Benjamen Walker’s Your Radio Nightlight was a sporadically produced radio program broadcast on WZBC Boston during a four-year period spanning 2000 to 2004. I don’t know what WZBC Boston is, but I happened across the radio program no less. In 2005 and 2006, Benjamen Walker was producing a different, but similar, radio program called Benjamen Walker’s Theory of Everything and on that program’s now defunct website toeradio.org, Benjamen Walker made available the MP3s of thirteen Your Radio Nightlife episodes. I sat and listened to them each during a short stretch of time. I would work during the day in my Driftwood Room on market research, telecommuting to Cedar Rapids, Iowa from Cloquet, Minnesota and I would put in my hours during the day. Afterward, at least during this stretch of time, I would listen to Benjamen Walker’s Your Radio Nightlight in three episode bursts with lengthy, arbitrary breaks in between episodes.

Your Radio Nightlight tells the stories of the depraved individuals living and working among us in a documentary fashion that any listener of Radio Lab or This American Life is surely familiar with. In Your Radio Nightlife, Benjamen Walker interviews the principal characters involved in these post-modern fantasies and more often than not, the stories he tells are his own. During the show, Benjamen Walker asks these many curious bystanders penetrating questions about the absurd circumstances of his stories, for instance how did he come to meet a three-headed dog and what are these men chasing us with guns for? Listening to these observant people calmly explain to the excitable and dramatic Benjamen Walker how these total fucking insane events came to pass you get the unnerving feeling that these people are agents of the situation. These people are responsible.

Benjamen Walker narrates his radio programs, sometimes in the first-person and sometimes in the third-person, in a stressful tone. Sometimes listening to Benjamen Walker I would hold my breath for long periods of time. I would stop breathing so that I could hear perfectly what he was going to say next. More often than not, he would surprise me with a quick plot change or witty turn of phrase but even in those moments, I could not shake the feeling that I was induced to choke myself at the sheer drama of his stories.

At some point in the recent past, the episodes of Your Radio Nightlight detailed below went offline. Through various re-formats of my hard drive and the accidental disposal of DVDs containing my archive of Benjamen Walker, I lost possessions of these stories. Thanks to the awesome power of Ask Metafilter (in particular, the gallant knave), I now once again possess thirteen episodes of Your Radio Nightlife. I make available these thirteen episodes as a service to the public, may we all enjoy Your Radio Nightlife forever more.

• Escape
• Underworld
• The Night
• Holy War
• What a Wonderful World
• Greater Depression
• Greatest Depression
• Noa Noa, Part I
• Noa Noa, Part II
• Noa Noa, Part III
• Man without a Country
• Resurrection Rashoman
• A Sacrifice

under miraculous circumstantial repeating
womanly gesturing beckoning
curving sweaty containing red flowing

islanded meandering and thoughtless indiscretionary grasping
transporting airy invisibility mouthed
watery splashing slightly covering general misgivings and arousing

opening lidded sightings darkly slapping fingered beepings
sitting nearly daring honestly saying
more accurate eventually dreamed

This man next door has drilled a hole through the wall separating my kitchen from his hallway. He stands at the other side of the wall, his eye peering into my kitchen at all hours of the day and he waits for me to engage him in a bit of conversation. We speak through the hole in the wall, our communication compressed into tidy bits of regurgitated information. Sometimes he asks me about the stars in the sky, he says he’s never seen them before. I tell him it’s daylight right now and you can’t see something that isn’t there. In the light, the stars are hidden or else they don’t exist anymore. Besides, I tell him, you only just drilled the hole in the wall and surely you’ve seen the stars before that. He doesn’t answer but he does ask that I relay a few questions to the stars on his behalf.

Later, I come to the hole in the wall and find him gazing silently at the blender on the counter. I tell him that I spoke to the stars and that they wanted to know more about the grass that shifts so slightly in the evening breeze. He says he thought they might be interested in the grass and “What did you tell the stars?” I tell him about the conversation I had with the stars about grass and about how in the daytime when the stars are hidden or no longer exist, the grass is green and it sways lightly then too in the morning breeze or the afternoon breeze. In the daytime the grass buzzes with the activity of insects and rodents and other larger animals some of which eat the grass for sustenance. Then I tell him that the stars had no interest in his proposal and he blinks.

One day while eating breakfast at the kitchen table directly below the hole in the wall, the man next door coughs a little. It isn’t very loud but he usually doesn’t make noise unless we are in direct eye contact. I finish eating my cereal and then I wash the dishes. In order to delay the inevitable, I even dry the dishes and place them in their proper place before confronting the man next door at the hole in the wall. I ask him if he is alright and pass a cough drop through the cough drop-sized hole in the wall. He thanks me and asks about the stars. I tell him I haven’t talked to them much lately and besides, there are more important things to spend time thinking about. “Like what?” he asks. I tell him about nuclear weapons because it’s the first thing that comes to mind. I tell him about the difference between fusion/fission nuclear weapons and the new pure fusion nuclear weapons that are currently under development in the unknown deserts and forgotten islands of the world. He says the stars might know something about that. I listen to his over-wrought explanation about the technical aspects of a star and even though his description is wordy and sometimes beyond my comprehension, I have to admit that he might be onto something.

That night, I lay in the grass on my back staring at the sky until dawn breaks. I ask the stars questions that the man next door told me to ask. I wrote down the questions on a small notepad, transcribed as best I could. The hole in the wall sometimes leaves artifacts in our speech though so I had to guess which words and sounds were extraneous. The stars knew things beyond our basic understandings of nuclear physics and certainly beyond my basic understandings of science and no matter how quickly I wrote, the words strung together on my notepad only added to nonsense. I spent the whole night like this. I spoke my disjointed findings from the stars to the man next door through the hole he drilled into our wall and even in his eyeball I could see him nodding. After I finished speaking my notes to him, he filled the hole with Spackle and left the hole in the wall.
For weeks there were loud noises that I could hear through the wall and then one day he left.

regarding your captured space,
to capture air breathed
in and out of a frame,

a picture frame
framing thoughts
and oxygen until

outside of the frame,
outside of the bubble,
the air rushes outside of your lungs

and you are left gasping
at the frame

• A contradiction of “first publishing rights” that journals so greatly desire is the purpose of this blog.
• A random assortment of little read poetry and prose is the purpose of this blog.
• A polemic to the vast success and failure of web enterprise is the purpose of this blog.
• Occasional redesigns and a great deal of “thinking” about typefaces is the purpose of this blog.
• Discussions and designations and delusions and debates about Mexican and Argentine poetry is the purpose of this blog.
• Drinking tea is the purpose of this blog.
• Tao Lin is the purpose of this blog.
• Brandon Scott Gorrell is the purpose of this blog.
• Blake Butler is the purpose of this blog.
• Name dropping random “blog school” authors to generate traffic from those “blog school” authors when they search their own name on “Google” is the purpose of this blog.
• Reading Bolano is as close to “having sex” as reading gets is the purpose of this blog.
• A three pronged blog strategy is the purpose of this blog.
• In other words, read IEB and such loud noise also is the purpose of this blog.
• Generating less traffic than IEB and such loud noise is the purpose of this blog.
• Martha Zweig is the purpose of this blog.
• Martha Zweig is not a “blog school” author is the purpose of this blog.
• I imagine Martha Zweig is very beautiful and I would fall in love with her and eat blackberries in a green tinted kitchen with her, if by chance I had the chance is the purpose of this blog.
• Tweet Twat is the purpose of this blog.
• Tomorrow is the purpose of this blog.
• And Wednesday is the purpose of this blog.
• A long digression on The Savage Detectives is the purpose of this blog.
• On Wednesday is the purpose of this blog.

We would sit together outside of your place, on cement blocks just talking about the past like it was the long forgotten missed opportunity. Smoking cigarettes that were meant for other mouths, trading stories and truth about the nature of our experience, I would feel a warmth rising in my chest and you would too maybe because we’d light up another in a chain of smoking lasting far too long for the cold. Together we were neglected, unappreciated, barely acknowledged enough to be ignored, an invisible class but we could have changed the face of history, you and I we could have made a difference in perceptions. I would sometimes watch you at the podium, giving a speech about whatever, your thought process transparent while discussing the inherent impacts and topical technicalities. You were off thinking otherwise and maybe we were meant to be, our mindsets so similar in distraction, unable to even consider the here and now. We would sit and reminisce out of a dearth of subjects to speak of but then occasionally there would be a spark, a poem recited and I would share with you the words of my ways. And in those moments, I reflect now, an art was born in the each of us, an often indescribable feeling and desire for creation. I think again about seemingly insignificant times spent doing drugs and smoking cigarettes, stooping for a better view, finding our voice together, one realization at a time.

And on and on? A question of continuity
and endurance? Will it become, what was
it before, to say this is was that not? And
on and on? It was this not is and has prop-
erties too? Why was is instead? Where along
is will it be was and is this really is? And
on and on? Until was there being why it is?
Forever they was is are becoming them to
us for is? Was is it was? And on and on?

Before it was is it was always is and begin-
ning was is beginning to question is instead?
Instead of intricate is for feeling was awar-
ded is and? And on and on? Is it never was
because? Because it is is was is it becomes
because is to arrange was? Alas is it? And
on and on? Also the it was always along for
it awaiting was never before? Beyond was go-
ingbecoming is always as is? And on and on?

To say it is without first was is to say it again?
“Would it be different with a different pen?”
And on and on? But is was going to be forever
as always is? And if is then was, a circular logic
belies? And on and on? A daring particular is go-
ing to shed light on was before it is all said and
was? Perhaps is going is simliar in form to was
from before even is to see? And on and on? May-
be instead we will just presume and on and on?

A tweet twat is an examination of the Twitter technocracy that attempts to unravel the very nature of my random 140-word missives. You can follow me at twitter for raw voltage. In theory, a new tweet twat will posted every Tuesday.

One night stoned in Portland, inside of a car breezing through the windows in the back seat, the cold dead night fills the air with speed and height. Driving on the highways that wrap and bend around the buildings dotting the Willamette shores, a feeling of immense power fills full of wonder at the human condition, a supreme understanding of environment enabling the construction of massive monuments to transportation. At any given moment in time, the roads at our disposal can take us as far away from problems and responsibility as need be, behind the wheel of an auto machine, an untrained and unrestrained driver can visit such great frights upon passengers high to by, besides needing rest and comfort, our party of three needs life. A small Honda Accord moves quickly into the embankment of the highway, a colossal column upholding the tenets of freedom of movement, the car whips lashes along the curve before an announcement, “We missed our exit, I think, maybe.” Turn around and drive fast back, toward home warding the want to suggest a change of leadership. Eventually familiarity is found and upon the city streets moving under lights, forgetting the risks involved instead supremely preoccupied by the breed of person wandering PDX late at night. At a stop a woman walks before the Honda Accord screaming obscenities at an unknown target, landing punches once crossed upon the glass walls of a bus stop. Inside the car, glances sidelong worried that she’ll notice, the light turns green and the car travels safely into the block finding home before too long as the frantic ride becomes a memory of insanity saved for another day.

(via FFFFOUND!)

On a Saturday once a child sought to say
he wished to be free from the constraints of childhood.
That child, on this Saturday, leapt
from his second-story window to the ground,
finding instead of Earth the sky below.
Falling forever it seemed, the child began to wonder
if maybe the sky has no end
and jumped again inside of the beginning.

Picture by Lauren Nasseff (via FFFFOUND!)

There is a road in Cedar Rapids, Iowa that goes on
for miles a sidewalk to walk down and all along
the way beside a fence forever guarding nothing inside,
no live stock no horses no dogs no house
just fields and fields of flat Iowa glory and I walked
down that sidewalk one night in search of her love
at the end of the way somewhere along the way
I think for some reason I thought that if I walked along the way
I’d eventually run into her but instead the sidewalk just finished
and I took a nap in the field.

Poetry by Tan Lin

Why does one stop reading a poem? Simply because they are tired, probably.

From the moment I met her I believed she was an exquisite liar. One night I asked her if she lied in one language better than another because I knew she loved questions like that (all questions for her resembled lies), and she said she knew she could lie best in English, because it was not her favorite language and was most free in it but when she was in bed with someone she preferred to make the sounds of endearment and physical longing in Chinese.

by Tan Lin, purveyor of mad ambient stylistics and lulling you to sleep. Says Charles Bernstein:

He wants to make good on his sense of language as “forever temporal, subject to change, cancellation, decay,” of language’s harrowing, or is it hallowing, “failure to specify anything in the here and now.”

GDI08 by Sophie Kern

Seeping from our souls
all the time drains an energy
like light our very force
of cause our belief in something
besides and inside
of that energy brings persuasion
of reason our logic falling
by the wayside our energy engulfs
the human nature in us all.

An Electric Literature Single Sentence Animation – Luca Dipierro imagines Lydia Millet’s “Sir Henry” (via ElectricLiterature)

There are times when I remember flying off the bends, blasting each mournful fellow five flights from Arch Street, a low groan landing down the stairs from my temporal turf telling each neighbor nothing and no one. The apartment sat above the law offices of Daniel, Schmidt and Snyder and consisted of one room essentially walled with wooden panels wilting under my touch, the entire length of the square footage accounted for a rectangle roughly thirty paces long and only five wide. At the moment, I stood in the bedroom, at the opposite end of the building furthest away from my office with blares tuning talent out off the computer speakers each silent bang speaking reverb through the linoleum floors. I had aligned below the window closest to my desk a collection of Jones Soda Bottles numbering in the hundreds according to a predetermined random array standing along the foot of the floor.

From my vantage point, the vestiges of oranges and cream did not look real, erect glass so far from home. Launching levitating little discs in slow motion the frisbees would float the length of the landing crashing and not breaking a series of bottles born bowling across the industrial carpeted floor. This game of frisbee golf grandstanding, dangerous disc destroying was often played with two or three competitors competing for the prize, we each Ricky, Rae and I would stand in the rotten room smoking room plenty of room inside and throw one frisbee, two frisbee, three frisbees and count our fallen few.

The Harvey Girls once gave credence to crashing cashing in on the craze, but in retrospect it behaves along the single slow core of a rotating axis, bellowing the great destroyer and long division away. The winter of early disconnect preceding prior to a peaking disorder and derange, each night spent at the residence on Arch Street was a remarkable return to tunes unheard under inappropriate volume, voluptuous bass and sounds required. From the beginning of most evenings a reluctant sound would leak, a note held laying into the sign, and Hannu once they knew were there too by design. Over intercom over and out we would all together drift in and out of consciousness sounds sipping at our ears with eyes barely open. The dramatic innuendo daresay innuendo would uphold in momentary collapses, fists full of mountains tonight.

Even in walks wailing while winking at the barista down the way, the snow would slow to a fall of frozen memories, each speck of darkness delights in the aural asphyxiation of soon to strum strong stumble to forget the fun in all of this. Willing walking around the neighborhood near Arch Street wound up an exercise in photographic pheromones with background tones of wrong wrong warbles. Each wandering walk step away would bring me right back to the apartment on Arch Street slouching under the weight of each hammering hum holding on for too long until as suddenly as a light, a release of relics and return to time.

The sixty-three individual residences comprise
my space of time traveling beyond
the normal limits of decency, collected
crevices and corners collide and arise
to the ceiling looking up from a bed
I can count the dimples in the sky.

In possessing sixty-three individual residences I can say
assuredly that crimes committed currently
will be forgotten inside of a different room,
that indiscretion is insubordinate an insufficient
sum of actions belonging to now
will forgive your errors tomorrow.

Second, she was in town for the weekend and we’d been unable to curtail our meandering discussions, we had launched little of note in the days that proceeded our first viewing always finding time to converse generally about themes and moods and she desperately wanted to understand our mania. The three of us, he and I again accompanying her for her first, we visited our presence upon Uptown Theatre once more waiting in line this time shorter we quickly stubbed out our cigarettes as we approached the ticket booth and found ourselves to the balcony beckoning for an encore. In shifts and shapes the Texas terrain travelled near our eyes, we stared and stumbled once more for two hours honoring our fallen heroes on the silver screen, Chigurh reminded us of the vaulted values we veered to advance we said to ourselves, “He is not a hero, he is a friend.” She in the midst made eye-contact again and again understanding fully our full blown obsession. The climatic coalescence of death at the hand of a roving band of Mexicans, a muddled party murdered without much regard for past history and superior motives. We thanked again our purveyors of pictures, a petulance is an end to something so secure.

Third, high and mighty we danced and danced discovering in datum a daring escape is soundless as the dry baked desert watches us by. Accompanied this time by menly friends forever we four found time in our like-minded ways to sit still for a few hours finding on the screen again and again the beginnings of something beautiful. I begin to obsess over the stark slow steps of Llewelyn across the way our camera felt far away and he is a small man traversing a long patch of dirt for a second before the scene is cut and we are transported beyond. I continue to stare at the little man walking his way across the frame our loved ones gone from the forefront and replaced with a resemblance to plot, I wonder what happens if you leave it be at that, a dark dot doting daring the audience to withstand two minutes of tedious travel. Later, I begin to wonder what it all means to know the words before they are spoken a sensation like watching Pretty in Pink a dozen times maybe? The four of us frown and furrow we toke and mumble and find a bit of laughter in the short walk home from Uptown Theatre we welcome with warm arms the indoors from a cold night and we bake our heads together for discussions discerning the quality of our viewing experiences once more.

Fourth, a visit is visited upon our entrants a bottle of Jameson jams our circuits as we again, he and I, are joined by friends and foes alike, his high school mates matter and we decide that the night is best spent viewing at Uptown Theatre a fourth time the wonderous film of Chigurh and his curious collisions with the human nature of our brothers and sisters. We stink of sminking gin and whiskey and we watch belatedly always the action unfolding. I can nearly taste the blood spilling from the cast colluding to determine our mindset and mood. I can feel my spirits lifting at the nearing apex, our arch ascending such great towers of height to find at the top a spellbinding performance of background and minimalism. Our fleeting forever feelings fade with sobriety and we find our car afterward covered in snow. The quiet conversation that follows in his schoolmates vehicle validates the inferiority of drunken depictions and a daring disguise for likely entertainments, our talk centers on he and I’s fourth viewing of such solid foundations under the influence of various substances and we vow next time to partake in fungal shenanigans just for simply selective sake.

Fifth, long forgotten, a home theater setup precludes the Uptown Theatre arrangement as arrangements are made to subject those missing friends to gasping gauging reactions reflect the tone of evening, we darken the living room of the Garfield Common Lofts and sit with fright at the beguiling menace of Chigurh chasing Llewelyn leaving Carla Jean and we come to memorize entirely the gentle missives of Tommy Lee Jones unable, he and I, to pass a day without citing a line from the film we wrangle with separation anxiety as we smoke cigarettes and attend to our duties as employees of some companies we find ourselves finding meaning everyday in our lives as it relates and we’re glad to finally have this .AVI file forever on loop as a screen saver selected it projecting on the windows it dances across the space between houses and flits freaky flicks on the walls next door. The leftover relations regale us tales downstairs on the porch at the pleasure derived from viewing such insane delights on the living room screen, we the residents of the Garfield Common Lofts take turns telling each other about long moments of grace, a murdered perfection and we celebrate together the crowning achievement attained yet again, he and I add another badge of merit and ponder, “Might we dare watch a sixth?”

Sixth, a seclusion of senses emanates, his responsibility of book house basement stock manager has enabled his returns on a book and we skim scantily the passerbys and altogether alarmingly similar sentences uttered under oath we get a feeling of sparse nothing impregnating the space in margins mounting a coup d’etat copping with the singular notion of death deceiving he does not indeed murder in the end and we have a fall of place peeling from the canvass each scratch suffered we watch together for a final time vetting the insides of the intricate deceit dangled for our consumption we begin to weary and waver in our uncompromising cadavers until finally a break through the walls of our overly analytical assumptions we reach the top of this casts collective charisma melting under the sun and we stand at the precipice wordless without doubt, we bow down lastly again for the sixth time in a two week span found sight asunder and lately we believe that such things are best represented undone.

Upstairs in her office seven stories high she takes from her pocket a ring of keys full to the dozen each key looking like the last her learned stare and expert touch tells her which key is the answer and she unlocks the door to find a dark closet full of desks, the damp cold air of nights rest lingers she fingers the wall for the switch and alight washes over the dingy office space. She sits for a time reading various papers, her mind wanders constantly at the state of study the focal point of her knowledge the nature of her experiments and then she arises, locking the door once more in departure, she ventures the hallways in search she finds another door and again reaches into her pocket for her ring of keys, the jingle of stale metal and worn teeth, these keys who have been possessed by owners numerous equally impressed with their mimicry, she selects the proper key and opens another door. Inside of the classroom she surveys the surroundings, she prowls around the desks and answers a few questions regarding rocks and readings attitudes and opinions concerning methods of measurement, her students know she can make them do better. At class end she exits, the room locked she finds herself again under the blank florescence of an anonymous hallway, streaking across the white floor the soles of her shoes have absorbed the slickness of a frequently polished surface and she practically skates to the next door keys already equipped she quickly jabs at the handle with the sharp point, turning robotically, she stands now before a laboratory. Inside she chats and mingles discussing various subjects and hoping to catch a glimpse of her advisor but long after passes and she bids farewell to her companions, the door behind her barred she crosses the hall to find her office locked still yet again. With a familiar motion she retrieves the ring of keys and unlocks the door, a sequence repeated over and over again the grinding halting sound of a notch lifting a pin and the wonder of a door opening in.