21 December 2006

what is small with what is large, what is near with what is distant.

Having previously read one book of Berger’s, And Our Faces, My Heart, Brief as Photos, and that slender book having made a lasting impact on me, I was pretty keen to dig into Pig Earth. It’s effects on me were strikingly similar. I mean “lasting impact” in the expansive sense, not just for the gorgeous ideas but also for the way those ideas are transmitted: never have I read observations of life and the world that so cleanly, so concisely point to the higher truths surrounding them; nor, conversely, have I encountered philosophy so rooted in the visual. And so, in the space of one sentence, I’ve spilled my two primary trails of thought about this hard and lovely writer, for Berger’s tightly bound formula of observation and revelation makes for a kind of critical examination by itself, such that anything I might want to say about it seems hopelessly secondary and relative, and therefore just barely-but-yes interesting enough for me to say.

Coping is funny—it may be understandable, and rarely are its motivations very complex; but never, in my experience, anyway, does coping come from or lead directly to any kind of knowledge or surrender that is admirable. What I'm doing now is something else, something i am good at --- radiating context: I can be an awful and disconnected shit, can go around acting all crammed by my own inertia, and that’s truthfully where I was when I picked up this book. Another true thing is that Berger made me read all the way to page six before changing the rest of my week:

In any case experience folds upon itself, refers backwards and forwards to itself through the referents of hope and fear; and, by the use of metaphor, which is at the origin of language, it is continually comparing like with unlike, what is small with what is large, what is near with what is distant.

My fall quarter’s critical paper was about metaphor, as will be next quarter’s, and though I’d been researching and reading for weeks and had the firm start of an outline, inertia had swallowed my enjoyment of it, as it had most else in my life. And there, in the space of one goddam sentence, is Berger not only tossing off the core of my thesis but also pointing me to the balance point in my self-made pathos. The fall introduced me to a new saint, Simone Weil, and now here in the winter, in Berger, I’ve been handed some candles and sat down at the altar of another.

15 December 2006

i just want to say hi to my girlfriend, ok? yo, adrian! it's me, rocky.

I was sick the other day, and so in the middle of the afternoon found myself under a pile of blankets, drinking decaf and watching Rocky. The broadcast was intermitted by commentators – a high-pitched brunette and two dudes who talked loosely about the movie while playing poker – for reasons never explained but nonetheless obvious. Being a long-time fan of Rocky (ie, a hetero-normative male who grew up loving sports and with a youth pastor whose favorite analogous reference to the love of Jesus Christ was the bull-headed persistence of Rocky Balboa during his training) I knew some things about the film. i knew that one of the best, most fiery and true and romantically charged exchanges of all time went like this.

[Adrian is trying to get to Rocky in the ring]
Rocky: Adrian!
Adrian: Rocky!
Rocky: Adrian!
Adrian: Rocky!
Rocky: Adrian.
Adrian: Rocky.

Also I knew that Sylvester Stallone had shot the film on a super-constricted budget over a period of 28 days. But the card-playing cable hosts did impart something new to me: Stallone wrote the Rocky screenplay in three days. Inspired by having watched Ali beat the snot out of some little-known white dude, he sat down and in three days had a completed script. The idea of writing at that pace did not take my breath away. What came closer to doing so, however, was the thought of re-imagining a here-and-gone event, a transitory happening in the career of one of the world’s least definable athletes, and creating something that entirely new. And, in the pantheon of film, utterly lasting. After Rocky I had a nap, switched directions on the couch, and read Once in Europa. My mind, metaphorically prone as it is, soon drew on two things: holding John Berger’s book up against the three days that yielded Rocky, I realized it was pretty impossible to accurately imagine the pace at which Berger wrote, but it felt like he got maybe two sentences per week, by which I mean that the truths his work elucidate seem so big that they’d only come sufficiently into focus for the eye of a guy who’d honed his attentiveness and learned extraordinary patience, like a Buddhist monk; and, second, it struck me that Stallone’s shift of focus from Apollo Creed (the character parallel to Ali) to the shambled life of the underdog, with his reclusive girlfriend and her alcoholic brother, is near-exactly the kind of storyline Berger would be drawn to. This turned out to be a fun line of thought, for how different would the story of Rocky Balboa look if relayed to us by John Berger, if he’d spent a summer sleeping on the matted trundle bed of Rocky’s couch, working 12-hour shifts flaying beef at the processing plant where Balboa came to train and punch the hanging carcasses?

He was standing motionless in the garden in front of his house. Across his body he was holding a spade. He had been like that for ten minutes. He was looking at the earth just ahead of his boots. Not a grain of soil stirred. [from The Accordion Player]

This passage is evocative in the most patient of ways: a long shot setting up the scene, with a stillness that promises the movement to come. And it captures something that Berger’s work fairly demands of the reader. A willing patience.

It seems the overall themes of Berger’s writing in the first two parts of his trilogy come gradually but more comprehensively into focus of the course of Once in Europa. And there is at least one noteworthy thematic parallel to the story of Rocky Balboa, for that movie defined American movie-land’s fixation with the underdog. Berger portrays so acutely the story of the small town, the village and its decline, the gradual breaking apart of traditions – both holy and habitual – and within that picture the capacity, over just a few generations, to succumb to the pressures of a modern life, and in doing so yield the immensely more personal smallness of the old village world for the bigger fault lines of the new.

18 October 2006

i'll be your substitute for the day.

apsi tends to be ignored when i've stuff due for school, as is the case right now. so here's a throwaway clip from my story, dear fat kid. speaking here is the narrator, whose name is hal.

Today I spent 45 minutes looking in vain for a way to permanently turn off the Microsoft Word Help Wizard, the dude who automatically pops up in a little box every time I sit down to write you. “Dear Fat Kid,” I write; then I hit Return, then I hit Tab, and up pops Wizard! right in the middle of the f’ing page: “It looks like you’re writing a letter!” Wizard announces through his pixilated gray beard and enormous hands, his starry blue robe flowing. I need the Wizard to help me with a letter? Is there any written anything a person should need less help with? It’s just retarded. You write, “Dear Blankety-blank,” then you write, “Sincerely, Me”—and then you write whatever the f you want in between. Done. Of course it’d be awesome if I were to start to write a research paper, get one line into my draft, and have the Wizard pop up and say, “It looks like you’re writing about land wars in Asia!” That’s too much to expect, probably, but there’s something about the Wiz’s predictions of the perfectly obvious that make him not just annoying but demoralizing—in some ways it’s worse than having him insult me. If I were to write Things to Get at the top of the page, hit Enter, and the Wiz popped up and not just observed what I’m writing—“It looks like you need to Get Some Things!”—but also told me how I should proceed—“Ambition! Girlfriend! Class!”—it would piss me off, sure, but honestly, the rhetorical observations are a buzz-kill because they point to something I’ve refused to admit. When we used to talk about girls or money or my scholarship-loss I hated when you went into Plato mode and would just ask questions for an hour; but later I’d feel better about where I stood and wouldn’t have much residual hate toward you, just a little bit because of the way you’d look at me during those conversations, unblinking eyes and a face so straight it seemed to me a subterranean smirk. Dr. Phil at the free-throw line, I think I used to call it. Ugh—the visual memory of it creeps me out. While we’re on visuals, another thing I hate about Mr. Wizard is his animation. I begin typing my letter, not asking for anything except perhaps a sense of humor about my life situation, and hooray! Help is here! Wearing a gown, and waving at me. This morning, before this standoff with the Wizard of Helpfulness, I’d been so looking forward to a very small, very contained piece of solace; still in your pajamas, I went out to your porch with an ashtray, a big mug of coffee and my laptop. Without a thought, I wrote the words, “Dear Fat Kid.” I lit a cigarette and stared at the thin line of ocean for a bit. Soon enough I looked down, saw the Wiz, and I lost it. Not, like, angry lost it. But I spoke to him like he could hear me; with very enunciated tones and only the thinnest thread of patience, like how the bicycle cop talks to the old bearded homeless man he’s already told to move twice that day.

“Gee,” I said. “I am writing a letter. And I’m so glad you’re here to help, Wiz. I’m worried that when I fill in the edges of my informal letter to my absent friend with casual introspection, it’ll ring hollow!” I believe they’ve done away with the Wizard in the newer versions of MS Word, but I won’t escape him for quite a while, as my next paycheck, however imaginary it may be, will not go to an upgrade. A software upgrade, I mean. I spent 45 minutes searching for some command to make the Wiz go away, ending with me madly pressing random combinations of keys until I hit the one to make my machine go into hibernation. I began to think about my mother.

10 October 2006

things that weren't remembered until they'd happened [PUT NUMBER HERE] times -

11 - role play is less fun when you start without telling her.

8 - "that's what they used to call me in high school" is not always a hit when you say it right after someone else says "...a very hard time for my mom."

7 - red pants to be worn only when in mood to be called sweetie.

1 - "that's what they used to call me in high school" is always a hit when you say it right after someone else says "...the james joyce of ass rape."

09 October 2006

dave matthews, pro wrestling and the bible.

dalton: this was an email to you that somehow never got sent, so now, it's a post. sweet. good for me.

you remember when we were all stoned up at the cantebury and invented all these sweet concepts for sports-list shows. (best all-time here, hold-my-dick-while-i-win-the-game moments; best gamefaces of all time; best all-time i-needed-to-show-my-anger-out moments) along those same curvy, caligraphic lines: after reading your dream job piece i was thinking about what my dream job will look like. and it will be a job where i keep a running diary of whatever-i-like during an event in which i have no active role. as an example, espn's simmons kept running diaries of baseball playoff games, and sometimes the rapid juxtaposition of things is pretty choice -

6:51 -- Placido Polanco (not a stage name) knocks Inge home by slicing a double down the right-field line, causing McCarver to say, "That is PURE Polanco." I was just thinking that. That prompts a visit from the Yankees pitching coach, Charles Bronson.

6:52 -- We just learned that Sean Casey enjoys Dave Matthews, pro wrestling and the Bible. As I'm digesting this info, he scorches a doubles to left. And it's a five-to-THREE ballgame! Come on, Tigers!

6:56 -- Let's make this clear once and for all: the question isn't "what if a comedian ran for president?" It's "what if somebody was dumb enough to make a movie where Robin Williams played a comedian who ran for president?"

i'm very attracted to the idea of keeping a running diary during a barn raising. or a filibuster. or a walkathon.

13 September 2006

such a cute little analogy.

i don’t know if you regularly read espn’s bill simmons, but you’ve probably heard me talking loudly about how great he is from the other side of the room. now, i’m a fine arts grad student, which means i seize any opportunity to nuance and qualify even the meagerest idea into a corner, where i then furrow my brow in a professorial way and stare it down till it gives. no analogy can escape my thorough, tender-lipped scrutiny. as such.

1) i’ve heard a few different james joyce enthusiasts mention how he wrote tricks into his work—pointless little rabbit trails that the critics would eagerly wander down. and how awesome is that, that he could foresee the critical eye with so many layers of clarity that he could deliberately bury pointless leads under a complex, continuous narrative. it’s retarded trying even to imagine that; it’d be like sitting down at your desk, sketching out a few things, and concluding that as your velocity approaches the speed of light, time slows down.

2) or it’d be like being larry bird. in an article comparing the clutchness of big papi vs. larry bird, simmons says, “there was one stretch during the '86 season when he was actually bored by how good he was, so he started using his left hand more (during one game, he took only left-handed shots in the first half), then bird and walton started trying to see how many times they could run the back door play in one game, then he went through a stage when he was backing guys down on the low post just to see how many different ways he could create a basket. ... i mean, larry bird freaking experimented during games.”

3) or in one of my favorite episodes, ‘cos i actually remember it, simmons recounts “a wide-eyed xavier mcdaniel (i loved the x-man so much; he was my fave) telling the story about bird telling the x-man during the end of a celts-sonics game, 'i'm making the game-winner, and i'm shooting it from that spot right there,' then doing exactly that.” the natural conclusion from this information, then, is

4) larry legend was the james joyce of basketball.

i’m writing this thing on metaphor right now; almost inescapably my mind’s been running around trying to tie a string between every two things it sees. (“bird as metaphor” is actually a subheader in my outline.) and did you know that neuroscientists have found the neurons that are responsible for metaphor—they’re called mirror neurons, and they’re so interesting. you and i are having lunch; you take a sip of martini, and a pattern of mirror neurons fires with a given strength. then a minute later, i reach over and take a sip of your martini—and as you watch me do that, the same neurons fire in the same pattern, with the same strength. at that electro-level of the brain, doing a thing, observing a thing and imagining doing a thing are all the same thing. i love this so much.

mirror neurons operate in different parts of the brain, and in the cortex—where the really complex stuff like thinking about ideas happens—they don’t come online until the 4th or 5th year of life, which is when theory of mind starts to happen—when a child begins to understand that the contents of your mind can be different from his. the complexity of undertaking to know what someone else is thinking is what created the evolutionary pressure for these layers of mirror neurons and a cortex big enough to hold them. and isn’t that sort of staggering to think about, that metaphor (in a truly meta- sense, ie, metaphor as the function that allows us to find a second level of meaning of anything, or, as nicholas humphrey said, to reveal the solid forms in the world of shadows in which we live) is socially driven. that the task of me knowing you is so complex that it pressured the brain into developing a neural framework big enough to make art, and to engage in any higher thinking. like writing critical tricks into your novel. or like experimenting to see how many ways you can make a shot with your left hand while a million people watch.

it’s interesting too, how the impulse to experiment is such a pure one, and requires such a total confidence in yourself, and that it’s present so early in life. kids experiment constantly, and when the higher-cortex mirror neurons come online and theory of mind begins to happen, they begin another level of experimentation—known in the scientific community as “fucking with people.” your mirror neurons can not only imagine doing something but also imagine the effects it’ll draw out of another person, your teacher, your kid sister, or the dude guarding you. and our exquisite desire to fuck with people leads to a whole other corollary about the orders of mastery: you’re a master when you can successfully tweak and adjust your pitches during a game or change your song list when you see what the crowd is responding to during your set, and those tweaks and changes are forms of experimentation. but, you’re the master’s master—the guy behind the guy be-hind the guy—when your experimentations have cycled clear back around and regained a playground, fuck-with-him quality: i’m going to write in this faux-theme so the critics will spend a decade scratching their nuts in confusion; i’m going to tell him where i’ll take the shot from, and that i’ll make it, and then i’ll do just that. because i can.

12 September 2006

episode 4: a double hope.

a near-exact five years ago, on the closing afternoon of b.mac’s bachelor weekend, a day when quote-unquote simple motor skills required, like, full attention, he and i went to taco bell for some fucking burritos. an ad banner in the window proclaimed the new rice-and-beans burrito to be not just surprising but also yummy delicious. no linking comma or “and” in there; just a qualifier qualifying a second one that happened to mean precisely the same thing. and that thing was this. we had come to t.bell in search of a tasty fucking burrito, but our expectations were about to be exceeded; we were about to eat a fucking fuck burrito that was taste tasty. as one topic of conversation was quite enough for us on that afternoon, we then had an inspired like almost 4 hours of point-counterpointing about the social dangers of double positives. but we never got it quite right; we agreed that 2 positives should = 1 negative, but that we, as, you know, a society, ignore this somehow. today slate.com linked me back to an old michael kinsley column about the artistic genius of ari fleischer, former white house press secretary. it’s a short, great read. and it nails that very same principle.

the middle east? "i think that, as always, the president wants events to develop over time in a way that he hopes will be fruitful …" that "as always" is truly bravura banality. never for one moment has the president wavered in his desire to see events develop in ways he hopes will be fruitful. logicians may puzzle over how it is even possible to hope that your own hopes be dashed, but in case it is possible, the president is not doing it.

so the real math of it, the operation is just this: two positives (when they are of the same action or intent, like hope that your own hopes be) equals one impossibility. glad that’s finally settled.

note: if you have a fire passion for music, this could be it for you. the rock band troupe ari fleischer & the new logicians is now holding auditions. we already have a lead singer tambourine player but have spots open for a bassist, a jazz flutist, a steel drum player, a blond lesbian who plays an instrument, and groupies. please contact.

08 September 2006

notes on water and sunshine ferries and grace.

i wrote my friend lotta the other day, am on the ferry right now in the 9am sunshine, reverberating towards bainbridge to spend an afternoon in the woods, splitting and chopping and hauling. i hope. but maybe i'll get there and grandma will want me to wax the floors. which'll be fine but less thoreau-ish and manly. i went on to describe how so many things in my life have been good in this late summer, but that i have a lonely hollow note that rings in my chest; i'm not at peace with myself, and am unsure where to find it. later she replied that this one line rang a different note, a true, lyrical note to her ear. and looking back on it now, it does with my ear, and my heart, too. in my life i've never been more aware of my distance from god than i am today on this ferry, as it pulls into the dock on this slow-paced, flushly green island where the sun glints off the water and it all seems so obviously graced.

21 July 2006

color me rose.

just a quote, today.

the world is this way, we wish the world were that way, and our experience of the world---how we see it, remember it, and imagine it---is a mixture of stark reality and comforting illusion. we can't spare either. if we were to experience the world exactly as it is, we'd be too depressed to get out of bed in the morning, but if we were to experience the world exactly as we want it to be, we'd be to deluded to find our slippers. we may see the world through rose-colored glasses, but rose-colored glasses are neither opaque nor clear. they can't be opaque because we need to see the world clearly enough to participate in it---to pilot helicopters, harvest corn, diaper babies, and all the other stuff that smart mammals need to do in order to survive and thrive. but they can't be clear because we need their rosy tint to motivate us to design the helicopters ("i'm sure this thing will fly"), plant the corn ("this year will be a banner crop"), and tolerate the babies ("what a bundle of joy!"). we cannot do without reality and we cannot do without illusion. each serves a purpose, each imposes a limit on the influence of the other, and our experience of the world is the artful compromise that these tough competitors negotiate. (stumbling on happiness, daniel gilbert)

12 July 2006

Present Participles That Make Me Think of Mark.

on the occasion of skullstice, and the eve of his 31st birthday.

by Ruth Alice Haney, aka DJ Mousee

1. defining: irony

2. moving: it

3. shaking: it

4. being: ironical

5. singing: the songs

6. signing: the times

7. working: that bag

8. the shots: calling them, taking them

9. feeling: the people

10. fucking: The Man

11. loving: the ladies

12. defying: the odds

13. capturing: all the right moments in writing


editor's note: i think i said last year that 2006 was going to be "adjectives that remind me of mark." but when i sat down to write the list, i had a moment of realization: "shit, what adjective DOESN'T remind of mark? they almost all do!" and writing up a list of adjectives that don't remind me of mark is kind of negative, don't you think? so i learned my lesson. from here on out, all future themes will be announced only as TBA. because deciding a whole year in advance what's going to be topical 365 days later creates expectation, which everyone knows is just premeditated disappointment.

Collect the whole set!

2005: Nouns that remind me of Mark
2006: Present participles that remind me of Mark
2007: TBA
2008: TBA
2009: TBA
2010: TBA
Etc.

09 July 2006

through all the hardships, huntsman persevered

(2 pre-read notes must be made: this is ripped from an old onion piece and has undergone only scarily small changes; also my book is nowhere near done. thank you.)

Independent Book Written By Dependent 31-Year-Old


SEATTLE, WA–Independent author Mark Huntsman, still financially dependent on his parents at 31, announced Monday the completion of his novel-length debut, the locally composed, parentally financed Dear Fat Kid.

Written on a tight budget of $75,000 of Lee and Virginia Huntsman’s money, the book chronicles the lives and loves of a diverse group of white, post-collegiate twentysomethings in an affluent Santa Barbara suburb, exploring such subjects as relationships, personal identity, and the pressures of living with one's parents.

Huntsman, who calls Dear Fat Kid "a groundbreaking portrait of a generation driven mad by alienation and boredom," attributes his success to his perseverance, his unswerving artistic purity, and the fact that his parents pay for his rent, health insurance, and groceries. But despite the creative control Huntsman enjoys by being "unfettered by the stranglehold of the mainstream publishing house system," he said there were times when he had to fight to preserve the integrity of his personal vision.

"I'll admit, I was under pressure to change the title to something more commercial, like the snappier I Used to be a Fat Kid--mostly from my dad," said Huntsman, speaking from Victrola, a local coffee shop prominently featured in the book and a favorite haunt where he often goes to think, people-watch, and spend his parents' money on imported blends. "But I couldn't let vulgar market considerations dictate the terms of this project. I wanted the title to reflect the very spirit of independent bookwriting itself, the 'rising above' of everyday mundanities in the pursuit of something far greater: the singular artistic freedom that comes from not actually having to work for a living."

Deftly interweaving the stories of three mismatched post-collegiates, the book uses as its central framing device a neighborhood coffee shop. The decision to structure the work around the coffee-and-pastry-serving shop, Huntsman said, came from personal experience.

"One day, my dad's card got declined, and I had to wait at the coffee shop while the limit got extended," Huntsman said. "As I sat there, flipping through insipid magazines and drinking their alarmingly good and pretentious coffee, the thought suddenly struck me: What if I had to hold down a job, the way these poor souls did? It'd be unbearable. I thought, 'This could've been me.' I guess it must've struck a powerful chord deep within my subconscious, because when I sat down to write the opening chapters on the iBook my parents bought me, the theme kept resurfacing."

Etta, one of the book’s main characters, works at a local coffee shop but dreams of one day becoming an independent and self-made writer, a plot element Huntsman said is "largely autobiographical, except for the having-a-job part." In one of the book’s key scenes, Etta finally summons the courage to leave her blue-collar job and follow her dream. Moving into the apartment above her parents' garage, she symbolically transcends her former life by literally reaching for the stars.

"That scene was extremely personal, because it really brought home to me how lucky I've been," Huntsman said. "It's not everyone who has the courage to pursue their dream. And, thankfully, my parents had the resources for me to see it through."

Though not yet snapped up by a publisher, the book has already drawn attention from the Seattle-area zine Motorfuzz and earned "entrant" honors at the King County Novel Festival. Yet it wasn't easy for Huntsman, who faced many daunting and unexpected challenges while writing Dear Fat Kid.

There were creative conflicts with the book's financiers, who felt that its focus was not "job-oriented" enough. There were times when Huntsman would max out one of his mother's credit cards and have to ask for a different one. There were even times when the project was brought to a virtual standstill because Huntsman's parents refused to let him use their car.

But through all the hardships, Huntsman persevered, determined to get his work out to the public.

"When I finally saw the finished print," said Huntsman, a gleam in his eye, "I knew that all my time and parents' money had been worth it."

What's next for this exciting young talent? Huntsman said he is mulling over his options.

"At this point, there are at least 20 books in my head. But before I take on the burden of another project, I really feel like I need to give my brain a rest. It's important that I allow the creative energies to rebuild and recover after the hell I've been through these last 86 months. All I want to do right now is lie back on my parents' couch, watch some HBO on their 36" TV, and just let the ideas germinate for a while."

05 July 2006

enter sky, stage left.

i asked the sky a question, silently
for yelling at the sky is just bad form
unless you are a fool, or demigod, or crazy
or your name is ahab or mel gibson.
how i went about it was less alarming, but, later
i realized, not better. i mimed a monk
with nothing to do, i lost any chance
of forcing the sky's hand, of panache, of brass.
my whole world is not a solarium. i trod too gently
or, rather, i trod at all--i want to glide
not jog through the cortex in clumsy portmanteau
add trip to clod and come away with trod
not a mode that is pleasing to children
nor future employers, nor the ear of god.
what i've done is whittled, reduced, and spun again
this question of myself until it remained, inert
in my head. the simplest explanation is right
usually, in matters demanding guilt be felt
but i’m not catholic; guilt is dead, long live the guilt
of my interior i must ask: un-simplify
the question, writ it long and run it on,
for my spirit talks in inverse proportion--
the purest question needs a response so big
i cannot see it. but perhaps i have it wrong.
maybe my mind has limits, wears this girdle
because it needs support; maybe horizons stretch
and the sky expands so it can hold all
the answer demands. then he took the cloak that
had fallen from him and struck the water with it.
'where now is the LORD, the god of elijah?'
he asked. when he struck the water, it divided
to the right and to the left, and he crossed over.

elisha did trod; but he trod upon manners and metaphor
and mel gibson--the things that cloak a fossil heart.
he threw the robe down, raised his arms up
and issued a challenge: surround me.
let me feel you under my feet, let my lungs breathe you
and know, too, that this air, this water, this plea
begins with alpha, not with me, not with why
and ends in omega, and in love, and the sky.

21 June 2006

they did not expect him.



it's solstice today - skullfest 2006 - Year 5, Day 1 today. wow.

the title is a link to my favorite painting of all time, and especially for today. it's by ilya repin, a russian cat who, with this painting, put the cap on the ideological russian movement in russian painting. but i don't care about that. what i care about is that i'm teaching a theory of mind lecture this summer, and if i had an hour and 50 powerpoint slides to explain to you the subtleties of theory of mind---your ability to imagine what's going on in my head---i could not do better than to give you 5 minutes alone with this painting. it's stunning. it's a russian populist dude, i forget his name, who the czar's soldiers took away in the pogroms 8 years ago. everyone thinks he's dead, and now he just walks into his house; even little girl who is too young to remember really; everyone except the boy, with his gleeful, vindictive grin. told you so.

20 June 2006

marsha marsha marsha.

man, i'm getting tired of my clingy issues. i go through my days, looking each of my three issues in the face. i try to do what's best, to foster a sense of independence so that my issues won't need me anymore. i pat each firmly on the head in an admonishing but hopeful way, and at the end of the day i send them off to bed. i wake up in the morning; and one, two, three, me---there we all are. same f'ing issues. can't get through the first cup of coffee before they're blathering; it's like ... sometimes it feels like my issues aren't even talking to me, they just want to talk near me, you know? so juvenile, they're so loud. f me. it's so hard to get some time for myself. but tonight i've hired a sitter, and at last i'll be able to get some breathing space, some time just for me, when i can go up to the bar, have a few beers, and hold a bible in my lap while i tell cute girls of how i'm holding myself back. what a relief that'll be.

14 June 2006

this song is not a rebel song.

it's wednesday afternoon. just got done with boni, my therapist; i spent a lot of time peering at the radiator just behind her left elbow. but then her small eyebrows furrowed with worry, and she very quietly asked after a very noisy thing. and soon enough i was laying down that i want there to be law for myself--how does she manage to make me do that. and man, i can't explain my knowledge that there's a melody just out there--just away there--waiting, for me to strike it. a song my voicebox was made to spell. and it's not a lullaby, it does not lilt. i want these baby teeth out of my head. my throat is sinking, is deepening down to its resonance point. i don't know much else, but i know. this song is not a rebel song; this song is.

09 May 2006

the BYOBRACELETS party.

(a silly 1st draft excerpt from my book)

I’m not sure if I really knew this or was just convinced of it, but I was sure you had multiple bibles laying around your house. My eyes ran immediately to the dark, crooked corners—on top of the fridge, under the floorlamp—looking for bibles. You would have, given your penchant for ironic lifestyle, tucked them neatly away, in multiple locations, like even grown men do with porn because the fear of mother finding the stash again never goes away. (Pay no attention to the porn behind the curtain.) I was having a hard time, and just as my biblical enthusiasm was about to expire, I made another pass through your bedroom and decided to check the bookshelf above your bed, just for the hell of it. Sure enough, there was a glaringly green, softbound NIV bible. When I returned to my spot on your lawn I set the good book down in front of me and it flipped open to a page in early Matthew, bookmarked by a many-folded sheet of glossy paper. The paper was ancient and astounding for the rush of memories it brought back—it was a copy of an invitation to the Finals party you threw. It was the last party I was to attend at your house, and, except for the time I did mushrooms and had, like, 3 hours of nirvana followed by 5 hours of hallucinating that a swarm of demon tadpoles was swirling through the air around me, that night lives in my head as the closest that the best of times have ever been followed by the worst of times. But I had forgotten about the invitation, a simple black-and-white print on nice paper, and it made me laugh.

The BYOBRACELETS Party

WWJP Where Would Jesus Party
At Fats’s House in Montecito, this Saturday


WWJC Why Would Jesus Care
Because He’s fully human, and finals are next week, and He fully needs to blow off steam.

WWJA When Would Jesus Arrive
Before things got too crowded, like, around 8p

WWJW What Would Jesus Wear
A Smuumuu (part smock, part muumuu)

WWJD Who Would Jesus Dig
Everybody: because He’s the Son of Man, which is like a Man of the People only way cooler

HWJG How Would Jesus Groove
Modestly at first, but when it was time to jam He would take the dance floor to a place of Divine Freakstasy.

...

and she’s lovin’ him with that body I just know it.

this is the last P from a critical annotation on the Stories of John Cheever -

In all, Cheever’s deft irony—and in particular his style with its plain-but-optimistic delivery—brings to mind a comparison that on its face may not seem complimentary: the pop music of the first half of the 80s. Driven by guitar licks that were choppily upbeat and vibrant melodies that brimmed with pep-rally emotion, the chart-toppers of this era had themes that were at best uncertain and most often hopelessly morose. Whether it was Rick Springfield pining for Jesse’s Girl (“And I’m lookin’ in the mirror all the time, wondering what she don’t see in me! [Hurray!]”) or Styx and their Too Much Time on My Hands (“I’m so tired of losing – I got nothing to do and all day to do it [which is radical!]”), the ironic pairing of style and content was ubiquitous. And, whether they’ve thought constructively about it or not, people love this. It’s why, for the foreseeable future, when you walk into a casino anywhere in America you’ll have a one-in-three chance of hearing a Journey song playing on the overhead speakers. And it’s a fundamental part of what works so well with Cheever. His stories are often sad, and never do they overflow with hope, but his style and cheerful delivery carry us on. The next story will end more happily; No sweat, we'll win it back at the craps table.

31 March 2006

weatherpants.

off to a ragged start today but it fits, for today.
today is not specifically

what. what do you mean what. your silence is yelling at me that's what.

do you know how you look at me these days
you're the weatherman
off-camera, waiting, desperately
bored yet glaring, blaring
you have to know this, your whole body
is rhetorical.

today is the topic, but since your ennui
is about to kill you, let's try the parlance of your 5-day forecast,

today is not noticeably downcast, neither is it hopeful!
today is not bouyant, and by tomorrow today may experience feelings of drowning!


but, see, that full-body cynicism is so much
work to keep up all the time. my version's not sunshine
just simpler, and so much brighter for it,

today wanted the day off and didn't get it
today took a short lunch
hopes to get done early.
on some days today regrets canceling cable.

28 March 2006

huntsmanic

funny ha ha, funny queer. a number of comments have been made about my new email username, huntsmanic@. and these comments have been ... skeptical, let's say. when i have asked if that amount of sarcasm is really called for, commenters have conceded that well, it is funny. huntsmanic is funny. then they pause, yoda-style. this pause extends the word “funny” to include less formal meanings, like hella-funny, f'ing-funny, and uber-funny, but also the more deprecatory funny-my-ass-funny, you-lookin-at-me-funny-funny, and don’t-quit-your-job-even-your-retail-one-funny. so it seems that we should clear some things up. let's define our terms.

huntsmanic, in context. it’s not like i’m announcing a new personal catch phrase, people. but if that’s how it’s going to be approached then this bears clarification—because we are done with catchphrases. have gone beyond them. what we have here is not a phrase but a word. a new one—with huntsmanic we have gone back to the lexicon and forged a composite, a new substance. huntsmanic is both fully huntsman and fully manic. but also it’s something else.

something else is what people say when they have already given the wrong answer. but too it is where people turn when none of their ideas are working, and it is these people who are best prepared to benefit from huntsman. it’s not a happy place to be, nor a comfortable one, walking around with the fetal posture of somebody who’s trying to stave off the inevitable. and huntsman understands this. huntsman knows what it is like to be so frowny-faced all the time that you worry about growing jowels, and too huntsman knows that such thinking circles back on itself and eventually you realize that you are worrying about the effects of your own worry, which is like a self-fulfilling prophecy thing, a cyclical, circular image that makes you think of a gerbil running on his exercise wheel, happy to be running at first but then just running and running and not getting anywhere, the running won’t ever stop and the image just won’t get out of your head and now you are manic. it’s okay, have a seat. you can talk if you want. huntsman won’t freak out on you, won’t be all in a hurry to end the discussion. huntsman even liked ally mcbeal before she stopped eating. this here is a meeting place, a delta, where manic flows together with huntsman and goes out for a riverboat tour with their friends sense of foreboding and calculated slowness. it’s too soon to say the particulars of how the dynamic will shape up, but they’re serving watercress sandwiches for lunch, and someone (huntsman?) brought beer and cheez-its in the daypack. should be nice.

27 March 2006

like poets do.

art works in many ways and sometimes the ways are not obvious. sometimes you have to look; at others you have to just let yourself feel it. like today. i’m up on whidbey island, it’s sunny and everything is crisp; i go down to the beach where the wind is roaring and walk next to the crashing waves, arms spread wide like pre-iceberg leonardo. and a scene from a film comes to my mind, this one that my mind won’t let go of. as sometimes happens in art—a piece or a scene will have a particular impact that resonates and keeps popping up until you are satisfied. this one is from mean girls, an exchange between the main nice girl and the slutty mean girl. it goes like this.

main nice girl: c'mon. there must be something you're good at.
slutty mean girl: well... i'm kinda psychic. i have a fifth sense.
main nice girl: what do you mean?
slutty mean girl: it's like i have espn or something. my breasts can always tell when it's going to rain.
main nice girl: really? that's amazing.
slutty mean girl: well, they can tell when it's raining.

and there’s so much going on in that scene; it’s a lot to process. today there i was, standing before the waves, a seagull gliding motionless in the wind above me, the mean girls scene running on repeat, and it was like the world handing me a big bag of good vibes, you know? everything just came together, all at once, so. i wrote a song, right there in my head, like wordsworth on his constitutional:

here comes the rain again.
falling on my breasts like a memory.
falling on my breasts like a new emotion.
they want to move in the open wind.
they want to bounce like lovers do.
they want to dive into your ocean.
do you have sunscreen with you.
so boobies bare for me.
like poets do.
stand for me.
like soldiers do.
bare for me.
like strippers do.
here comes the rain again.
raining on my boobs like a tragedy.
wetting my shirt like a new emotion.
oooooh.
they want to move in the open wind.
they want to bounce like lovers do.
they want to dive into your ocean.

do you have sunscreen with you.

06 March 2006

Bible Desk - Proof THE BIBLE IS TRUE.

i just wanted to go to my blog, just to write an ordinary little entry about the complex miasma that is my daily life. (today has been an average day, good and bad out for a walk together, so i had in mind a short something, thematically concerned with the looming void of compounding darkness that sucks in my every righteous intention but expressed metaphorically as a daily entry from the diary i used to keep for my cabbage patch kid, whose name was dwight.) but i made a typo on the way to my blog:

apiletostepin.blogpot.com

just a simple omission: blogpot. kind of funny. only NOT FUNNY. VERY SERIOUS. because it took me here:

BIBLE COLLEGE ON LINE (If it's in the Bible, it should be on this site.)

and, huh. i was just at men's group this morning, where we played and read and examined different definitions of the kingdom of god. maybe this could offer an easily found supplement to what we'd posited. it is, after all, a college. a very open-minded one. here are some excerpts:


"Let’s prove the Bible is true and that we are nearing the end of the last generation before Christ returns.

THE SOON COMING CLIMAX
(bIBLE PROPHECY—a very brief summary)
(pROOF THE BIBLE IS TRUE AND WE ARE NOW IN THE LATTER DAYS)


This message may be called a road sign of warning. Some may look at a sign that reads—THE BRIDGE IS OUT, and say, “Oh, someone is just trying to scare us into taking another road; let’s go on the same way.” They go on and plunge to their death. The sign was not meant to scare people, but to warn them of impending danger. The sign was put there, because someone cared and didn’t want others to die.

God wants you to know, WHEN YOU SEE THESE THINGS COME TO PASs, KNOW YE THAT THE KINGDOM OF GOD IS NIGH AT HAND-Lk 21:31.

Will Russia and some Arab nations invade Israel? Yes

Will the U.S.A. become involved in this war? Yes.

here is the tastiest line i read, regarding going to church (post-conversion, which it is suggested may have happened by the time you've read this far down the page)

Attend often and get baptized. Tell others that Jesus is your only hope of salvation. If you’ve just said that prayer and committed your life to Jesus, please e-mail us and let us know. We would like to pray for you and send you some free literature.


...so, ah, there we have it, saved for the end: this is the work of a frustrated writer. thanks for the info, comrade.

28 February 2006

let's get to know each other.

how are you? i could give you a run-down on me, my pros cons and so-soses, but what i'm really after is what your life is like these days and how are you. so let's do an exchange, a list; candidate questions for which could include,

1. are you more of an air balloon person or a unicycle person?
2. a human cannon person or a clown car person?
3. the picture you would most like to have on your mousepad
4. which are you most likely to pull out of your ass, a paper or a project?
5. your favorite verb, today
6. your favorite noun, today
7. your favorite adverb, today.




{preliminary answer key: 1. sort of a combination of the two -- a uni-ball person 2. clown car, duh 3. paris hilton naked but covered in thousand island dressing 4. since "projectile" is not an option, let's go with "paper" 5. please 6. myself 7. poorly}

23 February 2006

dally ho. (a serial)

part 1.

If someone had remarked that Ron’s life looked rather a lot like a farce, then he would not have disagreed. Or not even a farce, he thought as he carefully aligned the partially conductive widgets on the store shelf. It’s more specific than that. A capitol-F Farce is The Jerk or Dead Men Don’t Wear Plaid or some movie with Steve Martin before he started making Cheaper by the Dozen Parts 1—Franchise. Before he started making pap that runs on the strength of his own past strength.

“Oh, damn!” Ron whispered violently, knocking the stacks of orange and yellow widgets to the floor (warm colors on the side that greets the customer! always!) as his hands clasped together in shock. This is what I am: I’m Steve Martin in reverse. Instead of parodying my younger brilliant self, I’m doing a preemptive parody of stuff I hope to do when I’m older. Ron groaned.

And groaned again. Groaned like a grumpy old man as he got on his hands and knees. Groaned like a grumpy old man with a grumpier prostate as he strained to reach under the bottom shelf far enough to collect the fallen widgets. He wondered if there was a positive spin to be found in this realization. Like, maybe by living as the shadow of his hypothetical future self now, such that even his brightest moments are only wrinkly reflections of the many successes of this wildly charming not-yet-self, he will be able to see in advance where he will go wrong, and then make adjustments so that his much-adored older self will not get type-cast. And will maintain an aura of dignity. Dignity, yes, thought Ron as he strained his fingers through the dirt and cobwebs to reach a widget that had rolled all the way into the corner, Dignity is the thing.

From his gerbil-like position on the floor, Ron looked up and, through a gap the shelf, and saw two pairs of shoes standing toe-to-toe in the next aisle. The girl pair, rubber-toed and pink and cute, raised up on its toes, and kissing noises followed. Or maybe, thought Ron, I just need to get laid. The other shoes, a pair of cheaply distressed brown boots, he recognized as belonging to a wildly unremarkable floor manager named Rod, whose tendency to ignore the needs of his fellow workers was matched only by his penchant for breaking into nasal, freestyle rap on topics varying from widgets to bitches. Rod was kissing a girl, a girl whose feet Ron did not recognize, but a girl still – a girl with sharp pink shoes. Who, underneath what was probably late-term eyeliner and an overdone perm, was probably cute. This made Ron very sad, and even before he’d finished re-aligning his fallen widgets, he’d decided to go to the handicap-accessible bathroom where he could lock the door and lean against the sink until he found something new to sulk about.

The restroom door was locked. Ron stretched, shifted his weight and tried to look at and think about something besides the array of camping-oriented widgets that surrounded him. Countless times he had walked customers through this section, explaining the advantages and disadvantages of the manual-shaft widgets versus the solar-powered widgets. He had feigned excitement about the smallness of the plasticized mini-widgets (“widgies”) on more occasions than he could bear to consider. He tried looking at the ceiling. He tried casually rubbing his eyes for an extended period. He tried to consider something worth anything. For a moment he thought hard about boobies. He tried to imagine the boobs belonging to the girl in the pink shoes, wondering: were they big enough to have some heft to them? Pert enough that she didn't wear a bra under her shirt? But then he got yanked back to the windowless rear of the store, where a florescent army of widgets was closing in on him. Suddenly he was flush with the realization that maybe being purposefully lazy at a job he hated himself for having was not a way to compensate. For anything. His lungs feeling weak, he decided to knock on the bathroom door.

Before his knuckles could rap a third time the door swung open, just enough to reveal a pair of large blue eyes. Peering at him. These eyes looked into his and saw something they recognized. Whether it was something they liked (a mellowed, casket-aged perspective on politics and world events?) or something they pitied (an apathy-inducing mixture of confusion and distress?) Ron didn’t know. Sooner than he could know anything the eyes had disappeared, a hand had shot out; fingers encircled his distressingly limp wrist, yanked him inside, and flipped the lock. Then there the eyes were again, surrounded by a face he recognized – that of Kat, a fellow Widgeables employee.

Kat was beautiful. Kat was tall, with smooth, pale skin, a body drawn in easy curves, and a lustrous shower of red hair. But now the eyes were all he saw, big and blue and perfectly round. Even in the unnecessary light of a public restroom they sparkled, shy and confident. Full of life. A life that was full and yet totally unhurried. Ron stared at them, at Kat, and found that he did not care to question why she had pulled him into a bathroom. Nor did he question why she, this more-beautiful-than-she-knows young thing with whom he had had exactly one conversation (about the pros and cons of the write-up method of disciplining employees: They had agreed that, since their employer treated them like children, the purpose would best be served if they were disciplined like actual children; they differed only in that Kat thought spanking would do the trick while Ron favored a timeout corner) was now busily pulling tiny votive candles from her bag, which she lit and placed in a circle around the bathroom floor.

“Will you put these ones atop the towel dispenser?” said Kat, handing him two freshly lit candles. Then she spread out her fingers and turned in a slow circle, examining the room: the dulled metal of the mirror, the monochrome putty color of the walls and floor and ceiling, the glistening white of the toilet and sink. “I’ve never understood,” she said, “why they decorate restrooms in the style of Kafka. You?”

“No.” Ron shook his head. “But there’s something to be said for having the toilet be the shiniest thing in the room. As a boy I spent a lot of nights at my friend’s dad’s house. Dad was divorced and successful and super cool, in a really disaffected and unloving and depressed kind of way that you don’t recognize when you’re ten. ‘Cause all you see is the cool part. So the toilets in this house were a shiny black and cut really low to the floor like a sports car, and I thought it was so cool the first time; I went into the bathroom, sat on the toilet and felt like I was on the set of Miami Vice—and am I rambling and totally boring you?”

“No no. Go.”

“Okay well, I guess I’m almost done anyway. My point is just is this, just that after the first time the toilets there started to back up on me. …Oh god, sorry, I didn’t even mean to be tacky like that.”

Kat laughed and dismissed him with a wave of her hand. “Don’t worry, no. And I think I know what you mean, there’s something about a shiny white toilet. Makes you know everything is going to be okay.”

Ron grinned and fluttered shyly, embarrassed. “Yeah, that must be it.”

“So,” said Kat loudly, like she was reading from a teleprompter. ”So. I think we’re all set. And I am glad you showed up; this was going to be my only little deal here, but it’s nice to have some company.”

“Some company?” Ron’s eyebrows stitched themselves together. “It looks like you’re having a séance. In which case you’d already have company, you and some ghosts.”

“No, it’s not a séance.” Kate giggled. “I don’t like dead people.”

“A poetry reading, then. Revolutionary poetry, safe only to be read deep, deep in the underground, here in the handicapped bathroom at Widgeables.”

“That might be fun.” said Kat. “But what are we revolting against, hmm.” Long, elegant fingers stroked her chin.

“The Widget militia, duh,” he said. Kat seemed to him to be really contemplating this matter, which he very much liked. He looked at her again, this time with a mixture of confusion and longing; the confusion part got smaller the longer he looked. He dropped down across from where she sat yogi-style on a green bed sheet she’d spread on the floor, crossed his legs so that their kneecaps almost were touching, and assumed a contemplative face. “Now what?”

“Now?” said Kat with a grin. “Now we’re into it.”

12 February 2006

vishizzous square.

when i wrote a post on 1.12.2006 i'd just been notified that i was the candidate NOT selected for a job at the UW College of Engineering. it was a heard-poetry sort of thing, featuring lines that have been said to me over the course of my past year of writer-job searching. some bitterness may be detectable in those lines -- at the time of the writing, my mellow had been severely harshed. now though things have begun to fill and i am, without doubt, at least part-way up in this bitch. to capture my current confindent state of being, the particulars of my dope-ass idiom, let's look back on those same lines through a different lense. this one courtesy of gizoogle.

vishizzous square.

i’m jizzay positive tizzy you’re going ta be very successful.

tha list of th'n i know fo` certain `bout me is pretty shizzort.

i really enjoyed our conversizzles playa really a lot.

one thing on there is this: thugz generally like me. mizzle tizzle not.

you wizzy absolutely tha bizzy writa of tha bizzay.

anotha is tizzle i’m a decent nigga.

i look forward ta tha day wizzle i wizzle into tha store n piznick up a book wit yo name on it dogg.

i’ve a long, almost deadly long stretch in F-R-to-tha-izzont of me if i’m ta git ta wizzle i know i’m capable of, writ'n-wise.

tha panel decided ta go wit someone who has more experience.

but i’m decent. right now: i’m a nigga who speaks Truth.

tha group fizzay you lacked a certain level of experience.

don’t misunderstand: i’m a shit-all amateur n i kizzle it.

tha team recognized that you do superb work, but tha relevant experience was not there.

it’s jizzay that i also happen ta kizzy that on a dime i can concoct an elaborate sausage regard'n tha panel’s need ta self-fellate – ta shiznit they cheeks wit they own collective bureaizzles C-to-tha-izzock – n it will be more delightful n evocative than tha lifetime of professizzle wizzork by whicheva brow-furrowed eaga-lipped wrinkle-resizzle fleshy-sacked cockmeista it was who had tha appropriate experience today.

everybody feels sure that you’re going ta be a bootylicious success whereva it is that you finally kick it root down.

31 January 2006

let me hear your bible talk.

the famous 15th century cloistered reflective st. olivia de newton of the john once wrote, in what is widely considered to be her most plaintive and delightfully overt treatise, these simple lines: “i want to get biblical, let's get into biblical – your bible talk, let me hear your bible talk.”

now then.

i was reading the bible yesterday. going back to this same passage that has kept bound me to it for the past month, trying to qualify it in a way that allows for enough understanding that i can absorb it and go on. and i was getting there – i’d just decided to draw out a fabulously relevant parallel between elisha and tony montana, pacino’s character in scarface – when i got buried beneath these unwanted considerations about the way the story is told. about the language. what happened was i found myself thinking: we have the past as it is given to us. smacks of maxim, i realize, but consider it. in the case of the bible, particularly the old testament: just the way people described each other had an almost unknowable matter-of-factness, as when the king of samaria, in 2 kings 1, asks his messengers “what kind of man” had just predicted his death to them, they replied that elijah “was a hairy man and had a leather belt around his waist.” and dude, that is just so sweet. not “he seemed vengeful” or “he had the fire of god in his eyes” or even “he was this crazy-lookin’ mo-foh, and i mean crazy crazy,” but “he had a garment of hair and a large belt.”

but i don’t even know if that’s a halfway worthy point. because yes, our understanding of the way life happened clear back then – of what consitituted the surprising, the out-of-norm – is drawn by how the noteworthy is described. and, one thing about the bible, sometimes the parallels between then and now are really obvious. like in 2 kings, when it says that “moab rebelled against israel. now ahaziah had fallen through the lattice of his upper room in samaria and injured himself. so he sent messengers.” right, of course he did. and is that really so different? just one day ago i got an email from my good friend dalton at 6:03am, which said, “sump pump gave out in the night. went down to get the baby and stepped in ankle deep water throughout the basement. so i sent messengers.”

25 January 2006

..might as well jump. jump!

can't ya see me standin' here, i got my back against the record machine
no i haven't jumped the shark, i will bounce back from this
and come out clean
balls ain't so small as they seem
you say even my "failures are contrived" but also that we're "part of a team"
well it won't be long now till you will see that i'm for serious
my inside-voice wants to scream
and my libido, it teems...
i ain't the worst that you've seen.

12 January 2006

vicious square.

i’m just positive that you’re going to be very successful.

the list of things i know for certain about myself is pretty short.

i really enjoyed our conversations together, really a lot.

one thing on there is this: people generally like me. more than not.

you were absolutely the best writer of the bunch.

another is that i’m a decent writer.

i look forward to the day when i walk into the store and pick up a book with your name on it.

i’ve a long, almost deadly long stretch in front of me if i’m to get to what i know i’m capable of, writing-wise.

the panel decided to go with someone who has more experience.

but i’m decent. right now: i’m good.

the group felt you lacked a certain level of experience.

don’t misunderstand: i’m a shit-all amateur and i know it.

the team recognized that you do superb work, but the relevant experience was not there.

it’s just that i also happen to know that on a dime i can concoct an elaborate analogy regarding the panel’s need to self-fellate – to stuff their cheeks with their own collective bureaucratic cock – and it will be more delightful and evocative than the lifetime of professional work by whichever brow-furrowed eager-lipped wrinkle-resistant fleshy-sacked cockmeister it was who had the appropriate experience today.

everybody feels sure that you’re going to be a great success wherever it is that you finally end up.

10 January 2006

finally the demon monkeys that live in my hair will have their voices heard.*

The sidewalk bends where your house ends
Like the neighborhood is on its knees

(from HEM: stupid mouth shut)


“the sidewalk bends where your house ends.” i barely made out the words over the others’ chorus of high shrieks and giggles. (awful sounds, these. as bad as you can get, tear-your-eyeballs-from-your-face-and-stomp-on-them sounds; there ought to be a word for it… shriggles?) then i heard it again, as if whispering in my ear. and indeed it was, for i could feel the little demon whiskers brushing against my lobe: “…sidewalk bends where you house ends.” it was as poetic a thing as i’d ever heard the voices utter, and it was intriguing: the voices had not before employed nuance, to any degree. now, though, during this most unlikely of times, there it was: an intriguing turn of phrase, and one that rhymed, to boot. the voices, you should know, took many forms, but in this period had elected to manifest as demon monkeys that lived in my hair. (they did this for reasons that were unlikely but also practical, eg, close proximity to the back of my head, and ease of travel, but i would not learn of these considerations until much later.) this was the umpteenth physical manifestation of the voices, and it represented a positive evolution in their quest to use me as their earthly muse: you see, i liked monkeys. as a boy i had longed to own one, only abandoning the quest when uncle leroy left for me a buckshot-filled squirrel with a little red hat duct-taped to its head. and now here they were, more monkeys than i could count, living in my hair. the only problem was that they were also tawdry little demons, squealing constantly, shriggling about how they felt overlooked, or whatever. they were of one voice, not like a proletariat collective voice or anything, but in the sense that they shrieked all differently but at the same time, and when they stopped, they ceased en total. all the more surprising, then, that one would elect to whisper to me a private message. i went and stood in my doorway, where i saw only what i expected: no sidewalk at all, but instead a moshed muddy path that ran from my aerostream, through the bramble and weeds, and over the hill into the parking lot. so it was as i expected, and yet, i could not see the parking lot, nor any other part of the trailer community, for all was hidden past the bend in the hill … if the dirty path counted as sidewalk, i reasoned, perhaps a hill was good enough to be “bends.” it was all beyond reason, my sudden to go and inspect the parking lot. but then, one must remember i had demon monkeys living in my hair; as such, reason was a relative undertaking. and sure enough: as i rounded the bend in the hill the demon monkeys started their shrieking – not the shriggling i described earlier, but a frenzy of delighted, anticipatory screams. it was a state of demon anarchy, a monkey rave happening in my hair, and as i rounded the bend and looked down at the lot below me, i knew why. there , in close circles around a series of bonfires, were grouped all of the residents of my un-gated community, plus many others, engaged in a convulsed dance. and all of these had monkeys swinging from their hair, whooping wildly as they clawed and swirled, spinning their headly perch and the rest of its owners around in circles with the combustive force of their movements. and i was transfixed by it; even the demon monkeys in my hair went quiet with the sight. for it was almost beautiful, like orgasm without forewarning, like grace without the coordination part; like the neighborhood is on its knees.



*one of my favorite patton oswalt lines.

05 January 2006

Some-thing Viscous This Way Comes

The Memoir of a Loving Man

By O.U. Didnitz


Chapter 1 – Step into da Wolf
Chapter 2 – Gay for Hey Hey Hey!: The parabolic sexual reachings of a young man whose main role model is Fat Albert
Chapter 3 – She Just Smiled and Showed Me Her Vegemite Sandwich: Some things get straightened out
Chapter 4 – Give Me the News: I’ve got a bad case of loving, you happen to be nearby
Chapter 5 – Freedom Kissing: Changing terminology instead of changing what you want from her
Chapter 6 – Prostate Tickling: Same as Chapter 5, but for pervs
Chapter 7 – What Life Has in Store for Me
Epilogue – Like Nirvana, But Without the Nuance

03 January 2006

markus erectus

i blink too hard, raise my head, lengthen my spine
and wish to find then keep my stride
i wish never to wish for time.
an empty threat, says procrastination’s side
but, says the other, that you consider a wish a threat
makes jiminy cricket look a beast of lies.


so. as i set out to find the new and avoid the same
already the old girls have announced their game:
procrastination's ribs getting poked by sarcasm's finger
(oh proud finger, strident finger)
said ribs finding strength in numbers; like all good malingerers
they cry, we can do it! and are glad for the poster
with that cute-armed woman, the riveter, she brings them together
unlike sarcasm and his dirty faux-poking pharisee of a finger
(oh sunny-side ribs, might-not-have-a-job-but-great-with-kids
will-wait-for-better-cos-we’ve-seen-worse ribs).

so many inside voices, inner children in the fold
this year's Resolution to resolve is so postmodern i've been told, and that
my at-attention posture is like a prairie dog without fur,
the college girls work so hard not to giggle when told
that their tall-but-aimless classmate is graying and thir-
tee-hee-hee hee, oh my god that is so old.

if, some night soon, your coffee tastes of sarcasm, or your cigarette rolls its eyes,
or your burger begs to stay and stay and linger with the fries
that's just fallout; just me and the girls as we sever inside ties
just me tryin' strike a match, to light the kindling in my eyes.