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benjamin

Why is there something instead of nothing?

About Me

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My Interests

This American Life @WBZN Chicago public radio, Joe Frank, A Prairie Home Companion with Garrison Keillor---My kitty Cat, Selected Shorts at Symphony Space in NYC--National Public Radio... The Diane Rehm Show... walking around the city late at night and finding stray kitties to play with... motorcycles, vampire slayers, air conditioning, indie films, Manhattan, San Francisco, public libraries, indie book stores, empty coffee shops and quiet baristas... sushi, fresh basil, fresh mozzerella, olive oil, the spicy potatoes and veggie dumplings at Cafe Shambala...creative non-fiction, crossword puzzles, Basquait, Edward Hopper, Picasso, Henri Matisse, shy people, opinionated people, active imaginations, the smell of sage after a rain storm...lilacs... black coffee and camel ciggarettes and sun rises and empty pages and clicky pens and sighing after a long talk with an old friend...the sound of waterfalls, distant crowds, city sidewalks, and sincerity...a voice cracking before a sob and the quiet breathing of a sleeping loved one... the Oregon coast, haystack rock at sunset with pants rolled up and toes in the sand, pacifica news, democracy now and Howard Zinn... Eaves dropping, drunk dialing, volvos and saabs and mopeds and vespas, giving directions, long lonesome drives and solo road trips and youth hostels... old bridges and collonades and roof top gardens... the long way home, Mythology, Psychology, Sociology, Ontology and all manner of ologies, weeping willows, electric grandmothers, giving tree's, enthusiasm, authenticity, fearlessness...the smell of pine needles, romanticism, modernism, dadaism, existentialism, shades of gray, ambiguity and humanity.

I'd like to meet:

Red flocked wallpaper and a Victorian decor set the tone. Pale, nervous girls with black-rimmed glasses and blunt-cut hair lolled around on sofas, riffling Penguin Classics provocatively. A blonde with a big smile winked at me, nodded toward a room upstairs, and said, "Wallace Stevens, eh?" But it wasn't just intellectual experiences---they were peddling emotional ones, too. For fifty bucks, I learned, you could "relate without getting close." For a hundred, a girl would lend you her Bartok records, have diner, and then let you watch while she had an anxiety attack. For one-fifty, you could listen to Public Radio with twins. For three bills, you got the works: A thin Jewish brunette would pretend to pick you up at the Museum of Modern Art, let you read her master's, get you involved in a screaming quarrel at Elaine's over Freud's conception of women, and then fake a suicide of your choosing---the perfect evening, for some guys. Nice racket. Great town. New York. ---Woody Allen, from "The Whore of Mensa"

Music:


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Movies:

Woody Allen's stuff... especially Manhattan, Annie Hall, Interiors, Husbands and Wives, Alice, Everyone Says I Love You, Deconstructing Harry, and The Mighty Aphrodite.

Television:

Buffy the Vampire Slayer! ----proudly and with enthusiasm... Sopranos--I like Six Feet Under...of course Sienfield... I try and avoid television and usually check these titles out from the library or video store.

Books:

By Author--Poems, Novels, Plays, Short Stories, Essays and Philosophies--but in no particular order: Virginia Woolf, Gertrude Stein, Raymond Carver, Vladimir Nabokov, Woody Allen, Anton Chekhov, Franz Kafka, William Faulkner, Jhumpa Lahiri, Emily Dickinson, Langston Hughes, Galway Kinnell, David Sedaris, Sarah Vowel, J.D. Salinger, Joseph Heller, James Joyce, William Blake, Gustave Flaubert, Stephane Mallarme, Moliere, Oscar Wilde, Kurt Vonnegut Jr., Authur Miller, Bill Shakespeare, Sophocles, Tom Stoppard, Edward Albee (the playwrite--not to be confused with the Southern Utah enviromentalist writer...) Edna Ferber, Graham Swift, Henry Miller, John Locke, Jean Paul Sartre, Albert Camus, Jane Austin, E.L. Doctorow, Sherwood Anderson, Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Judith Kitchen, Cynthia Ozick, John Gardner, Bernard Cooper, David Mamet, Shel Silverstein, Tony Kushner, Rainer Maria Rilke and many more whose names I can't think of right now. Favorite recently read novels include: Pride and Prejudice, Lolita, Picture of Dorian Grey, Catch-22, Franny and Zooey, and To The Lighthouse.

My Blog

earthy ribbons and orange hues...

Listening to Miles Davis this morning---again appreciating that perfect combination of morning and jazz---the way it always enourages a certain undisturbed reflection and meditation.  I love this...
Posted by benjamin on Fri, 06 Oct 2006 10:11:00 PST

London

Disclaimer----please forgive all spelling and punctuation errors as i don't have time to edit when paying a euro every half hour for internet cafes.Hello everyone.I left London last night at about ...
Posted by benjamin on Wed, 31 May 2006 04:05:00 PST

Piano Jazz and Sunday mornings

Its Sunday morning in SLC and Im sitting beneath a mild headache at Cup of Joe. To my rightin a perfect windowed corner near a busy entrancea group of middle aged Rubber Tire residents are discuss...
Posted by benjamin on Sun, 18 Dec 2005 12:45:00 PST

I thought of that old joke...

I thought of that old joke. This guy goes to a psychiatrist and says, Doc, my brothers crazy. He thinks hes a chicken. And the doctor says, Well, why dont you turn him in? And the guy says, ...
Posted by benjamin on Sat, 17 Dec 2005 10:27:00 PST

One month without...and the stomping of feet

So, I'm at the Library sipping on Sumatra and stomping my feet. Too many passers by passing by as I sit, chagrined, inside out and trying to press the right keys in the right order on this goddamn lap...
Posted by benjamin on Sun, 27 Nov 2005 03:02:00 PST

And would it have been worth it, after all,

The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock              Sio credesse che mia risposta fosse A persona che mai tornasse al mondo, Questa fiamma...
Posted by benjamin on Sat, 12 Nov 2005 04:00:00 PST

Stinky kitty lips...

I'm trying to slow down... take deep breaths and remember that life is good.  So fucking good---compared to the way it used to be only a year ago.  I woke up this morning after 7 hours of dr...
Posted by benjamin on Sat, 01 Oct 2005 02:12:00 PST

Passion over Reason...

Another Sunday afternoon, fruitless Sunday filled with dissonance; thoughts without connecting threads, sighs without roots and nothing to grasp.  School is kicking my ass already and frankl...
Posted by benjamin on Mon, 12 Sep 2005 09:43:00 PST