L'amour fou: Yves Saint-Laurent et Pierre Bergé

sortie 22 septembre en france



Ciné : Yves Saint Laurent - Pierre Bergé, l'amour fou
envoyé par GayClic

Why the American Economy is in the Dumps

why is our economy in the dumps? one reason might be that we are paying the salaries of every politician, cop and ditchdigger in afghanistan, for every contractor, every road, the whole kit and caboodle. add to that iraq, then israel and egypt (to name a couple). then add to that 700+ military bases around the world. then add the rest of the defense budget, including all the money not allocated directly to defense, like energy and homeland security, which has DOUBLED since 2002 and is on track for a 2% increase in 2011, NOT counting the two wars.

meanwhile the average american cannot have what he or she needs, like jobs, healthcare, or education. even the israeli citizen has public healthcare. when are we going to rise up and say enough is enough, and i'm not talking tea party...

Psychobabylon

Manet, Nina de Callias, 1873

for Maureen

"How are you even alive today?" she asked,

eyes popping out of her head,

body taut with dread and excitement.

I answered, "Because I write,

because I get to express myself while

looking for truth and justice."

(On the great American way, hey-hey,

the flat-beat drum across the plain,

the White Buffalo and the Wannabe...)

I'd come to see her because I needed help

getting off my pain meds, I wanted to

detox from a drug that had made me

even worse, hopeless and miserable,

with vertigo so deep I couldn't see straight,

rapid heart beat and blood pressure so low

the nurses always exclaimed, "Great!"

as they ripped the cuff off my arm.

(Maybe if I were an athlete in red Nike shorts,

doing warm-ups and five-mile days, but not the

pathetic gray lump sitting on this chair...)

I recounted for the new counselor

all the facts of my sad history,

the rapes, the violence, the mental illness,

the times I was hospitalized or homeless,

the frightened child, the abandoned infant.

She needed it all to assess what kind of
judgment I had in my debilitated state.

(And why I spilled the beans in that 

holy church, god only knows; I guess

memories get triggered easily in my world...)

I was triggered tonight by Spike Lee,

five years after Katrina: watching again how

the government turned their backs on the

black and poor, tore down their homes, 

closed their hospitals, left the mentally ill

adrift on the Gulf without a shithole or paddle,

shipped the rest off to Houston or Nevada.

(Left it to Sean Penn to drag the bodies out

and to Brad Pitt to rebuild the entire Ninth Ward,

and fuck the Army Corps of Engineers...)

I've been living like a corpse on the water:

For 14 years I've been stuck on a couch,

too sick and depressed to fend for myself,

driving up credit cards to afford bogus cures

because my government wouldn't invest enough

to find out if this was an AIDS-like retrovirus

as anyone who lived with it suspected it was.

("There's nothing wrong with your

autonomic nervous system!" "Thanks to oxycontin

you'll live in a box." "Don't sweat the small stuff!")

My doctors turned their heads,

turned them over to the head experts

because they didn't know what to look for,

not that the geniuses at Disease Control

had given them a handbook, but rather

told them we were neurotic and tired

and finally, furiously, they blamed us for it all.

(Isn't that what callous authority does

when it doesn't have the know-how?

It blames the victim...)

After that, you just stay home, you resist calling.

No matter how sick you get, you get through it.

You think, they've got nothing to offer me;

this is as good as it gets.

I may be housebound but I've got my films,

my music, my poems. I've got a kind husband who

brings me tea and kisses me on the forehead.

(Like an animal that gets sick, you want

to crawl away in the dark, but like a human being

you never forget your former life...)

Tonight I'm sailing down the Mississippi

on an old life raft patched with band-aids.

I'm still taking the pain meds. They want

me to see a psychiatrist next, assess the old

labels and chemical imbalances.

What I need is a miracle, a friend, and a
reasonably good doctor who believes me.

(Or I'll die like everybody else,

I'll go the way of old cfs-ers: a heart attack
or a gun and an old Indian song.)

We brown ones, we broken ones,

we Congolese girls, we Tanzanian fishermen,

we victims, we predators,

we addicted, we atheists,

we hungry, we homeless,

we gamblers, we murderers

we invalids, we children.

(Survival of the fittest in a
savage landscape, just so much water
in the common well...)

 
Mandan - Hidatsa Lodge, abandoned after smallpox outbreaks

Our day will come: http://www.c-spanarchives.org/program/ID/214944

The French publish an me-cfs study today

based on the results of all the xmrv/mrv retrovirus studies...

PNAS-2010-Courgnaud-1007944107

Second Paper Supports Viral Link to ME-CFS

http://news.sciencemag.org/sciencenow/2010/08/second-paper-supports-viral-link.html


by Martin Enserink on August 23, 2010 4:02 PM

There's a new twist in the ongoing battle over whether a virus is linked to chronic fatigue syndrome (CFS). After the journal held it for 2 months, a study supporting a link between a mouse retrovirus and CFS was published today in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science (PNAS). Many are still doubtful of the link, but they're impressed by the authors' efforts to ensure accuracy.

In the new study, conducted by scientists at the National Institutes of Health (NIH), the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA), and Harvard University, researchers scanned for traces of a virus known as XMRV in samples taken from 37 CFS patients, collected by Harvard Medical School CFS specialist Anthony Komaroff in the mid-1990s. They found evidence for the virus in 32 (87%) of the patients, but in only three out of 44 healthy controls (6.8%). It remains to be seen whether the infection causes the disease or vice versa, says NIH virologist and co-author Harvey Alter—but he's "confident" that the findings are correct.

XMRV—less succinctly known as xenotropic murine leukemia virus-related virus—was first implicated for its potential involvement in prostate cancer, a link that's still under intense debate. Then, in a Science paper published last year, a team led by retrovirologist Judy Mikovits of the Whittemore Peterson Institute for Neuro-Immune Disease (WPI) in Reno, Nevada, found evidence of infection in 67% of CFS patients, compared with just 3.4% of healthy controls. But since then, four other papers failed to find the link, or any evidence of XMRV infection in humans at all. The last of the four, by researchers at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), was also held for a while, at the researchers' request, while they tried to figure out how government labs could come to such opposite conclusions. The CDC paper was eventually published on 1 July in Retrovirology.

Skeptics were concerned that the XMRV Mikovits had found might be the result of contamination by mouse DNA in the lab. To address this, the new study's first author—FDA virologist Shyh-Ching Lo—and his colleagues tested every positive sample for murine mitochondrial DNA. They found none.

While the paper was on hold—also because of conflicts with other studies—the team ran additional checks that bolstered the data further, says Alter. "I felt we needed to do more to prove our case," Alter says, in part because an additional, third reviewer, had looked at the paper at PNAS's request. For instance, the researchers took fresh samples from eight of the patients and found that, 15 years on, they were still infected and that the virus had evolved, "just as we would expect from a retrovirus," says Alter. The wait was "time well spent," he adds.

The data do seem solid, admits Steve Monroe, who co-authored the conflicting CDC paper. "It's simply a good paper," adds Reinhard Kurth, the former director of the Robert Koch Institute in Germany, who helped test some of CDC's samples and did not find the virus either. Alter—a widely respected virologist and winner of the Albert Lasker Award for Clinical Medical Research—"clearly knows what he is doing. They did everything correctly," says Kurth, who nonetheless says he remains skeptical.

So too does virologist Robin Weiss of Imperial College London (ICL), who says he's seen too many instances of proposed new human retroviruses that fell apart on closer inspection, including one he reported in arthritis and lupus patients in 1999 that turned out to be an innocuous rabbit virus. (In a 40-page review that he co-authored in 2008, Weiss called such mishaps "human rumor viruses.") "You can have a very good reputation and be very careful and still get it wrong," Weiss says.

Part of the problem, skeptics say, is that the researchers didn't exactly replicate the Science paper. XMRV is a so-called xenotropic murine virus, which means it can no longer enter mouse cells but can infect cells of other species. (Murine means "from mice.") The researchers in the PNAS paper say the viral sequences they find are more diverse than that and resemble more closely the so-called polytropic viruses, which is why they adopted the term MLV-related virus, for murine leukemia virus. "Let's be clear: This is another virus. They did not confirm [Mikovits's] results," says retrovirologist Myra McClure of ICL, a co-author of one of the four negative studies.

Still, "in the grand scheme of things," the viral sequence found in the PNAS paper closely resembles those of XMRV, says Celia Witten, the director of FDA's Office of Cellular, Tissue and Gene Therapies, who was not an author of the paper herself but spoke on Lo's behalf. Witten adds that the data "support" the Science paper. Mikovits—who is "delighted" by the new paper—says the difference is not important. In as-yet-unpublished results, her group finds more genetic diversity in the virus as well, she says.
Meanwhile, a working group coordinated by the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute (NHLBI) is coordinating an effort to answer the most baffling question: Why some labs find the virus in both patients and healthy people, and others find it in neither. Initially, some believed there might be geographical reasons, because the first three negative studies were all from Europe—but that theory seems unlikely after the CDC paper, whose patients were from Kansas and Georgia. Patient selection could play a role: Different studies have used different diagnostic and recruitment criteria. But even given this messiness, it's hard to explain why four studies wouldn't have included a single infected patient.

The discordant results may also stem from subtle differences in handling the samples or performing the tests that would have led the four labs to miss the virus. But CDC's Monroe says he's confident that the lab can identify the virus. As part of the NHLBI program, researchers at FDA, CDC, WPI, and other labs have all blindly tested a panel of samples, some of them "spiked" with different amounts of the virus; all of them performed well. Further exchange of samples and reagents is now under way to understand where the differences came from. "They should be able to clear this up by Christmas," says Kurth.

Many of the main players in the controversy plan to attend a workshop organized by NIH on 7 and 8 September. Mikovits, who is on the scientific committee, says she has seen the abstracts of two presentations confirming her findings. "I think it will be fun," she says.

Virus sleuth. Study author Harvey Alter says he's confident about his findings. Credit: NIH

Our hero, Judy Mikovits, retrovirologist

UPDATE 8/24/10: Just my own thoughts, but could the variations of cfs we find be due to the variations found in the mouse retroviruses? I have always felt that my cfs, for example, is not exactly the same disease as others I know. If this is true, it would answer a lot of questions that the researchers are asking.

dysfunction poétique

day breaks and i'm still up

i sip the too white coffee and nod

in the dawning i attempt to write a poem

i must work i desperately tell myself

i must try to put it all down to words

in case i'm gone by nightfall

but nothing comes of my spinning wheels

they say nothing comes from nothing

and they do seem to be right

as i mute the tele and light another butt

think about all the stories i have outlived

yet comes no description no color no passion

no crisis no denouement no brave ending

i give up quickly and succomb

i search the channel guide for another film

but realize that at last i've seen them all

there's nothing new under the moon

and then i hear the rain begin to fall

hard against my windows and doors

softening the dirt under my reddest roses

the winter daphne lays wrapped in morning glory

and i can smell that fresh earth through

the open door that stays perpetually open

like an open invitation to the world

yet goes unnoticed as i'm a voluntary guest

the primadonna in this nuthouse

filthy and cluttered from years of illness

i light another cigarette and sigh

and type a few more bandied-up words

pretend that a poem has come to form

then read it several times over

make the necessary corrections

then publish it like manna from heaven

with every trial the desire is stoked

the way the clouds just opened on the earth

there's alliteration and near rhyme

because i was brought up on nonsense

i'm egging and hamming myself up

to life to death to transcendence

i'm writing the comic strip of poetics

a façade to carry me through another day

for without that charade what's left of me

do i think i'm kidding myself

or my audience if and when they come

looking for material to assuage their pain

uplift their souls or confess their sins

am i writing the rough draft of consciousness

something to hang on to like a thread

a dirge for the half-living and dispossessed

the invisible ones stretched out on couches

dipping salty crackers into peanut butter

mentally keeping up the plunging blood

yes we're all hanging on a twiglet

cluttered with angst and self-pity

beyond formation in the nothingness

the sad poetry of illness

i'll be satisfied with this poem in the end

i'll lay back down and begin to sleep

i may weep in my dreams when they taunt me

but i'll wake up knowing it was only a dream

9/11 was an inside job

babel land

blitzkrieg

war on terror

i take you by the hand

i treat you like a friend

i'm not manic

jihad means

never having to say 

you're sorry

get it through your head

black eyed twins

make the best specimens

i like the way your

hair blows in the wind

in every direction

i fall over in your love

i'm made tame by your

dark whisperings in my ear

timing is everything

if you think that

time is everything

though i'm not ready

for marriage i've always

been a free spirit

your eyes are black

diamonds i can't wear 

on my fingers

allah akbar there is

no god but god when

the bomb goes off

how do three buildings

fall perfectly down onto

their own shadows

it's a mystical question

here today

gone tomorrow

my libyan lover played

pink floyd's the wall whenever

he made love to me

i'm in complete maya

conditioned to believe

my own eyes

the nazis learned
all the evidence can
not be destroyed

you tell me i have

bedroom eyes

it's a conspiracy

ok!

un poème de 1999

ok!

ces quatre murs

ok!

le ronron de la télé

ok!

les pillules dans une boîte

ok!

les idées folles

ok!

le petit déjeuner

ok!

aller au wc

ok!

une chaise pour moi

ok!

un poème idiot

ok!

travailler quatre heures

ok!

rentrer chez moi

ok!

attendre la nuit

ok!

je ne peux plus lire

ok!

un xanax pour dormir

ok!

ma vie entière

blank verse

ace in the hole

take a bunch of daffodils

and lay them on the stone

there's a lot going on

whether you see it or not

black sky

deepest night ever seen

venus like a car beam

in your eyes

no moon

scratch that itch

and put it down to dryness

nothing helps

not benedryl nor smack

nothing but a bandage

create a horror show

for the ones coming home

we've wasted years for this

the decrepit solitude

the scars of blitzkrieg

fuck i can't think

it's like another brick

red, dense, durable

fumigate the afterthought

down with cfs

présent indicatif

arranger le dos

la colonne étroite

les fesses serrées

les jambes indiennes

et de la tête en haut

ce fil d'araignée

qui étend la nuque et

basse le menton

et tout doucement

laisser tomber

les épaules détendues

les poignets aux genoux

les yeux concentrés

au milieu du front

derrière les paupières

faire flou la vision

retenir l'haleine

en dehors de soi

et puis respirer

profondément dedans

remplir le ventre

comme un ballon

doucement le serrer

laisser sortir le vent

et l'une après l'autre

les haleines coulent

comme un petit ruisseau

qui se vide dans l'océan

et rien n'existe

que la réspiration

simple et calme

in/exhalaison

inspire/expire

sans penser

le ventre plein

le ventre vidé

pas de problème

pas de blizzard

pas de progrès

pas de chaleur

pas d'oiseau

pas d'héros

pas de gagnant

pas de prison

pas de pauvreté

pas de faim

pas de mort

pas de guerre

la petite haleine

comme une fleuve

transportant tout

sans aucun but

voyage suprême

l'amour en soi

rien n'existe

que la compassion

An Early Adieu

Watercolor by moineau: In the Hospital

If this were actually it,

I'd have to admit a lot of anger for

the last 14 years of my life,

the loneliness, the loss of friends,

the mistrust of my family,

and all the ignorant doctors who

tried to make me see that I made

much too much about being in pain,

pain without end, exhausting,

often excruciating, until that

hour comes and I take my pills and

wait for salvation, relaxation,

and maybe even resurrection

if I'm lucky... for a few hours.

I read today that if only I
practiced cogitive behavioral therapy

I could make myself happy, like

the way you can be happy even

though it's raining outside...

I think I could be happy if it

were raining, if it were hailing,

if bombs were falling on Iraq

or children were starving in Africa--
I have the facility like you to ignore--

but these things are "outside", not "in".

The interior is not so easy to partition

or wish away or meditate through,

and when the clock strikes three

and I've already been waiting

four hours for that relief,

well, it's a penetrating fact,

that burnout.

Where people are concerned,

the emails and support groups,

how I loved my on-line friends!

They were easy, slippery and fun;

they'd wait days for a response.

But those off-line chums that

never called or those that tried

but did not get an immediate

response, especially when I was too

over the top to answer the phone,

they felt so jilted, ignored and angry.

I'm sorry to them all, and

wish I could jump to the phone

with enthusiasm, but there are

times, weeks, months, when

I just can't budge, and even if

i did, could you stand to
hear about it?

Or seeing my grandson a few times

per year and knowing that family

takes so much more but not

having the energy to survive the

two-hour trip to visit,
the car sickness so extreme, and

then the guilt and near torture of

feeling less than mother human or

feeling nothing and nowhere at all,

trying to rise above the nausea,

the constant curves and edgy vertigo

and endure... and love...

My partner of 17 years has

seen it all and was angry too,

but he had to give up something

intrinsic to be with me:

sex, big hugs; just little touches, a small

foot rub perhaps because

I feel like I've been beaten up with

a hammer and it's the day

after and each bruise scalds

and so... ouch! sorry...

that's a hot spot I suppose, not

your fault, how could you know?
He's become a good cook,
dishwasher... and my best friend.
But is it enough? He says "yes",
that good man, but he gets more
and more tired as the years
wear on and nothing changes;
no libido, no concerts, no outings
together. Yet, love can be strong
in spite of pain. Dare i say
we're lucky?

But oh the emotional flatness

that comes with narcotic use,

and the paralysis and low

blood volume, orthostatic

intolerance: I just don't want to

move sometimes, its movement like a wave,

and yet, move, walk, force,

grow strong, go to France
and then crash with nausea

and sudden increased pain

and bam! you're back exactly

where you were two years ago;

back on the couch,

and everything's dark and

vertiginous... again and again
and again... the same day.

When will I recover enough

this time to get up? And when will I

feel like talking on the phone,

taking a ride to the beach,

eating out in a restaurant,

making love to my mate?

When will I get up and not

feel like throwing up

because of some strange

whiplash, some odd brain

dysfunction no one understands

except some Japanese researcher

at the University of Kyoto

who puts out an abstract that

everyone ignores about how
pain shrinks gray matter?
I look at the date,

2004... Where's the follow-up?

Where's the drug?

So if this is it, if the heart attack

comes or the stroke or even

a suicide... no, my darlings,

I can never do that to you although

I think about it every other day,

and wonder, Would you forgive
me for it? Is 14 years enough time to
suffer 24/7? Is life on a couch worth

this much grief?

Or another trip to France where I will
be sick sick sick with stress and

ridiculed by the airline personnel?

Will they laugh among themselves
again or roll their eyes at the next
heavy white women traveling alone who
requests a goddamned wheelchair?

In my dreams, everyone is laughing;

I'm completely humiliated.

Doctors do the same, passing

around the dossier and steeling

themselves each time they come into
the room and have to deal with

one of us chronic pains-in-the-ass.

Must be tough never to have an

answer, it must be very deflating.
I feel for you... I'm full of feeling
for everyone...

I'm so tired. My eyes tell the story.

This is my early adieu

just in case I don't make it another

decade. Just in case nature takes

its course. Just in case they don't

get me to the hospital in time

or they decide to lock me up for

a month. (If they do, make sure

they've got my pain pills, ok?
Last time they never requested
them, the worst irony of all.)

Just in case my heart stops

by itself or with some prodding.

Just in time for sleep...

Just in time for rest in peace...

Just enough time to say,

I loved you more than myself:
I did my best to live for you:

I really did love you all.

Watercolor by moieau: Tu m'as laissée seule

Comment suivre l'Idéal

Je cours dans la forêt un jour de février. Il a plu toute la journée et les feuilles sont mouillées; je suis trempée des pieds à la tête, fait neuve comme une fleur qui pousse d'une graine, daphnée blanche si odorante je deviens folle, me tombe aux genoux, et reste comme un arbre. De mes orteils poussent des longues racines et de mes yeux poussent des hauts cris... muets.

j'entends quelque chose qui fuit comme le vent:  vite et de nulle part je la vois, une chasseuse avec une peau de bronze, des vêtements comme des ailes de soie transparente, son arc d'or et sa fleche en argent. La femme s'approche de moi et tend la main, son visage si proche, si beau, si rond, un soleil qui brille sur le mien. 

Je veux l'embrasser, j'ai le désir, mais elle se transforme avant que je puis: une biche qui tourne et court dans le bois, sans son et sans jeter un oeil derrière. J'essaie de la suivre mais je n'en peux rien; je suis plantée profondément dans la terre, toute épanouie et enferrée. Je ne peux qu'envoyer après elle mon parfum d'hiver, mon désespoir et une aile qu'elle a laissés embranchés.

afterbirth

accusation and confession:

i am a thought criminal.

a tattered antimatter flag

floats above the rain gutter.

in gray tones a phone rings.

no one is ever home. never.

a homeless man crashes the gate.

crows rush in to sift and peck.

they desecrate the labor ward

where i gave birth to god.

old man plays cat's cradle with

with bits of dessicated string.

crows argue string theory,

fighting over quarks.

the history of the universe degrades:

god lay stillborn on the table.

somewhere a phone rings

in this flat black emptiness,

now a room without a soul

where i am disappeared.

Eagle eye

i'm experimenting with writing with my non-dominant left hand. i'm going to be writing one poem a day in this way, hoping to trigger and strengthen the right side of my brain... and memories.

Time to fly

said the little eagle

Time to release

the exasperated ego

I'm taking a trip

to the other side of my brain

I'm tired of being alive

with my eyes closed

Begging for crumbs

I put sand in the machine

This eagle is an anarchist

The kiss of life is death

Woe the elements in

the eagle's nest

The pauvre petite eaglets

in the afterglow of knowledge

Red spiders enter the nest

and eat the half-baked chicks

When full moon comes

the wing's on fire

Each rapid beat of heart

facisimile

When one flies with fire

there is authentic music

Eagle eye morning star

sun moon and sky above

Terror on the earth below

as mothers sing to their babies