Monday, December 5, 2011

Sacred Beauty: Exploring Facets of Hijab in the Arab World



Hijabis in Saudi Arabia
         


            There is something to be said about the allure of the mysterious. A wrapped present, a wayang kulit shadow puppet; Shröedinger's cat sitting patiently in a box, existing in the null space between life and death. In the case of the allure of the human body when shrouded, particularly when it is covered to prevent any kind of sexual magnetism, it only fuels the fire of the human imagination more. This contradiction, for me, was the jumping-off point into a research that like Salome, required the removal of many veils to better appreciate the sartorial icon of both the Muslim faith and of Arab culture and identity. As I explored more about Saudi culture and what the hijab really represents to those that choose to wear it, I found myself questioning how I could have initially found this garment to be opressive; it holds the power for Muslim woman to assert her faith, her cultural millieu, and moreover, her desire to be respected and recognized. When I asked a group of Saudi women if they chose to wear their veils themselves, they assured me that yes, very much did they choose to wear it, and moreover they are proud to wear it, proud to stand out and stand for their country and culture. They told me they wear it because they feel more protected from outside harm. Modesty as a screen against an outsider gaze, and yet, the hijab they wore were not unlovely. Bright colors, and arranged in a way that made me feel jealous that I cannot don my own headscarf. But the incongruities! Beauty and modesty, two ideas that seem not immediately to be compatible, and an underlying misunderstanding of another culture's ideas of privacy.  In order to understand hijab, the Arabic word that literally means “veil” or “curtain”; a palpable screen that creates a space of privacy between the wearer and everyone else.         
                                                           
Western and Arab Notions of Privacy

            First, to better understand this notion in its Western context, a quick analysis of the etymology of the word “privacy”; from the Latin (adj), prīvus, “single, peculiar” and the Latin (verb), prīvō, “set apart from, to deprive”. So, given this context, the Western understanding of privacy is that of something set apart from others, standing out, but  insofar as in being deprived from the group one becomes singularly manifest; privacy highlights something or someone because they stand out, and because their status as Other, and to be true to that status must be removed or separated from non-Other in a corporeal sense. The gated community in the nice neighborhood, security systems protecting wealthy houses from within, first class seats on an airplane. Its Arabic counter-perspective, according to Fadwa Al Guindi, in the Arabic language (and by extension, the culture), “has no equivalent [to the Western sense of the word] at all, in any form...Indeed a notion of privacy in Arab culture was revealed...its content and meaning, however, differ from its counterparts.” (82)  She explains that the common ground found in Western and Arab ideas of privacy is that of privilege. In the Islamic sense, this privilege is bestowed upon all devout practitioners of the faith.
            Arab privacy is based on a specific cultural construction of space and time central to the functioning of Islamic society in general, in the dynamics of Arab gender identity, and for direct unmediated individual or collective communication with God. Space in this construction is relational, active, charged and fluid, 'insisting' on complimentarities. [italics mine] (Al Guindi, 77)
            
   Thus, we see the key difference between the two cultural perspectives on privacy: in the Western sense, privacy occurs in a more concrete way, with the individual inhabiting a space that is partitioned off from those without the privilege of privacy, whereas for Arab culture the space of privacy is more abstract and is created in an abstract manifestation, like the veil that is worn by a woman leaving her home going outside. As she wears the veil, the veil envelopes her in a space that closes her off from the outside, which, in Arab culture is not the realm which she controls. “...it is clear that men control political decisions affecting the community at large; yet, women also have political power, expressed in their de facto control of domestic life.” (Altorki, 24)
            Once back in the home/familial space, she can remove the veil around those who make up the privacy of the family unit. This same creation of sacred space occurs when the signal for prayer is called, and no matter where the followers of Islam may be at that moment, as soon as they begin to perform their prayers, whatever space they occupy becomes sacred, and thereby private from anyone not part of this group.
            Even in the familial space which constitutes the private realm for Arab women, a sacred space provided by the veil must be utilized when an unmarried woman is in the presence of strangers and men not part of the immediate family. As is stated in the Qu'ran:

And say to the believing women that they should lower their gaze and guard their modesty; that they should not display their beauty and ornaments except what (must ordinarily) appear thereof; that they should draw their veils over their bosoms and not display their beauty except to their husbands, their fathers, their husband's fathers, their sons, their husbands' sons, their brothers or their brothers' sons, or their sisters' sons, or their women, or the slaves whom their right hands possess, or male servants free of physical needs, or small children who have no sense of the shame of sex; and that they should not strike their feet in order to draw attention to their hidden ornaments. And O ye Believers! turn ye all together towards Allah, that ye may attain Bliss.(24:31)
           

            As Al Guindi notes, the stress in this passage is on the special status of the wives of the Prophets. In the contemporary sense, the privileged status based on piety and the adherence to modesty allows those who practice to become enclosed the sacred space of the veil. Another dimension of this privilege is reputation, which is closely tied to modesty and piety. According to Altorki, reputation is a mutual responsibility for both sexes, and for women, this means “they wear the veil in public...and that they maintain decorous distance in their interaction with men...They meet unveiled only men they could not marry.” [my italics] (54)
 Inappropriate behavior that detracts from reputation includes shunning makeup, excessive exposure of the body, even in the enclosed space of the household, although this has become somewhat more relaxed in the last 20 years or so, is interpreted as transgressive and can damage the family's reputation as a whole.
           
           
Descriptions of Sartorial Hijab in Saudi Arabia

            “O prophet, tell thy wives and thy daughters, and the women of the believers to draw their jilbab close round them...so that they may not be recognized and not molested” (Qu'ran 33:59)
           
   Since the Qu'ran only explicitly mentions jilbab, a general term for a body-covering cloak or coat, the amount of veiling is left to interpretation to the individual woman in reference to her devoutness, so long as it doesn't conflict with national law. A variety of sartorial hijab practices were acceptable up to the Iranian Islamic Revolution, at which point there was an influx of more conservative religious ideals, which affected the very laws concerning hijab practices in Iran, as the veil became compulsory.  In neighboring Saudi Arabia, who had adopted the Qu'ran's Sharia Law as national law, this influence of Islamic orthodoxy, a law was passed that all women are required to don the abaya when they leave their homes.  An abaya is, in essence, a loose, ankle-length, high-necked garment similar in shape to a jacket that a Saudi woman would wear over her regular clothes in accordance to standards of modesty. They are predominately black in color, and are in fact iconic around the Arab world for it's distinctive color and shape as belonging primarily to Saudi culture

Iconic Saudi Style (third down, far left)

   Looking at this cartoon you see the iconic status of the monochromatic ensemble of abaya, niqab, and veil as being culturally grounded in Saudi Arabia and surrounding Gulf cultures. However, contemporary abaya can come in a variety of colors and textiles, and with more eye-catching embellishments, such as sequins, rhinestones, glitter, etc. This contradiction of attraction and modesty will be explored a bit later.
            Other forms of hijab, however, are optional in Saudi Arabia as far as the law is concerned, thus they are adopted at the discretion of the wearer. Naturally, the more conservative in her Muslim beliefs a Saudi woman is, the more conservatively she will dress, with the most conservative ensemble of hijab being the combination of abaya, niqab and veil. (This will be the term I will adopt for the hijab (veil) in this paper, as I will be using the term hijab in the general sense, i.e. a modest mode of dressing in connection with Islamic piety.) This orthodoxy in dressing modestly is not only a personal choice, but can also depend on the geo-cultural context; Jeddah, the 2nd largest city in Saudi Arabia after the capital, Riyadh, tends to be more (relatively) permissive due to its urbanization and especially in part to the multicultural immigrant population, whereas towns and cities in the central provinces tend to be more conservative, and despite only the abaya being necessary to wear, in conservative areas, one finds more instances of women adopting the veil and niqab as well as the abaya. It is also important to note the cultural importance of the hijab as a form of resistance to widespread Westernization in urban Arab areas. Veiling, being as it is, a sartorial practice deeply ingrained in Arab culture long before the advent of Islam, is a veritable symbol of one's cultural background as well as personal religious beliefs.
            The niqab is any kind of garment that covers a majority of the face, save for the eyes; it can appear in multiple shapes, such as the Gulf style, the headband niqab, which has a band around the head attached to the part of the garment that covers the face; the headband is adjusted around the head and altogether the piece covers the head entirely, although a veil can be worn around it. More modern styles can come with different fastenings such as snaps or velcro, but the overall shape remains the same. 
     

Headband-style niqab
   A more severe iteration of the full niqab may even include a  mesh screen across the eyes for a more devout woman to expose even her eyes, which can, by some ultra-conservative Muslims, still seem too immodest. An example of this is the Egyptian-style niqab, which comes with a string that holds the portion of the garment covering the face up and over the nose, with the string resting between the eyes. According to the blog, “Old School Hejabi”, the blogger herself in accordance to her own interpretation of modesty, finds the Egyptian niqab “too exotic and strange in the west and it tends to accentuate your eyes in an inappropriate way.”  
       
Egyptian-style string niqab


   The half-niqab is a rectangular piece of fabric outfitted with an elastic loop that goes around the head, and the veil is worn over it. This is the ideal niqab for those that wear glasses and allows for more ease of movement when eating or discreetly lifting when the situation calls for it. The half-niqab leaves a majority of the face covered, but unlike the full niqab, the eyes and the bridge of the nose are exposed, as opposed to the eyes alone.
Half niqab


     The veil itself can also be arranged into a niqab shape, and in fact, is worn in an innumerable multitude of modes, each depending on the personal devoutness of the wearer. The mode of veil that is known generally as hijab is a square piece of fabric, tied in such a way around the head and face so that the hair and neck are covered, but leaving the face bare.  



                                                   
                        
     
      The al-amira style consists of two pieces, a close fitting cap that encloses the hair, and a tube-shaped scarf that encloses the top of the head and around the neck. 

Al-Amira Style


   The shayla style veil is a rectangular piece of fabric, wrapped around the head and kept in place with pins, either inconspicuous or decorative, and the remainder rests around the shoulders. The hijab shaped scarf and the shayla shaped scarf can be wrapped in different styles in accordance to personal choice and current fashions.

                                                         

The Paradox of Compromise: Beauty and Modesty

            There is a great deal of debate amongst hijabi(women who choose to adopt sartorial hijab) about wearing the veil in a manner that is aesthetically pleasing, after all, with the Western fetishization of the veil, where can one draw the line between beauty and physical attraction? Can the line be drawn at all? This can be problematic for hijabi, as they see the veil as “transform[ing] the assumed sexual gaze of men into a look of recognition and respect” (Tarlo,  75), but also want to overcome the negation of individuality and personality that the veil can sometimes cast on the wearer. The wearing of different colors and methods of tying hijab in accordance to current fashions is a way of presenting both the wearer's culture and religion while at the same time presenting her sense of identity. The difficult philosophical question this presents is, are beauty and stylishness mutually exclusive from modesty? Can one be beautiful and modest at the same time?  And how can one  express their personality sartorially, on your sleeve, so to speak, without being overtly conspicuous?  An example of a hijabi coming to terms with this paradox can be found in the interviews of Tarlo with two British-Jamaican rappers Sukina and Muneera (known collectively as Poetic Pilgrimage), and their discovery of Islam and the practice of hijab that came with it:
            
Muneera: I remember one time shortly after we came into Islam, and I remember I'd never been so clothed in my entire life—never ever had so much on, and we were coming back from the mosque and this brother comes up to us and says 'Look, I could give you a lecture on how you're dressed, but I'm not going to...But really, you are dressed too bright!'...And I just thought you can't please everybody. Even if you have got a [veil] and a jilbab on, then someone will say you should be wearing niqab.
            
Sukina and Muneera, Poetic Pilgrimage


So, despite the contradictions inherent in modesty and how it can be employed sartorially, only the beliefs a hijabi holds within truly dictate what in what manner and how much she covers in regards to hijab. In the end, as with all other religions, a hijabi's devoutness isn't necessarily only shown in how one wears it through hijab, but in their actions and relationship with God. The rest is left up to them.



Sunday, December 4, 2011

Sacred Beauty: Works Cited


                                                      Works Cited

Altorki, Soraya. Women in Saudi Arabia: Ideology and Behavior Among the Elite. New York: Columbia University Press, 1986.

El Guindi, Fadwa. Veil: Modesty, Privacy and Resistance. Oxford, New York: Berg, 1999.

Tarlo, Emma. Visibly Muslim: Fashion, Politics and Faith. Oxford, New York: Berg, 2010.

Ibrahim, Umm. Old School Hejabi. Wordpress, March 2009. Blog.



Monday, October 24, 2011

a cute pericoronitis

up, up, dangerbone

ram your head against that wet meat;

the puffy red pillows where the tombstones

keep their roots.

where the ghosts of cigarettes cling to the walls

like gray babies to their mommas on the first

day of school.

where the skeletons of breakfast reach out

in scummy lumps.









Thursday, October 6, 2011

i wonder how it feels to be ________.

love   evol
love (r)evol(ve[s])
love evol(ution)
love (r)evol(ution)


love evolves. it changes over time.
love revolves. the cycles the cycles.

love devolves? love can step backwards through its development?

i didn't think anything could do that.

love vole. love is a burrowing thing.

love vélo. vélo rolls you towards love.

love the distance. love the mean.

love is a mean between. love is the equilibrium. the balance.

love is the vanishing point.







i woke up. tiptoed to the kitchen. opened the fridge and finished the bottle of blood i was saving for a special occasion.

i turned red. i turned blue.

i turned into a prism and ate up all of the yummy white light and spit out the chroma like they was seeds.

i dug a tunnel to love's house this afternoon. i watched him sleep. i watched him leap.
we watched the birds together.

i became pregnant around 5 o' clock, or so i thought, but when the doctor split open my belly,
rose petals flurried out.

but when the doctor split open my belly,
cockroaches stormed out.

i am not quite dead yet.



self absorbed:

when the self is absorbed (in? with?) the self.

so? is i the sponge or is i the liquid?what should the self absorb instead?
the other?

sounds awful. sounds like assimilation. sounds like a simulation. sounds like sounds.

(sounds like sounds they play real nice in the schoolyard)

maybe not.

it is difficult to make assertions
about the value of things.

value is not absolute, therefore i cannot make an absolute statement about value.

replace the "u"
with a "v"
and value
becomes a
valve.



bird bird bird
bird is a word
word word word
word is a string of sounds
that depict an idea

uhhhhhh


word word word
word is some sounds
bird bird bird
where is the bird?


whass the bird?
THUNDERWORD

whass the price?
ALL THE RICE

Friday, May 6, 2011

goo-FEE

apples to apples


dusk to dusk.


my sappy poetree is the shade for the critters that love me.

oh critters. oh babies. i'ma gonna put you all in my zoo.

my menagerie, under glass

the sap the sap who played the sap who made the syrup?

who taught you about love anyway?

it was the weird woman.  DEE OH TEE MAH

but not through her directly. it was through a friend who heard it from her who told everyone at a party about her and then someone from the party told another party who told some other guy and it was written by playdoh and then i read about it.

what was it, though?

it was of something. it was of nothing.

love is the absence. the desire of presence.

love is alot like writing. always absent. absentee vote or absentee love?

well ronnie james dieu, i just dont know.

DONT KNOW

WONT DOWN




satanic sex rite

beelzebub, thongs, altar;

the safe word? pink sock.






o bhikkus o bhikkunis

what are we going to do

about all of these birdies

all of these bunnies

all of these giraffes?

all of the ghosts? where will they go?

will my ghostfriend find happiness?

find it! get it!

dig it up and roll around in it!

just as soon as you're defeated, you realize that you're on your way to victory.




SHIT GIRL, YOU ARE GOOFY.



no. just goo.


oog.

venus in spurs...an unfinished tail

it's pony's playtime. he waits all week for this.


where's his ponytail buttplug? oh right, it's in its zippered case in the bathroom.

plug me in, plug me in. plug me in, plug me in.

pony time.

when he shakes his head, it isn't a weak combover that is tossed around. the spell is working. he shakes his mane instead.

but where is she?

where is that wascawwy jockey? where is the bitch with the hold on his reins?

pony starts to sweat. spooked pony.

he trots to the kitchen, nudges open the fridge door with his big horsey nose. good horsie. thassa good trick you know. the pony nibbles on the end of a carrot he freed from the bag. chews thoughtfully.


he is a showy, wily pony. he is a wonderhorse.

the pony can drive a car. the pony can do quick mental math. the pony can balance a checkbook. the pony can balance a checkbook on his nose.


the pony can talk, but only when the jockey says it's okay. that's part of the magic.


the horse is only mildly aware of the man outside. the man is only mildly aware of the horse inside.

it is their shared dream that binds them so strongly.
the dream of the centaur.
the perfect form, unattainable.




speaking of binds.


here comes the jockey; the pony's ears pricked up at the sound of her distinctive, clandestine tattoo against the backdoor. yes, it is safe to come in. yes, little girl, you may come play with the pony.




"did you...hrrmmhuhhrrmm...did you bring the spurs?"


breaking the rules. breaking the spell. but pony wants!




"bad horsie. ponies don't talk and i only deal with equines, buddy."


but the pony looks so sheepish,


it's a look that is all animal. it softens her. pony is forgiven.




he is, after all, a wonderhorse.

Thursday, May 5, 2011

if you came here to see the new banner...


...you are hereby rewarded with funny pictures. 




the birdbat goes about its business, unaware that it is an abomination.

something tells me this ensign isn't going to die as quickly as the other redshirts...

cats have a weird way of showing affection, and it usually involves their urine on your clothes.

Saturday, April 23, 2011

how did she do that? i think it was a magic handbag.

the old lady flew away.

granny troggs has a fruit stand




words are droppings;

we are not

picking up after ourselves, are we children?


FAKE FRUIT

COME GIT YOURS

FROM MY FAKE FROOT STAND

frake frute

frakkin fruit

silicate putty grown on wire

nummy rummy

seeps through tummy

gastric aacid

HOO HAW

granny gits hers here

take it fake it its fake for a reason

even the stand

is a figment of figs and imagination

OH, MY


om my, yes

ohhhhhhh  fake fruit for plastickooks

plastic ovaries for overbearing bearswine

swipe my fruit?

not without plastic.

swipe it through the lady's buttcrack

plastic fruit aluminum crackpipe cottage cheese thunderthighs

i do not lie

my fruit will last forever.

a crew sybil

question: are you afraid to die?

answer: i will miss things. japanese kids. pizza. my companion. the color cerulean.

question: are you afraid to die?
answer: it is not just my fear. we are all in this together.

question: do you care about anyone other than yourself?

answer: i want everyone to be happy. i love everyone.

question: are you selfish?

answer: i am trapped behind my perceptions, my point of view. i am the camera, and i am always set to "record"

question: question: question: are you afraid to die?

answer: i'm afraid i already have




question: will you ever do something new?

answer: 

everything that happened happened so long ago

i heard a story about a girl who got some sand in her clam

and it spit out a pearl.

she gave it to her boyfriend

but he choked on it. he wasn't expecting it.

i choose you!

pikachuterus!


du shit

the fish is probably dying. bluuuue blew boo beaux 

panty panty scumcatcher


so everyday when i walk to school, i walk past a pair of ominous black wires dangling from a pole; probably a power line, and even though it looks inactive, i suspect it to be a live wire. 

i walk past the dangling, exposed wires everyday. They are at my eye-level. This provokes imaginings. They are thus:

i walk under the lines this time instead of around them and since they are at (my) eyelevel, one of them strikes my wide-open glazzball and I AM ELECTROCUTED THROUGH THE EYEBALL ELECTRICITY RUNNING FROM THE EXPOSED WIRE END THROUGH THE CABLES CONNECTING MY SIGHT BALLS TO THE COMMUNICATION COMMAND CENTER AND the eyeball expolodes into a gummy bubbly jelly and I CAN SEE ONLY ELECTRICITY, CAN ONLY THINK ELECTRIC THOUGHTS. the smoke pours out, noir,through the tear duckt of my other eye.


i probably scream, but am too caught up in the moment to be really self-aware.



supraselfaware.



i lied about there being imaginings, there is only the one imagine, but it's a doozer and a half.

eyeballjelly. glazzy on toast. earwax on rye with melted haveahearty cheese.



the other day

i picked my nose and it

started to bleed. this is the natural bleeding cycle of the nose;

your body's way of telling you

to cut that shit out. you are too old to pick your nose.


growing up growing out out growing up growing

i waited but you never

finger tip toe

tip tack tow

hop, skip, jump away. you jumped away.

and i said so! and i said go!

hop skipped jump

leaps and bounds






i waited but you never came. i waited but you never came. i waited but you never came. 










it is just me
and the ghosts.


we thrush our firsts against the pots and steel in sits we three the gots

                                                                                               gots

                                                                                               gots
                              
                                                                                               gots




togs

togs

togs


(toga?)

stop that. trying to be seriously.

(seriously?)

well excuuuuuuuse me.


(no, keep going. this is the part where it gets good. i've seen this one before)


your stupid haircut is only a reflection of how stupid you are.

hairmirror that spells disaster. the calendar nods its head in agreement.


yes. yes. yes.


everything will die in the winter.


i will go back to ghostland.

you will hop, skip, jump away.

























even pulling off your own head is easy if you try hard enough.

it sounds like velcro when you rip the flesh.

i should have been a pear of ragged clause


indeeed

there will be time

oh time
in deed

there will be rhyme

rhythm? schism. skits oh oh oh freeeeee kneee ahhhh

stack tracks
tack sacks
to the back of
the lady that lacks
the back

DONT  BALK

pretty bird

OHHHH 
OHHH
JOLIS OISEAUX


gimme gimme
i needed more words
gimme gimme
time to fix
words heavy like bricks
bricka braka broke like sticks

bah roke like the seventeenth century so broke so broke

if poor, you're broken, if rich, well

MO MONEY MO PROLLUMS

MO RINGS MO GOLLUMS

how do you write? how do you right?

how do you wrong that write then right about it?



i can't write because i'm always wrong
i can't write because i'm always wrongi can't write because i'm always wrong
the mike is open, i might step inside

ANY REQUESTS?
i liked the one you did about lola.
it was the best one you ever did.

Lola!

L-O-L-A
lola. with that dark brown voice, mmm mmmm cherry cola.
(not that one, stupid, that was the kinks)

what was my song then?

open, mike? no. mike closed. mike say goodbye,

"goo-bye, mike."

attaboy!




any requests?
anything left?


[crickets]

i request you tri tri triangle tri tri try again later.


bony day.

not tub!

hot button issue: hot tub

NOT TUB!

button is pressed, BUT OH!

hot butt and issue

ensue.

unicorns are allergic to poop, or so i'm told

banana nyah nyah peals away

gojira gorirra sama sam ah, so

high wasted pants

low wasted pants

get these pants off

it's time to sober up
bubble bubble

vomit and scrubble

toilet burns

and vision double




buttplugs are important. you wear them every night to seal the entrance. you don't want the poop trolls to get in and dig around yer butthole.
this black gold is my black gold.

none for trolls and none for gnomes
none for the heroes
and especially keep it away from
the unicorns.

they are allergic.

Thursday, April 21, 2011

γυναικός λόγος

gynecology---->gyne's logos

(presocratic philosophy) women's principle for governing the cosmos
(sophistic philosophy) women's topics of rational argument
(aristotaelian philosophy) women's appeal to reason
(grammar) women's form of rhetoric which uses logic as the main topic
(judaism) women's word of god, the female foundation of the power of divine wisdom
(christianity) the creative 2nd Woman of The Trinity, which is simultaneously God Herself and also with God the Mother
(sciences) a woman's representations of an aligned set of sequences, this is the same sense of the term λόγος from which the english word "logo" is derived
(entomology) the reproductive female caste of social insects' words/stories/rhetoric/studies





come inside
open wide
spotlight, please
spotlight's on
do you feel my fingers
(no, it's asleep, or it malingers)
the nape of the neck of your womb, it's tilted

is that bad?

well, it means

you have cancer you have hiv you have gonorrhea you have hpv you have nyc you have empty ovary syndrome you have meningitis you have uteral influenza you have herpes you have internal genital warts you have candidiasis you have sperm cough you have gorilla syphillus  you have cervical canker sores you have tumors you have cysts you have chocolate cysts you have vanilla cysts you have tutti frutti cysts you have sacs full of pus you have every hepatitus you see, from hepatitus A to hepatitus Z you have smallpox you have mal pox you have apoplectic ovaries you have anal cancer you have uterus scabies you have trichomoniasis you have cyberaids you have lumps you have scarring you have scaring you have super aids you have endometriosis you have exometriosis you have a collapsed anus a collapsed uterine cavity you have cavities in your uterus (have you been flossing like you're s'posed to?) you have ectopic pregnancy you are pregnant you are infertile you are downright sterile, we're just looking at a shriveled, empty sack, throw it away
you have no reproductive organs at all, what am i looking at?

what should i do?

we're gonna hafta laser your uterus, your ovaries we're gonna hafta remove the cysts the tumors from your uterus from your ovaries we are gonna hafta remove your ovaries your uterus a full hysterectomy HEY DON'T GET HYSTERICAL ON ME we're gonna hafta remove your pelvis remove your legs we're going to remove your asshole we're going to saw you in half we're gonna hafta remove the body or the head will die we're gonna hafta put you to sleep why are you still standing here there's nothing we can do for you you're gonna die you're dying you're already dead you were never born

oh.

yes, like i said, you're young, you're healthy, you've got a lot of life left to live, so you don't have to worry, i just want you to have an idea of how you're doing "down there" and so far everything looks good, i'll have your test results in about a week.



Tuesday, April 12, 2011

growan ghreh ghroni graes groniz

ovary the meadow and through the tubes

out of mother's house we go

clumping cells formed solid shapes

oscillation station

cognization brigade

aaaaooogah
aaaaaooogah

repeat the shapes a memory makes
the shapes repeated into a groove into the one
that saw the shape

of a mouth
that makes the shapes that force the sounds
that give the shape
a name

names have shapes and shapes have names
that

accumulate boost breed expand extend manifold unfold proliferate prrrofligate swell amplify

towards a heap
(ad-cumulus)

Wednesday, February 2, 2011

rabbitses' revenge

COME RUB THE RABBITS
the right way or the wrong way
any way 
anyway
COME BUFF AND RE-BUFF
all of this fluff and stuff
all the rubbing they can bear
rub hair until the hare is bare

ubby-wabbit!


HSSSSSHHSSS YOU WILL KNOW ME AS UBBY-RABID

everything is a lie!







frith misuses the rabbits


It is the year of the rabbit again at last.
Rub the bunnybutt 
Win fabulous prizes







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Saturday, January 29, 2011

a picture is worth about two words apiece

monster tonsillolith





conjugal visits




cheese dip




toiletpaper shredder







grim war

grimoire------>grammaire----->grammar------->gramayre-----.gramery------.gramaire------>grammatikos--------> grammatica------>grammatike----->gramma------>grapho----->gerebh



grimoire sharing a base wiff da word Glamour (in japanese that would be gramour)

pictured: glamour



                                                      

something about violence and plant sex

I leant upon a coppice gate
      When Frost was spectre-grey,
And Winter's dregs made desolate
      The weakening eye of day.

- Thomas Hardy, "the darkling thrush"






coppice (cawpiss)

roots----ye oldie french, coupeiz, "a cut forest"----etymologically linked to coup, "a strike, blow, hit" 


coupeiz/coup----medieval latin, colpus, "stoke, blow" [in the botanical sense, it is a noun, "a groove sometimes occuring on grains of pollen"




huh huh you said stroke and blow


huh huh you said pollen and pollen is like, plant sex


eh heh heh heh heh plants doin' it


plants gettin they colpus on, yeeeeuh


colpus from the earlier latin, colaphus, "a strike with the fist"


colopho, mawfuckah!


colaphus from the greek, κόλαφος, "to cuff"

Coppice- English, /noun/:

1. a thicket of small, brushy growth
2. wood cut for the purpose of growth huh huh wood woooood huh huh colpus the woooood 

Wednesday, January 5, 2011

bird the bard

bird the bard

is bird the barred

in the village of

barre de barbe

for being a pain

'round the neck