deep in my heart i am warrior.

(here is another bit i wrote elsewise, posted here just to give apsi a half-reviving half-breath. things are busy and don’t look to get less so for some time. (i got a job, a writing job, with an actual desk, and a laptop and a salary and responsibilities. also the job has artwork on my desk, 3 big pieces, placed there by the “senior vice president of non-value-added activities” which will remain there until someone else gets hired, probably a few months out. Among these pieces is an 18” x 24” full-color glossy tour book, entitled Bette Midler - Da Tour, and it is breathtaking---is proud and joyful and relentless in its celebration of mid-80s bette. even as i type she lurks, just beyond my monitor, primping her short perm, cooing at me, staring at me with those salacious eyes, equal parts manatee and sucubus. it's a good job.))

The first bits I really connected with in brief interviews with hideous men the title stories, of which there are several installments, and are structurally similar in that one (hideous) man talks and another party’s queries go unstated:

Q.

‘It wouldn’t be so embarrassing if it wasn’t so totally fucking weird. If I had any clue about what it was about. You know?’

Q….

‘God, now I’m embarrassed as hell.’

Q.

My initial fascination was so strong because it related to me: the opening pages of my story Dear Fat Kid, employ a similar device when Hal, the narrator, is on the phone with his father, who speaks only in em dashes. Most of the interviews are short, less than five pages, and the longer ones began to lose me. As a whole I felt the interviews came up short, not for their context-free nature but because any one interview was weighed down by the context of the interviews on either side of it—these are not happy or joyful dudes, and with the exception of the one guy who involuntarily shouts “Victory for the Forces of Democratic Freedom!” every time he comes, they’re pretty hateable. But they’re interesting has hell.

This is because David Foster Wallace is a goddam virtuoso. In the end, that’s much of what I have to say about these pieces as a whole: he vamps with a mixture of ambition and clarity and ethic that brings to mind Charlie Parker or Miles Davis (both of whom I’ve been pretty newly introduced to, and whose structural expertise is so strongly if implicitly at the base of their improvisations that I’ve been playfully but recurringly taken with the idea of the framework that must underlie any significant creative work), and though almost every time I pick up Wallace’s writing I regret that he sets the bar for connecting with his work as high as he does, when the time comes to put the book down I don’t want to—the connection has formed (given his penchant for medical analogy, Wallace might say metastasized. Given my own penchant for picking up an analogy and wringing every last bit of life out of it, I’ll note that Miles Davis has become a staple accompaniment in my intellectual life—some of his work, that is. Kind of Blue and Live at the Plugged Nickel and Birth of the Cool have tirelessly sustained my attention, but I can’t listen to Bitches Brew while I’m writing, or reading, or riding on the rackety city bus—the sounds are unrelenting, fully harsh, and require not just focus but an acclimation period, a willingness to throw my hat in the ring and sit till I’m ready).

As taken as I was by the Brief Interviews stories, the mountaintop moment of the book came for me in Octet, a series of five bits of “belletristric fiction” each labeled as a Pop Quiz, in which a scenario is related to me, the reader, and at the end a question is asked (eg, “Q:(A) Is she a good mother. (B)(optional) Explain whether and how receipt of the information that the lady had herself grown up in an environment of unbelievably desperate poverty would affect your response to (A).) It’s in the final part of this piece, PQ9, that he does two alarming structural things: he goes off the deep end in terms of “S.O.P. metatext”—it has 17 footnotes; and he puts you in his shoes—the first line is “You are, unfortunately, a fiction writer.” It’s a crazy and difficult piece, and it caused me to start taking notes before I’d read its (seemingly) modest 12 pages through for the first time. Not until after I’d digested it some did I see the neatest trick of the whole bit: Wallace actually succeeded not just in getting me to care about the central human theme of Octet, nor just to sympathize with his struggles in writing the piece, but too he successfully put me in his mind at the time of writing more than any writer has ever done—more than Lamott with boy and her birds, more than Dillard with her squirrels and trees and windowless rooms. I’m excited to dig in to his essays when I get the opportunity.

i said i don’t need this; i do really well

so i wrote a poem the other day. it is very beautiful.

i had a dream this morning
insurance was adequate
contact was documented
surveillance was adequate
heart was heart
that the know about
you might get screwed on this thing
code cobra was employed
to see what they were doing
and after two years i go,
and like i said, and, yeah,
i’m pretty good,
i can go sit on my hill somewhere
and really zoom in on my work projects
the sun’s zooming in behind me
(people are in public places)
and you’re not assuming privacy
(and you’re looking into someone’s shower)
in idaho you can even assume that a reasonable
expectation of privacy is still a headache,
a gray area, not useful
the biggest one in the world is in las vegas
you’re not gonna get a fix if it breaks like another one
do you think you’re a good read of people
the thing is i’ve realized
there’s enough transcendental-ish reports, 560 dollars,
it’s gonna be hard enough to document,
you’re still going to have a hard enough time,
all those things –
probably they still see themselves
(in bushes)
well, yeah, and the next day the safety comes out,
and the next day in his backyard the hole comes out
and the guy says he’s, ya know,
nobody’s wife wants to say he’s disabled
he is partially paralyzed, but
that’s just it, you know, i don’t like going back
and forth – i’ve had a girlfriend for a while but in the next
few days we're going to alaska
but a year ago i went to career-ab-holding
and there not very many
huge companies, and they tried to have me farm…
to cut me short, and have me clip me 12 years ago, so,
i said i don’t need this; i do really well
we don’t charge for an hourly rate,
so fuck this,


with the exception of the truncated final line, which in full would read something like -- so fuck this, beer before liquor and the answer is none ... none more blacker -- i'm happy with it. see, it was my first day off in forever; b.mac and i ate a late breakfast, played pool, drank a few pitchers; and it was great. then i went to bernard's, downtown, where i remember drinking two happy hour martinis, which were only $2.25 each, were not a good idea,

you might get screwed on this thing

but still were better than the ones i had after that, of which i have no memory. poor, poor etling had an f'ing task getting me out of there and home

code cobra was employed, to see what they were doing

one of the only things i remember is pulling my hand away from etling's so as to point to the black ice she should watch out for, on which i then immediately fell, hard enough that she claims to have felt the reverberations through her shoes.

i can go sit on a hill somewhere, and really zoom in on my work projects

but no sooner was i there than i began to spin myself in circles, crying, wee! spin-spin disco time!

in idaho you can even assume that a reasonable expectation of privacy is still a headache

i don't remember are getting home, sitting down on the floor and hugging the corner of the bed frame; not eating my tacos; not watching the debut of 24; and passing out at 7:30. but that's what i did,

the thing is i’ve realized there’s enough transcendental-ish reports, 560 dollars, it’s gonna be hard enough to document

apparently when etling joined me at the bar, she'd told me of half-waking me that morning and asking me if i was dreaming. i said, "i am a garden vegetable." and how is that going? she inquired. "well, it was pretty rough for a while, but, now we have a few customers." so this is the emotional crux of what i set out, there at the bar, to evoke through poetry. now, a day later, the matter is simpler yet hopelessly more blacker than before.

all those things – probably they still see themselves (in bushes)

the dystopic redundancy of my blacking out one line into the composition of a poem inspired by a dream wherein i'm an organic cucumber nobody wants to buy is not lost on me, and if it is lost on you, well then, no hard feelings, you can stop reading and go ahead to the green room, where elmo and david lynch are making bumperstickers out of recycled hymen, and i'll see you there in a minute.

and the guy says he’s, ya know, nobody’s wife wants to say he’s disabled

when i was well into my poem and etling was actively conversing with the dude next to her, i grabbed her arm, swung her chair around, and told her (she says) that i was "99.9 percent sure you are really really going to love it." but then my laptop battery died.

i do really well, we don’t charge for an hourly rate, so fuck this.