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.