Frontline.
I stand on the front line.
A mile behind, ninety-nine souls
Stare.
Facing forward,
Accusing.
They say:
Why?
I say:

At any given moment, it seems there is a fashion week happening somewhere in the world - be it Sydney, Istanbul, Dubai, Seoul, Moscow, Toronto, Copenhagen or Lagos (to name a few).

But the latest entrant may be the most surprising: Silicon Valley.

Or, as the organisers style it: Silicon Valley Fashion Week?!.

The punctuation marks as part of the title are a self-aware nod to the incongruity of marrying the location, known for its allegiance to hoodies, Tevas and T-shirts, to a fashion event.

But that does not mean they are any less serious about its potential.

The three-day annual event, which finished its second turn over the weekend in San Francisco, bills itself as "part fashion show, part variety show, part trade show" and is open to the public, unlike the usual fashion industry events. This year, about 30 brands were featured and tickets, at US$20 (S$28), sold out, with about 500 people attending each day.

It was staged by Betabrand, a San Francisco company that builds its clothing catalogue by crowdsourcing design ideas and, after seeing which take off, crowdfunding the production of the prototypes to see which ones people will actually want to buy. Examples include a "mind the gap" blouse that stretches to fit the body's contours and a dress that uses a trademarked reflective material.

The event exists at the nexus of Burning Man, wearable technology and the Maker Movement, home of inventors, designers and other do-it-yourself types. Pebble Smartwatch presented a Smarthole Hoodie, a standard hoodie design with sleeves that extend over the thumbs and have a movable panel around the wrist to make gaining access to the company's device easier; and Tinsel offered headphones that can be worn as a necklace.

Alison Lewis, who holds a design and technology master's degree from Parsons School of Design in New York, showed three items: a lambskin leather handbag embedded with LED bulbs that can be rearranged in different patterns with an app; a T-shirt that does the same; and a dress with lights that undulate with the wearer's heartbeat.

"Technology is a tool. It's how we use it that's really exciting," she said. "We could have less clothing in our closets and have pieces that change and work with our moods and personalities on a daily basis."

Lewis has not had a chance to present her work in other fashion shows and, so far, she has not been able to mass-produce her items. She commended the fashion week as a place to experiment.

She was not the only designer struggling with the challenge of manufacturing what she displayed.

However, as wearables increasingly enter mainstream fashion, with designers from Ralph Lauren to Zac Posen dipping their creative toes into technology, the idea of clothing patterns controlled by apps, of drone delivery, and of customisation that allows - maybe even asks - its wearers to make a choice each and every day, seems less far-fetched and more like fashion's possible future.

Which, unlikely as it may be, puts the Silicon Valley event on the style front line.Read more at:www.marieaustralia.com/backless-formal-dresses | http://www.marieaustralia.com/red-formal-dresses

prelimenary coordinates - a blindman playing chess.

well... you either drink, and write sparingly,
     or you don't drink, and you write
a novel...
    but who would have thought, that there
would be poetic odes involving coffee...
     it's staggering how many women write
poems and have to concern themselves with
coffee...
  i down a litre of whiskey a night, don't know
what a hangover is anymore,
        and i can beat out more words
than women, who use a stimulant and write
   crumbs... when i expect a loaf of bread...
if not this website, then another, and the scenario
is the same: the glorification of coffee...
           it just shows you how barricaded the human
narrative is, of the soul...
        poetry merely nibbles, and i know it's
flaws... write without paragraphs,
or care for punctuation marks... and it's immediately
a poem...
   or... oh god forbid! there's something profound
being said with a few words...
      and it has to be profound...
                      yes, i'm the Gargamel and those
are my smurfs...
                             strange that Freud didn't think up
the man-child complex...
                         which is the opposite of the madonna-*****
complex, which he actually did...
           Edward Hopper was also bemused by
these two mental pharmacologists...
                did a little sketch holding Freud as pillar 1,
and Jung as pillar 2.
    but coffee and poetry: i'd expect more from this
latitude...
        and it's still a case of:
                   people cling to the raft that's their
mental narrative mondus operandi...
                Kant tried to say something as concrete
with 5 + 7 = 13... and read any philosophy book...
    Kant isolates the ''i think'', and Hegel isolates
    the i = i, or i am i...
                              and these are serious thinkers...
but Descartes has said a limit...
                       thinking defines subjectivity...
      thinking the essential component of what's
   not thought about: the existential compromise of
   being per se...
                    and how i always seem to find philosophy
as a stumbling block concerning everything i write...
    it's almost as if i can't escape the world of
abstracts...          a degree in chemistry didn't help either...
     am i truly so un-realistic?
               not that i'm afraid of being drawn toward
the un-real...          it's that humanity seems only like
an infertile groundwork speeding toward a forgivable
promise...
    i just wanted to say: you drink and write poetry...
or you don't drink, and write a novel...
      and true to a heart's cause i will say:
that straitjacket of what poetry is...
                           whether rhyme... or other technique...
    hanging over it...
                           it can't do:
      i abhor Nietzsche for making poetry a science...
  and it is: too scientific...
              i'd never think so little can be deemed
so perplexing... or having that essence...
                    so yes... Kant
                         really does struggle to say something
profound, but he actually does...
                     over and over again... namely:
i'd never could think of so many faculties of my mind...
    not that's what i call a plastic saying...
      ****-licking brown-nosing, call it what you like...
it's just so terrible that philosophy cannot reach
toward being a humanism, like a novel always can...
     which is why i could eat a historical novel
        by Kraszewski in three weeks in between allocating
that time to the festive season,
                     and it took me 2 years to read Kant's
critique... until i let go of that post-scriptum necessity
of having to stop at every setence and do a rubick's cube...
     a bit like: well... aren't those electron-migration
   schematics they teach you in chemistry, a little bit pointless?
   who give's a badger's nut-sack about how electrons migrate
when a a cabron to oxygen bond forms?
                         but they do teach that...
           which is why you can take a novel to bed,
on the train... but so much focus is needed for that other novel,
the scientific one... the grandeur of... philosophy...
                and that's when i let go...
   the last part of the critique does allow you to read
piece of work... like a novel... unless of course that was my
need to do so...
                    so yes: transcendental methodology in Kant's
critique: does read like a novel... at some point
you just have to let go.

ii. ...

and you do... try saying philosophy without saying
something pretentious....
               and i dare say: as long as the fewest number
of people concern themselves with it:
  the more chances we have for electricity,
plumbing, food on the table...
               but by now there's this talk of a curse...
premature Socratic antics... mind you: he was an old man...
but Plato be ******, he wrote down what the old man
spoke: and a clear number of them succumbed to
      the tumble-**** effect...
                      no real prospects for life...
        and, evidently, the dead gods philosophised,
while the rest remained: prone to throwing a show of
macho, and worshipped the body...
Olympus shone...  
   by now you should know that i don't know what
i'm doing...
                  give me the killer-switch to launch a nuclear
strike and i'd probably say: maracas!
shake shake shake...     fidgety in the brothel...
shake shake shake...
             that's the weird thing, every time i went to
a brothel i became over-heated...
      i sat there, the whole **** place always reminded me
of a perfume... jack daniels...
   and i could feel myself over-heating...
  i don't known if that was the angel conscience talking
to me... but i always felt those eyes of scrutiny...
       mind you, once the whole "naughty'' escapade
took off... i forgot those relationships where
                    an impotence was crowned...
   don't know: maybe prostitutes just know my pin-number
and hold to say to little richard: off to the crusades with you!
     phenomenal...
                                         well... thank god for
the north african imports! i'd start thinking all european
women are bound to be: neglected.
               and was it ever, not only about ***?
    it's nice to doubt it...
                           next time i'll woodpecker a grave.
but hey! the promised land!
                           at least you'll have someone to cry
over your grave...
   and did i tell you how there's this cult of the grave
in Poland? yep, that's not a personal reality,
it's a populist manifesto... i'm starting to see it
as a hell where people sort of forgot to state their emotion
to the people, now lying in those tombs...
         give me a Hindu wedding with fire!
  i wanna become elemental!
and look, libido on fire... a billion vishnu-******* in
Bangladesh...   it's this thirst for fame in western
societies that's going to be a downsize...
                                 over there that's like a **** in
a tornado...              ha ha! it really is!
   but then again, here i am, a graveyard hyenna...
walking in Liberace's talk of style...
  most of these graves, really are: tacky...
    just like Liberace, the greatest showbiz conman of
the 20st century... i love the fact that he fooled so many
women... i mean... that guy was almost as good
as ****** when it came to mesmerising people...
but Liberace had a nieche audience... so...
                 no khaki for the ss...
                                           and i dare to hold
an ethnicity? in tune with bob marley: one love, one people...
it has never been so painful to strategise globalisation...
         it's this ethnic cleansing that everyone agreed to
provided they received a smart-phone...
                   or a McDonald's fetish... and that's saying it cheap...
but that's how it feels on the periphery of H'america...
little ol' England boycots Europe...
                     and it's like: huh?
                                           presto! dum-dum.
    sometimes i start thinking that i have a hydra for a tongue...
and the more i drink, the more i start to see
       it splintering up into a polyphony construct,
but more a case of: polyphony of subjects...
   and yes, aren't we all those internet losers...
when the most powerful man in the world...
     uses twitter. bastions of respectable comment!
yes, i.e. newspapers... we're riding this meteor to the end...
          does anyone still consider newspapers to be
the pledges of a free society? i must have been asleep for
the past 20 years then...
                      someone switched on this chaos-turbine,
and we're all shoving our two cents of opnions'-worth into it...
and it's not stopping...
            and yet you still read in newspapers, this underlining
feeling of being condescended... as if they are the sole
authority... they have to behave like little despots...
                           social media's power is invested in its
shock reverberation... think: Marx in the 21st century...
           but can you? is this some pseudo Marxism?
             i might have bypassed all the king-makers and
walls... but i have no leverage... my opinions are
     as cheap as chips... well: we got ourselves a unison converson...
   i still don't see how the television zeitgeist still thinks
that the internet zeitgeist is no connected with ''real life''...
i mean... **** me! where's the highstreet with all the shops?
on the internet. where is the frontline of wars? on the internet.
  where do suicides take place? on the internet,
from all the cyber bugs that people start to represent...
    if this isn't real life... then i guess i must be sitting,
and writing this in some medieval castle in transylvania,
    and my computer is powered by a legion of
hamsters on exercise-wheels, in a damp room, lit by a candle.

iii.

for me, this is how reading a philosophy book looks like:

| | |
     fig. 1
                                          /   \
                                            _
                 ­                                 fig. 2
    Δ
       fig. 3
                                           A
                                               fig. 4

it's like i want to see something with some clarity;
there is clear movement
      concerning a book like that,
              but unlike a standard novel:
there is clearly nothing concerning the: any given
  hope to disperse the mist.
                you're given the blunt truth:
the use of language...
                     again, it would be easier to call forward
a use of a tomahawk... or a guillotine...
            philosophy books never establish civilisations,
they break them.
                and do i think that the crucifix is a profanity
of the tetragrammaton? yes.
                do i feel Spinoza's anguish? probably.
when you read philosophy to start to waver,
it's almost necessary to unlearn language, and with
each philosophy book: learn it over again.
     you can't remain strapped to this culture
of emphasis of singled-out words...
              we can't find a constructive basis if we're
about to start any mechanism from such a dynamic,
isolating certain words and weighing them
                       obstructs language...
                 i can't even begin to fathom a pledge
to using a language, if there are these plebian obstructions...
i did write some notes when i spent these past 3 weeks
in Poland, but i'm scared of rewriting them...
                    i can claim to have understood
their content at the time,
but the context disparity is too much for me...
                 i'm rereading them in England
and i can only see England as a nightmarish construct
of such grandeour... that i might only be seen
speaking truth in the north of it...
                nor do i like the tri-tier categorisation
of man... if you read Kant, you'd be afraid of
man's laconic approach to the mind, stating
the three boundaries, and literally no faculty interactions...
  consciousness (the artist), denoting the overly-sensitive,
the subconscious (the worker), denoting the athletic construct
   and liberation from the daily toils of pure physical
    disposition...
and the unconscious (the zombie)...
   if you read Kant and explore the faculties...
and then turn toward the Freudian populism:
   there's enough reason to be concerned...
                  i can't be saying someone anti-vogue:
and that was my proper concern, that i might be saying
someone not recountable in any sort of realism...
          that mine is an isolated case...
         ditto alongside: why are we juggling the tri-tiers,
and so bombastic and even celebratory in huddling
toward these safety-nets of being human?
    thus said: the reflective man has died...
       in his place came the reflexive man...
                             and if there really is a worthwhile
stance to be a: **** sapiens...
   then all hope for a bewildered man is gone...
                 when the potency of robotics escaped science
fiction, and all trodden paths of orthodox science were
      fed to science fiction, humanity could begin
the process of discarding the offshoots...
          
iv.

the new testament... a book riddled with metaphors...
no wonder the greeks exploited the hebrew literalism...
and yes, plato the precursor made this very real...
by testifying that poetry had no place in the republic,
the new testament had to become solely poetic...
   the new testament is a rebellion against plato's republic...
it's a book wholly compromised on metaphor...
culminating in a book that's founded on imagery...
the gosepls are, once again, arithmetically speaking,
resembling the crucifix... which damns the concept
of the tetragrammaton...
                      as a book: it's only gibberish in
its final circumstance of revelation as a book of imagery...
   and in its preceding case: a book of metaphors...
who wouldn't be apprehensive to be born human
with such a thing being rampant?!
                    imagery is gibberish, given that we
have compentent painters out there...
and metaphor is metaphysics, given that we have
competent magicians out there...
   so how far apart are the words: qua             and
                   quo?
   as good a question as: how far apart are the words
                          phor               and phren?
       φoρ                       &                            φρην?
        so in the congregation of μετα, how are they
so apart?  looking at language from an alphabetical
perspective... it's hard to see anything inspirational...
    nor the tangens divergence of words
that are nonetheless so proximate in their construct...
a bit like the genetic proximity of man and ape,
or man and a banana...
   φoρ (the bearer of the beyond) -
                φρην (a mind concerned with things
under the curtain) -
                        and so: the futility of looking for
        a soul... became translated as the new found feudalism
of looking for a mind:
  given the common consensus: we're all mad....
so too looking at mythology could be revised:
  that myth of narcissus and echo...
or narcissus and psyche...
                         or φρην & πσιχη -
                we already know that there's an aesthetic
in Greek, at least they showed us
      that it can be σimple, when acknowledged
  and practised -
which means transcribing the ease of handwriting
   into a digital format, can be seen as an unnecessary
complexity - as if me currently looking for a word
that ends, and showcases the most obvious Grecian
aesthetic (without mention ο, ε, ω, η, œ)...
but with due mention: so where the second variant
of α, given there's æ?
                           it really is hard to find coherency
in human language... i'm still trying to conjure up
the second sigma... unless i hit the plural noteς...
there... i hit them... as simple as that.
  and yes: the father of the french hooked c
in garçon, came from this: the sigma used at the end
of wordς... i suspect that how things were denoted
to be possessed in english, also came from it.
once again: handwritting is bewildering on this digital canvas.

v.*

i don't have an atheistic argument, or a theistic argument,
i'v

Headless chickens running aimless toward the almighty dollar
Blindly staring at the knife"s stainless steel amidst all the squaller

My thirsty soul argues against my numb skull to hold a thorough audition
They lewdly feud about potential candidates accrued to search for recognition
They conclude on a suspicion they mutually feared as a result of blind ambition
Search preludes the admission, that I found my dream car with no keys for ignition

Don"t question authority especially when it's the majority
Everyone knows the world is flat and let's just leave it at that
I bought water from you now I have ice to sell
I have a great story but no one worthy to tell
Hindsight should really be at least twenty fifteen
Because to admit we just don"t know is too obscene?

Blissful ignorance"s repugnant scent wafting through the cave
Mindless sheople"s chainlinked brains all dancing at the rave
Fire flickering Shadow puppets tastefully riding the next wave
Puppeteer wizard behind the curtain telling them how to behave
Misaligned redcoated frontline soldiers falsely labeled as brave
Life"s ironic conundrum puzzle, choosing which children to save
Diseased cement steadily drying in a world ever ready to pave
Hungrier than I"ve ever been, yet sickly devoid of things to crave

Over the ravaged battlefield, a pall of death hung fast
I watched in silent horror, as the wounded breathed their last
The screams of bloodied soldiers, echoed down the sodden trench
As vermin ate the flesh of men, unbothered by the stench.

A drizzling rain was falling soft, as darkness slew the day
I knew my life was fading fast, so I began to pray

Oh GOD! Above in heaven, as you look down on this Hell
You see,through this black holocaust, a frightened Sentinel
The time is fast approaching Lord, when we'll meet face to face
And I'll be held accountable, for my actions in this place

No words in mitigation, can excuse the deeds I've done
I'm a product of my nation born to die upon the Somme
Before deaths bullet takes me, when I'm ordered from this hole
I beg you to forgive me and recieve my wretched Soul...

The order came along the trench ''Get ready to attack''
The cold hard hand of terror rested firmly on my back
Down along the frontline, whispered prayers of men grew quiet
While mass extermination waited out there in the night
Each brief second seemed an hour, as I saw my life flash past
Then somewhere in my reverie, the whistle blew at last

That cold hard hand of terror pushed me forward from behind
A burning rage and bloodlust closed the senses of my mind
Rifle shooting deadly sin, over no-mans land I stumbled
The dead of prior battles, in heaps around me,tumbled
A piercing war-cry on my lips, my bloodlust not yet sated
Firing blindly, all the while, the foe he grimly waited

Halfway accross hells quagmire, the flares popped overhead
Casting down an eerie glow on the living and the dead

Caught like running Ghosts of men, by those floating midnight Suns
Fodder for Deaths banquet, silhouetted for their guns
The whine of flying bullets filled the air about my ears
A smell of death, its **** and blood returned me to my fears

Realising our predicament, caught between two stools
Though Death reaped us like fresh grass, we all ran on like  fools
A bullet caught me in the chest, just below my shoulder
I fell upon the barbedwire and felt my blood grow colder
Hanging there, as life ran out, screaming for assistance
I saw myself and comrades, from what seemed a mighty distance

So adrift upon some sea, Life, winding down within me
But Oh! the manner of my Death, a very sad short story
A lad of nineteen summers, I had never loved a wife
Nor done the things I dreamed I'd do in the young days of my life....

My nation called ''We Need You Son'' in nineteen and fourteen
And preached of War and Battle as a bright and shining dream
With words like, Honour, Glory, Pride........ Bravery and Duty
Beguiled my generation by painting Death as beauty....

A message from the government explaining my sad tale
My poor beloved family will soon get in the Mail
Telling lies of sacrifice for our nations worthy cause
BUT NOT RELATING,HOW I DIED OF GOVERNMENTAL FLAWS.....


Written on October 5/2005.. Copyright.Eamonn O'Dowd.

I stand behind you.
No matter where you turn,

I've got your back.
Don't care if you can't see me;

I won't make a sound as the
Bullets hit.

It's a cheap shot world at times.  
You form the frontline,

I'll be here with a back full of
Lead with your name on it.

I'm a ***** Boxing Champion.
Taking all their sucker punches,  

I stand behind you. Let you fight  
Your own battles,

Shield you only from what
Isn't fair.

Even the odds with every step
You take. I'm kevlar. You unalone.