I saw her at the bus-stop and quickly decided she wasn’t edible,* although she was certainly pretty. I therefore stopped returning her glances, which seemed to upset her.

But when the crowds started boarding the bus, I realized the opportunity to rub up on her from behind, and I seized it. Although the bus wasn’t crowded enough to justify full (dry) penetration, I managed some pleasant, boner-inducing contact.

She was talking to her neighbors in irritated Italian, and out of fear of being cursed out in a foreign language, I didn’t exaggerate the situation.

She kept wincing, which was her way of repenting for occasionally deliberately backing up into my stiff cock. Repenting in front of the various censors/voyeurs around us who kept checking and measuring the space between us.

When she got off she did peek through the corner of her eye, through the window as we pulled away, to see who I was, what I looked like, whether I knew, realized, was still looking, judging, perhaps gloating… And she did respond to my friendly, generous smile with the slightest of Mona Lisa smirks of her own…

Why so much analysis of one anonymous girl’s psyche? For the same reason that Leonardo kept sketching legs’ veins and endless other irrelevancies, which, in the long run, make masterpieces possible.

_{* In the cunnilingus sense, not the cannibal sense…}

Of course I like to fuck! And at times I even employ my entire reason and all my senses in that service. I submit my whole being to the will of my penis.

Then there are times, and of these the stretches are indeed longer, when my heart rules, and I sacrifice even my sex to the service of my love.

The strongest of my warring factions, however, remains my mind. Not the control-freak in him, but the indulgent side, which loves to think, dream, analyze, create, relax, etc. These desires, which seem to be almost continuous, dominate the others, and let them war amongst themselves, and occasionally indulge in a victory or two.

The pain of a forgotten idea!

The failure to jot down the gist of a poem that will now never be…

A subtlety that will have to remain vague until ‘catharticized’ by another addict of articulation…

But, then again, if I hadn’t forgotten it, I wouldn’t have articulated the pain of forgetting, which is also a universal experience worthy of articulation.

And so it goes – death giving birth to new possibilities…

Yes, I am obsessed with the light inherent in everything. The darkness and the pain are too obvious to warrant constant articulation. This sets me on a constant quest for joy and birth. A quest for optimism.

Does that make me an optimist? Or perhaps a….. I don’t even want to say the word!

What the fuck was that idea? Its death already gave birth to a new idea. Now it can harmlessly be reborn!

What the hell was it?!

Excuse my inherited ignorance of the details of all the various species*, but I do know that there are certain types of spiders, or perhaps other insects, which live to breed and then die immediately after giving birth. Even salmon do something similar, but the insects I’m referring to are more blatant about it.

I feel very similar to them. I’m devoting my every last drop of energy to creating my contribution to my species – doing my share of passing on the tradition – with total disregard (although not without hope for a miraculous exception) for benefiting from it any way before I die.

*Written many years before the Internet and its easily-accessible articles such as this.

At any given moment there is a ‘Present’ which can be seen and studied from infinitely many angles…

History consists of infinite moments, each of which were at one brief time one of these (perhaps) infinite ‘Presents’…

And science keeps delving (perhaps) infinitely deeper into each of its ever-splitting branches…

Thus, who can claim absolute authority on knowledge and information, when every sliver of our existence is (perhaps) infinitely broader than any of our individual capacities?

This is my excuse for writing beauty, poetry and philosophy without possession of, or concern for, excessive education and degrees…

I’m feeling particularly open this morning!

I just read an issue of IGNITE – a failed N.Y. underground poetry journal, which was at least successful in opening and clarifying my feelings this morning…

I feel as though I can articulate every wave and impulse of my being…

Who would want to read it?

I don’t know…

But I know that I’ve benefited from other people’s articulations, not only when they described epic or universal truths, but also the subtlest subtleties of their own idiosyncrasies…. Like waking up the morning after and finding the left-overs of last night’s fetish – an onion peel, or the like – on the way to making your morning coffee, or the like…

Taking comfort in the knowledge that these weirdnesses are universal, and, thus, just as epic as the rest of it.

The poet as one who takes a leap – not down, not across, but simply surrenders to the winds of fate. Incalculable forces colliding at your center at every moment – warring with each other until they produce the sum-totals which are your constant reality.

Suspending the energy you’d otherwise use to stay balanced and keep a grip on your station, and perhaps improve it with sufficient wit and daring. Suspending that energy and applying it to observation, to increase your sensitivity towards all that you fall through, above, below, beside, with, away from, etc. To increase your understanding, however insignificantly (at least as far as the grand scheme of things is concerned).

Not obsessing with finding irony, or addressing – or serving – any other agenda, which at one time may have been so novel and cute. Absolute suspension. Complete submission to your senses – inner and outer. Listen to the wind of your falling, that’s one sound you won’t hear anywhere else – at least not willingly.

If you understand this, you must be falling with me! Or have once fallen similarly, and remember the sensation! It’s not that unique. It’s practically a sport. An extreme sport, indeed. But one that has existed for at least as long as recorded, or remembered, expression. Whenever people spoke of anything – in every generation and in every culture – some were describing this very journey. The psychological and emotional equivalent of parachuting, but without the parachute, without a landing-field, or any other destination. Without a sponsor, or insurance, or even any means of navigation. And certainly no publicity (until you reach the finish-line). Just sensation! The sensation of absolute suspension. Not fearing heights, or depths. Fearless of speed, or stillness. Or at least sufficiently brave to face those fears…

For now I can only indulge in this sport for short flashes at a time – flashes long enough to write these little descriptions. But now a combination of fear, love for some non-leapers, and a passion for some other hobbies draws me elsewhere!

(11-26-28, Midnight)

Although no two people are exactly alike, and thus no one can find perfect instruction in another’s (even perfectly) articulated feelings, experiences, etc., one can, after sufficient search and study, piece together a broad mosaic which may help him (or her) catch an ‘articulatable’ glimpse of some of his (or her, godammit) own ever-fleeting and kaleidoscopic whims, reactions and collisions.

After collecting enough of those infitesimile slivers, one starts to notice patterns and repetitions, and those slivers eventually start accumulating bulk, until one has a better grasp of his (or her, godammit) experience.

And if they be generous, they can then labor to articulate it for others and, thus, expand, however minutely, this ever-growing public mosaic.

Are collages just an art form for those who cannot draw or paint?

I ask myself this quite often since I spend a lot of my own lifetime cutting, matching, pasting, and titling collages, rather than practicing draftsmanship, etc.

The answer I usually give myself is that while collages might have been invented by those who couldn’t create original images of their own, these ‘borrowers’ managed to stumble upon an interesting crack in our psyches.

Many painters have painted larger images composed of smaller ones (think Archimboldo), yet the individual images all have a common, uniform language, and one voice can be heard, or felt, throughout. In a collage, however, the individual components usually have different origins and belong to different ‘sets’, so that when the collageist brings them together they form a time/space-warp which very much echoes our subconscious.

During every waking moment we have constant new sense-stimuli entering our sense organs and leaving their traces in our memory. We then carry around these traces as a collection of ‘found objects’ which our logic tries to organize into ‘proper’ separate categories. But when our logic takes a rest – after a shot, hit, or during a snooze – these objects all leap out of their ‘proper’ categories and start dancing and copulating in irrational Bacchic frenzies.

Collages have the ability to vaguely evoke these frenzies, even while logic be in full reign.

Whether or not one enjoys these Bacchic frenzies is a private and personal matter.  

Is Mika Tenhovaara a Bacchante? 

*Written for an exhibition of Collages by Mika Tenhovaara after being asked by a mutual friend, Hawk Alfredson.