Un Día Voy a Cantar las Canciones Sin Letra y Cada Uno Podrá Imaginar Si Hablo de Amor, de Desilusión, Banalidades o Sobre Platón

Last weekend, I got back to revising my novel, for the first time since I got back from Los Angeles, prior to which I had finished writing it, although now it needs revisions. During that time, I had been to DC and LA, so I wrote a new chapter for the book, a preface, which is set in DC. I had my character walk the same way I'd walked, exiting the FBI's Brutalist headquarters, passing the National Archives in front of which sits a stone woman with an open book on her lap whose pedestal reads WHAT IS PAST IS PROLOGUE, and down to the National Mall, except when I was there it was cold, and in the book it's spring, and he walks through a shower of cherry blossom petals.

After I got back from Hollywood, I had to take some time to let all the things in my head, what I'd seen and heard and witnessed, retreat, so it wasn't quite so BIG, because it can get that way when there are humans mating with machines, and porn is strewn across the floors of strip mall offices, and you end up in the back of a warehouse marveling at an empty raised Pepto Bismol pink stage with chipped paint and a stripper pole festooned with silver star streamers. I have to wait for it to abate, let the reptilian brain chew on it, so I can put it to words.

This has been a strange week, hasn't it? Once upon a time, there was a virtual me, and then there was a real me, but for a second there I wasn't sure which one was real, only that the internet flattens time, and you have to find a way to stretch yourself across it.

Have a great weekend, because there's nothing else worth having, is there?

[Music: Juana Molina's "Un Dia"; title translation here.]

After DC Thoughts

If you're in DC, see Leo Villareal's Multiverse. It is really, really terrific. One of the most beautiful things I've seen in a long time.

[T]he work features approximately 41,000 computer-programmed LED (light-emitting diode) nodes that run through channels along the entire 200-foot-long space. ... His programming both instructs the lights and allows for an element of chance. While it is possible that a pattern will repeat during a viewer's experience, it is highly unlikely.

If you're looking for somewhere to stay, Donovan House is very lovely. I got a great rate through Expedia, and the hotel upgraded me for no apparent reason, which got me a very fabulous room at about a third of what it was supposed to cost. Their new restaurant Cha was soft launching; Todd English's sushi chef makes a mean eel roll. If you're looking to eat cheap, there's a Whole Foods a few blocks away.

My last morning in DC, I went to Arlington National Cemetery, home of infinite sadness. The trees were very stark, and it was very cold. I saw the eternal flame and wondered why John-John wasn't buried next to his father. The headstones stretch for miles -- and still they are running out of room. When you climb a ridge and look back you see that on the backs of the gravestones are the names of the wives and the children buried with the men.

What's past is prologue.

That's what the giant woman in front of the National Arhives with the open book on her lap says. When I wandered around, I thought about what the main character in my novel would think and see and do, and that was very helpful. I thought of an important scene that would happen on the National Mall.

But, I don't know, something happened on the trip, between the road trip and the city and the cemetery, something sort of went wrong in my head. I haven't felt unwell in a while, but there it was again. This churning itself up in my head again. I guess it's like relapsing, but without the booze. Maybe it was the kid in the jar, maybe it was the pushing, maybe it was the losing three stories in a week, maybe it was the things I don't understand, maybe it was the being alone.

The worst thing about losing it is that once it happens it becomes possible, and once it becomes possible, it is always possible. It's like being on a seesaw stuck in the middle, and you can't tell if anyone's sitting on the other end, it's like the other end of a phone call where no one says anything, and you can't tell if it's dead or silence, it's like being somewhere inside yourself, and you can't figure out where the ground lies.

When it does happen I probably won't believe it's true. -- Bruce Barnes, son of George "Machine Gun Kelly" Barnes

Justice Is a Fetus

Well! I had a busy day in DC. First, I went to the National Museum of Health and Medicine. Thank you reader SZ for suggesting it! Although, I wanted to vomit, literally, by the time I left. I used to be really into the, uh, "strange," and I guess in my own perverse way I still am, like once I bought a -- a -- shit, I can't remember what it was, but it was some creature pickled in a jar for a guy who used to be my boyfriend, but at this point in my life rows upon rows of what amount to dead babies in jars just sort of made me want to throw up the egg salad sandwich I had just eaten. There were three jars in particular -- not the one with the conjoined twins in it, but in the case right next to it -- that had the, like, "too freakish to live" babies in them. It was horrifying. One was a cyclops. One had some kind of dwarfism. And one -- the one that made my head want to explode in primordial sadness -- had the thing where your brain stops growing, and a tiny head, and these terrifically bulging eyes, and the "the horror, the horror" thing about it is that it was a girl. Remind me never to find myself in a deformed pickled in a jar freak baby again.

(And I'm not even going to get into my responses to the elephantiasis leg in a jar, or the human hairball from the little girl who couldn't stop eating her hair, or the floor from the Iraq war hospital, or that all these things were nothing, nothing, nothing at all compared to what was going on in the endless buildings of the surrounding Walter Reed Army Medical Center.)

After I stopped wanting to die, I didn't go to the mini bar of my dreams, but I did sit at the bar downstairs and ate the best grilled cheese sandwich of my life. I wanted to make love to it, but I ate it instead. It didn't have a leg or a fetus in it, but a lot of truffle oil instead, so I was happy.

Then I wandered around and stared at the J. Edgar Hoover Building, because it's in my novel. It's so sad. It's like someone at the DoJ was trying to punish someone by making that building. It's a true Brutalist horror. Although I guess that's sort of a redundant thing to say. I went to school at a place that was a Brutalist concrete nightmare, and I would not refer to my experiences there as exactly "fun." Except for when we used to have races in which people rode in large garbage bins. But that's another story.

Next, I went to the National Museum of Crime & Punishment, which is awesome. I highly recommend it. You have to, you know, though, have, like, an open mind. If you are serious about such matters, you will not like it. But if you are into finding out what you look like in infrared, think it is exciting to look into a gas chamber and discover there's a mirror in there like it's YOU IN THERE, and cannot get enough of John Dillingerabilia, you will have a good time. I enjoyed the part where I did a video simulation that enabled me to save a screaming woman from an attacker by shooting him. Sure, it took me two shots, but it took the woman in line ahead of me three shots, so I felt pretty pleased with my performance, poor as it was. My favorite thing, though, was the replica of the Dillinger death mask, and there was this card next to it that said something to the effect of: "LOOK IN THIS TINY MAGNIFYING BOX TO YOUR LEFT, AND YOU WILL SEE AN ACTUAL EYEBROW HAIR FROM THE REAL DILINGER [sic] DEATH MASK." And then you look, and there is Dillinger's one eyebrow hair, like: Here is what murderous DNA looks like, people. The museum has a lot of typos, but all the sirens and flashing lights and prerecorded gunshots make you not worry about the technicalities.

I skipped the spy museum. It was too Hollywood, and there were too many people around, and it was kind of off my research, and I think you had to buy tickets in advance, and, well, that was that.

After that, I went to the National Museum of Natural History. That was pretty great. I had a literary epiphany in the mammals section. And I checked out the Hope diamond. And I went through the live butterfly exhibit. Good times. I think I prefer my museums with fur over organs.

On my way back to where I'm staying, I lingered about the Department of Justice, by which I mean I sped by it and hoped no one would arrest me for casting sidelong glances at it. I like the figure of the woman over the entrance with her boobs hanging out, like, "This is what justice looks like: my tits." When I got home, I checked my blog stats and saw that someone at the DoJ had been visiting my blog when I was cruising around the periphery. Eric Holder, is that you?

DC

DC, you are one cold ass bitch. So far, the highlight was meeting this big boy. He is huge. And he is big. He is sitting in the corner. If he was standing up? I don't know. Maybe he would be 12 feet tall? But the big thing is that he is really beautiful. In person. You kind of have to see him to get it. His facial expression is ... explosive. His bald head is as big as the world. He is delightful to behold. For some reason, when I was in this room, there was like me and five other people and all the other people were men. I was looking at him by myself, and I would sort of move around, and what you can't see here is that -- well, he's anatomically correct. His testicles sit on the floor like a three-pound sack of flower. And he's uncircumcised, in case you were wondering. Anyway, I guess I was pretty interested in him, because when I was looking at him, I accidentally crossed the do-not-cross line, and then some huge alarm went off, like WAH-WAH-WAH or BONG-BONG-BONG or I can't remember, and then everyone turned around and looked at me and "Untitled (Big Man)."

Ms. Cowgirl Goes to Washington

Soon, I'm going to DC. Supplemental research for my novel will take me to the Spy Museum, the National Museum of Crime and Punishment, and Arlington National Cemetery. I might also visit the Newseum. I dream of minibar. And I plan on eyeballing this Brutalist icon. If there's something else you think I must do, or if you have a lead related to the AOS or the OPTF, drop me an email.