snow me. please.

Why can't i get some of this? Seriously? you mean denver can't spare even a few inches? they have so much snow there people are staying home from work. i know. that kind of thing hasn't happened since grade school.

People, listen. all we have here in A2 is a little bit of drizzle, a little spatter of rain. we need snow to live. winter has not arrived yet and it is almost christmas. good thing we are leaving tomorrow.

true, i bet these people hated it:










and these people probably weren't thrilled about spending the night at the airport.













all i'm saying is, reconsider. split the snow up fair next time and give some to us. denver, you snow hog.

Ha HA!

I'm posting all over the place! i'm blogging everywhere! i'm running around like crazy blogging and posting and i'm not wearing any pants! ok. calm. i really am wearing pants, don't get worried. i just needed a break from grading finals. no lie, i read an entire three page essay on woody allen's narcissism written by a unnamed student who thought the word was narcotism, or narcocism, or narcosim, all versions of the word found in the paper. ouch. he should have looked that one up before the test. as it was, i was unsure if he wanted the vague spelling-related nod to drug addiction there or not. ok, not really, i knew what he was talking about.

so, back to the suffering.

but first, a picture, because as the superextraspecial K says, a post is always more interesting with a picture. even an unrelated one. so here goes, bitches!

the winner of no pants day, may 5th, 2006:

i so didn't make this up. see for yourself: no pants day. Ha HA! I'm running around like crazy! and i'm grading finals! like crazy!

oh, satisfaction

the feeling you want to etch indelibly in post # 50. the one that lingers a long time after starting that magical new story/poem idea, that sudden explosion of ideas and images that has lain dormant and now finds expression. that feeling.

let's just say it was a good day off.

day off

this is my first day off school. so what am i going to do? post here, of course. my mother asked me what i wanted for christmas, and i was appropriately vague, then acutely specific. i sent her an email with a link. well, what good is technology, if you don't use it?

my computer came back on the afternoon of the day that i finished my paper. it figures. after two days camped out at my wife's office, typing the paper, my worn old beater comes back just as soon as i don't need it. why do things always happen in this way?

also, now that i have a day off perhaps i can get started on some of those long-put-off revisions. or maybe whip something into shape for my upcoming january reading. or maybe write some new stuff. or submit something and get it accepted as a way of snubbing those who rejected me previously. or maybe just sit around and cultivate my aura of professional boredom with being an artist. hmm.

really, absolutely involved with the medical community these days, what with dentist appts. and doctor visits, none of which i participate in the capacity of anything more than a bystander. well.

and anything other incidental happening to me must be connected in some way with the stunning sentences from flaubert i devoted my morning to. an example:

Every head of hair was freshly clipped, ears were sticking out, cheeks were close-shaven; some there were who had left their beds before dawn, when there was scarcely enough light to be using a razor, and now had great diagonal gashes across their upper lip, or, along the jaw, flaps of detached skin as big as a three-franc piece, inflamed by fresh air along the way, so that all those great white beaming faces were blotched with pink.

when i am writing like that i will tell you. and then you can read something and be well satisfied that the balance of work that went into it as compared with the instant it takes to perceive it is clear and shows through so neatly as to make you feel in the moment of reading that this sentence--those preceding and following be damned for now--but this sentence is one worth spending time with.

and hopefully the others will fall in place as well. let me go attend to it.

tokyoto

a seizure waiting to happen. come on guys, think before you put out a video.

paper

the paper is done. the beast is laid to rest. the library can reclaim the lost pages that have been resting under my coffee table. and i am done w/ my first semester as an mfa.

oh, cloud king

Kirsten Johnson

“apple-two”

Oil, acrylic on wood panel, 24" x 42", 2002

Thank cloud king for this.

failure

keyboard failure, that is. and touchpad failure. my computer does not work anymore. and yes, i tried mashing all the keys. no dice. so i took it to best buy to work the warranty one last time. it expires later this month. the guy said they would give it a new keyboard and touchpad. don't know how they expect to do that. it isn't like they are techno-wizards after all. they're just normal people. the guy had even less of a personality than me, if you can believe it. i made small talk about the keyboard intermittently going on and off and he looked at me like, why would i respond to this, it's not like i haven't heard it before. techno-somethings.

anyway, so now i am reduced to procrastinating in the computer lab at school, of all places. with all these people circling the occupied stations like sharks, in what is called, absurdly enough, the fishbowl. and me taking up a spot to blog when i still have a paper to write and no computer to write it with. so since i spent the better part of a week taking books from the library to rest under my coffee table, i now have to figure out how to bridge the physical space from the computers at school to my living room. and no, carrying them isn't an option. it may be a small fraction compared to the total collection at the library, but compared to the total space under my coffee table, it is a very large fraction. try 1/2 to 2/3.

how ridiculous. keyboard failure. why didn't something useful happen, like screen failure. at least then i would have gotten a whole new computer. now all they'll do is take out the keyboard and solder some new one in, and i'll be typing away on a frankensteinien machine that is about to go belly up any minute. okay, i'll shut up. please don't read this. i will be embarassed if you do.

sufjan stevens

oh such a very long song name.

The Black Hawk War, or, How to Demolish an Entire Civilization and Still Feel Good About Yourself in the Morning, or, We Apologize for the Inconvenience but You're Going to Have to Leave Now, or, "I Have Fought the Big Knives and Will Continue to Fight Them Until They Are Off Our Lands!"

i could write a story about that song name. i think maybe i will, too.
and what a great picture. hello! i want to wear big old kite-bird wings and play banjo in front of a crowd of people that paid to have me dress up like that for them. i want.

Picture courtesy of Joe Lencioni, shiftingpixel.com

stuck

came down with an illness over thanksgiving break and am now stuck. dried up. can't write a thing. please let it break soon. please.

Cancelled

so the reading tonight was cancelled. due to flight delays, the author was stuck in st. louis. as a result, i stayed home and made a warm dinner with my wife, and am now settling in to my warm house to enjoy a movie. no complaints here.

six point five

If you haven't been there yet, then get on over. issue 6.5 is out and wants you to read it. seriously, get over there now.

box of books

this is only one of the many books i came home with from thanksgiving. my bro-in-law was trying to condense his collection to a sort of greatest hits, or in other words, books that he would actually read. i am trying to expand my collection to include books precisely like this one. while he had to admit that he had not read it and probably never would and was thus getting rid of it, i have not yet admitted this to myself though i have failed thus far to finish ulysses. next semester though, i will have another shot at it.

also included in the box: delillo, elie weisel, d.h. lawrence, proust, allende, ford maddox ford, lesssing, kafka and more. i know. the man has an amazing library. don't know how he does it. my modest collection, which is expanding and overflowing the bookshelves at a ever-increasing rate, has really begun to alarm my wife. she is leery of the book purchases i make, no matter how thrifty they make me appear with their prices in the under a dollar range. and yes, i still have to pay shipping. what can i say? will i ever read them all? why do i need more books when i already have so many? i refer you to the calvino quote in the sidebar. he goes on with many other categories, but this is a nice excerpt. you get the idea. you can never have too many books. here's to massive and ridiculous libraries!

yes, great, well, okay... now what?

to think that someone thought they saw me and had a mix of emotion is surprising. i tend to think that the emotions i evoke in people range from insignificant to nonexistent. strange how some parts of me are so past high school melodrama and others are caught in catchphrases like self-esteem.

recently recieved an email from a friend. the relationship never really got started, but we'll call it friends anyway. i don't have so many of those that i can discount those lurking in the pre- and post- stages of friendship.

not sure how things are here. with the semester coming to an end and me wondering whether i have accomplished anything. papers due and tests looming. stories unfinished and finishing. revisions waiting, waiting. and me wondering if i have accomplished anything.

why am i here? do i really think i can write? why am i even asking these questions?

the touchpad on my laptop failed inexplicably today. when i try to go into the settings to fix it, the settings application fails and closes. perhaps this is only the beginning of a long slow stage of shutdown. let's hope people don't start mimicking computers anytime soon. although perhaps they already have, since computers have begun mimicking people, so if people mimicked computers then they would really be mimicking a mimic of themselves... echoes of baudrillard.

this is a long way to say that thanksgiving was great in philly, and i am sad to be back facing the same set of scholastic problems that i was when i left.

again...

why am i still talking about this?

pynchon gets praised here.

pynchon's day has come

Pynchon gets mashed in a NY Times book review here.

Publisher's weekly has a few better things to say, and Pynchon weighs in with his own, now official, blurb at amazon.

A bit of history, mixed with myth, about the man himself.

If you really want to dig in to the past, read the wikipedia entry.

But what do i think? Don't know. Haven't read the thing yet. Whether he has put out a book that reads like an imitation of himself, as the times review alleges, or whether he has forged a bright new piece of steel from a heap of slag is neither here nor there. the truth is, his time has passed. the day he has been piling up silence and public avoidances against is the day that he will be no longer relevant to the written world. That day has come and gone, but he doesn't seem to realize it yet, and still lives in fear for that note to sound. If he hasn't heard it, perhaps the response to his new book will make it reverberate in his tone-deaf ears.

As much as i would have liked to re-immerse myself in his oeuvre in preparation for the new novel, i found that i couldn't bear to do it. Whether this is a reflection of a possible maturity i have reached since my undergrad days, or whether i am simply not in the mood, i don't know. What is clear is that his work is not useful to me and my own writing at this point in time. He was, once, something i aspired to become. Now he represents particular pitfalls that i wish to avoid in my own writing. Why the shift? I realized that his work shows several aspects that hamstring me in my own work, namely: indulgence, ridiculous wit, bizarre and implausible plot, underdeveloped characters, and the big one, a sense of mystery that is largely unfounded and which will never pay off in the course of the narrative. So the question of whether or not the new Pynchon novel is a good one is the wrong question to ask. The real question is, why should i read the novel at all? If you can solve that one for me, and justify the massive amounts of time it would take to finish the beast (all 1120 pages of it), then maybe we will have something to talk about.

caprice and the word

how is it i have no control over my muse? how is it that one morning, in a matter of scant hours i can turn out five pages and the next i fail to string together a sentence? why can't i control the thing that so hauntingly dictates the steps of my own life? though i press on in spite of her abscene (and have done so occasionally, not entirely without benefit) i find myself struggling to understand the caprice that governs my ability to conceive language, to generate it as it drops fresh from the mouth of the oracle. mysticism seems to be so apt, but is, i suspect, the wrong approach entirely; the muse is perhaps better ignored, so as to prick her curiousity and entice her to return. and should she fail to return as she has not yet done (for more than several weeks at a time, that is)? then i will be utterly destroyed.

as yet untitled

finishing a draft has a certain pleasure to it. knowing that you have gone as far as you intend to go in pursuing the thread of a particular character's life is sad, but also wonderful, in the same way that losing a friend who you have spent too much time with and knows to much about you is both bitter and freeing because of the weight of the bitterness. being without that person gives you the freedom to alter their meaning in your life. the same holds true for fictional characters. before the point of departure has been reached, they extend their particular jargon and traits deep into me, their fingers rooting into my synapses and they seem like young saplings rapidly maturing into a network of redwoods, unable to be knocked over.

but when i decide to leave them, they have to finish their lives offstage, and whether they have resolved their particular dillemas is of no concern to me. it was, but is no longer. knowing that they now have to enact their dramas on a different stage gives me the freedom to revise, to come back and bore holes in the base of the trunks to run roads through, to cut roots that were reaching outside the limits, to trim branches heavy and shaggy with unnecessary weight. coming free from the spell of a given piece is an awakening that leaves space for only one possible thing: the opporunity to be entranced by another newer, more enticing piece.

this is how i feel on the evening of finishing a draft. in the morning i will probably say upon reading this post, as i have so many times before, "delete this post. delete this drivel. rewrite."

i have yet to come up with a name for the piece.

note

there is the impulse to post (write) though there is nothing to say. there is a disembodied voice that cannot be owned. in time reasons and events murky will become even more so. the passage of time does not clarify but further dirties the waters of memory.

Entering and Exiting

There are no exits. The doors are flat matte metal under my fingers. They are sealed from the outside. I have no recollection of how I got here. The doors were locked when I found them. When I first put my fingers out in the dark, all I could remember was cold. I felt it for the first time, again. The sensation of being out in the world. Like a birth, the expulsion from the womb’s warmth into the cold dark. Now I am blank, black, mapped out on the concrete floor, which is smooth and seamless. The doors have seams. One splitting them from each other, one reaming the edges. The edge seam feels like two but runs along the floor and must rejoin the opposite seam at the top somewhere to make a complete circuit. I put my eyes to the seam and strain for a sense of light. If the doors join, then they must allow some light in. But there is nothing, just the seam of the smooth metal under my naked eyeball. And then a sudden phototropic swirl of spots swimming in my eyes after I rub them, press them with my fingers. At this moment, the pressure I put on my eyes brings me to recall the moment of entry, a sharp pitching forward. The simple mechanics of my arms catching my body and doing so without my insistence. They reached out until they made contact, and settled the weight of my falling torso into them like useful pistons that have been worn too far. For, they did not stop me completely but let me down hard onto the floor. My cheekbone feels like the skin has split around it. I haven’t run my fingers up to check but the skin is swollen and tight and is making my left eye hard to close. I am lying on the floor. The space of the room is short and dark. I am swallowed in a finite space, bounded by walls. They are rough and blocky to my touch. I rub my limbs against the walls until they are slick with blood. It seems that the space around me is shrinking, drawing in. I no longer have to move to reach the walls. They are closing on me until there is no difference between my body and the wall. I am a function of the wall; I exist as a barrier to motion. I am pure and superior in my finite state, held in a granite density in eternal motionlessness.

The exits are many; they exist all around me. I am held in a space where the light is so bright that it has ceased to exists as a stimulus. I keep my eyes closed because opening them hurts too much. I am standing, but I am not standing. I see through a process of sensing the lack of obstruction, indicating and opening. There is no weight settling on my spine. I do not feel the ache in the ruptured disc in my lower back. I remember a vague statement once made about this condition, that it would be with me permanently. It appears that statement is incorrect. I do not feel the disc. There is no pressure being exerted on my vertebrae. I feel suspended, as though all directions are open to me and I could proceed at any moment through a flapping doorframe. I do so and feel the presence of the door only as a slight breath of air moving across my face. There are no moments of hesitation, no space between the want of a thing and its occurrence; there is only the present state of being. I am moving at will now through doors placed at every angle in the space of cubed walls. That is, there are no walls, only doors at sharp angles to each other. I proceed from cube to cube until a certain turn leads me to a room that is more than a cube. It has several more doors than the previous room. This room is a cube with an extra side, a fifth side, a fifth door. And then it seems that door is a remembered term, one with implications that are now lost—these are not doors but opportunities for motion. Room also seems a false construct. They are really moments in space. I move through the opportunities to more complex moments. These hold me in the bright vacuum of their light until I am accelerating, flipping through the moments in a scattered zag of sharp-cornered turns. The speed is incomprehensible until the moment I reach is so complex that it is simple in its complexity. I understand this all at once and my speed disappears. I am moving at such a high rate of speed that it seems that I am not moving at all. Every facet of the moment is held out to me in a glittering array. The opportunities are limitless. There is no choosing. I cannot enter even one of them. It is impossible to proceed further into infinity than infinity itself. As I begin to ponder this I understand everything, and all is present to me, there is no past, no future, nothing but the moment I am in, which is endless and eternally encompassing in its capacity.

Chinese poster saying: "Shatter the old world / Establish a new world."

library book comment

from the table of contents in denis johnson's Jesus' Son comes this comment:

"This is a f**king beautiful book."

the words were penciled in and then erased, leaving only the impressions of the marks on the page. it was still legible. it was signed by E and dated 94.

i assume that the comment was erased by the either a library employee or the next reader of the book. or at least someone who felt it was not true: two conflicting sets of checks and plus/minus marks, these unerased, ran down the margin next to the titles of the stories.

i agree with the author of that comment.

the only other thing i have to say is that if someone is writing comments like this one in my books in the future, i will be happy.

Post Calligraphic Drawing: Brice Marden

the reality line

bloom is an ass. i firmly believe this. still, many an ass since balaam has had much to say that is useful. bloom makes a distinction between two types of stories: the borgesian and the chekovian. the checkovian are realistic, and serve to promote a kind of truth in life, while the borgesian are fantastic, and attempt to turn truth inside out to find another kind of truth. while this does seem a bit simplistic, it is true that all stories brink a certain line at some point in their creation and existence. i have felt this myself. for my own purposes i will call this the reality line.

the reality line is simply the final divide separating reality from surreallity. once this line is crossed, it is difficult, if not impossible, to recross it. if your story exists in both at once, it is more likely to be finally percieved as belonging to the surreal school, by virtue of that element existing within its pages. stories firmly rooted in either mode can partake of the other, but only by relating it to a certain aspect of the story which does not partake, such as a character, or narrative mode. though this seems wordly and complicated it is finally as simple as the question: could this story really happen (or have happened) or not?

we get at this in workshop by asking what sort of a reality the story exists in. is it a true-to-life? does it utilize mythologizing of characters and so fall off a bit in its realism? is it a phantasm masqerading as the quotidian? after adressing these questions, the details can be picked apart so that the reality the story inhabits, whichever that may be, can be depicted with more verity.

recently i was complaining about this very subject to my brother on the phone. my problem being, i seem to cross and recross the reality line frequently--from piece to piece--and often a story started off in one mode will veer off the road into the other. controlling this is a difficult thing to do. perception provides a set of blinders that also cause trouble once the piece is out in the public arena. often a reader/listener will love a piece, but will make assertions about it that are completely wrong. For example, upon assessing a piece that is realistic, but lies near the line to fantasy (read: not what the reader/listener is used to), a reader will state: "this piece is great! i love how surreal it is." when in fact, for an artist such as yourself, this is the most gritty reality, the harsh-facts-of-life version, in which you spared yourself no amount of grief in rendering its limbs so as to be without the distorting twist of the surreal.

back to bloom: he does not prize one of the modes over the other. does this mean, then, that regardless of whichever school i belong to, that i can write in both? or does this mean that at some point i will find myself caged on one side of the reality line, unable to cross it? and which side to i belong to anyway? (i suspect that neither would have me without reservation.) and how much does any of this blather matter? questions that have little to no relevance to life often have the most concrete and decisive of answers.

kafka

strange resonances with kafka here. a few to get you thinking.

last week i workshopped some stuff with the current visiting writer (new one every week). when discussing my story, he said--have you read kafka? uh, yeah. hello. KAFKA. and then he went on to compare my story to kafka. said it was remarkably like his stuff. crazy. then other members of the workshop (read: my peers) echoed his sentiment.

another:

there is a girl in my workshop, a fellow first year, who has tattoos on the underside of each of her wrists. they happen to be sketches kafka did for The Trial. sketches. by kafka. tattooed. on her wrists. just wanted to reiterate and make sure it was clear.

last:

kafka has always intrigued me, for lots of reasons. now i have a new one to add: i am interested in kafka because i apparently write like him (sometimes). what can kafka tell me about myself that i don't already know? this is assuming i am not just aping the man; i can testify that i am not: first i haven't read quite enough of his work to do that, and second i don't read him with great enough frequency to do that, and third, that would be ridiculous. but anyway. kafka. what a great name.

what i like... (do i?)

this in reply to someone who urged positive assessment of my writing:

-i do language well. by this i mean that i occasionally turn out a phrase or sentence that rings true; more true, in fact, than the image that inspired it. for this i am lucky.
-i have a knack for odd names. without odd names i would be nothing. plain names baffle me.
-i sometimes manage a tone, or evocation, of a mood--this is really just an extension of language.
-if i think of anything else, i will add it.
-i work. hard. at writing. this perhaps pleases me more than any aspect of the writing itself: the work i put into it. not sure why this is.

any attempt at making me love my work is difficult, since the moment after the words spill from me i am revising them, worrying them with my teeth, tearing them. so it is difficult to love any project but the one i am currently working on. which is, right now, absolutely amazing. when i finish it will be mundane sludge. such is a writer's life.

the shop

oh they ranted, they raved, they disected, they ripped and tore--but my first workshop is over, and i don't feel too bad about it. They were also impressed or summarily bored and gave me the usual praise: how lovely! this turn of phrase, that description, and yes! I've heard that already. Tell me about the guts, the raw mechanics.

all that aside, i think that my raw 1st draft was enough to impress upon them that i am a peer. which is enough for anyone to ask of a few pieces of paper.

TBR

Yesterday, the mail came. I checked it. Between the grocery store coupons was the latest issue of TBR. Love it. Love that they are still putting stuff out that I edited back in the prime of my internship.

And then the table of contents...

scan, scan, HEY! Myself! scan some more, scan, Myself AGAIN! scan, scan, HEY! no, no more me. But two reviews coming out unexpectedly in one issue was cause for celebration. we bought sour cream donut holes.

now if i could just get some fiction published as well... *


*this may seem like whining, but don't take it that way. i am absolutely pleased and happy publishing reviews. but i would also love getting some of my own stuff published, so that other people could do the reviewing.

the death of B&N

I quit. Yes, you whip-cracking booksellers, I quit. I want this to sound strong and life-affirming and other jargony terms that empower me, but let's face it, I was scared. Always am when it comes to dropping the casual hey-i'm-quitting-but-i-still-like-this-place speech.

but this is good. after two weeks, well, one-and-a-half now, i will be shut of the place. let's hope this means the beginning of a new epoch for me. it will certainly give me enough time to plan a few epochs, if i want.

here's to quitting. here's to feeling inferior in a graduate context and admitting it to myself and faking the smarts and quitting my job so i can stop faking and get intelligent.

please let it be true. TP's first in a decade. please let me get a pre-release copy. that would be unutterably great.

Wandered, Swamplike

Though there were thirteen of them at one time he had reduced it gradually to three. This constellation suited him, no Cygnus blinking back, head severed.

He shuffled them along the cross-hatched surface of the stump, end up, planted on the porch.

The checkers were slow, blind to his mistakes. He had chosen them as silent participators in the scenes he desired and manipulated with his brown fingers.

And though he had arranged for senseless examination of facts, there was more sense floating in square pools of space than he would allow.

There was no symptom that could not be corrected. He had only to allow time, to think, ponder the problem. Assign names to circles, class them in two colors: red, white.

After translation, simple movements remained. Forward over the squares. Plain diagonals. And backwards, in any fashion, for the kings. These motions repeated became symbolic of larger patterns he saw in the world around him: they became relationships.

Contact was an actual barrier to forming relationships: it was so easily misread. Example A: he fingered a red checker forward, one named Hannah. He knew this piece intimately; he directed it about the board with delicacy. Fully aware, fingertips burning accumulated touch.

Hannah was in close proximity to another checker, this one white, given the name Clarence.  Though one square remained between them, they held this space diagonally, looking askance at attempts at reconciliation.

He eyed the pieces, pondered the third, a red, deep in the briars of the double corner.

Stagnation was never something he had concerned himself with; rather, it had been concerned with him.

Spine-knobbed stone rose against reddened sky, wedging black rifts into the seams of his mind. The sun set; he waited for the next move to reveal itself.

Clarence had a habit of skittish movement. Confrontation was not his thing. A strong feeling, in word only, for literal behaviors manifested in him as hypocrisy.

Panned the board, summed the squares, 64, finite movements, action or reaction. Recant, why not cant it out if both allow? Sinew shrinking the span of his fingers from eight squares to five.

High trees shaded the porch. One by one, the leaves begin to fall. A chance breeze pushed one onto the board. He grasped the withered stem with his fingers, and twirled the leaf slowly.

To bridge the space separating two individuals, a girder, or artificial support, can sometimes be used to great effect.

He placed the leaf silently on the board, then slid the third checker out of the double corner. When kinged after the long march, he would break the standoff. He put his hands on his knees and watched the sun slide below the horizon. The leaves continued falling in the dusk, collecting at his feet. He shucked his way through them and wandered, swamplike.

How did this happen?

Now, I would never be insensitive about someone's death.

It is never funny when someone dies, especially under tragic circumstances. But, well, just let me highlight the subtitle to the lead article here.

"A stingray barb through the heart kills the beloved Aussie Adventurer... How did this happen?"

Well, I'm not sure how it happened exactly. I do know that it could never have happened to me.

Irwin's death occured under suspicious circumstances: he was swimming with a 7 foot bull manta ray.

Let's refer to another picture to refresh in our minds what sort of person Steve Irwin was.

"Oh, that's him exactly!" I hear you say. And it is. To put it bluntly, Irwin was a man who played with the sort of animals--Poisonous snakes, crocodiles, and stingrays--that most of us avoid. Why do we avoid these animals? Because they all share a certain aptitude in areas that are, well, linked to those tragic deaths you hear so much about these days.

So while I do think an article about Irwin's death, a man who did get people interested in fangs and claws and stingers, could be a great spot for questioning (what is our fascination with dangerous animals), I don't think the one to ask is "How did this happen."

Let me just say unequivocally that the first day I swim with 7 foot bull manta rays is the same day I expect to be killed by them.

chinese

Ahar! Chinese has just begun, and it is taking a TOLL. note the use of the verb take. the implication is one of violence, of coersion, of prizing something away from tightly locked hands. That something is my time. i have so little of it these days, it seems.

so what am i doing here? venting. that should be obvious. what sentient being can remain so without a little good-natured bleeding?

and so i am off to chinese again. it is by far the most regular element of my schedule.

and the teacher is a wretch who treats me like a child.

who pushes books for a slave's wages? me.

cough it up, moses

Middle of procure a new revelator, selected the tousle-hair; Divination don’t adhere to no laws of grooming.

Bed-head never predict a thing his whole life, except that Ma gonna tell him make breakfast himself, if he want it that bad. He was right about that one.

Fair bit more than I ever, said the Preacher. And I’m a man of god.

Sound like word from another source, said muddy-foot Sam.

Rough-eye occupant in the street, shove a bit and step on bed-head’s toes. Make you come across funny, Bed-head spit out.

Hear how he take to it, after not more than a waft of position, said Beeftea. He step up and draw dirty mark where he stop with steel-toe plate shining through his boot.

Circle tightening around Bed-head. All three nod out this is a good thing. Boy make us fat where we havn’t been in long time.

Sight better than Muddy-foot’s forked stick, half-submerged in his back pocket, which only found water which was already apparent, all three agree.

He like a luminous stone in our hand, said Beeftea.

Bed-head thinking about nervous perspirate, come out with a prediction: Beeftea got a thing for the Preacher.

Hell you say, Muddy-foot exclaim, I never knew you all were that way.

Beeftea weren’t making words just hard up a bit with noises in his throat.

The Preacher making notes for declarate against unrighteous types of prophecy on cream-stained band inside his hat brim, straighten up quick.

Why you amn’t denying, said the Preacher. He eye on Beeftea a bit.

Beeftea find his voice, work out: This not something the boy know. I vouch he lie.

Muddy-foot careful with his tongue. But you ain’t deny yet.

We never, said the Preacher.

Scratch-filled space lay thick on them. Beeftea look like he don’t wait his mouth, but he do anyway.

You say yourself he a luminesce… like a paint contain a phosphor, said Muddy-foot.

Beeftea growing redder in cheek and neck, sputtering back into silence.

Cough it up, moses, said Bed-head, but Beeftea just choke louder.

All three pay attention with steady stare to bed-head, like he got some ability they feared. Wish they reverse what they done, now bed-head take to power.

Of three, two regret much, one goggle-eye at sort of news town havn’t had in more than a year.

People crowd in to look at rumple-hair boy. Weren’t no chance of going back now.

Whole town hear what Bed-head said.

-made a list

-at the library three times today in search of potter number six. one library twice, the other once.
-found the buses growing crowded with the advent of the semester.
-generally wasted time.
-put in an order for Sheep
-vaguely pursued writing
-found myself frustrated
-read, in no particular order, fragments from ulysses, kostelanetz, delaney
-felt inferior
-assumed the rain/weather was a result of/associated with my mood
-wondered if certain past friends knew i was alive
-hoped B would get off work soon
-wandered, swamplike

Terror

it is 3 am. we are sleeping in a small two-man tent.

something large and heavy collides with our tent and seems to fall on it, thrashing briefly before getting off.

we awake screaming.

there is no interval between waking, assessing our situation, and screaming--rather, in one fluid moment we wake to screams, and later realized that we were the ones screaming.

the confusion at our tent appearing to collapse on us, while simultaneously being skewed off the ground and shaken violently, completely disorients us.

after the tiny moment in which this all happened, we huddled in the center of the tent, trying to understand what had happened and searching for our flashlight.

we could not find the flashlight.

we were mortally terrified.

we had no idea what was outside the tent, and whether it was still there or had left.

one of our friends in a tent nearby called out and asked if we were ok.

we got out of the tent, joined by several other people who we had woken with our screams, and examined the tent.

there was a hole big enough to stick your foot through in the lower left hand side of the tent.

the pole had been pulled apart.

two tent stakes had been pulled completely up.

an elastic bungee cord that secured the rain cover on the tent had been ripped completely off.

we speculated that a deer had run into our tent.

we gathered our things and abandoned our tent.

we left abruptly in the mizzling rain, driving through the tree shadowed roads home.

later that day, we retrieved our tent from some friends who had brought it home with them.

they told us that several other people in the campground had had things stolen from their cars, one of which was parked near our tent outside the parking lot on the grass.

we now believe that a person who had been stealing from the car either slipped on the wet grass or tripped on our tent pole and fell on our tent.

this does nothing to relieve the terror we felt upon waking up screaming.

The Night&Day Book

Ann Arbor

We pulled into to town, and after the initial claustrophobic response to all the trees (we couldn't see a thing, and with no mountains, had no idea where we were) this is how it happened: Us plus Ann Arbor equals love.

Ann Arbor, besides having some of the worst roads built in the continental US this century, also boasts parks, a lovely downtown, a university that is, get this, integrated with the city (that means they work together instead of fighting with each other), an annual art fair, a farmer's market, and um, parks. The parks bit turns out to be even better than it appears, since many of them happen to be along the Huron River that runs through the middle of town. Which means that they have canoes. And places to store and rent canoes, called canoe liverys--who knew that term was still in use. And for canoes, no less, not horses! "Ah, yes, i'll be down at the livery if you need me."

Ann Arbor also has a heat wave that just passed. During that heat wave, we almost passed as well. Now Ann Arbor has an all-day rain. love it.

and well, ann arbor has a university that now employs both myself and my wife, and pays for me to attend school. they are fantastically foolish. but i'm ok with it--if they want to fund my life, i am willing. anyone else wanting to contribute some cash can post a comment indicating the amount.

blogger can die

i can't load blog pages. it's a fact. i can create posts but i can't look at the actual blog itself. and what good is a blog unless you can bask in the vanity of something you created? so i say, blogger can die. or perhaps my computer. or the internet. or whatever unknown force allows me to look at any website but my blog. (or any other blog.) i will not give up my vanity, regardless of how hard something seems to be making me try. i still have my mirror.

china

just over a week and i will be on a plane flying to china. i feel no sadness at leaving the states. after all, what am i leaving? the things most important to me are coming along--my wife, my thoughts--and i can always find my lost red book. plenty of pages to fill before i get back stateside in early july.

china. as a child it seemed so distant, far away. as an adult it seems even more so. removed from my experience as a middle-class suburbanite. separate from the freedoms available to american citizens. but soon it will be neither far away nor mythical. it will be reality.

here, i will cease to exist. there, i will take root and grow. china. land of possibility.

eavesdropping at the bus station

His voice is always the same, asking
What to bring in a duffel bag:
Candles, obviously. Also the pussycat dolls and
Candyland. I almost feel guilty wearing these jeans—new,
To fit the 10 lbs. that leave me slightly off-balance

Leaning sidewise as I climb the stairs. I want to catalogue them,
But they know I do it, scribbling, trying to hold the page away
From sight, interpretation, ostracization; but she
Bums a smoke from me, and my cover is blown.

I have no smokes to give.

But I do complain under my breath, obvious
Enough to see but not hear, and I watch those
Who ride who watch me watching them watching me
And try to visualize their names:

Blind asian woman, white cane, sits near door
With feet that dangle above rubber tread

Thin woman, white gauze bandage on throat
Cropped gray hair, smoke-rich scent

Complaining woman, brown coat, slack
Brown hair with doughy face

Black woman, headscarf, long wool
Coat and glasses, heavy gold earrings

They ride, and I ride, and we ride together
But always apart, thinking thoughts about each
Other both visual and invisible, without speaking.
Doors wheeze and suck another on, and I take it

In, red white and blue patriot ballcap elaborate green
Tinged walker supporting massive swell of flesh
Swathed in Gunther Toody’s 50s Diner jacket over Monkees
Tee ZZ-Top beard. He puts on the dark sunglasses later.
Then again:

Plump latino couple, shaved head, sharp-edged facial hair, faux
Diamond studs, tight bun, fleshy face, gold hoops

Teen girl, hoodie, piercings—eyebrow lip tongue nose—big
Gulp duffel headphones cord snaking around exposed navel

Black dog walking black man walking black dog who sees for him
In leather harness on short hair and clipped nails

Rich Denver does not ride the bus. And then I see why
The driver always nods at my shoes
And ignores the jeans when he sees that I pay in crumpled
Bills and linty coins dug out of tight pockets;
Anyone can blow their paycheck on new pants. Wheels
Turn as I get off, and all I can think is

White man, respirator, paunch, mustache.

snow

turns the sky into a swirling grey cloud. visibility drops to 50 ft. on the road and your tires slide as you change lanes to avoid the semi bearing down behind. you try to remember the warm las vegas sun and find only blurry images washed by snow. white. blank. clean. fleeting.    

like my soul after recognition.

tribute to blooms

this is to The Bloomsbury Review, with caps, italic, and all proper respect. they gave me a place to work, a chance to shine, and best of all, a place in their legacy. here's to little ol' indie presses and their academic cousins, university presses. may blooms keep the spirit of independent publishing alive and well for much longer than the 25 years they have been in operation.

used book shopping pays off

in spades

the bookstore of lot 49

the captions of the preceding pictures say it all. one of the great things about shopping for used books is the unexpected surprises that come out of nowhere. like this one, which i bought for $1 at the corner bookstore. now, i don't like the corner that much--the proprietor is cool (he was listening to the go! team on his ibook as he rang me up) but the selection doesn't stack up to the plain-titled Books, over by Joanne Fabric. Books is the prototypical bookstore, with scads of stuff piled up everywhere and a crusty old owner that smokes like a chimney and grunts his acknowledgement of my choices. love that place. the prices aren't great, but they always have something i want, and that makes the trip worth it. if you have to struggle to pick which book to plunk your coins down for, the shop is definitely worth the time. i used to wish i ran one of those places, but i'm probably not crusty or mean enough for the job. besides, i wouldn't want to sell anything, as i'd regard the place as a personal library.

though if i did run one, this is what would happen:

customer walks in, doesn't look at me, is gone by the time i turn around. he approaches the counter with a volume, slips a card out of his wallet, extends is. Wrong.

"Sorry, that book is not for sale."

"Sure it is. The price is marked inside the cover."

"Not for sale to you, i meant."

his face reddens, he gets pissed, he polishes his teeth with his tongue. then:

"sell me the book or die, bitch. "

"name four other books by this author and i'll let you have it free."

"um, yeah, see, it's for school, you know, they require me to..."

"leave. now." i wave my arms like they were snakes and turn my back to him. the bell tinkles as he leaves. without the book. i held on to that.

again:

girl comes in, takes a half-hour choosing, pays in cash. while ringing her up i make small talk.

"i bet your name is veronica, or something."

"no, but i wish it was. veronica is so much hotter than betty."

"jughead rocks, you know."

"i thought archie was the cute one." wrong. i slide her change back across the counter.

"come back when you figure it out," i say.

and last of all:

woman comes in, gum chewer, asks for danielle steele.

"you take our questionnaire," i say.

"what questionnaire?"

i slide the paper across the counter. "score 15 out of 20 you can buy mass-market. that means danielle steele. for anything else you need a 19 or 20."

she scores a 3. wrong. i boot her out the door.

anyway, you get the idea. not a very successful venture. though if someone came in i did like, i'd probably give them an extra book for free. anyway, to cap this post, let me just ask a few questions:

Who is Oedipa Maas? And what was she doing when the Paranoids blew out all the lights? What was the strange legacy of Pierce Inverarity that first led her to the world-wide conspiracy known as the Tristero System, and then on into the mystery and enigma of America itself?

pants

and their relation to weight that is. mine, of course. you didn't think i was going to talk about the weight gains of some other poor sap? you are heartless, as usual. i thought you were going to think that. which is why i hesitate to tell how i tried on three pairs of pants today, all of which were tight in the waist. by tight, i mean gut-suckingly tight. tight so you can't wear them without needing to visit the restroom more than usual, thanks to that extra pressure...

the scale reads 152 sometimes, though it usually rounds out just below 150 in the 148-49ish category. not much. but when i came came home from two years in the philippines three years back, i was clocking a skeletonesque 125, 10-15 below my average 135-140. so where did this 15o stuff come from?

all this obsessing over a few pounds? what has denver done to me? or maybe i should blame it on the holidays: chocolates, cookie exchanges, parties. or the tetons. but i think it is much more likely that i was undernourished as a child, and am just now regaining my proper proportions.

seriously, let's think about this. i grew up in minnesota, where it is winter 6-8 months out of the year. (if you think i am exagerrating, visit my parents for a week right about now. but bring at least two coats, and plan on wearing them simultaneously, or getting severe frostbite.) eskimos wear fur coats, eat extra fat to keep their energy up (at least according to popular myth). me? i shivered in a coat filled with synthetic fiber and ate salad every day. salad is a summer dish--you eat it when you can grow it. but not according to my mother. which made me a skinny little runt, and accounts for my stunted growth.

so it is obvious that i am not to blame for my pants not fitting. they were the wrong size all along. or maybe it was just the holidays.

rejection with a smirk

i received another rejection slip today. along with the normal typed note was a small handwritten note that said, "thanks Steven." my reaction was totally laid back and cool. i didn't even blink for five minutes.

but hey, a HANDWRITTEN NOTE! that takes serious time. first you have to select a pen, or pencil, or fashion a quill out of a paperclip; second, shake it, sharpen it, or stick the improvised stylus in your arm for backup ink; third, COMPOSE the thing; and then actually write it.

in order to not look like morons, they probably rewrote it 5-10 times, increasing their investment exponentially. let's tally our total so far:

writing utensil selection: 5 min.
priming the chosen instrument: 2-10 min., depending on stubbornness of the utensil
composition: 20 min., bare minimum
actual writing time: 30 sec.
revision: 15 min.

total time wasted at office while getting paid: 42 min. and 30 sec. - 50 min and 30 sec.

which amount of time pales to how i waste the hours here at the hotel. but still, they don't work at a hotel, which can only mean that A) they love me, B) they hate me or C) they are indifferent. which pretty much covers the bases.

finally, i conclude that they are laughing at me for something, or else they genuinely almost liked my story. i can't decide which. the agony of mind reading is multiplied a million times when a handwritten note is involved. i think they sent it to me on purpose.

click me

finally, someone tells the truth about the internet.

what? honesty? on the internet?

barb and steve (i always start books with a picture of my baby)

lost red book

i placed a small red book on the trunk of my car and drove off. i never found it again. i interpret this as an end, and a beginning. the book symbolized a moment of my past, and is now lost among the sidewalks and rain gutters of suburbia.

so, instead of mourning my lost book, and the notes inside--i already have a new book anyway--i'll use this blog to fill the remainder of the book with things i might have written inside it. and since this blog isn't limited by two covers and a finite number of pages, it may last a little longer.

here's to my lost red book.