be there so I'd wish I was back there again.
When my mother was very small, someone gave her a basket of baby chicks for easter. They all died.
I exist! I am conceived to the chimes of midnight on the clock on the mantlepiece in the room across the hall.
Moonlit blue-white hyphens emerge from blue-grey, spread and join. Moonlight.
He was eight now, and parties were for children.

  Above them swayed the two bodies from a swing set; from a doorway they could hear scraps of lullaby, in a window crackled a poorly tuned radio.
A man with binoculars.
He was mourned in every continent.
They took down the hanged man above my head; he twisted his head, first left, then right, stretched his arms, as if imitating an ascending aeroplane, and then dissolved into the mass.
And I said they're running out to death which is with some soul and their eyes are mad and teeth out.
I did not see them again.
The dead, at least, know piece.

  Civilisation has brought refinement into our psychological life.
We propose to consider first the single elements of our subject, then each branch or part, and, last of all, the whole, in all its relations - therefore to advance from the simple to the complex.
We come to detest the objects of time especially if they might be organic and their composition emits some foul some putrid odour to remind us of their previous existence as if such anterior time were bound up with our own existence.
The disaster ruins everything, all the while leaving everything intact.
Today's seminal idea is tomorrow's critical cliche.
There's death in my language, a grimace, jawless.
At this time he had no messages for anyone. Nothing. Not a single word.

  It's good to talk.
Between my finger and my thumb the squat pen rests; snug as a gun.
We use them daily, and I don't know what we're doing.
Sure, I tell myself it'll all be over soon.

  Once a guy stood all day shaking bugs from his hair.
And what about little John Ruskin, with his blond curls and his blue sash and shoes to match, but above all else his obedient silence and his fixed stare?
The day and the night began again their round.
I hope that they understand.

  Going out at night the medics gave you pills, Dexetrine breath like dead snakes kept too long in a jar.
As statistics, they were lost among the other battle casualties, which has a certain unintended justice.
Tomorrow's dawn would cover all of them with the same dew. Dead flesh and rusted steel would run with the same sweat. Tomorrow the black birds would come.
The deaf-mute rise, and moved by the rhythm of falling bombs their bodies receive from the trembling earth, they begin to dance.

  It's one definition of modernity.
Now I am at my window looking down at the avenue. It is as empty as ever.
Utopias elude definition.

  Time is a blind guide.
It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen.
A clammy chill, tight and tactless as a deadman's, gripped the predawn terrain.
I felt tired and worn out.
Time is up and time is now!
Certificates that purchase the past easily and on our own terms. Sell everything then hope for the best.
But as long as we can keep asking "why?", we have a noble purpose.

  We lie in the bed, listen to the click of blinds, watch a thin thread of dusty cobweb weave back and forth, back and forth, in the waves of air we cannot see.
The night turns long when love sours.
And we feel uneasy.
What have I been doing for the last ten years?
Come, get me.
And even though I loved Fips but not then, not there in the garden of war, not yet, but later.
Every time I see the grave, I get the empty feeling where something was, and isn't anymore,
and will never be again.
It's only what you do not understand that you can come to a conclusion about. There will be no conclusion.

  Love sets you going like a fat gold watch.
He cannot separate from the loved person, to shed the loved body.
Once upon a time it was the only way.
We got up at dawn, ignored the yolky sun, loaded our navy-blue Austin with suitcases and then drove straight to the coast, stopping only at the verge of Sarajevo, so I could pee.
Reaching the speed of light and using it to take a leak, now that's a major event.

  When a surgeon cuts into a body, he knows what he will find inside.
You know you can change the story.
Not me!
The decision is out of our hands.
I've been there before.
It's all over now, he thought, stepping onto the damp gravel.
Now, where do I go from here?
A turn into traffic, a goodbye toot on the horn. Goldstars. Alone with his dead.

  The village was silent in the damp June morning.
I see that I must give what I most need.
Then he walked on along the path, without turning back. Now there was only the dog behind him.
Starting home, he walked towards the trees and under them, leaving behind him the big blue sky, the whisper of wind voices in the wind-bent wheat.

made with the first and/or last sentences of the following authors:
(beg.: John Berger: Ways of Seeing)(beg.: Charlotte Perkins Gillman: Herland)(beg.:Martin Amis: London Fields)(beg.: J.L. Austin: How to do things with Words)(beg.: J.P. Douleavy: The Ginger Man)(beg.: paul virilio: open sky)(beg.: Taylor Brady: Is placed/leaves)(beg.:Kathy Acker: Human Croquet)(beg: michel foucault: the Order of Things)(beg.: Nicole Brossard: Surfaces of Senses)(beg.: Marc Baker: Nam)(beg.: Manuel De Landa: a 1000 Years of nonlinear History)(beg.: Magnus Mills: Three to see the King)(end. Walter Abish: In the Future Perfect)(beg.: Alejo Corpentier: The Lost Steps)(beg.: Marc Hauser: Wild Animals)(beg.:Hiromi Goto: Chorus of Mushrooms)(end: Richard Brautigam: Sombrero Fallout)(beg.: Palph Steadman: Gonzo the Art)(end: Dodic Bellamy: The Letters of Mina Harker)(beg.: Phillippe Soupault: Last Lights of Paris)(beg.: Cathy Acker: My Mother...)(end:L.A. Alexander: Intimate Cartographies) (end:Margaret Artwood: Bodily Harm)(Beg: Grad Hollqnder: The Palaver)(end. Marc Baker: Nam)(beg.:Margret Artwood: Bluebeards Egg)(Kate Atkonson: Behind the Scenes at the Museum)(end: Peter Hedges: An Ocean in Iowa)(beg: Alaric Summner: Waves on Porthmear Beach)(beg.: Norman Haire: The Encyclopedia of Sex Practice)(beg.: Carl von Clausewitz: On War)(end: Samuel Delany: Longer Views)(end: Palaver)(beg.: Maurice Blanchot: The Writing of the Disaster)(end: Fiona Templeton in: Language Alive)(end: Saul Bellow: Herzog)(beg.: Gunnar Kopperund: The time of Light)(beg.: Anthony Loyd: My War one by, i miss it so) (beg.: Seamus Heaney: Death of a Naturalist)(beg.: Hartmut Winkler: Search Engines in ReadmeReadmeReadme)(beg.: Celine: North)(beg.: Steve Bard: Logic Bomb)(end.Hartmut Winkler: Search Engines in ReadmeReadmeReadme)
(beg: Deborah Levi: Diary of a Steak)(end. Helene Cixous: Stigmata)(beg.:Tina McElroy: Ugly Ways)(end: Peter Hoeg: Miss Smilla's Feeling for Snow) (beg.: Philip Dick: A Scanner Darkly)(beg.: Rosalind E. Krauss: The optical Unconscious)(end: Phillippe Saupault: Last Nights of Paris)(end. Anthony Loyd: My War one by, i miss it so)(end. James Grauerholz: Word Virus)(end. Gunnar Kopperund: The time of Light)(end: J.P. Doulavy: The GingerMan)(end: Kenneth Allsopp: Adventure lit their Star)(end. Focus: Discoveries)(beg.: Michael Crichton: The Andromeda Strain)(end.: Thomas Keneally: Schindler's List)(end. Anthony Beevor: Stalingrad)(beg.: Michael Herr: Dispatches)(end:J.P. Sartre: Iron in the Soul)(end:Ethel Adnan: Sitt Marie Rose)(end. Stece Beard: Logic Bomb)( Arrabac: The Burial)(beg.: John Carey: the faber book of Utopias)(beg.: Johanna Drucker: Night Crawlers on the Web)(end: Dashel Hammet: The big Knockover)(end. Michel Serres: Knowledge's Redemption in ReadmeReadmeReadme)(end. Matt Ridley: The Red Queen)(beg.: Anne Michaels: Fugitive Pieces)(beg.: Spalding Gray: Swimming to Cambodia)(beg.: Marc Auge: non-places)(Russel Hobin: Turtle Diary)(beg.: Margret Artwood: Bodily Harm)(beg.: Sylvia Plath: Ariel)(Kiki Smith: Endocrinology)
(beg.: George Orwell: 1984)(J.P. Sartre: The Reprieve)(beg.: the Vantage Book of Walking)(beg.: Aleksandar Hemon: The question of Bruno)(end. Paul Virilio: Pure War)(beg.:Matt Ridley: The Red Queen)(end: Hiromi Goto: Chorus of Mushrooms)(end: Terry Wilson/Brion Gysin: Here to Go)(end: Michael Crichton: The Andromeda Strain)(end. Ian Sinclair: Lights out for the territory)(end: David Copland: Generation X)(end: Martin Amis: Dead Babies)(end.: Spalding Grey: Swimming to Cambodia)(end:James Elroy: L.A. Confidential)(beg.: Ivo Andre: The Bridge over the Drina)(beg.:Cornelius Ryan: The Longest Day)(end. Anne Michaels: Fugitive Pieces) (end. the Vantage Book of Walking)(end: Truman Capote: In cold Blood)(beg.: Paul Virilio: Pure War)(Maurice Scully. Beg.: Foil

max ensslin ~:) 03.1.03 2nd draft