SIMULACRA
Self Portrait
SIMULACRA
Akron Ohio Ibarra Ecuador
SIMULACRA Dogs of Maricao If the city won’t recognize you a coincidence of direction aubade portrait of Eurydice as theater & thespian Nox the river of forgetfulness & the caves of hypnos The Seven Deaths of Matthew C. Mackey The march hares Girl Sitting Against a Wall Breakfast The Doctrine of the Similar The God Elevator
Ken’s Collage
DOGS OF MARICAO They call them Satos, the stray dogs. In Maricao, a mountain town in Southwest Puerto Rico, we call them “those fucking dogs”, the dogs that limp down the street, missing fur, teeth, ears, often covered in insects. They are dangerous if you are a child and you get too close, as my daughter had found out while walking on a beach (not in Maricao, but a beach, a beach), where she had leaned to pet one and it snapped at her and she screamed and ran from it. They seem to have a sort of strange humility when it comes to grown men. My first encounter with these dogs, at least in my memory, was not in Old San Juan, oh great cruise ship destination of Puerto Rico (and beautiful town, not overwhelmingly American). In Old San Juan I saw great packs of cats, cats that would gather at the storefront in the shade while men smoked and talked nearby. It was when I was trying to find Maricao, which is not the easiest thing if its your first night in the jungle, and its getting dark, and you don’t know quite yet how the road works, how to continue on a route without taking another accidentally. I climbed a winding road up a mountain in the car, road swiftly turning to less than one lane, then gravel, and everyone is outside their beat down houses and they look at me like I’m lost, which I am. The dog, a small grey thing, ran in front of my car and I stopped abruptly to avoid hitting it, but it wouldn’t move, so I’d move a foot forward and hit it WUMP and hear it bark, then another foot forward WUMP and meanwhile the country folk standing next to the car watching me are wondering why I don’t know that the dog will get out of the way eventually, and maybe they’re wondering what I’m doing up this road. I push past the dog and reach the summit of the mountain and run out of gravel and am on dirt. And I stop and
get out of the car and curse and kick the tire like I’m in some movie about the tourist who gets cut to bits. And, when I light a cigarette, sit on the hood, and look, I can see the mist and jungle spreading out for miles, every once in awhile a little concrete house on the edge of something, a flash, something bright between the trees. But eventually, I have to come back down this same mountain, and pass that same damned dog, and this time I make sure I’m going fast enough so that I don’t have to stop. I’m not sure if I hit him. I know the car jumped, and I heard his owners shout something at me. I don’t know. I don’t speak Spanish. If I was to bet on it, I would put money on “the dog lived” because, as I was to see later, the dogs are nimble. They are survivors. There are 200,000 or so stray dogs in Puerto Rico. I knew a girl from Bath Township who would kidnap strays without collars, to take care of them. She smoked pounds of marijuana and would go on these long drives in other people’s neighborhoods. If a dog had left the yard, it didn’t matter what neighborhood she was in, she would just put a bag over its head and pop him in the back seat, take him home, rename him. I asked her why she did it, when she never knew if someone was looking for the dog or not, or some little kid might be out there looking and his best friend, Lassie, abducted, renamed, rehomed. I picture her in Puerto Rico driving with a trunk full of dogs, bodies piled like anchovies, dogs in her backseat, some belted in, puppies yipping on laps, some large dog, part Irish wolfhound, head out of sunroof getting whacked in the whiskers by the jungle brush and limbs hanging down over the road...and she’s whacking the fleas on her neck with one arm while trying to steer, but she’s going too fast... its a one lane road, and a truck comes around the bend…
Euthanasia is at 97% or more in Puerto Rico, meaning if you take these dogs to a shelter, they will probably be killed. In 2007, Julio Diaz Cintron and his cohorts in Animal Control hurled 80 dogs off of a bridge, 50 feet to their deaths. They call it the Barceloneta Massacre. No one has been convicted of the crime. Owners, when tired of their pets, often drop them off in the jungle. I have been counting since I got to Maricao, and I’ve counted at least fourteen around the plaza. Six of them run in a pack, the rest are checked off in my Puerto Rican field guide as stray dogs when I see them laying in the road, or hiding under a set of stairs, or sleeping under a car. I see the pack together often, and take pictures of them in the street. Sometimes I follow them to see where they go, and they stop and turn as if to say stop following me. I don’t bother to name them, not because they’ll be dead soon, but that naming them is akin to naming a hyena. I would name a dog if I wanted it to come eat, and come play. I have no names for dogs that have no use for names. There is the brown dog, the white, and the black. Those are the leaders, the loudest, the others come and go. The pack has been outside my door all day, kicking around a blue trash can. I’ve been drinking heavy and snorting cocaine and the sun is going down on our 30th day and when Brigette invites me and Roxanne over to stay the night with her up the road in Pueblo Nuevo, I decide that I’ll stay home and get really drunk and spend some time alone. I regret it about an hour in because I’m lonely, and as if in response to my psychic need, Brigette is texting and sending messages to me every five minutes so I can’t concentrate. I secretly think she’s a bruja, and I begin to worry about it. I can’t breathe, the scent of ammonia in the apartment is so strong and it’s so stuffy I feel like I’m sweating piss and I’ve got to g e t
out of there. I’ve got to escape so I’m smashing through my stuff, tossing it around the living room because I can’t find my pocketknife because the bruja has cleaned my apartment without my consent, and I’m sending messages to her in a bastardized Spanish demanding to know where my knife is because there are crooks and thieves everywhere that were eyeing me near the bar and whispering sinister things and that I’m going for a walk and it will be her fault if I’m killed because all I have is my teeth. I can’t make a fist I’m so out of sorts. Nothing is coming back to me that makes any sense. I toss the phone as far as I can from me and leave the place in disgust, filling up my large plastic cup to the brim with Don Q for the walk, about seven shots, a little splash of Coca Cola to take the edge off. There is a point where the street is silent of the baying dogs. Rita, the wife of one of my friends here, tells me that this is a bad sign...its because they, unlike me, can see the spirits of the dead. The dogs stare at the spirits of Maricao, and they look like they’re awake, but dreaming. I follow their eyes and I can’t see a damn thing, and soon enough they can’t either because they shake it off and recline by overturned trash cans. I lean against the green concrete of my apartment and watch them. After a long while, the pack sits upright again. They have noticed a cat four or five blocks away. They are at full attention. They bark and bark at the cat silhouette, and the ragged cat hears them and runs swiftly to a fence and slips between iron bars. The dogs lick their lips and steal glances at each other. What should we do? Is it gone? Will he come back? I walk down the street to the Gruta San Juan Bautista, the small falls and the spring, to get a drink of water, because the water in the apartment is hot. There is no word for warm in Spanish, not really, at least I don’t know it. I walk and walk. The Ashford’s, the duty free cigarettes are getting to me, I’m huffing and puffing before I even get a block or two. My heart is clenching. It must be the bruja’s dark magic.
The most savage dogs paces outside of his home, restless. In the lane to the Gruta, a family lives there, the usual fat parents with skinny kids. Their dog is a beast. They don’t keep it leashed He snarls and I think of what I might do to him if he attacks me...I have the right to walk by, but these people have the right to protect their property, but it is a public street after all. I chug down more Don Q and wait. 100 feet back or so, I watch while the dog barks and growls and walks in ever widening circles...I’m afraid of dogs. When I was little I was much smaller in stature than most other kids, neighborhood dogs unleashed would tackle me in the street, and I would get hurt. I remember being knocked down eight or nine times in a row by a big golden retriever, who was a bully by any standard. I began to hate the owners. Why don’t you keep that monster on a chain, I would think. Your precious Mitsy. Ha! I would sneer in bitter disgust when I heard phrases coming out of owners’ mouths...she’s friendly! She doesn’t bite! I never believed them, keeping my distance, but I found out that dogs do not give a fuck about personal space and so still I was bit often, clawed, knocked down, maybe even raped, I don’t know I’ve blocked it out.
Eventually Auntie so and so comes out of the door and grabs the dog by the fur and pulls it inside so that I can pass. The dog yelps when she grabs it, and looks at me as if to say, Next time, Im going to kill you. The Gruta San Juan Bautista, a small waterfall with steps on either side leading to the top, and only the right hand path leads to the Glory of God, a balcony of sorts where stands a statue of John the Baptist in mid baptism of Jesus Christ our lord and savior. The water is rigged so that it drips out of The Baptists bowl onto the head of Jesus. Up on the stairs, and then on balcony overlooking the water, the coqui and the jungle bugs are in full rapture around me. The coqui whistle, the “all clear,” you might expect from a nine year old boy in a no girls allowed club. There are bands of reptiles, bands of animals in this town. And now there is no one else around. The whole town is asleep. I finish my cup of rum and now find myself drunk. Behind me, I sense the presence of the King of Kings, his shadow cast upon my back, I’m angry about that, and lonely, and strange. Turning, looking up to Christ, The eyes are blank and I am feeding emotions into them, hoping they will register anger, love. I hold the wet hands of this enormous statue of Jesus and I look up at it and I wish the hands would clasp over mine and I call Christ a faggot when they don’t. I crumple my cup and wedge it between his arm and his torso; it looks as though he’s frustrated by its emptiness, hands out, pleading for more money for more of the Don, the Don Q, the Don Kee HOH TAY his eyes telling me all of that and nothing. I start crying, and I don’t stop for an hour. Occasionally, I look into the empty spaces, hoping I can see the spirits of the dead, but, of course, I don’t. It’s just emptiness and more emptiness. If it was Ohio, I would’ve slept in the woods that night,
so strong was my desire to get away from that apartment and the call of that phone and the book I was trying to write, and all of it was driving me totally insane with search for purpose, when I know damn well some things are purposeless, and violent, and all things end, but there are giant centipedes in the woods, so I began the walk back, slowly, acid from stomach ulcer burning in throat, each step like shaking a two liter. The dogs are at attention when they see me again, and then they are not because they know I’m not a threat. They can smell me, sniff the air, and they lie in the road, lazy...one of them has been fucking with the blue trash barrel again. It rolls slowly until it bumps softly against concrete wall. White, Brown, Black...the rest of the pack, evaporating into night mist. I wave at them, go into the apartment and get some beans and rice that Brigette’s aunt has made me, good rice with the kind of beans I love more than anything, the pink beans cooked in a pot with seasonings, cilantro, small potatoes, green olives, so much more, I’m thinking now as I write of two cans of pink beans which I will buy someday soon and stagger over one hungover morning and place in Brigette’s hands mumbling, “Mas, mas, por favor” and she will look at me and exclaim “Que cajones!”, and cook them anyways. I bring out the pot and throw some on the sidewalk next to my door, and the dogs cross the street and lap it up. They have no trouble sharing. I go back inside and get a can of tuna, and open that, and bang it out on the cement, then I sink against the wall and sit with them. When they finish, they lie next to the wall with me. I call to one, the white dog, and he scoots over without getting up entirely, he does this while still laying, just kind of wiggles over and lays his scarred head next to my hand. The dog is nuzzling my hand and lays his head on my lap. We are staring at each other, our eyes meaning nothing. He makes a few sudden movements every now and then, like a spastic. I have this
feeling he is fighting like hell not to just break the moral codes ingrained in him when he was a pup and just go primal, rip my goddamn throat out, if only to have just one good meal. We have something in common, and I pat his dusty head, my fingers greasy from his fur. He is lazy and leans his head on my shoulder like a tired woman. When I first met Brigette, she had laid her head on my shoulder like a dog. There is no other way to put it. She put her head on my shoulder and looked up at me with brown eyes and wanted to speak, but couldn’t, not enough English. The black dog is carrying milk for puppies. Where are they? The black dogs naked belly reminds me of her...Brigette pulls her shirt up exposing her stomach when she’s hot, something that the Puerto Rican men do, just pull the shirts up and let the glistening stomach hang in the sun, its natural. There is no word for warm here because there is no warm here, only hot. And the dogs, like everyone else, head to the ocean, eventually. There is a beach that they call “Dead Dog Beach” where people put their dogs when they don’t want them anymore. Others can go and pick one out, sometimes at night they’re used as target practice by gangs of men and boys with pistols. But, it’s night now, and I pet the dogs on either side of me, as they have surrounded me… I pet them and sing to them the song my mother used to sing to me to quiet me down before bedtime. It goes like this: The Lord bless you and keep you The Lord make his face shine upon you And give you peace And give you peace And give you peace Forever Halfway though the song, something stirs them and they leap up, frightening me, cutting the song short, and they are answering some call of the night, limping, skipping, running into some new ghosts. I sit alone, out of rum. Before long, I am convinced that the spirits they see in the street are the dogs that have come and gone before them.
SleEp
a coincidence of direction give me brass compass
a magnetized needle afloat in a bowl
of seawater an antiquated stellar astrolabe to point me away from the direction leading to my demise disuse of sail & paddle a rudder redacted & ruined leave me a raft caught in a trough an orphan in a kelp basket as if turtle or waterfowl bereft of water shadow can you hear me silver dollar sliver of an ear? do you see me waxwing boy soon known to sunlight? among whitecaps & cumulus clouds I am but minor planet a pear in an apple orchard plumb bob pointing to no known plane where I can balance chance & dispatch so I recite this sober poem without guitar & with the oak barrel merit of wine’s alacrity & excess as I wash ashore on the peninsula of your body encompassed & quashed & calmed as if silence waiting to follow an echo
Pohang
Women
aubade night’s sooty gradation plays gray scales extemporaneous & exact hours of forsworn intent masquerading as joint ventures prod onward toward the impossibility of closure doused & rejected then an unticked clock a sudden flocking sound of dark wings an ark loged in an exactitude of tree trunks & branched conjectures as if a plum wine red plumage is arrayed as if green birds yellowing as if ripened pears & the mulberry tree is as enjoined as if a theater sold out on opening night & not as couples in dance steps conjoined & not as in the precision of a quadrille but as a singular & softening retort but as the spontaneous & portending arrival of day’s light
portrait of Eurydice as theater& thespian imploring possibility to release me from a probability of living inside a tin cage I hear the clasp release clack of beak & wing-thrum call it clean break a flawless nightjar flight from island to archipelago to apartment door arriving with wings beating then standing with knocking hand held as if a photograph of a fist: flash! & a portal opens from threshold to theater to ticket window to stage to Eurydice & her hands are premise & promise as if a constellation of catbirds & mockingbirds on a catwalk in the sky over parting black curtains at heights where gravity arcs the earth & waxwinged Eurydice swings on a wire while below I rise to my toes flapping my impossible wings
Nox the river of forgetfulness & the caves of Hypnos Orpheus exhales & sets down the hash pipe smoke wisps & meanders & disappears the dusky sleep god murmurs inducing drowsiness Orpheus remembers a poppy’s scent & hears whispered: memory’s other name is ghost in her home his mother Calliope keeps a curio cabinet a closet or cloister the latch clacked & lifted he covers a table’s top in tea cups & seashells & halved walnuts each shielding a secret turned over each reveals remembrance: a satyr’s laughter song & silence a blue guitar feather & ink excess & echo a beached row boat a turtle turned-over rain on a river lack & longing empty aerie forget-me-not leaves steeped in steaming water from a river whose name he’s forgotten
The Seven Deaths of Matthew C Mackey I. Five nights ago was the last time Matthew C. Mackey was seen alive. He had, as he was prone to do, taken his evening in a local bar. According to corroborating reports, he left his apartment around 10:00 pm Friday and headed to Loco Mono in central Ibarra. Supposedly, he frequented the establishment to see a young lady named, Maria Vacones. His friends and colleagues noticed his absence the following Monday, when he failed to come into work. After several attempts to reach him by phone and email, Dr. Joshua Litzenfield, head of the English department at Urcuqui Technological Institute, went to locate him, stopping first at his apartment, which there was no answer. After two more days, Dr. Litzenfield contacted the local authorities in Ibarra, who then began a nationwide search for the missing person. While foul play is not suspected, authorities are beginning to worry as neither his friends nor family have received word from him. Many think that he has simply left the city for the
more rural areas of Ecuador or fled the country entirely. However, there is no evidence to suggest that any luggage had been packed or arrangements for travel made through airlines or bus. In the summer of 2015, Matthew made his way from Northeastern Ohio to Ecuador in order to teach abroad, much to the grief of his closest companions and relations. Still, some thought that he was foolhardy, a liar, and most likely a cheat. Though there exists no record of these claims being made verbally, an investigation into his social media accounts revealed that Matthew had recently received messages from people he loved condemning him as irresponsible and dishonest. Whether these messages had any influence on him or not is a mystery, but his journals reveal that he was very troubled by the lack of faith. As part of the search, his journals which span fifteen years are being carefully read for clues which may lead to his discovery.
It is known that Matthew had been in contact with a Norwegian journalist before his disappearance and had been offered the opportunity to sail around South America, a notion that he often spoke about with colleagues. An attempt to find the Norwegian journalist has begun as well as a joint effort with Ecuadorian and Venezuelan authorities to locate the proposed ship, known as Ser y Nada. The owner of the ship, Victor Guerrere, refused to speak to the police, as he was under scrutiny for other unrelated, criminal activity.
When questioned about the disappearance, D. B., friend and colleague from Ohio, cheered, saying, “Not many of us live like that anymore. Real gone, ya know? Off the radar shit, and you wanna bring him back? Fuck that. He’s free now, a real wild man.” He refused further comment, but is under police observation spurred on by his last words to investigators, which were, “I’m gonna join him soon enough. Probably write his biography. No. I’m gonna make his movie. That’s what.” A press conference was held in Quito by President Corea and the National Police to address the situation. Police Director Edwin Alejandro Mosquera Reyes reported, “The only oddity of this whole case is a piece of paper taped to the window, which reads, ‘…issillo lleno de murmullos…”’. Because there is international pressure, Ecuadorian police have made locating Matthew a top priority. However, in an official statement to his Missing Persons department, Police Director Reyes made the announcement that if Matthew is not located by the end of the month, “he will be presumed dead” though the search would continue regardless.
StoRies
Multi-
-tool
If the city won’t recognize you Marion “Kayo” Conner is a boxer from Canton, Ohio. Marion Conner fought Joe Frazier in 1967 and lost in the third round. Marion Conner is a legend of sorts. Legends also named Marion: John Wayne. Marion Conner killed a man with his fists: Greatest Crawford, age 26, who was beaten so badly by Marion Conner that he was knocked unconscious in the ring and died two days later. Marion prances up to me, gleeful, shows me a photo blown up to three times the size, showing greatest Crawford bent over with a look of terrific fear, wide-eyed… Did he know he was going to die? Marion standing over him in the photograph, dominating this man, he demonstrates the moves that killed Crawford in the kitchen, smiling, footwork, “One! Two! One! Two!” His hands and feet move quick- he loses forty years in this moment. At the end of his career, Marion fought only in his hometown of Canton. There was something to be redeemed, a long losing streak after the Frazier fight, the respect of his hometown…
Marion fought former Olympic boxer Ronnie Harris in the Canton Civic Center. It was his last fight. He lost, and penned an open letter to those that had seen the fight, the judges, and Harris himself, alleging that the only reason he had lost was because of the trainer Gary Alexander, who had split open Marion’s eyebrow a week before. Gary Alexander. Marion retired from boxing, which meant no more being outmatched by thirty pounds or more, no more blood, no more sack of meat, victim of promoters who gave him enough money to live and they took his mind. Marion Conner is now 72 years old and a victim of dementia pugilistica, a neurodegenerative disease so common to boxers they named it after them, hence pugilistica, hence delusion, hence memories only of each punch, each fight, but not much else. His wife serves a buffet of leftovers: bread pudding, chicken pot pie, shrimp and rice and mushrooms, pizza, cookies, all baked by her own hand- wife, alternately irritated by his memory loss and caring deeply for him, she defers to him as the man of the house, she is tender, she is strong, they’ve been married for around fifty years by God so she can do whatever she likes. In the backyard, there are nine wild deer behind a ten foot fence. We go to see them up close. The grown deer run when we approach. Two fauns do not. They come sniffing. “Come here, baby deer. Come on. Come on.” He’s not foolish enough to put his fingers through the chain link fence. Imagine my surprise, he tells me, that old Gary Alexander has begun attending my church. Old Gary Alexander who split my eye before I fought Harris. I asked him the other day if he’d fight me and he said yes. He gave me his word. Gary Alexander will fight Marion Conner in the year of our lord two thousand and thirteen.
“It’ll go, it’ll go. It’s up to me if it’s going to be.” “I’ll train. I’ll fight. Never ever ever ever give up.” Dropping down and doing 10 pushups in the kitchen— Coming up, breath ragged, “Determination conquers all.” Ten jumping jacks “One! Two! Three! Four!” “Never Ever Ever give up!” Later, when we walk: “Do you think you could get 5,000 people to come? God, the crowd!” Marion Conner is a living legend with an uncertain legacy. Marion Conner Jr. died of a gunshot wound in 1995. They called him “Wink” not because his life was short. Before Wink had died he had been putting together a scrapbook for his father. In the scrapbook, every newspaper clipping, and every photo that Wink could find of his father, mugging with portly Italians, cigars, suits, and thin cut fighters whose eyes say “I will do whatever you need me to do so that I can win.” When I ask Conner’s wife about the upcoming fight with Gary Alexander, she says “Marion says a lot of things”, and asks me if I want more pie. The dedication in the scrapbook, as softly written as his father’s voice, ends with this couplet: “So if the city won’t recognize him, his family will.”
Frosty’s
Angel
The march hares grow tired of the complaints from the field mice; once herded together, the hares douse the mice with gasoline: one match away from a massacre before the hawks intervene.
Girl Sitting Against a Wall after the sculpture “Girl Sitting Against a Wall II� by George Segal She sits in a chair next to the window. A passing train rattles the pane behind her. She feels the journey in her neck, back, hips, thighs. Watches the rain splash against glass, sees it bead up for a moment, before streaming down, and away. Her father calls her name from the kitchen. She gets up, walks toward his voice. A single bulb floods the space with pale yellow rays, like sunlight settling toward the bottom of a lake. She holds out a glass of water. Watches him clutch it, cradle it close to his chest, swaying to his own rhythm, before he spills it on to the floor. Her body is weary. His bones are knots. She imagines the young mother driving her four children into the pond, the green liquid lapping the windows like a lullaby, luring her to rest. She presses her fists to her eyes. Her circled hands become the opening buds of water lilies unclenching, unfurling.
Breakfast Here. Pour this granola over your head. Tell me what are you thinking as the raisins, walnuts, almonds and cranberries fall past your ears, slide over your forehead and down your nose. Shake the excess from your hair. What sound do sweet dried fruits make? What is the music of scattered grain? Gather the small portions lost at your feet and cup them altogether inside the bowl of your hands. Put your ear against them. Tell me about re-assemblage. Let me spill out the cereal this time. Listen. Describe to me dis-assemblage. Say something new. Say this is news.
The Doctrine of the Similar for Orson Welles and Walter Benjamin
The dominant metaphor here is mimesis. The act of mimicry. Reproduction. Imitation. We’re talking the facts of facsimiles. Echoes and iterations. Growth hormones in every pot and two carbon copies of carbon footprints in every garage. Our home movies play like tired reruns, exit polls from Sunday’s big game. Every ballot a quilt with a two-party pattern. Cut from the same cloth. Duplication. Dupes. Governments talk about the people and the proletariat; I talk about the suckers and the mugs. The dominant technology here is motion capture. The only available revolution is on the dance dance floor and your heroes are playing plastic guitars. These movies were made to capture our movements but not our gestures, never the emotions on our faces. Not even Charles Foster Kane could get himself elected governor, caught in a love nest with his mistress, called a love pirate by the press. The dominant medium here is forgery. With apologies to Marshall Mcluhan, the medium isn’t the message, it’s a metaphor. A thousand copies to every original: a van Gogh on every wall and a Stradivarius on every shelf.
The metaphor is the message, with apologies to Lakoff and Johnson. The non-sensual similarities within a canon of candidates can be partly clarified this way: The magician is just an actor, playing the part of a magician. Even the war of all against all has rules of engagement, and this campaign, this war of one against one, self against self, has rules to its game. Call it the fair use of abuse doctrine, call it sticks and stones and super-PAC funded broken bones. Call it collect. Citizens United sets the dial tone for our public discourse, chief executive officers on the caller i.d. and our fingers rubbing the redial button raw, recalling our mistakes instead of our governors. We’ll find ourselves wherever we look, from the simplest eukaryotic cell to the brilliant, bursting flame out of a supernova. A child not only plays at being a grocer or a teacher, but also at being a windmill or a train. We know our politicians by their bumper stickers and gaffes. Like Orson said, we only sit through Shakespeare in order to recognize the quotations.
The God Elevator Charity, they say, begins at Starbucks. You finger the coins in your pocket. You buy a cup of coffee. Heaven and Hell could be displaced in this translation, transactions completing you like simple equations. Wait for the elevator to arrive. Your halo is a squared circle:
the frame of a doorway, frame of a painting. Push the button. Your finger touches His: you, too, are God. Remember: a finger pointing away in a closed universe points back at itself in the end. Remember what Marx said about the heart of a heartless world, the sprit of a spiritless situation. Take nothing but photographs. Leave nothing but fingerprints.