Pre-Columbian Sculpture, Oaxaca, Mexico, 2004

Let me begin by saying I voted for you. And that you may now be the only person that we on the progressive left can approach, because you are in many ways a part of power and the ruling class in the United States and you are a well-respected member of one of the major parties.

We beseech you to ignore Republicans, Democrats and so-called Progressives who have conceded this election as accomplished fairly and to independently look into the matter.

Please, Senator Boxer, take up the call for Investigation of the Election of 2004. Do it now; before the Electoral College votes and before the Inauguration of the President.

At this moment – as in 2000 – colleagues of yours in the House are prepared to contest and investigate the election for fraud. One Senator willing to ask is all they need to achieve such a request. Only one single Senator who is politically safe, who has the support of a Progressive community, and who has the courage of conviction to stand up and say simply that:

decisions regarding how we vote and for whom are being made too quickly, and as a result carelessly, and perhaps erroneously;

that our democratic processes are being rushed and hurried by the Republicans led by Karl Rove [called the “architect” of the re-election by Bush] and;

that democracy in the U.S.A. is suffering terribly, if not critically.

As a woman and a progressive Democrat, you have won re-election easily. People here support you for your ideas and values. You are in a safe state among people who share your beliefs.

After hearing four weeks of testimony from key states [especially Ohio] and after reading horrifying stories from around the country as to what happened on Tuesday, November 2, I and many of your other constituents believe that the results of the 2004 election are significantly riddled with errors, many of which circumstantially point to the STRONG possibility of FRAUD and vote fixing.

Senator Boxer, changing the outcome of the election is NOT our interest in asking this of you.

The desperate and fundamental need for a fair elections process and real democracy DEMANDS a slower, more measured, piece-by-piece investigation – conducted by Congress – of the Election of 2004 and in particular of the votes cast via electronic voting machines.

It is now clear that George W. Bush’s falsely named Help America Vote Act written to address the many issues that resulted from the 2000 election, served only to rush US counties and states into purchasing machines that have become black holes for American votes.

California’s Secretary of State Kevin Shelley was admired by people across the State for standing up to the manufacturers who were clearly complicit in rushing these devices past proper standards and though now he is being attacked within the system by the powers that be, it is clear he has TREMENDOUS public respect for his forward-looking actions on e-voting over the past year and a half.

By setting an aggressive calendar for hearings and for public and private input, Secretary of State Shelley was able to decertify machines and to put out a detailed list of 23 conditions for the use of other machines to make them safer and more accurate for Californians. He said when doing this that cheating wasn’t going to happen on his watch.

He then testified before the Election Assistance Commission and at both the Democratic and Republican Conventions, that other states should earnestly learn from California’s experience and institutionalize protections … but it was too little, too late.

Other states and indeed Bush’s White House and the GOP-controlled Congress diminished the significance of Secretary of State Shelley’s very hard work.

Senator Boxer, you will be greeted by a flood of support from the grassroots level if you take this on. You could revolutionize the argument.

As our Senator won’t you chastise them for what they did to our Secretary of State? Won’t you stop their stampeding toward re-election for long enough to examine the facts and the data? Won’t you please tell the rest of the country that Californians were very relieved to have had a Secretary of State who cared enough to demand protections against problems suffered in other parts of the country?

Please, Senator Boxer, look deep into the future of this country, summon the courage and do what you do so well.

Stand with your colleagues in the House who believe a Congressional Investigation into the Election of 2004 is an absolute necessity before the U.S.A. can pass one more law or engage in one more battle.

Only one Senator is required … it would make us all proud if you were first.

Respectfully,
M.T. Karthik

originally sent to: http://boxer.senate.gov/contact/webform.cfm
26 November 2004

Eric Drooker Fresh from Palestine

29 Sunday Aug 2004

Posted by mtk in audio, journalism, NYC, protest, social media, travel

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I found this interview I did with Eric Drooker on the Great Lawn in Central Park. Before I post it on the date it took place, I’m putting it here – because I think more people will hear it that way. Hope so.

I’ve added it to the Interviews tab as well.

Ronald Reagan Obituary

07 Monday Jun 2004

Posted by mtk in Uncategorized

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07 June 2004

Dear Staff:

on my sixteenth birthday when he first announced something called Strategic Defense Initiative or SDI – which later became called “Star Wars” technology in vernacular media

my father and I were disgusted at his gall and agreed Reagan was an idiot.

we sought in vain the names of those for whom he was a useful idiot.

I was always disgusted by him and his people. Their every action was unctuous and covered in a slick, plastic veneer,

bloated, arrogant, dumb, pushy, hyper-powerful, wasteful, “let me tell ya this” and “well, let me just say this about that” and the fucking bullshit sports metaphors and the asinine posturing all the while arming this whole world to the teeth – granting massive contracts to these companies here in Cullyfornia.

Feigning loss of memory … “honestly, I don’t remember,”

smiling, shaking his head – bobbling really – like one of those dashboard dolls making a mockery of us all for his wealthy cabal.

refusing for his entire first term to utter the word “AIDS” or “HIV” and letting half a decade of deaths just happen without funding for research because of his bigotry against gays.

the arrogant cowboy shit

arming Osama bin Laden to the teeth and giving him sacks of cash.

raiding Granada to look tough-guy

Libya!

de-humanizing other world leaders

making Qaddafi a model for GHWBush to stretch to Noriega and Saddam Hussein

The US Central-American policy of Reagan years extending Nixon/Kissingers squashing of democratically-elected Marxist and Socialist governments in the hemisphere.

Iran-Contra

Nancy. “Just Say No.” What fucking hypocrisy.

Reagan died years ago I say – and his family just kept drawing the check.

Bells, Wolf, Plastic Flute, song, 2004

20 Tuesday Apr 2004

Posted by mtk in audio, Los Angeles, songs

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This is a multi-track song made from child’s toys

that were around the house because our son was 19 months old.

a shaker of bells, a stuffed wolf that howled when you squeezed it, and a plastic flute.

Because I began to notice that the child outgrew toys and I wanted to record them for our memories, one day I took all of them to the studios at KPFK and recorded each part as a one-off and mixed it in software. It was the war years and Bush years and there was much distress. This is a lament.

It was the one and only time I used the child’s toys to express my adult lament, away from home, in the studio, without the infant present. But I played these toys for a year and a half, jovially, for the baby.

Evening News Hour with MTK

05 Monday Apr 2004

Posted by mtk in audio, journalism, Los Angeles, performance, radio

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Audible Palestine No.1

08 Monday Dec 2003

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audible palestine in 2003

The Night Schwarzenegger Won

07 Tuesday Oct 2003

Posted by mtk in audio, journalism, Los Angeles, protest, public letters, reviews, social media

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I anchored news coverage for KPFK radio in Los Angeles during Governor Davis’s Recall to perhaps a quarter million listeners. Backed by solid investigative reporting and original interviews with numerous sources, my staff and I wrote what I would deliver after Schwarzenegger declared victory.

I co-authored and authorized the use of these words to introduce the new Governor. Much thought and weeks of effort went into it – listen:

I was initially suspended for my actions, but listeners protected me and I defended myself with sources and original reporting we had done into Schwarzenegger’s background for each of the adjectives we used to describe the new Governor.

In the end the phrase “sexual predator” was the issue. But I had, myself personally interviewed women for our news program who claimed it. Several others on our staff had interviewed other women complaining of it as well.

These were women who had been unheard by the State, likely because of Schwarzenegger’s power. We were the only news outlet affording them airtime. I made that call. As a journalist, I felt obliged.

I don’t know if anyone else described it like this on mass media, but I doubt it. Now years later, Arnold’s sexual problems have been revealed publicly and his marriage dissolved from it. We were right. We said it … and few people heard.

and just a few minutes later, I was asked to describe and explain it to Londoners, who were just waking up to the fact that the movie actor Arnold Schwarzenegger had just won the Governorship of California.

MTK on British morning drive time radio.

That was 12 years ago, I was 33 and a news director with the backing of a huge progressive community in Los Angeles and the Pacifica Network – we were a voice for that community. That was the last of many lonely moments in that year for myself and our listeners.

An Austrian, Arnold Schwarzenegger, stole the Governorship of California because Democrats couldn’t effectively prevent a Republican-forced Recall Election of Governor Gray Davis, nor, once the Recall was in effect, competently back the supremely qualified Lieutenant Governor Cruz Bustamante to victory (many in the State claimed it was because he was a Latino. ouch … 2003.)

haiku, 2003

23 Tuesday Sep 2003

Posted by mtk in Los Angeles, NYC, poetry

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one cosmology:
father sun, ocean mother
the moon is a god

mtk, NYC&LA, Jan-Sep 2003

Labor Day Memorandum

08 Monday Sep 2003

Posted by mtk in journalism, Los Angeles, protest

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To: Staff at KPFK, 90.7fm, Los Angeles, CA

From: News Director, M.T. Karthik

Re: Labor Day 2003

Friends, enemies, colleagues, compatriots, Pacificans, idealogues and free radicals – a quick note at the end of summer:

Summer 2003

THEM:
Systematic Claims by the Pentagon that the Occupation of Iraq was wrapping-up, with quick, public replacements (in television terms) of all major players involved in the actual conflict. Powell for Rumsfeld, Garner for Franks, McClellan for Fleischer, Folksy Bush taking advantage of the summer to do the one thing he does well … chumminess with boorish, Fourth-of-July loving Amerikka (Bush’s Birthday is right around then)

Franks was retired quickly and out of sight because he was named in the ICC lawsuit by nineteen Iraqis (Bush actually thanked Franks by name in the “End of the War” reality TV Show he produced for May 1st on the USS Lincoln) and the diplomatic flap resulting over threats from the US against Belgium in NATO and this has led to the current split over EU/NATO Security Issues. By contrast, Fleischer got a resignation party, the image of an honorable discharge.

The Establishment of a puppet council of 25 men, many of whom have not been in Iraq for more than twenty years. This Council has a red, white and blue flag and at least one of its members, Ahmad Chalabi, is actually a convicted criminal – a man who stole from Jordanian interests via a family-owned entity called Petra Bank.

US:
The USA Sucks commentary on Fourth of July

IRAQIS:
Car bombed the United Nations, assassinated envoy. Truck-bombed the Jordanian Embassy, and continuous guerrilla warfare against Anglo-American forces leading to more deaths of American soldiers since Bush declared war over and Iraq free.

We Do More Before 9 am …

27 Thursday Mar 2003

Posted by mtk in journal entries, protest

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Well, before, 9am, for every person in the country of Iraq on this day …

what idiots for generations will call the 27th of March … of some stupid 2thousand3, on this day,

1000 extremely specifically-trained members of the United States Army dropped out of airplanes that were being flown illegally over the people called Kurds in the Northern Region of the country established by definition of the UN Charter as Iraq, and,

using parachutes landed – american newspapers, radio and television newscasts casually called them “paratroopers” – to begin one mission: to seize control of an airbase.

For more than 2500 years, the Kurds have been living in the mountains of this region – stateless and unaffected by the west – but for the will of the British, Russians and Americans to posses the dark crude oil that lies beneath the Caspian Sea region. It is the most valuable property on earth.

Thanks to numerous experts we have had on the air here at KPFK, we know what was offered to Turkey – 15.6 Billion U.S. Dollars – to allow the U.S. to use an airbase in the southern part of that country or at least to share one belonging to the Turks in order to let 62,000 military personnel and 300 flying machines capable of carrying death and destruction – including the most world-renting bombs yet invented – into the region.

And the Turks emphatically said “NO!” in their democratically-elected Parliament, a body that is widely recognized as legitimate, and there was much debate there and particularly courageous editorials were written in Turkish dailies.

The pre-Erdogan deputies of the Parliament of a government that has been growing ever-closer to Europe, in fact nears becoming European – as per the Maastricht Treaty that has created the European Union; the Pre-Erdogan deputies of the Turkish Parliament are heroes of peace.

And as a result of their action, before 9am Baghdad time, 1000 paratroopers landed in the mountainous regions of Iraq.

This act is illegal on so many levels.

It violates every treaty signed since the second world war: the UN Charter, the Geneva Convention, Warsaw and Nuremberg codes.

Why I Wanted to Have a Child

05 Wednesday Mar 2003

Posted by mtk in essay, journal entries, Los Angeles, our son

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Why I wanted to have a child

to give myself a reason to stay alive
for the experience
because Tifa wanted a baby and I knew we could do it
I immediately knew the WTC buildings were demolished in a controlled way
I wished for a child to whom I could tell the truth, based on my own experience

October 05, 2003

Los Angeles, CA

three days before my son’s first birthday

What Motivates My Writing

17 Monday Feb 2003

Posted by mtk in beliefs, Commentary, essay, journal entries, Letter From MTK, Los Angeles, thoughts

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What motivates you in your work?

In a slow, measured and lucid way, a way that has revealed itself to me with heaviness over the past fifteen years, I have come to believe I am seeing the end of something.

Humankind must put an end to war or war will put an end to humankind.

To isolate oneself in contemplation, no matter how comfortable it may seem a position from which to view the world, is simply unacceptable; costly.

We must use the extremely complex tools we have invented for this purpose: to focus our energies and work toward more equitable and efficient distribution of the earth’s available resources.

We must put an end to warmongering.

We must disarm and then de-militarize first the United States.

It must be held accountable for its excesses and waste. It must assume responsibility for the Colonial Era and the good U.S. Americans, who know the truth, must begin the task of admission of the ongoing genociding of cultures in USA, of the economic reality that the current power structure has been built on slave’s labor [for the Millennium?]

Rampant, bloated overdependence as a result of the Era of Capitalism must be tamed and harnessed to bring the world together peacefully.

Those incapable of diplomacy should be jailed until they have calmed down and seen the error of their course.

I am motivated to aid those who see that thieves and dacoits have stolen the greatest of the earth’s resources for the last five hundred years and are not through yet and must be held to task for such barbaric idiocy; that seeks to interfere with the great continuity of human thought.

The USA is the world’s greatest impediment to peace, stability and progress; it must be told by humanity to stand down in the exact manner that international humanism told South Africa, “Aparteid will not stand.”

M.T. Karthik, February 17, 2003, Los Angeles

Transcript: UN Security Council Proceedings FEB 05, 2003

05 Wednesday Feb 2003

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United Nations Security Council Proceedings
FEB 05, 2003
simultaneous translation via e-mail chat
[final three pages, rush transcript]

M.T. Karthik: Germany now. crash of space shuttle/condolences
thanking powell for info … emph. that the UN is the place for this

(QUOTE) findings have to be examined carefully
findings of powell co-incide with much of our other info
we must work with all info to clarify quickly and fully
and iraq has to answer elements provided today by powell
this is why the sanctions w/ no-fly exist

iraq must disarm

the presence of the inspectors has already effectively reduced the threat

but still the full disarmament is goal of res. 1441

iraq must answer w/out delay.

future trips by blix and baradei

1441 provides for the tools … the dangers of military action and its conseq.
are plain to see. we must continue to seek peaceful solution

in the world of the 21st century the un is

MTK says: (wow, idealistic words) …

(QUOTE CONTINUED) on the basis of 1441 we need to enhance the instruments

we need a tougher approach

by tightening inspections we are creating an opportunity for a peaceful solution

french colleague made proposals we should consider (wow)

MTK says: sounds like … USA/UK/SPA/BUL/CHILE vs.
RUS/GER/FRA/MEX/SYR/GUI/PAK/ANG
IRAQ has now been invited to speak …

(QUOTE) my delegation extends congratulations to Germany on assumption of the presidency of the council.

IRAQ
we wish we had more time than a few minutes to rebutt a two-hour presentation and accusation by Powell … I shall be polite and brief.

the pronouncements in powell’s statement are utterly unrelated to the truth

no new info was provided

mere sound recordings that cannot be ascertained as genuine …

you might have seen me smile when the tapes were played here

(QUOTE, CONTINUED) there were words I will not translate

there are false assumptions, incorrect assumptions etc … in this tape

S. Hussein has said we are totally with/out WMD.

we have been saying it for over a decade.

Christopher says: (is that Aziz?)

MTK: powell could have saved all of us the time by providing the info to the UNMOVIC and IAEA (no … another foreign minister)

Christopher says:(valid point)

MTK: (REPEAT) Powell could have saved all of us the time by providing the info to the UNMOVIC and IAEA

(QUOTE CONTINUED) at any rate the forthcoming visits by Blix and co. on 8th will continue to verify …
… detailed info coming
and we are working daily w/ inspectors.
… NOV 27, 2002 … inspectors cranked up with more than 250 UNMOVIC and IEAE staff including more than 100 inspectors
as of FEB 4 of this year: 575 inspect. 321 sites
sites named in bush’s report sept 12, 2002, and blairs report and cia reports topped the lists by inspectors … and they ascertained all allegations were not true

this confirms we are w/out WMD.

water, soil, plants and air samples were taken.

factory remnants and production remnants from vast areas

throughout iraq

analyses … show … conclude: absence of any indication of prescribed chem,
bio or radiological agents or of any …
(DETAILED etc …)

END QUOTE. EDITORIAL BEGINS.

MTK says: Blix confirmed – Times, Jan 30, 2003
gotta go … sorry Christopher, have to run to the station now …

Christopher says: I gotta run myself

Christopher says: I’ll find you later

Christopher says: thanks for all that

MTK says: seems like UN standing in way of USA/UK to me

The Delicate Comfort of Anonymity

20 Friday Dec 2002

Posted by mtk in essay, journal entries, Los Angeles

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We push, sit upon and ride the half-ass, trickety jalopy we call the Internet at the dawn of international communication in real-time, awaiting a sensibility to take hold of the government that isn’t fundamentalist Christian and radically right-wing or from Texas with a hardline agenda or wearing an elephant tiepin in the form of the flag of the United States of America.

It is apparent and obvious to absolutely everyone now that the United States of America is occupied by a political force that can only be called a faction. This faction controls communications media with near-absolute restriction of content, controls agencies that monitor, manage and distribute the collective funds of the largest bank account in the world, and controls the military to which it granted 400 Billion dollars last year, the best funded, most powerful war machine on earth.

Among the fools in this faction there are elderly bigots who are given swan-songs of attention, there are hyper-militarily minded protocol hounds who have seized the language they wrote only two and a half generations ago. There are House Niggers. And House Wiggers, too. House Immigrunts.

All have been seized by soldier mentality and blood-lust – that is the stage play CNN, NPR, PBS, ABC, CBS, NBC, Fox, HBO, The New York Times, The Washington Post, and every major news outlet in the United States is meant to project because what has happened is:

The free-est economy in the world puffed itself up for eight years – wrapped itself into a Y2knot by getting dumbed into a hitch in the 90’s – and had to be “system re-booted.”

Thus, 9/11.

When all intranet debts were erased by a tidal wave of media, all pumping the same fiction (a well-known – not obscure – mafia move). All the drunk parasites clinging to the largest multi-media assault on international humanity ever attempted by any country, any peoples.

This faction is guilty of producing, staging and titling “9-eleven” to salvage the failing economy and stimulate younger generations of participants into their System of Society. They do this with pride.

We witness these people drop megatons of death from the sky upon the heads of others, elsewhere, anywhere in the world they wish. These, who have said aloud – and continue to say it – they believe they are doing God’s work: murder, manipulation of masses, demagoguery, espionage, political deceit, covert operations, corporate protectionism over truth and environmental needs.

(and their remains this stubborn question of “whiteness”. A demon they have given political birth to and won’t let go of. This ugly American Racism born from the evilest of the fictions they claim … the “discovery”of “Colombus”).

How does one address a bigot? How does one approach an enraged fundamentalist in order to seek common human spirit and tranquility among us all? One imagines s/he is most susceptible during religious ceremonies, when they claim to be open to God’s word.

The Peace Movement is God Asking Humanity to Stand Down.

Make Peace. Calm yourself and your species of its ill-will and avarice. Earth hangs in the balance. Human arrogance deafens and dumbs you in the delicate comfort of your anonymity.

Put a stop to it.

Americans United to Stop War
we must learn to do without oil

mtk 12/20/2002 Los Angeles

Off-Year Elections

06 Wednesday Nov 2002

Posted by mtk in appeals, beliefs, essay, Letter From MTK, Los Angeles, politics, protest, public letters

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I am a pacifist and a conscientious objector to war who seeks political asylum for myself and my family from the United States of America, whom I perceive to be the world’s worst terrorist nation-state.

It is a nation-state without clearly defined borders. It consistently and has constantly maintained armadas on the high seas and in ports all over the world – on “sovereign” territory. Its government is a military junta run by pseudo-Christian fundamentalists who have turned a universal moral truism: “Thou Shalt Not Kill” into its opposite, and have violated every international law on war established since the Second World War (as they have it): Nuremberg, violated. Geneva, violated. Warsaw, violated. U.N. and U.N. charter, violated from first day. The despotic faction in charge has violated also the United States’ own Constitution and shielded itself from recrimination or even inquiry. It is secretive, cabalistic and frightening to many.

The election of a Republican Senate unifies the branches of the U.S. government under an insecure, aging collection of un-representative rightists who paranoically project evil on to mankind, believe these actions to be legitimate. The media are predominantly owned by huge corporations who support this worldview, and the system has successfully factionalized, cordoned-off, controlled and out-capitalized independent outlets for information, thus eliminating any hope of a “checks and balances system” for at least two and a half years. There is about to be wholesale change of how business is done in the name of the United States with its partners and alliances. New compromises will be demanded on top of this, for this white, unfathomably rich, minority of the human species.

The people who have taken control of the United States government are the biggest money there is in the world and now, they are a desperate machine composed of a people who have fictionalized for so long that they feel they have startlingly seized control legitimately. To this worldview has been granted two years of control of the Supreme Court, both Houses of Congress and the Executive Office. (Please Lincoln Chafee, Turn. Now. Not to independent, to Democrat, outright.)

As a registered voter who has participated in the last 9 U.S. elections with federal implications, including the following for President, in order chronologically from 1988: Dukakis, Clinton/Gore, Nader and Gore and in local races in Austin, TX, San Francisco, CA, New York, NY and Los Angeles, CA, for Governors Ann Richards and Jerry Brown and many Democrats, Independents and Libertarian and Green Party candidates. I have participated deliberately in the American exercise in democracy with consideration.

I now believe that not one single vote that I have ever cast in the American system has made a positive difference in the world, because my vote either went to a losing candidate or my candidate was, in point of fact, a loser (Clinton). The American system is corrupt and worthless. It is not democracy (Germany’s is far better). The tiny range of political ideologies in its corporate-controlled system protects a wealthy minority from everyone else. A minority that allows only limited entry – at its speed, for its purposes – to its party.

Because I do not wish to participate in the lie that the USA perpetuates, I have been successfully marginalized by the very wealthy of the United States of America.

So, I have not democratically voted at all, but have merely attended a pathetic dance-of-legitimization that has resulted in hats and horn-blowers for the faction that calls itself Grand Old Party, a dance which would have been only mildly less incorrigible were it being done for the Democrats (I dare to say: “If Gore’s President, the WTC are standing today.” Bush baited them … all summer, just like Roosevelt in ’41 with the boats in Japanese water. It’s their style actually, it’s not even that clandestine, they call themselves “gentleman farmers” … The Bushes brought down the attacks, dammit. Face the facts. And they are murderers, this morning by an unmanned spacecraft over Yemeni soil. No judge, no jury. Cowboy – maybe Wellstone got it the same way.)

They are a serious family, the biggest mafia. The grandfather assisted in the financing of Hitler and the mentality that exercised the poisonous lie of eugenics. As it failed, they somehow planted candidacy onto one of their sons through a shady war-story and, though he lacked intelligence, he managed to ride on the coattails of the television actor, and so became Chief Executive and began baiting Arabs for oil, their “spice”. They rolled into Texas from Maine or Connecticut with a whole lot of money and they bought a posture by feeding bigotry, insecurity, fear and rage. They manipulated and bullied newspapers and poor people. They re-instituted barbaric, unenlightened practices. And they lied and posed bare-facedly, using powerful media to do so, rehearsing ultimately for the “big-time”. This is all so obviously scripted in their response to an event they ‘staged’ … And still they posture. It’s amazing, shameless.

Yes, conceptually, the Bush-Americans staged the attacks on the World Trade Center. [Leave out the Pentagon and wherever the other guy was wandering in what must have been a hellish turmoil. (“Your job is to see if they’ll shoot you down, God be Willing”).]

The Millennium was the set up and 9/11 was the knock down.

Forever let it be added to their list of crimes, the short-sighted old fools, the Bush-Americans staged the “planes-into-towers” thing. They built the set, bought the losses, made the calculations, placed the documentation tools, baited the enemy and stepped out of his way. And that is an accusation. A legal and civil accusation. These people are fascist and amoral and need to be tranquilized and jailed. They lack the intelligence to see humanity and our planet for what it is, a delicate organism.

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

AMERICA, I HAVE SEEN THE ENEMY, AND IT IS YOU.

Sharpton, DC Protest, 2002

26 Saturday Oct 2002

Posted by mtk in music video

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Our Son and His Country, 2002

12 Saturday Oct 2002

Posted by mtk in essay, journal entries, Los Angeles, our son, protest

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Family:

Ocean Mandela Milan has been born to my partner TRW and myself.
He enters the western calendar at 9:13 a.m. (PDT, GMT-8) on 8th October, 2002, a Tuesday.

He weighs in at 3170g and has a full head of black hair. His eyes initially appeared blue! But now they are getting browner by the day. We are not getting much sleep, but we are thrilled to have him with us.

We conceived Ocean purposefully, with all loving intent, courage and will, last winter. It is our first child. We have known each other only as adults. I met TRW in San Francisco when she was 22 years old and I have known her for more than seven years. We lived together in New York City for 18 months. We have relocated to Los Angeles. I am 35. She is 28.

In my partner’s work with young children (aged 0-6), and through her studies in college, preschool and in intimate family settings, it has become apparent that loving family structures benefit a child greatly. We have read, studied and personally observed that the most important factors in children’s development and happiness are parents who are attentive and loving and the presence of love, kindness and attentiveness in any extended family; parents, grandparents, aunts and uncles who are supportive, kind and encouraging.

Here in the U.S., we have both witnessed single parents, divorced parents, and unmarried couples who are more involved and loving than many of their married counterparts and who do have happier, more balanced children. We want to provide a safe, stable, loving, educational and enlightened environment for our child in which POSSIBILITY is a fundamental that makes life worth living and fulfilling. We do not want to create an environment that symbolizes RESTRICTION of possibility. We want to be organic in addressing the needs of our child. We do not want to create formalistic rules based on pre-existing social structures, rules that might limit the growth of our child’s mind, soul or body.

Recently, friends, family and others have asked if we are married or worse, if we plan to marry, or worse still, why we aren’t married.

Young children don’t know or care whether their parents are married; it’s simply not an issue before age 6. And while it’s true that as children become older (6 and up, school-age), they are more aware of social structures and may be influenced by peers or others who may imply that their parents are “supposed” to be married, we have witnessed this stigma lessening every year as times change. We are confident, from watching and learning from families and children and society around us, that in 2008, marriage will not be as serious a societal expectation and that our decision will not affect our child’s self-esteem or security.

We are quite proud to provide for our child’s friends, an example of a relationship in which parents are individually whole, total and perfect equals, mother and father, neither reduced or inflated by the socially-weighted titles of “wife” or “husband”, providing a happy and healthy home for their child. We are proud to be strong enough, stable enough in our love for one another and secure enough in our knowledge of self to be unmarried partners in the endeavor of raising a child.

We met in San Francisco and moved thousands of miles, abandoning personal projects and employment, to make our family and settle here in California, a place we love, where we feel secure. We made this decision to have a child because we care deeply about our world, are devoted to making it a better place, and feel that by raising a kind and conscientious child we can change the world. This pregnancy is happening now because we are lucky, and because it is meant to be. The world needs peace-minded, enlightened, non-violent, intelligent, humanist parents, badly.

Neither of us feels the institution of marriage is for us. We recognize marriage as something that many people have grown to expect of those who love one another and who want to have a child – but marriage, as an institution, has no personal meaning for either of us.

Religious marriage ceremonies conducted when any party is NOT a faithful believer in the philosophy under which the ceremony is being held have always struck us both as hypocritical and fundamentally bogus bonding rituals. And licensed marriage under a State that STILL refuses to recognize same-sex marriages and is completely unrepresentative of our political views is ethically reprehensible to us. We think of ourselves as brave in our deep commitment to TRUTH and honesty in politics, life and our love. We do not want to participate in rituals or support institutions in which we do not personally believe.

If we were to ignore the discomfort we feel and marry to satisfy our family’s, state’s or anyone else’s expectations, we would both soon regret it, and we strongly believe that we would be starting out on this venture with a negative feeling. Resentment—toward each other, toward the family or state that pushed us into it—would be sure to develop quickly. We don’t want that.

We have both witnessed tragic and debilitating divorces, and have seen the heavy expectation that marriage places on relationships. I was an unwilling participant in the terrible strain that orthodox concepts of marriage placed on my parents at an age when I should have been free of such concerns. Separation has been good for my parents as individuals and would have been easier to cope with had the heavy expectation of marriage not been such a significant factor. Many people trapped in marriages they do not want suffer needlessly in relationships that no God or good person would wish for any sentient being.

Neither my partner nor I know any couples in wildly successful long-term marriages. We do know couples who have been together for many years without marrying and who have strong relationships. Some of these couples do not have children but wish they could, eventually hope to. Marriage has never been a positive consideration for them in that decision-making process – only a negative: “Well, if we do have a child, we’ll HAVE to get married.” They say it because they are considering HAVING to satisfy someone ELSE. This (sadly common) sentiment in these relationships actually prevents beautiful, stable and wonderful people from committing to bringing new life into this world.

We both feel that if we were married we would lose control of the pure and honest love that we are daily working so hard to build. By deciding to have a child, we feel we are leading by example, providing an alternative for other unmarried couples – those who choose to be together and may have similar feelings but lack the personal security or the courage to have a child.

We are proud to assist in reducing the expectation society places on anyone in love.

There are things we each feel strongly about, and overwhelmingly, remarkably, my partner and I agree with each other about the most important environmental factors that will help determine what kind of person our child will grow up to be. That is in large part why we have decided we’ll be good partners in parenting. We enter into all our decisions together and with great thoughtfulness, foresight, and clarity.

This decision, not to marry, was the first of many decisions we made and will make together. It is a decision that reflects our personal beliefs, our experiences and the ways in which we hope to change this world and our child’s experiences in it.

Just as we respect others’ different opinions—and know that they are what make our society and world a diverse and fascinating place filled with cultural and social variance—we expect respect for our opinions in return.

Now, to his name:

We have considered dozens of names in the past year. I won’t go into the many possibilities, but I will tell you some of the things we like about the name we have given to our new son.

We both decided early on that we didn’t want to take either of our family names – we feel that a third new surname would serve to bond our family better since we chose not to marry. To this end we have given our son his own first, middle and surname. We will eventually decide whether or not we wish to take his name for ourselves, likely we will.

TRW and I have swum in many oceans and seas. We have both always loved the Ocean, having been born by it ourselves – TRW near the Pacific and I by the Bay of Bengal. It was a great day early in this pregnancy that we agreed that the English name for Ocean could be used for either a boy or a girl and that French, Portuguese, Spanish or Sanskrit variants could be used by anyone who chooses to do so (Oceano, is the Spanish, Swedish and Portuguese, and a particular favorite of mine). It’s easily translated.

It was TRW’s idea that a second initial with an ‘M’ would make “OM” and we agreed that would be nice. Had he been a girl, the name we first thought of was Madeleine (a French name that TRW has always liked and I remember enjoying in the children’s book of that title). After she had chosen the girl’s name she asked me to think of a three-syllable, ‘M’ name for a boy. Within seconds, the first thought was of one of my heroes, Mandela.

TRW agreed that the name Ocean Mandela has both a wonderful sound in English and carries international significance for its socio-political importance (a sidenote: Nelson Mandela titled his autobiography “Long Walk To Freedom” after a quote from Nehru)

The hardest part for us was choosing a surname for the baby. We ended with Milan because it means “union” or “coming together” in Sanskrit. We are an inter-racial couple and we feel this name is progressive and beautiful. In addition to creating the sound ‘OMM’ with his initials, the name has the following anecdotal niceties.

As letter number 13, ‘M’ is the center of the western alphabet providing balance.

The numbers of letters in each name corresponds to the number of syllables in the haiku form of poetry from Japan – 5,7,5.

Only afterward did I remember Milan Kundera the GREAT Czech writer – exiled in Paris – whom I have read and enjoyed for decades.

I, for one, call him “Little Man” and approve of Manny or other variants as long as they are tasteful. We look forward to introducing you to our son, Ocean Mandela Milan.

I mean that as the aforementioned Czech-writer Milan Kindera once wrote: “An illusion revealed and a rationalization unmasked have the same pitiful shell. Nothing is easier than to mistake one for the other.”

My life in the USA has been a constant disagreement with the powers that be. I find them deeply bigoted, fascist and corrupt. But until 9/11/01, I allowed myself the thought there was hope for this place. I always worked hard to believe I was helping to educate and create a better USA than the one I was forced to move into. That we would one day come to common ground. What nonsense! This place is run by supremacists and pseudo-Christians who suck oil, water, air and energy from the rest of the world and then justify their bloated, self-serving attitude. 9/11/01 only made what was covert, overt. Unmasked the rationalization of empire.

We were all spending the last decade talking about “post-colonialism” only to find that in the Christian’s 21st century, colonialism is alive and well, and its latest manifestation, the USA under Bush and Cheney, is no different from the ones who locked up my grandfather in a jail in his own country in 1928 and 1931, and who claim to have “civilized” India with railroads. They are only wearing a different mask.

My son, my partner and I vociferously protest the American military intervention planned for Iraq and the covert operations that these pigs continually run around the world – in the Philippines, in Colombia, in Afghanistan, in Africa, with armadas on all high seas, overtly militant, with global positioning technology accurate to the size of a dime.

Because of my protest work for the last fifteen years, (and because of the sensitive work my father did for the American military) I am absolutely certain that my e-mail and phone are monitored by the NSA. Though I have always followed their rules and have struggled mightily to work within their system, there is no real freedom for me here and there never has been.

The American nightmare is what I hope my son can avoid. My partner and I – truly global citizens who believe in world peace and harmony between peoples – intend to raise him to lead us away from war – to disarm the USA and to demand multi-lateral, peaceful disarmament of the entire world for his grandchildren.

Three Days After the Birth of Our Son

11 Friday Oct 2002

Posted by mtk in essay, journal entries, Los Angeles, protest

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11 October 02
Los Angeles

Last night as I sat in the baby’s room with TRW and we tried to calm Oceano as she breastfed him, the radio broadcast the U.S. Senate roll-call vote on Resolution 45 that authorized the use of unilateral military force against Iraq for George W. Bush. It was O.’s third night “on earth.”

This country makes up only 7% of the entire population of the world. 7%!!! Where do you get off telling 93% of the world how to live?! You suck so much more oil, water, power and energy than anyone else anywhere. You produce more waste – nuclear, plastic, noxious gas – and force garbage onto others. You have a military presence in most places – your military commands global positioning technology down to the size of a dime.

What is happening in the United States of America is shameful, pathetic and racist. Americans, drunk on technology or passed out from over-indulgence weren’t even woken from their reverie of engorgement when slapped HARD on 9/11. We need you to wake up! Your elders have no idea what they are doing. They refuse to leave the world stage quietly.

Instead they force their high-tek-savvy grandchildren to create pro-war content that glorifies them as “The Greatest Generation” – which they, being kids, do for a paycheck, weekly doses of “Friends” and sexual freedom. The warmongering generation dumbly rattle the wheels of their chairs like sabres – scream blindly about wars past as though they have an understanding of weapons of the day – they don’t. World peace can only happen through peaceful, multi-lateral, disarmament.

There is little representation in Congress for this idea – embraced by most Americans – and yet we are deeply taxed to pay the salaries of our so-called representatives. Taxation without representation was the basis for the “revolution” that gave birth to this system. Today, unrepresented people taxed to pay for this system number in the tens of millions. Bush placed last after Nobody and Gore. And the paper screams that Congress supports Bush’s proposal for attacking Iraq. Meanwhile the radio this morning presents a “community calendar of anti-war demonstrations” that includes 16 different protests to take place across L.A. Several are ongoing, weekly protests. It is time for another revolution. We must disarm the USA.

Television programming devoted to sports, entertainment and even to watching each other behave stupidly has been so successfully marketed to the under-educated Americans that they have become skittish and defensive about their own ignorance – unable to admit they know nothing about the world – indoctrinated by the endless sloans of Big Brother in the schools, churches and moviehouses: “Columbus discovered America.”

The USA is an idiot-child in a world of ancient cultures – China, India, Africa, Australia, Europe – and it’s being led down the toilet by a crusty, stubborn, rigid, militant culture headed by pseudo-Christian haters who have audaciously remade Thou Shalt Not Kill into its opposite.

They spit venom at others while acting out all evil human behavior themselves – bombing, killing, butchering, name-calling, hatred, bigotry – and they see no hypocrisy in it; pathetic, repressed, idiot-children of humanity, you will be the death of us all. The USA sucks. It sucks oil like no one else. It sucks water and power and energy and it shits out more poison than anyone. It’s freedoms have spawned unsupportable gluttony. All in the name of the white man’s Liberty – his unsatiable need to consume all property, have total control of humanity.

And what will you Bush-Americans do after you “regime-change” Iraq? What will you do about China? And India? They are nuclear powers. What if they start to hate you because you are so stupid you don’t even see what a mess you are making? What if rogue Al Qaeda members choose to hide in China?

Where are America’s priests, rabbi, brahmins and imams? Reduced to pawns in a political battle of ever-shifting factions of power-seekers. Right now, we couldn’t see or hear any God trying to communicate with us anyway, because the enormous din of our own machines of war and oversexed marketing – billboards, screaming ads, hyper-powered narratives of false prophets – drowns out everything, even the chirping of crickets.

Fuck you silent Americans who let this charade continue that leads to death by nuclear or bio-chemical attack – Bush is asking for it, baiting others to give it to you and you won’t even say: stand down, dammit, before you kill us all. Stop the USA. Stop the warmongers. Tranquillize the bellicose.

Us = Them, installation feat. "1984" performance, Los Angeles, 2002

11 Wednesday Sep 2002

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Us = Them, curated and produced by M.T. Karthik, Fifty Foot Pine Tree Press, Wine Hobo Trio, Booklyn Artists Alliance and 33 1/3 Books and Gallery, Sunset at Alvarado, F. Sosa, Proprietor, September 11, 2002

1984, performance by MTK

On September 11th, 2002, beginning at 5:35am Pacific Time, corresponding to the moment the first plane struck the World Trade Center in New York City exactly one year before, MTK read George Orwell’s novel 1984, aloud in its entirety at 331/3 Books and Gallery, at the corner of Sunset and Alvarado, in Los Angeles, ending at sunset:

as a performance element on the opening day of the Booklyn Artists exhibition

Us = Them, installation feat. “1984” performance, Los Angeles, 2002

11 Wednesday Sep 2002

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1984, performance by MTK

as a performance element on the opening day of the Booklyn Artists exhibition

Gallery

Soon, a zine, 2002

25 Saturday May 2002

Posted by mtk in artists books, collage, jazz, journalism, Los Angeles, poetry, travel

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2002, antonio, california, drawings, hindu, Karthik, m.t., media, Mingus, mixed, mtk, road, San, soon, texas, trip, trotsky

This gallery contains 19 photos.

ode, 2002

25 Thursday Apr 2002

Posted by mtk in Los Angeles, poetry

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Love a pine tree intensely,
expecting nothing
and perhaps it will, in its immensity,
rebroadcast that love
like an antenna
scattering your emotion
down the umbrella of branches and tiny needles
that fall from above
to prick the soles of pilgrim’s feet
in accurate punctures,
coursing by vein at the heel
up into the minds of tree lovers
who seek nothing in the trunk
save the root
and to die in peace

MTK, Los Angeles, 4/25/2002

The Marathon Project

15 Saturday Sep 2001

Posted by mtk in audio, NYC

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1998, 1999, 2000, century, City, collage, collected, digital, early-21st, Found, Karthik, late-20th, M.T.new, marathon, microphone, mini-disc, mtk, Project, sound, york

an audio project I worked on for three and a half years.

[and here is some of the audio streaming online since 2004]

I worked on this all summer of 2001 – getting an engineer to master it, making the packaging – and just when I was getting ready to release it, the attacks of September 11th changed the entire environment.

This is the last copy I personally have of an edition of 101.

$1000 and it’s yours autographed specially.

Transcript, microcassette tape, Brooklyn, NY, 9/11/2001

11 Tuesday Sep 2001

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Transcript of A-side of a Microcassette Tape
September 11th, 2001
11:15 a.m. – 12:40 p.m., EDT (US)
Bushwick Avenue, Brooklyn, NY
< police siren, Bushwick and Powers streets, Brooklyn>
Corner Deli at 15 Bushwick Avenue, Williamsburg, Brooklyn

MAN TRANSLATING SPANISH TELEVISION: The game plan was this: to bomb Washington D.C., to bomb New York City, to bomb Chicago.
<BREAK>

MAN: I can’t communicate. I can’t even communicate with my sister. I can’t even communicate with the people up there. I can’t even communicate with my boss. I don’t know.
<BREAK>

EXT. DELI, 15 Bushwick
A.E. Williams: It’s September 11th, two thousand and one and uh, the polls have been closed, the world trade centers- buildings, have- (beat) are gone.
<BREAK>

INT. 53 Bushwick, #3
(the sound of television reporting the news)
M-H. Balle: -had a dream about last night. I had a dream about UFO’s last night (notices tape recorder) -Oh, God, No, No, No!
M.T. Karthik: Yes! Listening to what you’re saying right now, I am sure that I’ll want to hear this back later on so-
MHB: Oh, please! Fuck you! Are you being condescending?
AEW: (negatively) mm-mm. No Way.
MHB: And am I being paranoid?
AEW: Well, what is paranoia, right? (points at TV)
MHB: I’ve never-
AEW: That’s not paranoia!
MHB: I told Alison earlier today that I wrote a story called falling debris about a year ago. And the story essentially was that it surprises me that I am not hit by falling debris more often than I am – which is never.
MTK: which is never.
MHB: Right, I’ve never been hit by falling debris.
MTK: Right
AEW: She’s always afraid of shit that’s falling out of buildings.
MTK: Right.
MHB: I’m afraid of- I’m afraid- I’ve always- Not afraid, but I walk around in Manhattan – especially lower Manhattan and I look up and I’m like, ‘The fact that this shit isn’t falling down on me for whatever reason amazes me.’ – the fact that these buildings are allowed to stand.
MTK: Allowed to stand?
MHB: Yeah. I have to like, I have to hook up my other computer and print something out because-
TV: … a couple of years ago about how much U.S. authorities … attack … and now …
MHB: They’re gone now of course. We’re looking at (laughs) footage of what used to be the world trade centers. (laughs)
TV: -’ve on the phone right now, someone who both in fact and fiction has dealt with this … in …
MHB: … it’s so – They’ve already brought up-
TV: Tom Clancy-
MHB: Tom Clancy, by the way (laughing)
TV: Uh, Mr. Clancy, uh, this is uh-.
MHB: There it is! Tom Clancy.
TV: I guess a terrible case of life imitating art
Tom Clancy: It’s a noteworthy incident, I mean, it’s not the sort of thing – It’s the sort of thing that’s best left in a novel rather than in real life. Unfortunately one of the problems with being an author is keeping up with reality.
TV: But Mr. Clancy, you also are very well plugged into this world-
MHB: he’s plugged into this world-
TV: From your own knowledge-
MHB:He’s plugged in, baby-
TV: -how concerned have the authorities been
MHB: -to this world!
AEW: (laughing)
TV: – that something of this scale could possibly hit on the- o-o-on American soil?
CLANCY: It’s Jeff Greenfield, right?
GREENFIELD: Yeah, yes.
CLANCY: Well, you’ve been here to the house. It’s uh, I had a conversation some years ago with an Air Force General about a possibility rather like this – I ended up putting it in one of my books – where you know a bad guy takes an aircraft-
MHB: a bad guy! (laughing)
TC: -into the Capitol building during a Joint Session of Congress – which, you know, could effectively decapitate the whole government-
MHB: (hysterical laughter)
TC: uh, (laughing, also) I don’t know, at the time it seemed rather humorous. You know, I said, ‘Surely you’ve thought about things like this,’ and he says, ‘Well you know, to the best of my knowledge nobody in my office has looked at this but I promise you Monday morning they will be.’ Presumably they have been- you know, they’ve considered this possibility for some time … the- the big problem is a person who is willing to, to lose his own life voluntarily in a, in a terrorist incident. People like that are relatively rare because self-preservation is indeed the first law of nature and a per-it’s not too many people that want to throw their lives away and those who do it generally do it for religious reasons because they think there’s something good waiting for them on the other side of death- Uh, in a case like this that’s going to lead people towards, you know, talking about Is-Is-Islamic fanatics but we need to remember that Islam is a religion and it’s a religion with beliefs not necessarily very different ….
MHB: …voluntarily deciding that they want to lose their lives … or that they wish to or that they’re willing to. So fuck you on the ‘lose your life thing.’ To declare war is not a statement decided by Congress, right? Why is it any different from a guy who lives in Omaha, Nebraska deciding that he wants to- deciding that he is willing to go to … Europe during world war two and fight. This is different than a man or a woman who decides to fly a plane into the world trade center.
GREENFIELD: -officials, uh, in doing the research – did they see an attack of this enormity or were they more concerned with the sort of smaller kind of hit and miss that we’ve followed the last several years?
CLANCY: Well, you don’t ordinarily expect terrorists to display this degree of expertise. I mean, flying an airplane is not all that ea- <channel click>
MHB: (laughter) I can’t believe that Tom Clancy is the authority on terrorism now. How many more books do you think he might sell tomorrow? <click>
VOICE: but unfortunately you know the security you have in airports because your dealing with human beings is not perfect (unintelligible)
MHB: Actually I think he’s big on books on tape, too.
CLANCY: Somebody very carefully and <click>
<click>
CLANCY: -madman- <click>
MHB: “madman”
<click>
MHB: Wait- unedited video-
YOUNG GIRL: -huge cars – I’m standing on the corner and watching and taking pictures you could see the wings of the plane sticking out at least in the middle of the second building. (beat) I think they were delivering bombs. The explosion went up on that last one.
MHB: You know what I love-
MTK: “They were delivering bombs”
MHB: It’s the “they”.
YOUNG GIRL: Although it was probably a bomb inside the plane. They saw it to.
MHB: I’ve heard this word “they” many many many times.
YOUNG MAN ASIAN: The explosion went up like a mushroom. The second uh, the second building-
MAN W/AUSTRALIAN ACCENT: (fast) The second plane was an old prop engine plane like an old Cessna?
INTERVIEWER: Say that again.
AUSTRALIAN: (slower) The second plane was like an old prop plane, like a dual prop plane, like a Dakota(r) or something like that – It wasn’t a Dakota, but.
MHB: another authority here.
AUSTRALIAN: -it came in low from over the ocean …

[witnesses are interviewed]

MHB: Can we get Spanish? I want the Spanish channel- or Disney! I’m curious what’s on Disney- <click> lets see what else is going on in the television world <changing channels>“countless acts of kindness” can we record this term, “countless acts of kindness” thank you. Yeah, well, let’s get BET TV on right here. I think BET TV might sum it all up for you right here.

[lots of channels, skipping around, pieces of soundbites]

MHB: That’s another thing-
[Spanish for some time]
MTK: OK, now we’ve had enough-
VOICE: (female) a source from New York City saying it is likely … it is possible that thousands of lives have been lost-
MTK: Look, (reading scroll) the White House, Pentagon and Capitol have been evacuated – look, the White House, Pentagon and the Capitol-
MHB: thousands of lives have been lost, is that what they’re saying now?
VOICE: at least in the United States, uh, in addition, the Federal Reserve- <click>

<BREAK>

MHB: -to anger, retaliation, envy, jealousy, hatred, paranoia.
MTK: This is what revolution leads to.
MHB: Well I do- not- I do believe that these are some of the things – I’m not saying that there the only things – these are some of the worst things components of what revolution can lead to. I mean look at what’s happened in other revolutionary scenarios? I mean look at China, look at the Soviet Union, and I believe that this is a statement, that says- I mean we are- the targets are two significant institutions: one, the military industrial complex which is directly linked to the world trade org- World Trade. Multi-national.
MTK: You don’t think- peaceful revolution is impossible you think?
MHB: I don’t- I believe it is- the point that I am making is that I don’t think that this- I mean, to me this is a revolutionary act.
MTK: It is?
MHB: I believe it is-
MTK: Is it a terrorist act?
MHB: It’s a terrorist- well, yes. But we need to define terrorism. This is a terrorist act, which you know, I’m going to assume that this a terrorist act as it’s being called.
MTK: Oh, wow, so you are going to give credence to every single person who’s naming this-
MHB: No, no-
MTK: We’ve got to turn the mute on immediately- immediately (TV cuts off)
MHB: I’m talking about, if this is a terrorist act, which I believe it is.
MTK: You believe it is because you have been told it is.
MHB: No, as a matter of fact no one has actually said that it is yet, right?
AEW: Yes.
MHB: They have? Oh, they have made the statement that this is a terrorist act?
MHB: I’ve heard-
MTK: They had a terrorism timeline!
MHB: I’ve heard- no one has officially been willing – other than Bush who has said the following thing: “I will hunt down the people responsible,” right? So, there is a hunt, yes. So, here we have a res- now we already have the first tenet of what happens in a revolutionary act, which is the desire for vengeance, “to hunt down.” So the statement that’s being made here, very clearly it seems to me, is a statement that says: the military-industrial complex, the world- the world trade scenario as it stands-
MTK: hang on, hang on … are you sure it’s not just that drunk people shouldn’t fly planes?
MHB: No. This is too significant to be drunk people shouldn’t fly planes. Drunk people who shouldn’t fly planes, accidentally hit small buildings like the ones we live in now.

<BREAK>

MTK: Like the White House?
MHB: What?
MTK: Remember that guy some years ago-
[edit]
MHB: You said, “The White House”
MHB: Was that a drunk guy? Actually it wasn’t a drunk guy-
MHB: Revolution breeds vengeance.

[stupid conversation]

MHB: We were talking not that long ago about the question of revolution. I think we were implying violence. We talked about guns. Remember we talked about guns?
MTK: We did?
MHB: We did in the bar at The Garden. And I was like, we were talking about it as a violence against- perpetrated or enacted by one individual towards another.
MTK: That’s what- that’s what you think of as revolution?
MHB: Well, yeah we were talking about it in that context at the Garden.
MTK: hmm, ok.
MHB: I mean, yeah, ‘cause I mean, certainly revolution is a broad stroke, I mean it can mean many things revolution in art, revolution in writing … although I don’t … there’s many-
AEW: It means ‘taking down,’ doesn’t it?
MTK: No, it means change.
MHB: see this gets very complicated.
MTK: Revolution is change.
MHB: Change happens every second, every moment-
MTK: Right. Revolution is a lot of change in a short amount of time. I’ll take the Webster’s dictionary and read the word revolution if you want.

[dictionary search conversation]

MTK: All right I’m going to try this out of the Webster’s [reads etymology and definitions of ‘revolution’ and gets to, reading] 2a. a sudden, radical and complete-
MHB: change?
MTK: change.
MHB: right.
MTK: (reading) b. a fundamental change in political organization especially the overthrow or renunciation of one government or ruler and the substitution of another by the governed.
MHB: Now, that’s more-
MTK: like the French revolution.
MHB: right.
[edit]
MHB: I would define it as an act of violence. I am opposed to the idea of revolution that is violent.
MHB: can we talk about this (points at TV) We are literally sitting here the three of us, watching a very significant occurrence.
MTK: You think so?
MHB: I do. Because the World Trade Center represents not only symbolically but structurally-
MTK: Mmmhmm
MHB: structurally there are mainframes that exist in those two buildings that are now gone-
AEW: 400 million dollars in each (unintelligible)
MHB: Yeah! The amount of money that is- ok there are several things: how much did it cost to build?
AEW: 400 million dollars?
MHB: How much does it cost to maintain? Not only that -Well, we know because they told us how much it cost to build- Not only that, what is the insurance – on those two buildings? Let’s think about who insures those two buildings? And my guess is it’s that insurance company in England.
MHB: I forget the name of that-
MTK: You know the name of it.
MHB: I forget the name-
MTK: Well I shan’t, uh, say it for you.
MHB: Please tell me, ‘cause I’m very bad with names, I always forget.
MTK: Chris Evert took the name, let’s put it that way, to return-
MHB: No, no, no tell me, tell me- I forget-
MTK: Are you a fan of tennis at all?
MHB: Kind of no, not really.
MTK: Chris Evert took the name, anyway what’s your point?
MHB: My point is that this has this rippling effect. These 50,000 people don’t get to go to work
MTK: Don’t get to go to work?
MHB: They don’t go to work anymore.
MTK: Don’t get to go to work?
MHB: They don’t get to go to work-
MTK: Oh-
MHB: Right they don’t.
MTK: poor kids
MHB: -seriously where do they go? I’m not talking about the people, I’m talking about the industry that exists around those two buildings. The actual industry-
MTK: Is there industry- is there actual industry?
MHB: Oh-, uh, well, 50,000 people work there-
MTK: -or is it just promotion of paper?
MHB: Oh, OK. Well, what is-
MTK: do they really work?
MHB: -capitalism? What is capitalism?
MTK: do they really work? do they really work? Or do they just move paper around to ensure that they stay powerful and wealthy?
MHB: But that’s my point.
MTK: it is?
MHB: That’s the point I’m making-
MTK: Ohhhh.
MHB: -about these two buildings- These two buildings structurally-
(phone rings AEW answers)
MHB: -maintain a (sic) international system. These two buildings, because they are called the world trade centers are symbolic of world trade. They are symbolic of trade, international trade. People who sit at computers who move things from place to place – who organize and move things are in sort of, from the lowest-
MTK: and they can be anywhere. They don’t have to be here.
MHB: No, it’s true, but structurally we don’t have a place to put these 50,000 people right now.
MTK: That’s not true, there’s a huge, massive place to put them.
MHB: OK, well, let me tell ya, it’ll be a while before these people will find another home to work in.
MTK: Yeah, but they have insurance.
MHB: Which they do, back to my original statement about the insurance company-
MTK: which is?
MHB: -that has to cover this.
MTK: unh, hunh?
MHB: The point that I am making is that there is an incredible, symbolic statement that is being made here – and The Pentagon – it symbolizes the military-industrial complex which is obviously connected to the protection of world trade and capitalism
MTK: This is the military-industrial-entertainment complex.
MHB: Well, but that’s the-
MTK: That’s what this is …
MHB: well, it’s more than just –
MTK: … which is equally vile.
MHB: Right. Right. Well, so it’s all one big package deal – but it is a significant thing. And it’s- and to me – you know as much as I find this disturbing, and I do … it’s surreal. It’s incredible. It’s … it’s going to have rippling effects.
MTK: You think so.

<BREAK>

AEW: (on telephone) -skin, black hair, uh, Muslim-
MHB: I just want to say I’m drunk right now-
MTK: rippling effects?
MHB: I’m saying it’s going to have a rippling effect. I don’t think this is very- I mean this is not cloaked conversation – it’s going to have a rippling effect. We already- It already has one. All airports in the country have been shut down. You cannot get into Manhattan, all the subways have been shut down. You cannot call into Manhattan, all the phones have been shut down. You cannot watch even television unless you have cable because everybody transmits from downtown. We have just closed the voting booths. We have a primary, the most significant primary in New York City history, perhaps, has just been stopped.
MTK: subverted.
MHB: right, subverted. So if this doesn’t have rippling effects, nothing will. And a minimal loss of life. Now, there’s another interesting thing: this could have been in the middle of the day, the decision was made not to make this in the middle of the day – not to fly two planes into the world trade center simultaneously at two-thirty in the afternoon. After lunch when everybody’s back in the office.
MTK: It could have been right at lunch, when everybody was out at the lunch spot so they could have a good viewing position (sarcasm).
MHB: But it’s still- you have less- you- actually, the fact is that in most of the- and this is another thing to- understand and- the way that Americans work- I mean most Americans, especially at the world trade centers start around 8.
AEW: (on phone) and the borders closed now.
MHB: This is the first bombing – the first bombing, – the first airplane arrived at whatever, seven-thirty-five, so, about a half an hour before most people got into the office. (beat) Most people- I know people who work there – they generally start between eight and nine. The second plane arrives around what? Nine? … Nine o’clock. So by now you have had at least an hour to evacuate the building.
MTK: I find this um …
MHB: The idea is to not …
MTK: boring.
MHB: This is boring?
MTK: Yeah.
MHB: Why is this boring to you?
MTK: same shit, different day.
MHB: You don’t think that the – (smirking) that the fact that there is no world trade center isn’t significant? The fact that the Pentagon-
MTK: If I believed there was none, it would be significant (a) and if …even if I even if – even if I did- even if there wasn’t one. What I’m sure of is that precautionary measures on the part of the people who have constructed the entire economy protect the wealthy from any real exigency or problem and the people who are going to be suffering are the ones down at the bottom getting the crumbs-
MHB: absolutely.
MTK: so, it’s the same shit, different day-
MHB: no, I understand that part-
MTK: -as far as I’m concerned.
MHB: But I’m talking about – I think I mentioned earlier – this is incredibly significant symbolically. Which is the point that I am making about why you make- I mean, if you wanted to make a decision to make a statement about the world trade – about world trade – so, hence, world trade center – with minimal loss of life-
MTK: Hmmm.
MHB: I mean, I agree with what you are saying. You do it because you know the people who go to work everyday are not – the goal is not to kill 50,000 people, the goal is to glue all of us to this symbol.
MTK: (laughs)
MHB: The entire world is watching this right now, right? 50,000 people didn’t die. Had you done it at 3:00 or 2:30 or 3:00 in the afternoon, everybody practically would have been back from lunch right now. So you make it strategic. You evacuate everyone at 7:45, and you fly another plane in – and whether or not there were bombs in those planes-
MTK: Well, you’re teaching me about terrorism which is something I know nothing about-
MHB: I’m not teaching you about terrorism, I’m being-
MTK: Yeah you are …
MHB: -very presumptuous.
MTK: you are literally telling me how to do it … what time of day-
MHB: I’m being presumptuous. I’m assuming that I understand the scenario here which is that there could have been 50,000 people in that building at 3:00 this afternoon. We could be going about our business right now, and it’s what? (looks at clock) 12:30.
MTK: Well, I’d like to go about my daily business, actually.
MHB: Right. So you should. And there’s no reason why you can’t. No one’s forcing you to stay here.
MTK: My daily business is voting.
MHB: Right, but you can’t vote.
MTK: I can.
MHB: No, because- the el- the booths are closed. The booths – the election booths are closed (laughing)
MTK: Well, see the funny thing about that is-
MHB: It’s primary day! How interesting is that?
MTK: um, then it’s not subversion then, is my point, it’s complicity. And complicity at that point, becomes a joke for you to be so presumptuous. So, as you continually get drunk and-
MHB: Wait, wait, wait, no, no, don’t bring in my being drunk because I don’t think that I’m being irrational-
MTK: I don’t either, but I just think you’re being presumptuous to the point of like-
MHB: but wai-wai-
MTK: you’re telling me I can do what I want-
MHB: No, you can-
MTK: – and yet in point of fact you’re not telling me I can do what I want-
MHB: No, you said you wanted to vote-
MTK: – and then your saying there is a subversion of-
MHB: No but I already brought up the voting thing, I already brought that up. I was like, I talked- I said- I mentioned several things- we can go ba- and that’s what’s great about this tape- we can go back and I- I had mentioned several things that have now been subverted because of this event and one of them was the primary.
MTK: and you believe that?
MHB: Well- I don’t think it’s an accident. Do you think that it’s just incidental? Is this fate? Two planes just happened to crash into the world trade center?
MTK: I don’t make- I don’t make judgements until I have seen the evidence-
MHB: Oh. Oh well, I’m being presumptuous – as I said earlier, I’m being presumptuous.
MTK: For example, air traffic controllers have much more power than pilots, for example –
MHB: They do.
MTK: and something could have happened where air traffic control is going on –
MHB: You’re right- I’m being
MTK: and what’s going on-
MHB: completely presumptuous.
MTK: is … as far as I’m concerned is-
MHB: an accident.
MTK: -absurdly presumptuous.
MHB: ah, well, I’m just saying that … I’m making a statement of presumption.
MTK: Yes, you are.
MHB: I said that several times. (beat goes to kitchen) I said that several times, Karthik. I’m not being, you know, I’m not being uh-
MTK: I am not resisting you.
MHB: -waffling here.
MTK: I am not resisting you.. I am not resisting you.
MHB: I know you’re not.
MTK: I am not resisting you.
MHB: I’m just surprised that this hasn’t happened already, I guess.

[END SIDE A]

My Last Footage of the WTC Towers

08 Sunday Jul 2001

Posted by mtk in Uncategorized

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79 Days Before the Towers Fell

23 Saturday Jun 2001

Posted by mtk in journal entries, NYC

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2001, beach, before, brooklyn, chinatown, coney, days, fell, greenpoint, island, m.t., m.t. karthik, mtk, subway, towers, walk, williamsburg, wtc

Rent in Williamsburg has risen to the point where a small, clean, $700-a-month, one-bedroom apartment is impossible to find, requests for roomshares are on the rise and complaints about the cost-of-living are played out.

Next door on this very block, “loft building” banners have gone up across construction sites in two empty warehouses. The owners advertise cookie-cutter, 750-1200 square-foot apartments for $2000 – $4000 a month with amenities like all new appliances, double height ceilings, gas heat and hot water; on flyers at the local deli where, yesterday, a woman picked up a flyer, stared at it and seriously muttered, “there goes the neighborhood.”

Burns, a bicycle mechanic and bassist, and Dr. Tracer, an instructor at a local community college, live on a four-year-old lease and pay $1000 a month for perhaps 700 sq. ft. – the back space of which Burns has converted into his bedroom.

Ten days ago I took the world’s longest nonstop flight from Hong Kong to Newark.

I’ve been sleeping here in Burns’s room when he leaves for gigs or work and writing with his laptop on the nightshift.

I rose from my daysleep just after midnight to find Dr. Tracer had dropped acid. He was about an hour into his trip when I awoke and he offered me a tab. I meditated, ate and dosed.

It was 1:20 in the morning and I was awake and alert for the next 15 and a half hours for a cool, rainy trip on a Saturday morning in June in Brooklyn and Manhattan.

Dr. Tracer illustrated without malice, frustration or the use of traditional spoken language that as a result of only 180-degree sensory input, a person who cannot hear evolves under a powerful sentiment of paranoia about what is behind them or out of their field of vision.

We began walking through Williamsburg at 2:30 in the morning, past the swinging doors of a bar. Partied-out, Friday-night boozers stumbled into the street looking for taxi or subway or deli or restaurant doors, their eyes blearily seeking something recognizable, the stench of smoke and alcohol wafting off them. Music drifted faintly out the open doors.

We stopped at a deli, where a broad swath of bottletops had been crushed into the asphalt in a dense, rectangular splay of circles – a speckled count of the beers drunk at the cornershop on hot summer days, when tossing a bottlecap out onto the street meant it got stuck in black, melted goo. A girl was hanging around the pay phone, Brooklyn summer night; couples fell into each other, lazy eyes smiled, engines fired up, a black sedan pulled away from the curb.

We had a coffee and made our way to a bar off McCarren Park. I drank a couple of martinis, Tracer had cold white wine. We conversed until 4:30, discussing broad philosophical topics casually. We were specific on the matters of death, writing and deafness. At one point Tracer and I agreed that when we were children, we were surrounded by others who did not understand how to communicate with us, whose methods were sympathetic but crude. This we agreed, drove us to write.

Two women, a redhead and a brunette, walked in and seduced two men. The women sent one man home alone and, as he stumbled out, but before the door had fully closed, the brunette said coldly to the redhead: “T-G- H-G!”- in time with his steps, with the door swinging closed and with the click shut, she mock-laughed as she fell forward on her stool, elucidating: “Thank. God. He’s. Gone.” as she turned back to the man who remained. At last call, they walked home with the second man, the brunette told him they wanted to teach him something. We were the last customers and left shortly after this.

A few blocks away, we ran into Tracer’s former roommate, a German who shared his apartment for the three years before Burns moved in. The German’s wife and child were out of town and he was up at 5:00 in the a.m. strolling neatly out of a bar, wide-eyed, looking for cocaine, asking if we had any – we did not.

The sun rose quickly, early on one of the longest days of the year. Dr. Tracer and I returned to the apartment, rolled a joint and continued talking. The joint was affirmative and Tracer had a broad laughing fit while in the bathroom alone. We decided to travel.

We had a coffee, then took the G and the F trains to the ends of their lines, arriving at Coney Island just past 8:00 a.m. It was a rainy morning and thick, grey clouds masked the sun. The light was a cold-white glow behind them. The beach was a neat, empty, expanse of sierra-colored loam, darkened by wetness in neat lines by tractors pulling wide metal rakes. The sand was made soft by the thin, white line of foam that the edge of each wave drew as a loose parallel to the horizon, a black straight-edge between the gray sky and the grey sea.

We began walking from the boardwalk to the beach silently, occasionally signing as we walked. We passed an elderly, disheveled woman, who was entirely wrapped in a blanket lying on the beach. After we passed this lump of cloth and human flesh, I saw peripherally that she rose from her reclined position. I then clearly heard her say, “who knows … maybe they like walking on the beach.”

I have never known LSD to contribute to paranoia in me. My use of it has generally resulted in hyper-attenuated hearing and sight and an alertness and remoteness of character. But even now, I wonder about what I heard and saw in that moment.

It could have been a woman on a phone call talking to someone else about something else, but her physical movements implied awareness of us. It could have been a crazed, semi-lucid homeless person babbling incoherently to herself, afraid of people approaching and passing her encampment on the beach or, it could have been an agent of some U.S. policing department observing us as we visited the beach. More engagements with seemingly random others on our trip would increase my feeling that we were being closely observed.

Dr. Tracer and I sat by the ocean, waded, ate a bag of chips on the lifeguard’s chair, had Saturday morning at Coney Island Beach for forty minutes and decried the lack of sunshine. I tape-recorded the sound of the waves and the seagulls to listen to back in the city.

I hoped, pathetically, that the sun would emerge until Tracer pointed out that the storm off the coast was headed inland. We left the beach before the rain started. As we left the boardwalk, vendors were opening for business. We had a coffee. The first drops of rain struck us as we crossed the street to the subway. We decided to go to Chinatown.

We caught the N and smoked a bowl in an empty car during the long stretch between the end of the line and 50th. Then we switched to the operator’s car to watch people. On the way back, I glared out the windows at the grey sky defiantly until we went underground. Dr. Tracer finally joked, “when we get out on the other side the sun will be shining down on you … vindictively!”

A black, 40-plus-year-old man, clean shaven and slightly balding, got on and sat beside me carrying a rustly collection of objects in two plastic bags; black plastic covering a white plastic bag inside. He had a small band-aid strip stuck on his head exposed below his high hairlines. The obvious rectangular strip was set perpendicular across a straight, red line of blood above the temple – the wound was obviously fake, staged. The man fumbled with his possessions, continuously muttering to himself. He could as easily have been a semi-crazed denizen of New York as an undercover NYPD detective.

Once we moved from the empty car in the back to the operator’s car, many people who got on the subway on their way to Manhattan seemed like characters, with staged aspects, or too-perfect appointments. I wore headphones, listening to a CD of sarangi and hearing the outside world leak in. Two women with children sat beside us, a young boy in a stroller, his mother holding his infant sibling. They were northeastern Asians, maybe Korean. Their grandmother was gently inspiring the children to be friendly. The son, cool, observant and thoughtful, seemed worried; the baby was still at the age of wondering at the world.

This was the operator’s car on the N, Saturday morning at 10 o’clock from south Brooklyn to Manhattan on a rainy day in June and I report with the impunity of a witness: public space in New York is undeniably equally peppered with lonesome egos, expressors of unimaginable histories, and potentially dangerous operatives for larger interests, both governmental and mafioso.

Another example: Agent 99, who subsequently led us to Canal street, starts with a pair of plain, white leather sneakers with silver dots evenly-spaced along the edge of the sole – thumbtacks – and a short, hot, controlled blaze of red, orange and yellow flames painted on the outer skin of each shoe, burning up, licking at the clean white leather shoetops toward the short, white, rolled columns – socks – that lead to a pale leg elegantly colored with intricate flowers of reds and blues – tattoos – into a sea of limpid green: an opaque, green silk skirt with a lime-orange border.

She wore a plain blouse and her hair was colored with straight, serene blonde streaks. She was reading a hardback with a romance cover and flowery letters that read, “The Sorcerer’s Apprentice.” The glance of anyone on her side of the train who bent over to set something down, pick something up or tie a shoe was met with that leg, rocking up-and-down, regular as a pendulum, leading to a carefully put-together young woman on her way to Mallhattan.

We emerged from the subway to the rainstorm we’d seen hovering dark over the ocean. The World Trade Center Towers disappeared into thick, coal-colored clouds. The curved disks of the shoppers umbrellas floated through space, most were black, bobbing with the motion of their porters. The storm had traveled overhead as we traveled underground and was now present broadly over Canal street.

The huge, warm, tropical drops, falling down, on and around street signs and ads with Chinese and English text, reminded me of Taipei where I’d been two weeks before during the see-bei-oo rainy season.

We stood under the awnings of the Asian marketplace as rain poured down. Oblique, glowing flashes of white light flooded the clouds internally, leaked out the edges. Thunder rolled. Rain fell and we passed through it, mindless, walking between the drops.

We crossed between corners and in front of the slow-moving traffic. Many people shopped. Two tall women, one with a necklace that spelled, “dirty south,” in cursive, solid gold letters, awaited a man, shorter, rounder, balding, mustachioed, who was buying a souvenir. Young southern Europeans, women, were shopping. An elder, African-American man bought a pair of scarves. Il pleut.

We stopped at a Vietnamese cafe, had hot tea, then pho, rolls and beer. We returned to Brooklyn on the J. It was past noon.

Burns had gone to gig a wedding. His cats, Percy and Mingus wandered around the house, mewling for food. We fed them. We rolled another joint. We’d spent 27.00 on food, 25.00 on liquor, 4.50 on transportation and 3.00 for three coffees each, USD 59.50, total.

We were coming down. I was sitting in a chair opposite Dr. Tracer in his room in the apartment. It was silent. The grey light of the sky outside was only visible through crevices in the blinds and around their edges. Tracer had angled a desk in such a fashion that, sitting behind it, he could see himself and me and the door out, mirrors reflecting the interior of the room around him and nothing else. His back was to the window and the room behind him. I was able to see the window and the lightning that flashed outside.

This was the end of our trip, 12 hours after dosing and after a big meal and a long, wet walk in the rain. In my fatigued simplicity I became conscious of the sound of the weather. We were talking and the thunderstorm was accentuating Tracer’s speech. It grew in intensity and I could no longer focus on what Tracer was saying – the anxiety of it made me jump up. I suddenly remembered that the window in Burns’s room at the back of the apartment was open. I made my way to the back of the apartment saying, over my shoulder, “the rain! … I left the window open!” I realized only later that perhaps Tracer could not hear me or see my lips.

It was pouring. There was the continuous sound of thunder following ever-nearing lightning. At the back of the apartment, rainwater was hammering the wooden sill and dousing objects that lay near the window with a fine spray. Some water splashed my arm in just the time I took to shut the window. I went back to Tracer’s room flush with the excitement. He remained behind his desk, but was standing, pacing as he spoke.

I began to realize my error and clumsily showed him my arm, which now was hardly wet at all. He continued speaking and I realized I wasn’t following him. I sat down opposite him again, trying to compose the communication space that I had broken.

“… and <crack> … things that aren’t funny … No!” is what I heard him say as he took his seat and pointed down the hall.

Then, not immediately, but a second or two later – as Tracer continued speaking – there was an intensely loud, short, sharp <CRACK>! corresponding to a bolt of lightning that must have grounded somewhere very near to the apartment. It was shocking – by far the loudest sound I’d heard in days.

From the open window, I heard voices on the street raised in unison about the sound and flash – the remarks of people standing by the building outside for cover. Tracer’s face and posture showed no notice of any of it. I apologized for interrupting and we resumed our conversation about rent, writing and philosophy. The storm ended after twenty minutes.

Specifics of our conversation have been edited or lost to sobriety and the mindwash of sleep.

MTK The Writist

~ Homo sapiens digitalis

Pre-Columbian Sculpture, Oaxaca, Mexico, 2004

Father and Son, Oaxaca, Mexico

Chatina artist, Oaxaca, 2004

sunset, Puerto Escondido, Oaxaca, Mexico, 2004

Letter to Senator Boxer Protesting Election 2004

Ronald Reagan Obituary

Bells, Wolf, Plastic Flute, song, 2004

Evening News Hour with MTK

Audible Palestine No.1

haiku, 2003

Labor Day Memorandum

We Do More Before 9 am …

Why I Wanted to Have a Child

What Motivates My Writing

Transcript: UN Security Council Proceedings FEB 05, 2003

The Delicate Comfort of Anonymity

Off-Year Elections

Sharpton, DC Protest, 2002

Our Son and His Country, 2002

Three Days After the Birth of Our Son

Us = Them, installation feat. "1984" performance, Los Angeles, 2002

Us = Them, installation feat. “1984” performance, Los Angeles, 2002

Soon, a zine, 2002

ode, 2002

The Marathon Project

Transcript, microcassette tape, Brooklyn, NY, 9/11/2001

My Last Footage of the WTC Towers

79 Days Before the Towers Fell