Japanese noise musician Masami Akita, who performs under the name “Merzbow,” specializes in music that sounds like massive titanium robots copulating; a bondage/fetishism enthusiast as well as a vegan animal rights activist (who dedicated the albums “Minazo Vol. 1 & 2” to an elephant seal), Merbow takes his moniker from Kurt Schwitters’ “Merzbau”; I discovered Merzbow while in a state of depression, and listened to his music for days at a time; Merzbow was, for me, the sound of all my frustration and rage (towards myself, the world) buzzing into the ether like an auditory Tesla coil; you see, while the music played it felt like the depression was out of my body and drifting towards the ceiling; I am not depressed anymore, but I still appreciate Merzbow—in smaller doses—and think that his life’s work has been a noble attempt at sonically representing the electric drone of contemporary culture; I genuinely believe that if you listen to any three discs from Merbow’s 50-disc boxed set “Merzbox”—or read Don DeLillo’s “White Noise”—you will begin to regard your household appliances with a newfound respect and/or fear; consider that while Japan has given birth to ambitious death cults (Aum Shinrikyo), rape and “futanari”/shemale comics (“manga”), an epidemic of male shut-ins (“hikikomori”) and teen suicide, as well as the misunderstood noise-artist known as Merzbow, 63 years ago the United States used two explosive devices to instantaneously, arbitrarily slaughter over 200,000 Japanese civilians; there is no elegant way for a culture to move forward from such an event; you could try to forget, but that would be futile, and besides, unexorcisable ghosts would keep appearing in your forests, photo albums, and artwork; Dr. Raymond Kurzweil, a leading futurist and Transhumanist, believes that at some point in the next 50 years, we will attain “Singularity,” a state where: “There will be no distinction, post-Singularity, between human and machine or between physical and virtual reality”; if this terrifies you, do not be afraid: these adaptations towards a posthuman existence will occur not in a giant leap, but in a series of swift, continual baby steps, such that you will not be taken aback when your grandchild needs to be recharged like a cell phone; sometimes, the future has already occurred, but it takes years for a hesitant public to shed its past; if you would like to be inspired by noise that feels like a handful of glitter and thumbtacks, I suggest listening to Jimi Hendrix’s live performance of “The Star Spangled Banner” at the Woodstock Music & Art Fair in 1969, followed by “3 Types of Industrial Pollution” from Merzbow’s 1986 album, “Antimonument.”

Located on the Gulf Coast of Florida, Weeki Wachee Springs is the only city of live mermaids; Weeki Wachee was founded in 1947 by former Navy frogman, Newt Perry; the original mermaids were called “Aquabelles”; Weeki Wachee is one of the finest tourist attractions in the United States, and the entire operation—an underwater mermaid aquarium and a water park called Buccaneer Bay—is built on a natural spring; the spring is deep; if you go to Weeki Wachee—and you should go to Weeki Wachee—you will see mermaids, and you will gape like a prepubescent child; Weeki Wachee is a necessary destination in what Greil Marcus called “the old, weird America”; early last year, I met a girl—a young woman; I saw the girl perform in a Donna Reed dress, and she made me smile; let me clarify: I was on a semi-date, but when this girl walked on stage, everybody else in the room ceased to exist (including the semi-date, whose name I can not recall); soon after, this girl and I met for lunch in a park; I arrived before her, and as I waited, I wondered how I would appear to a beautiful girl in a car as she drove up; she arrived, then immediately went to the public restroom; I wondered if she was nervous too; probably not, I concluded; we sat down on a bench and talked for hours; I could have listened to her for days; when she spoke, I noticed a gentle lilt that reminded me perhaps of southern gentility—or Julie Andrews; I inquired about her accent, and she confessed that she stuttered as a child; years of practicing proper speech had created a curious enunciation of words; the resulting effect is that she seems like a kindergarten teacher, and you are her student; it is comforting; this girl’s stories meandered and circled and gave birth to other stories, like the tributary system of the Amazon River; I thought to myself: “What a lovely, odd girl”; at one moment in our conversation, her gaze drifted past me; she then said, “That squirrel looks like he’s reading a newspaper”; I turned to see a squirrel standing on hind legs, holding a scrap of paper in his front paws; the squirrel did look like he was reading a newspaper; the girl said that when she sees something so unbearably cute, it makes her want to grind her teeth; I understood what she meant (later, the same teeth-grinding issue arose with hummingbirds, except when they flew close she had a strange desire to pluck them from mid-air, like flying fruit); stop it! too cute!; our conversation in the park then drifted to Weeki Wachee, which was near her childhood home; I had heard that Weeki Wachee was celebrating its 60th anniversary, and the original mermaids would be performing a reunion show; we both talked about how fun it would be to go to the show; when we left the park, I wondered when I would see this girl again; soon, I hoped; I left for North Carolina the next day to visit friends in the military who were preparing to deploy for the Middle East; a week later, while in Wilmington, I received a phone call from the girl; she said that she was serious about going to Weeki Wachee, and wanted to know if I was just as serious; I was; I spent the summer getting to know this girl; we became friends; she liked to garden, and I once took a photo of her standing proudly with a handful of weeds, the sun setting behind her; she has the unique capacity to discover—in manual labor—the opportunity for magic; it is infectious; if this girl told you that hidden in the dirt and weeds was a wooden box full of gold, you would immediately grab a shovel and dig; I imagine her gorgeous mind as a Rube Goldberg machine, as Pee-Wee’s bedroom—an elaborate workshop of springs and sprockets and wee beasties tugging on levers, revealing rainbows and ghosts; late that summer, we flew to Florida and visited Weeki Wachee; we befriended some of the mermaids, and were even able to swim in the springs; she mastered using the oxygen tubes used by the mermaids and swam to the bottom (she was a natural, an Esther Williams—and the mermaids tried to recruit her to join their ranks); she outclassed me in the water; I watched from the surface as she fed bananas to floating turtles thirty feet below; I could not figure out how to breathe from those tubes—except in short spurts—but I loved being in the water, and while the girl swam below, her oxygen bubbles bursting around me, I thought: “I could not possibly feel more alive”; it was a couple months before the girl and I kissed; a year has passed, and I have since traveled to other cities to be with the girl, but still, when I am with her I feel so alive—and like I am floating; during “The Little Mermaid” show, the mermaids of Weeki Wachee sing: “We’re not like other women/We don’t have to clean an oven/And we never will grow old/We’ve got the world by the tail!”; when you go to Weeki Wachee—and you will go to Weeki Wachee—be sure to have your photo taken with a mermaid; mermaids are camera-friendly; you will never see a mermaid without her tail, and it is a given that she will be smiling; you will want photographic evidence of your visit; people will not believe that you met such a woman; you will need proof; have you ever been to a place so otherworldly you are sure you are dreaming?; I have.

A 1978 black-and-white photograph by Swiss-born photographer, Robert Frank; a vertical diptych (created with conjoined photographic frames), “Sick of Goodby’s” contains—in its top half—the dirty, warped beach image of an arm reaching into frame, holding a toy skeleton; the ocean’s horizon-line is in the distance, and the words “sick of” are scrawled across the photo; the lower half of “Sick of Goodby’s” depicts a small mirror resting against a larger mirror, the word “goodby’s” dripping down the image; it is unclear if the words were written in paint, lipstick, or blood; known for his iconic 1958 collection, “The Americans,” Robert Frank made the Kerouac-narrated Beat film “Pull My Daisy” in 1959 and spent much of the next decade creating films; I was aware of Robert Frank’s photos as a teenager, because he—along with Walker Evans—seemed to be the great visual chronicler of mid-20th century, roadside America; the photographs in “The Americans” are formal, elegant, and coolly ironic—just detached enough to create the feeling of immigrant insight into the post World War II/pre-Vietnam era in U.S. history; in college, I had a “hip” art teacher who showed us the rarely screened “Cocksucker Blues,” Frank’s druggy, sexy 1972 Rolling Stones tour film; my knowledge of Robert Frank’s work did not go beyond the Stones documentary; years later, while killing time in Washington Square Park, I began perusing the wares of one of the NYU-area sidewalk booksellers; I bought a French collection of Robert Frank’s photographs—published by the Centre National de la Photographie—for four dollars; the earliest photographs in the book are from 1949, and near the end of the collection is “Sick of Goodby’s”; this was the first time I saw “Sick of Goodby’s,” and I became obsessed with the image; “Sick of Goodby’s” did not resemble any of the Frank photos I knew from “The Americans”; I did not know what happened to the artist in the interim; in the back of this French book is a timeline of Robert Frank’s life, and it says that in 1974: “Andrea muerte dans un accident d’avion a Tikel au Guatemala”; I do not speak or read French, but had a vague sense of the sentence, and “muerte” seemed ominous; after a bit of research, I discovered that in the span of a few years in the 1970’s, Robert Frank’s daughter was killed in a plane crash and his son was diagnosed with schizophrenia; I can not imagine what Frank went through; his life was coming undone, and his photographs—which were influenced by his motion picture work as well as his enormous personal tragedy—would never be the same; Robert Frank’s photographs of this era are messy, scratched, covered in text, and deeply haunted; these photos seem to be movie stills married with script supervisor notes from the nightmare-film of a heartbroken, wrecked man; still, Frank managed to keep producing work; “Sick of Goodby’s” is a sort of mystic, sacrificial art: acknowledging the fragility of flesh, of film, the image is naked, sad, shattered, and ultimately—terrifying; but also, exhilarating; I am afraid of this photograph; if I stare at “Sick of Goodby’s” too long, I feel compelled to call my father and mother.

Based in Liuyang, China, Black Cat is a brand of fireworks popular throughout the world; according to the website for Black Cat, “The history of firecrackers is deeply embedded in the Chinese psyche, in its traditions, its ceremonies and culture. Just as Europeans enjoy the pop of a champagne cork and a sip of sparkling wine to celebrate a birth, a marriage, a home-coming or a business deal, Chinese people prefer something more demonstrative than a single pop and a subdued fizz!”; the website also says: “In China, ‘black cats’ are a symbol of ‘luck and good fortune’”; in America, as in much of Europe, black cats are considered bad luck, especially if one crosses your path; historically, black cats have been associated with witchcraft and black magic; despite your religious beliefs, it is not acceptable to spend Halloween collecting black cats in a potato sack; according to folklore, Benjamin Franklin—a Puritan at heart—made it a requirement that when a court summons was issued, the person delivering the summons would wear black; legions of debtors and alimony-evaders soon were forewarned of a “black cat”—the nickname for the deliverer of a summons—crossing their path; by the late 19th century, the tradition of wearing black clothing when delivering a summons was outmoded, but the fear of black cats lingered; debtors are now okay, and are assisted in their personal journey by helpful credit card companies; alimony-evaders will always be bastards; beginning at age nine, and continuing through my childhood, July 5th held a special meaning for me; with the fireworks remaining from the Fourth of July, my best friends—Scott, EZ, Derek, and Ethan—and I spent the following day engaged in a full-scale bottle rocket war; roman candles, M-80’s, and smaller firecrackers were used as well; the fireworks were usually purchased in bulk during family vacations in Florida, South Carolina, or Tennessee; bottle rockets were loaded into PVC pipes and aimed at each other’s heads; we divided into two teams, but eventually it always became a free-for-all, a pyrotechnic genocide; July 5th was better than July 4th, because instead of shooting fireworks towards the moon (like everybody else in the U.S.A.), we blasted them at our best friends’ faces and torsos; on July 5th, when I was 12 years old, Scott invited a boy named Peter to join our bottle rocket war; I knew Peter from Little League and thought he was a good guy; Peter was a pitcher for “Trust Company,” and he could already throw a real curveball; Peter was an eager addition to our war, and he had excellent aim with the PVC pipe; however, I could not stop thinking about Peter’s father; Peter’s father was the assistant coach for “Trust Company,” and took third base coach duties when his team was up to bat; also, when Peter’s father was a teenager, he blew off his right hand with a firecracker; Peter’s father was the only one-handed third base coach I have heard of, and it was always a source of great inspiration—and humor—to watch him make coded hand gestures with his hand and stump; it was a distracting, hypnotic spectacle, always a mini-performance within the actual game; there are few things I can compare it to for pure, clumsy, animal beauty, but various three-legged dogs and the blind, stumbling ballerinas at the beginning of Pedro Almodovar’s “Talk to Her” come to mind; you see, when Peter’s father made gestures to the batter with his maimed arm, it ceased to be merely about athletics; that flapping, rubbing, twitching limb, deformed by Chinese explosives, was an admonition to each child on the field—and the adults sitting in the stands—that human bodies are frail, faulty, but the heart and mind are defiant; if that stump could speak, it would have said, “Look at me, you motherfuckers! I belonged to a life without fear. Now I dream of tickling piano keys, fingering the seams of a baseball, and massaging my wife’s soft neck”; on July 3rd, 2008, the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission issued a voluntary recall of approximately 20,000 of Black Cat’s Screech and Scream Fountain Fireworks, because: “The fireworks can produce a loud bang and unexpectedly scatter debris, posing an injury hazard to the user and bystanders”; it is unknown how many of the consumers who purchased the Screech and Scream Fountain Firework read the July 3rd recall in the 24 hours prior to Independence Day; inevitably, if you search for video clips of Black Cat—or any other brand of fireworks—on YouTube, and continue watching “Related Videos,” you will wind up discovering footage of the world’s largest hydrogen bomb, a terrifying Soviet behemoth tested in 1961, nicknamed “Ivan.”

A popular absurdist-comedy sketch show starring David Cross and Bob Odenkirk that ran on HBO from 1995-1998; as I never had HBO during that period of time, I was only superficially aware of the show’s existence; several years ago, I watched my first episode of “Mr. Show” on DVD, and this was in part thanks to Bono; on May 26, 2005, U2 brought their “Vertigo” tour to the Fleet Center in Boston; I am not a particularly big fan of U2’s output in the past 20 years, and in fact think they creatively peaked when, in February of 1983, they released the excellent album, “War”; after that point—and certainly following the fawning reaction to the release of “The Joshua Tree” in 1987—I think U2 began to believe their own hype and play music for an abstraction known only as “the people,” releasing album after album of nausea-inducing platitudes fit for a Hallmark card, not a band born from the creatively exciting early-80’s post-punk scene; The Edge has been quoted as saying, “Particularly on ‘Boy,’ I can hear a bit of the Banshees and the Buzzcocks and some hint of the Skids”; The Buzzcocks never, to my knowledge, played with Pavarotti; knowing I would be in Boston, a friend of mine offered me a private box at the Fleet Center to see U2; until that moment, I did not realize I had friends who could offer me such things; I did not confess that I am not the world’s biggest U2 fan, but I have two very-good friends who lived in Boston at the time that are, in fact, massive U2 fans; I accepted the private box for the sake of my friends, you see; I was selfless in that way, much like Bono is selfless; my friends—Mandy and Sam—knew the lyrics to every song; the show—a combination of laser lights, sonic riffs, and poverty-relief—was actually fairly exhilarating; I can think of no other band on Earth who could pull off the humanitarian rock-bombasity with as much conviction as U2; Bono is a sincere man, I think; I might have appreciated the arena-rock more if not for my persistent cough, which led me to begin drinking Robitussin DM; Robitussin DM contains Dextromethorphan, also known as DXM, which, when ingested in high enough quantities, produces effects similar to Ketamine and Angel Dust; fans of a cough syrup high have their own vocabulary, which includes terms like “sippin’ tuss,” “robotripping,” “dexxing,” and, for fans of the Texas rap scene (including the deceased DJ Screw and Pimp C), “drank,” “lean,” and “sizzurp”; many advocates of sizzurp—like Lil Wayne—enjoy the mixture of Promethazine VC (with Codeine) and Hi-C or Hawaiian Punch, and they drink it for the opiate effects of the codeine; those that use Robitussin DM are interested in the hallucinogenic qualities of the DXM; it is unknown what is the cough syrup of choice for the rapper, DMX; Robitussin DM is extremely popular because while in small doses it acts as a cough suppressant, in higher doses—500 mg and up—it is a full-blown psychogenic drug, capable of radical dissociation in increasing plateaus of hallucination, though it can also cause horrendous vomiting, diarrhea, and spastic muscle-control, resulting in movement resembling a zombie or Robocop; in high school, I went to shows at an all-ages DIY club called Tite Pockets—which resembled a crack den—where I heard amazing hardcore music and watched scores of robotripping gutter punks leave trails of pink puke in the area just outside the front door; in college, kids ordered European DXM in powder form over the internet and got high in their dorm rooms; I missed out on these school-age experiences; in the middle of the U2 concert, I began to feel delirious, and while—in a show of sober solidarity—the audience held their cell phones in the air (to celebrate the ONE Campaign and Nokia), creating a sea of glowing lights, I giggled at all the blinking robot eyes; after the show, we stopped at a CVS where I bought more Robitussin; we hopped on the Red Line and went to Mandy’s large, 19th century home in Cambridge; we set up camp in the library, where my hallucinations came on stronger and I plucked, from the long shelf of books, a leather-bound, first-draft copy of the screenplay for Terrence Malick’s “Days of Heaven,” which included a hand-written note on the title page and was signed, “Love, Terry”; I am still not sure if that actually happened; Mandy and Sam dropped me in a leather recliner, positioned a plastic garbage can next to me, and put on a DVD of “Mr. Show”; I am not sure how many episodes I watched, but I found the show very funny, especially a sketch about a character named Willips Brighton, who resembled Brian Wilson circa 1988 and sang a sunshiny piano ballad called “Mouthful of Sores”; the various lights in Mandy’s library—from the ceiling fixture, two lamps, and the television itself—began to leak from their respective light-sources into the air directly in front of my face and bleed into each other, like a set of watercolors left to melt in the back seat of a station wagon in mid-July; I was fucked up out of my mind, or, as they say where I am from, “tripping balls”; I passed out soon after; in the morning, I woke up covered in quilts and Mandy came into the library with hot coffee and read to me from Charlotte Bronte’s “Villette”; I felt like a small child on Christmas morning; after lunch, I boarded the super-cheap Dragon Coach bus, bound for New York City; I had read quite a bit about the recent “Chinatown bus wars,” but my ride was peaceful, and the elderly Chinese women and college students on the bus seemed unthreatening; I tried to sleep, but I felt groggy, slightly dizzy, as though I had been beaten up and stuffed full of cotton balls; I was happy, though; finally, I slid into sleep, hearing a dreamy fugue of Cantonese gibberish, the piano melody from “Mouthful of Sores,” and Linda Manz’s immortal opening voice-over from “Days of Heaven”: “Me and my brother—it just used to be me and my brother. We used to do things together. We used to have fun. We used to roam the streets. There was people suffering of pain and hunger. Some people their tongues were hanging out of their mouth.”

A 1920’s song by Nelstone’s Hawaiians, an Alabama-based group that specialized in songs featuring Hawaiian steel guitar; “Fatal Flower Garden” is included on the essential 1952 “Anthology of American Folk Music,” assembled on 78 rpm records by Harry Smith; Harry Smith was the truest American cultural scavenger of the 20th century; Smith gave birth to the 1950’s-60’s folk movement, was an important experimental filmmaker, occultist, maven of the Beat scene, synesthete, jazz champion, shaman, world-class collector of paper airplanes and Ukrainian Easter eggs, and the finest alchemist in North America; Harry Smith spent the majority of his adult life pursuing the philosopher’s stone, but despite the tireless joint-efforts of Smith, the faculty of the Naropa Institute, and the Boulder City Council, he was unable to ever locate pure carmot; while Harry Smith never successfully created gold or a homunculus, he was reputedly able to transmute dust containing rat feces into a chocolate powder similar to Ovaltine; in Weirdo Heaven, Harry Smith operates a phonograph while Tiny Tim sings in a cartoon falsetto and Moondog bangs on drums; if you like songs about famine, infanticide, infidelity, God, drought, drowning, Satan, or moles in the ground, the “Anthology of American Folk Music” is for you; “Fatal Flower Garden” is my favorite song on the collection; several years ago, I flew into BWI airport in Baltimore; my then-girlfriend picked me up in a silver Isuzu Rodeo; while driving to the Eastern Shore, we found ourselves in a minor monsoon; we pulled off the road and parked; the stereo in the automobile was broken, so I took out my Mac laptop, opened iTunes, and put on the “Party Shuffle”; the rain outside came down so heavy that we could not see ten feet in front of the Rodeo; my then-girlfriend and I moved to the back seat, got frisky, depantsed, and while we were in a state of physical communion, “Fatal Flower Garden” began to play; this song is in no way sensual or erotic; “Fatal Flower Garden” is spooky and haunted, as if dead peckerwoods performed at a Leper Colony Luau in Hades; I shut my laptop, then we put our clothes back on and began our drive through the storm; it was the beginning of an unpleasant weekend; little is known about the southern Alabama duo of Nelstone’s Hawaiians, but it is approximately 1,030 miles from Baltimore, Maryland, to Mobile, Alabama; it is approximately 4,300 miles from Mobile to Honolulu, Hawaii; it is unknown if Nelstone’s Hawaiians ever visited Hawaii; I do not know where my ex-girlfriend is now; the opening lyrics of “Fatal Flower Garden” are: “It rained, it poured, it rained so hard, it rained so hard all day”; the rest of the song concerns a Gypsy, a diamond, and a Bible.

Based in Atlanta, Georgia-Pacific is one of the world’s largest manufacturers of paper, tissue, and packaging products; in 2005, Georgia-Pacific was purchased by Koch Industries for 21 billion dollars; beginning in elementary school, and peaking in 8th grade, I hid in bathroom stalls at school in the morning; my bus arrived at school an hour before class began; students were supposed to congregate in the cafeteria; this undefined period exacerbated my insecurities; unchecked social anxiety forced me to find comfort in hidden and locked spaces; I was particularly self-conscious because hair had begun growing on my upper lip; this hair did not seem cool—it seemed disgusting; unable to speak to my father about shaving or much of anything, I used the Bic razor my mother left on the edge of her bathtub; she used this razor for her legs and armpits; I did not understand the necessity of shaving cream, so I shaved without cream or water; this process left my upper lip chafed and cut and scabby; combined with a greasy face and acne, this rendered me cripplingly self-conscious; bathroom stalls stop several inches short of the floor; on certain occasions, while hiding in a stall, somebody would enter the bathroom, notice my feet, and ask: “Is somebody taking a shit in there?”; I would not reply, which would elicit the follow-up inquiry: “Who’s dumpin’ in there?!”; I squeezed my muscles tight, tried to suppress my anger and embarrassment, thought about Gandhi, and said nothing; “Tell me who it is or else I’m gonna go outside and tell everybody to come in and watch you take a big stinky shit!” they would say; finally, when my options felt exhausted, I would whisper my identity; the person would walk away, open the door, then yell that I was taking a shit; they would laugh and leave; I would sob uncontrollably and yank a handful of toilet paper; the toilet paper dispenser was always made by Georgia-Pacific; this name—Georgia-Pacific—is a nonsense-phrase I thought about often while crying on the toilet; I wondered if, in the days of the supercontinent, Pangaea, Georgia might have touched the Pacific Ocean; hence, the name: Georgia-Pacific; this thought pleased me; finally, however, I concluded no, Georgia was probably bordered by western Africa; this fact would render the American South’s connection to Africa far, far older—and less tragic—than the Transatlantic Slave Trade (sometimes referred to as the African Holocaust, or Maafa); when I finally stopped crying, I would shove my right hand into my pocket, grab some chapstick, quickly apply a coat to my lips, and put the chapstick back in my pocket; next, I would squeeze some hand lotion onto my finger and rub it onto my face, just below my nose, where it was red and dry; the sting would last for a second, then go away; I would put away the lotion; then, when I was sure nobody else was in the bathroom, I would unbolt the door, shove it open, and go to homeroom; my junior year in high school, I purchased an electric shaver; I still have not made sense of the name, Georgia-Pacific.

An underground New England youth movement in the late 19th century, led by Benedetto Ossoli (born on September 5th, 1848); Benedetto Ossoli was the fraternal twin of Angelo Ossoli and the son of Giovanni Ossoli and Margaret Fuller Ossoli; on July 19, 1850, Giovanni, Margaret, and Angelo Ossoli all perished at sea in a shipwreck near Fire Island, New York; Margaret Fuller Ossoli, more famously known as Margaret Fuller, was a critic, gender theorist, and the most highly-regarded feminist of her era; Margaret Fuller Ossoli was one of only two women who were original members of the Transcendental Club; Ralph Waldo Emerson persuaded Henry David Thoreau to travel to New York to search the shoreline for Margaret Fuller Ossoli’s body, but neither her nor her husband’s bodies were ever found; the baby Angelo Ossoli was found, drowned; the possession and exhibition of three names was popular among Transcendentalists like Margaret Fuller Ossoli, Henry David Thoreau, Ralph Waldo Emerson, as well as Frederic Henry Hedge and Amos Bronson Alcott; Mary Moody Emerson, Ralph Waldo Emerson’s aunt, was a Calvinist and a voracious reader, enjoying Milton, Byron, Plato, Locke, Jonathan Edwards, and the Bible; Mary Moody Emerson’s influence on her famous nephew was enormous, and he described her as, “a fruit of Calvinism and New England that marks the precise time when the power of the old creed yielded to the influence of modern science and humanity”; Emerson’s radical departure from traditional Christianity upset his aunt, and for a period she refused any communication with him; my great-aunt, a North Carolinian by birth, possesses little-to-no knowledge of transcendentalism, but a preternatural ability to accumulate worthless knick-knacks, mints from restaurants, pilfered silverware, and canned vegetables from bygone Presidential administrations; in 1993, I watched the NCAA basketball championship with my extended family at my grandparents’ retirement home in Stuart, Florida; this included my parents, sister, grandparents, aunt, uncle, cousin, great-uncle, and great-aunt; the University of North Carolina played the University of Michigan—with their famed “Fab Five,” of Jimmy King, Jalen Rose, Juwan Howard, Ray Jackson, and Chris Webber—for the national title; when Chris Webber, who was a brilliant college basketball player, a first-team All-American, made the mistake of calling a time-out with 11 seconds remaining in the game, despite his team having no remaining time-outs, his team received a technical foul, clinching the victory for the University of North Carolina; after Chris Webber made the profound error of calling the time-out, my great-aunt exclaimed, “Those shine-heads sure can’t handle pressure!”; my entire family was aghast at my great-aunt’s outburst, which was racist as well as shockingly descriptive and creative; my great-aunt also insists on calling the sprinkles at ice cream shops “coloreds”; I share blood with my great-aunt; this fact sometimes causes me great consternation; Benedetto Ossoli did not drown in 1850 with his brother, father, and famous mother, Margaret Fuller Ossoli—because he was inexplicably left on the steps of an orphanage two weeks after his birth; this abandonment caused Benedetto—whose left cheek was dominated by a birthmark that would now be called a “port-wine stain”—great anguish during his childhood years; Benedetto Ossoli settled in Boston, and in 1865, while still a teenager, began the movement known as “Vulgar Living”; Vulgar Living included various slothful acts, including the consumption of massive quantities of alcohol and meat, as well as thievery, vandalism, spitting (but not into a spittoon), rudeness towards the elderly, and public onanism; theories abound, connecting the rise in Vulgar Living to a sense of disenfranchisement felt by young soldiers returning from the Civil War; Benedetto Ossoli never married, and spent his later years in New Bedford, Massachusetts, managing a boarding house popular with young fishermen; Ossoli also ran a brewpub adjoining his boardinghouse, and is viewed by some as the grandfather of the American microbrewery movement; Benedetto Ossoli’s brewpub, which is now the site of a gas station, was called “The Drowning Lady.”

An almost-realized dream of the self-taught American artist, Jean-Michel Basquiat, the X Train was to be a subway line that would connect Soho, the Lower East Side, Alphabet City, and Williamsburg, Brooklyn (which was just burgeoning as a hipster Mecca); according to popular lore, Basquiat planned to abandon art when he turned 30 and become an urban planner—the “Robert Moses of the 1990’s”; in 1983, after solo shows at Larry Gagosian and Annina Nosei’s galleries—and inclusion in the Whitney Biennial of that year—Basquiat befriended Andy Warhol; it is during Basquiat and Warhol’s early conversations that the idea for the X Train emerged; Basquiat, whose early graffiti tag was “SAMO” (Same Old Shit), supposedly said to Warhol, “Painting on city property for money is ridiculous. If you really want to make a million dollars, the quickest way is to be the guy that owns the city property”; the X Train was to be a “subway for beautiful people”; Basquiat’s vision would connect the beautiful people, and the subway would feature art by himself, Warhol, Keith Haring, Jenny Holzer, Julian Schnabel, and Lee Quinones; muzak on the X Train would be recorded by David Byrne, Lydia Lunch, Debby Harry, DNA, Brian Eno, Suicide, Lou Reed, Kid Creole, and the Ramones; this magical train would have been glorious, a Polar Express for art students; my friend Elliot, who was raised in the mountains of eastern Kentucky and knows the ways of coal mines and serpent handling, used his intellect to gain scholarships to a Chattanooga prep school and then the Ivy League; Elliot’s father is a preacher with a small but devout ministry—and an avid collector of NASCAR miniatures; the best moonshine I ever drank was with Elliot in Whitesburg, Kentucky; four sips did the trick; Elliot knows more about architecture—from West Virginia company towns to the Beaux Arts—than anyone else in my life; when Elliot tells a story, he tells a story—with his eyes, arms, and he leans towards you, lowering his voice, reeling you in, then when he arrives at a punch line, he chuckles loudly and reclines easily back in his chair, slightly proud; even if he has not touched a teaspoon of alcohol, Elliot always seems slightly drunk; the overall effect is charming; Elliot is not necessarily an old soul, but he was definitely born an old man (like Jonathan Winters, in a particularly inspired episode of “Mork & Mindy” which involved reverse-aging); Elliot was the one who let me in on the secret of the X Train; his apartment in Williamsburg is near what was supposed to be the final stop of the X Train; once, Elliot and I went down into the subway tunnel with makeshift bamboo fishing poles and cheese as bait, hoping to do some “rat fishing”; the rats were not biting that day; we wanted to shoot a music video for our band, the Harlem Bluegrass Choir; the video was supposed to be an homage to the opening credits of the “The Andy Griffith Show”; the Harlem Bluegrass Choir amicably disintegrated; apparently, nutria—which are the skunk-apes of the rodent family—have been sighted in New Jersey; this means they will soon be in New York City; we will be prepared with our fishing poles; high-ranking member of the Metropolitan Transit Authority were supportive of Basquiat’s X Train, and the plan lingered in bureaucratic limbo through two mayoral administrations, but when Rudolph Giuliani stormed the mayor’s office, the plan was quickly squashed; Elliot has taken me through the underground remains of lost subway lines; the original 28 New York City subway stations opened to the public on October 27, 1904; the City Hall station, which closed in 1945, is stunning; if you are ambitious, you can visit this gem of early 20th century architecture; I can not tell you how; I do not know what Basquiat’s favorite subway station was, or if, in a show of admiration, he spray-painted it; it is exciting to discover architecture in a state of entropy, or whatever comes after entropy, when a structure is done collapsing, and now just sits like a pile of bones, taunting neat-freaks; New York has numerous crumbling sites whose architects and former denizens haunt them; if you are dubious, I urge you to hurry to the boat graveyard in Rossville, Staten Island, the smallpox hospital on Roosevelt Island, spooky Hart Island (with its Potter’s field and Nike missile base), or take the train up the Hudson River and gaze out with wonder at the decaying castle on Bannerman’s Island (you will believe you are in Scotland, not the lower Hudson Valley); our failures are what make us most human; rural America has many architectural ghosts—those abandoned churches and factories and homes that are left to nature; a city like New York does not have nearly as many spirits, but they are there—enduring at the fringes—weather-worn and covered in colorful graffiti; graffiti tags are my favorite form of modern art—though I suppose cave dwellers originated the form—and I think it is born from a simple, human desire to proclaim, “I am alive. I was here. I have a name”; if Basquiat had achieved his dream of a subway for beautiful people, I wonder if Elliot and I would be allowed to board; Jean-Michel Basquiat, named “The Radiant Child” in a 1981 “Artforum” article, died from a heroin overdose at age 27.

Invented by the ingenious Huichol Indians of Jalisco, Mexico, the God’s Eye, or Ojo de Dios, is also known as the Sikukli, meaning: “the power to see and understand things unknown”; a God’s Eye consists of simple weaving across two sticks; American summer-campers learn to make God’s Eyes with colored yarn and popsicle sticks; this is probably not what the Huichols had in mind when they invented this mystical object symbolizing all that is known and, more importantly, unknowable; the four corners of a God’s Eye represent the four elements: earth, fire, water, and air; Maurice White, a Memphis-born Sagittarius, moved to Chicago, studied Astrology, and became a funk-soul wizard; “Boogie Wonderland” is the sound of tree nymphs— or dryads—dancing; the eyes of God are mentioned numerous times in the Bible, including Psalm 34:15 and Proverbs 15:3; an order of Franciscan monks in northwestern Mexico keep God’s Eyes in their undergarments for good luck; I never learned how to make God Eye’s in summer camp, because I did not attend a traditional summer camp until the summer between 8th and 9th grade; this is an unusually late time to attend summer camp for the first time; I felt like I had missed out on an essential experience of youth; I followed the lead of two friends and, after imploring my parents, signed up for Camp High Harbor, a YMCA camp on Lake Burton in Clayton, Georgia; we had many adventures that summer; these adventures included: rafting, rappelling, and spelunking in the Lost Sea, the largest underground lake in the world, which possesses myriad treasures (cave flowers, the world’s biggest rainbow trout, and World War II fallout shelter provisions); unbeknownst to the campers, the counselors had made bets on whose group would win the “Spirit Stick” at the end of the camp; the Spirit Stick was a prize given to the group of campers who best excelled in displays of spirit; spirit was quantified by the ability to sing “I Am a C-H-R-I-S-T-I-A-N” and “Oil in My Lamp,” which includes the chorus: “Give me gas for my Ford, keep me trucking for the Lord/Give me wax for my board, keep me surfin’ for the Lord”; volume was key, as spirit is loud; we were chastised if we did not sing loud enough; our counselors, 15 and 16 year olds, stood to earn over one-hundred dollars if their group won; one counselor—Ivy—was attractive, soft-spoken, kind, and wore a sexy retainer, which she manipulated in her mouth like it was rock candy; Ivy was not my counselor; my counselor was acned, Christ-obsessed, malicious, and smelled vaguely of paprika; we did not win the Spirit Stick; while I can become competitive about virtually anything, this loss made me secretly happy; near the end of the summer, the camp director called a meeting with all the children; standing in front of almost two-hundred children, the director pressed play on a boombox; “Baby Got Back,” by Sir Mix-A-Lot, began playing; for a moment, our camp director was, in our eyes, cool; the moment passed as he yanked the tape from the radio, tossed it onto the ground, crushed it with his heel into the earth, and declared it “Satanic”; this was surprising, as Sir Mix-A-Lot expressed a fondness for big butts, not Satan; it is, in fact, God, not Satan, who created all butts, both large and tiny; right?; this gesture made the “C” in YMCA very apparent; my favorite part of Camp High Harbour was the water sports, which included skiing, boating, and knee boarding; in November, 2007, during a major drought in Georgia, Governor Sonny Perdue prayed for rain on the steps of the state capitol; like the Franciscan monks in northwestern Mexico, Governor Perdue also placed a God’s Eye in his undergarments; the Lord answered the Governor’s prayers; eventually, it rained; it is unclear, though, whether it was the Governor’s prayers, the God’s Eye in his trousers, or condensation of water vapor in the atmosphere that caused the rain.