Lights Bright There

I Just Cant Stop Loving You - Michael Jackson


Dear French-tips,
After watching the Manny Pacquiao vs. Miguel Cotto fight at the MGM Grand for 45 min. somewhere its revealed that he wins because he fights out of love. He punches for the 90 million Filipinos back home, jabs for their recovery after major typhoons, right hooks a jaw for the incessant poverty of his people preoccupied with so many things like hunger and karaoke. As if boxing were also a means to save a country, instill hope in a culture masked with American idealism but yet remain cheerful as a people with a great majority running around hungry without shoes. The story is what gets me. The working narrative behind every blow which can inspire the fate of a younger generation in the Philippines. He is not fighting for himself. He makes the sign of the cross on his forehead and chest before every round. As if he is fighting for something greater, not knowing what, but obedient to it. He listens to Cotto's stamina, waits. Like waiting for the right time to jump into a neon pink line of text floating across the karaoke screen. Punctuation and timing. to the "chora". Dominated by several drives at once and executed at the punch. The same goes for piano.

Yesterday at Niagara Falls I video myself over a bridge so that you can hear the sounds of the water passing through me. A shot of my mouth on the upper left hand corner narrating a blog entry to you which I will later cut and drag out the audio over to a grassy field spinning at 8 frames per second. My face is also there masked between 8 to 30 frames per second like sticky numbers moving through space. I was walking around Niagara Falls following the movements of my shadow draped in the gossip of blue exposure not thinking about authenticity, for once. I viewed the cascading water through the little video screen like a good tourist of my own perception at 3 in the afternoon when no one else was looking. I sat beside a tree on a field of grass extending out to the marshes of that river and began to mumble to myself through the screen while laying on my belly on a pillow of dead november leaves. I keep Carlos' poem "Veritable Blue & Green Masks" in a locket around my neck to protect me from the masks everybody wears from Buffalo to Venice its all the same. So you text "do you feel authentic?" And i must say, yes, i do, most of the time.

your,
Clip hearts Pacquiao