Collab with Jamie Boling and Cece Cole, and a poem from my Afghanistan Journals

List from September or October, 2004

Hypnosis
Psychodelia
String Theory
Killer, unimpressive, calm
Beethoven
The clicking of watches

Dis infectant
Alcohol
Dewdrop.
Trembling
Universe
School Desk

'Ol Kip, Bedtime Stories

My father used to read me Rudyard Kipling poems as bedtime stories. At the time, when I was 6 or 7, it seemed perfectly normal, but looking back on it I think it was an extraordinary decision. He was teaching me about something moral that he thought was important in a way that sunk in. I'd rather have my father than 10 millionaires buying me everything I had ever wanted, because what a man is worth has nothing to do with money.

He would read the last 3 lines of "Gunga Din" with such force and volumn that it was like a decree from heaven:

"Though I have belted you and flayed you,
By the livin' Gawd that made you,
You're a better man than I am, Gunga Din!"

Growing up in New England in the 1980's, I can tell that you behind closed doors, pretty much everyone was a little racist, but those 3 lines from Gunga Din always let me know that it was wrong.