Halloween Again...

As we head towards Halloween again, and with the new e-book in circulation, I am left to reflect on what it means to live/work through a transitional time. Some home truths seem to be both stark and Halloween-ish; television, print media, popular culture are all bottoming out on an atrocious level of thoughtlessness and mediocrity. The vacuity of what's "around," in all these contexts, is breathtaking. Meanwhile, the world created from, and out of, the Internet, while it has to have some of the earmarks on the century XX world, has set in place the possibility that those with the brains and gumption to do so can forge their own worlds, universes, contexts. Is it that stark in 2017: the Internet set against the rest of America, or the rest of the world? I am given to wonder because, as the Halloween skull you see here being flown at 1521 Fayette Street in  Conshohocken, the contrasts are so stark, so deathly. If we are moving towards an era in which online universes win more of the time against the hollowed-out stuff, you can bet the plebeian sector of humanity won't be particularly happy about it; they'd gladly stay in century XX forever. But the individualistic portion of humanity, who dare to live beneath the surface and develop their cognitive capacities, will have a much easier time finding outlets for creative self-expression. That seems to me to be more important; even if the "skull" hovering around the endeavor, which suggests rancor and even physical violence, has to be flown, because between those of my kith and kin and the plebes it must, it seems, be never-the-twain.

View from River Walk, Conshohocken, across the Schuylkill

Adam Fieled: Conshohocken, Pa: September 2017

Volo Coffeehouse, Manayunk

The Posit Trilogy was released September 9, 2017, as an Argotist E-Book. Posit, the first third of the Trilogy, was written in December/January '06/'07 in my Logan Square apartment in Center City Philadelphia, and released as a Dusie chap on June 9, 2007. The second and third portions of the Trilogy (Deposit and Re-Posit) were initially drafted here, at Volo Coffeehouse, on Main Street, Manayunk, in late August 2013. I re-drafted them earlier this year. Volo resembles the Last Drop in Center City Philadelphia very specifically; the high, coffered ceiling, large bay window facade, and general ambiance of all things indie, avant, and Bohemian distinguish it. I happened to be reading Augustine's Confessions as I drafted Deposit and Re-Posit; I also happened to be wearing all my Carnaby Street/Urban Outfitter's gear from the Aughts. And carrying a cigarette case. The coffee was super-potent.  

New Argotist Online E-Book: The Posit Trilogy

The new Adam Fieled Argotist Online E-Book is The Posit Trilogy. Many thanks to Jeffrey Side.

"The Posit Trilogy initiates a cycle, and then repeats it twice: a kind of Father, Son, Holy Ghost structure around the poet's quest to achieve self-hood, through analysis of different kinds of subjectivity (visionary, practical), explorations of dreams (consciousness creating its own kinds of matrixes and mazes to wander around in), and attempted resonances with the American city of Philadelphia (birthplace of America, enchanted by history, architecture, hidden depths, and interstitial, subterranean structures). The cycles that constitute The Posit Trilogy ricochet back and forth, with an eye towards creating a poetic landscape individual, idiosyncratic, and loopy enough to stimulate any human brain receptive to its advances."

Here is the current list of Argotist Online E-Books.

Two Plugs

Mike Land & I dropped acid in Logan
Square, danced down to the Drop,
spaced out in the dank basement;
sashayed over to Jen Cho's first floor
apartment on Lombard Street, where
she held court, partying with her U of
Delaware "green" buddies; & huffed some
hash on top of the acid. Mike sat in an
armchair, rocking. Erin, Jen's chum,
sent me purple signals, but Mike had to be
wheeled out of there. Jen's was a floor to
crash on, for Erin & I later. I got my news.
Over at the Drop, Erin's geeks had our number-
I woke Mike up to hear the code: two plugs.

Boys/Girls, Aughts/Teens

The born-in-the-90s generation are in an interesting position. Because the era we happen to be living through is a transitional one, they will not have the problem my generation was forced to work around- of being stuck in a crawl-space, with a rapacious, monomaniacal system of information dissemination dictating what our economy should be to us. We had nowhere to run, nowhere to hide- everyone was more-or-less forced to experience the same events, catastrophes, uprisings, and conflagrations at the same time. Kids born in the 90s can, via the Internet especially, take their pick of what to believe, what to experience, what to study, what to internalize, and who to trust. The popular entertainment 'biz, important for kids, does happen to be in a huge slump now; but the Net offers a variety of alternatives, so that as the brighter, more inquiring kids develop their own "routes," their brains can expand in whatever direction happens to appeal to them at any given moment.