Thursday, May 14, 2009
sometimes a parade float smacks into a lamp post and then the lamp post crashes down and hits someone and then it ain't no parade no more, no sir..
i can still see you doing somersaults and blackfips on the trampoline as a little girl.
oh all that old song stuff, careering up and down stairs in boots.
times change, and you find yourself sleeping surprisingly well in a bookshelf against a whitewashed wall.
we are walking, and i am clunking along in those same boots, keeping awkward time (i am terrible with rhythm, and can't follow) and you say,
-are those comfortable?
-well yeah, accept for the toes.
-...
-so no. no, they're not comfortable. they're not comfortable at all.
echo, that irritating but forgiven reference.
that unbearable summer, your falcetto stilettos.
fillies run differently from stallions. they just do. and then again, they triple-think, while i tipple-think and get less and less funny, while i crack more and more jokes and get less and less funny, my eyelids at halfmast, my little self knowing less and less and less.
and less.
all brown-spotted, all barn sour.
broad-shouldered and odd.
the lonely woman sighs, everyone has gotten old all of a sudden, and you yourself are only young for this split second. this is something that has not occurred to you before. and then it does, and you swoon with it, to the point where you can think of nothing to say at all,
at all.
all the waywardness in the world could not prepare us for this.
there is: an old man in the coffee shop. he has a military haircut, and is playing a flight simulator on his computer with a cockpit joystick.
i mouth the words, "cockpit joystick" while i am waiting there in line for my coffee.
cockpit joystick. i mouth, and then pour half my coffee into the wastebin.
.
Sunday, April 26, 2009
when my parents got back from a trip to france a few years ago my dad leaned over the table at the east coast grill and said to me, in an almost confidential tone, speaking over plates of pickles and pulled pork and glasses full of ice and vodka,-ellen, you would love paris.
and i said,
-oh yeah? why?
and he said,
-they’re all crazy about napoleon too.
.
of course you’d remember nearly everything from my childhood, save for when you trade the right book for the wrong but more fashionable (or at least more narratively appropriate) one. when you reveal this fact to me (the wrong book in place of the right) i’m suddenly eight and at fenway park again, reeling from that baseball’s (or rather, bookbinding’s) smack to the face. and seeing stars and lonely planets, my childhood self understands and forgives your subconscious editing style (and deathtrap car, and tendency towards fond literary theft); she understands why she is suddenly holding a different book than the one she was reading before the foul ball bent impossibly around the home plate netting and came up into the stands and smacked her in the face. the planets whirring about her head are deeply lonely. some of them have roses, some of them have lamplighters. some of them went dark eons ago, when their suns died. some of the planets have kings, some snakes, some fools, some foxes, some inconsolable tyrants, and oddly enough, quite a few of them have you.
.
the day is unbearably hot. and then suddenly the sun sets and i go a little mad in the red blue light. mariachis are strolling home from work with big caseless guitars, wiping sweat from under their hats (which they refuse to take off). on the sidewalk a little mexican boy is running too far ahead of his parents and they pay him absolutely no mind. no one could get hit by a car in this heat, or everyone could. i get stuck on the sidewalk behind a group of appealingly scruffy, just-starting-to-cool overheated young men. one of these young men is so over-warmly endearing to me with his oblivious air and flushed face that i have no choice but to bare my teeth at him, sharp-lined as i can make them; i bare my teeth at him and at the red blue ridiculous summer night. i bare my teeth, and flinch, laugh, internally, at the fact that i am actually baring my teeth at someone.
i am right on the edge of a hot growl, a closed-mouthed, paper-ripping roar.
but instead of giving in to that, i simply bare my teeth at this flushed red young man. i snarl my mouth into what is most certainly not a smile.
.
you find yourself in an overhot closed bookshop with a strangely, falsely familiar man and an orange cat who has the same name as your brother. the falsely familiar is scrounging through books while the shop employees dim the lights and vacuum the floor with a device from the eighties. he picks up one book, then another, paging through them each briefly as if looking for some beloved line, but you know that this is not the case. for the most part the books could be nothing but a cover, an isbn number, and a date, and provided it was the right isbn number, cover, and date, the lines within the book would really make no nevermind to him. but he leafs through the books like they have something to tell, well, someone. his hands are rough. he’s brilliant at quickly consolidating things into stacks in cardboard boxes so that they are least unwieldy. at estate sales the women glare at him as he pours himself another glass of free vodka. he asks me why this always happens to him and i say,
-darling, are you kidding me? you’ve got “mooch” written all over you.
and his face reads a thorough, possibly entertained, possibly insulted (probably both):
-!?!
(with no dust jacket, no cover, no isbn number, and just a few dates.)
in the hot closed bookshop he’s disappeared around the corner. it’s difficult to see anything in there. you hear papers shuffling, pages flapping somewhere. you are sitting on a stool in the theatre section. you pick up a book about orson welles. you read the few lines you can make out in the semi dark and then you put it back on the shelf. you pick up another book about orson welles. you listen to the cat and vacuum hum. you hear the falsely familiar say something around the corner, muffled. you briefly think he’s calling you, but then you realize, after a moment, that he’s just calling the cat.
.
Wednesday, April 01, 2009
sometimes i want to make chalk ticks on the heel of my boots to count and keep track of them—the friends i’ve passively lost track of, the men i’ve not loved, the books i’ve not read, barely read, or have seen the movies of. my boots would be white in no time at all if i did this. this is our callous but well-meaning youth, fraught with various successful and unsuccessful attempts at affection.
.
so you try again and again to draw something different, and fail.
but you still have great hope.
.
there are a few things that can really make you feel achingly human, other than love, death, religion, children (although they should really fall under “love”) and alcohol. there are a few things, in my grasp, at least, that make your humanity come up and smack you directly in the face, that can make you love and hate people at the exact same time. you really swoon with it, then. love, crippled, thwarted, oversaddened love. the two things that make this humanity-smack occur, for me, at least, other than those listed above, are food service, and public transit.
so. that’s good to know.
.
a brown little girl in a short red skirt is hopping down the sidewalk on one leg. then she runs (on two legs, now) and clambers up on anything she can find. coin slot bucking broncos, gumball machines, sidewalk clothing displays. she trots, hops, runs, climbs. her father watches her, through the corner of his eye, just barely.
sitting on the floor with us, the baby leans into his uncle’s leg (the baby can’t quite sit up on his own yet) and sucks absentmindedly at his uncle’s jeans. he coos, also absentmindedly, a noise between happy, upset, and just plain existentially overwhelmed and distracted.
-you will not get any time to yourself for quite some time to come,
i tell him silently.
but the very practical possibility, the basic feasibility, of love, in milk, smashed yams, your uncle's bizarrely scratchy but still somehow reassuring facial hair, blankets you know by now, necklaces you always pull at and try to break, and words you don't yet understand (thank god. much of what we say is inappropriate, but funny as hell to us) is somewhat comforting while in the midst of all of that.
.
we are staring through shop windows, at gaudy greek-ish statuary. and someone says,
-these people make me unhappy.
.
understand that: because of a flashing, chiming, colored, shapey ball i had when i was young, i am now synesthetic.
understand that: the sun is too bright for babies.
understand: “the calendar of flowers, gin bottles, [and] steak bones.” (john cheever)
.
she did the laundry. she thought, then, that she needed some sort of physical escape, someone to throw her arms around, but when she thought back on old love affairs she only became more aware of the fatigue she felt around her eyes, of the heaviness of chest, legs and soul she often felt. there were no more real heights. though that wasn’t entirely true. she still achieved the same heights, but, much like a climber who has scaled the same mountain hundreds of times before, once she reached the top what she felt was not really elation, but rather exhaustion, and an overwrought sadness at being exhausted. like hemingway, an old man, back at the bullfights, looking mildly confused and quite sad indeed, as if to say,
-where did it all go? i remember it being here. where did it….go?
as if looking at a picture of yourself at an early age would make you feel young again, when really it does the opposite—it sets up, simply, nothing but distance, and at the same time collapses distance into a nothingness composed of flattened layers and layers of god knows what. you look into your own eyes in the picture and simply see the distance you’ve crossed without your even realizing it. nothing occurs in the space between your living eyes and the eyes in the photograph. it is ouroboric. endless, and endlessly ending, the negative number added to the positive.
.
kovrin falls in love with the dowdy professor with the secretly great legs and frowsy hair. what do they talk about? beasts and zoo memberships. her dog, joseph. the vicious pied crow his mother had as a pet when he was small. they talk about whether something without teeth can really be described as “vicious.” he says, wistfully, as they watch a crow fly overhead,
-you know. it’s odd. crows don’t need money at all.
she says, when he comes into her office,
-joe lost a ball in the bushes earlier.
and then she adds with a sigh,
-he’s pretty upset about that.
and kovrin looks at the dog drowsing happily under her desk.
they talk about his mother. about how she kept a christmas tree up year round until it caught fire and burned down the house. she turned to judaism after that.
-can a person really “turn” to judaism, though?
-well, she converted, anyway.
-“turning” to judaism makes it sound like she turned to drink or something.
-well she did that too.
kovrin tells her stories about his time guarding an airfield in morocco, about how he lived in a steel corrugated quonset hut and tamed a gazelle and a hyena, who both kept him company until the tragic day the hyena ate the gazelle. kovrin had come across the decimated carcass of “anna,” with “heinrich” chewing the last of the meat off her poor, delicate bones with some relish. heinrich had looked up at kovrin, unashamed, as if to say,
-well it was bound to happen, old pal.
-how’d he get relish?
greenbaum asks him. and kovrin scowls, as if about to cry.
-sorry,
she says. and kovrin says nothing.
after kovrin found the two animals he couldn’t stop crying for a week.
.
greenbaum discovers, later, that this particular story of her lover’s can’t possibly be true, and that some of the stories he tells are reminiscent of episodes out of the life of antoine saint-exupery, napoleon, and orson welles. but she also discovers, with some surprise, at the very same moment, that she really doesn't care.
.
Wednesday, February 18, 2009
there is: an invisible but audible nest of fledgling birds in one of the overhead lights in the 24th street subway station. there is: the condescending but sweet phrase that comes complete with an unexpected pat on the back (which causes something in you to flinch wildly, offended, but also causes something in you to settle and lie down at the same time). there are blind men selling muffin tins on the corner of folsom and 17th.
there are street names, some with names and some with numbers.
there is the obvious but still surprising realization (when riding the bus and suddenly recalling small hands playing with your big coat buttons) that children are far more interesting than dogs.
there is the obvious clunkiness of this particular device.
there is: that revelation that smacked you in the face while you were sitting on the steps of your cambridge house, all alone, at two in the morning. it was cold, quite cold, but you were sitting there on those blue-gray-painted wooden steps (the second one down, always the second one, that was the step that felt right) and the street was totally dark and disconcertingly silent (the houses around you were filled with sleeping, darling, respectable little families you sometimes made breakfast and lunch for), and you were looking at the moon and the moon started to taunt you, it was so white and cold and silent. it taunted you, or really, reassured you, depending on how you looked at it. and you looked at your shoes and then back up at the sky again, at that big moon that felt early, since everyone you knew but your brother wouldn’t even notice the moon for a few more hours (or at least that was the sense you got, being stretched out across the entire country), and you felt alright, really quite well, happy, even, though moving to new england all alone and with no real program to follow is truly an exercise in keeping sane.
and the moon said, or really just shone (since we shouldn’t anthropomorphize something so entirely physical, the moon is silent and speaks to no one, not even you, lonely and striving to keep it together with job and books and attempts at writing and drawing and phone calls and wine at lonely 23) the moon passively shone on you the way it’s always shone on goddamn everyone (everyone. think about that for a moment). the moon shone and you thought, in the voice of that silent moon,
-no one can ever give you this.
and with a short little vaguely pneumonic (you were not entirely well this winter, although for many weeks you mistook slight unwellness for simple melancholy, or vice versa) intake of breath you realized that the moon, up there and huge and passive and beautiful and really not speaking to you at all, was right.
and you repeated, rubbing your very cold, overdishwashed hands together and looking at the moon with your own small, warm, gone-in-a-flash-of-the-moon’s-nonexistent-eye fondness, (which felt so big, since you were so small) you repeated, warm and little and fond and lonely and dearly all alone,
-no one can ever give you that.
parentheses.
.
Friday, February 06, 2009
“alexander saw a people who buried their fruit-trees in winter, to protect them from the frost.”.
and then all of a sudden, all of those objects lost their magic.
-it's no way to live, i tell you, hiding from death by building newer and newer nurseries.
.
he dropped her off at her parents’ house and without another word (and barely a wave to the old couple at the door) he sped off, not without a little regret, it was true. he didn’t see her for quite some time after that. she was distanced from many things for all that time, more distanced from everything than she had been since childhood. and it was like childhood all over again, but stillborn, backwards. she felt suddenly aged, but, like a blind woman, many of her senses came back to her stronger than she had remembered them; they were full-hold, real, realer than most, realer than they had been. the smell of the herbs in the garden was absolutely ridiculous to her, and the milk man’s chronic cough could send her swooning into an empathetic faint.
that godless tyrant was the refrain constantly ringing through her head in those days. she gardened. she washed. she spoke to her mother, who she did really love. she kicked the covers and narrated a better story than he had ever read. she was absolute, utter distance. and she narrated. she gardened. she washed. she narrated.
that godless tyrant.
.
a psychic once told me to avoid people with names starting with one letter and seek out people whose names started with another letter. and oddly enough, she was more or less right, depending on how you look at it.
when the psychic appears to have been wrong, i think nothing of it, but when she appears to have been right, i think, HOW UNCANNY. and that’s how the parasciences, and, well, faith, really work if you think about it.
.
-oh yes, oh yes, he speaks about it very well.
he says, sitting with his back to the bay windows, looking out peripherally on a shabby green courtyard.
-he speaks about it very well. very well.
and i say, yes, he does,
and i think of all the more-satisfying conversations i've had in the past.
.
i've gotten lazy about recreating the world in miniature. it stays large, hazy, vaporous, expanding like a gas, particles all over, indefinite, nearly on the edge of just plain lost. everything is of the same significance, no protagonist is selected, no props, no locations. it stays a phonebook when it should be a novel.
what happens to the sea lions, the foghorns from ships at night, air raid sirens, the old woman i can see in the window of the building next to mine. they aren’t written yet (have i spoken about them, at least? yes, somewhat.) so really, they don’t exist. they aren’t pinned specimens, they aren’t boxed love objects. yet.
but still, even without writing, you’d have a grand view of anything from up here.
.
he pulls down a big cardboard box filled with little white plastic canisters that chime haphazardly.
a metal bowl, a brass clapper, the high-pitched drone of airplanes (many many airplanes), the smell of ink, the smell of thick powder, dear.
rockport.
all warm flailing, rushing headlong into conversation, all outer, all male (very good, my dear). conversely- all inner, with an occasional little kick that barely registers but takes so, so much effort
or no effort at all- that same little kick moves the seas, registers as utterly real to a much bigger, more powerful, less-dreaming thing. from one drifting to another. barely conscious being. seas move. seas, yes, but not oceans.
domes and chimes.
the knowledge of everything.
“yes you are foolish smoking, the bars are for rabbits who wish to outlive the men.”
(frank o'hara)
a seven-year old boy walking with his mother, carrying some kind of wire basket. why isn’t he in school, anyway?
this tiresome music that sounds like goddamn nothing.
moving to new england was certainly an interesting exercise in keeping sane. and i can’t quite shake it, though that was months past.
there’s that embarrassment of writing longhand in public.
“the distinct feeling of being left out in the cold, unkissed.”
(john berryman)
vodka, balloons, red curtains, tolstoy, you.
the elevator comes for me even though i didn’t call for it.
ding……ding…..ding……ding, and it’s there, with its lit little yellow portal. dark wood, a narrow box, complete with vents and metal knobs that look like the stops on my harmonium. the whole contraption is reminiscent of the harmonium, in fact. but less loud. reminiscent of an unplayed harmonium.
chandelier crystals and muffin tins. this is the world.
the pigeon population has tripled in the past two months.
i watch a cab driver eat his lunch out of his open trunk.
sea lions are just big mean wet dogs.
less than [taught-from-an-early-age].
and then you ride out on the train to rockport and you walk around in the rain for awhile there. grab a cup of coffee at a place almost as narrow as the counter, where two middle-aged men in slickers and a teenaged boy in a slicker are talking to the old woman who runs the place. jeopardy is playing on the tv and your cuffs are soaked through and sandy. you slap your wet umbrella against your wet leg, ask for a cup of coffee. you sit for a minute and warm your hands before heading out again into the rain and cold, into the summer tourist town that is utterly abandoned in the winter.
back on the gray beach there’s a large, stoutly-built old man in a slicker. he is reminiscent of your sidney, who, of course, is not “your” sidney, since “your sidney” is an old man back in boulder, battling the winter and old age and retirement plans. he has a close gray beard and a longshoremanlike cap. his three dogs, little cairn terriers, run about 15 yards over to where you are walking, or are at least moving your soaking feet around in the sand, swinging your legs shallowly and really getting nowhere (you have been sort of weaving on the beach, walking in big circles, figure-eights (it probably looks great from up above). the dogs tear over to you across the sand and come say hi. you pat them each on the head. the man whistles for them. one of the dogs is wearing a shock collar. he is the last of the dogs to respond to the man’s whistle, the last one to run back away from you.
.
Monday, February 02, 2009
i'll be back soon.
really.
.
Wednesday, December 10, 2008
we have it on good authority.the woman in the apartment above me is wearing heels. clack, clack, clack, as she walks around, maybe just home and pacing after a long day of work, or maybe going around and laying out the bread, cheese, olives, opening the wine, turning over the record, waiting for the guests to arrive.
this is a new sound to hear above me, and it seems festive.
"clack clack clack."
this is the noise heels in the apartment above you make.
in the morning, i wake up in a strange house, on a strange couch. i throw on my clothes, coat, and boots. i climb the narrow steps to the roof and i walk around, from edge to edge, looking at the trees that hang over and onto the building, at the leaves brushing the gravel. i look out at the hills, at the people down on the street below leaving their houses with their dogs.
clomp, clomp, clomp.
and the neighbors below dream of me up there on that weird gravel, up above their kitchens and dining rooms, up above where they are sleeping late in their bedrooms. they dream of me,
"clomp, clomp, clomp,"
because that's the noise a booted stranger makes up on your roof on a saturday morning, when you're dreaming of her walking around up close to the sky and weaving in and out of that high-up forest of stainless steel chimneys, those rooftop smoky pillars.
.
Monday, December 08, 2008
"Sand Flat Shadows"by Carl Sandburg
Fire the Goat and Flim the Goose slept out. Stub pines stood over them. And away up next over the stub pines were stars. It was a white sand flat they slept on. The floor of the sand flat ran straight to the Big Lake of the Booming Rollers. And just over the sand flat and over the booming rollers was a high room where the mist people were making pictures. Gray pictures, blue and sometimes a little gold, and often silver, were the pictures. And next just over the high room where the mist people were making pictures, next just over were the stars. Over everything and always last and highest of all, were the stars.
Fire the Goat took off his horns. Flim the Goose took off his wings. “This is where we sleep,” they said to each other, “here in the stub pines on the sand flats next to the booming rollers and high over everything and always last and highest of all, the stars.”
Fire the Goat laid his horns under his head. Flim the Goose laid his wings under his head. “This is the best place for what you want to keep,” they said to each other. Then they crossed their fingers for luck and lay down and went to sleep and slept. And while they slept the mist people went on making pictures. Gray pictures, blue and sometimes a little gold but more often silver, such were the pictures the mist people went on making while Fire the Goat and Flim the Goose went on sleeping. And over everything and always last and highest of all, were the stars.
They woke up. Fire the Goat took his horns out and put them on. “It’s morning now,” he said.
Flim the Goose took his wings out and put them on. “It’s another day now,” he said.
Then they sat looking. Away off where the sun was coming up, inching and pushing up far across the rim curve of the Big Lake of the Booming Rollers, along the whole line of the east sky, there were people and animals, all black or all so gray they were near black.
There was a big horse with his mouth open, ears laid back, front legs thrown in two curves like harvest sickles.
There was a camel with two humps, moving slow and grand like he had all the time of all the years of all the world to go in.
There was an elephant without any head, with six short legs.
There were many cows. There was a man with a club over his shoulder and a woman with a bundle on the back of her neck.
And they marched on. They were going nowhere, it seemed. And they were going slow. They had plenty of time. There was nothing else to do. It was fixed for them to do it, long ago it was fixed. And so they were marching.
Sometimes the big horse’s head sagged and dropped off and came back again. Sometimes the humps of the camel sagged and dropped off and came back again. And sometimes the club on the man’s shoulder got bigger and heavier and the man staggered under it and then his legs got bigger and stronger and he steadied himself and went on. And again sometimes the bundle on the back of the woman’s neck got bigger and heavier and the bundle sagged and the woman staggered and her legs got bigger and stronger and she steadied herself and went on.
This was the show, the hippodrome, the spectacular circus that passed on the east sky before the eyes of Fire the Goat and Flim the Goose.
“Which is this, who are they and why do they come?” Flim the Goose asked Fire the Goat.
“Do you ask me because you wish me to tell you?” asked Fire the Goat.
“Indeed it is a question to which I want an honest answer.”
“Has never the father or mother nor uncle nor aunt nor the kith and kin of Flim the Goose told him the what and the which of this?”
“Never has the such of this which been put here this way to me by anybody.”
Flim the Goose held up his fingers and said, “I don’t talk to you with my fingers crossed.”
And so Fire the Goat began to explain to Flim the Goose all about the show, the hippodrome, the mastodonic cyclopean spectacle which was passing on the east sky in front of the sun coming up.
“People say they are shadows,” began Fire the Goat. “That is a name, a word, a little cough and a couple of syllables.
“For some people shadows are comic and only to laugh at. For some other people shadows are like a mouth and its breath. The breath comes out and it is nothing. It is like air and nobody can make it into a package and carry it away. It will not melt like gold nor can you shovel it like cinders. So to these people it means nothing.
“And then there are other people,” Fire the Goat went on. “There are other people who understand shadows. The fire-born understand. The fire-born know where shadows come from and why they are.
“Long ago, when the Makers of the World were done making the round earth, the time came when they were ready to make animals to put on the earth. They were not sure how to make the animals. They did not know what shape animals they wanted.
“And so they practiced. They did not make real animals at first. They made only shapes of animals. And these shapes were shadows, shadows like these you and I, Fire the Goat and Flim the Goose, are looking at this morning across the booming rollers on the east sky where the sun is coming up.
“The shadow horse over there on the east sky with his mouth open, his ears laid back, and his front legs thrown in a curve like harvest sickles, that shadow horse was one they made long ago when they were practicing to make a real horse. That shadow horse was a mistake and they threw him away. Never will you see two shadow horses alike. All shadow horses on the sky are different. Each one is a mistake, a shadow horse thrown away because he was not good enough to be a real horse.
“That elephant with no head on his neck, stumbling so grand on six legs—and that grand camel with two humps, one bigger than the other— and those cows with horns in front and behind— they are all mistakes, they were all thrown away because they were not made good enough to be real elephants, real cows, real camels. They were made just for practice, away back early in the world before any real animals came on their legs to eat and live and be here like the rest of us.
“That man— see him now staggering along with the club over his shoulder— see how his long arms come to his knees and sometimes his hands drag below his feet. See how heavy the club on his shoulders loads him down and drags him on. He is one of the oldest shadow men. He was a mistake and they threw him away. He was made just for practice.
“And that woman. See her now at the end of that procession across the booming rollers on the east sky. See her last of all, the end of the procession. On the back of her neck a bundle. Sometimes the bundle gets bigger. The woman staggers. Her legs get bigger and stronger. She picks herself up and goes along shaking her head. She is the same as the others. She is a shadow and was made by mistake. Early, early in the beginnings of the world she was made, for practice.
“Listen, Flim the Goose. What I am telling you is a secret of the fire-born. I do not know whether you understand. We have slept together a night on the sand flats next to the booming rollers, under the stub pines with the stars high over— and so I tell what the fathers of the fire-born tell their sons.”
And that day Fire the Goat and Flim the Goose moved along the sand flat shore of the Big Lake of the Booming Rollers. It was a blue day, with a fire-blue of the sun mixing itself in the air and the water. Off to the north the booming rollers were blue sea-green. To the east they were sometimes streak purple, sometimes changing bluebell stripes. And to the south they were silver blue, sheet blue,
Where the shadow hippodrome marched on the east sky that morning was a long line of blue-bird spots.
“Only the fire-born understand blue,” said Fire the Goat to Flim the Goose. And that night as the night before they slept on a sand flat. And again Fire the Goat took off his horns and laid them under his head and Flim the Goose took off his wings and laid them under his head while he slept.
And twice in the night, Fire the Goat whispered in his sleep, whispered to the stars, “Only the fire-born understand blue.”
.
Thursday, December 04, 2008
a lot of cities.balzac's financially-breaking collection of bric-a-brac.
an old woman walks in the door of the yellow basement café. there's a bitter wind outside. the café owner asks,
-a table, miss?
and she answers,
-i'm meeting a friend.
he asks her, after she sits down,
-would you like to order something now or wait for…
-hm…
-how about a glass of water?
-oh, yes, please.
she sees him filling up a glass of ice with water from the tap, and says,
-oh, i think cambridge water tastes wonderful. thank you. i'm glad to have tap water.
then
she regales him with stories about cambridge water works, asking him,
-do you have children?
he says,
-yes. my children are one and four.
-oh. they're too young to like it, then.
but she goes on to talk about the water works factory.
there is a drinking fountain attached to a giant glass pump. there is a mosaic map of cambridge on the floor of the lobby, with thick metal inlays showing the waterways throughout the city.
when her friend comes in, she says,
-we've just been chatting away about the waterways. his children are one and four. they're too young to enjoy the tour, but the water is still delicious, don't you think?
the other woman asks the owner,
-is josephina still here? i haven't been here since i was in college.
and he says,
-no, unfortunately, josephina passed away. my wife and i own the place now.
the old women do not look too distraught.
one of them says,
-oh, that's too bad about josephina.
the owner says,
-well, we have kept all the recipes the same.
he gives a little bow.
and the old women smile.
the women are talking when the waiter walks over to their table again. they all talk at once, one of the women continuing her story, the other ordering:
-a medieval soldier is standing over the tombstone…
-i'll have a hot chocolate with my sandwich please.
-with the sandwich?
-unfortunately, hitler's come to power, it's a terrible time in the alps…
-yes, at the same time as the sandwich.
-cream with the hot chocolate?
-yes, cream. please.
and i turn back to my book.
.
in the museum of comparative zoology,
i overhear a man say to his spanish companion while they stare at the lion:
-i've always wondered why cats have four toes on their back feet and five on their front.
and i have a theory, but i don't stop to talk to them.
instead, i walk on, and read a label:
"in some ways they are extremely timid animals and will do everything in their power to avoid meeting a human being."
i hear another couple, also spanish. they're looking at an animal around the corner, out of sight from me. i can see the man gesture as he tells the story in broken english. he says,
-they were having dinner, and it walked right under the table. she thought it was a dog, and kicked.
(he kicks, and the girl laughs)
-it was a warthog.
-no!
-it was a warthog.
.
+ grain of salt.
we are cold ocean water, and we have a crippling fear of insincerity. As a result, we never say anything at all.
my hand actually tires of putting the pen across the paper.
these women all blend together. i make their food for them, but it takes me two months to discover that customers actually have faces, have eyes that i can meet with my own, there under my compulsively-worn red wool hat.
and is any of it? actually?
schooners and colored lights.
is that what it is.
paintings in soot, a fascination with art heists, tiger tamers, and cruelty.
that clatter of portuguese, of any language i don't actually understand.
evie tells me about her work on horse farms in nevada. about how her boss made her roll a dead, rigor-mortised horse down a hill over a cliff once because she didn't want to pay to have it disposed of. and we both grin at the terribleness of this story. we both grin.
can we lead a different sort of life, please, can i not be a snap-pea girl…i am not a snap-pea girl (though i am now, in many ways). i am not really that girl. i am, but i am not. i am the snap pea girl and i am also the old man watching her. all at once. my voice is sometimes not my own.
"my nurse was always on hand to pull me away when i came too close to the cages, and i once told her how much i wanted to be behind the bars with the tiger and she said, 'are you crazy? he would gobble you up in one bite.' i shivered with delight at the thought."
.
they continue the conversation in spanish, and she says,
-madA-gas-CAR?
and he says something in response that ends with
-madA-gas-CAR.
the overwhelming desire for tactile understanding. the overwhelming desire for gold food.
there's that longing to open up those glass doors and hold the hides and feathers inside. really hold them, throw your arms around them. i look up in the whale room, i look for gaps in the glass where you can get close to the whale bones, look for a gap where i might be able to reach through and touch them, finally. these bones terrify me, always have, but today, i realize, i understand, that all i really want is to hold them, i want to see them up close, i want to put my hands on them and know them. rough, smooth, i want to know them. i want to put my face against them, kiss them the way i might kiss a doorfacing.
but there are no gaps in the glass that would allow for this. i should know this by now, but i don't. i have this feeling that maybe my longing can outsmart the museum, today.
there is that longing to know feathers and fur, to understand that blue black ruff, that brown crest across a deer's collarbone, those sharp, barbed points of the porcupine. that's what i really want.
i actually say outloud, while i am looking through those glass cases for the five-hundredth time:
-my eyes aren't good enough for all of this.
and the school group next to me hears me, and stares.
my hands can't actually reach out and stroke any of it. i swoon whenever i imagine putting my arms around anything-- reaching in and stroking that fur ruff, tapping those bones that are the color of tea. tactile understanding. i need to lie down in the natural history museum. i need to have a blanket thrown over me in the natural history museum.
i have been going along, going along, and i finally complain to owen: "there really doesn't seem to be any pay-off..."
and he says,
-oh, el, there IS no pay-off, actually. there is no pay-off.
and. well.
is that what love's supposed to be like? no pay-off
with a short beat, and the addition of
actually, no pay-off.
the longing for tactile understanding. the wish to open up the glass doors and really know black/blue feathers and bones the color of tea, dusty, ancient hides that were so carefully brushed before they were put on display.
the woman who is disappointed by the state of ancient taxidermy specimens- she is distressed by the appearance of cracks in the hide of a sawdust-and-hay-stuffed elephant who was shot and killed a century before she was even a glimmer in anyone's eye.
i'm dreaming, i'm dreaming
that is all
a small girl around the corner from me, from where i am standing against a pillar next to the elephant, is complaining huskily in little-kid french, and her parents are answering in grown-up french
i am out of sight, i am listening to them, and i can smell the bag lunches of school groups downstairs, i can hear their little-kid clatter
a boy thunders around the corner from me, shouting
-i own this one. i own this. i call this one. we own ALL OF THESE. ALL THE ONES IN THIS ROOM, I CALL. except the black bear, since ethan already called it. we own everything else. i own everything else.
.
Tuesday, November 18, 2008
this is just to saywe are such uncanny children
i lean in and you lean out—
and we all lean out, always. we do all our work leaning slightly, we climb leaning slightly, we people the world leaning slightly.
and we could lean and tilt, lean and tilt for millennia, and it wouldn’t change a goddamn thing. because we are all still careering, ambling, sliding, rushing towards that same big nothing, that same happy lack. that same old
gone, gone.
i would have thought you’d want to have a little chat about that.
wait long enough, be lucky enough, and you will turn into a glass object that can only be pocketed badly.
she says,
i was it in the baby days.
but childhood is not a place, after all,
it’s not a room you can return to.
everything is the same as it always was—
the rain still pools and sparks when it hits the ground,
we are uncanny, and we simply grew taller.
you’re still that boy, you know, it’s just that
cells divided and shifted, divided and shifted until you no longer had that sour-sweet milk smell your mother knew like her own breath, until your mother no longer came close enough to you to even know what you smelled like anymore, whether it was dirt or leaves or smoke or sweat. you are still dividing and shifting, dividing and shifting, signaling. your cells are mute, they do their work, they are you, and they feel vaguely ignored, vaguely unloved.
.
this hulking kid with unstrapped white sneakers. i pretend with him in order to have some company. he brings a bottle of wine he’s taken from his mother’s house.
-she has a bad back. so she has a glass of wine every night to help it. so she’s got all these bottles lying around. she was fine with me taking it.
-well, will she need it for her....back? did you say?
-nah, she’s got these, uh, what do you call them...not percoset.
-vicodin?
-vicodin. she’s got vicodin, so it’s not like she needs the wine.
i open the bottle while he takes off his shoes. and i’m smiling at my own foolishness, at my own pretending, and i feel some part of me waving to his mother as if through fogged glass, his mother and i wave to each other and think
he smelled like sour-sweet milk until i no longer came close enough to him to even know what he smelled like anymore, whether it was dirt or leaves or smoke or sweat. i was a landscape to him, i was it in the baby days, but childhood is not a place, after all, it is not a room one can return to, everything is the same as it always was, we are uncanny, and we simply grew taller, the rain still streaks the windows of classrooms, only we’re no longer in them, our children are in them, and their sneakers are wet, the teacher is changing the date on the calendar, and we are dividing and shifting, dividing and shifting, dividing and shifting.
i am that girlhood, those children, that leaning, out west, my grandmother, i am those cereal bowls
i am back when late night was a discovery, an invention.
do you remember
when you invented sex
you were twelve, and on the chaise lounge in the tv room
when it happened
your mother couldn’t know. she couldn’t know that you no longer had your strange baby powder smell. you smelled now, of molasses, of weekend damage. she couldn’t know.
and we all have you to thank for it.
at night, i pass a woman with a big black dog in the rain. another woman, across the street from us, calls out to her,
-is that a new dog?
and the woman with the dog answers,
-no, i wish, i’m just dog sitting. did you get a new cat?
-no. not just yet.
-yeah. that’s us too. not yet. not just yet.
we’re that grief, that animal-loss. rubbing silk the wrong way. i’m a keening, rutting instrument, the noise i make laughs, cries, screeches along train tracks. i’m sweeping across my childhood in the rain and i know suddenly (really suddenly) that time is really not a thing. and i buzz with the discovery, i buzz with it, i am buzzing, i am in love, i am going to eat it alive, all that subterranean understanding that we are all careering, climbing, ambling, sliding towards that same big nothing, that same happy lack
.
Wednesday, November 05, 2008
first of all:PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA. (!!!)
and second of all,
nothin'!
.
“Still another use for the shell; one sometimes finds pieces of broken shell on the beach, cleansed of its outer rough bark by the [sea’s] scouring, smooth as ivory, and so hard that one would think they were flintstones; I found some among them that were so petrified, that one could strike a spark with them, like true flintstones.”
-Georgius Everhardus Rumphius, “The Ambonese Curiosity Cabinet”
(that name sounds like a joke, but it isn’t. poor guy.)
.
we’re our own deep majesty.
the food court lessens it slightly, bad fake blood from my mouth lessens it slightly, dental school, music videos, digital watches, real estate agents, iphones, oh,
many things lessen it slightly
(everything is vulgar, he thinks)
but then i look back on the winter, on that dark, colored clutter, when i was so sad but still surrounded, when i got into a hot fight over the phone regarding,
clear weather
what. what was it regarding. i was washing tiny, frozen christmas ornaments i’d found in a box in the snow by the trash outside my house. i was washing them in the sink, it was daytime, which felt unusual, the sink was hard white porcelain that i’d broken many glasses against, i was alone (and was for ten months straight) and the phone conversation went from hot good to hot bad quite suddenly. (that used to be quite familiar, and reassuring to me).
i don’t even remember what it was about.
but i was sort of in love in the abstract sense. and it was about something. and it ended abruptly, as most things end. abruptly.
and it was red, clear, and silver, and it was running under the tap in a hard white porcelain sink i had broken many glasses against, and it was daytime, which felt unusual. and we were our own deep, hot majesty.
who is “we,” anyway?
well:
a handful of keys, an open window, the death of something that never even existed but that i truly, madly loved all the same. it struggled for breath at the end, recited a little psalm it itself had written.
goodbye old paint.
it smiled while it watched me pound a pocketknife into the kitchen table and say, as if to prove to it that i could live on happily without it,
-well will you look at that.
we’re all tangled up in that somehow.
(he thinks, everything is vulgar)
if there’s no moment of epiphany, if nothing is ever really realized, what, after all, is the point?
we talk about ourselves the way rabbis talk about the torah, the way rabbits talk about the hutch, but no conclusion’s ever come to and it’s hardly worth more than a laugh in the end anyway.
that is just, everyone but you.
take a little moment.
take care,
i am walking back to the hotel at four in the morning and i call and sob to him over the phone,
-like a fucking jackrabbit!
and months later i slap the make-up right off of his face. twice. i slap him twice. slap the make-up right off his face. twice. months of cold, solitude, and danger lead up to this, to my slapping the make-up right off his face in the middle of the mission, in the middle of the night, in the middle of the road, with two girls i don’t know watching.
-fuck you all,
i bite into my bottom lip as i get into the cab. just like kovrin.
i’ve probably only slapped two people in my entire life.
and i am more than that, i think.
we are our own deep majesty, after all. jarry carried a pistol with him to fire off whenever he thought someone was being boring. so maybe this is my version of that.
or maybe i was just drunk, bored, and very much not in love.
BANG
it goes, right through the roof of the cab.
not in love.
i always ride in the last car of the train. always. the very last car, where they keep the bicycles. it’s funny that i only attempt to save myself from the very least likely of dangers.
.
Sunday, November 02, 2008
-there was a time when we could dance until a quarter to ten, we never thought it would end then, we never thought it would end but now.
in my modernism and postmodernism class this summer my professor asked us,
-so how many of you are liars? habitual liars? who here considers himself to be a good liar?
and almost everyone in the class raised his or her hand, rather proudly. i didn't, and he pointed at me.
-you. your hand isn't up. so you don't lie? are you an incredibly truthful person?
-no, it's not really that,
i said,
-i just can't really do it. physically. i have no poker face. i blush when i try to lie and it gives me away.
and i felt my face get hot.
he said,
-you're blushing right now.
-am i?
-yes.
he waited a beat before saying,
-that's very complicated.
.
Wednesday, October 22, 2008
-living is easy it’s easy to live.in boston, she sat under a vast arched ceiling and thought, yearning won’t kill you, but she didn’t believe it. and she leaned over the table and wrote on the yellow tablet she wasn’t that crazy about,
-yearning won’t kill you, he thought, but he didn’t believe it.
and that’s part of why she loved kovrin. because in her stories kovrin finished her sentences for her. it also didn’t hurt that he was physically quite attractive. darling, she patted his arm firmly and he responded by swinging his arms around her and saying, whiskey-hot,
-well.
and that’s all it ever took, that’s all it ever really takes, in that unafraid midnight-at-seven sort of spot.
she spent a little while after that photocopying drawings of wolfhounds
and then, back at the table, she thought, take a little moment out of every day to feel lonely. look at things. find out their edges. and she leaned over the table and wrote,
-take a little moment out of every day to feel lonely. look at things and find their edges.
and then she crossed that whole thing out, hard. the pencil broke. she resharpened it. she crossed it the fuck out. especially that little bit about taking a “little moment.” and she cocked her lip when she did that. she looked out across the room. men with laptops. the room was great. really great. all tapping. she wore headphones. read and ignored texts from coworkers. the ceiling was blue and white and very far away up above. the ceiling was arched, but she didn’t really like the word “vast.”
but it was “vast.” could it be “big”? was “big” better, more direct?
it seemed like a thousand years since she’d run up the boulder library steps in those shitkicker boots with the two older boys (one scruffy and difficult, the other well-kept and difficult, but both rather lovely in their own way) right behind her. that was a good night. when things happened and smoking on the porch and the bird’s nest.
don’t do that, she cringed at the long table under the big arched ceiling.
that was really something, though, that night, many of those nights. she’d stolen the card from that civil war first aid book at that library that night. she was always stealing things those nights.
i’m never going to sleep again.
.
Thursday, October 09, 2008
-and suddenly he realized maybe it had all been a ruse, and the whole world was calcutta after all.
.
.
Sunday, October 05, 2008
-The slip was not for keeps. He could keep it only while memorizing it. This brand of paper (used by macaroon makers) was not only digestible, but delicious. (Vladimir Nabokov, "Pale Fire")
a martingale is a device for steadying a horse’s head or checking its upward movement.
an aspergillum is a brush or globe used for sprinkling holy water.
aqua regia (“royal water”) is a mixture of nitric and hydrochloric acids that dissolves gold and platinum.
in their case back at the mcz in cambridge, azara’s dog resists chasing weid’s cat. meanwhile, a sand dollar in a case in the hallway does nothing, but somewhere, someone remembers that charles darwin picked it up in the galapagos 150 years ago and sent it to louis agassiz as a sort of present for disagreeing with him. trace amounts of both men's DNA still linger on that sand dollar. just hanging out. or it's been brushed clean by some thoughtful museum employee, and they don't.
mono means one. and rail means rail.
.
"Everything had changed, everybody was happy. And he absolutely had to find her at once and tell her that he adored her, but the large audience before him separated him from the door, and the notes reaching him through a succession of hands said that she was not available; that she was inaugurating a fire; that she had married an American business man; that she had become a character in a novel; that she was dead."
(Vladimir Nabokov, "Pale Fire")
..
kingsley amis said that the teetotaler and the diptomaniac have a similar, wrong idea about alcohol.
so welcome to the wrong idea. welcome to the real unreal. welcome, my dears, to the real unsure.
you can stand in the middle of the woods, spread your arms wide, exasperated, and say to me,
-sweetheart, we are NOT in the woods.
and in many ways i admire this level of great belief or disbelief.
in san francisco, now, i can see the bay from my pillow. container ships pass my living room on their way to china. i watch the proverbial slow boat to china. miniature, gigantic. max is talking about his baby nephew and a large ship appears behind his head. it edges across slowly, miniscule-from-here white foam buffeting away from its bow, and i very slowly read the tiny (huge from there) lettering.
YANG
then: MING
then
LINE
i point this out to him and say,
-look. yang......ming......line.
the next day it's the maersk sealand line.
down the hill i am constantly assaulted by dim sum menus. walking around the city is like horseback riding-- you are always leaning either forward or back. on occasion i find myself leaning only to discover that i am not actually on an incline, and am only tilting out of habit.
heavy, backwards bouquets of pink plastic shopping bags graze my knees, shoulders, elbows. a woman on the steps of the church reads a coloring book to her kid. everything chinese is lucky. i walk about and gawk at dried fish in bags and in baskets and fruit, vegetables, and roots i have no name for. i see signs advertising "sleepful" and wedding cakes. i see a pink little girl dressed in a pink little dress standing on the sidewalk next to her family's pink bags of groceries, and in all the pink plastic confusion she gets scooped up, carried off, and bought for 49 cents a pound, which is frankly still a bargain anywhere in the country.
.
Monday, September 22, 2008
and then it occurred to him that maybe the entire thing was a bit of a ruse, and that the whole world was calcutta after all.
.
.
Wednesday, August 20, 2008
this is the scene that begets no other scenes. this is the scene where you say,
-this is the last scene.
and i nod hazily, since i haven't slept a wink all night.
when i hear someone say something kind of stupid or obvious or downright wrong, something in me flinches. my disapproval, my jealousy, my vague feelings of superiority (i really try not to have those feelings, but of course i do) are a horse with huge hooves, tremendous, sharp-edged hooves, fiery eyes, a scoffing mouth. but he has reins, he is mostly a tamed thing, and when someone says something like,
-it’s interesting that the author has used “longing” as a noun here
or something like,
-i went to the movies with this girl
the feelings are similar to one another—the horse kicks up and flares its eyes and i can feel it buck its head and stomp its feet (it’s enormous, this horse, this thing, potentially very dangerous) it stomps and flares and declares itself the real unreal thing, the misunderstood real thing, the only way to be (it says: look at me! what the fuck is wrong with you people???)
but that’s only for a moment, and i say whoa, whoa, and i pull back on those leather straps, dig in my heels, and get him under control.
but it’s always startling for a moment.
-what just happened?
people ask, since i look like something just kicked me in the chest.
-nothing. nothing.
and smoke drifts from my mouth, my ears.
it is interesting to both read a lot and drink a lot. at some point you have read enough (and, well, drank enough) that some kind of synchronicity starts to emerge—very different sources of information start to harmonize and inform one another, and you start to live in a sort of perpetual state of déjà vu.
it’s actually sort of cold out, the light is slanting and reminiscent of fall. i’m getting ready to move back across the country, and i’m suddenly seeing everything as fleeting, even things in my house carefully admired and placed and now gathering dust. a crushed metal ring i found a few days ago and then scoured in the sink. i apologized to it when i cleared a spot for it on the shelf
-don’t get too comfortable.
i feel right on the edge of things but sincerely ready for it, ready for it, desperate for it, in a vaguely glad way.
i’m in a constant state of déjà vu, thoughts and memories often not my own—
everything gets shaken up in a jar of nails.
all these things intermingle, the tops of some things and the bottoms of other things combine,
(did anyone else have those books? where you combined the tops and bottoms of animals and usually wound up with intensely boring freaks?)
there’s an odd feeling of synchronicity. everything seems like something else.
i actually stop walking down the sidewalk when i think of something and can’t quite place it, i try to remember what it is about it that makes me pause, and i can find the answer, usually, in one or two books in the two giant columns on either side of my bed (think of hanta, with his shelves and shelves on either side of his bed and even up above him, threatening to crush him)
i think i even stole “shaken up in a jar of nails” from somewhere. but i can’t remember.
tell me(?)
this is not to say i am a great reader. by no means. i’m a fucking terrible reader.
some of these memories, it turns out, are my own, i read a description of an epileptic seizure and remember our great old dog dan, when he had his seizures,
“he turns all red, a foolish grin spreads across his face, and his eyes seek us out, as if to cling to us. suddenly, he falls off to the side, whimpering. his limbs go taut, his eyes roll back into his head, he drools a little. sometimes the seizure ends there. sometimes he comes back, relaxes, but his eyes remain unfocused. it looks like he’s pausing between the two worlds. then he falls again. when he comes out of it, he looks surprised.”
i remember dan’s eyes getting deep and seeking ours out. we would all crouch with him while he bent and shook and really, truly went somewhere else.
i feel like it’s about to be halloween, thanksgiving, christmas, i wonder if, when i am finally out of here, i will be totally desocialized, like a feral child, if i’ll try to sleep on the floor no matter how many times my loved ones put me down in the bed to sleep.
it’s probably not that big of a deal.
.
Monday, May 19, 2008
Thursday, May 15, 2008
once again, + a grain of salt.
***
-everything that every grew, the goose and the gander and the gosling too, the duck upon the water when he feels that way too says
***
on my way home from the grocery store i pass an old man and his caretaker sitting on their front porch. this old man is my landlord’s father. i know this because cambridge is a very small town. the agassiz neighborhood in particular is very small. (i met a girl recently who was the former roommate of my coworker’s roommate’s cousin. this cousin was my bartender at the b-side lounge a few months ago, when i was there having drinks with my coworker, his roommate (this b-side bartender-girl’s cousin) and my boss, who is the childhood best friend of the boyfriend of the girl i recently met who is the former roommate of my coworker’s roommate’s cousin, who was our bartender that night at the b-side lounge.
all of that is purposely confusing, and entirely true.
i should probably move.
but. i pass this old man and his caretaker.
a stout, curly-haired woman with a paper bag passes on the sidewalk at the same time as me and calls out to them,
-hello. i’ve just picked up my dinner. i’m starving. how are you?
and the caretaker responds,
-good, good. nice day out, finally.
-yeah, finally.
the curly-haired woman waves and keeps moving. she says,
-well i’m going home.
-okay. enjoy your dinner.
my landlord’s father asks his caretaker, creakily,
-where is she going?
and his caretaker answers:
-she’s going home.
-going home?
-yeah, she’s going home, she’s going to bed.
and i find it very odd that she has told him this, as it’s only about six in the evening, and the woman is most likely not going to bed.
but the old man says,
-oh. she’s going to bed?
-yeah.
-well. where am i going?
and the caretaker answers:
-the front porch.
i keep walking. i climb my steps, open my door, and turn on all my lamps.
***
a ridiculous character.
lamps. glasses. dishes and cigarette boxes. i like mountains and hunting and fishing. i like john cheever.
i am the exile who still gets magazines from back home.
(-she took out four twenties 'cause she liked round figures.)
i would like a room of spun sugar objects
what i need is a western shirt and some western pants
all green and red and silver.
***
i’m on the boat with joshua’s dad. joshua calls to us from where he is swimming (probably because his dad and i aren’t really speaking, we’re just keeping track of all of them there in the salt water, far from shore, gasping. we are trying to make sure none of them drown). i am keeping an eye on my brother, who is swimming the hour swim to shore because he can’t pass anything up, ever. and i admire this. joshua, who i really don’t know at all, calls to his dad:
-ellen’s taking an ornithography course!
and his dad stares at me quizzically. he asks,
-ornithography?
from under his mustache.
and i say,
-he means ornithology. he keeps getting confused.
-so that’s...
(he revs the engine, and the boat turns. i sway back a little in my salt-soaked black dress)
-...birds, right?
-yeah.
-so tell me. why are there so many cormorants around here nowadays? we never used to see cormorants. now they’re everywhere.
-i don’t know,
i say, and he revs the engine again. i say,
-something about your fisheries must’ve changed.
and this is to say, well, i have no idea mr miner. i have no idea at all.
but i like cormorants. because cormorants are diving birds their feathers are incredibly absorbent— their feathers are basically a built-in diving belt, a built-in diving jacket. when they hit the water they immediately become much less buoyant. this way they’re able to stay underwater longer to fish. as a result, though, cormorants have to dry their wings after every dive in order to be able to fly. this is why you see cormorants striking that dramatic, sunning pose so often.
where they are spread-eagle, like this:
---- (head)
---------- (wings)-----------
[ ] (legs)
--------- (tail)
i say none of this.
-there’s your sunfish, joshua.
mr miner calls, and points at a fin sticking out of the water about twenty feet away.
***
i watch a man with a gray blazer slung over his shoulder walking a black dog under the magnolias near boston common.
in a hat shop, i hear a kid say to his little brother,
-don’t try that one on. that’s a ladies’ hat for when somebody dies.
and after they leave i take the mourning hat to a mirror and place it on my head at a jaunty angle.
***
when my coffee shop sells (“my” coffee shop), the kids who work there are in mourning, all of us— we are like children of divorce or death, we stick close together, though we have previously mostly fought, teased, and tried to kill one another. garrett, my manager, is in the corner by the window looking down at a scone recipe, i am in another corner cleaning up the oil i have spilled everywhere, we are both tense with the presence of the new owner, the presence of a total stranger in a place that has come to feel like home, and his dad, the previous owner of the shop, rounds the corner into the kitchen. he passes me and i grin at him. he gives me a little wave and moves on toward the window. he stands still behind his son, and when garrett turns around and sees him, there in his civilian blazer, he is so surprised and pleased that he cries out, “hey!” and taps tim’s shirt with the back of his hand. this is a jocular, genuinely happy gesture, so pleasing in its giddy simplicity. i think of the phrase hail-fellow-well-met and understand it. something about it makes me flush, red and happy.
when i go home, i try to recapture it, i try to mimic that gesture with my own hands. i practice this movement over and over again.
***
on the train we pass skunk cabbage and lady slippers, we pass puddingstone and salamanders under rocks. stone walls, there because early on in new england history people had to clear their fields of that glacial detritus in order to grow anything.
i see ospreys in their nests, on the ground near the water, flapping haphazardly above salt lakes. i see red-winged blackbirds in the cattails, in the thick of their everyday territory wars. there is salvation in the naming and counting of things, and i name and count everything i can. egrets. deer. nests made of sticks. trees. cars. gravestones. i think of how those nest sticks must feel to the baby ospreys. i think of those nest sticks as opposed to eiderdown. i think about the word "eiderdown" and say it out loud to myself as the train shudders and rockets along.
***
do this.
how to ragout a goose.
there was that awkward day at the shop when all of us kept whistling.
this is that close work you’ve been talking about.
-stacks of records, dust, swords, and...
he turns to me,
-...guns.
you tap the keys and play this musical armor, those pleasing little metal buttons, that pleasing little tap tap tap.
that tap tap tap of birds’ feet
as i walk along the river, i imagine a man shaving
and decide:
there has been some kind of mistake. and he is returned to us, straight-backed, strong, a young man, he walks with us miles and miles. that gold wire is in sight, that most beautiful object is in sight. that love object, the platonic ideal of a magnifying glass.
.
Friday, February 29, 2008
a line of scowling young men who smell vaguely of leaves and dirt
that pretty much says it
i whip through a snowy countryside, past woods, past pools of dark, frozen black water at the bases of tree trunks.
you'll cry when you take your first steps. you'll cry and cry.
you will always be fascinated by maps, but you will have no talent for geography.
you're kidnapped and i'm lonely.
i get up in the morning, get passably dressed, and begin my morning commute to nowhere.
there are no words, there are no seats. i pass a tree laden down with frozen fruit. i say the word "laden" outloud to myself.
there is: an overwhelming desire for gold food. there is: the brown and white cat that appears and trots alongside me on the bridge over the train tracks.
we are those finicky children, those days of no proportion.
we ride in the handsome cab with the red blankets over our legs. scratchy red felt. the horse's feet clomp along the pavement. the cars pass hhhssssshhhh and someone hums tunelessly. headlights sweep past those hard-knuckled frayed knees. our horse is spotted. he clomps, clomps, clomps.
we are thick metal inlays in a mosaic map. everything unwinds around us like a coil.
.
that pretty much says it
i whip through a snowy countryside, past woods, past pools of dark, frozen black water at the bases of tree trunks.
you'll cry when you take your first steps. you'll cry and cry.
you will always be fascinated by maps, but you will have no talent for geography.
you're kidnapped and i'm lonely.
i get up in the morning, get passably dressed, and begin my morning commute to nowhere.
there are no words, there are no seats. i pass a tree laden down with frozen fruit. i say the word "laden" outloud to myself.
there is: an overwhelming desire for gold food. there is: the brown and white cat that appears and trots alongside me on the bridge over the train tracks.
we are those finicky children, those days of no proportion.
we ride in the handsome cab with the red blankets over our legs. scratchy red felt. the horse's feet clomp along the pavement. the cars pass hhhssssshhhh and someone hums tunelessly. headlights sweep past those hard-knuckled frayed knees. our horse is spotted. he clomps, clomps, clomps.
we are thick metal inlays in a mosaic map. everything unwinds around us like a coil.
.
Sunday, January 20, 2008
oh, nonsense..
as she went out the door she turned to the monster and said, as an afterthought,
-well, i’ll watch out for you, i suppose.
he replied,
-but there will be no place to watch out for me, my dear.
his eyes flashed. he spread his claws wide and added,
-whoooooosh.
she stared. and said
-well. alright.
and closed the door behind her.
.
kovrin wanders through the brambles of the garden, towering over those child-sized spaces in his tattered woolen suit. he brushes the back of his hand on the trunks and leaves of the pepper trees and oleander as he passes. he stops by a small stone fountain filled with lily pads and tiny fish. something thunders past in the bushes behind him and he startles. he turns to look, and the branches and leaves are still quivering.
.
from the plane the bodies of water below are all molten silver—giant railroad tracks, vast puddles of melted metal. rain evaporates as it hits that hot surface. the fog sweeps up. everything is swathed in green or pulled white cloth.
there are bridges, rivers, snowfields, deserts, roads. sometimes all at once, all intersecting, microscopic.
from up here the horizon is 232.66 miles away.
here’s a sharp ridge covered in snow for you. here’s a little volcano. here you go. take it, put it in your pocket.
count out hours and people and animals and put them in a little snuff box trimmed with gold paper and black lacquer. put it in your pocket, take it home.
-oh no, I couldn’t possibly.
-TAKE IT HOME.
there is no such thing as physical immortality. even if death is taken out of the mix, if you lived long enough your likelihood of physical accident, of total obliteration, would increase exponentially. the longer you live, the more and more likely you are to get hit by a meteor, wiped out by an avalanche, totally emulated in a fire. utterly destroyed, utterly blown to bits and powder. you wouldn’t last beyond 10,000 years, even if you could "live forever."
look around, even the landscape itself isn't all that old, comparatively speaking. on a long enough timeline, physical destruction is an absolute certainty.
that’s actually sort of reassuring. 10,000 years? pah, that’s hardly even worth it.
.
i can't help but laugh. it's all so goddamn absurd. the exquisite cruelty. he holds up his hand, places his index finger and thumb together and describes my ability for drawing proportions. in my family, we use our hands to talk.
he retells the story as,
-lord, you know that's too goddamn much salt,
when the line has always been, in the past,
-lord, you know that's too much pepper.
owen wraps mythic creatures in toxic foam so that they don't break, jess calls from where she is driving through baton rouge, i pace around in california in bare feet and wonder what's wrong with me as i pour my umpteenth glass of wine of the night. the dogs bark, bark, bark. our exquisite little turtle sits in a box in the wayback, near the toy teaset and the water-stained portrait of some dead author.
these are real men, doing real things.
i lie on top of the red covers back in cambridge. the blinds are all open next to me, and it's snowing outside. i am playing invalid, reading old magazines and going through my entire record collection. it's blizzarding. throughout the day, people come out of their houses in giant parkas and stocking hats and shovel while the snow falls around them. i can watch them from here. i don't have to go out in that mess, as i have no car to extricate. i look out at the house across the street, at the driveway where i can see through to the backyard. in the summertime i used to watch these people's dog wander around out there, dragging branches, stripping bark. now, during the blizzard, i am strangely sick, unable to breathe, i have just enough groceries to last me the day, which i am spending fully clothed-and-lighted but barefoot on top these covers. out in that backyard, i see a little figure through the snow. i lean closer to the window. i can't tell if it's a person or not. it's strange-looking, small. is that a kid? then it moves. it is a kid, a girl about age six, out in her snowsuit and jacket and hat. she's buried herself up to her waist in snow. and she just sits there as the snow falls around her, occasionally patting flat the snow on top of her legs with her mittens. as i watch, the dog trudges over to her in the snow, and she pushes it away. it wags its tail. and they are both exquisitely happy.
.
Wednesday, December 05, 2007
down the garden path.i sit in the plough and stars and have a bowl of soup and a bloody mary. the bartender is irish. large and sincere. i enjoy him. no one is large and sincere any more. it's a terrible shame.
since i'm sitting in an irish pub and the book i'm currently reading is by an irish author, i have to read my back-up book, which is by a russian author.
one should not read irish books in irish pubs. it's beyond embarrassing and it effects the meal.
.
always foolishly disappointed. there is too much owed. the snow in new england never melts.
the charles river kind of freezes, but i still wouldn't walk on it.
i am back to feeling aimless, atoms drifting from my shoulders and back. i kick my legs out at night, throw my arms out at night. i kick and throw. i dream that i'm still young. i'm running away from home, into the woods behind our house. dan, the big yellow dog, is still alive, and i have no concept of non-familial love.
the covers are tangled in the morning.
here in massachusetts, the morning is open and cold. you can't see anything here. there are no mountains, there is no big sky. the sky is steel-gray, low, suffocating. the landscape doesn't want us here.
i hear school children outside my house, a full story below me. the day-to-day lives of children fascinate me and make me mildly glad.
a woman and her three-year old come into the shop in the morning and the woman tells me, after i ring her up,
-i was dressing this morning, and she came in and all she said was, "corn muffin."
maybe this is how it should be. the rough brick edges of buildings suddenly appearing. in the sky above porter square, the pigeons wheel and wheel around and then alight on an office building. some of them don't land and keep going round and round. minutes later, the ones who did land sweep up into the sky again and join them.
that regular give-and-take with the world, that constant talk, talk, talk. everything welcomes me back, it calls me by name and overwhelms me. it says:
look, look--
that little boy is walking with his mother and saying YAYAYAYAYA over and over again, that bird is trying to eat a muffin wrapper, that old man is going to visit his youngest daughter in toronto in three days, his name is charles, that plastic bag once held a carton of milk and a package of peanut butter crackers, that pigeon has had fifteen children, ten of them survived, that napkin never cleaned anything, that guy once had a eyebrow ring but he took it out when he was 24, that tree was pruned a year ago today and hasn't been since, that man woke up at one in the afternoon today and then watched five minutes of telemundo. one of the actresses reminded him of his ex-girlfriend, who was named kate and did social work, that pothole has broken seventeen car axels, that leaf was stepped on by a little girl named johanna (it went "crik') whose mother corrected her that afternoon when she asked for a glass of water: "it's MAY i have some water, johanna, not CAN i have some water" and that night, she dreamed about easter grass.
and on and on and on.
.
Monday, December 03, 2007
find me plastered on the sides of buildings, plastered on billboards with a phone number underneath, my mouth slightly open, looking ridiculous and dazed.i am milk and mutes, i'm a swooning faint in a cold front yard, i'm that "special time you spend with your loved ones during the holidays," i'm the tramp you pick up in the rain who doesn't stab you, i'm your mother, i'm yep, nope, okay, dear, and occasionally alright. i'm all that, and a broken teapot to boot.
so. let's have a look at you, then.
crows can't be anything but black. unless they're albino... then they're white with red eyes.
i'm slicing tomatoes, as i do on many mornings, and daydreaming about awful work-related injuries (it keeps me focused). the slicer is humming, warm, metallic. i work with it like some dear, sharp-toothed beast of burden. i treat it with a lot of affection. it's alive to me, it's an animal that won't hurt me so long as i don't stop paying close attention to it.
i get paid minimum.
it's six in the morning, freezing. the radio is on. the heat is barely on. i'm singing quietly to myself, and the slicer is going "shhuuut, shhuuut, shhuuut."
an old woman who often comes in on mornings when i open the shop walks in the door. the door clacks- "cht-ttt." this sound lets us know someone has arrived. i sometimes think i hear this sound when i'm not at work. cht-ttt, and i come to attention, no matter where i am, because that sound means that someone, somewhere, is hungry, and wants me to feed them. quickly.
she sits and reads the sunday paper. she's in a shawl, a long coat, and rubber boots. she sits and tears out coupons. she and the shop owner talk about quiche. she has the sort of accent american women did in movies in the twenties. a careful accent, almost british but also distinctly american. the sort of accent adopted by people who grew up in the middle of nowhere who don't want to sound like they grew up in the middle of nowhere. this is the way girls were raised to speak in the early to mid 20th century. i find it very soothing and kind of confusing.
she says,
-the sweet potato and kale quiche you gave me last week was really lovely, tim.
and tim says,
-did you like that? they're in season now.
and i think, the quiche, the kale, or the sweet potato?
the slicer falters,
shu'chh-SHH.
and i realize i'm getting distracted and am in danger of cutting off my hand. so i focus on my slicing again.
.
Saturday, December 01, 2007
Harold Pinter's “The Birthday Party”LULU: Oh, hullo.
STANLEY: Ay-ay.
LULU: I just want to leave this in here.
STANLEY: Do. (LULU crosses to the sideboard and puts a solid, round parcel upon it.) That’s a bulky object.
LULU: You’re not to touch it.
STANLEY: Why would I want to touch it?
LULU: Well, you’re not to, anyway.
LULU walks upstage.
LULU: Why don’t you open the door? It’s all stuffy in here.
She opens the back door.
STANLEY (rising): Stuffy? I disinfected the place this morning.
LULU (at the door): Oh, that’s better.
STANLEY: I think it’s going to rain today. What do you think?
LULU: I hope so. You could do with it.
STANLEY: Me! I was in the ocean at half past six.
LULU: Were you?
STANLEY: I went right out to the headland and back before breakfast. Don’t you believe me!
She sits, takes out a compact and powders her nose.
LULU (offering him the compact): Do you want to have a look at your face? (STANLEY withdraws from the table.) You could do with a shave, do you know that? (STANLEY sits, right at the table.) Don’t you ever go out? (He does not answer.) I mean, what do you do, just sit around the house like this all day long? (Pause.) Hasn’t Mrs Boles got enough to do without having you under her feet all day long?
STANLEY: I always stand on the table when she sweeps the floor.
LULU: Why don’t you have a wash? You look terrible.
STANLEY: A wash wouldn’t make any difference.
LULU (rising): Come out and get a bit of air. You depress me, looking like that.
STANLEY: Air? Oh, I don’t know about that.
LULU: It’s lovely out. And I’ve got a few sandwiches.
STANLEY: What sort of sandwiches?
LULU: Cheese.
STANLEY: I’m a big eater, you know.
LULU: That’s all right. I’m not hungry.
STANLEY (abruptly): How would you like to go away with me?
LULU: Where.
STANLEY: Nowhere. Still, we could go.
LULU: But where could we go?
STANLEY: Nowhere. There’s nowhere to go. So we could just go. It wouldn’t matter.
LULU: We might as well just stay here.
STANLEY: No. It’s no good here.
LULU: Well, where else is there?
STANLEY: Nowhere.
LULU: Well, that’s a charming proposal. (He gets up.) Do you have to wear those glasses?
STANLEY: Yes.
LULU: So you’re not coming out for a walk?
STANLEY: I can’t at the moment.
LULU: You’re a bit of a washout, aren’t you?
She exits, left. STANLEY stands. He then goes to the mirror and looks in it. He goes into the kitchen, takes off his glasses and begins to wash his face.
.
Thursday, November 29, 2007
-are you ready, desperado?-always ready.
.
a music box chimes and he says,
-there is no way in hell i am listening to this.
so i wipe the flour off my hands, walk over to the stereo and change the track, thinking,
-what an asshole...
.
everything a hopeful monster.
the tortoise slides back and forth on the tipping wooden floor of the ship. he is the size of a soup pot, nails smooth, the color of ivory.
i stole that entire line. from two different people.
we're in bird masks and our mother bursts into tears for some reason. unrecognizable loved ones are distressing.
alone in my house, i'm looking for a book on the shelf by the door. i'm singing, really belting it out, though i can't sing to save my own life, and i hear my neighbors clonk up the stairs. i know they can hear me. they even pause outside my door. but i keep singing. i feel a bit foolish, but, frankly, it would be more embarassing to stop now, wouldn't it? so i keep singing.
-it took me SOOOOO LOONG to FIND OUT....and i FOOUND OUT...
it was embarassing.
.
i feel endlessly old.
.
Friday, November 16, 2007
-PLAY IT to me.. PLAY IT to me hollywood blues..
weakened, foolish, clad in leather boots, she lays a tripwire in the basement under a heap of cardboard boxes.
she waits behind the water heater for him to stumble upon it. and when he does, he hurts his leg. badly. but he doesn’t make a sound. he closes his eyes in total silence, stills his face as if he can see her watching and can’t bear to give her the satisfaction.
but she isn’t satisfied. far from it. and she cries out in terrible pain before he does.
-oh jesus! sweetheart, what did you do??
.
i tear myself up, blow the pieces onto a large piece of butcher paper, and paste myself where i land.
i am a very capable person.
the girl juggles her options for the night and then winds up doing absolutely nothing.
or rather, she juggles her options for the night and then winds up wandering around in the freezing cold and early dark, going to forest cafe, and THEN doing absolutely nothing.
but 0+0 always equals....
sometimes this sort of thing works, and sometimes it doesn't. on this particular night, it doesn't really work. it does, but it doesn't.
it does. it doesn't.
and sometimes i refer to myself in the third person.
freezing cold and very, very slowly thawing out, i sit alone at a side table at forest cafe, there against the fake wood barrier between the restaurant and the bar. this barrier used to divide the restaurant into smoking and nonsmoking sections. that is no longer its purpose. the barrier no longer really serves any purpose-- it provides no privacy-- the drunks at the bar still lean their arms over the partition so that they're basically hanging over my drink and dinner all night. i'm close to scraping someone's hand with my fork. three old, balding men hang over me and talk about hair pieces. one of them says, in a thick-slurring boston accent,
-no, look, you know, as long as i can pah't it, i'm happy. as long as i have enough haya-ta pah't, i'm happy.
and so am i.
my family used to come to here when i was a little kid. it's exactly the same as it's always been. mexican food, highly gringofied, slightly terrible but weirdly passable, like mexican night at a nice polish family's house. the staff leaves me alone. they are friendly and prompt and don't cock their eyebrows at me, there, sitting alone over a book and cell phone and drink after drink after drink. so it works. and every now and then i come here and sit and drink and eat something and read and eavesdrop. on this night, a woman near me tells her friend a story about her husband:
-so you know that candy, altoids?
-yeah.
-well he loves them. he hasn't really got a sweet tooth, it's more of a... sour tooth, y'know?
-yeah, i have that too.
-so altoids, for a little while, was making these lemon ones.
-yeah?
-and he loved them, i mean, he would go through a couple tins a week. they have these circular metal tins.
(she curves her index finger and thumb into the shape of an altoid tin)
-yeah, yeah.
-but then they stopped making the lemon ones.
-oh.
-but then i was at costco around christmas time... i was buying candy for the kids' stockings... and i found a big tin of these lemon altoids all tucked away on the back of a shelf.
-ha!
-so now every christmas i put three or four in his stocking, and he LOVES them. it's only three or four from this big tin i have. but to him it's like HEAVEN.
-what are you going to do when you start to run out?
-i don't know. he'll be heartbroken. i guess i'll start giving him ONE every christmas.
my waitress is fine. she leaves me alone. but at the end of dinner she brings me my check and says,
-say, didn't you used to work in a movie theater around here?
-uhh... no..
-yeah, you used to come in here all the time with this short girl. you used to work in a movie theater. didn't you have a really short red-haired friend you used to come in with?
.
comment:
this is always amazing to me.
first of all, it is amazing to me when people mistake me for others, because i have a lot of difficulty believing there are many people out there who actually look that much like me. maybe that's just some kind of weird delusion on my part. but i have never met someone who could actually be confused with me other than... i don't know... my sister...? maybe..? and maybe a cousin or two...? maybe..? i don't know..
really? i have dopplegangers? where are they, and what the hell are they doing with themselves? who are they hanging out with? can i meet their friends? shouldn't they be my friends by proxy? they do have a type, apparently.
the best exchange i've ever had involving confused identity was at espresso roma, back in boulder, about a year ago. the barista girl said as she was ringing me up,
-hey, you used to work at the southern sun, didn't you?
-uhh... no..
(for some reason i always have to think about it. i'd never been employed before a few months ago. but there's still this little part of me that asks 'wait, DID i work at the southern sun..?')
the espresso roma girl continued,
-yeah, you did work there! or you went there a lot. i know you from the southern sun. i totally do.
-i don't.....think so..... the closest i've ever been to the southern sun was the parking lot. i've never actually even been inside the southern sun.
-no, i know you! you were dating a pilot at the time! weren't you dating a pilot?
(did i date i pilot?)
-yes. that was me.
the second thing that confuses me about this sort of exchange is this: once you've confused someone for someone else, and established that they are not in fact that person, what's the point of continuing to talk about it? people always try to convince me that i am in fact the person they're thinking of, to the point where i myself actually almost start to believe it.
.
back at the forest cafe, the girl is still trying to convince me that i once worked in a movie theater and came into the bar a lot with a short girl.
i shake my head. and say i'm sorry. and for some reason, i am sorry.
the busboy is new, and barely speaks english. i've seen him twice since he started working here a few weeks ago. he's still hopelessly lost. tonight, he is wearing the same city sports t-shirt he was wearing the last time i saw him. i look down and realize that i'm wearing the same top i was wearing the last time i was here. it's a work top that's too nice to work in, but fuckall, even with a paltry wardrobe i've got standards. it's still covered in flour. i'm still covered in flour. i used to work in a movie theater. i was dating a pilot at the time.
.
Thursday, November 15, 2007
here's a placemarker for tomorrow.
.
.
Thursday, November 08, 2007
-is he alright?
-well, i think he has no arms.
-they couldn't reattach them?
-i don't know.
-i thought they reattached them.
-but how would he get the arms into the car?
-look, any guy who can drive himself to the hospital using his mouth can probably get it together enough to take a couple arms, wrap them up in some newspaper..
.
-well, i think he has no arms.
-they couldn't reattach them?
-i don't know.
-i thought they reattached them.
-but how would he get the arms into the car?
-look, any guy who can drive himself to the hospital using his mouth can probably get it together enough to take a couple arms, wrap them up in some newspaper..
.
Monday, November 05, 2007
-jesus. these pirates are monsters.-well, yeah, but remember i shot one of their guys in the neck last week and killed him, so. i think we're okay too.
.
he licks his teeth, once, with great purpose, (-smack-), and says
-i am i am i am i am i am.
and i say,
-you really are.
you are?
a broken something.
we drink because we’re thirsty.
in the dream, i make breakfast for someone else’s children. the lawn outside is wet, the hill probably leads down to a cow or two, maybe some goats, maybe someone’s drunk, soaked, violent brother who’s hiding in the empty barn. in the kitchen, little mortimer the third eats plenty of hot buttered toast, and there’s milk at will for everyone. something buzzes warmly, but it’s still pilgrim-slaying cold by the windows and the door (it’s an old, drafty house) so we stay away from these glass openings except on occasion, when we go back to fill our mugs up again. we have to leave the coffee pot on the warmer, after all, and the only plug is right under the goddamn freezing windowsill.
.
in reality, i’m alone at the bookstore, and the woman in line behind me is extremely rude to me. cruel, even. in response to this, i start laughing uncontrollably. she looks alarmed, germanic. my shoulders are still shaking with it when i get up to the counter and say hi to the shopgirl. this has been happening lately—i’m overcome and i start laughing hysterically. it’s a little troubling, frankly. at the shop the other day i started laughing like this and actually said to a coworker who’d been harassing me all day,
-what the HELL are you TALKING about?
and then i turned away, still laughing, and resumed windexing the cooler doors. her face fell, possibly embarrassed, possibly frightened. i was not intending to be mean to her. and i really don’t think i was. i didn’t feel any real animosity towards her in that moment…. it was just… funny…
and squeak squeak squeak went the glass under the rag.
in those tattered, sad house dresses, i want to take them by the shoulders and shake them heartily, slap them, shout and dredge something out of that sorry sweet little arrogance. because i’m fond, sincerely, (insanely), but i really just want to say, firmly,
this is all you’ve got, this little sad thing is all you’ve got. time is not your friend.
.
Friday, November 02, 2007
i'm a lonely soldier.every once in a great while i am overwhelmed with a day-long wave of totally blind, smothering fondness. but there's no one here to throw my arms around-- i'm alone, almost entirely, almost all of the time. so i kiss the lead-paint doorfacing and wander out in the morning, vaguely buzzing. i see a woman and her four-year old on the playground. i know them from the shop. the woman waves (it takes her a moment, she doesn't recognize me without a black apron on, apparently) and i wave back. the little girl stares.
i see a squirrel running up a driveway with an entire piece of toast in his mouth. i see an abandoned pair of workgloves on the sidewalk. i buy coffee and throw the paltry change into the tip cup. i see a dead pigeon and a dead rat within the same two blocks. i catch the hanta virus.
i climb into blasting headphones, cross my arms tightly, and that warm swirling settles down into a more bearable, dark little thud in my chest. a steeplechase thud.
and then i can get on with my day.
i suppose it's that weirdly buzzing, mildly glad feeling that makes some people pray. CS lewis said that it's not enough to simply pray by existing-- that it angers god for you to assume that he knows how you're feeling about the whole existence thing. he said that's not enough-- that you have to actively get down on your knees and pray. otherwise it doesn't count. that little feeling of effortless grace doesn't cut it.
CS lewis was an asshole.
but he's dead, and i'm not.
so i win.
.
Sunday, October 28, 2007
i think i'm in love with this guy: http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/28/magazine/28wwln-Q4-t.html
and hell, i'll just post it:
Questions for Pierre Bayard
"My Reader, My Double"
Interview by DEBORAH SOLOMON
Published: New York Times: October 28, 2007
Q: As a professor of French literature at the University of Paris, you’re offering rather subversive advice in your 12th book, “How to Talk About Books You Haven’t Read,” which is about to be published in this country. Do you think it will fare as well here as it has done in Europe?
A; I have no idea. It was a best seller in France. People bought it without reading it — they followed my advice. It was a best seller in Germany, too, because there are many nonreaders in Germany, and they want to see their rights defended.
Q: Naturally, I read your book in preparation for this interview. Do you think I made a mistake in doing so? What do you mean when you say, “I read it”?
A: One of the purposes of my book is to show that it is not so easy to say that you have read a book.
Q: What’s wrong with the traditional method of starting a book on the first page and reading through to the end?
A: It’s important to know how to read from the first line to the last line, but there are also other ways of reading. You can skim books, you can just have heard about them, you can have read them and forgotten them.
Q: You write in your book about Montaigne, who confessed to having a poor memory and to forgetting about books he himself had written. Which leads you to ask: If we read a book and forget that we read it, is that the same as never having read it?
A: I think between reading and nonreading there is an indeterminate space that is quite important, a space where you have books you have skimmed, books you have heard about and books you have forgotten. You don’t have to feel guilty about it.
Q: But what about those of us who read to feel things — to experience pleasure, an end to loneliness?
A: Of course I read in order to feel something. And to feel an end to my loneliness, of course, just as you.
Q: Then why are you so willing to devalue the experience of close reading in favor of skimming? You seem to believe that knowing a little bit about 100 literary classics is preferable to knowing one book intimately.
A: I think a great reader is able to read from the first line to the last line; if you want to do that with some books, it’s necessary to skim other books. If you want to fall in love with someone, it’s necessary to meet many people. You see what I mean?
Q: You suggest in your book that schools destroy a love of literature, in part because they don’t allow skimming.
A: Yes. Sometimes I help my son write book reports. Guillaume — he’s 14. It’s terrible. The questions are so specific about the names of characters, dates and towns where the heroes went that I am unable to answer the questions. It is the model of reading in France. A kind of scientific reading, which prevents people from inventing another kind of reading, which should be a form of wandering, as in a garden.
Q: Wouldn’t your son be better off if you let him do his homework by himself?
A: He thinks he wastes his time with book reports, and I agree with him.
Q: Have you read all of Proust, on whom you once wrote a scholarly book, “Off the Subject: Proust and Digression”?
A: Proust is very difficult to read. His sentences are long and have very strange constructions, so it is not very possible to read it from the first line to the last line. You are obliged to use another way of reading.
Q: Are you saying you skimmed Proust?
A: Yes, of course I did! I prefer to say that I live with Proust. He’s a companion. Sometimes I go to Proust and I seek advice for my life. I open it and I skim some pages. That is to live with books. It’s important to live with books.
Q: But if you’re a habitual skimmer, why should we trust the conclusions you draw about literature?
A: Because now, after hearing my arguments, you are convinced of my position.
Q: Not completely convinced.
A: Then you have to read my book once more, from the first line to the last line, the French method of reading.
.
and hell, i'll just post it:
Questions for Pierre Bayard
"My Reader, My Double"
Interview by DEBORAH SOLOMON
Published: New York Times: October 28, 2007
Q: As a professor of French literature at the University of Paris, you’re offering rather subversive advice in your 12th book, “How to Talk About Books You Haven’t Read,” which is about to be published in this country. Do you think it will fare as well here as it has done in Europe?
A; I have no idea. It was a best seller in France. People bought it without reading it — they followed my advice. It was a best seller in Germany, too, because there are many nonreaders in Germany, and they want to see their rights defended.
Q: Naturally, I read your book in preparation for this interview. Do you think I made a mistake in doing so? What do you mean when you say, “I read it”?
A: One of the purposes of my book is to show that it is not so easy to say that you have read a book.
Q: What’s wrong with the traditional method of starting a book on the first page and reading through to the end?
A: It’s important to know how to read from the first line to the last line, but there are also other ways of reading. You can skim books, you can just have heard about them, you can have read them and forgotten them.
Q: You write in your book about Montaigne, who confessed to having a poor memory and to forgetting about books he himself had written. Which leads you to ask: If we read a book and forget that we read it, is that the same as never having read it?
A: I think between reading and nonreading there is an indeterminate space that is quite important, a space where you have books you have skimmed, books you have heard about and books you have forgotten. You don’t have to feel guilty about it.
Q: But what about those of us who read to feel things — to experience pleasure, an end to loneliness?
A: Of course I read in order to feel something. And to feel an end to my loneliness, of course, just as you.
Q: Then why are you so willing to devalue the experience of close reading in favor of skimming? You seem to believe that knowing a little bit about 100 literary classics is preferable to knowing one book intimately.
A: I think a great reader is able to read from the first line to the last line; if you want to do that with some books, it’s necessary to skim other books. If you want to fall in love with someone, it’s necessary to meet many people. You see what I mean?
Q: You suggest in your book that schools destroy a love of literature, in part because they don’t allow skimming.
A: Yes. Sometimes I help my son write book reports. Guillaume — he’s 14. It’s terrible. The questions are so specific about the names of characters, dates and towns where the heroes went that I am unable to answer the questions. It is the model of reading in France. A kind of scientific reading, which prevents people from inventing another kind of reading, which should be a form of wandering, as in a garden.
Q: Wouldn’t your son be better off if you let him do his homework by himself?
A: He thinks he wastes his time with book reports, and I agree with him.
Q: Have you read all of Proust, on whom you once wrote a scholarly book, “Off the Subject: Proust and Digression”?
A: Proust is very difficult to read. His sentences are long and have very strange constructions, so it is not very possible to read it from the first line to the last line. You are obliged to use another way of reading.
Q: Are you saying you skimmed Proust?
A: Yes, of course I did! I prefer to say that I live with Proust. He’s a companion. Sometimes I go to Proust and I seek advice for my life. I open it and I skim some pages. That is to live with books. It’s important to live with books.
Q: But if you’re a habitual skimmer, why should we trust the conclusions you draw about literature?
A: Because now, after hearing my arguments, you are convinced of my position.
Q: Not completely convinced.
A: Then you have to read my book once more, from the first line to the last line, the French method of reading.
.
Monday, October 22, 2007
i sit at a littered table for hours at a time, flipping through some random book and not really reading it.
then i decide that the music is too loud, so i turn it down.
and that's the evening.
.
i sit on the steps of a church and talk on the phone. a woman with a baby in a stroller comes over and stands uncomfortably close to me, not really doing anything, just standing there. i look at her. she smiles. stands there. does nothing. the baby sits there. does nothing. i sit for another minute to see if they want to talk to me. but the woman doesn't say anything. so with an apologetic look i get up and walk very slowly away. they continue to stand there as i walk away. the baby watches me leave silently. she actually turns her head as i go.
this is what most of my interactions with other people are like.
.
at the shop, a man comes in and stands there while we all smile at him from over the counter. after a long minute, during which he's just been staring at me (waiting there with a notepad and pen in hand to take his order, and smiling benignly and, i think, invitingly) i finally ask,
-so....can i help you?
and he says,
-yes. i would like to order a SANDWICH.
in a strange, loud way.
and i say
okay,
what can i.....get you?
.
i can't get away with anything anymore.
the moon moves from one glass corner of my apartment to the other. and i see the moon and the moon sees me.
or something like that. i don't even fucking know anymore.
.
then i decide that the music is too loud, so i turn it down.
and that's the evening.
.
i sit on the steps of a church and talk on the phone. a woman with a baby in a stroller comes over and stands uncomfortably close to me, not really doing anything, just standing there. i look at her. she smiles. stands there. does nothing. the baby sits there. does nothing. i sit for another minute to see if they want to talk to me. but the woman doesn't say anything. so with an apologetic look i get up and walk very slowly away. they continue to stand there as i walk away. the baby watches me leave silently. she actually turns her head as i go.
this is what most of my interactions with other people are like.
.
at the shop, a man comes in and stands there while we all smile at him from over the counter. after a long minute, during which he's just been staring at me (waiting there with a notepad and pen in hand to take his order, and smiling benignly and, i think, invitingly) i finally ask,
-so....can i help you?
and he says,
-yes. i would like to order a SANDWICH.
in a strange, loud way.
and i say
okay,
what can i.....get you?
.
i can't get away with anything anymore.
the moon moves from one glass corner of my apartment to the other. and i see the moon and the moon sees me.
or something like that. i don't even fucking know anymore.
.
Friday, October 19, 2007
life and distance are funny things.
.
.
Wednesday, October 10, 2007
there is nothing so satisfying as the basic ability to play the piano. not with any sort of talent-- nothing beyond a basic competence--just a basic competence. with the piano. that's satisfying.
a dull mirrored surface.
watching a homeless guy and a street preacher arguing, she walks smack into a telephone pole.
-ow....motherf..
a plastic henry VIII. the habit of holding your shoulder up, strangely cocked, just like your grandfather did when he was a kid. sore and blind from bright lights.
i have been told, on many occasions, that i need to develop some kind of filter, some kind of netting, but as you can see, i've ignored that advice happily.
.
a dull mirrored surface.
watching a homeless guy and a street preacher arguing, she walks smack into a telephone pole.
-ow....motherf..
a plastic henry VIII. the habit of holding your shoulder up, strangely cocked, just like your grandfather did when he was a kid. sore and blind from bright lights.
i have been told, on many occasions, that i need to develop some kind of filter, some kind of netting, but as you can see, i've ignored that advice happily.
.
Friday, October 05, 2007
a travesty of riches.
when he says no one, he means no one.
a small, round metal box that seals far too well, that holds jewelry she can no longer in good conscience wear.
everything turns off at the same time that it all turns warm and giddy and alive. on the train, sad little towns, ugly plastic yard-toys and fifteen different graveyards fly by, and she realizes that death actually exists. there are bridges and rivers and marshes. there are men and children and birds. there are animals that spend their whole lives trying to find something to eat and someone to procreate with. and that's what's really going on, with no real nuance to it.
there's all sorts of damage possible. but it doesn't really matter. there are still pocket watches. there is still numismatics. which isn't terribly interesting to me.
but still.
we run through the warehouse because we are terrified of something.
i’m chasing you through a house deluged with flowers. i'm happy doing this. but there’s a man with just one leg blocking me on the stairs. and you get away. outside, the waves wash over the dock. the whole building will be under water in a matter of minutes. there’s some kind of statuary, some kind of garden, some kind of twinkling light. i give up on catching you. i sit at the bar alone and get a drink. i think that we are in some kind of limbo, and we are.
there are birds on the roof of a car dealership that sing quietly to themselves, aware that everything was made entirely for them.
there's all of that, and there's being young at this very moment.
and. well. how fucking funny.
.
when he says no one, he means no one.
a small, round metal box that seals far too well, that holds jewelry she can no longer in good conscience wear.
everything turns off at the same time that it all turns warm and giddy and alive. on the train, sad little towns, ugly plastic yard-toys and fifteen different graveyards fly by, and she realizes that death actually exists. there are bridges and rivers and marshes. there are men and children and birds. there are animals that spend their whole lives trying to find something to eat and someone to procreate with. and that's what's really going on, with no real nuance to it.
there's all sorts of damage possible. but it doesn't really matter. there are still pocket watches. there is still numismatics. which isn't terribly interesting to me.
but still.
we run through the warehouse because we are terrified of something.
i’m chasing you through a house deluged with flowers. i'm happy doing this. but there’s a man with just one leg blocking me on the stairs. and you get away. outside, the waves wash over the dock. the whole building will be under water in a matter of minutes. there’s some kind of statuary, some kind of garden, some kind of twinkling light. i give up on catching you. i sit at the bar alone and get a drink. i think that we are in some kind of limbo, and we are.
there are birds on the roof of a car dealership that sing quietly to themselves, aware that everything was made entirely for them.
there's all of that, and there's being young at this very moment.
and. well. how fucking funny.
.
Thursday, October 04, 2007
and everything goes south. but it's warm there, and covered in kudzu and rusting cars and huge lovely houses, so it's really not the end of the world. or maybe it is, i don't know. maybe it is the end of the world and we can just wear t-shirts and sandals and go crabbing. right at the end of the world.
there is: the sweet-sounding but incredibly vulgar song that winds up saving your life.
there is: the best way to tear down a barn: cut a 12" hole in the roof and wait.
i spill an entire metal bucket of iced coffee down the front of my shirt. i work for another six hours with this huge wet splotch that just won't dry. i soak the shirt in my sink later. watch the coffee drift off of it into the water like some boring kind of blood. the plug in my sink (which i apparently had never closed before) seals shut, is stuck in that position. i use the handle of a teaspoon to keep it propped open from then on. i stare at the spoon every time i brush my teeth.
she steals his middle name, does terrible things to it, paints it ugly colors, sews feathers and buttons on it, and then hides it in her closet. she feels bad about it, but it's beyond help and she can't bring herself to throw it out.
he says,
-he looks like bonnie prince billy, doesn't he?
and i say,
-yeah, jesus, i was just thinking that. it's not him, though.
-no, it's not him.
and then i leave.
.
there is: the sweet-sounding but incredibly vulgar song that winds up saving your life.
there is: the best way to tear down a barn: cut a 12" hole in the roof and wait.
i spill an entire metal bucket of iced coffee down the front of my shirt. i work for another six hours with this huge wet splotch that just won't dry. i soak the shirt in my sink later. watch the coffee drift off of it into the water like some boring kind of blood. the plug in my sink (which i apparently had never closed before) seals shut, is stuck in that position. i use the handle of a teaspoon to keep it propped open from then on. i stare at the spoon every time i brush my teeth.
she steals his middle name, does terrible things to it, paints it ugly colors, sews feathers and buttons on it, and then hides it in her closet. she feels bad about it, but it's beyond help and she can't bring herself to throw it out.
he says,
-he looks like bonnie prince billy, doesn't he?
and i say,
-yeah, jesus, i was just thinking that. it's not him, though.
-no, it's not him.
and then i leave.
.
Wednesday, October 03, 2007
he seems crazed at the kitchen table- exhausted, unshaven, gesturing oddly. the walk was cold, and he is somehow still emanating chilled air. i watch him talk. everything he says is pleasantly fanged and confusing.but how can something be "pleasantly fanged"?
in the night, it comes back around and bites me on the shoulder.
-when you don't have them they hate you because you won't; and when you do then they hate you again, for some other reason.
some homeopathic recipe for disaster. grocery store employees. a birthday party mass.
-eyes that had been drowned in fathomless disillusion... he seemed so old... endlessly old, built up of layers of disillusion, going down in him generation after generation, like geological strata; and at the same time he was forlorn like a child.
and worried like a woman. but i can forgive you for being so precious.
.
i see a portly, shirtless gardener cooling himself off with his leafblower, which he has propped up on the truckbed.
.
in a room with countless small children whose faces resemble those of their fathers (so that said fathers don't eat said children) the animal waits for relief.
"i never", he says, "have any time for myself anymore."
.
she swung a loaf of bread out the window on a rope. the kids below laughed at her and said, throwing gravel up into her face,
-your bread is always stale and crumbling. and we don't want your damn lilies, either.
.
yeah... i know.
.
Wednesday, September 26, 2007
-go gold and come back when you're done.
.
.
Sunday, September 02, 2007
he brushes something from the back of his left hand with the fingers of his right hand and the night’s over..
she brought me up to the treehouse and showed me the mouse her cat had caught. it was tiny, quivering, sad.
-i’ve been feeding it peanut butter,
she said.
i don’t remember what happened to it after that. but i can’t imagine it was very good.
.
we had the ice queen locked in my bucket. we left her in the woods by the birch tree where we dumped the old soaked firewood and dog shit. we assumed she had died but also assumed she’d be back the next winter.
it was a cliffhanger.
i don’t think she ever came back, but
watch your back.
we are too familiar, i dream of the ends of your fingers cut off, of imprisonment, of some faint, strange sound in the night by the ocean.
once i dreamed of fish heads lining the woods.
that was an awful dream.
i see an american bittern from the train. he wades through the marsh as we pass. clacking.
so. i have an odd feeling about this.
this weekend i was convinced i was going to drown. there was so much water. tides and boats and buoys and drinking. hot fucking sun. dogs. people i didn’t know. disappearances.
it was a little terrible. but interesting.
i hadn’t been in the ocean since i was about fifteen. when my brother called and said he and neely were heading up that night and that i should be ready to go to gloucester at midnight i ran out and bought a swimsuit in a bag and a black dress to wear over it. did the 19th century thing and swam in a dress.
of all things.
cold, cold water.
.
he makes a great collection entirely based on theft.
a whole new system of classification, one built on purpose, rather than genetics. what the hell did shakespeare have to do with his father? so what does the stork have to do with the falcon? it’s what they do that’s interesting, not where they came from.
right?
.
wakes up naked, thoroughly naked.
my god.
the dogs run against the mistaken safety of the cliff. wishing they could fall in love the way they did when they were young.
the basic, moaning suggestion of a world. nothing more.
sunburnt, made of string and thick cloth, stuffed with horsehair.
someone’s overly quiet mother.
-are you going to say anything, ever?
he says in a baseball cap.
and no. i’m just going to quietly get old. get quietly old. all of a sudden. because i can’t. the way i could when i was nineteen.
a wine with a stupid, simple, floppy taste.
in the night, she wanders to the sink, opens the cabinet, pulls out the scissors, and sleepily cuts off all her hair.
he stands under powerlines in the morning, under a pair of shoes that are dangling by their laces.
after seven tries, he knocks them down with one of his own shoes. they fall to the ground. he tries them on. they don’t fit.
.
tell me it’s possible to better myself, then order oysters. order some scotch. ruin oysters for me, ruin scotch for me, ruin sleep for me permanently.
let me lie down the way i used to. dream for hours in the morning of the garden and of absence.
force me to take the shells home, even though i’d rather not carry them. say, “this is a nice one” and put it in my pocket without meeting my eyes.
.
-what’s it like to not want anything?
-terrible.
-what’s it like to be drunk?
-how drunk?
-really sauced.
-oh….it’s….wonderful. you feel important.
.
Monday, August 27, 2007
a very crowded place..
i say,
-i haven't gotten hysterical lately, at least.
and he pauses. says,
-but...
-what?
-don't lose sight of that.
-of what?
-don't lose sight of the....hysterics.
god forbid i lose sight of my hysterics.
.
i wonder how they can live with these narrow stairs. every time i go up or down them i imagine that they won’t be able to hold my weight—that the entire thing will come crashing down under me.
in the rain, a woman in a yellow plastic bag walks two dogs in jackets into her house.
smashing the doldrums.
horses.
stairs.
something pulling down.
some tin model.
that’s not what you want.
even when they're gone and the bedroom is available i still sleep downstairs, where i was meant to sleep. on the stage.
i was meant to sleep on the stage
.
i sink down before the end of it.
i can't breathe, i can't talk. i'm in deep, cold ocean water. all i can see or smell or taste is salt and black.
when i jump into the water, everything-- breath, voice, basic sense of self-- gets knocked out of me. it's incredibly cold. the others are out ahead of me. i'm the last of eleven to jump off the boat, and i sink five feet before forcing my way back up to the surface, sputtering. i don't open my eyes while i'm under, but i can still see dark green blue and hear this bizarre, terrified rushing. i'm under for what feels like a minute. freezing. wet. the others disappear, the boat disappears, i'm in the water. rushing 650 feet deep. i force myself back up, gasping, eyes stinging, lungs burning. and try to breathe, try to call for someone to wait for me. but they're all out ahead of me, clinging to the giant red metal buoy. some of them are similarly baffled-looking.
and this is how things happen.
we're an hour away from land, and they're swimming. they swim or float slowly, freezing. after dangling from the buoy for a few minutes i swim back to the boat and clamber back up. i can't handle it. i can feel how far down it goes beneath us. and i can't handle it. i can barely watch films of submarines without covering my eyes, so how am i supposed to be in the ocean that far out for that long without losing my mind. i watch the others as they swim slowly slowly toward the shore. from the boat, i keep track of all of them. there are five brown heads, two blonde heads, three black. they all start to look the same after awhile. i can't tell my brother from the others. and as we get closer to the lobster traps, it's hard to tell what's object and what's human.
.
i can't actually keep from laughing.
i am slightly autistic.
who needs a drink. birds look at us sideways. i am
constantly losing other people's dogs and children
dunes, i'm burned all to hell and wondering
how any of it actually happens
.
Monday, August 06, 2007
maybe “superstitious” is the word for it.or “kestrel.” or “holy.”
or maybe the phrase “repeating arms” would cover it.
i don’t know.
what i do know is that i get nowhere in the rain.
there’s nothing like a healthy fascination with the normal life.
i spent all that money on a broken birdcage. all that money on a dead racehorse. on shoes for children. on a whistle, a bit of string.
and really. why?
i’m standing on the sidewalk, waiting for the light to change. and i hear a loud squalling pass,
-aaaaaaaAAAAAAAAaaaaa.
doppler.
fantastic.
.
Friday, July 27, 2007
kill you with a look.-ju-das.
-what?
-i just said “judas.” it doesn’t mean anything.
holding onto a pole in the train i think of all those unbearable pauses and emphases.
holding onto this cat of a thing. this thing of a cat.
(that doesn’t mean anything.)
but i find myself strangely glad i’ve sort of left the world.
i sleepwalk occasionally now, since moving. i never did before. i do now. i wake up in front of the door at night, clutching the cold doorknob.
.
i hear some kids by the harbor:
-are you going to have a quinceañera?
a stout, downright-fat-if-we’re-going-to-be-honest-about-it girl asks a skinny one.
the skinny one nods. a boy near them leaps over the railing clumsily on his side. the stout girl asks him,
-are YOU? stupid. you stupid.
and i like the way she says “stupid.” there’s something oddly wholesome about it.
i see a pregnant woman, the type of hugely pregnant woman the rather disgusting phrase “heavy with child” was invented for on the subway with a cigarette tucked behind her ear.
so.
ju-das.
i see a dozen jellyfish in the harbor, clustered around a giant white plastic bag, mumbling to themselves.
.
i fall down my steps. i miss the last step, crumple into the wet lawn. it is early evening. i am not drunk. my phone goes sailing and splits in two.
later, i burn all hell out of my finger. it will scar, i can tell. i jam that same finger into the T ticket slot shortly afterwards. which is next to impossible to do, with the slot looking something like this: _____________________
so. i can hurt myself on just about anything. just watch.
.
weirdly feverish, i read about sideshow giants later that night:
“And notice the size of the hands—watch the hand please—and the size of the ring I have here, so large you can pass a silver half a dollar right through the center of the ring
Watch this, a silver half a dollar right through the giant lucky ring, believe it or not
Right through the center of the ring
Now each of these rings have my name and occupation engraved on them, and I’m going to pass them out now for souvenirs, and this is how I do it
I have here a little booklet, tells you all about our married life, has the life story, photographs of both of us and ten questions and answers pertaining to our married life and
Now all you care to know about us two is in this booklet
Now we sell the booklet for ten cents and for each and every booklet we give away one of these giant lucky rings
Now if you care to take home an interesting souvenir of the circus, hold up your dimes and I’ll be very glad to wait on you
Ten cents is all they are.”
and i go to sleep fearless and sad.
.
Sunday, July 15, 2007
nothing to see here.i spend my first night in cambridge watching “one flew over the cuckoo’s nest" in my hotel room. i watch it once from the middle. then i watch the entire thing again during the encore presentation.
i dream that i’m trapped in a canyon. i sleepwalk to the door of my room and then wake up.
the next night i watch nature shows. an english man says, 'fire and water ravage and renew, advance and retreat. but the waters are never defeated' and i believe him.
then i change the channel.
the hotel walls and adjoining doors are so thin that i can hear the man in the room next to me brushing his teeth. actually.
so this is cambridge. at least for the time being.
i sit by the river. i watch a seven-year old girl swearing at her mother in spanish. i buy a raymond carver book i think i might already own. i walk to my new apartment, get the keys, stand around inside my new living room. i eat alone. i buy a bottle of wine from c’est bon, even though i was really convinced that that was illegal on sundays in massachusetts after six.
then i go back to the hotel and watch the godfather on tv.
so.
wait for it… wait for it…
.
i'll be back soon. really.
.
Sunday, June 03, 2007
i should be the kind of person who says-don’t open this door no matter what you hear, no matter what i tell you
and then goes into the room where the beast waits. i’d be doomed, certainly. but. it would be a valiant effort, at least. and in the cartoon version it would make the kids laugh.
so, hey.
there’s hummingbird language, there are skeleton keys, crow invasions. there are ladders and boxes. seagulls hang over the bay in double-helix formation.
there are people out there who actually carry change purses. and decorate their rooms with a western theme.
.
i can make these meetings sound epic if i try. i can say,
there was a giant white hound i couldn’t get to leave. there was a rough plank of wood i fell asleep against. there was a plane with no pilot. there was a dinner party that everyone i had ever met and everyone i would ever meet attended.
i taught them the names of the constellations. i got some of them wrong, but they didn’t know the difference.
i kissed the doorfacing hard and then left.
time is short, and then suddenly you're not there any more.
.
enkidu loses his ability to run with the animals when he first falls in love. something in his legs goes out, is loosened. he’s tamed.
-doesn’t this feel like being dead?
.
i dream that i'm the bull. i can feel my shoulders fall apart like something made of sand.
.
ask,
-so what swims with you when you’re there in the water, with your sandbar and picnic disappeared, in something so terrifyingly named, “the hay canal?”
what do you suppose is down there under you? if pelicans are diving all around you? because life in water mimics life in air exactly.
and. how very frightening.
.
the little one
i draw and draw and draw and draw
bulls, bears, a dog, a man in a hat, a christmas tree.
you carry the scraps but i’m still ruined at night
taking photographs of my feet
because we all know there’s a level of grace missing.
the sort of grace that makes owen able to cook grandma’s crab bisque with nothing but a bowl, two forks, and a salt shaker. i don’t think he even had any crab on hand.
miracle.
.
there is:
the fact that boats exist.
the fact that i laugh uncontrollably when taken onto a beach.
there’s that.
.
he’s a bit of a joke, telling me, “you don’t have to do it quite like that,” and then suddenly pulling me across the wooden floor roman holiday style
unappealing, in a brusque way, less than romantic, less than heroic, by the arm, rough
but i suddenly find myself across the room. and i stare in amazement at the distance i just crossed without actually walking.
i'm the tyrant who was given a gracious reprieve from adulthood.
there is no sense of proportion, ever.
i ask,
are you alright, in the night, and he says, yes, i was just having trouble with the door.
.
Wednesday, May 30, 2007
this is how things get lost. we can't take anything as a compliment because we're being paid these compliments by a maneating tiger. his orange and black stripes quiver in a strange reptilian way, so what are we to assume? we're ruined.you string a necklace of silver-black fish around my neck. you bring me water, an empty matchbook, a bowl of lemons, a broken cage, a jar of tacks, a box of pigment, a watch, a dead mouse. but what i want most in the world is a glass doorknob.
but then you just run off.
and i can't help wondering what the hell that was all about.
.
Thursday, May 24, 2007
outside the bookshop, you're a soaked black and tan dog tethered to a parking meter. in these situations, there's always the possibility of a bite to the ankle (or, in the case of a very tall dog, the shoulder) but this time you have resigned, somewhat sad eyes, and i know for certain that nothing bad can possibly happen.-you have such a strange impulse towards theft,
the dog says.
.
the enormous bush outside my window used to be a weed- a feral plant- a volunteer. all of the plants in my yard- bushes, flowers, trees- started out this way. none of them were planted intentionally. and now they're all huge. that bush has grown far above my head. this year it started flowering. little white flowers, white confetti, white piles of ash.
.
we're in the car, and i see a coyote by the side of the road. my mom and brother haven't seen him. but my mom asks,
-was he loping?
and i say
-no, he was just kind of walking.
.
Monday, May 07, 2007
we rob the tower of its bells (it's all we can do) but then we feel awful the next day, not hearing that deep chiming from across the field. we can't find a place in the house to hang them. wracked with guilt, we leave the bells by the church doorway at two in the morning, but they can't raise the money to re-hang them.so fuckall, we'll just chime our small selves instead.
.
practical:
i am a day away from finishing college, and like i've already told many, i keep having this shivery feeling in my back like something's about to come up and eat me. i'm moving away. and i may need the assistance of several planes and ocean liners in order to do so.
we'll see.
.
what do you suppose we're actually aware of?
we see old people walking, hunched, on the sidewalks and feel a sweet, swaying sadness.
we want children but know that we wouldn't really know what to do with them. i'd worry about them nearly getting hit by cars, collecting metal objects and halloween costume detritus too close to the road.
life passes faster with a quick heartbeat. just think of mice and birds (700 bpm) as compared to elephants (30 bpm) for godsake.
think about it.
think about it..
.
Monday, April 30, 2007
not for solitude, not for romancewhen i wake up, i think it's snowing out. it isn't. but white things are falling from the trees outside, so what's the difference? it's 84 degrees fahrenheit. so i waltz outside and watch a dog alone in a car barking, barking, barking at absolutely nothing. he seems lonely and sheepdoggish.
we come out of the old building with our clothes smelling of naphthalene and formaldehyde, our throats sore and confused, but good god, that's just part of it-
we saw the hoatzin and the maned wolf, for god's sake.
i dream of an hour given, with some familiar but lost face, some familiar but lost coat. i'm finishing fifth grade again, and an extra hour is given to me by my family as a gift. in the park, or in my house, i tell the story of the action figure's legs i found when out on a long walk. i found the first one outside tra ling's-- just one leg separated from the little plastic body, about three inches long, in fatigues, with a tiny plastic black knife painted on the thigh. i found the second one three blocks later-- the other leg, with a painted-on gun.
i laughed, then headed home and placed them gently on my junk shelf, which consists of--
far too many things to list.
if you think about it, it's too dirty.
.
Friday, April 20, 2007
whatever we found, we found well enough.so i'm an untethered houseboat and you're both a ship and a pirate? how can you be something and someone at the same time? are you unhappy as a boat? as a person? i thought waves were supposed to be lulling. so relax.
the ocean would just swallow me up if i went out to sea. a toy houseboat. sails too tiny to catch any wind. i'd just dip and sink once, and it would be all over.
so enough with vessels. we should be some kind of animal, then, that swims and walks and climbs, sometimes all at once. i could easily spend the rest of my days swimming, walking, and climbing. easily.
.
Monday, April 09, 2007
-and you know that i've been so good. except for drinking. but he knew that i would.even so.
(this is a level of discipline i’m not interested in.)
some kind of duke. gold strings. a duke. the saint of bicyclists and knife-makers. (the old kind of bicyclist, the chain-smoking kind who carried aperitif glasses with them as they wheeled (huge wheels) through trees, over hills, over cobblestones. over trees, through hills, under cobblestones.
and the same kind of knife-maker. inexplicably wheeled.)
who?
i’ve finally learned to hold my tongue. about nearly everything.
(do you know what you’re allowed?)
made of blue and red paper, cut into shreds so that design is an easier task.
(you’re allowed anything. nearly anything.)
steam, gears.
a light ringing bell and reading for the blind.
and who might you be?
.
Wednesday, March 28, 2007
-how is that close to "albatross"?i am nothing if not haunched. listing (patience, kids):
a tire weight, a soldier, a cow. tapping biological motions. the truly immoral thing.
the worst thing, the truly immoral thing about a new novel is the thinness of the pages one has already read.
what transpires passes for SOMETHING. we fall asleep intertwined with tree branches. you leave me crowded but alone, nothing but a voice and possibly hands (though the hands are only rumored to exist. no one has ever actually seen them). a colossus molosser. a medal held together with rubber bands. a candy rotary phone. a pirate making balloon animals. the dark smell of ink.
we're the splendid other people.
i see an old woman walking with two children. she says,
-i want to see the new tulips they planted on the mall. but you two wouldn't be interested in that.
and the boy says, quietly, not looking at her,
-i would.
flying lessons. go ahead and laugh now, but i'm not joking. you'll believe me when i come by and blitz your house.
woosh.
happy unbirthday, O.
.
Sunday, March 25, 2007
so come on by, come and slip and slide right through the groundso you were there when that egg-shaped rock blew apart and became water, horses, Plato, trees, electricity, dirt, fish, me, everything?
how the hell was it?
i wake up one morning and i'm made of cloth. it's raining, so you have to help me get around. drag me across town, soaked, heavy. i'll be fine, i'll get used to it. it's you i'm worried about.
we bring a glorious south american ant colony to the city and display them in a large plastic box in a gallery. we're displaying "organic pattern." the museum patrons gawk, shuffle through, cluster around. but one day a few weeks after arriving, the ants (little brass miracles) look tired and aimless. and then they die all at once, over the course of one night. all two million of them. in the morning we come in and they're all there-- curled, dry, dead, and sad, under clear plastic.
the museum staff bag them up and put them out by the dumpster for the sanitation department to pick up. but god knows when they'll actually do it. maybe the ants and the giant plastic box will sit out there for weeks like our christmas trees did. the ants are left to lose their charm in the alleyway. people talk about the possible causes of death. some talk about drafts in the gallery. others talk about purposelessness and plastic.
one friday when i was in high school i wandered outside the art building during class (which i was prone to doing at the time) and i found, among the cans of paint and turpentine sitting on the curb, a small jar of old honey. the jar had been sitting out for quite awhile, and as a result it was full of suspended dead ants. and i was wracked with purpose. i brought the jar in, wrapped in my coat, and went to the utility room. i got a few boxes of needles and then sat down with the jar at the windowsill. i poured out the honey, drop by drop. the suspended ants drifted onto the windowsill. i used a needle to slough away the honey smothering their limbs. with that stickiness, i could make the ants whole again-- by carving carefully, carefully between their limbs, i could make them stand, uncurled, unsad-looking. i'd gotten through eight of them when i noticed the first one moving. he moved slowly at first. he moved, through the honey that still stuck to him-- he tried his limbs, his antennae, and then, utter miracle, he walked away. i spent an hour freeing the rest of them. some walked away. others just stood perfectly still. the lost ones stayed stuck to the windowsill, dead little statues.
.
place, side by side, the same picture of the same white dog, dead and gone a century before i was born, and i'll gladly show you the new trick i've learned. because everything is connected with little colored strings back to the same circus thing.
.
Sunday, March 18, 2007
we met your savior, he's changed his behavior, now he's shooting and drinking with usyou don't need to use a knife to open a bottle of wine. if you’d asked for my help, you wouldn’t have had to pull out any sharp objects to get the job done. i am a viticultural ninja, a viticultural monk. i can open any bottle smoothly, with my mind.
just watch.
if you leave a bottle of red uncorked all night it will turn to vinegar. it will smell like this:
i hold the bottle out to you and you breathe in and say:
-i can’t tell the difference.
who was it i once watched force a cork back into an empty bottle? was it owen? it looked perfect, unopened again, and we were both delighted for a moment before saying,
-that’s really going to confuse and disappoint us later.
i light the corner of the room on fire. it stays that way, contained, smoldering all night, until i can see daylight through the wall. i open my mouth, sincerely believing that i can emit the sound of a train wreck— wailing wheels, crashing metal, whistles— but it doesn’t work, and i wind up making no sound at all.
the house gets blasted apart, the trees sway and splinter, even the ground gets blown to bits. but then you put on rite of spring, and it all slowly pulls itself back together again.
.
Monday, March 12, 2007
so, what, maybe we're made entirely of air and dust?but what am i saying "maybe"?
your handwriting degenerates when you can't think of a new name for yourself.
a shih tzu or a lhasa apso (something) about *this big* goes straight for the two-year old boy next to me, and i yell at the owner,
-for the love of god, hold the thing back hold it BACK
HOLD IT BACK.
but she won't.
.
whatever this is, it comes in the shape of a giant black poodle. and i'm left alone with this behemoth, this monstrosity.
but it's our behemoth, our monstrosity.
so. okay.
.
children’s voices come from warm climates. we tie ribbons in their buttonholes, tie bells around their ankles. we are our own walking, hot fondness. we’re the nursery, complete with bedposts, pirates, sultans, gunpowder, man-eating tigers, curtains, chandeliers.
read out loud, and let the kid finish the last line of the book:
-and now we meet quite often, those empty pants and i, and we never shake or tremble. we both smile and we say...
-...“hi.”
.
a billiard ball rolls around in the faint hollow of your chest. as a child, you were different, strange. overpetted, born with a tiny horse inside you. he does you no harm, being very small, but he does you no good, either, so you grow up to be a substitute teacher.
stare. lie on the stove with your arms splayed in an attempt to warm yourself. try to warm me by extension.
faded. you're the color of the burro after he ran away.
.
Monday, March 05, 2007
______ ____ : the most disliked creature in all the animal kingdom.where are we heading? i see that the street's curving and gray, but all i can really pay attention to is how close you keep coming to scraping the tires on the curb. i stare. you glaze, wearing blinders.
our pioneer infant shade
you sling a white sundress over your shoulder.
-do you think that will help you in the long run?
we pop the window out and climb through. we find our feet among flowers and shrubs. unexpected. where are we heading? i press a train token into your hand but you don't know what to do with it. where's the conductor, anyway? who are we supposed to pay? where's the train? you start shouting. the only people who appear are there to tell us
-please leave right now.
and the funny thing is that we WANT to leave right now. that's what we (you) were shouting about.
in the end, it's our rough fatigue that gets the best of us.
.
completely night-blind. it's amazing to me that i can still walk around after the sun has set, since i have no idea what's going on around me in the dark. but for some reason, my heart doesn't even skip a beat.
.
Sunday, February 25, 2007
my dad tells a story about coming home from class one day and finding his roommate sitting at his desk, staring into space. my dad asked him, -what's up? you look pensive.
and his roommate replied,
-oh, no, i'm not, i'm just thinking.
you could say, at the moment, that i am pensive. oh ho ho, you'd better believe that i am pensive.
confound again and again
i'll turn away towards the wall and examine the stucco. i'll count the ice cubes in my glass. i'll get into a fist fight with a liquor store, and i will lose. i am definitely pensive. at the moment.
draw a picket fence across my shoulder blades in black ink and i'll never wash it off.
my commands are real, so take them seriously. deny me and be doomed.
in the end, this is all held together with fishing line and spit, so what am i to expect?
-how does anybody fill their days? i think the truth is you fill your days most of the time by being in the washing machine of your own mind, thinking, what's this? when does it stop? am i enjoying it? i don't know, oh, it's time to go to sleep. i can't, i'm worried. and then you wake up and you smear jam over your family's face and your own. obviously at times life is very enjoyable.
count sheep, count birds, count lions, tigers, anything, but in the end, come find me in a room lit with one dim light bulb
and try to be nice about it.
.
Saturday, February 24, 2007
is the most distinctive vodka in the worldgive me a snarling drumroll, like stiff paper being ripped with a knife, and we'll be just fine.
your eyes well up. everyone stares. you make it worse by being angry that it's happening, that you can't stop it from happening. you slap your eyes to try to make it stop. it doesn't stop. it won't stop. your face is betraying you.
this is different from the work you want to be doing, from the colors you want to be projecting on the walls.
(and by "you" i of course mean "me.")
so instead of all that, let's have a cure. bring me a thin steak in a dark room. bring me an unnamed reddish-black drink that might just leave me poisoned. eat a balloon. serve me a juggernaut on a platter, with a sprig of parsley as garnish. feel a hot, heavy sway, get flushed, screw seventy-five light bulbs into the wall and light them. bathe in the ocean, using the rough fish to smooth your elbows and heels.
what else is there.
i find myself in the company of a thief and an arsonist. the arsonist is entirely composed of the thick dust collecting in the corners of my room. he plays with a broken pocket knife as he speaks.
he tells me the secret name his mother gave him at birth, and before the word has fully left his lips, i hear an electric snap, and he vanishes into thin air.
.
Friday, February 23, 2007
they pat the horse hitched to the cart, then head in and get a drink
i look at the sky for the first time in days, and it's blue,
then black
i will only confide in russian men from now on.
flat-foot stomp across the yard, fall through a foot of snow, break the door, then throw the latch.
some kind of exquisite, exhausted aloneness, always locking the horse after the barn was stolen.
.
i look at the sky for the first time in days, and it's blue,
then black
i will only confide in russian men from now on.
flat-foot stomp across the yard, fall through a foot of snow, break the door, then throw the latch.
some kind of exquisite, exhausted aloneness, always locking the horse after the barn was stolen.
.
Sunday, February 18, 2007
"I wondered then, and always wonder, about the fact that, no matter how hard one may try to live without the intolerable burden of society, the unwelcome recognition of a face, perfect solitude is always shown to be temporary, a phantasm, a dream. I envy the lonely. Loneliness, which is to say neediness, drives others away and keeps them at bay; the great irony is that the more those of us who desire only autonomy try to escape, the more we are pursued, whereas those who most long for companionship are most denied it, as if that pull of longing creates a force field around them that repels those they most want to attract. By those same laws of psychological physics, the attempt to escape creates an undertow in the social surf that pulls people along with you as you flee. True escape seems impossible for people who crave it like a drug. It seems that there can be no pure life, no essential aloneness." (kate christensen, "the epicure's lament")you can never get away, kiddo.
-you got ignition this is diction yeah you know it's gonna be fire
our awkward familiarity is made out of paper cutouts (a bear, a girl, a vase), string, the broken barrel of a gun, and the escape wheel of a watch.
gold and pearl
an aviator with violent practice, dead birds and giant caterpillars, a roped bronco, an unfinished sentence
i don't know what that means
but you've grown roots through the bottoms of your shoes
and i don't want to leave. keep all this in a poorly sealed box.
-hey, the place looks great.
.
Friday, February 16, 2007
it starts with a little strum, then it falls asleep, gathers dust-he could get anyone to do anything he wanted, but he didn't know what he wanted.
the boys smoke cigars on a frayed bed. they're next to an old taxidermied racehorse on a shoddy wooden platform. they hide in the curtains when the father comes home. he pats the horse fondly, maybe even kisses it firmly on the muzzle (but the boys can't see this, as they are still in the curtains, cigars smoldering. how does the father not smell them?). he takes money from the flower vase, where he's hidden it. the boys take money from the flower vase, where they've hidden it. the mother does as well. it's an open hiding place.
there's the man upstairs.
(he won't turn off his house music, and i listen to it boom (uhn-chik, uhn-chik, uhn-chik) until five in the morning.)
i watch a red drop drift down the bottle. i let it pool, miniaturized, on the table
i sing along with this song, overloud, even though i don't know the words.
could we hire an orchestra, a mariachi band
oh, it breaks my heart, kids.
.
i'm motherly in an archetypal way. meaning i might just bake you into a pie after i tuck you into bed.
i hope that doesn't scare you off.
.
Thursday, February 15, 2007
have you looked at that shelf much?is something burning?
he looked up. he did not see her. he looked down. he did not see her.
why, ALL OF A SUDDEN
dot dot dot
suddenly, suddenly, suddenly.
a black tirade, an opera singer, a cosmonaut, a knife stuck in the table, a grease fire, a royal portrait, a name like water.
i can let my eyelids drop just a little when told something i don't quite understand, and say,
-i don't know what that means.
is there shame in that...dot dot dot....
lonely hands age faster than the rest of the body-- crooked fingers, the last two jutting away from the rest, wanting to escape the hand. a mendelian trait, similar to the ability to curl your tongue,
like this. (curls tongue)
try it.
lie on the couch with your hands thrown away over your head. listen, and while you're lying there, buzzing quietly, you'll hear an epic car crash right outside your house. on a one-lane street. with very few cars on it.
it all slowly starves. if i'm clinging to childhood, it's only because i'm biding my time before i climb into the lion cage. and you have to be very small to slip through those bars.
ok, mockingbird?
.
Monday, February 12, 2007
-COME TO ME ON THE HILL! COME TO ME ON THE HILL!come to me on the hill
an umlaut's not supposed to go over an "e." her father was just ashamed of being irish, and decided to class up his name with a german symbol.
-then i thought of just picking any name, and throwing "captain" in front of it to jack it up a bit.
give me something
great daring and love of language
oh, you flatter me. please. continue.
you absent-mindedly bite right through the doorfacing. you purposely don't laugh at something i've said. there is a hot, heavy silence, an imaginary sidelong glance that only goes as high as the base of my neck. but because i want you to make things difficult for me, i find this utterly charming.
utterly, dear boy.
i order a ketel one and tonic (should i stop writing about liquor? probably.) and the girl tells me,
-oh, but we have a two-dollar special on well vodka.
-alright, well, crap it up, then.
in the company of a green-bound library book, i am hopelessly lost. work, papers, papers, papers
i only have one paper to write, actually, but i really don't want to do it.
i have only spoken to two people today, and one of them was on the phone. the other was selling me food. i have hoarsed my throat for only about 20 sentences altogether for the past eight hours.
i can't decide if i want a drink or not.
but i've just made a mix i titled: "men who like the sound of their own voices"
and that's just what it contains.
i'm left to fairy-stories. i want someone to get off a ship (air or water) and come find me, bearing.....what.....what would he be bearing......
something. bearing. the same invisible thing i imagined falling out of the sky and clattering down through the tree branches in the garden. it would get up, dust itself off.
i'd like a little dirigible. i'd like to swim in a river. go to a bullfight. i'd like to not slam into the wall when i'm aiming for the door.
let's try for that.
.
Sunday, February 11, 2007
tell me everything you know about the hydrai should not be so willing. the funny thing is that in reality, i am not that willing.
(take that! you!)
do you know what you're supposed to do with eggshells after you crack them? you're supposed to break them up into tiny pieces. do you know why? because if you leave them whole witches will use them as boats. and we want to thwart witches at every turn.
i always break up eggshells.
actually.
i saw them stars go off.
i have a menagerie of stamps on my hand. i'm a zoo. a roaring, barking, lowing ink zoo.
he asks something sarcastically, and i answer him sincerely. i'm a little slow on the uptake sometimes. i don't think this shows a lack of intelligence, necessarily. i think it just means i'm not paying enough attention. to anything. ever.
-show me some birds, morning. show me some birds.
show me a short glass filled with spent birthday candles. red, green, blue, yellow. show me an empty riesling bottle i've kept for five years without realizing it had sentimental value. show me lou reed and patti smith in the cabinet above my stove. show me a good death. kill me a good death.
i lent a leonard michaels book to someone a few years ago and have yet to get it back. but in that book he writes:
-i want her to kill a good death.
and when i first read it, i tipped the book away for a moment, looked at the ceiling and thought
-oh my god. SO DO I.
that doesn't mean i understand what it means, though.
.
Saturday, February 10, 2007
-my answer to the party line- up in and go get herfrom the age of eight i drew men with curved backs, horns, fur
and they've come along now, i've conjured them.
shout silently
-does nothing move you??
(and i'll answer, nothing moves me. but if i stand under a tall tree, or a tall building, or, god forbid, a tall metal ship, i will shiver uncontrollably. this is what remains of my childhood brushes with the sublime. i still have that. that fear of LOOMING.)
looming,
hand me my third cup of coffee over the counter and i'll get them to put more gin in your drink.
i will preface this by saying,
-i don't mean to be a brat. but this is all tonic.
the bartender swirls the bottle of rotgut into your short glass (in front of me. he's trying to make a point) and then the drink is all gin.
i've spent money on the jukebox but i can barely hear it.
i can tap the table with two fingers and think of the word "valence" but not say anything about it, because what would i say?
-i'm thinking of the word "valence."
-cool.
valence. vandal.
max tells me about a girl he met named "tirani"
-"tyranny"? her name is "tyranny"??
-yeah, but i think it's spelled differently.
-oh my god, that's fantastic. i should name a kid tyrant.
-yeah, but then people would just call him ty.
-oh, that's true. that's not nearly as good.
maybe "mussolini"? "stalin"? but that probably wouldn't go over well.
-stalin excels at finger-painting, but he has difficulty playing with the other children.
but i'd like to haul that off to the waldorf school. in there with "sierra" and "sky" and "kaly" and "hope"
little stalin.
barbaric.
i will firebomb the world with the names of my non-existent children.
.
Thursday, February 08, 2007
show me a silk victory. take that awful line from around your jaw and you'd be perfect. that awful line. but i'm not one to talk about being less than charming. i'm down at the creek feeding the ducks
-there are 32 of them, exactly.
-not half-a-duck to be seen?
and my cuffs are soaked to the knees with mud and salt. even still, i probably won't wash these pants for a good three more days. i'll walk around as if starched. in mud. and salt. less than charming.
but i'm not worried.
.
i do not want to go to dinner with four girls i don't know. i have no use for girls.
-clown college? you can't eat that.
.
the civil war poster on my wall has a typo. it reads:
"BATTLE OF KENESAW MOUNTIAN"
and....mountian? really?
i had this poster up for two years before noticing the date on it: June 27, 1864.
which is my birthday. not 1864. 1984. but still, june 27th. what are the odds.
send flowers, please. not for me, but for the battle of kenesaw m-o-u-n-t-i-a-n.
.
some rutting behemoth.
i could shout him down.
.
i remember the animals made of beach clay that were sitting on a giant black rock on the beach in massachusetts where i almost drowned. owen swam out and pulled me out of the water. i was nine or ten. the sandbar disappeared from under me, just dropped away, and i was suddenly out of my depth, way out from shore and being pulled out further and further. i couldn't for the life of me get back in.
the animals on the rock were unrecognizable-- even looking at them up-close, you couldn't say with certainty, "there's a horse...there's a dog...there's a bear..."
they were just animal-- four legs, a tail, two archaic ears. i imagined them watching me drift out to sea with miniature looks of fear on their faces. we didn't see who'd made them. there must have been about fifty up there, nestled in the nooks and crannies of the black rock. i watched the black rock get smaller and smaller as i drifted out. and then owen somehow got to me and dragged me back in.
i lay in the sand afterwards. my wrist hurt where owen had grabbed me. i probably wasn't that close to drowning. i hadn't even gone under, really. but. still. little clay animals are easily startled, and so am i.
.
Monday, February 05, 2007
-guess how i know that guy.
-he sells you food.
-right! that's...how i know most people.
the girl attempted to sip, tripped, and, flung into the blue, found that she could breathe underwater.
but this isn't the storyline you were going for, and our exquisite corpse ends ten minutes after it began. and. cue radio silence.
i can watch black flash on green. i can pay no attention to the girl behind us calling huskily, irritatingly, incessantly, until someone else points it out. and then it's all i hear. this poor, drunk girl.
she wins a leather jacket from the raffle later that night. and then i don't feel bad for her anymore.
there's an odd sense of pride-- they are laughing at everything, suddenly. i'm baffled by this, and i rub my eyes until i can't see properly.
i can enjoy anything served in the right sort of glass.
-was your question going to be about birds?
-yes. yes it was.
the hoatzin is a leaf-eating bird with hands. but i can't frame this as a true or false question, so it doesn't get said.
.
-he sells you food.
-right! that's...how i know most people.
the girl attempted to sip, tripped, and, flung into the blue, found that she could breathe underwater.
but this isn't the storyline you were going for, and our exquisite corpse ends ten minutes after it began. and. cue radio silence.
i can watch black flash on green. i can pay no attention to the girl behind us calling huskily, irritatingly, incessantly, until someone else points it out. and then it's all i hear. this poor, drunk girl.
she wins a leather jacket from the raffle later that night. and then i don't feel bad for her anymore.
there's an odd sense of pride-- they are laughing at everything, suddenly. i'm baffled by this, and i rub my eyes until i can't see properly.
i can enjoy anything served in the right sort of glass.
-was your question going to be about birds?
-yes. yes it was.
the hoatzin is a leaf-eating bird with hands. but i can't frame this as a true or false question, so it doesn't get said.
.
Thursday, February 01, 2007
the bike on the ceiling has been reduced to a uselessly sad duchamp mimic. who could ride in this snow, though?
we talk about cadence. about a professor i actually loved but didn't have the time to treat with one iota of respect. when i finally speak to her after her reading, she is leaving, coat on, scarf on, and all i can say is,
-your children are darling.
i smile at the little girl, look back at my professor, and say,
-hey, thanks for the B, by the way.
i am odd.
i actually am "the felon," and i hope she remembers that, but she probably doesn't, because she may not have imagined the felon to be so hot-faced, tilting, and girl.
all i really want to say to them is
-what i want in life is to give some kids a happy childhood and maybe write a few books.
but i don't succeed at being this succinct, and i spout off for several minutes before collapsing on the floor. grace is difficult, beyond me.
in fourth grade, i stare at a cabinet in my classroom with a piece of tape with "SCIENCE" scrawled on it in black marker until the word looks completely bizarre.
S-C-I-E-N-C-E.
i could look at you and make you unfamiliar, until i'd have to sound you out to get an ounce of meaning out of you, but i avoid it, because i am intrinsically lazy, and was never fond of crossword puzzles, word-finders, or anything else in newsprint.
.
we talk about cadence. about a professor i actually loved but didn't have the time to treat with one iota of respect. when i finally speak to her after her reading, she is leaving, coat on, scarf on, and all i can say is,
-your children are darling.
i smile at the little girl, look back at my professor, and say,
-hey, thanks for the B, by the way.
i am odd.
i actually am "the felon," and i hope she remembers that, but she probably doesn't, because she may not have imagined the felon to be so hot-faced, tilting, and girl.
all i really want to say to them is
-what i want in life is to give some kids a happy childhood and maybe write a few books.
but i don't succeed at being this succinct, and i spout off for several minutes before collapsing on the floor. grace is difficult, beyond me.
in fourth grade, i stare at a cabinet in my classroom with a piece of tape with "SCIENCE" scrawled on it in black marker until the word looks completely bizarre.
S-C-I-E-N-C-E.
i could look at you and make you unfamiliar, until i'd have to sound you out to get an ounce of meaning out of you, but i avoid it, because i am intrinsically lazy, and was never fond of crossword puzzles, word-finders, or anything else in newsprint.
.
Sunday, January 28, 2007
i live an hour north of i-don't-know-where.
i am not nearly as intelligent as you seem to think
but what was once rangoon is now yangon, the former capital of myanmar, which was once burma.
once upon a time i went only by "el," but then some sweet souls reverted back to "ellen." and i couldn't be more pleased with how that went.
god is on my side, cause i'm the childbride.
petulant, i argue for the merits of beards and frightening facial features, and against the soft, strange safeness of boyhood everyone seems to love so much. look at these actors. they put on face cream before they go to bed. they actually BATHE. boyhood, it's unthreatening nature, is unappealing to me.
he practically shouts:
-why do you hate boys??
and i don't hate boys. i want to raise boys. but when i'm writing an ode, i have to know that the kid i'm writing for or about could throw me across a wooden floor if the mood struck him.
i bite right through a billiard ball. i can't do anything without at least three people getting angry, but oddly enough, this really doesn't bother me. i fall asleep on the tulle of her wedding dress. always petulant, displeased with the three-in-the-morning food he brings me. we are poachers. we poach the continental breakfast bar, and this small sin will send us to the third circle of hell. otherwise known as phoenix, arizona.
.
i am not nearly as intelligent as you seem to think
but what was once rangoon is now yangon, the former capital of myanmar, which was once burma.
once upon a time i went only by "el," but then some sweet souls reverted back to "ellen." and i couldn't be more pleased with how that went.
god is on my side, cause i'm the childbride.
petulant, i argue for the merits of beards and frightening facial features, and against the soft, strange safeness of boyhood everyone seems to love so much. look at these actors. they put on face cream before they go to bed. they actually BATHE. boyhood, it's unthreatening nature, is unappealing to me.
he practically shouts:
-why do you hate boys??
and i don't hate boys. i want to raise boys. but when i'm writing an ode, i have to know that the kid i'm writing for or about could throw me across a wooden floor if the mood struck him.
i bite right through a billiard ball. i can't do anything without at least three people getting angry, but oddly enough, this really doesn't bother me. i fall asleep on the tulle of her wedding dress. always petulant, displeased with the three-in-the-morning food he brings me. we are poachers. we poach the continental breakfast bar, and this small sin will send us to the third circle of hell. otherwise known as phoenix, arizona.
.
Friday, January 26, 2007
you are wolfish and i'm the new blue-blood, i'm the great white hope
our crowd cheers: i i i i i i i i
the acrobats stand on their heads: ! ! ! ! ! ! !
and tumble wildly in a lovely lined formation. they shout huskily: Hey! Hey! Hey! Hey!
i feel sick, feverish, like someone kicked me in the throat with a steel-toed boot. wait, did someone kick me in the throat with a steel-toed boot? no, i would remember that.
why are you lonely and staring dazedly at a bird glider hooked up to a motor? why are you swaying in time with its wings? slowly, slowly, and always in the same place?
why does no one believe me that you are unspeakably darling? and why doesn't that help you when you're out in the world? what do you want, anyway? huh? huh?
Hey.
Hey.
Hey.
Hey.
i fill a well one rock at a time. it takes me three years to fill it to the top. and at the end of it, i'm amazed, and even a little disbelieving, that i can stand on top of it without falling in.
.
Thursday, January 25, 2007
"Laughing at me, and I'd be brutal and I'd grab your hair like this—
how beautiful, Oh—In the air."
i think i misquoted that on purpose.
..
i remember when i first really understood the concept of evolution. how i suddenly saw my parents in the faces of deer, my brother and sister in the faces of bears and birds. that's what i got from that. inelegant to some, maybe, but quite reassuring to me, being out in an animal world that so closely resembled my family.
..
-the two of us dedicating our lives to making people happy with our feet.
..
our sweet melancholy
a command: learn about colors, then come talk to me.
..
i look at a book about steeplechasing but don't wind up buying it, because the illustrations are dreadful. there are two drawings, though, with captions i read over and over again before putting the book back on the shelf. both show horses and their riders jumping over fences.
one says:
"Hitting a Fence: The Wrong Way to Cope."
and the other says:
"Hitting a Fence: The Right Way to Cope."
and i actually smile at this, in the back of that dusty closet of a bookshop. mudahin the steeplechaser. hitting a fence. the right way to cope.
..
later that day, i read a greasy menu in a lovely afterlife place in san francisco with gold-and-glass candle holders and waiters and bartenders dressed in white-and-black uniforms more appropriate for barbers or pharmacists. we are there, and my brother and i are not telling our dad where we are heading afterwards, for reasons i don't, at this young age, understand.
the menu says:
"Pacific Oyster Stew (In Milk or Half-and-Half)"
and though it doesn't appeal to me to eat this dish, i at least like reading about it. it almost sounds curative. what could it cure? the gout, maybe. and maybe the melancholy i mentioned earlier.
..
there are little square holes in the walls of the carrels at the public library, and i've often wondered: if i stuck a hand through one of them, would someone clasp it or shake it heartily? or would something just bite me and not let go?
..
the miniatures box-- i recall, as a kid, wishing that i could live in the miniatures box. so now i do. as you can see, i've broken up my life into little toy-sized pieces.
.
how beautiful, Oh—In the air."
i think i misquoted that on purpose.
..
i remember when i first really understood the concept of evolution. how i suddenly saw my parents in the faces of deer, my brother and sister in the faces of bears and birds. that's what i got from that. inelegant to some, maybe, but quite reassuring to me, being out in an animal world that so closely resembled my family.
..
-the two of us dedicating our lives to making people happy with our feet.
..
our sweet melancholy
a command: learn about colors, then come talk to me.
..
i look at a book about steeplechasing but don't wind up buying it, because the illustrations are dreadful. there are two drawings, though, with captions i read over and over again before putting the book back on the shelf. both show horses and their riders jumping over fences.
one says:
"Hitting a Fence: The Wrong Way to Cope."
and the other says:
"Hitting a Fence: The Right Way to Cope."
and i actually smile at this, in the back of that dusty closet of a bookshop. mudahin the steeplechaser. hitting a fence. the right way to cope.
..
later that day, i read a greasy menu in a lovely afterlife place in san francisco with gold-and-glass candle holders and waiters and bartenders dressed in white-and-black uniforms more appropriate for barbers or pharmacists. we are there, and my brother and i are not telling our dad where we are heading afterwards, for reasons i don't, at this young age, understand.
the menu says:
"Pacific Oyster Stew (In Milk or Half-and-Half)"
and though it doesn't appeal to me to eat this dish, i at least like reading about it. it almost sounds curative. what could it cure? the gout, maybe. and maybe the melancholy i mentioned earlier.
..
there are little square holes in the walls of the carrels at the public library, and i've often wondered: if i stuck a hand through one of them, would someone clasp it or shake it heartily? or would something just bite me and not let go?
..
the miniatures box-- i recall, as a kid, wishing that i could live in the miniatures box. so now i do. as you can see, i've broken up my life into little toy-sized pieces.
.
Wednesday, January 24, 2007
we are the anechoic mockheroic.
i am fake-engaged to the sea. this terrifies me. where on earth will we live? in a snow fort. low rent, aesthetic appeal, good acoustics. we could be happy there.
i could get flushed on my neck and chest. i could win at pictionary because you can't draw a chia pet to save your own life. i could stop talking about myself all the time.
i i i i i i i
i's lined up look like little men. and as i've said before, h's lined up look like a herd of little animals. h h h h h h
here's a man with a horse:
i h
they're talking about politics and radiohead's later albums. the horse is gesturing wildly and getting red in the face, but you can't tell that, because you're too far away.
.
i am fake-engaged to the sea. this terrifies me. where on earth will we live? in a snow fort. low rent, aesthetic appeal, good acoustics. we could be happy there.
i could get flushed on my neck and chest. i could win at pictionary because you can't draw a chia pet to save your own life. i could stop talking about myself all the time.
i i i i i i i
i's lined up look like little men. and as i've said before, h's lined up look like a herd of little animals. h h h h h h
here's a man with a horse:
i h
they're talking about politics and radiohead's later albums. the horse is gesturing wildly and getting red in the face, but you can't tell that, because you're too far away.
.
Monday, January 22, 2007
i am cannibalistic, i can sleep with no sheets and no shame, i watch a game of pool and see that everyone's manhood is on the line, even mine
i'll swing from the rafters
trust me, i cringe at the beginning of every novel, of every song, at the edge of every pillow.
chris and i are standing outside of the pub, looking into the windows of a hair salon
there's a strange curving white tube next to a chair whose purpose we can't quite figure out
-what is that for?
he says
and i say
-that's to suck the ugly out.
we laugh, because he is my expectant, and always laughs. i laugh the hysterical laugh i laugh when i have no idea what's going on.
i spend fifteen dollars on the jukebox, some of which isn't mine. usually i transition into my songs with "seven nation army" because every single person in the world likes that song, and it's good to get the crowd on your side before throwing something totally abrasive at them. everyone actually gets quiet when this song comes on. you can actually see them feeling like badasses. you can actually hear them singing along in their heads. they roll up their sleeves so you can see the little chains around their wrists.
people are unbearably darling.
i don't call my mom back, because it's late, and though i'd like to talk about the museum job in massachusetts i have all but lined up for me
i don't, because i have pool games to attend to. life will go on forever (forever- we're immortal, and won't be surprised by old age) and i have this unpleasant drink to attend to
-we're kids, right? and nothing is contrived.
i am crueller than i look, even with increasingly soft facial features, i am crueller than i look, so know that, and leave me to blasting headphones, knowing that i am cruel, but that i will always love this to near-death. and even though my hands shake uncontrollably during piano lessons, even though i am lazy in climbing, near-death might be quite close to what we, what everyone wants
.
i'll swing from the rafters
trust me, i cringe at the beginning of every novel, of every song, at the edge of every pillow.
chris and i are standing outside of the pub, looking into the windows of a hair salon
there's a strange curving white tube next to a chair whose purpose we can't quite figure out
-what is that for?
he says
and i say
-that's to suck the ugly out.
we laugh, because he is my expectant, and always laughs. i laugh the hysterical laugh i laugh when i have no idea what's going on.
i spend fifteen dollars on the jukebox, some of which isn't mine. usually i transition into my songs with "seven nation army" because every single person in the world likes that song, and it's good to get the crowd on your side before throwing something totally abrasive at them. everyone actually gets quiet when this song comes on. you can actually see them feeling like badasses. you can actually hear them singing along in their heads. they roll up their sleeves so you can see the little chains around their wrists.
people are unbearably darling.
i don't call my mom back, because it's late, and though i'd like to talk about the museum job in massachusetts i have all but lined up for me
i don't, because i have pool games to attend to. life will go on forever (forever- we're immortal, and won't be surprised by old age) and i have this unpleasant drink to attend to
-we're kids, right? and nothing is contrived.
i am crueller than i look, even with increasingly soft facial features, i am crueller than i look, so know that, and leave me to blasting headphones, knowing that i am cruel, but that i will always love this to near-death. and even though my hands shake uncontrollably during piano lessons, even though i am lazy in climbing, near-death might be quite close to what we, what everyone wants
.
Thursday, January 18, 2007
this is nothing like it was in my roomit's possible to just disappear into thin air. i evaporate and come back as rain. i wind up setting up a little studio apartment in the river. the walls and windows are made of water, the lamps are made of water, the chairs are made of water, the table is made of water, you are made of water. everything flows together. sometimes i confuse you with my record player. i don't realize my mistake until i try to turn your volume up.
-what are you doing?
i'm quite happy down there, but the zen-bullshit fishermen bother me with their catch-and-release, always throwing horribly maimed fish back into my liquid living room. we steal bread from the children trying to feed the ducks. we steal ducks from the children trying to feed the ducks. we are barbaric and free-flowing, but only in one direction.
.
Wednesday, January 17, 2007
we were attending til no one was left breathing
there's a small christmas tree in the corner of the room that it looks like you could win money from
it takes time and plenty of wine
-relax. why don't you go find some cans and bottles and peel the labels off? you like that kind of thing.
-no. it'll just frustrate me when they don't come off cleanly.
-why don't you fill the sink with warm water and soap and soak them off? do you have dish soap? you could soak them off. want to do that? huh?
-...
-huh?
-darling.
steam ten stamps off of ten envelopes, then stick them to your arms. the ink will bleed, and you will be tattooed with currency.
through the window, i watch a wren eat a giant white moth. eating living, dusty paper.
cruelty-free is more difficult than it sounds.
owen and i are looking at a joseph beuys painting with a dead, rawly stuffed hare on a stick on the top of it. "EURASIA" is written in thick chalk on the black paint. owen says,
-that's real chalk, you know.
and the hare stares sideways at us as if to say,
-i think the realness of the chalk is beside the point.
in the park i hear a little girl call to her brother from where she is perched on their father's shoulders. she says,
-lewis! we're near the carousel! do you know what a carousel is?
the boy doesn't answer. he's dragging an enormous branch out of the bushes.
she says
-it's a thing with horses on it
.
Tuesday, January 16, 2007
we got those colored lights
i'm not ashamed of helping the monster in the garden. little girls are replaceable, monsters and their giant white dogs are not.
we build an animal in the shape of a boat.
-what are you trading for piano lessons?
-the pleasure of my company.
milk, subway, baby, sleep. kings are leading the crowd, suddenly suddenly.
leiderman, my russian prof, has a tic where he says,
-suddenly suddenly
before making any kind of brilliant statement. he also invents phrases like
-under stalin, people were scared to their BONES.
and he pronounces bones "bohwns."
i love and am terrified of him. which i think is the way to be.
i see a shop awning in new york that reads:
pianopianopianopianopianopianopiano
and call information:
-new york, new york. the number for pianopianopianopianopianopianopiano, please.
please.
i'll build a house inside of you, i'll go in through the mouth.
we compromise. the non-existent boy, the boy who will never, in fact, exist, takes bacchus as his middle name. but ambrose is too precious a first name for a non-british child.
i realize that.
.
i'm not ashamed of helping the monster in the garden. little girls are replaceable, monsters and their giant white dogs are not.
we build an animal in the shape of a boat.
-what are you trading for piano lessons?
-the pleasure of my company.
milk, subway, baby, sleep. kings are leading the crowd, suddenly suddenly.
leiderman, my russian prof, has a tic where he says,
-suddenly suddenly
before making any kind of brilliant statement. he also invents phrases like
-under stalin, people were scared to their BONES.
and he pronounces bones "bohwns."
i love and am terrified of him. which i think is the way to be.
i see a shop awning in new york that reads:
pianopianopianopianopianopianopiano
and call information:
-new york, new york. the number for pianopianopianopianopianopianopiano, please.
please.
i'll build a house inside of you, i'll go in through the mouth.
we compromise. the non-existent boy, the boy who will never, in fact, exist, takes bacchus as his middle name. but ambrose is too precious a first name for a non-british child.
i realize that.
.
i'm handcuffed to the bishop and the barbershop liar
.
we're sitting in the bemelmans bar. it's post-dinner, but we're still weirdly attracted to the little silver dishes of bar food, because anything in a silver dish is appealing. there's a piano player, a saxophone player, a bassist. they're taking requests. owen writes one on a potato chip, and neely comes very close to eating it. we decide to write on a napkin instead, but they still don't play our song.
a woman tilts over to the piano (it's a very small bar) and leaaaans against it, looking pleased.
neely asks,
-what is that woman doing?
and my mom says,
-she's had too much to drink and it's her song.
generations later, this statement goes on our family crest.
.
Sunday, January 14, 2007
i’m a storybook character gone to seed. there are furrows in the ground and i’m looking over them jealously, willing things to grow. i can't get anything to happen.
but stravinsky's "rite of spring" gives me some kind of street cred, right?
we’ve been at war the entire time i’ve been in college. i watched shock and awe start with owen and patrick in a bar my freshman year. we were snowed in. it was spring break. it was the bar of the cheesecake factory, because it was the only thing open in the snowstorm. we watched the world go all to hell in a chain restaurant with a menu the size of an epic novel.
sometimes it hurts so much it feels nice.
once upon a time i had a white rabbit named django. we kept him in the yard, with thelonious, a brown-and-gray lop.
but that isn’t a story.
.
he comes in trailing a smell of burnt coffee, whiskey, and neatly folded ties. i draw horns in the air on either side of his head with a finely sharpened pencil. everyone in the room exclaims,
-oh, darling! sweetheart!
but he just glares at me angrily. i’m angry in a different way. i, at least, still laugh when the bull won’t go back in his corral after throwing his rider.
-what are grounds for divorce in this city?
-marriage.
our citrus trees get yellow-burnt by the frost. we spray them with water and then cover them with sheets to save them from the cold, which is confusing. how can that make them warmer, when they don’t give off any kind of body heat? someone explain this to me. and while we’re at it, explain to me why plants grow into different shapes at different altitudes. i don’t have time to look these things up on my own. also....will you start my orange for me?
in the summer, you can walk outside barefoot, with the black dogs trailing you the way they would a young god of hunting, and make your breakfast entirely from the yard. but now it’s winter, and the fruit trees are frozen, and we all have lonely tasks to attend to.
.
but stravinsky's "rite of spring" gives me some kind of street cred, right?
we’ve been at war the entire time i’ve been in college. i watched shock and awe start with owen and patrick in a bar my freshman year. we were snowed in. it was spring break. it was the bar of the cheesecake factory, because it was the only thing open in the snowstorm. we watched the world go all to hell in a chain restaurant with a menu the size of an epic novel.
sometimes it hurts so much it feels nice.
once upon a time i had a white rabbit named django. we kept him in the yard, with thelonious, a brown-and-gray lop.
but that isn’t a story.
.
he comes in trailing a smell of burnt coffee, whiskey, and neatly folded ties. i draw horns in the air on either side of his head with a finely sharpened pencil. everyone in the room exclaims,
-oh, darling! sweetheart!
but he just glares at me angrily. i’m angry in a different way. i, at least, still laugh when the bull won’t go back in his corral after throwing his rider.
-what are grounds for divorce in this city?
-marriage.
our citrus trees get yellow-burnt by the frost. we spray them with water and then cover them with sheets to save them from the cold, which is confusing. how can that make them warmer, when they don’t give off any kind of body heat? someone explain this to me. and while we’re at it, explain to me why plants grow into different shapes at different altitudes. i don’t have time to look these things up on my own. also....will you start my orange for me?
in the summer, you can walk outside barefoot, with the black dogs trailing you the way they would a young god of hunting, and make your breakfast entirely from the yard. but now it’s winter, and the fruit trees are frozen, and we all have lonely tasks to attend to.
.
Thursday, December 28, 2006
and at the time, the girl could write letters that would just kill you. you'd sprout branches and leaves rereading those things.
we chew on raw sugar cane, swill unidentified liquor from green bottles. i am old and tired, all of a sudden, but still fast on my feet. i flinch at the words "sound guy" (oaahhhh) and decide i want to run away so that i never have to hear them again. i am fascinated by stairs, by men's shoes, by the loneliness of crowds. but nothing interesting ever happens in bars.
really. actually. trust me.
i lean my head down close to the table, watch mouths move and don't even try to make out the words.
pained, maybe a little pleased.
-you're so....
with a snarl,
owen pounds the steering wheel rhythmically. we head up and down epic paved hills.
it's a job. it's a job.
he asks me,
-do people actually eat swan?
-no.
-what about crows?
-no. wait, yes. no. that's just an expression. but i think i read once that young crows are edible. not particularly good-tasting, but edible.
-huh.
a happily lonely morning in the snow, i'm barefoot in my house, puttering around while the speakers hiss warmly. laughing, i will sit under a piano later that day. squeezed into a practice room with two young men, i'll listen as the one at the bench swears every time he misses a key.
grab it fast.
it'll be. just like. starting over.
.
we chew on raw sugar cane, swill unidentified liquor from green bottles. i am old and tired, all of a sudden, but still fast on my feet. i flinch at the words "sound guy" (oaahhhh) and decide i want to run away so that i never have to hear them again. i am fascinated by stairs, by men's shoes, by the loneliness of crowds. but nothing interesting ever happens in bars.
really. actually. trust me.
i lean my head down close to the table, watch mouths move and don't even try to make out the words.
pained, maybe a little pleased.
-you're so....
with a snarl,
owen pounds the steering wheel rhythmically. we head up and down epic paved hills.
it's a job. it's a job.
he asks me,
-do people actually eat swan?
-no.
-what about crows?
-no. wait, yes. no. that's just an expression. but i think i read once that young crows are edible. not particularly good-tasting, but edible.
-huh.
a happily lonely morning in the snow, i'm barefoot in my house, puttering around while the speakers hiss warmly. laughing, i will sit under a piano later that day. squeezed into a practice room with two young men, i'll listen as the one at the bench swears every time he misses a key.
grab it fast.
it'll be. just like. starting over.
.
Monday, December 18, 2006
III.
Curtain rises on a jungle scene. Kovrin, inexplicably soaking wet, lies against a fallen tree, a bottle in hand. His shoes are off, his feet filthy. Three men in white linen sit around him, sewing together an enormous burlap parachute. The cloth lies all around them. The stitches are large, raw, visible. There is a tall step ladder behind them. A rifle lies on the ground next to Kovrin. Wooden cages of various sizes, shabby-looking, embarrassing in that they could not feasibly keep anything from escaping, sit around them. The Victorian dollhouse is still lit up in the background. There is a misting sound of insects and wet air.
KOVRIN: Keep it up, boys.
MAN #1: WHY, Isaac?? What is this for?
KOVRIN: Just keep it up.
Kovrin swills from the bottle and looks at his watch for several minutes.
KOVRIN: Just keep it. Up.
MAN #2: You should wear shoes, Isaac.
KOVRIN: And why would I do that, Queequeg?
The man stares at Kovrin for a moment. The other men continue to sew. Kovrin drinks from the bottle.
MAN #2: My name is Marcus and you know it. You’ll get ascariasis. It’s a miracle you haven’t already.
KOVRIN: I’d only get ascariasis from drinking your filthy water, Gunga Din. And god knows I won’t touch that cloudy warm stuff.
MAN #2: Clearly.
Kovrin drinks from the bottle and looks at his watch again. The men continue to sew in silence for a moment.
MAN #3: Your watch is broken, Isaac. What do you expect to learn from staring at it so much?
Kovrin doesn’t answer, but continues to stare at his watch.
KOVRIN (singing): If I were a white man. And you were the same. Da da. Dada. Da da.
They sit in silence for a moment. The men continue to sew.
KOVRIN: How’s the work coming?
MAN #2: What work, Isaac? We’ve just been sewing this filthy cloth for four days. Aren’t we supposed to be hunting?
Kovrin bites his lip angrily, considering this.
KOVRIN: Do you know what the parachute is for, Marcus?
Marcus throws down his side of the parachute.
MAN #2: No, Isaac, I don’t know what the parachute is for. Enlighten me.
KOVRIN: Do you recall the cliff over the river? The one we can’t get down?
MAN #2: Yes.
Kovrin swills from the bottle.
KOVRIN: Finish sewing the parachute, and we’ll be able to. The Bab-r is down by that river.
MAN #2: How do you know?
KOVRIN: The anthropophagus has to drink. And he doesn’t know the dangers of ascariasis as well as you and I. Finish sewing, and we’ll simply drift down to him, and shoot the goddamn hell out of him.
Kovrin makes the sound of a gun, biting the inside of his lip and holding a hand in the shape of a gun out in front of him.
KOVRIN: Tchhoaa….Tchhoaa.
He drops the bottle and covers his face with his hands. He starts to sob and shake silently.
MAN #2 (genuinely concerned, though perhaps more frightened than anything else): Why are you crying, Isaac?
Kovrin doesn’t respond. He rubs his face violently, sits up, and picks up the spilled bottle.
KOVRIN: I spilled my fucking drink.
There is a loud explosion offstage. All men look offstage to the left. We hear the careening, Dopplered sound of a crashing plane. There is silence for a moment, then an incredibly loud bang. There is a sound of birds calling, flapping out of the trees. Kovrin staggers to his feet. He stares to the left, mouth open, amazed.
KOVRIN (starting to run to the left): Get the thing. Get the thing.
He runs back and picks up the rifle.
KOVRIN: Get the bloody parachute!
All men gather the cloth together and run offstage to the left. Curtain falls.
.
-do you remember how i got into this school?
-yes. you wrote a play.
-yeah. a little one-act about watergate.
.
this is kind of a nightmare. where am i going to get dynamite?
.
here's a little kafka thing i fucking love:
"To my fellow lodgers:
I am in possession of five toy rifles. They are hanging in my wardrobe, one on each hook. The first belongs to me, and the others can be claimed by anyone who wishes to send his name. If more than four people send in their names, the supernumerary claimants must bring their own rifles with them and deposit them in my wardrobe. For uniformity must be maintained; without uniformity we shall get nowhere. Incidentally, I have only rifles that are quite useless for any other purpose, the mechanism is broken, the corks have got torn off, only the cocks still click. So it will not be difficult, should it prove necessary, to provide more such rifles. But fundamentally, I am prepared, for a start, to accept even people without rifles. At the decisive moment we who have rifles will group ourselves around those who are unarmed. Why should not tactics that proved successful when used by the first American farmers against the Red Indians not also prove successful here, since after all the conditions are similar? And so it is even possible to do without rifles permanently, and even the five rifles are not absolutely necessary, and it is only because they are, after all, there, that they ought also to be used. But if the four others do not want to carry them, they need not do so. So then only I, as the leader, shall carry one. But we ought not to have any leader, and so I, too, shall then break my rifle and put it away.
That was my first manifesto. Nobody in our house has either time or inclination to read manifestoes, far less think about them. Before long the little sheets of paper were floating in the stream of dirty water that, beginning in the attics and fed by all the other corridors, pours down the staircase and there collides with the stream mounting up from below. But after a week came a second manifesto.
Fellow inmates:
Up to now no one has sent his name to me. Apart from the hours during which I have to earn my living, I have been at home all the time, and in the periods of my absence, when the door of my room has always been left open, there has been a piece of paper on my table, for everyone who wished to do so to put down his name. Nobody has done so.”
i know how you feel, brother.
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Friday, December 15, 2006
forgive me for this.
i buy a bottle of shampoo and tell the guy as he rings me up,
-this shampoo will give my hair body and fullness. AND touchability.
and he smiles and nods.
so help me, i will name a son bacchus. the father will have no say in the matter, because he will have left us by that point.
little bacchus.
he interprets his own dream as if it were mine. saying,
-i think it means that you think being a part of my life will make you warmer, but it's actually just making you colder.
-but wait, it's YOUR DREAM, so shouldn't it be saying something about you, and not me?
-oh yeah.
-...
-well then it means i think you think being a part of my life will make you warmer, but it's actually just making you colder.
-i think it just means you really want to take a bath with me.
-possibly.
i wish CU offered a masters degree in tree-climbing.
.
Tuesday, December 12, 2006
my brother's childhood friend george has some musical projects that just....kick.....so....much....ass.
for example: below is a video of the what cheer? brigade. george is the drummer with the whistle in his mouth.
also: javelin. apparently george has a dance hit in finland.
.
for example: below is a video of the what cheer? brigade. george is the drummer with the whistle in his mouth.
also: javelin. apparently george has a dance hit in finland.
.
-guard this traveling man
take him to your shoulders the wind
give to him a heavenly sigh
mountains crossed just to stand in the morning light
i wake up in the back of a car and we're surrounded by hot air balloons. the baskets hold men with shotguns. but they're festive, not hostile. they wave. my eyes are blurred, dark from sleep.
he says, about me, to her, 'isn't it great that her earrings match her brooch?'
and she says 'it's just the light.'
and i smash every mirror in the place without even getting up. but it's in a festive, not hostile way.
because come on. it's ALWAYS just the light.
i stand on a chair, lean down towards him and say,
-hey. hey. what if i were thiiiiis taaalllll?
and then i have trouble getting down by myself.
pocket this, carry it around until it's crumpled up beyond recognition, just like you.
.
Friday, December 08, 2006
well, here i am.
.
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Tuesday, December 05, 2006
do i wish i were a different sort? the sort that buys someone else's hair and has it woven into the ends of her own? no, not that sort. but a different sort. the sort that could lock herself in the house for days. not faltering at having to write:
ADRIAN: (speech)
TOM: (speech)
i get sick of invented names. i wake up in the morning with no notion of where i'm supposed to be. i squint at the ceiling, worry vaguely. not real worry, but the kind found in a person who's walking carefully carefully on ice.
i poach lightbulbs from the chandelier, replace those bulbs with dead ones.
i could swing from rafters, stare you down until you catch fire. i could line up tiny spoons, tiny glasses, tin types, ice cube trays. i could paste fake grass (the powdery kind used in architectural models) on your shoulders, chest, back, and let little sheep graze there.
.
ADRIAN: (speech)
TOM: (speech)
i get sick of invented names. i wake up in the morning with no notion of where i'm supposed to be. i squint at the ceiling, worry vaguely. not real worry, but the kind found in a person who's walking carefully carefully on ice.
i poach lightbulbs from the chandelier, replace those bulbs with dead ones.
i could swing from rafters, stare you down until you catch fire. i could line up tiny spoons, tiny glasses, tin types, ice cube trays. i could paste fake grass (the powdery kind used in architectural models) on your shoulders, chest, back, and let little sheep graze there.
.
Monday, December 04, 2006
-you're like a sugar cake, you look so good on a china plate.
the king of optical clay.
a bad look down. we crash, undone. the kids stuff their mouths with caramel. and this, the mother thinks, equals breakfast.
they’d been driving for five days. haphazard, aimless. she’d never known street names, so they’d made their way west crazy, zigzagging, lame elk through woods. they’d stopped all over and bought windbreakers, snow globes, candy apples. they’d bought the littlest one a food color dyed live chick. he was dyed red, in a basket of others that were dyed red, blue, pink and orange (though it was difficult to tell if the orange ones were simply older red ones who had faded). the red chick died after an evening in the back of the car. the mother cried in the hotel room later. she didn’t know what she’d expected to happen, but for some reason, it hadn’t been death in the backseat.
frederick, the oldest, eight, had been philosophical about the death of the chick.
-he probably breathed in some of that dye when they made him.
-frederick. lighten up.
the mother said, and flicked the channel to pbs.
-go get us a bucket of ice. take anton and thomas with you.
-what do you mean, “made him”?
anton asked when they were in the hall by the ice machine.
the youngest, orris, the supposed owner of the chick, said nothing about the matter. it made things too dark to even think about it, so he didn’t, and the little animal’s death added to the noise of old losses- dogs that had wandered off, the goldfish that had disappeared and left an empty, clean bowl one saturday afternoon when he’d been out in the kiddie pool. it became a little red-dyed bruise behind his dark three-year old brow. sweet and sad, as if it might not have happened at all. he watched the news with his mom and sister while his brothers got them a bucket of ice.
they rolled past trains, past fields, fruit stands. the middle ones wanted cherries. they didn’t stop for them. the mother didn’t like cherries, and the pits would be a mess in the car.
-i’m mystified by this traffic.
the mother said. the word “mystified” tripped off her tongue. mist-if-eyed.
the trip had already been worth something: they’d seen trains and horses and crop-dusters, all of which all five kids were fans of. they hadn’t known what a crop-duster was before the trip, but now that they did, they were happier in the world. they’d gotten eight trucks to blow their horns. they’d even gotten a train to blow its whistle.
the mother was tired.
-watch for deer.
she said when she saw a yellow sign with a black deer on it.
and they all perked up, despite the fact that they were always watching for deer.
.
the king of optical clay.
a bad look down. we crash, undone. the kids stuff their mouths with caramel. and this, the mother thinks, equals breakfast.
they’d been driving for five days. haphazard, aimless. she’d never known street names, so they’d made their way west crazy, zigzagging, lame elk through woods. they’d stopped all over and bought windbreakers, snow globes, candy apples. they’d bought the littlest one a food color dyed live chick. he was dyed red, in a basket of others that were dyed red, blue, pink and orange (though it was difficult to tell if the orange ones were simply older red ones who had faded). the red chick died after an evening in the back of the car. the mother cried in the hotel room later. she didn’t know what she’d expected to happen, but for some reason, it hadn’t been death in the backseat.
frederick, the oldest, eight, had been philosophical about the death of the chick.
-he probably breathed in some of that dye when they made him.
-frederick. lighten up.
the mother said, and flicked the channel to pbs.
-go get us a bucket of ice. take anton and thomas with you.
-what do you mean, “made him”?
anton asked when they were in the hall by the ice machine.
the youngest, orris, the supposed owner of the chick, said nothing about the matter. it made things too dark to even think about it, so he didn’t, and the little animal’s death added to the noise of old losses- dogs that had wandered off, the goldfish that had disappeared and left an empty, clean bowl one saturday afternoon when he’d been out in the kiddie pool. it became a little red-dyed bruise behind his dark three-year old brow. sweet and sad, as if it might not have happened at all. he watched the news with his mom and sister while his brothers got them a bucket of ice.
they rolled past trains, past fields, fruit stands. the middle ones wanted cherries. they didn’t stop for them. the mother didn’t like cherries, and the pits would be a mess in the car.
-i’m mystified by this traffic.
the mother said. the word “mystified” tripped off her tongue. mist-if-eyed.
the trip had already been worth something: they’d seen trains and horses and crop-dusters, all of which all five kids were fans of. they hadn’t known what a crop-duster was before the trip, but now that they did, they were happier in the world. they’d gotten eight trucks to blow their horns. they’d even gotten a train to blow its whistle.
the mother was tired.
-watch for deer.
she said when she saw a yellow sign with a black deer on it.
and they all perked up, despite the fact that they were always watching for deer.
.
-just a lad, nearly 22, neither good nor bad, just a kid like you
there's a sort of warm, sticking smell that makes you think of the color red, of the sound of wallpaper being torn from a corner of the room. i shuffle my feet on the carpet and dust comes up, the color gets stronger. my cuffs get covered in red powder.
i shut my hand in the cafe door and swear loudly. i'm still clutching my fingers, moaning quietly several blocks later like the elephant man.
there's the breadbox statue of an epic gold lion (it's just a model)
there's the beat-up leather valise, but no sheaf of papers being lugged around inside it
("letters-to the newspapers, to people in public life, to friends and relatives and at last to the dead, his own obscure dead, and finally the famous dead.") (i'm nothing so mythic.)
i'm like a nine-year old who somehow wrangled her way into own apartment. helpless against the cold.
-WHY doesn't my heat work?
-because your window is open. take out your air conditioner.
-that's never made it cold in here before.
-look, if it wasn't a machine BUILT to CONVEY COLD AIR i wouldn't say anything, but...
alright, alright, alright.
-what on earth was that?
-it's my new turn with a laugh.
-keep the turn, lose the laugh.
.
Saturday, December 02, 2006
my best friend when i was a kid had an exquisite dollhouse she inherited from her grandmother. intricate, victorian. it had three floors. tiny oriental carpets, tiny china, tiny silverware. a tiny chandelier in the dining room. it was nicer than either of our actual houses, like a miniature plantation house. swinging doors. i think of that thing a lot. the most amazing thing about the dollhouse was that it was perfectly wired for electric light-- you flipped a black switch on the side and all the rooms lit up with tiny bulbs. the odd thing is that in my mind, which is still, even now, baffled by the idea that a dollhouse could have electric light, tricks me into thinking (actually thinking, even as an adult-- because i ACTUALLY REMEMBER THIS, even though it couldn't possibly be right) that the dollhouse had plumbing. running water. i remember this as if it were actually the case. i remember turning on the tap in the kitchen sink. i remember the rumbling and gurgling of tiny pipes in the walls. i've never asked my friend to verify or deny this. if she told me it wasn't true, i don't know what on earth i'd do with the memory of that miniature sound of water.
.
.
Thursday, November 30, 2006
my brother calls simon, our big black dog,
-simone.....DEBEAUVOIR.
what if i just showed up as the mess that i am? (and you might ask-- is there any other way to show up?) no one is easily fond anymore. i walk him out the door and struggle with an impulse to hug him. i punch him instead.
-i miss your house.
-my house misses you.
-really?
-no, not really. it hasn't mentioned you in awhile.
still.
i'm reduced to taking books i own out of the library, because i can't find them in my house. i listen to "a day in the life" fifteen times through. we (we?) have company, and he sings along to "happiness is a warm gun" as it blasts through the speakers. she looks displeased. people who are displeased by the mention of firearms are stupid. stupid, stupid, stupid.
sidney talks about the end of the world, about the oceans rising up and taking out all the cities i love.
-your plays will still be very much in demand when that happens, though.
and i think,
-my plays?
i don't have any plays.
.
-simone.....DEBEAUVOIR.
what if i just showed up as the mess that i am? (and you might ask-- is there any other way to show up?) no one is easily fond anymore. i walk him out the door and struggle with an impulse to hug him. i punch him instead.
-i miss your house.
-my house misses you.
-really?
-no, not really. it hasn't mentioned you in awhile.
still.
i'm reduced to taking books i own out of the library, because i can't find them in my house. i listen to "a day in the life" fifteen times through. we (we?) have company, and he sings along to "happiness is a warm gun" as it blasts through the speakers. she looks displeased. people who are displeased by the mention of firearms are stupid. stupid, stupid, stupid.
sidney talks about the end of the world, about the oceans rising up and taking out all the cities i love.
-your plays will still be very much in demand when that happens, though.
and i think,
-my plays?
i don't have any plays.
.
Wednesday, November 29, 2006
i’m out on my porch in the snow. tapping my wineglass with my ring finger. morse code. SOS. help comes from above. the world is smothered in cold, in snow. i hear a flock of geese fly above. amazing. imagine flying in the snow. i can imagine a goose keeling over, freezing, midair, and careening down into my yard. i would nurse him back to health. he would turn out to be some kind of ornithological royalty, and teach me how to fly.
.
one of these little guys just showed up on my birdfeeder in the ridiculous snowstorm. he's an oregon junco. what he was doing in colorado, competing with my house sparrows for a spot on my tiny two-runged birdfeeder, i don't know, but i'm glad he deigned to make an appearance.
.
Monday, November 27, 2006
-well you know, i always was a sucker for germanic theatre.
the task at hand: to still yourself enough to sling a heavy gun over your back and go to war in some cold town. once you arrive there, buy a white bird and bring it as an offering to someone you meet on the gray steps of a building with a clock tower.
we've got all the time in the world for that sort of thing.
big black shivers. i sleep quite well in new york, dream things that really happen: a helium shortage, a woman getting swallowed by a whale. i dream i buy a suit box for someone i haven’t seen in close to five years.
the dinners here are like something woland would order in his tattered smoking jacket, his leg wrapped in dirty linen, a giant black cat at his side. fruit and meat. few lights. animal heads on the walls, eye level, ancient. too much rum. i feel like i should be wearing eye patches over both eyes. so i do.
in this crazy paradise, you are in love with pain.
van gogh is the piano player. and i fall in love with him the way i fell in love when i was nineteen. the walls are wood paneled. simple, devilish food is served in short cocktail glasses. we worry about not sitting near the window, about not owning this afterlife room. i flash forward years and years and wonder if i’ll ever actually hold a hot little three-year old hand in mine. i wonder about putting my kid on a counter while i pay for something (this is a view i remember very well, from when i was that small). now most stores have signs that say: “please do not place children on counter.” which seems almost cruel. like having a sign that says, “please do not pet the kitten.”
some kind of behemoth. red and black. an arm wanders out at night, takes up too much room, annoys me. i wonder what this says about your character. i’ve never been a sucker for a pretty face. even when i’m being had, i know i’m being had. i cut out a gray and blue picture and put it on my wall, stand back and admire it. a gray square, a blue square, a black one.
the bus is packed on the ride back into town. i’m sitting with my legs propped up on my suitcase, drifting in and out of a doze. getting that childhood head-loll, snapping awake every now and then. they’ve dug up the prairie dog colony just out of town, seem to be pouring cement for a new parking lot. those guys just can’t get a break.
i indulge myself again, find myself easily fond of the bus driver (you really should have seen him—this was better than it sounds). there are about fifty kids on the bus, standing, sitting in the aisles. they’ve crammed their bags into the metal compartments below, and at every stop, our poor dear driver has to get out and slide open that sharp, heavy metal door and drag out two tons worth of luggage for girls in expensive but fairly ugly boots. he has a light trace of a scar across the top of his head, which divides his short, burr-brush hair, an old river in a field. he gets covered in oil from manhandling the metal doors, from climbing into the compartments at every station. he breaks his watch. the band snaps apart when he’s closing one of the doors. i see this happen, see him slightly heartbroken as he fumbles to put the pin back in, hoping to somehow miraculously fix it, like some kid trying to use soap to reattach his shadow.
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Sunday, November 26, 2006
"stop being so special, kid."
-joshua miner
.
-joshua miner
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Thursday, November 16, 2006
my friend max got possibly the worst album review i have ever read: the campus press. some of the key words the reviewer used are "pathetic," "poor," "lacking," "painful," "played-out," "boring," "awful," "botched," "fumbled," "awkward," "disaster," "angry," and "frisbee."
but they're wrong, it didn't cost $600.
i think it's funny. the album, i mean.
don't get me wrong, i love the kid to death.
-my mom says i'm handsome. and that i'm the coolest guy at school.
.
but they're wrong, it didn't cost $600.
i think it's funny. the album, i mean.
don't get me wrong, i love the kid to death.
-my mom says i'm handsome. and that i'm the coolest guy at school.
.
"the yak" by john lurie
"this is the story about a small and strong and proud man who woke up one morning and looked at the ceiling of his bedroom and said to himself, "what i love in this world and in this life is god, my farm, and my family."
and on this farm he had some cows and he had some cows and he had some cows and he had some chickens, he had ducks, he had some very small barking dogs, little tiny one-inch long dogs that had red stripes all over them that lived mostly on the farmer’s shoulders and when he’d wake up in the morning and they’d go “hello good morning, how are you, hi, good morning hi, hi,” and he had a dog, and he also had the strange and unusual beast called the yak.
and one day inverily as the man was surveying the beauty of his land and of his home and the place where he lived he said with a smile on his face, he said to himself, “my life has been good to me,” and all the animals on the farm went “yes.” and he walked down off the porch and he noticed that a rake was facing the wrong way up. the rake could be very dangerous to his young children when they came home from school and he must remember to fix that rake. and he also walked by five hoes. HOE HOE HOE HOE HOE. and he walked up onto the hill up onto the grassy knoll where president kennedy was shot and he could see off yonder off in the distance that the yak who was tied to a chain to a tree was acting strange, the yak was moving its head from side to side, the yak was making horrifying noises, the yak was going “RAAAA RAAA RAAAAAA RAAAA RAAAA RAAAAA!” and the farmer came close to him and said, “what’s wrong? what could be wrong with the yak?” and the yak said, “I’M SICK! YOU STUPID FARMER, I’M BURNING UP WITH FEVER!” so the yak, the yak was acting terrifying and the farmer moved closer to the yak because he was afraid of the yak because the yak had bitten him one time. so he moved up closely and he put his hand on the yak’s forehead and the yak was going “RAAAA RAAAA RAAAAA!” and he could feel that the yak was burning up with fever and it terrified the man.
so he rushed down the hill and he rushed down the hill past all the animals who all looked nervous about the situation that was happening and he came up to the porch and he burst into the kitchen and he said to his wife, who was beautiful and fair, he said, “THE YAK IS SICK! THE YAK IS SICK! THE YAK IS BURNING UP WITH FEVER! THE YAK IS SICK!” and his wife, as always, put her hands on his shoulders and said, “calm down, just be calm, just be calm. if the yak is sick, if the yak has a fever, just feed the yak. give the yak some toast. give the yak some toast. give the yak, um, here, give him some of this oatmeal here and give it some raisinettes and some porkchops we had last night,” and she so laden the man down with food that he could not see where he was going. but he knew the path. and he walked out the hinged door backwards and he came down the stairs and he walked and he stepped on the rake that was going the wrong way up and the rake came up and HIT HIM IN THE HEAD and he died immediately. and the moral of the story is, feed a fever. starve the yak.
and now the man is dead, and to this day you can still see the yak on top of the hill shaking his head from side to side going “RAAAAA RAAAAA RAAAA RAAAAA! I’M SICK, I’M BURNING UP WITH FEVER! RAAAAA RAAAAAA RAAAAA! IT’S MY FARM NOW! RAAA RAAAAA RAAAA! I CAN HAVE HIS WIFE! RAAAAA! COME TO ME ON THE HILL! COME TO ME ON THE HILL! COME TO ME ON THE HILL!”
.
"this is the story about a small and strong and proud man who woke up one morning and looked at the ceiling of his bedroom and said to himself, "what i love in this world and in this life is god, my farm, and my family."
and on this farm he had some cows and he had some cows and he had some cows and he had some chickens, he had ducks, he had some very small barking dogs, little tiny one-inch long dogs that had red stripes all over them that lived mostly on the farmer’s shoulders and when he’d wake up in the morning and they’d go “hello good morning, how are you, hi, good morning hi, hi,” and he had a dog, and he also had the strange and unusual beast called the yak.
and one day inverily as the man was surveying the beauty of his land and of his home and the place where he lived he said with a smile on his face, he said to himself, “my life has been good to me,” and all the animals on the farm went “yes.” and he walked down off the porch and he noticed that a rake was facing the wrong way up. the rake could be very dangerous to his young children when they came home from school and he must remember to fix that rake. and he also walked by five hoes. HOE HOE HOE HOE HOE. and he walked up onto the hill up onto the grassy knoll where president kennedy was shot and he could see off yonder off in the distance that the yak who was tied to a chain to a tree was acting strange, the yak was moving its head from side to side, the yak was making horrifying noises, the yak was going “RAAAA RAAA RAAAAAA RAAAA RAAAA RAAAAA!” and the farmer came close to him and said, “what’s wrong? what could be wrong with the yak?” and the yak said, “I’M SICK! YOU STUPID FARMER, I’M BURNING UP WITH FEVER!” so the yak, the yak was acting terrifying and the farmer moved closer to the yak because he was afraid of the yak because the yak had bitten him one time. so he moved up closely and he put his hand on the yak’s forehead and the yak was going “RAAAA RAAAA RAAAAA!” and he could feel that the yak was burning up with fever and it terrified the man.
so he rushed down the hill and he rushed down the hill past all the animals who all looked nervous about the situation that was happening and he came up to the porch and he burst into the kitchen and he said to his wife, who was beautiful and fair, he said, “THE YAK IS SICK! THE YAK IS SICK! THE YAK IS BURNING UP WITH FEVER! THE YAK IS SICK!” and his wife, as always, put her hands on his shoulders and said, “calm down, just be calm, just be calm. if the yak is sick, if the yak has a fever, just feed the yak. give the yak some toast. give the yak some toast. give the yak, um, here, give him some of this oatmeal here and give it some raisinettes and some porkchops we had last night,” and she so laden the man down with food that he could not see where he was going. but he knew the path. and he walked out the hinged door backwards and he came down the stairs and he walked and he stepped on the rake that was going the wrong way up and the rake came up and HIT HIM IN THE HEAD and he died immediately. and the moral of the story is, feed a fever. starve the yak.
and now the man is dead, and to this day you can still see the yak on top of the hill shaking his head from side to side going “RAAAAA RAAAAA RAAAA RAAAAA! I’M SICK, I’M BURNING UP WITH FEVER! RAAAAA RAAAAAA RAAAAA! IT’S MY FARM NOW! RAAA RAAAAA RAAAA! I CAN HAVE HIS WIFE! RAAAAA! COME TO ME ON THE HILL! COME TO ME ON THE HILL! COME TO ME ON THE HILL!”
.
Wednesday, November 15, 2006
some john lurie painting titles from the queens PS1 summer exhibit:
"I Am a Medical Doctor. Like Most Medical Doctors, I Suffer From Severe Psychological Problems. My Wife, Who Is Ugly And Mean, Can See Right Through Me, But My Mother Is Very Proud. I Am Growing To Despise Sick People. Your Job Is To Deal With Me. I Am a God.”
“Audrey Hepburn As The Lone Ranger”
“Jesus Was In My Garden Once But He Is Not There Today”
“If You Marry Me We Can Live Here”
“Japan Is For Murderers”
“Bird Has Absolutely No Face”
“Even Doctor Bellman’s Dog, Idiot, Thought He Was Irrational”
“Davey Crockett Has Lost His Fucking Mind”
“Three Dentists Think Of The Same Squirrel”
“I Was A Coyote. Then I Died. Then I Came Back As A Coyote.”
“It Is Very Likely That In Every Breath You Draw There Will Be At Least One Molecule Of Air From The Last Breath Of Cleopatra. Best Wishes, The Scientists.”
we play baseball with an empty wine bottle as the bat. from the roof, the queensborough bridge looks like whale bones and wood. the "international delight" baked goods factory drifts the smell of donuts and cake out onto the street, where we're standing in front of a medallion taxi cab school.
aw hell.
.
just a deck of cards and a jug of wine
and a woman's lies make a life like mine
the collar of this coat scratches my face, my neck. it looks soft, though. and that's what counts.
put this song on repeat.
since when were you so generous and inarticulate?
what's with all the boring? you do realize what you're allowed, don't you?
i know exactly what i'm capable of. laugh and watch me spin something on the table, reach out a hand and stop it, and what things could happen. i could be a cannibal. once you're in my house, i own you. i'm going to eat you alive.
we lean up against a wall in sicily. we take a walk through the countryside, guided by men with sawed-off shotguns.
i remember when a fast heartbeat scared me. strange, like a sick animal:
-i feel like you're just going to keel over.
and he closed his eyes:
-jesus, el, i'm a young man.
.
Monday, November 13, 2006
a good exercise in modesty and regret.
i’ll place all these things in a suitcase with built-in compartments. that will be my dowry.
trade five birds for a wife.
(i’ll trade you a husband for five birds.)
we sit there and i drink six cups of coffee. i’m practically blind with it. i’m hunched over the cup, wearing epaulettes and not putting much effort into any of this. there’s a chip in my mug. i think of lolly’s send-up of this restaurant—“make sure you check for hair between your two slices of cold toast.”
-have you read paul auster?
she asks.
-yeah. he was a very handsome and slightly pretentious young man.
-yeah.
other people come up in conversation.
-yeah. he is a slightly handsome and very pretentious young man.
-yeah?
..
-when did you buy this little football?
he asks, twirling it in the air.
-today.
i say.
-why?
-“why”?
-yeah. why?
-so that i could play catch with myself in bed.
-...
-...
-i can’t believe you actually just said that.
.......
-i haven't been myself since i quit smoking.
-oh, when did you quit smoking?
-sixteen years ago.
-wait. you quit smoking sixteen years ago? i don't understand.
-...
-...
-are you joking? what do you mean?
-mean?
.
Sunday, November 12, 2006
someone writes "come find me" in white chalk on a blue wall and none of us know what to do with it.
loneliness: the advice is:
-well, just bring fuckhead with you.
fuckhead. poor, dear fuckhead.
i am disappointing.
the room contains: fake wings (they look real enough), a toy bull, a cap gun, a blue fish, a colander (steel, maybe aluminum), a framed Our Lady of Guadalupe (light-up), a torn-out magazine page with eugene hutz on it, a red cloth, a dollhouse table, chairs & refrigerator.
i can trick them into thinking anything
.
loneliness: the advice is:
-well, just bring fuckhead with you.
fuckhead. poor, dear fuckhead.
i am disappointing.
the room contains: fake wings (they look real enough), a toy bull, a cap gun, a blue fish, a colander (steel, maybe aluminum), a framed Our Lady of Guadalupe (light-up), a torn-out magazine page with eugene hutz on it, a red cloth, a dollhouse table, chairs & refrigerator.
i can trick them into thinking anything
.
Friday, November 10, 2006
this kid is thirteen. and french. which is why he says, "didn't know zey were vam-py-ers."
.
Wednesday, November 08, 2006
i'm in love but i'm lazy.
when i was a freshman i was madly in love with a polish kid who worked in the library on campus. i never spoke to him. but i knew that he made and restored violins. owen spoke of him once, to a friend of ours, saying,
-yeah, the kid restores like, 2000-year old violins.
he waited three beats while we all thought about the improbability of this before adding,
-jesus..?
..
i am seeking- an ornithologist to keep me from throwing rocks through windows. someone suited and funny as the devil. the DEVIL, i tell you.
..
but until then, a little back-and-forth:
max: "today some girl told me she knows six anorexic girls who have died. that can't POSSIBLY be true."
lon: "unless she was in an anorexia ward.."
me: "..that caught fire."
ah.
we are so great.
.
when i was a freshman i was madly in love with a polish kid who worked in the library on campus. i never spoke to him. but i knew that he made and restored violins. owen spoke of him once, to a friend of ours, saying,
-yeah, the kid restores like, 2000-year old violins.
he waited three beats while we all thought about the improbability of this before adding,
-jesus..?
..
i am seeking- an ornithologist to keep me from throwing rocks through windows. someone suited and funny as the devil. the DEVIL, i tell you.
..
but until then, a little back-and-forth:
max: "today some girl told me she knows six anorexic girls who have died. that can't POSSIBLY be true."
lon: "unless she was in an anorexia ward.."
me: "..that caught fire."
ah.
we are so great.
.
Tuesday, November 07, 2006
i’m sitting in a movie theatre, watching a movie i don’t want to see. so i’m swilling whiskey from a small, amber bottle i bought for this purpose. there are eight high school kids sitting in front of us, and at one point, i absent-mindedly rest my foot on one of the sixteen-year old girls’ heads. i take my foot down, don’t apologize. i’m watching this movie. and it’s not entirely unpleasant. theatres are pleasant. company is sometimes pleasant. whiskey is increasingly unpleasant, but what are you going to do. there’s the illusion of my lifestyle to keep up.
but i’m sitting in the dark and thinking of the book i’m reading (a wild sheep chase), thinking of a description of haze, of that newish, whiskey haze that makes you feel as if you’ve lost something. so, feeling you have lost something, you set out further and further into the haze, until you are completely, hopelessly lost.
what if we strike out and there’s nothing there? nothing but the occasional dim recollection of the place we’ve just left?
i try, in the dark theatre, to remember something. to conjure something. but all that comes to mind is a spun gold sash. the perfect texture, smooth, soft, pliable, despite the fact that it’s made of metal.
this is not enough to go on.
he asks me where i would go if i could go anywhere. and he is petulant, disappointed with my answers. says,
-i tell you these things and you can’t even play along, all you can say is, “i want to go to dresden, or afghanistan.”
-i never said afghanistan.
i did say dresden, and i still say dresden. this must be where this geographically-lacking boy got confused. i said dresden “before the bombing”. he had said, “anywhere,” and i said dresden before the bombing. he must have immediately thought contemporarily. hence this strange mention of afghanistan.
-i said dresden before the bombing. i never said anything about afghanistan.
(“afghan” means to cry with pain, though, i remember. but i don’t tell him that.)
-what bombing??
he practically shouts, exasperated.
-the firebombing of dresden. world war two.
-world war two???
-yes. i want to see dresden before the war.
friezes, pillars. monkeys and horses gamboled along the tops of the buildings. before the war. dresden. I’ll find my spun gold sash there, with some lovely young (but not too lovely, or too young) man in a suit inside it.
can we set the table for once? can i drink a glass of wine slowly?
we’re walking, and he hears a rattling coming from me.
-what’s that rattling?
he asks,
-is there something in your shoe?
we stop. i take off my shoe. shake it out. nothing. we walk again. and the rattling gets louder. something’s come loose inside me.
.
Thursday, November 02, 2006
come on let's get on with it
so we lack something-- lack—a happy lack--rooks, magpies.
-what is a kingfisher?
-a kingfisher is the favorite bird.
-what does the kingfisher look like?
-the kingfisher looks like a heron, compressed by two strong hands. it has a smaller body, a shorter beak, a shorter neck, shorter legs, smaller feet, and a crest of feathers on its head.
-so it’s nothing like a heron at all.
-i guess not.
a happy lack. a lack that contains everything, like a death that contains all sensation. the feeling of river ice, the feeling of mud, the feeling of the hay canal’s floor dipping down away from you. birds dive. everything drowns.
mongol hordes of the fishing-line universe
there's a tin can on one edge of the sidewalk and the broken hull of a ship on the other. reconciling this will take some doing, to keep it bitter— to swirl, join speech— somewhere, the oven’s been left on with nothing inside. the footfalls of an alleycat stalk a man in red hook who dies without ever having tasted a peach.
with his old handmirror he blurs the horsemen into oblivion
ha.
.
so we lack something-- lack—a happy lack--rooks, magpies.
-what is a kingfisher?
-a kingfisher is the favorite bird.
-what does the kingfisher look like?
-the kingfisher looks like a heron, compressed by two strong hands. it has a smaller body, a shorter beak, a shorter neck, shorter legs, smaller feet, and a crest of feathers on its head.
-so it’s nothing like a heron at all.
-i guess not.
a happy lack. a lack that contains everything, like a death that contains all sensation. the feeling of river ice, the feeling of mud, the feeling of the hay canal’s floor dipping down away from you. birds dive. everything drowns.
mongol hordes of the fishing-line universe
there's a tin can on one edge of the sidewalk and the broken hull of a ship on the other. reconciling this will take some doing, to keep it bitter— to swirl, join speech— somewhere, the oven’s been left on with nothing inside. the footfalls of an alleycat stalk a man in red hook who dies without ever having tasted a peach.
with his old handmirror he blurs the horsemen into oblivion
ha.
.
Monday, October 09, 2006
the sort you meet, and immediately want to punch firmly in the jaw.
he lets loose a few things he regrets and doesn't remember later
(when all he has made obvious in the past has been,
-i will and can not help you, ever.)
but these things are new. an odd revelation, like lipstick on white tile
(you never moved on from infant hand-and-foot regard. in your case, it simply shifted to blazer-and-shoe regard. and i can't fault you for that. you're a straight-shooter.)
(i read somewhere you got a new dog.)
(when you find yourself in the thick of it, help yourself to a bit of what is all around you.)
saying, “you are unhappy and do not know it” is like saying “you have stepped on a tack and are trying to make the best of it.”
(i don’t know what that means)
but i stand on a roof in manhattan and see the chrysler building
i can see these things
and lovely buildings make me happy
f. scott fitzgerald cried at the top of the empire state building for a different reason than i did
(or maybe he didn’t)
-what has happened, what has happened?
the bear asks me
-where is kovrin? where is ambrose? where are my epic names, my titles? why is your pasodobles record gone?
and i say
-is it? are they? are they not here?
and then we look in the closet and find that they're all hidden under an old sweater.
-oh. phew.
when a white lie was told to me years ago, i cocked an eyebrow
and then decided to build a birdcage and raise that lie as my own. the product of my labor was wonderful. it was epically plumed, and spoke spanish, french, and russian. and a little portuguese, but only that which referred to culinary marvels.
i want to tell them:
when my mother was pregnant with me, she saw a russian circus act on tv that featured a muzzled bear on a bicycle. the bear was harnessed to the bike, which made lazy loops around the ring. he was making a pitiful noise, a sort of “mraaaawl”ing noise. and my mother burst into tears, watching that bear on the bicycle.
much the way an expectant mother who is frightened by a cat will have a child that resembles a cat (they believed this in the dark ages, so of course, it’s true) i am, and always will be, the child of a woman who wept for a circus bear.
i’m not always such tedious company, though.
the piping queen is a musical feast. she is there, winged, singing, singed.
eh,
why would anyone ever tell me that?
a much better question is,
-what do you want, dear, what do you want
as i was asked once, breathlessly, over the phone.
and i asked him back,
-well, what do you want?
and he got indignant and said,
-that is not the same thing at all. at all.
i find a katydid outside the coffee shop. a giant one, the size of my palm. he’s green, standing on a brown bed of dead leaves. i try to pick him up and he flutters away from me in a panicked, irritated way.
-there is never enough time to do or say that which we wish we could
time is short
and then suddenly, you’re not there anymore.
.
he lets loose a few things he regrets and doesn't remember later
(when all he has made obvious in the past has been,
-i will and can not help you, ever.)
but these things are new. an odd revelation, like lipstick on white tile
(you never moved on from infant hand-and-foot regard. in your case, it simply shifted to blazer-and-shoe regard. and i can't fault you for that. you're a straight-shooter.)
(i read somewhere you got a new dog.)
(when you find yourself in the thick of it, help yourself to a bit of what is all around you.)
saying, “you are unhappy and do not know it” is like saying “you have stepped on a tack and are trying to make the best of it.”
(i don’t know what that means)
but i stand on a roof in manhattan and see the chrysler building
i can see these things
and lovely buildings make me happy
f. scott fitzgerald cried at the top of the empire state building for a different reason than i did
(or maybe he didn’t)
-what has happened, what has happened?
the bear asks me
-where is kovrin? where is ambrose? where are my epic names, my titles? why is your pasodobles record gone?
and i say
-is it? are they? are they not here?
and then we look in the closet and find that they're all hidden under an old sweater.
-oh. phew.
when a white lie was told to me years ago, i cocked an eyebrow
and then decided to build a birdcage and raise that lie as my own. the product of my labor was wonderful. it was epically plumed, and spoke spanish, french, and russian. and a little portuguese, but only that which referred to culinary marvels.
i want to tell them:
when my mother was pregnant with me, she saw a russian circus act on tv that featured a muzzled bear on a bicycle. the bear was harnessed to the bike, which made lazy loops around the ring. he was making a pitiful noise, a sort of “mraaaawl”ing noise. and my mother burst into tears, watching that bear on the bicycle.
much the way an expectant mother who is frightened by a cat will have a child that resembles a cat (they believed this in the dark ages, so of course, it’s true) i am, and always will be, the child of a woman who wept for a circus bear.
i’m not always such tedious company, though.
the piping queen is a musical feast. she is there, winged, singing, singed.
eh,
why would anyone ever tell me that?
a much better question is,
-what do you want, dear, what do you want
as i was asked once, breathlessly, over the phone.
and i asked him back,
-well, what do you want?
and he got indignant and said,
-that is not the same thing at all. at all.
i find a katydid outside the coffee shop. a giant one, the size of my palm. he’s green, standing on a brown bed of dead leaves. i try to pick him up and he flutters away from me in a panicked, irritated way.
-there is never enough time to do or say that which we wish we could
time is short
and then suddenly, you’re not there anymore.
.
Wednesday, September 20, 2006
what will become of the baron
surely this time
there will
be no
escape
surely this time
there will
be no
escape
Friday, September 15, 2006
-neighbors! i demand a higher CLASS of garbage!
i'm trolling the alleyway, looking for luck, and there's absolutely nothing to be found. the whole damn town is covered in plastic cups and flies (which is always the case, but sometimes there's something in there besides that: maybe a smooth piece of metal, a plastic cowboy covered in dirt, the jewel-end of a broken earring). but nothing. there's a bike reflector in a yard, but there are people sitting on the porch, and i have to live in this neighborhood, so i'm not quite that bold. when trolling the alleyway, i have to hope for something. i think of the WWI medal i lost on halloween. there have to be people out there as careless and tasteful as i am. i finally find a metallic-colored marble, which is decent.
there's a cat at the base of my stairs when i get home. her nametag reads, "olive." i say hello to olive, pet her, roll the marble around for her.
-don't kill my birds, olive,
i tell her. but this is exactly what she's after. which is why i don't care too much for cats.
some much odder vessel going about the house. a little ship, maybe, with full mast and sails knocking over stacks of books and records, stacks of everything, with a sort of constant drone of a hammond organ that shakes the walls. i could wait on the porch like an obedient dog (but what if the dog just really likes the porch, and isn't particularly interested in seeing you? what if he just likes the feeling of warm wooden boards and birdseed? though who likes the feeling of birdseed..) but i won't.
we lose my neighbor's cat like in a dream, she's just gone, gone, still in the house but completely gone. i dream in the night that i fall in love, but the young man turns into a metal statue holding an umbrella.
.
i'm trolling the alleyway, looking for luck, and there's absolutely nothing to be found. the whole damn town is covered in plastic cups and flies (which is always the case, but sometimes there's something in there besides that: maybe a smooth piece of metal, a plastic cowboy covered in dirt, the jewel-end of a broken earring). but nothing. there's a bike reflector in a yard, but there are people sitting on the porch, and i have to live in this neighborhood, so i'm not quite that bold. when trolling the alleyway, i have to hope for something. i think of the WWI medal i lost on halloween. there have to be people out there as careless and tasteful as i am. i finally find a metallic-colored marble, which is decent.
there's a cat at the base of my stairs when i get home. her nametag reads, "olive." i say hello to olive, pet her, roll the marble around for her.
-don't kill my birds, olive,
i tell her. but this is exactly what she's after. which is why i don't care too much for cats.
some much odder vessel going about the house. a little ship, maybe, with full mast and sails knocking over stacks of books and records, stacks of everything, with a sort of constant drone of a hammond organ that shakes the walls. i could wait on the porch like an obedient dog (but what if the dog just really likes the porch, and isn't particularly interested in seeing you? what if he just likes the feeling of warm wooden boards and birdseed? though who likes the feeling of birdseed..) but i won't.
we lose my neighbor's cat like in a dream, she's just gone, gone, still in the house but completely gone. i dream in the night that i fall in love, but the young man turns into a metal statue holding an umbrella.
.
Tuesday, September 05, 2006
a god-dwelling, sumerian arches, high beams of oak like an overturned ship. thick with green ivy but free of snakes and spiders and full-hungry-heavy of birds who echo up to the very rooftop.
river kids come in here and, wandering, wield sharp sticks between the garden pews. they stare at the cow and her child who browse in and out of the broken wall clover. they ride the gray horse up and down the aisles. they chase and bellow, and shout barbarian:
-BARBARIAN!!!!
the boys run from the mute girl in an endless game of chase, but one of them finally stops, spreads his arms wide and lets her catch him. the other girls (those who can speak) stay clean until 11 on sundays, and then they happily tangle themselves in grass-stains, in thick vines of utility and depth. they all wear crowns of paper-mache and trail tails that the neighbor’s hounds lent them days ago pinned to their coats .
outside, saul the monarch (who is nameless in reality, and wearing the black mask he bought in the dream’s convenient store) moves rocks from one spot to another. wandering about the ruins, he finds that under the flaking paint everything is made of gold.
he knows the names of all the great hunting dogs ovid had as a kid. and as he hauls a metal bedframe into the room for the river kids to climb on he lists each one to them softly, in barbarian tone:
-ladon, oribasus
laelaps, nebrophonus
agre
leucon and asbolus
dromas and
dromas II
and others.....
so many others....
heavy names, he drops them, but the bedframe is surprisingly light as he hauls it into the building, past the cow and the children, all of whom ignore him.
from far off comes the sound of the neighbor’s hounds rushing to the ruins, calling the kids by their wrong names, not knowing "peter" from "pietro," or "iva" from "ivy." the dogs call in a clatter and the kids spin and rush past saul to their nonexistent homes, intent on keeping their borrowed wagging tails.
the birds swoop down and up in the ivy, and the building is suddenly empty of all but the horse and the monarch and the cows and the birds.
he hears the dogs thunder past in the dust. he hears the day end. and as the cool of the green building settles around him he sits still, as if breathing in a song and a breeze. he sits, awaiting a milk kiss from a mooncalf.
.
river kids come in here and, wandering, wield sharp sticks between the garden pews. they stare at the cow and her child who browse in and out of the broken wall clover. they ride the gray horse up and down the aisles. they chase and bellow, and shout barbarian:
-BARBARIAN!!!!
the boys run from the mute girl in an endless game of chase, but one of them finally stops, spreads his arms wide and lets her catch him. the other girls (those who can speak) stay clean until 11 on sundays, and then they happily tangle themselves in grass-stains, in thick vines of utility and depth. they all wear crowns of paper-mache and trail tails that the neighbor’s hounds lent them days ago pinned to their coats .
outside, saul the monarch (who is nameless in reality, and wearing the black mask he bought in the dream’s convenient store) moves rocks from one spot to another. wandering about the ruins, he finds that under the flaking paint everything is made of gold.
he knows the names of all the great hunting dogs ovid had as a kid. and as he hauls a metal bedframe into the room for the river kids to climb on he lists each one to them softly, in barbarian tone:
-ladon, oribasus
laelaps, nebrophonus
agre
leucon and asbolus
dromas and
dromas II
and others.....
so many others....
heavy names, he drops them, but the bedframe is surprisingly light as he hauls it into the building, past the cow and the children, all of whom ignore him.
from far off comes the sound of the neighbor’s hounds rushing to the ruins, calling the kids by their wrong names, not knowing "peter" from "pietro," or "iva" from "ivy." the dogs call in a clatter and the kids spin and rush past saul to their nonexistent homes, intent on keeping their borrowed wagging tails.
the birds swoop down and up in the ivy, and the building is suddenly empty of all but the horse and the monarch and the cows and the birds.
he hears the dogs thunder past in the dust. he hears the day end. and as the cool of the green building settles around him he sits still, as if breathing in a song and a breeze. he sits, awaiting a milk kiss from a mooncalf.
.
Thursday, August 31, 2006
i overhear a phone conversation. this kid breathlessly asks the person on the other line,
-did you know your name means "water"?
.
-did you know your name means "water"?
.
Monday, August 28, 2006
-talk to me harry winston, tell me all about it
.
and with this, there is the brackish midnight of too much too late
.
anthracite: coal of a hard variety that contains relatively pure carbon and burns with little
flame and smoke. also called hard coal.
there are pallid towns, armors for man and horse
there is our drastic oddness
and europa and the bull
and that bull is supposed to be god, you know.
there are men on scaffolding sandblasting detail onto tall buildings, there’s a woman putting on face cream at the bus stop.
there are the sandbags in california
left over from wars that never happened
there is the attic
-remember that we like hot pepper oil, napoleon and eugene o’neill
and that we’re suckers for fountains, towers, ships and dirigibles.
tie a string around a finger
write a note and put it next to the door.
i’m riding the subway alone, completely, utterly alone, in an empty car followed and preceded by empty car upon empty car
the lights are off inside
and for miles upon miles i count blue lights
.
.
and with this, there is the brackish midnight of too much too late
.
anthracite: coal of a hard variety that contains relatively pure carbon and burns with little
flame and smoke. also called hard coal.
there are pallid towns, armors for man and horse
there is our drastic oddness
and europa and the bull
and that bull is supposed to be god, you know.
there are men on scaffolding sandblasting detail onto tall buildings, there’s a woman putting on face cream at the bus stop.
there are the sandbags in california
left over from wars that never happened
there is the attic
-remember that we like hot pepper oil, napoleon and eugene o’neill
and that we’re suckers for fountains, towers, ships and dirigibles.
tie a string around a finger
write a note and put it next to the door.
i’m riding the subway alone, completely, utterly alone, in an empty car followed and preceded by empty car upon empty car
the lights are off inside
and for miles upon miles i count blue lights
.
Sunday, August 27, 2006
the first thing i eat upon returning to colorado is a kind of fruit i’ve never had before. a “pluot,” a sort of cross-breed hybrid of a plum and an apricot. it’s deep in color, a sort of dark red-blue-black and is shaped like a small heart. not too small a heart—but smaller than a man’s, and larger, i think, than a dog’s.
i eat it barefoot in front of the window above the sink, where i’m watching the soldiers i got at the flea market in manhattan. the union boys will never make it across the windowsill, which is fortunate for them, since those are confederates waiting on the other side.
i eat the fruit, watch the soldiers, look out the window. i rinse a hand in the sink and find a tiny black spider struggling with the stream of water. animals should be spared from rising water. i scoop him up in a shallow glass with the hand not occupied by the dogman-heart-fruit. he’s a small, perfect spider, like one out of a fairy tale. i place him on the railing of the porch. when he offers me a wish in return for sparing him i just shrug and tell him to take better care of himself.
the pond is green with patches of dark, odd, clear depth. like a map of the world, with the koi as moving continents, the dragonflies as terrifying, sentient satellites
in new york, my dad talks about his office looking “out west towards the east river”
and we all pause and consider this for a moment, because it could very well be possible
in a place like this limbo
(where owen and i see the opera in red at night in the park, where we converse with wild mice in store windows, where we make our midnight meals on plums and caramels. where queens always smells like donuts)
it's quite possible that the river he sees is not the hudson, but is in fact the east river. the east river could be to the west. sometimes the world folds like a map, and one direction touches another naturally.
.
i eat it barefoot in front of the window above the sink, where i’m watching the soldiers i got at the flea market in manhattan. the union boys will never make it across the windowsill, which is fortunate for them, since those are confederates waiting on the other side.
i eat the fruit, watch the soldiers, look out the window. i rinse a hand in the sink and find a tiny black spider struggling with the stream of water. animals should be spared from rising water. i scoop him up in a shallow glass with the hand not occupied by the dogman-heart-fruit. he’s a small, perfect spider, like one out of a fairy tale. i place him on the railing of the porch. when he offers me a wish in return for sparing him i just shrug and tell him to take better care of himself.
the pond is green with patches of dark, odd, clear depth. like a map of the world, with the koi as moving continents, the dragonflies as terrifying, sentient satellites
in new york, my dad talks about his office looking “out west towards the east river”
and we all pause and consider this for a moment, because it could very well be possible
in a place like this limbo
(where owen and i see the opera in red at night in the park, where we converse with wild mice in store windows, where we make our midnight meals on plums and caramels. where queens always smells like donuts)
it's quite possible that the river he sees is not the hudson, but is in fact the east river. the east river could be to the west. sometimes the world folds like a map, and one direction touches another naturally.
.
Tuesday, August 22, 2006
-would i have jumped from this high when i was two?
-yes, but we had to hold you then. you were very small.
there is no darling
(but that's a stupid thing to say, really, because
we're entirely composed of darlings. by the end of every long night, whatever we were made up of has been replaced by the shadows of sleeping horses and wild dogs.)
he has a cat as a governess. a pistol in the nursery, on the bureau next to the bed, right under the lamp with the crooked shade that sends an orphaned pool of light onto the wall.
they dredged up a plane out of the ocean that night. i tore a ship in two with my bare hands and then set fire to its pieces.
on the walk home, something massive moved alongside me on the other side of the hedge in the dark
and then said to me:
-you know it's entirely possible to haunt yourself. i've been doing it for years.
we leave bails and bails of orange peels on the sidewalk in the morning, because we're monsters, and have eaten them all in one go. we only leave the peels because we have a slight, vague sense of propriety. it's that same sense of propriety that makes you draw pants on all the animals you sketch.
.
Tuesday, August 08, 2006
and so.
what follows is an excerpt from "light years" by james salter.
.....
“A car comes up the driveway, back from the city. The driver goes inside, only for a moment until he’s heard the news: the pony has gotten loose.
He is furious. “Where is she? Who left the door unlatched?”
“Oh God, Viri. I don’t know.”
In a room with many plants, a kind of solarium, there is a lizard, a brown snake, a box turtle asleep. The entry step is deep, the turtle cannot leave. He sleeps on the gravel, his feet drawn up close. His nails are the color of ivory, they curl, they are long. The snake sleeps, the lizard sleeps.
Viri has his coat collar up and is trudging uphill. “Ursula!” he calls. He whistles.
The light has gone. The grass is dry; it creaks underfoot. There was no sun all day. Calling the pony’s name, he advances toward the far corners, the road, the adjoining fields. A stillness everywhere. It begins to rain. He sees the one-eyed dog that belongs to a neighbor, a king of husky, his muzzle gray. The eye is closed completely, sealed, covered with fur so long ago was it lost, as if it never existed.
“Ursula!” he cries.
“She’s here,” his wife says when he returns.
The pony is near the kitchen door, tranquil, dark, eating an apple. He touches her lips. She bites him absent-mindedly on the wrist. Her eyes are black, lustrous, with the long, crazy lashes of a drunken woman. Her coat is thick, her breath very sweet.
“Ursula,” he says. Her ears turn slightly, then forget. “Where have you been? Who unlocked your stall?”
She has no interest in him.
“Have you learned to do that?” He touches an ear; it is warm, strong as a shoe. He leads her to the shed, whose door is ajar. Outside the kitchen he stamps dirt from his shoes.
The lights are on everywhere: a vast, illuminated house. Dead flies the size of beans lie behind the velvet curtains, the wallpaper has corner bulges, the window glass distorts. It is an aviary they live in, a honeycomb. The roofs are thick slate, the rooms are like shops. It gives off no sound, this house; in the darkness it is like a ship. Within, if one listens, there is everything: water, faint voices, the slow, measured rending of grain.
In the principal bath, with its stains, sponges, soaps the color of tea, books, water-curled copies of Vogue, he steams in peace. The water is above his knees; it penetrates to the bone. There is carpeting on the floor, a basket of smooth stones, an empty glass of the deepest blue.
“Papa,” they call through the door.
“Yes.” he is reading the Times.
“Where was Ursula?”
“Ursula?”
“Where was she?”
“I don’t know,” he says. “She went out for a walk.”
They wait for something further. He is a storyteller, a man of wonders. They listen for sounds, expecting the door to open.
“But where was she?”
“Her legs were wet,” he announces.
“Her legs?”
“I think she was swimming.”
“No, daddy, really.’
“She was trying to get the onions on the bottom.”
“There are no onions there.”
“Oh, yes.”
“There are?”
“That’s where they grow.”
They explain to each other outside the door. It’s true, they decide. They wait for him, two little girls squatting like beggars.
“Papa, come out,” they say, “We want to talk to you.”
He puts aside the paper and sinks one last time into the embrace of the bath.
“Papa?”
“Yes.”
“Are you coming out?”
The pony fascinates them. It frightens them. They are ready to run if it makes an unexpected sound. Patient, silent, it stands in its stall, a grazing animal, it eats for hours. Its muzzle has a nimbus of fine hair, its teeth are browned.
“Their teeth never stop growing,” the man who sold her to them said. He was a drunkard, his clothes were torn. “They keep growing out and getting worn down.”
“What would happen if she didn’t eat?”
“If she didn’t eat?”
“What would happen to her teeth?”
“Make sure she eats,” he said.
They often watch her; they listen to her jaws. This mythical beast, fragrant in the darkness, is greater than they are, stronger, more clever. They long to approach her, to win her love."
"Light Years"
James Salter
.
what follows is an excerpt from "light years" by james salter.
.....
“A car comes up the driveway, back from the city. The driver goes inside, only for a moment until he’s heard the news: the pony has gotten loose.
He is furious. “Where is she? Who left the door unlatched?”
“Oh God, Viri. I don’t know.”
In a room with many plants, a kind of solarium, there is a lizard, a brown snake, a box turtle asleep. The entry step is deep, the turtle cannot leave. He sleeps on the gravel, his feet drawn up close. His nails are the color of ivory, they curl, they are long. The snake sleeps, the lizard sleeps.
Viri has his coat collar up and is trudging uphill. “Ursula!” he calls. He whistles.
The light has gone. The grass is dry; it creaks underfoot. There was no sun all day. Calling the pony’s name, he advances toward the far corners, the road, the adjoining fields. A stillness everywhere. It begins to rain. He sees the one-eyed dog that belongs to a neighbor, a king of husky, his muzzle gray. The eye is closed completely, sealed, covered with fur so long ago was it lost, as if it never existed.
“Ursula!” he cries.
“She’s here,” his wife says when he returns.
The pony is near the kitchen door, tranquil, dark, eating an apple. He touches her lips. She bites him absent-mindedly on the wrist. Her eyes are black, lustrous, with the long, crazy lashes of a drunken woman. Her coat is thick, her breath very sweet.
“Ursula,” he says. Her ears turn slightly, then forget. “Where have you been? Who unlocked your stall?”
She has no interest in him.
“Have you learned to do that?” He touches an ear; it is warm, strong as a shoe. He leads her to the shed, whose door is ajar. Outside the kitchen he stamps dirt from his shoes.
The lights are on everywhere: a vast, illuminated house. Dead flies the size of beans lie behind the velvet curtains, the wallpaper has corner bulges, the window glass distorts. It is an aviary they live in, a honeycomb. The roofs are thick slate, the rooms are like shops. It gives off no sound, this house; in the darkness it is like a ship. Within, if one listens, there is everything: water, faint voices, the slow, measured rending of grain.
In the principal bath, with its stains, sponges, soaps the color of tea, books, water-curled copies of Vogue, he steams in peace. The water is above his knees; it penetrates to the bone. There is carpeting on the floor, a basket of smooth stones, an empty glass of the deepest blue.
“Papa,” they call through the door.
“Yes.” he is reading the Times.
“Where was Ursula?”
“Ursula?”
“Where was she?”
“I don’t know,” he says. “She went out for a walk.”
They wait for something further. He is a storyteller, a man of wonders. They listen for sounds, expecting the door to open.
“But where was she?”
“Her legs were wet,” he announces.
“Her legs?”
“I think she was swimming.”
“No, daddy, really.’
“She was trying to get the onions on the bottom.”
“There are no onions there.”
“Oh, yes.”
“There are?”
“That’s where they grow.”
They explain to each other outside the door. It’s true, they decide. They wait for him, two little girls squatting like beggars.
“Papa, come out,” they say, “We want to talk to you.”
He puts aside the paper and sinks one last time into the embrace of the bath.
“Papa?”
“Yes.”
“Are you coming out?”
The pony fascinates them. It frightens them. They are ready to run if it makes an unexpected sound. Patient, silent, it stands in its stall, a grazing animal, it eats for hours. Its muzzle has a nimbus of fine hair, its teeth are browned.
“Their teeth never stop growing,” the man who sold her to them said. He was a drunkard, his clothes were torn. “They keep growing out and getting worn down.”
“What would happen if she didn’t eat?”
“If she didn’t eat?”
“What would happen to her teeth?”
“Make sure she eats,” he said.
They often watch her; they listen to her jaws. This mythical beast, fragrant in the darkness, is greater than they are, stronger, more clever. They long to approach her, to win her love."
"Light Years"
James Salter
.
Thursday, July 27, 2006
-i’m enjoying having your library here with me.
-stop going through my shit.
.
the kid talks utter nonsense and still manages to convince me, at least occasionally. so i take him to a distant aunt’s house and get him fed on butter and crackers.
seeing how dazed he looks, and noticing that his clothes smell of weekend arson, she plies him with bread and hot milk with vodka and then lays him in an oil drum to rest.
he tells us, as he drifts off to sleep,
“the bee performs the wedding. i take the pictures on the wedding day. two days later, the flowers are exhausted.”
.
when at least some part of me (the ghost of an arm or a leg) is off dreaming of someone who smells vaguely like a barnyard on fire
things come a little more easily
but when this does not happen
i find myself in a robe that makes me look like an invalid, like a drunk, like a mental patient. and i act accordingly.
.
“he grew up around potting sheds, spending spare change on plants. his nanny was a fervent naturalist who fed him fried blackbird eggs and hedge trimmings."
and turning to the wall he says
"i believe
there’s some kind of salvation to be found in the black line of a crayon."
.
there is nothing in the world that pleases him so much as the sight of milk in a saucepan. the sight of a junco sharpening its beak on a traffic sign. so close that you can hear it, violent, fwip. fwip. fwip.
lines come and go as if trailing biplanes. one a week. and lying in your oil drum.
.
in the morning, he tears into bread and coffee, and letting his eyelids drop, recites us a story.
“the bear tells him, ‘there is no one left, dear boy. you can look if you want, but i tell you, they’re all gone. the girl, her sweet mother, her young brothers, her birds, her dogs, the troubling blue objects. they’re all gone. no one knows where to, but the time has passed, things have changed, and the gold clock has turned silver and tope. the fish in the garden have changed their national language from koi to german. the illiterate the girl so loved has joined the navy and started following international tennis tournaments, though he has never played. he’s started wearing a cap after showering in order to flatten out his curls.
i am not ready to be in the glass. this light flickering of dragonfly ash on my brow. drives me paper-lonely.
i'm married to the sea, or if not that, than to something far less wonderful than the sea
but still blue in color.
glazing antique shops
i run to the base of the tree to clap crows away
then run out there with a ladder and a handmirror to see the damage that's been done"
if he could only speak a little more clearly
the one who smells vaguely like a barn on fire.
inexplicably pleased by the sight of milk in a saucepan
.
-stop going through my shit.
.
the kid talks utter nonsense and still manages to convince me, at least occasionally. so i take him to a distant aunt’s house and get him fed on butter and crackers.
seeing how dazed he looks, and noticing that his clothes smell of weekend arson, she plies him with bread and hot milk with vodka and then lays him in an oil drum to rest.
he tells us, as he drifts off to sleep,
“the bee performs the wedding. i take the pictures on the wedding day. two days later, the flowers are exhausted.”
.
when at least some part of me (the ghost of an arm or a leg) is off dreaming of someone who smells vaguely like a barnyard on fire
things come a little more easily
but when this does not happen
i find myself in a robe that makes me look like an invalid, like a drunk, like a mental patient. and i act accordingly.
.
“he grew up around potting sheds, spending spare change on plants. his nanny was a fervent naturalist who fed him fried blackbird eggs and hedge trimmings."
and turning to the wall he says
"i believe
there’s some kind of salvation to be found in the black line of a crayon."
.
there is nothing in the world that pleases him so much as the sight of milk in a saucepan. the sight of a junco sharpening its beak on a traffic sign. so close that you can hear it, violent, fwip. fwip. fwip.
lines come and go as if trailing biplanes. one a week. and lying in your oil drum.
.
in the morning, he tears into bread and coffee, and letting his eyelids drop, recites us a story.
“the bear tells him, ‘there is no one left, dear boy. you can look if you want, but i tell you, they’re all gone. the girl, her sweet mother, her young brothers, her birds, her dogs, the troubling blue objects. they’re all gone. no one knows where to, but the time has passed, things have changed, and the gold clock has turned silver and tope. the fish in the garden have changed their national language from koi to german. the illiterate the girl so loved has joined the navy and started following international tennis tournaments, though he has never played. he’s started wearing a cap after showering in order to flatten out his curls.
i am not ready to be in the glass. this light flickering of dragonfly ash on my brow. drives me paper-lonely.
i'm married to the sea, or if not that, than to something far less wonderful than the sea
but still blue in color.
glazing antique shops
i run to the base of the tree to clap crows away
then run out there with a ladder and a handmirror to see the damage that's been done"
if he could only speak a little more clearly
the one who smells vaguely like a barn on fire.
inexplicably pleased by the sight of milk in a saucepan
.
Monday, July 17, 2006
"Oh just my usual night out, you know. Went to see an experimental film where nothing happened for two hours. Hung out with a pornographer. Got a job in a burger bar. You know, the usual."
i'm in such dire need of a haircut it hurts.
thus we return to the world of the borrowed line.
sort of.
in a bit.
.
i'm in such dire need of a haircut it hurts.
thus we return to the world of the borrowed line.
sort of.
in a bit.
.
Friday, June 23, 2006
Wednesday, June 21, 2006
Tuesday, June 06, 2006
Fish That Sing in the Moonlight
from Thomas R Henry's "The Strangest Things in the World," 1958.
"There may be a fish that actually sings—
This “singing” fish, which nobody actually has been able to identify, is one of the curiosities invariably called to the attention of visitors in the Batticoloa province of eastern Ceylon. It frequents only one deep lagoon and can be heard when the water is calm. Moonlight seems to draw the organism closer to the surface.
The fish are best heard when the human listener's head is held under the surface of the water.
It has been previously established that several species of fish in the lagoon make distinctive sounds. One, a large black fish with a yellow belly and four whiskers on each side of its face, expresses sounds like a baby’s fretful crying. A large chocolate-colored fish found among the bottom rocks makes a sound “like the distant echo of a large firecracker.” There is a curious little scaleless fish found in schools of 100 or more; as the school moves through the water it produces a chorus of tinkling sounds, like that of ringing bells. A phosphorescent light comes from inside the throats of these animals."
.
from Thomas R Henry's "The Strangest Things in the World," 1958.
"There may be a fish that actually sings—
This “singing” fish, which nobody actually has been able to identify, is one of the curiosities invariably called to the attention of visitors in the Batticoloa province of eastern Ceylon. It frequents only one deep lagoon and can be heard when the water is calm. Moonlight seems to draw the organism closer to the surface.
The fish are best heard when the human listener's head is held under the surface of the water.
It has been previously established that several species of fish in the lagoon make distinctive sounds. One, a large black fish with a yellow belly and four whiskers on each side of its face, expresses sounds like a baby’s fretful crying. A large chocolate-colored fish found among the bottom rocks makes a sound “like the distant echo of a large firecracker.” There is a curious little scaleless fish found in schools of 100 or more; as the school moves through the water it produces a chorus of tinkling sounds, like that of ringing bells. A phosphorescent light comes from inside the throats of these animals."
.
Wednesday, May 31, 2006
-well hell
we’re brown thoroughbreds ridden down mainstreet by the oldest woman in town
captive, sidesaddle
we’re having dinner in gray conference chairs in the bar of the “Cattle-ac,” swinging back and forth on creaking wheels and laughing, drowning in west
.
-i like to have the consummate everything,
he says, trying on a pair of sunglasses that make him look like a cop
and i grin, the odd stranger with bandaged hands from mishandling hunting knives
.
jen picks me up at the airport in miles city, montana where i’ve landed in a tiny prop plane with four other people on board, on which, upon take-off from billings, the flight attendant told us,
-well, looks like none of you decided to sit in the exit row, so i guess we don’t have to go over all that.
i’m right over the wing, in front of a kid from glendive named “chance,”
i’m deaf, reassured and happy with the violent hum of the right engine floating over the toy earth nothingness below
there’s no one HERE, i think, looking over smudges of green, leaf-vein rivers and toy mountains. i think,
well, if i were done now, i wouldn’t regret it, at any rate,
because who would be audacious enough to be afraid of flying
jen picks me up in their truck, with an open bottle of wine and two full glasses waiting for us in the cup-holders
and we make our way home
as there are no laws in montana
the next morning at six, i'm hazed and giddy pain-ridden when jen and i head out to feed the chickens and let them wander around their dappled yard. blind and barefoot, i watch the windchime swaying back and forth up in an oak tree. i watch the antelope skull, up on a pole, not doing anything. i drink my coffee slowly and eat a piece of bread which has somehow made its way into my hands.
i wonder at the lack of dogs in this household.
jen tells me to watch where i step, as chickenshit abounds, but i’m not worried. we feed the baby pigeons, who are hysterically, terrifyingly small and weak-looking. you have to swaddle them in a towel and force them to eat like a foie gras goose-- they don’t help you-- they don’t catch onto what you’re trying to do-- they only know that they’re hungry, and that after you spend about twenty minutes manhandling them, they aren’t anymore. the first time jen and matt force this troubling task on me, i’ve got enough gin in me to fly.
.
after the rodeo, matt and i are wandering back to the car, through overgrown grass and pickup trucks and hazed, sickening sunlight. we pass the billboard bemoaning meth use. we pass a little festival-stand outside the rodeo selling pink wigs.
i’ve been sick-hot for hours, like i used to get as a kid, with foggy, almost prophetic vision
but i don’t say anything except, finally,
-i’m in pretty bad shape.
and he says,
-yeah, you look like you’re hurting.
we keep walking, and
-god,
he tells me, at random,
-even when i was broke, i spent so much money on total shit...
and i wonder if it was the pink wigs that sparked this statement.
i say sly things, as i do when i’m with kids i don’t know very well
but fondness surrounds me like faint atoms, and it’s easy, i laugh, though we are both ill with the night before and with the heat and the parade and the day’s overcast haze. we’re dazed with our winning 15 dollars on “goodbye earl,” our horse i hardly got a good look at, but who was winning straight out of the gate....
i stare at everyone’s boots. i film everyone’s boots. and back at the house, after visiting jen at the vfw and trying cosmic hangover remedies that don’t work as well as we wish they would (blackberry rum on ice, sipped down INCREDIBLY SLOWLY), we all sleep at the same moment, in the middle of the day, dead after horsebucking and blinding overcast weather, with an antelope skull swinging over our heads.
when we wake up that night, we have bear meat for dinner. the hide of this bear is over the bed where i am sleeping, down in the basement that was really never meant to be slept in, where they keep all their hunting get-out: rifles, ammunition, fishing rods, ice augers, goose decoys. there’s a revolver on my nightstand. i handle it briefly, before putting it down, suddenly, oddly terrified
.
solomon was said to understand the language of ants and birds. i think i used to be able to
last summer, we’re all on the porch, and chris is standing under the pillar where the finches have built their nest. we can hear the female, over in the bushes, chirping wildly. i tell him to move, that that’s what she’s telling him to do. he steps two feet over and she immediately wings back into the nest, feeds the babies.
-you speak bird,
someone says.
but now i don’t remember to feed them enough, so they haven’t even even tried to nest there.
we’re bound together by small mythologies, bound to the quilted time when we were supposedly insomniac over the same things. back when the plastic cowboys and soldiers actually did come to life in the middle of the night and have tiny wars, tiny parties.
but now we drink red poison on the rocks,
and hair of the dog is our breakfast
and staring at the fishing rods, ice augers, and rifles down in the basement where i am sleeping, i think
i was meant to be born a steeple-chaser, i was meant for better correspondences, less clutter, more tin and pearl and gold. give me a tail, i need a tail.....
i dream in the night of the bear, of MY bear,
and of the bear that haunted winchester castle in england in the 15th century. i dream about kubla. about explaining this to people. about explaining this to the god of bears come judgement day, and to the house domovoi who’s clattering in a box on the shelf, caught up in fishing line.
we talk about how
a horse can navigate stairs better than you’d expect.
we talk about taking a glider up over the ridge at night, skimming blueprints of impossible bridges,
precarious staircases
.
Monday, May 22, 2006
fill her coat with weapons and help her get it on
the annual bucking horse sale, miles city, montana. more soon.
.
Monday, May 15, 2006
we practice a sort of social circular breathing, where nothing interesting is said and nothing interesting is heard. but damn, we could play the oboe well if we wanted to.
.
.
Saturday, May 06, 2006
for a change she got out
alone, rocking in an ancient chair in the kitchen, i think--
i live with the ghost-clutter of our stolen antique schooldesks and astronomy, with the ghost of knowing the lava-flow that continually goes on below ground on earth
and the ghost of our sudden coffee-gotten COSMIC FUCKING KNOWLEDGE
of sub-terrestrial plates and the nameless fishing-line things that move them
but this is still not enough to keep us from cracking up at our total ignorance and failure once it all rolls around
and going to hapa afterwards
..
my love of
("what?? you don't want HIM,")
things
is hilarious, because
i could break this chair with rocking.....
..
now, years later, i hear,
-oh you can do it. just call me when you're done with it and we'll get a drink.
and i think
will we?
we'll get balloons?
enough to take us over the walls of our mothers' houses?
we'll
annex carousels for less than they're worth?
(-five rides for one birthday party?? fuck that. i could pay for fifty rides and ride alone all day and night for half that much.)
and we will, we do
..
in theory.
..
i use the milk and the good chocolate on kids who never say
-what am i, your son?
even though......they ARE....they may as well be..
eternally lonely and phased, we'll get lovely sad elephants we'll go up to and, soft and gray and dry as they are, explain the intricacies of the circus to.....
we will, in our newloss color-free reverie,
be able to shoot magnificent beasts in the woods
and then have them stand up later, like childhood nextdoor neighbors playing our games,
and have them say, "you got me, but i'm fine now--
and the meat you're eating is just wood chips and pine needles
and you're drinking tea and bourbon out of acorn caps."
like the kid in the desert who says, "i shall look as if i were dead, and that will not be true..."
we'll heave up the horns of our kill and feel the weight of death as little more than a game
we'll run up the hill ridiculous afterwards, luged, to where mom is calling us.
we won't have to return the button necklaces when we are six, because the playing-with-them was sincere, and grandma doesn't need them to fix old sweaters anyway, and i am not shaming her by doing what i am now doing.
i am, instead
continually carrying encyclopedias up the hill
i am
carefully carrying back from campus
broken, hatched-out-of
blue robin's eggs shells
and placing them next to napoleonic-era lead soldiers who trumpet with tiny lead mustaches made in ukraine
.
Wednesday, May 03, 2006
the impossible look of a plastic window on a paper house.
tell me more and more and then some
you know how i love that stuff
.
Wednesday, April 26, 2006
from now on you’ll be history
you’ll be hist you’ll be hist you’ll be hist-ory
and we will glorify your name
you will be a bust be a bust be a bust in the hall of fame
.
Tuesday, April 18, 2006
there are cities composed of warring factions of flowering plants. the war of vegetal demands--
the conditions of which are unusual, brutal, because life there is based on the quality of soil. the apple trees, already warlike, throw mozeltov cocktails through the orchids' windows. they slash the vintner's tires and rob his wine cellar. drunk and staggering, they kidnap his dog for ransom and burn down the farmhouse and surrounding buildings. the redwoods spy on the cherry trees for the rosebushes, tunneling into their camps. the kelp colonies, in league with the magnolias, drag the apricot trees into the ocean. scads of them wash ashore, drowned.
.
flowering trees should really make a noise when they bloom. a pop, a confettied explosion. or a deep ringing, like that of bells. maybe they already do.
.
man, i need some entertainment.
.
Monday, April 10, 2006
good men and better shoes.
i missed the borrowed line's third anniversary. but i'm sure whatever i was doing was mildly celebratory.
maybe.
all the same.
someone buy me a fishing boat lined with christmas lights, for godsake.
.
when i was a kid in my grandparents' house in new mexico, owen and i stayed up until four in the morning chewing on paper and tissues and singing "eighteen wheeler" over and over again.
another time, i woke up in the morning, having fallen asleep in an eyemask of my grandmother's, and discovered that it was no longer on my face, but on the bedside table. at the time i didn't know what to think of that, but looking back on it, someone, maybe my sister, maybe my grandmother, had thought of accidental nighttime strangling, and taken it off of me.
huh.
.
the enormous is in demand in all things-- in play, in love, in idleness
under a moveable forest, beasts are set upon men for other men's entertainment, and this can only be described as EXQUISITE. colosiums, circuses are built where climate is conquered, where giraffes and elephants parade tragically before a crowd of thousands.
the cities are deluged with roses.
he points a rifle at the sky and shoots, and a rain of confetti comes down and covers everything. the moon and sun swing wildly and smash into the mountains.
i say,
-oh that's just great, kid.
.
without quite realizing it, i attribute my luck to the quality of the objects i find on the sidewalk. about a month ago this supply started to dry up, and i found very little of interest. (-that's a piece of ginger...)
i got worried. it had been awhile since i'd picked up anything made of metal. no canadian coins, no washers, no random unnameable pieces of cars. i think the last thing i picked up was the broken-off handle of a white coffee mug, a porcelein clavicle bone. since then, nothing.
i stop by the bookshop to look for a book that i, hotfaced and tilting, flipped through the other night when i got tired of mundane conversation and wandered away from the restaurant. i can't find it, and walk outside to a homeless guy who hands me a photocopied picture of jesus. in the picture, jesus looks a little mexican.
on the walk home, i find a small skeleton key. it's covered in rust, and turns my hands an odd orange. everything returns slowly.
.
Thursday, April 06, 2006
cake for all.
.
.
Friday, March 31, 2006
-wife, do we know anyone who smells of violet?
.
.
no darling.
we're left baffled and dazed for the rest of our lives. like a music box missing a spring- the notes sit there, still perfectly capable, still chimeable, but unstruck, in a top dresser drawer.
i watch a tape of us in albuquerque, in a hotel, and i find myself wishing i were 19 again. i line myself with maps and wait for disaster, smiling as darling others get drunk and use their shoes as phones. i want something funny to happen. i want to throw a glass across the room. i want to get into a fist fight.
we look for the grail constantly as kids.
at five-years old, i rob from the class coin collection and tell my mom that i've been finding the coins in the sandbox, which, i can tell, she knows is not the case.
this was my first foul deed, but i really wanted those coins
and as a result, to this day, i have quite a good collection
hungarian coins, german, romanian...
they sat in a tin cup on my dresser for years.
if i were to
not spend the rest of this
i could lie back on a hotel bed with some, any company, and smile with an easy fondness
at affinity-kids and circuses which
by birth i have a right to, but which are wrenched with the rest of it now—
with the summer dinner parties missed, with everyone still, even now, out of reach after months of patiently awaiting miraculous returns,
hidden parties, parades and elephant acts i grin and scowl at
because
i was here
and if i could, i'd write again:
and embrace those miniscule explosions.
but the cities are gone, nothing left but gray, heavy, moaning magnolia air. the strings of lights are pastel-- and we live within the gates and don't reel off on paper lanterns, fireworks and wine. we live behind the gates, with statuary and plague and imaginary sultans beating down our doors. there is no spinning, no wheeling, not a second to speak of. the roads are gone, rained off into dust. i steal coins from the tin cup on the dresser and hide them in the sandbox at night. then, finally, i run off and join the circus in mexico.
.
Tuesday, March 28, 2006
my mom walks in the room, looks out the window, and shouts,
-look at that man's hat!
i sit, shined and scowled in fifteen-dollar fatigues and watch the people go by below. guys in suits, mainly, young guys who got up and got dressed for jobs they don't want. i could stand on every corner in the city and shout,
-dear young man
and see what happened.
.
-look at that man's hat!
i sit, shined and scowled in fifteen-dollar fatigues and watch the people go by below. guys in suits, mainly, young guys who got up and got dressed for jobs they don't want. i could stand on every corner in the city and shout,
-dear young man
and see what happened.
.
Monday, March 20, 2006
all hell breaks loose and i find myself oddly pleased, a glutton in every way imaginable. shaking fists at every parade in the world and shouting,
-you wanna go??
at night, i'm a black drawing crawling away from crowds, suddenly finding flight and tunneling to be less than impossible. i still don't know what the hell to do with them, though.
.
-you wanna go??
at night, i'm a black drawing crawling away from crowds, suddenly finding flight and tunneling to be less than impossible. i still don't know what the hell to do with them, though.
.
Thursday, March 09, 2006
we're driving, and i ask,
-why don't you take the plastic off your phone?
and she scoffs,
-why don't you take the plastic off your LIFE?
.
the importance of hunger in art museums. with the tapping feet of a monarch, you say,
-i can taste weight, you know. i can taste gravity.
color through patent leather
-i used to think i had synesthesia
but then i decided i was just trying too hard. all the same,
blue tastes like snow, red tastes like gin. sometimes like yellow fields, oddly enough.
and, feeling ashamed, i realize that all i can taste is age, barrels, and the occasional lemon.
.
-why don't you take the plastic off your phone?
and she scoffs,
-why don't you take the plastic off your LIFE?
.
the importance of hunger in art museums. with the tapping feet of a monarch, you say,
-i can taste weight, you know. i can taste gravity.
color through patent leather
-i used to think i had synesthesia
but then i decided i was just trying too hard. all the same,
blue tastes like snow, red tastes like gin. sometimes like yellow fields, oddly enough.
and, feeling ashamed, i realize that all i can taste is age, barrels, and the occasional lemon.
.
Tuesday, March 07, 2006
meh.
.
.
Saturday, February 18, 2006
she's the mother of the arts and the devil
she's wonderful
a brilliant monarchy, they invite barbarians to the wedding, fill them all to sleep with some honey-steeped drink, and then proceed to kill them, there, one by one, where they're all passed out under the hot trees, cups still in hand.
in the yard, nothing but clay, a white stork trips while walking. something is caught on its foot.
the band keeps playing in the midst of all this hot, bloody clatter.
and i wonder if the bride knew that was the plan.
we talk as if
things made easier
horses, misplaced in fields with ancient holsteins
(i never shot your dog.)
space travel is made difficult
with short food supplies
and the dog drifts
shining, tilting,
dying with a view.
.
she's wonderful
a brilliant monarchy, they invite barbarians to the wedding, fill them all to sleep with some honey-steeped drink, and then proceed to kill them, there, one by one, where they're all passed out under the hot trees, cups still in hand.
in the yard, nothing but clay, a white stork trips while walking. something is caught on its foot.
the band keeps playing in the midst of all this hot, bloody clatter.
and i wonder if the bride knew that was the plan.
we talk as if
things made easier
horses, misplaced in fields with ancient holsteins
(i never shot your dog.)
space travel is made difficult
with short food supplies
and the dog drifts
shining, tilting,
dying with a view.
.
Friday, February 10, 2006
he misspeaks, and suddenly flushes red on his neck. and i find this enormously appealing. a chink in the facade.
-a chink in the facade. a chink in the universe.
-that sounds so racist.
-i know. i also like to pronounce "facade" as "fuckade."
-it's all just a big fuckade.
-it really is.
.
-a chink in the facade. a chink in the universe.
-that sounds so racist.
-i know. i also like to pronounce "facade" as "fuckade."
-it's all just a big fuckade.
-it really is.
.
Wednesday, February 01, 2006
splendid....
“Rosanette, striking a glass with her knife, finally managed to secure silence; and, turning first to the Knight, who had kept his helmet on, and then to the Postilion, who was wearing a shaggy fur bonnet, she said:
‘First of all, take that saucepan off— it makes me hot just to look at it. And you over there, take off that wolf’s head. Do what I tell you, dammit. Can’t you see my epaulettes? I am your Marshal!’
They obeyed, and everybody applauded, laughing and shouting:
‘Long live the Marshal! Long live the Marshal!’
Then she took a bottle of champagne which was standing on the stove, and, lifting it high in the air, emptied it into the glasses which were held out to her. As the table was extremely wide, the guests, especially the women, leaned over towards her, standing on tiptoe or on the bars of their chairs, so for a moment they formed a pyramid of headdresses, bare shoulders, outstretched arms, and leaning bodies; and long jets of wine spurted through the air, for the Pierrot and Arnoux, in opposite corners of the room, had each opened a bottle and were splashing the company’s faces. The door of the aviary had been left wide open, and the little birds invaded the room, fluttering in bewilderment around the chandelier, and beating their wings against the window-panes and the furniture; some of them settled on the heads of the women, so that the latter appeared to be wearing great flowers in their hair.”
-Flaubert
mmm... aviary....
.
“Rosanette, striking a glass with her knife, finally managed to secure silence; and, turning first to the Knight, who had kept his helmet on, and then to the Postilion, who was wearing a shaggy fur bonnet, she said:
‘First of all, take that saucepan off— it makes me hot just to look at it. And you over there, take off that wolf’s head. Do what I tell you, dammit. Can’t you see my epaulettes? I am your Marshal!’
They obeyed, and everybody applauded, laughing and shouting:
‘Long live the Marshal! Long live the Marshal!’
Then she took a bottle of champagne which was standing on the stove, and, lifting it high in the air, emptied it into the glasses which were held out to her. As the table was extremely wide, the guests, especially the women, leaned over towards her, standing on tiptoe or on the bars of their chairs, so for a moment they formed a pyramid of headdresses, bare shoulders, outstretched arms, and leaning bodies; and long jets of wine spurted through the air, for the Pierrot and Arnoux, in opposite corners of the room, had each opened a bottle and were splashing the company’s faces. The door of the aviary had been left wide open, and the little birds invaded the room, fluttering in bewilderment around the chandelier, and beating their wings against the window-panes and the furniture; some of them settled on the heads of the women, so that the latter appeared to be wearing great flowers in their hair.”
-Flaubert
mmm... aviary....
.
Monday, January 30, 2006
summer, i'm sitting at a sidewalk cafe in boston with eduardo, no doubt still giving him shit about a comment he has just made about a hat i tried on (-it makes you look like a boy from the back) when something miraculous happens. there are pigeons all around us, sauntering, peg-legged, pear-shaped. suddenly something startles them, and, in a flurry of blue wings, one of the birds starts up, straight up, and, wheeling haphazardly, smacks me right in the face with his left wing. the impact lets out a dull, feathered,
-PACK.
-whoa,
eduardo says,
-SHIT.
i say.
the impact is hard, strange, muscular. i sit there, reeling, and think
i have always read that birds are light beings. their bones are hollow, barely there, and then topped with feathers. they barely weigh in at anything-- how in god's name could something so light have startled me so badly?
but i've been christened, a revelation. like a dove descending, but a filthy, boston dove. and instead of descending, the damn thing just smacked me in the face.
eduardo laughs at me as i develop a wing-shaped bruise on my cheek.
-oh, go to hell.
.
-PACK.
-whoa,
eduardo says,
-SHIT.
i say.
the impact is hard, strange, muscular. i sit there, reeling, and think
i have always read that birds are light beings. their bones are hollow, barely there, and then topped with feathers. they barely weigh in at anything-- how in god's name could something so light have startled me so badly?
but i've been christened, a revelation. like a dove descending, but a filthy, boston dove. and instead of descending, the damn thing just smacked me in the face.
eduardo laughs at me as i develop a wing-shaped bruise on my cheek.
-oh, go to hell.
.
Sunday, January 22, 2006
the wolf up the street from me sends me a letter saying he'd like to get together sometime. when i see him next, i ask him why he didn't just call me, or, at the very least, knocked on my door. he looks up at me and says
-can't knock or dial with paws.
i think about this, and then ask
-how'd you write the letter, then?
he stares at me for a moment, and then shrugs.
-more things in heaven and earth, my dear.
and i feel like an insensitive clod.
.
-can't knock or dial with paws.
i think about this, and then ask
-how'd you write the letter, then?
he stares at me for a moment, and then shrugs.
-more things in heaven and earth, my dear.
and i feel like an insensitive clod.
.
Saturday, January 21, 2006
it's not necessary to hold a revolving door open for someone. in fact, it's next to impossible. but i just tried it. i was feeling a little confused.
i walk around town feeling like i'm going to spontaneously combust. so then i do, with a strange, dry pop, mingling with the sound of a deep bell ringing once. pop, clang. i leave nothing behind but a little drifting trail of red and white confetti, which eventually gets blown into the river.
.
i walk around town feeling like i'm going to spontaneously combust. so then i do, with a strange, dry pop, mingling with the sound of a deep bell ringing once. pop, clang. i leave nothing behind but a little drifting trail of red and white confetti, which eventually gets blown into the river.
.
Tuesday, January 17, 2006
i'd like to interrupt the useless written autism for a moment to share that i recently discovered google video. i have done little else since. i mean, my god. my boy's a box.
and now that i've done that i might as well take it a little further with this little ditty.
and really, what the hell, this one too.
but then it's useful for other things, too, like this.
.
and now that i've done that i might as well take it a little further with this little ditty.
and really, what the hell, this one too.
but then it's useful for other things, too, like this.
.
Sunday, January 15, 2006
an endless appeal, we crawl out from under rocks and find ourselves stockinged, hatted, stupid and immortal.
brutality in a suit, he buys his girl ruby earrings. they don't fit her well, with her being so pale. the red looks strange against powder white.
i appear on no maps, on no public records. i legally do not exist. but, like an existential version of wile e coyote, so long as i don't realize i've run out over a cliff, i won't fall. so long as i don't realize i'm not here, i won't disappear. like a lamed wufnik, but far less noble.
the boy swallows rocks to weigh himself down in the river, to get close to the fish. i'm sitting on the bank watching and knowing he's just thinking, saying outloud even, listing:
-i like this. and this. i like this. i LIKE this.
curves and aging. my birds call out to me in the morning,
-darling foolish lonely girl.
a horse and cowboy fall down my arm from a great distance. and i find it all to be charming, writing endless odes to young men with saddlebags and cigarettes.
shooting myself in the foot like the old drunk indian who came around to o c culver's door. he'd literally shot himself in the foot, and was looking for my great-grandfather.
pounding on the front door and calling,
-whitey culver!!!!!
my grandmother and great aunt, little girls, looked through the window and shouted to him,
-he's next door!
and he promptly went around to the back door of their house and shouted,
-whitey culver!!!!!
i tell my mother i wish i'd known him. o c, whitey culver.
-he'd have come up with some ridiculous nickname for you.
-god, i wish someone would.
.
brutality in a suit, he buys his girl ruby earrings. they don't fit her well, with her being so pale. the red looks strange against powder white.
i appear on no maps, on no public records. i legally do not exist. but, like an existential version of wile e coyote, so long as i don't realize i've run out over a cliff, i won't fall. so long as i don't realize i'm not here, i won't disappear. like a lamed wufnik, but far less noble.
the boy swallows rocks to weigh himself down in the river, to get close to the fish. i'm sitting on the bank watching and knowing he's just thinking, saying outloud even, listing:
-i like this. and this. i like this. i LIKE this.
curves and aging. my birds call out to me in the morning,
-darling foolish lonely girl.
a horse and cowboy fall down my arm from a great distance. and i find it all to be charming, writing endless odes to young men with saddlebags and cigarettes.
shooting myself in the foot like the old drunk indian who came around to o c culver's door. he'd literally shot himself in the foot, and was looking for my great-grandfather.
pounding on the front door and calling,
-whitey culver!!!!!
my grandmother and great aunt, little girls, looked through the window and shouted to him,
-he's next door!
and he promptly went around to the back door of their house and shouted,
-whitey culver!!!!!
i tell my mother i wish i'd known him. o c, whitey culver.
-he'd have come up with some ridiculous nickname for you.
-god, i wish someone would.
.
Friday, January 13, 2006
i lose interest about every four days, but then it comes reeling back on threads, little beads of glass that keep time, clicking, tapping against each other. blue. and suddenly-- in a stilted fashion, i'm making declarations again, resolutions. narrating in a coat in the dark dry cold, in a place that never sees fog or water. yelling at the sidewalk. it won't listen, and i'm left with waldemar the fish dancing up and down in a bowl on the kitchen table.
pretty, though.
the dance of successful foragers. having yet to learn it. i laugh at it, amazed, tracing a bird's wing out of an ornithology book. wanting to send off telegrams, packages, letters that only read,
-start- you knew and why didn't you tell me. -stop-
-i'd dance with you
i'd like to say, but i don't, instead i stay quiet
and listen to the little kid in front of me on the plane, who's whimpering:
-iiiiii dooont liiike biiiig aiiirplaaaaaaanes i liiike smaaaaallll aiiirrrrplaaaaanes......
and it takes him about five minutes to get through all of this. i feel awful, but by the end of the flight he's fine, standing up on the seat (he's about three) and pulling the shade up and down, up and down, making the miniature world appear and disappear in a flash of dirty opaque plastic. his name is jack, which is darling.
i focus on reading my book, which, as it turns out, is lovely, if a little bit pornographic.
who knew.
on the bus from the airport, we head into mad max territory, where they're extending the dump. cutting down trees, clearing all the way to the river. the prairie dog burrows look forlorn, vacated. we roll along slowly. heavy. there's a dead coyote on the side of the road, big, the size of a dog. ruffed up.
at home in colorado, things are endless. cold on walks, alone and warm in the house, clinging to happy nonsense. they're baffled. i'm baffled. little animal with curved hands. useless aging thing.
.
pretty, though.
the dance of successful foragers. having yet to learn it. i laugh at it, amazed, tracing a bird's wing out of an ornithology book. wanting to send off telegrams, packages, letters that only read,
-start- you knew and why didn't you tell me. -stop-
-i'd dance with you
i'd like to say, but i don't, instead i stay quiet
and listen to the little kid in front of me on the plane, who's whimpering:
-iiiiii dooont liiike biiiig aiiirplaaaaaaanes i liiike smaaaaallll aiiirrrrplaaaaanes......
and it takes him about five minutes to get through all of this. i feel awful, but by the end of the flight he's fine, standing up on the seat (he's about three) and pulling the shade up and down, up and down, making the miniature world appear and disappear in a flash of dirty opaque plastic. his name is jack, which is darling.
i focus on reading my book, which, as it turns out, is lovely, if a little bit pornographic.
who knew.
on the bus from the airport, we head into mad max territory, where they're extending the dump. cutting down trees, clearing all the way to the river. the prairie dog burrows look forlorn, vacated. we roll along slowly. heavy. there's a dead coyote on the side of the road, big, the size of a dog. ruffed up.
at home in colorado, things are endless. cold on walks, alone and warm in the house, clinging to happy nonsense. they're baffled. i'm baffled. little animal with curved hands. useless aging thing.
.
Tuesday, January 10, 2006
how we pull it off-- we don't. bacchus. and kudzu. and i fall down at every turn. dream of arguments, movement. dream of pointing to something nonexistent and then running away. i wish i could do this in real life. because damn. damn.
to hide in my house with 500 books from the library free shelf.
in the garden, i fall into dirt paths. trip along green highways, fondly hit the pendula trees on the trunk, stare down the coral tree. my birds nest in a hollow branch. they're nesting in winter, which is risky, impossible. if i could live in the garden- with that green vegetal stench- if i could climb trees well-
h's look like little herd animals
so here we have:
h h h h h <--- a herd of little animals
the pocketwatch i find in my top drawer is broken, and sort of plastic-looking, but it is a pocketwatch, in there with old notes from elementary school friends that read, "i am bored. this is boring. are you bored? this class is so boring."
and if we could keep all this intact, like thin green branches. if anyone ever laughed fondly. if i could run, arms ready, straight up a tree, and find it to be further from the ground. well.
.
to hide in my house with 500 books from the library free shelf.
in the garden, i fall into dirt paths. trip along green highways, fondly hit the pendula trees on the trunk, stare down the coral tree. my birds nest in a hollow branch. they're nesting in winter, which is risky, impossible. if i could live in the garden- with that green vegetal stench- if i could climb trees well-
h's look like little herd animals
so here we have:
h h h h h <--- a herd of little animals
the pocketwatch i find in my top drawer is broken, and sort of plastic-looking, but it is a pocketwatch, in there with old notes from elementary school friends that read, "i am bored. this is boring. are you bored? this class is so boring."
and if we could keep all this intact, like thin green branches. if anyone ever laughed fondly. if i could run, arms ready, straight up a tree, and find it to be further from the ground. well.
.
Friday, January 06, 2006
locking the horse after the barn was stolen.
locking the...
i yell, roll over, yell again. vicious. i’m on the floor of the wayback, wondering.
the stars are ringing, trains pass and howl and remember when i used to write about them. the fruit trees moan, new favorites. beautiful. stars, overripe. i rob half-built houses at night, but have no ether-bound company to speak of.
.
locking the...
i yell, roll over, yell again. vicious. i’m on the floor of the wayback, wondering.
the stars are ringing, trains pass and howl and remember when i used to write about them. the fruit trees moan, new favorites. beautiful. stars, overripe. i rob half-built houses at night, but have no ether-bound company to speak of.
.
Thursday, January 05, 2006
-i know. that's because it's so stupid.
you walk with the motion of not wanting to get caught up in strings, like perpetually playing cat's cradle with your feet. it's bothersome, elegant.
-dance lessons, that was?
you wander downtown and lose your sheep. i draw a circus across both hands.
the roses fall apart on the counter. the room's cut apart in the night by some shaft of light under the door. we clear the grounds, sweep up after the animals.
he gets the carrot cake.
i'm sitting at the table in boulder with a glass of whiskey. i'm drawing a dog in a snowglobe, and listening to these tiny sounds of another city coming over the rotary.
other times, from other places, i hear the TV on. i hear rain, water. cars passing. hear the lights go out. the fire's still going, and i write an ode.
.
you walk with the motion of not wanting to get caught up in strings, like perpetually playing cat's cradle with your feet. it's bothersome, elegant.
-dance lessons, that was?
you wander downtown and lose your sheep. i draw a circus across both hands.
the roses fall apart on the counter. the room's cut apart in the night by some shaft of light under the door. we clear the grounds, sweep up after the animals.
he gets the carrot cake.
i'm sitting at the table in boulder with a glass of whiskey. i'm drawing a dog in a snowglobe, and listening to these tiny sounds of another city coming over the rotary.
other times, from other places, i hear the TV on. i hear rain, water. cars passing. hear the lights go out. the fire's still going, and i write an ode.
.
Friday, December 30, 2005
i don’t either, frankly, but that’s different.
-let’s catch that egyptian stray and make a lot of money.
paper bird,
she says,
i am going to make you so fucking rich. run to the top of that hill without stopping, and i’ll give you sixty-five dollars.
but it’s too steep. and he collapses, somewhat comically.
in a cabinet of folding paper, i am an absolute tyrant. bedding down in maps. i guess
we're reeling in some giant metal thing on wheels-- through pouring rain, nothing but glass, lights, and shining.
i could cut your hair and make you
fantastic. all pale and woeful. i— what, clean up the kitchen? it’s three in the morning, suddenly, but he doesn’t wake up, even when i drop the short glass of whiskey, which is slowly filling the room with a drunken smell.
meticulous hours spent building tiny foliage cities to make these things think they’re back where they should be. a full car ashtray and cymbals under my feet. a bruise on my face from a big black swing i won’t notice until a few weeks later, when i see what horrible shape it’s taking.
this isn’t a sweet mystery. so in the end, no.
no, no, no.
there are five of us on the balcony. i reach in my pocket and find a book of matches with a photograph of a reclining blue nude on one side and a photograph of a cut apple on the other. i find the matches in my pocket, but no pocketwatch, because i don’t own one.
he reaches in his coat pocket for a light, and instead finds a flapping red bird, which flies away.
his friend reaches in his pocket for a flapping red bird and finds my pocketwatch.
the girl has no pockets, but reaches in her purse and finds a silver pistol with a jammed trigger. the last one reaches in his pocket and finds a tiny orchestra playing his favorite song.
i go home and watch the rodeo with the sound off.
this big, ugly yellow bull, turns and reels and throws goddamn everyone. but no one finds this charming, because we’re not civilized enough.
but you are all, still, across flat distances, so, so darling.
.
-let’s catch that egyptian stray and make a lot of money.
paper bird,
she says,
i am going to make you so fucking rich. run to the top of that hill without stopping, and i’ll give you sixty-five dollars.
but it’s too steep. and he collapses, somewhat comically.
in a cabinet of folding paper, i am an absolute tyrant. bedding down in maps. i guess
we're reeling in some giant metal thing on wheels-- through pouring rain, nothing but glass, lights, and shining.
i could cut your hair and make you
fantastic. all pale and woeful. i— what, clean up the kitchen? it’s three in the morning, suddenly, but he doesn’t wake up, even when i drop the short glass of whiskey, which is slowly filling the room with a drunken smell.
meticulous hours spent building tiny foliage cities to make these things think they’re back where they should be. a full car ashtray and cymbals under my feet. a bruise on my face from a big black swing i won’t notice until a few weeks later, when i see what horrible shape it’s taking.
this isn’t a sweet mystery. so in the end, no.
no, no, no.
there are five of us on the balcony. i reach in my pocket and find a book of matches with a photograph of a reclining blue nude on one side and a photograph of a cut apple on the other. i find the matches in my pocket, but no pocketwatch, because i don’t own one.
he reaches in his coat pocket for a light, and instead finds a flapping red bird, which flies away.
his friend reaches in his pocket for a flapping red bird and finds my pocketwatch.
the girl has no pockets, but reaches in her purse and finds a silver pistol with a jammed trigger. the last one reaches in his pocket and finds a tiny orchestra playing his favorite song.
i go home and watch the rodeo with the sound off.
this big, ugly yellow bull, turns and reels and throws goddamn everyone. but no one finds this charming, because we’re not civilized enough.
but you are all, still, across flat distances, so, so darling.
.
Monday, December 26, 2005
and awaaay we go.
with that hot noise of rodeos, circuses, few lights, three parakeets and a parrot.
.
with that hot noise of rodeos, circuses, few lights, three parakeets and a parrot.
.
Saturday, December 10, 2005
with bells
you wish for some kind of accolade, but i wonder, suddenly, if this is what it is. if this actually is the prize, the way to do things. with dark hair and good, easy humor. with a thick smell of butter and smoke, with a thin blue volume with gold lettering that reads:
Refresher Shorthand Naval Terminology.
ripping off, like charles olson, like creeley with his goddamn amazing.....dark hair.
the difference between the belt around your waist and the belt you give someone up the side of the head is fascinating, and makes for three hours of conversation.
-one holds your pants up.
-the other leaves a mark.
-they can both leave a mark.
-oh SHIT, you're right.
outside of the show, a kid with wire-rimmed glasses asks one of them for a cigarette.
-of course,
he says, fishing one out of a coat pocket.
-thanks.
the kid says, and then stands with us awkwardly.
-you don't have to stay and talk to us, you know, it's okay.
i say, and he leaves. the kids i'm with laugh as if i've done something awful, but i know i've done us all a favor.
the inability to make a snowball may be akin to the inability to fog up the glass of an ice cream display case with your breath--
-way to breathe, no breath.
and should, possibly, be similarly terrifying
-odd..
but
this place is populated with birds-- kingfishers that chatter like the owls in the forest in wizard of oz (i do believe in spooks, i do i do i do believe in spooks). the occasional little nameless black songbird that, amazingly, dives into the freezing river water and pops up a few seconds later a few feet away. i think for a moment that my eyes are fooling me, as they have been lately, but then i see a guy in a stocking cap on the river bank, and he's seen it too and gives me a what-the-hell grin,
-what the HELL
grin
.
you wish for some kind of accolade, but i wonder, suddenly, if this is what it is. if this actually is the prize, the way to do things. with dark hair and good, easy humor. with a thick smell of butter and smoke, with a thin blue volume with gold lettering that reads:
Refresher Shorthand Naval Terminology.
ripping off, like charles olson, like creeley with his goddamn amazing.....dark hair.
the difference between the belt around your waist and the belt you give someone up the side of the head is fascinating, and makes for three hours of conversation.
-one holds your pants up.
-the other leaves a mark.
-they can both leave a mark.
-oh SHIT, you're right.
outside of the show, a kid with wire-rimmed glasses asks one of them for a cigarette.
-of course,
he says, fishing one out of a coat pocket.
-thanks.
the kid says, and then stands with us awkwardly.
-you don't have to stay and talk to us, you know, it's okay.
i say, and he leaves. the kids i'm with laugh as if i've done something awful, but i know i've done us all a favor.
the inability to make a snowball may be akin to the inability to fog up the glass of an ice cream display case with your breath--
-way to breathe, no breath.
and should, possibly, be similarly terrifying
-odd..
but
this place is populated with birds-- kingfishers that chatter like the owls in the forest in wizard of oz (i do believe in spooks, i do i do i do believe in spooks). the occasional little nameless black songbird that, amazingly, dives into the freezing river water and pops up a few seconds later a few feet away. i think for a moment that my eyes are fooling me, as they have been lately, but then i see a guy in a stocking cap on the river bank, and he's seen it too and gives me a what-the-hell grin,
-what the HELL
grin
.
Friday, December 09, 2005
then suddenly i feel quite fond of cold weather. gray snow leveled over white. the front door of the cafe closed, locked, with a pretty little sign saying:
PLEASE USE SIDE DOOR.
why did you. if winter arrived in the space of two days, with trees bent double in the wind, with brutal tribes of kudzu shouting—
well.
two sets down. trees, useless, with old juggling pins and the northern pole, with frozen hands.
meteorites miss their targets.
birds don't come when not fed.
trees bend like ships, thrown.
oh hell, kid.
and my granddad says,
-tell ellen. i'll buy her a shotgun if she wants one.
and.
dusk meetings in tiny offices crammed with eighty five books of the same title. i have no questions for you, but i'd like, if i could, to just sit here, among your strange, underpaid objects.
-do you....ever write.....fiction....
and it's not a question. it just trails off.
-how the HELL do you make a snowball??
he shouts as yet another one leaves his hand only to turn into powder before it even hits the kid.
-HOW.
(well. you don't, apparently.)
creation's formed with microscopic fishing line. pulling cells back together from the brink of chaos with the sorry promise of flight. and, with the clicking voice of the rotary phone,
is there such a thing as forgiving too much.
.
PLEASE USE SIDE DOOR.
why did you. if winter arrived in the space of two days, with trees bent double in the wind, with brutal tribes of kudzu shouting—
well.
two sets down. trees, useless, with old juggling pins and the northern pole, with frozen hands.
meteorites miss their targets.
birds don't come when not fed.
trees bend like ships, thrown.
oh hell, kid.
and my granddad says,
-tell ellen. i'll buy her a shotgun if she wants one.
and.
dusk meetings in tiny offices crammed with eighty five books of the same title. i have no questions for you, but i'd like, if i could, to just sit here, among your strange, underpaid objects.
-do you....ever write.....fiction....
and it's not a question. it just trails off.
-how the HELL do you make a snowball??
he shouts as yet another one leaves his hand only to turn into powder before it even hits the kid.
-HOW.
(well. you don't, apparently.)
creation's formed with microscopic fishing line. pulling cells back together from the brink of chaos with the sorry promise of flight. and, with the clicking voice of the rotary phone,
is there such a thing as forgiving too much.
.
Wednesday, November 30, 2005
dressed up like a doll.
dark loves roses. and roses love jail.
up on a mountain in new mexico, we familiarize ourselves with shotguns. double-barrel.
shouting,
-PULL.
and clay pigeons shatter. my mom and i are good.
-catch up, pass it, and shoot.
the man says.
-it's just like playing pool. with a gun.
this is winter, with smashed clay falling out of blue sky, with worn out leather and drinking in the afternoon. we talk to the bartender and he says,
-yeah. it's good to know a person in a town.
and i agree. it is good to know a person in a town.
.
dark loves roses. and roses love jail.
up on a mountain in new mexico, we familiarize ourselves with shotguns. double-barrel.
shouting,
-PULL.
and clay pigeons shatter. my mom and i are good.
-catch up, pass it, and shoot.
the man says.
-it's just like playing pool. with a gun.
this is winter, with smashed clay falling out of blue sky, with worn out leather and drinking in the afternoon. we talk to the bartender and he says,
-yeah. it's good to know a person in a town.
and i agree. it is good to know a person in a town.
.
Tuesday, November 29, 2005
-once you go through something like that with a person......you never want to see that person again.
.
.
Tuesday, November 22, 2005
oh, consuming.
they catch a picture of me yawning, stretched out like a little kid. yawned, young.
gravity returns in drifts, pulling down, down, down. like a mingling trail of light. only there when you think of it, and how you're attached to the pavement, to the grass.
-this place is awful.
i say. everything slightly off but slightly lovely. wood and glass barometers. wanting to go home. broken apart on re-entry. shaking against the window.
-lean AWAY from it, you'll be less cold.
everything's tapping, singing, vibrating. odd. what animals do in winter. how swallows hibernate in mud when things freeze. or else migrate to the moon. or else turn into eagles.
samson rends the lion in two, then returns hours later to find honeybees living inside the still-warm carcass. he pulls out the honey and brings it to his parents. he doesn't tell them where it came from, but says,
-the sweetest thing in the world. the strongest thing in the world.
and so on.
.
they catch a picture of me yawning, stretched out like a little kid. yawned, young.
gravity returns in drifts, pulling down, down, down. like a mingling trail of light. only there when you think of it, and how you're attached to the pavement, to the grass.
-this place is awful.
i say. everything slightly off but slightly lovely. wood and glass barometers. wanting to go home. broken apart on re-entry. shaking against the window.
-lean AWAY from it, you'll be less cold.
everything's tapping, singing, vibrating. odd. what animals do in winter. how swallows hibernate in mud when things freeze. or else migrate to the moon. or else turn into eagles.
samson rends the lion in two, then returns hours later to find honeybees living inside the still-warm carcass. he pulls out the honey and brings it to his parents. he doesn't tell them where it came from, but says,
-the sweetest thing in the world. the strongest thing in the world.
and so on.
.
Sunday, November 20, 2005
i shout at them at the bar, calm, but loud, face undoubtedly flushed.
-IT IS HUMAN AND THAT'S WHAT'S SO SCARY ABOUT IT.
and the stars pop and go out above us, leaving behind a little ghost trail of retinal light. the star charts are useless now, but they're still beautiful.
on the walk home, i screen the call, only to find that the one who is human and scary is driving slowly right behind me.
this is turning into an afterschool special.
-jesus, hey. you're....right there.
-let me give you a ride.
yeah....ay.
a wheeling, bending, dark loss.
red horses, a talisman in a back pocket. endless, terrifying variation.
.
-IT IS HUMAN AND THAT'S WHAT'S SO SCARY ABOUT IT.
and the stars pop and go out above us, leaving behind a little ghost trail of retinal light. the star charts are useless now, but they're still beautiful.
on the walk home, i screen the call, only to find that the one who is human and scary is driving slowly right behind me.
this is turning into an afterschool special.
-jesus, hey. you're....right there.
-let me give you a ride.
yeah....ay.
a wheeling, bending, dark loss.
red horses, a talisman in a back pocket. endless, terrifying variation.
.
Friday, November 18, 2005
run a mile to see him smile
imagine if you could fly. just jump up off the sidewalk and dip, wheel. really get to know trees and rooftops. god, that would be great. i'm five, i know.
colored ash, like soot, but red, yellow, green. spread around the garden with rakes. little piles of color.
being fast is important to little kids. i see an eight-year old boy racing his older sister? baby sitter? up and down the shuffle board court. he’s kind of slow, actually. i’d be ashamed if my children were slow.
hobos......tugboat captains....window washers....nazis...arsonists.....
i don’t care. (even though i do.) mostly because of this line:
me: don’t you love it that there’s a subversive bookstore under the body shop?
him: yeah. the revolution will smell wonderful.
.
imagine if you could fly. just jump up off the sidewalk and dip, wheel. really get to know trees and rooftops. god, that would be great. i'm five, i know.
colored ash, like soot, but red, yellow, green. spread around the garden with rakes. little piles of color.
being fast is important to little kids. i see an eight-year old boy racing his older sister? baby sitter? up and down the shuffle board court. he’s kind of slow, actually. i’d be ashamed if my children were slow.
hobos......tugboat captains....window washers....nazis...arsonists.....
i don’t care. (even though i do.) mostly because of this line:
me: don’t you love it that there’s a subversive bookstore under the body shop?
him: yeah. the revolution will smell wonderful.
.
Thursday, November 17, 2005
oh hell.
.
.
Wednesday, November 16, 2005
drinking bogle out of the bottle.
i'm thinking of 65 kids playing the same stilted song on 65 recorders.
-look, they come apart!
-that's so you can clean them.
-...
-...
-eww.
years later, all that's left of mine is the tuneless third piece. the part that's fluted like a trumpet. every once in a while i get it out and handle it. pretend it's some kind of musical bone.
my shoes are worn nearly in half, so i'm basically walking around in stocking feet. the snow slips into them on the sides. they're so far gone that at the airport security doesn't make me take them off.
-god, they don't even have heels. just walk on through.
i go buy a new pair of shoes. throw out the box and change into them at the bus station. singing
-won't you be....please won't you be....my...neighbor.
at home, my actual neighbor is standing on the porch swing singing,
-heeeey good lookin.....whaaatcha got cookin.....
and. kid, kid, kid.... i think about lying and telling him i had a dream in which he joined the army and shaved his head.
-kinda short on the sides, longer and sticking up at the top in the back. it was cute.
(so you should let me do that for you. i fake-dreamed it. it's been decreed.)
long now, brown, mixing into beard. like an apostle, which is why i thought his name was paul for three months before he told me otherwise.
up the street a man is shoveling snow off his roof.
a voice like a train whistle. long, musical over snow distances.
hoooooo.
-well i care for you.....and that's all i wanna...do.
professionally. want to love you professionally. but you wouldn't have to pay me or anything. that would be illegal.
.
i'm thinking of 65 kids playing the same stilted song on 65 recorders.
-look, they come apart!
-that's so you can clean them.
-...
-...
-eww.
years later, all that's left of mine is the tuneless third piece. the part that's fluted like a trumpet. every once in a while i get it out and handle it. pretend it's some kind of musical bone.
my shoes are worn nearly in half, so i'm basically walking around in stocking feet. the snow slips into them on the sides. they're so far gone that at the airport security doesn't make me take them off.
-god, they don't even have heels. just walk on through.
i go buy a new pair of shoes. throw out the box and change into them at the bus station. singing
-won't you be....please won't you be....my...neighbor.
at home, my actual neighbor is standing on the porch swing singing,
-heeeey good lookin.....whaaatcha got cookin.....
and. kid, kid, kid.... i think about lying and telling him i had a dream in which he joined the army and shaved his head.
-kinda short on the sides, longer and sticking up at the top in the back. it was cute.
(so you should let me do that for you. i fake-dreamed it. it's been decreed.)
long now, brown, mixing into beard. like an apostle, which is why i thought his name was paul for three months before he told me otherwise.
up the street a man is shoveling snow off his roof.
a voice like a train whistle. long, musical over snow distances.
hoooooo.
-well i care for you.....and that's all i wanna...do.
professionally. want to love you professionally. but you wouldn't have to pay me or anything. that would be illegal.
.
Wednesday, November 09, 2005
the shouting calm..
...
This Room
John Ashbery
The room I entered was a dream of this room.
Surely all those feet on the sofa were mine.
The oval portrait
of a dog was me at an early age.
Something shimmers, something is hushed up.
We had macaroni for lunch every day
except Sunday, when a small quail was induced
to be served to us. Why do I tell you these things?
You are not even here.
...
vices
built in the philippines.
turned against one another. if the drift- of smoke- down a highway- on stilts.
ah.
.
do it yourself.
how to meet on an ocean liner
how to achieve a decent level of intoxication on an airplane (can also be applied to train travel)
how to get blood out of an oriental carpet
how to be henry james' grandaughter
how to meet freud's grandson as a middle aged man
how to smuggle birds out of a third world country
how to catch the hoatzin (the leaf-eating "bird with hands")
how to bake a layer cake without an oven or any other source of heat
how to publish a book no one, not even your own mother, will glance at, let alone read
how to trip while standing still
how to drown in an inch and a half of water
how to fall over a dog
how to literally have the book thrown at you
how to spell in french
how to die in french
how to throw your voice
how to throw your brother's voice
how to make a coat out of your own hair
how to make a car run on hammers
how to start a fire in a closet
how to make shoes out of materials in your own house
how to wear hats in a dashing manner
how to lack classily
how to see through time without getting your feet wet
how to have a love affair with a vacant lot
how to survive on chaff alone
how to imagine a cup of tea
how to make wine out of vinegar, honey, and a page from an encyclopedia
how to catch a fish
how to drown a tree
how to dance upstairs
how to seem english
how to seem alive
.
and....scene.
.
...
This Room
John Ashbery
The room I entered was a dream of this room.
Surely all those feet on the sofa were mine.
The oval portrait
of a dog was me at an early age.
Something shimmers, something is hushed up.
We had macaroni for lunch every day
except Sunday, when a small quail was induced
to be served to us. Why do I tell you these things?
You are not even here.
...
vices
built in the philippines.
turned against one another. if the drift- of smoke- down a highway- on stilts.
ah.
.
do it yourself.
how to meet on an ocean liner
how to achieve a decent level of intoxication on an airplane (can also be applied to train travel)
how to get blood out of an oriental carpet
how to be henry james' grandaughter
how to meet freud's grandson as a middle aged man
how to smuggle birds out of a third world country
how to catch the hoatzin (the leaf-eating "bird with hands")
how to bake a layer cake without an oven or any other source of heat
how to publish a book no one, not even your own mother, will glance at, let alone read
how to trip while standing still
how to drown in an inch and a half of water
how to fall over a dog
how to literally have the book thrown at you
how to spell in french
how to die in french
how to throw your voice
how to throw your brother's voice
how to make a coat out of your own hair
how to make a car run on hammers
how to start a fire in a closet
how to make shoes out of materials in your own house
how to wear hats in a dashing manner
how to lack classily
how to see through time without getting your feet wet
how to have a love affair with a vacant lot
how to survive on chaff alone
how to imagine a cup of tea
how to make wine out of vinegar, honey, and a page from an encyclopedia
how to catch a fish
how to drown a tree
how to dance upstairs
how to seem english
how to seem alive
.
and....scene.
.
Wednesday, November 02, 2005
i have souza's marches in my head. this makes it very difficult to get through the day in a normal fashion.
as you were.
.
as you were.
.
Friday, October 28, 2005
if the snow buries my neighborhood.
i swear in front of children when asking them what they’re going to be for halloween. as in,
-oh holy shit, jonah, that’s damn cool.
i buy a “great bird styrofoam glider” and the instructions read:
THE MORE YOU EXERT YOURSELF TO THROW.
THE HIGHER IT FLIES,
(AND THE STRONGER YOU WILL BE.)
they go to work in costume. he’s the emperor of ice cream, despite the fact that he’s not well-read. (it was her idea.) she’s ophelia, but she regrets it, thinking maybe she’s drawing too much attention to herself. after awhile she just starts telling customers she’s a princess. he takes a kingly walk out. limping, ambling to buy cigarettes, crown in tow.
beware beware. his flashing eyes his floating hair. milk of paradise. all that.
-look at your little blue earrings against your little blonde head.
-i have a little head?
-no. i was just….trying to be endearing.
-doesn’t fit you.
my ducks are back in the river. the widgeons, the mallards. i’m not afraid of pandemics. bring them bread in the winter. the ducks, not the pandemics.
it’ll be fine.
.
i swear in front of children when asking them what they’re going to be for halloween. as in,
-oh holy shit, jonah, that’s damn cool.
i buy a “great bird styrofoam glider” and the instructions read:
THE MORE YOU EXERT YOURSELF TO THROW.
THE HIGHER IT FLIES,
(AND THE STRONGER YOU WILL BE.)
they go to work in costume. he’s the emperor of ice cream, despite the fact that he’s not well-read. (it was her idea.) she’s ophelia, but she regrets it, thinking maybe she’s drawing too much attention to herself. after awhile she just starts telling customers she’s a princess. he takes a kingly walk out. limping, ambling to buy cigarettes, crown in tow.
beware beware. his flashing eyes his floating hair. milk of paradise. all that.
-look at your little blue earrings against your little blonde head.
-i have a little head?
-no. i was just….trying to be endearing.
-doesn’t fit you.
my ducks are back in the river. the widgeons, the mallards. i’m not afraid of pandemics. bring them bread in the winter. the ducks, not the pandemics.
it’ll be fine.
.
Wednesday, October 26, 2005
peloria.
i trip trying to jump up onto a marble bench in the park. bust the hell out of my knee.
-that's the alcohol for you.
greg says loudly.
-i'm not drunk.
i say.
-i know. i'm just trying to make you look like less of an idiot.
.
low tide after a veritable tidal wave. in the morning there's nothing left in me but smashed trees, flopping silver and gold fish on rocks and sand. i look and am exhausted. dark circles. a penniless face.
i forget the code to the laundry door and get a neighbor to open it for me. it's three in the morning, cold. i've dried things i shouldn't dry.
-damn it.
nothing fits.
the crows on the rooftop are having a war. calling against blue.
the dog finally likes me. we've made great strides. on the porch, talking about miniature people.
.
i trip trying to jump up onto a marble bench in the park. bust the hell out of my knee.
-that's the alcohol for you.
greg says loudly.
-i'm not drunk.
i say.
-i know. i'm just trying to make you look like less of an idiot.
.
low tide after a veritable tidal wave. in the morning there's nothing left in me but smashed trees, flopping silver and gold fish on rocks and sand. i look and am exhausted. dark circles. a penniless face.
i forget the code to the laundry door and get a neighbor to open it for me. it's three in the morning, cold. i've dried things i shouldn't dry.
-damn it.
nothing fits.
the crows on the rooftop are having a war. calling against blue.
the dog finally likes me. we've made great strides. on the porch, talking about miniature people.
.
Friday, October 21, 2005
-your fingerprints are just like snowflakes. they're both very pretty.
in the cemetery, a yellow dog turns black.
i'm leaning against a broken tombstone that reads "IN DEATH. IS GAIN."
and i don't know what that means.
a group of people near me starts singing a funeral dirge. i watch them. black dresses, black hats. i didn't even know this graveyard was open anymore.
.
NOTES FROM BLUE BOOKS #s 2 & 3.
.
a bread shop with big block dark wood tables,
rough-hewn. smoothed dark chairs, chandeliers, cheese,
meat, oil. glass and lettering and the dayfade
outside.
damn.
i could work here. i could live here.
.
the best thing in the world.
.
nightmare-drawn and off
better when it comes in and lies down with a comic
stretch out of fingers and toes
and suddenly it's light in an epileptic flash
we cannot avoid it as much as we WOULD like
and everything's moving against everything else
.
you talk as if in your sleep
so drift, kid, and call me from the payphone outside
the building you're dreaming of
bigger than the tawny ocean
a knife stuck in the table
and it'll stay there
sugar spilled on the floor
the kid barefoot
aton/etan
and tiny footprints across the chalkboard.
do you know where tunisia is
can you find it
on a map?
point him toward the sky and he'll be fine. that mute
who talks in his sleep.
there's a young woman with a dark baby and a bald
husband. i'm watching them through the window, over
brooches of brown and white. they're looking at
jewelry. it's light inside, dark out.
a little kid in a cowboy outfit dry heave sobbing
black hat, black boots
a chest of drawers and blue butterflies
i had to kiss to leave a mark on the table (where the
knife is still sticking up, stuck in)
i changed my mind and don't want to give you anything
pocketwatch love of all
drips of ink on my palm that weld their way into the
creases and brimming, make a galaxy of ink in milk,
blotches of stars and constellations on my hand.
how do animals move
a crack of the whip
i really shouldn't have
pilots, horses and heroes
the tinny sequel shouts down a heavenly hole
and discovers that she can become a tall wheel or a
small window
with pantheon the dog trying to bite her
ambush- trying to hear. lying in bed at every age-
listening to nothing welling into loud loud deafening
emptiness.
the empire trolling for microscopic life and kingly
shoes
imperial
it stops me in the hall and says
"excuse me, miss
if you could, miss.
please
place him outside the door."
.
in the cemetery, a yellow dog turns black.
i'm leaning against a broken tombstone that reads "IN DEATH. IS GAIN."
and i don't know what that means.
a group of people near me starts singing a funeral dirge. i watch them. black dresses, black hats. i didn't even know this graveyard was open anymore.
.
NOTES FROM BLUE BOOKS #s 2 & 3.
.
a bread shop with big block dark wood tables,
rough-hewn. smoothed dark chairs, chandeliers, cheese,
meat, oil. glass and lettering and the dayfade
outside.
damn.
i could work here. i could live here.
.
the best thing in the world.
.
nightmare-drawn and off
better when it comes in and lies down with a comic
stretch out of fingers and toes
and suddenly it's light in an epileptic flash
we cannot avoid it as much as we WOULD like
and everything's moving against everything else
.
you talk as if in your sleep
so drift, kid, and call me from the payphone outside
the building you're dreaming of
bigger than the tawny ocean
a knife stuck in the table
and it'll stay there
sugar spilled on the floor
the kid barefoot
aton/etan
and tiny footprints across the chalkboard.
do you know where tunisia is
can you find it
on a map?
point him toward the sky and he'll be fine. that mute
who talks in his sleep.
there's a young woman with a dark baby and a bald
husband. i'm watching them through the window, over
brooches of brown and white. they're looking at
jewelry. it's light inside, dark out.
a little kid in a cowboy outfit dry heave sobbing
black hat, black boots
a chest of drawers and blue butterflies
i had to kiss to leave a mark on the table (where the
knife is still sticking up, stuck in)
i changed my mind and don't want to give you anything
pocketwatch love of all
drips of ink on my palm that weld their way into the
creases and brimming, make a galaxy of ink in milk,
blotches of stars and constellations on my hand.
how do animals move
a crack of the whip
i really shouldn't have
pilots, horses and heroes
the tinny sequel shouts down a heavenly hole
and discovers that she can become a tall wheel or a
small window
with pantheon the dog trying to bite her
ambush- trying to hear. lying in bed at every age-
listening to nothing welling into loud loud deafening
emptiness.
the empire trolling for microscopic life and kingly
shoes
imperial
it stops me in the hall and says
"excuse me, miss
if you could, miss.
please
place him outside the door."
.
Thursday, October 06, 2005
-you know, joining the army's a good way to get a free ride to college. except for that whole joining-the-fucking-army thing.
in the natural history museum, yazhin and i are looking at giant south american pine cones in a glass case. yazhin is a colombian who grew up in new york. his parents named him after a russian soccer player. he's in the US army. we're looking at these pine cones, and he turns to me and says,
-jesus, everything foreign is so weird.
.
in the natural history museum, yazhin and i are looking at giant south american pine cones in a glass case. yazhin is a colombian who grew up in new york. his parents named him after a russian soccer player. he's in the US army. we're looking at these pine cones, and he turns to me and says,
-jesus, everything foreign is so weird.
.
Thursday, September 29, 2005
do we double-knot our shoelaces with good reason?
he died on fire island. run over by a dune buggy. drunk and hilarious. he didn’t want to get old.
i pass some bushes, under which a pile of white plastic tubing is lying. in the center of the pile, a water-stained manual is lying open, abandoned. the project didn’t work out.
-damn it, this is exactly what happened with the time machine!
we are endless. she has names for his children (they are an indulgence he allows her) but she has difficulty christening the parakeets.
they lean out the windows and watch the elephant parade wind by. soft feet flatten against the pavement. sad, warm, gray. intelligent feet.
…
ever ever ask for more.
kovrin was a monster in a man suit. he was a threadbare coat with several buttons missing. adorned in dust and smoke. a shag of blackish brown hair, the occasional mustache. he’d grown up on the outskirts of albuquerque, new mexico, in his grandmother’s house with his little sister, emily. he would sit and watch the dry smother with oncoming thunder storms. he would feed the dog, the birds, occasionally visit his grandmother’s old holstein who stood dreamily a few paces away from the house. he was a mediocre student, given to reading film magazines and sketching airplanes on his desk with a pocketknife. he left home at the age of fifteen to work the bull rings in mexico. he was a man with a permanent air of failure. this was his distinguishing feature- a sweet, sad resignation. that he would never be entirely likeable, entirely successful, or entirely sober. he had accepted these as unequivocal facts.
…
animals hide at night and i take a spin around the block on foot. it seems i’m too old to start dancing.
to leave a dinner party, he jumps from a first-story balcony and runs across two lawns.
white dogs with red ears. gabriel’s ratches, gabriel’s hounds.
an animal of strange or terrifying shape.
he claims i know him, though.
this house-top worship. the kid comes by and grins, behave yourself. snow dinners, but we are gin-hot.
look at you, wapperjawed, dressed up like a weekend matador.
trochal, lazy, mine.
in the cafe i hear a girl say to her friend:
-oh i know all about bastards.
but.
once you succeed
in befriending the hare
he is witty, charming
and debonair.
.
he died on fire island. run over by a dune buggy. drunk and hilarious. he didn’t want to get old.
i pass some bushes, under which a pile of white plastic tubing is lying. in the center of the pile, a water-stained manual is lying open, abandoned. the project didn’t work out.
-damn it, this is exactly what happened with the time machine!
we are endless. she has names for his children (they are an indulgence he allows her) but she has difficulty christening the parakeets.
they lean out the windows and watch the elephant parade wind by. soft feet flatten against the pavement. sad, warm, gray. intelligent feet.
…
ever ever ask for more.
kovrin was a monster in a man suit. he was a threadbare coat with several buttons missing. adorned in dust and smoke. a shag of blackish brown hair, the occasional mustache. he’d grown up on the outskirts of albuquerque, new mexico, in his grandmother’s house with his little sister, emily. he would sit and watch the dry smother with oncoming thunder storms. he would feed the dog, the birds, occasionally visit his grandmother’s old holstein who stood dreamily a few paces away from the house. he was a mediocre student, given to reading film magazines and sketching airplanes on his desk with a pocketknife. he left home at the age of fifteen to work the bull rings in mexico. he was a man with a permanent air of failure. this was his distinguishing feature- a sweet, sad resignation. that he would never be entirely likeable, entirely successful, or entirely sober. he had accepted these as unequivocal facts.
…
animals hide at night and i take a spin around the block on foot. it seems i’m too old to start dancing.
to leave a dinner party, he jumps from a first-story balcony and runs across two lawns.
white dogs with red ears. gabriel’s ratches, gabriel’s hounds.
an animal of strange or terrifying shape.
he claims i know him, though.
this house-top worship. the kid comes by and grins, behave yourself. snow dinners, but we are gin-hot.
look at you, wapperjawed, dressed up like a weekend matador.
trochal, lazy, mine.
in the cafe i hear a girl say to her friend:
-oh i know all about bastards.
but.
once you succeed
in befriending the hare
he is witty, charming
and debonair.
.
Saturday, September 17, 2005
i saw an ant carrying another ant along the sidewalk today-- he was dry, curling, sad.
i hope he was taking him to the doctor.
the king rail is an exquisite bird. its lines, sharp, clean-heavy curves. graphically, its right up my alley. i wish i'd invented the king rail. i wish i'd drawn it on a napkin in a diner and exclaimed outloud, "ladies and gentlemen, i give you the king rail!" i also like the name "king rail."
i'm also a little hungover.
he's a man who feels that dining alone at restaurants is an ordeal. he's in front of me in line, ordering a sandwich.
-would you like a half sandwich or a whole sandwich?
the waitress asks him. he looks at her somewhat blankly.
-a whole sandwich.
as if to say, CLEARLY.
the last time i was here i ordered a sandwich. they didn't ask if i wanted a half or a whole. they decided, without a moment of thought, that i wanted a whole one. an ungodly one, obscene.
i'm waiting to pay for my salad, and seriously considering ordering a glass of wine. i've even gotten my ID out. but an old woman comes to ring me up and i'm paralyzed with guilt.
-anything to drink?
-a small soda.....please.
.
i hope he was taking him to the doctor.
the king rail is an exquisite bird. its lines, sharp, clean-heavy curves. graphically, its right up my alley. i wish i'd invented the king rail. i wish i'd drawn it on a napkin in a diner and exclaimed outloud, "ladies and gentlemen, i give you the king rail!" i also like the name "king rail."
i'm also a little hungover.
he's a man who feels that dining alone at restaurants is an ordeal. he's in front of me in line, ordering a sandwich.
-would you like a half sandwich or a whole sandwich?
the waitress asks him. he looks at her somewhat blankly.
-a whole sandwich.
as if to say, CLEARLY.
the last time i was here i ordered a sandwich. they didn't ask if i wanted a half or a whole. they decided, without a moment of thought, that i wanted a whole one. an ungodly one, obscene.
i'm waiting to pay for my salad, and seriously considering ordering a glass of wine. i've even gotten my ID out. but an old woman comes to ring me up and i'm paralyzed with guilt.
-anything to drink?
-a small soda.....please.
.
Wednesday, September 14, 2005
my teacher in cambridge said there are three things that truly, without a doubt make life worth living- love, religion, and alcohol. i remember thinking, well, you've definitely got one of the three.
but i've thought of others.
i remember reading a theory about the fall of rome that argued that it was largely due to widespread lead poisoning. they were heating red wine in vessels made of lead. oh rome. you so crazy.
don't know what made me think of that.
someone in the crowd smells good, but not like cologne- like a person, warm, uncloying.
i'm walking with laura and i notice her purse- soft fabric, vaguely familiar. i know what it is.
-i like your purse.
i say. and she says,
-oh thanks, mrs. corsini gave it to me.
and i actually know this, because i saw this corsini woman's daughter with the same purse about a year ago. it's my grandmother's purse. the same kind. the same one that sits on my mom's dresser now, with her keys, little containers of unsalted peanuts and mints. she collected useful containers.
walking downtown to meet them, i have all the conversations we're going to have in my head. i know what i want to say, talk it all out before even getting to the bar:
1. i've never been in love.
2. i'm impatient when making toast.
3. the second half of the pasodobles record is better than the first.
4. orson welles and billie holiday had an affair. if they had had a child, it would have been god.
5. i am considering running off with the winner of the zelda fitzgerald emotional maturity award. whether or not this person exists or not remains to be seen, however.
it's cold here, now, for the time being. i think more clearly when everyone else is shivering in CU hoodie sweatshirts and itching to go skiing. i wake up in the morning, my birds unfed, my newspaper sitting dejected on the front porch, and think, ohh, hallelujah, it's COLD. shades of blue, red and gray. ohh fuck. thank god.
.
but i've thought of others.
i remember reading a theory about the fall of rome that argued that it was largely due to widespread lead poisoning. they were heating red wine in vessels made of lead. oh rome. you so crazy.
don't know what made me think of that.
someone in the crowd smells good, but not like cologne- like a person, warm, uncloying.
i'm walking with laura and i notice her purse- soft fabric, vaguely familiar. i know what it is.
-i like your purse.
i say. and she says,
-oh thanks, mrs. corsini gave it to me.
and i actually know this, because i saw this corsini woman's daughter with the same purse about a year ago. it's my grandmother's purse. the same kind. the same one that sits on my mom's dresser now, with her keys, little containers of unsalted peanuts and mints. she collected useful containers.
walking downtown to meet them, i have all the conversations we're going to have in my head. i know what i want to say, talk it all out before even getting to the bar:
1. i've never been in love.
2. i'm impatient when making toast.
3. the second half of the pasodobles record is better than the first.
4. orson welles and billie holiday had an affair. if they had had a child, it would have been god.
5. i am considering running off with the winner of the zelda fitzgerald emotional maturity award. whether or not this person exists or not remains to be seen, however.
it's cold here, now, for the time being. i think more clearly when everyone else is shivering in CU hoodie sweatshirts and itching to go skiing. i wake up in the morning, my birds unfed, my newspaper sitting dejected on the front porch, and think, ohh, hallelujah, it's COLD. shades of blue, red and gray. ohh fuck. thank god.
.
Sunday, August 21, 2005
TV. have the mexicans always been this excitable about soccer? the damn ball's nowhere near the goal and their hearts are in their throats. their hearts are in my throat.
on the porch swing at night. instead of making futile attempts at continuing a conversation i don't particularly feel like having, i rub my eyes to feign some kind of emotional solitude and eventually the kid wanders off. i feel bad, but then again.... whatever.
thoughtful, no....
un monde parfait- it should be an awful song, and yet....yet.....
i'm punishing myself, examining the summer's scars, the bizarre associations i have with little scratches on my arms, bruises on my legs. french techno songs. thinking- that was the durian night, that was the sword-fight night. boston common, mexican restaurant night, one of many when the waitress went from carding the kids endlessly to bringing us glass after glass after glass of sangria.
still have splinter-ridden hands from the fence by the water. from when i wandered off from them, too far along the beach to actually be safe. a guy in a polo shirt materialized out of the sand to ask if i thought "the evening was lovely." i said yes and then ran.
a full moon or a close-to-full moon. i stand and watch it out over the water, and because i'm emotionally stunted the only thing i can think is, "wasn't "jaws" supposed to have taken place here?"
the water's as warm as a bath tub. i'm standing knee-deep in it, alone, down the way from where i can hear laszlo and somebody's mock-fighting fading into the sand and water near the swings.
they're standing, looking at this massive dark thing out in the water. we've all spotted it and are watching it dip in and out, visible, then gone, then there again, then gone. a plastic-metal-wood whale with a lobster trap attached to it, somewhere deep down in the dark water below.
english as a second language. meng says to eduardo:
-i think that's a bouy out there.
but he says it "boy."
and eduardo says,
-yeah, yeah, that's what those are called. it's a bouy.
again, pronouncing it "boy"
greg and i are listening and greg says,
-well shit, should we go help him?
and we laugh. (though greg does actually say "oot" and "aboot," so he's really not one to talk. american english is more legitimate than canadian.)
the worst thing people can make fun of me for is the fact that i get angry at anything and everything.
-if you were a super hero you'd be exclamatory girl.
but that's all over now. boulder, endless, i wonder if anyone will ever tell these kids that they look like dipshits in their baseball caps.
i seriously wonder if i did damage to myself this summer. i don't know what the hell heidegger is talking about and worse, i'm not really bothered by that fact. i'm not the smartest person in the world, to be sure, but i'm certainly not the stupidest.
although.
.
in the shop i'm pawing through paul's most recently discovered book plates.
-monkeys! holy shit, i haven't seen the monkey ones!
and a guy comes in and asks him if he'll trade his picasso for the chagall in the entryway.
-of course, buddy!
and fuckall. here i am haggling over monkey book plates.
.
on the porch swing at night. instead of making futile attempts at continuing a conversation i don't particularly feel like having, i rub my eyes to feign some kind of emotional solitude and eventually the kid wanders off. i feel bad, but then again.... whatever.
thoughtful, no....
un monde parfait- it should be an awful song, and yet....yet.....
i'm punishing myself, examining the summer's scars, the bizarre associations i have with little scratches on my arms, bruises on my legs. french techno songs. thinking- that was the durian night, that was the sword-fight night. boston common, mexican restaurant night, one of many when the waitress went from carding the kids endlessly to bringing us glass after glass after glass of sangria.
still have splinter-ridden hands from the fence by the water. from when i wandered off from them, too far along the beach to actually be safe. a guy in a polo shirt materialized out of the sand to ask if i thought "the evening was lovely." i said yes and then ran.
a full moon or a close-to-full moon. i stand and watch it out over the water, and because i'm emotionally stunted the only thing i can think is, "wasn't "jaws" supposed to have taken place here?"
the water's as warm as a bath tub. i'm standing knee-deep in it, alone, down the way from where i can hear laszlo and somebody's mock-fighting fading into the sand and water near the swings.
they're standing, looking at this massive dark thing out in the water. we've all spotted it and are watching it dip in and out, visible, then gone, then there again, then gone. a plastic-metal-wood whale with a lobster trap attached to it, somewhere deep down in the dark water below.
english as a second language. meng says to eduardo:
-i think that's a bouy out there.
but he says it "boy."
and eduardo says,
-yeah, yeah, that's what those are called. it's a bouy.
again, pronouncing it "boy"
greg and i are listening and greg says,
-well shit, should we go help him?
and we laugh. (though greg does actually say "oot" and "aboot," so he's really not one to talk. american english is more legitimate than canadian.)
the worst thing people can make fun of me for is the fact that i get angry at anything and everything.
-if you were a super hero you'd be exclamatory girl.
but that's all over now. boulder, endless, i wonder if anyone will ever tell these kids that they look like dipshits in their baseball caps.
i seriously wonder if i did damage to myself this summer. i don't know what the hell heidegger is talking about and worse, i'm not really bothered by that fact. i'm not the smartest person in the world, to be sure, but i'm certainly not the stupidest.
although.
.
in the shop i'm pawing through paul's most recently discovered book plates.
-monkeys! holy shit, i haven't seen the monkey ones!
and a guy comes in and asks him if he'll trade his picasso for the chagall in the entryway.
-of course, buddy!
and fuckall. here i am haggling over monkey book plates.
.
Saturday, August 13, 2005
-what does an iraqi bird sound like?
-AAAQUGH!!!
40 roaming stray dogs wandering around china's half-built disneyland, scrawny with ribs sticking out behind fur like an insult.
juan and i are jumping turnstiles, running, and in the back of my mind i'm hoping not to get mowed down like that brazilian in london a few weeks ago. running through the subway is hardly wise. green, green, red, orange. how the hell we get home is beyond me, but we do. later, a ukranian girl and a korean girl come into the room where we're all splayed on the couch. the ukranian girl sets out two bowls of chocolate and says,
-would you like some ukranian chocolates?
and juan's hoarse shouted reply from the couch is,
-serve it up, b'otch!
in chinatown i find durian, this huge green spiked fruit i read about years ago. it has a heavy stink when you cut it open. in southeast asia all the markets reek of it. in england it's illegal to open one on the subway. in the chinese market, near the whole dead ducks and live fish and crabs and mollusks we find it. massive, a ten-pounder. they wrap it in a chinese newspaper and a pink plastic bag. we carry it home on the T and then open it up in the courtyard at night. the smell of it, musk, like an animal, wafts up when we put the knife in and crack it open. these pockets of food, white, like strange meat. we pull out the seeds, like novelty-sized pinto beans, the size of a baby's fist, smooth, alien-looking. eat the fruit around it, wondering at it, slightly sickened. greg and i eat the whole thing, laughing, while meng, who's had it before, tells us that on a scale of one to ten this durian is a four. but he smiles, glad we like it. eduardo sits and watches us with a firm, worried look.
-i think maybe it's bad, ellen.
worried we're poisoned. and frankly, i'm touched that he doesn't want us to die.
-i think it's underripe, if anything, ed.
-that's true. that's true.
we eat the whole thing. feel lighter, realer, after finishing it. laughing.
-holy shit, it IS getting better now that i'm used to it! holy shit. this is GOOD!
digging out from what really looks like a slaughtered armadillo, a monster of god sent to feed us or feed on us. they call it the king of the fruits. the god of the fruits.
temporary tattoos, four of us with the really cool heraldry ones. four of us prouder than the others, who got rainforest animals and butterflies, second and third tier. mine, on my arm, a swirling red and black ribbon with a red gryphon in a crest and a harlequin in red and white on top, holding what looks like a mop.
-no, no, it's a butterfly net.
ahmad says.
from an ancient guild of butterfly-catchers, an old classic family of lepidopterists.
we walk up to the towers at night and meng shouts out the window,
-brazil!!
-what?
-go back to china, bitch!!!
.
-AAAQUGH!!!
40 roaming stray dogs wandering around china's half-built disneyland, scrawny with ribs sticking out behind fur like an insult.
juan and i are jumping turnstiles, running, and in the back of my mind i'm hoping not to get mowed down like that brazilian in london a few weeks ago. running through the subway is hardly wise. green, green, red, orange. how the hell we get home is beyond me, but we do. later, a ukranian girl and a korean girl come into the room where we're all splayed on the couch. the ukranian girl sets out two bowls of chocolate and says,
-would you like some ukranian chocolates?
and juan's hoarse shouted reply from the couch is,
-serve it up, b'otch!
in chinatown i find durian, this huge green spiked fruit i read about years ago. it has a heavy stink when you cut it open. in southeast asia all the markets reek of it. in england it's illegal to open one on the subway. in the chinese market, near the whole dead ducks and live fish and crabs and mollusks we find it. massive, a ten-pounder. they wrap it in a chinese newspaper and a pink plastic bag. we carry it home on the T and then open it up in the courtyard at night. the smell of it, musk, like an animal, wafts up when we put the knife in and crack it open. these pockets of food, white, like strange meat. we pull out the seeds, like novelty-sized pinto beans, the size of a baby's fist, smooth, alien-looking. eat the fruit around it, wondering at it, slightly sickened. greg and i eat the whole thing, laughing, while meng, who's had it before, tells us that on a scale of one to ten this durian is a four. but he smiles, glad we like it. eduardo sits and watches us with a firm, worried look.
-i think maybe it's bad, ellen.
worried we're poisoned. and frankly, i'm touched that he doesn't want us to die.
-i think it's underripe, if anything, ed.
-that's true. that's true.
we eat the whole thing. feel lighter, realer, after finishing it. laughing.
-holy shit, it IS getting better now that i'm used to it! holy shit. this is GOOD!
digging out from what really looks like a slaughtered armadillo, a monster of god sent to feed us or feed on us. they call it the king of the fruits. the god of the fruits.
temporary tattoos, four of us with the really cool heraldry ones. four of us prouder than the others, who got rainforest animals and butterflies, second and third tier. mine, on my arm, a swirling red and black ribbon with a red gryphon in a crest and a harlequin in red and white on top, holding what looks like a mop.
-no, no, it's a butterfly net.
ahmad says.
from an ancient guild of butterfly-catchers, an old classic family of lepidopterists.
we walk up to the towers at night and meng shouts out the window,
-brazil!!
-what?
-go back to china, bitch!!!
.
Friday, August 05, 2005
i'm sitting in the science library, and i just heard a guy say,
-well, i think chomsky's a crackwhore.
it was pretty awesome.
.
-well, i think chomsky's a crackwhore.
it was pretty awesome.
.
Tuesday, August 02, 2005
-i got a dealer in tokyo. i got a rep in paris. i got an agent in cologne. shit, i got a gallery in NEW YORK.
nothing to see here.
.
nothing to see here.
.
Friday, July 29, 2005
colored lights, strobing, striped shirts, loud, loud, loud with broken carnations and paper strewn across the dance floor. i'm there, wondering if i've gone deaf from sitting in blasting headphones and blowing things up in my apartment back in boulder since tonight, i realize, i'm really just feeling the music in my chest more than actually hearing it...
it's....not great.
my glass is sweating beads, and i'm still marvelling at how much it all costs....this.....
goddamn i'm gonna break myself...
this kid picks me up off the couch and swings me into a dance. tottering, we knock into women's bare arms and men's striped backs. i quickly disentangle myself from this. this kid, manic, completely insane. he steps out into the street and shouts
-WE NEED EIGHT CABS!!!!
and actually gets them
i help him put on his suit jacket when we all leave the club. this is the best i can do for someone who makes me this quietly anxious. too much, too much, but while i watch them all losing their minds, i think
-i can watch your coat and help you dress at last call. i'll keep track of your jacket, fold it in my lap like a flag, speak to a swede and a guy from southie, watch the saudis, amanda, maria.
this is what i can do.
baseball tickets, running trains. great timing. they go over technicalities, ask me little questions i don't know how to answer, because i really don't keep track of these things.
phantom back-home friends
this spinning swaying youth
spinning, swaying
.
it's....not great.
my glass is sweating beads, and i'm still marvelling at how much it all costs....this.....
goddamn i'm gonna break myself...
this kid picks me up off the couch and swings me into a dance. tottering, we knock into women's bare arms and men's striped backs. i quickly disentangle myself from this. this kid, manic, completely insane. he steps out into the street and shouts
-WE NEED EIGHT CABS!!!!
and actually gets them
i help him put on his suit jacket when we all leave the club. this is the best i can do for someone who makes me this quietly anxious. too much, too much, but while i watch them all losing their minds, i think
-i can watch your coat and help you dress at last call. i'll keep track of your jacket, fold it in my lap like a flag, speak to a swede and a guy from southie, watch the saudis, amanda, maria.
this is what i can do.
baseball tickets, running trains. great timing. they go over technicalities, ask me little questions i don't know how to answer, because i really don't keep track of these things.
phantom back-home friends
this spinning swaying youth
spinning, swaying
.
Thursday, July 28, 2005
not that i FOLLOW these things or anything. but. horoscope:
"Life's not always a picnic. But it could be. So buy a baguette and go to the woods!"
buy a....what....and....what?
man.
.
"Life's not always a picnic. But it could be. So buy a baguette and go to the woods!"
buy a....what....and....what?
man.
.
Wednesday, July 27, 2005
rising! music! everything clicks into 2D at four in the morning. i'm not fond of this, but i just lie there and wait for it to pass, and it does. looking for that colored elation felt a week ago. it's a little muted, but then, i'm a little tired. like sitting with a great conversationalist- sometimes you just want to read the paper and not talk to them. sometimes you run out of things to say, and then there's nothing but frank o'hara and a slightly angry sweetness. bells in the tower a block away.
my teacher says
-i want to listen to loud music! and i want to drive really really fast! and i want to listen to loud music while driving really really fast! but i also want to get married and have kids!
so it's complicated.
looking for a ball, amanda and i root through the closet and find a moving box full of chocolate. we drag it out behind us and of course all set about eating it. i wander through the halls of the basement to get to my room. the machine willingly takes my dollars for once. i know i have to be back in an hour. an hour an hour. i head out of my gate at full tilt glinting sprint but i hear a whistle behind me and trot to a stop.
-oh. hey.
if everyone's late i don't need to hurry.
.
my teacher says
-i want to listen to loud music! and i want to drive really really fast! and i want to listen to loud music while driving really really fast! but i also want to get married and have kids!
so it's complicated.
looking for a ball, amanda and i root through the closet and find a moving box full of chocolate. we drag it out behind us and of course all set about eating it. i wander through the halls of the basement to get to my room. the machine willingly takes my dollars for once. i know i have to be back in an hour. an hour an hour. i head out of my gate at full tilt glinting sprint but i hear a whistle behind me and trot to a stop.
-oh. hey.
if everyone's late i don't need to hurry.
.
Monday, July 25, 2005
in the morning the hawks perch on lowell tower, up in the gold dome outside my window.
at night, leaves sound on the pavement like applause. i'm standing outside chewing on colored pencils and holding an apple. wait, switch that. we see night animals in boston common, moths around streetlights, bats flitting between the trees. free mason tombstones, benjamin franklin's father. an endless angled red city lit up at night.
you can't buy liquor after six on sundays. pilgrims, you know.
at the mexican restaurant they watch me drink a margarita out of a waterglass. we toast over and over again.
-gentlemen, it will set you on fire.
.
at night, leaves sound on the pavement like applause. i'm standing outside chewing on colored pencils and holding an apple. wait, switch that. we see night animals in boston common, moths around streetlights, bats flitting between the trees. free mason tombstones, benjamin franklin's father. an endless angled red city lit up at night.
you can't buy liquor after six on sundays. pilgrims, you know.
at the mexican restaurant they watch me drink a margarita out of a waterglass. we toast over and over again.
-gentlemen, it will set you on fire.
.
Tuesday, July 12, 2005
water might be nice. cold water, cold fruit.
red pigeons, blue hens.
it occurs to me, when i visit the flower shop rabbits in their window at night, that i should ask the florist their names the next time i'm in there paying too much for a single flower, but i decide instead that i will just name them myself. i decide to call them bonaparte and cosimo.
i wonder outloud to them afterwards if those are a little much.
two rabbits. a black-spotted lop and a brown-spotted doe. they live in the flower shop by day and in a dollhouse in the shop's window by night. a sweet, bizarre life. they turn their ears back and forth to listen to the cars passing outside and to the phantom sounds in the dark shop behind them. i look up and i can see the rabbit in the moon up above the towers. there's a rabbit in the moon, if you look hard enough. once you see it you'll have trouble ever seeing the man again.
i go to a concert i don't want to see and the girl draws a smiley face on my hand to show that i am in fact allowed inside.
and how am i supposed to function in a world where such things actually happen?
and how am i supposed to function in the world when my idols are all belligerent old or dead-when-young men?
hm?
happily? yes? happily.
and yet it's a puzzle.
at the natural history museum the maned wolf makes an impression. i see myself in his eyes and i know that if it were at all possible, he would go out for a drink with me.
.
red pigeons, blue hens.
it occurs to me, when i visit the flower shop rabbits in their window at night, that i should ask the florist their names the next time i'm in there paying too much for a single flower, but i decide instead that i will just name them myself. i decide to call them bonaparte and cosimo.
i wonder outloud to them afterwards if those are a little much.
two rabbits. a black-spotted lop and a brown-spotted doe. they live in the flower shop by day and in a dollhouse in the shop's window by night. a sweet, bizarre life. they turn their ears back and forth to listen to the cars passing outside and to the phantom sounds in the dark shop behind them. i look up and i can see the rabbit in the moon up above the towers. there's a rabbit in the moon, if you look hard enough. once you see it you'll have trouble ever seeing the man again.
i go to a concert i don't want to see and the girl draws a smiley face on my hand to show that i am in fact allowed inside.
and how am i supposed to function in a world where such things actually happen?
and how am i supposed to function in the world when my idols are all belligerent old or dead-when-young men?
hm?
happily? yes? happily.
and yet it's a puzzle.
at the natural history museum the maned wolf makes an impression. i see myself in his eyes and i know that if it were at all possible, he would go out for a drink with me.
.
mexican restaurant, a few months ago. someone's retelling a story about a neighbor's three-year old who said something along the lines of, “santa can't be a man because he doesn't drive a car.”
we all laugh and make the appropriate charmed noises one makes when told a cute story about a little kid.
“that's great,” my mom says, “and you know, also because he doesn't smoke the same cigarettes as me.”
“yeeeeees,” i say, drunk and pleased by the entrance of this line. owen turns to me and says, “god, that's such a good song.”
and i say, “it really is.”
.
we all laugh and make the appropriate charmed noises one makes when told a cute story about a little kid.
“that's great,” my mom says, “and you know, also because he doesn't smoke the same cigarettes as me.”
“yeeeeees,” i say, drunk and pleased by the entrance of this line. owen turns to me and says, “god, that's such a good song.”
and i say, “it really is.”
.
Thursday, July 07, 2005
i leave the table, basically saying,
-fuck you, fuck you, fuck you.
fuckall.
the newspapers, one day showing britons beaming and pasty, the next day showing them bloodied and crying and blown apart.
maulik says that the reason this sort of thing doesn't happen all the time is so that people stay afraid, that
-...otherwise there would be no point, it would be expected. it wouldn't be terrorism.
but i think and know that the reason this doesn't happen all the time is this: people don't actually want to blow each other up. given the choice, they'd much rather sleep and eat and fall in and out of love and lust. they'd much rather drink and laugh. given the choice between killing someone and going out to lunch, 99.9% of the world's population (if only out of sheer laziness) would choose to go out to lunch. is that naive? too anne frank? i don't fucking care.
sitting outside on the basement cafe's patio, i listen and think,
-great laugh, boy.
and the girl laughs a moment later and i think,
-great laugh, girl.
hard and harsh, tossing their heads back, they laugh warm and gravelly, surprised. i wonder for a moment if maybe they are brother and sister but decide instead that they are either together or secretly in love.
HA.
the train rumbles away beneath us and i ask the kid, as the cups clatter on the shelves,
-is that the subway?
and he stops, empty white coffee cup in hand, and says,
-you know, i guess it must be. i've never noticed that before.
above us, the overhead lamps sway, and outside, the fifth bus to pass in an hour grazes the ancient curb outside the church.
.
-fuck you, fuck you, fuck you.
fuckall.
the newspapers, one day showing britons beaming and pasty, the next day showing them bloodied and crying and blown apart.
maulik says that the reason this sort of thing doesn't happen all the time is so that people stay afraid, that
-...otherwise there would be no point, it would be expected. it wouldn't be terrorism.
but i think and know that the reason this doesn't happen all the time is this: people don't actually want to blow each other up. given the choice, they'd much rather sleep and eat and fall in and out of love and lust. they'd much rather drink and laugh. given the choice between killing someone and going out to lunch, 99.9% of the world's population (if only out of sheer laziness) would choose to go out to lunch. is that naive? too anne frank? i don't fucking care.
sitting outside on the basement cafe's patio, i listen and think,
-great laugh, boy.
and the girl laughs a moment later and i think,
-great laugh, girl.
hard and harsh, tossing their heads back, they laugh warm and gravelly, surprised. i wonder for a moment if maybe they are brother and sister but decide instead that they are either together or secretly in love.
HA.
the train rumbles away beneath us and i ask the kid, as the cups clatter on the shelves,
-is that the subway?
and he stops, empty white coffee cup in hand, and says,
-you know, i guess it must be. i've never noticed that before.
above us, the overhead lamps sway, and outside, the fifth bus to pass in an hour grazes the ancient curb outside the church.
.
Wednesday, July 06, 2005
at the convenient store i buy expensive colorful magazines to avoid buying more crippling things. glossy, i wonder if they'll last.
in the morning i wake up to a sizzling sound, like that of a giant egg being fried just outside my window. it's raining, but that's an understatement.
cower across town under a black umbrella. the rain thunders down on the sidewalk, in the greasy alleyways.
i wind up eating alone at a mexican restaurant crowded with off-duty cops because i don’t want to risk the enormous puddles on campus. in class, i sit by the big window and watch people scattered about in the ridiculous rain. an old man comes to the edge of a foot-deep puddle, stands for a moment considering it, and then turns around and heads in the opposite direction. a few minutes later a woman comes upon the same puddle and without a moment’s hesitation takes off her flip-flops and wades to the other side.
i pull my sleeves over my hands as i walk back from class. beat, the cuffs of my pants are soaked and heavy. they make it difficult to walk. i stop in the flower shop on the way home, and find, near the streaked window in the back, a vase of lovely white-blooming flowers that look like startled doves or like an overturned woman in a petticoat. the word GARDENIA thuds into my head.
-are those gardenias?
i ask the kid who works there.
-no, those are peonies,
he tells me. and i say
-oh.
-gardenias are sort of flat, and they’re usually floating in water. here, hold on a sec.
he runs in the back and brings me a flattened flower with smushed, lushly green leaves.
-this is a gardenia.
-oh, ok. can i get a peony, then?
-yeah.
-and a little vase?
-mm hm.
he clips the flower too short and it looks a little ridiculous, up braced against the vase’s rim as if it’s craning its green neck, but in the pouring rain it does the trick, and even convinces me, for the time being, that i do have the patience to wait until i get back to boulder to buy a little songbird.
i could stand outside of lowell house, under the tower, and shout
-AUSTRIAN!!!!
in the hopes that that would actually work, but i doubt it would.
thoughtful waiters ashing on the steps, bringing good coffee and asking if i want cream or milk with it. they’ve read what i’m reading and want to talk about it simply, with the happy ease of children who like the same cartoons.
-you like him?
-i love him.
-i do too. he’s just fucking great.
"don’t take your guns to town" echoes over the speakers and i sit happily in this basement and know that i wouldn't mind not leaving.
i pass a woman in the rain. she loses her shoe and stumbles back to retrieve it. i smile drunk-sobering at her and say,
-you’re like cinderella.
and she scoffs, quick as anything, and says,
-yeah, but where’s my prince?
to tell you the truth, i didn't know people actually had conversations like that.
.
in the morning i wake up to a sizzling sound, like that of a giant egg being fried just outside my window. it's raining, but that's an understatement.
cower across town under a black umbrella. the rain thunders down on the sidewalk, in the greasy alleyways.
i wind up eating alone at a mexican restaurant crowded with off-duty cops because i don’t want to risk the enormous puddles on campus. in class, i sit by the big window and watch people scattered about in the ridiculous rain. an old man comes to the edge of a foot-deep puddle, stands for a moment considering it, and then turns around and heads in the opposite direction. a few minutes later a woman comes upon the same puddle and without a moment’s hesitation takes off her flip-flops and wades to the other side.
i pull my sleeves over my hands as i walk back from class. beat, the cuffs of my pants are soaked and heavy. they make it difficult to walk. i stop in the flower shop on the way home, and find, near the streaked window in the back, a vase of lovely white-blooming flowers that look like startled doves or like an overturned woman in a petticoat. the word GARDENIA thuds into my head.
-are those gardenias?
i ask the kid who works there.
-no, those are peonies,
he tells me. and i say
-oh.
-gardenias are sort of flat, and they’re usually floating in water. here, hold on a sec.
he runs in the back and brings me a flattened flower with smushed, lushly green leaves.
-this is a gardenia.
-oh, ok. can i get a peony, then?
-yeah.
-and a little vase?
-mm hm.
he clips the flower too short and it looks a little ridiculous, up braced against the vase’s rim as if it’s craning its green neck, but in the pouring rain it does the trick, and even convinces me, for the time being, that i do have the patience to wait until i get back to boulder to buy a little songbird.
i could stand outside of lowell house, under the tower, and shout
-AUSTRIAN!!!!
in the hopes that that would actually work, but i doubt it would.
thoughtful waiters ashing on the steps, bringing good coffee and asking if i want cream or milk with it. they’ve read what i’m reading and want to talk about it simply, with the happy ease of children who like the same cartoons.
-you like him?
-i love him.
-i do too. he’s just fucking great.
"don’t take your guns to town" echoes over the speakers and i sit happily in this basement and know that i wouldn't mind not leaving.
i pass a woman in the rain. she loses her shoe and stumbles back to retrieve it. i smile drunk-sobering at her and say,
-you’re like cinderella.
and she scoffs, quick as anything, and says,
-yeah, but where’s my prince?
to tell you the truth, i didn't know people actually had conversations like that.
.
Tuesday, July 05, 2005
too soon. causes me a hell of a lot of trouble.
this kid, venezuela, whose name, like "canada"'s and "brasilia"'s and "kazak #1"'s is actually something else, gets lost in downtown boston after the fireworks. he and canada have stolen a bike with no seat and a broken chain, and venezuela has subsequently torn open his toe while riding down a hill. hours have past since then, though, and now they're just depressed, lost, dirty, and hurt. somebody has stolen their stolen bike. they pass the same hyatt three times before finally breaking down. venezuela, close to tears, approaches an asian couple.
-PLEEEASE HELP US. we've been going in CIRCLES and my FOOT is SO.....auuughhh.
the couple takes them inside to their apartment. they sit them both down at the kitchen table.
while the woman pours them milk and makes them ham sandwiches, the man wraps venezuela's foot in a bandage. after they've eaten and rested, the man walks them four blocks in the right direction. venezuela and canada get back at 5am. they are each carrying a little bag of food the woman has sent them with.
god bless america. or asian america, anyway.
.
this kid, venezuela, whose name, like "canada"'s and "brasilia"'s and "kazak #1"'s is actually something else, gets lost in downtown boston after the fireworks. he and canada have stolen a bike with no seat and a broken chain, and venezuela has subsequently torn open his toe while riding down a hill. hours have past since then, though, and now they're just depressed, lost, dirty, and hurt. somebody has stolen their stolen bike. they pass the same hyatt three times before finally breaking down. venezuela, close to tears, approaches an asian couple.
-PLEEEASE HELP US. we've been going in CIRCLES and my FOOT is SO.....auuughhh.
the couple takes them inside to their apartment. they sit them both down at the kitchen table.
while the woman pours them milk and makes them ham sandwiches, the man wraps venezuela's foot in a bandage. after they've eaten and rested, the man walks them four blocks in the right direction. venezuela and canada get back at 5am. they are each carrying a little bag of food the woman has sent them with.
god bless america. or asian america, anyway.
.
Sunday, July 03, 2005
there's something mildly funny about drinking out of a wineglass with "truth" written on it in latin.
it's a beautiful night in boston, as if the whole place is yelling at me, offended:
-come on, i'm still cool.
on the plane this little kid is weeping as we descend. he's wailing that his eye hurts. his mother doesn't seem to be taking him seriously, but i believe him, having had the sensation of imminent ocular explosion on a plane before. i want so badly to turn to him and say, "it's okay, sweetheart, it'll stop soon." but i know it's really not my place. it's painful to sit there and listen to him cry while he gets no sympathy from his mother. i hate it when people ignore kids. i clench my fists and will the plane down to the ground, and finally he stops crying.
broken, i smuggle beggars banquet and conrad's pasodobles back to massachusetts after a drowsing weekend in the west. i'm slightly worried, pulling them out of my suitcase, that they will be cracked or warped, but they're fine, if a little short-running.
snapping. walking around town. the strap of my bag bleeds black onto my chest so that i walk around most days with a streak of dark cutting diagonally across my shirt, as if someone has painted an ammunition sash onto the fabric. it's not attractive. i eat in the hall and wonder at how i could enjoy people's company somewhat, but frankly, not enough to actually keep up with it.
days pass, mornings are lovely. i see catbirds and nightingales in the cemetery. i see lowell tower from my window. blue, gold, weathervanes of ibis and cats. the wind blows across the river. it waits for the fireworks to start and wonders outloud,
where where where where where.
doing laundry and waiting for the evening to start in earnest. hell, it may not happen, or it may already have.
.
it's a beautiful night in boston, as if the whole place is yelling at me, offended:
-come on, i'm still cool.
on the plane this little kid is weeping as we descend. he's wailing that his eye hurts. his mother doesn't seem to be taking him seriously, but i believe him, having had the sensation of imminent ocular explosion on a plane before. i want so badly to turn to him and say, "it's okay, sweetheart, it'll stop soon." but i know it's really not my place. it's painful to sit there and listen to him cry while he gets no sympathy from his mother. i hate it when people ignore kids. i clench my fists and will the plane down to the ground, and finally he stops crying.
broken, i smuggle beggars banquet and conrad's pasodobles back to massachusetts after a drowsing weekend in the west. i'm slightly worried, pulling them out of my suitcase, that they will be cracked or warped, but they're fine, if a little short-running.
snapping. walking around town. the strap of my bag bleeds black onto my chest so that i walk around most days with a streak of dark cutting diagonally across my shirt, as if someone has painted an ammunition sash onto the fabric. it's not attractive. i eat in the hall and wonder at how i could enjoy people's company somewhat, but frankly, not enough to actually keep up with it.
days pass, mornings are lovely. i see catbirds and nightingales in the cemetery. i see lowell tower from my window. blue, gold, weathervanes of ibis and cats. the wind blows across the river. it waits for the fireworks to start and wonders outloud,
where where where where where.
doing laundry and waiting for the evening to start in earnest. hell, it may not happen, or it may already have.
.
Saturday, July 02, 2005
all kinds.
cryptic things follow. but that's what you get with exhaustion and weeks away from these things. like i've said, i'm not here to entertain you.
as if anyone could get confused about that.
.
paul gives me a valise and a rodin book for ten dollars altogether. in cambridge, the round, ancient jewish bookseller with glinting spectacles gives me a book called "damage control on war ships" and a napoleonic journal and tells me,
-pay me later. i try to match the books with the people. otherwise it's just money, and that's hardly worth it, let me tell you.
he locks the door behind him with a brass key after we go out. i thank him and take the stairs. he thanks me and takes the elevator. i can hear him coughing behind closed doors as the elevator sails down the three floors to street level.
.
in the jungle, with a sweep of his hand, the guy catches a horsefly that's been chasing him, and, turning his palm over and releasing it, says,
-i forgive you.
and it flies off without biting him.
or at least that's what i'm told.
.
if and when, with dizzying heartbreak, i wake up in strange but familiar houses, i know that i can get up and pour cold coffee into a fiesta ware cup and drink it happily with too much milk.
i know that i can watch crows cross a white jetstream in a blue sky and not care if i write anything worth reading ever again.
i know that i can love the west to near-death, right down to the lack of water, right down to the ugly citizens who agonize over what kind of horrible coffee drink to order. i know that i can always root for the bull at the rodeo. i know that i won't forget the name of the toro bravo that killed manolete. i know that grandma heard the story about me carrying volumes A-F of a set of free encyclopedias a mile up the hill in 95 degree heat two months ago. she clapped her hands, hard, once, when my mom told her about it at dinner. i know that i care about little else.
the sun comes up, birds fly too close to the window.
.
so people die, and i remember things from their childhood. i sit in the garden at the hospital and wonder what on earth you're supposed to do in an eden with a metavac helicopter flying overhead. thwap thwap thwap, it says, and i instantly want nothing more than to get on with the unhinged tauromachy. her "old kid" business. the painted rocks, the brutal slap games, the kids with exquisite names, the indian dogs. but fucking hell if the circus doesn't leave town.
fuck all with the giant moths and instant crippled love. fuck all with eldorado and "going to see my man." the ancient relatives. the drinking in the afternoon. the garden. the train station. we round the corner and she doesn't follow us.
tonight, dropped at the bus station. i call because the next bus, it turns out, is not coming for another hour, at 10 pm.
-i guess i could just go across the street and wait.
-could you?
i could. so i head to tattered cover in the dark, see cockroaches criss-crossing the sidewalk ahead of me. fireworks boom, unseen, high up above me. crippled love. hot, crippled, high-up love that doesn't involve anyone.
my grandmother was the first white child born on an apache reservation in colorado. "apache" means "enemy" in the apache language. it's not what they call themselves. it's what they told the whites to call them. as in,
-"apache" is all you need to know, brother. just call me ENEMY.
and "beall" as in ringing bell. and houseburning as in dean standing barefoot on prickers at night as the culver house burned to the ground and my great-grandmother handed kid after kid down to him through the window.
white apache, snowball fights and brutal slap games. the aunt, as a kid, too short to iron the shirts, the chariot too heavy for the horse to pull. the family historian crying, will with his mustache, the kids with their gravestone seats, forrest clambering over the couch cushions while we dip chocolate in red wine and watch "peter pan" for the thousandth time. i wonder how it is that everyone i care about in the whole goddamn world could be there in the house or in her room or long dead. i dream about my great-grandfather, who i never met.
owen: i'm pretty sure that it was aaron burr who was sent off on a ship in exile. and everything else, honestly, is just fucking nonsense.
.
cryptic things follow. but that's what you get with exhaustion and weeks away from these things. like i've said, i'm not here to entertain you.
as if anyone could get confused about that.
.
paul gives me a valise and a rodin book for ten dollars altogether. in cambridge, the round, ancient jewish bookseller with glinting spectacles gives me a book called "damage control on war ships" and a napoleonic journal and tells me,
-pay me later. i try to match the books with the people. otherwise it's just money, and that's hardly worth it, let me tell you.
he locks the door behind him with a brass key after we go out. i thank him and take the stairs. he thanks me and takes the elevator. i can hear him coughing behind closed doors as the elevator sails down the three floors to street level.
.
in the jungle, with a sweep of his hand, the guy catches a horsefly that's been chasing him, and, turning his palm over and releasing it, says,
-i forgive you.
and it flies off without biting him.
or at least that's what i'm told.
.
if and when, with dizzying heartbreak, i wake up in strange but familiar houses, i know that i can get up and pour cold coffee into a fiesta ware cup and drink it happily with too much milk.
i know that i can watch crows cross a white jetstream in a blue sky and not care if i write anything worth reading ever again.
i know that i can love the west to near-death, right down to the lack of water, right down to the ugly citizens who agonize over what kind of horrible coffee drink to order. i know that i can always root for the bull at the rodeo. i know that i won't forget the name of the toro bravo that killed manolete. i know that grandma heard the story about me carrying volumes A-F of a set of free encyclopedias a mile up the hill in 95 degree heat two months ago. she clapped her hands, hard, once, when my mom told her about it at dinner. i know that i care about little else.
the sun comes up, birds fly too close to the window.
.
so people die, and i remember things from their childhood. i sit in the garden at the hospital and wonder what on earth you're supposed to do in an eden with a metavac helicopter flying overhead. thwap thwap thwap, it says, and i instantly want nothing more than to get on with the unhinged tauromachy. her "old kid" business. the painted rocks, the brutal slap games, the kids with exquisite names, the indian dogs. but fucking hell if the circus doesn't leave town.
fuck all with the giant moths and instant crippled love. fuck all with eldorado and "going to see my man." the ancient relatives. the drinking in the afternoon. the garden. the train station. we round the corner and she doesn't follow us.
tonight, dropped at the bus station. i call because the next bus, it turns out, is not coming for another hour, at 10 pm.
-i guess i could just go across the street and wait.
-could you?
i could. so i head to tattered cover in the dark, see cockroaches criss-crossing the sidewalk ahead of me. fireworks boom, unseen, high up above me. crippled love. hot, crippled, high-up love that doesn't involve anyone.
my grandmother was the first white child born on an apache reservation in colorado. "apache" means "enemy" in the apache language. it's not what they call themselves. it's what they told the whites to call them. as in,
-"apache" is all you need to know, brother. just call me ENEMY.
and "beall" as in ringing bell. and houseburning as in dean standing barefoot on prickers at night as the culver house burned to the ground and my great-grandmother handed kid after kid down to him through the window.
white apache, snowball fights and brutal slap games. the aunt, as a kid, too short to iron the shirts, the chariot too heavy for the horse to pull. the family historian crying, will with his mustache, the kids with their gravestone seats, forrest clambering over the couch cushions while we dip chocolate in red wine and watch "peter pan" for the thousandth time. i wonder how it is that everyone i care about in the whole goddamn world could be there in the house or in her room or long dead. i dream about my great-grandfather, who i never met.
owen: i'm pretty sure that it was aaron burr who was sent off on a ship in exile. and everything else, honestly, is just fucking nonsense.
.
Sunday, May 29, 2005
raining. sunday. high ceilings. etc.
Sunday, May 22, 2005
slept in my shoes like a crooked old mother hubbard.
though, wait....she wasn’t the same as the old woman who lived in the shoe, was she?
no....shit, she was the one with the dog.
well you get the idea, anyway.
.
though, wait....she wasn’t the same as the old woman who lived in the shoe, was she?
no....shit, she was the one with the dog.
well you get the idea, anyway.
.
Friday, May 13, 2005
in the denver museum of nature and science
i echo into the wildlife halls- “explore colorado”- look at the dioramas
little brass hoof prints under each one
the phones on the wall suggest some kind of communication with the exhibit- i imagine that i will pick them up and be able to hear the frozen living world behind the glass, as if over the phone the bushes will sound in the breeze, the birds will keep chirping, the elk will breathe without realizing the miracle they are committing via telephone..
but i pick up the reciever and a man's voice hisses through with facts about elk in mating season
the exhibits have the same efffect as one's most well-remembered baby dreams
and you think, simply, “how on earth are those deer.....flying?” as if caught mid-air, the dust caught static, caught-jumping
i just stand there and think,
how were they caught
jumping?
they float mid-air dynamic, caught midjump and snow globe sealed, alive unmoving still like the dust underfoot, under hoof.
buttons you can press to hear the sounds an animal makes, the musk-oxen staring down the wolves, the painted backgrounds of every diorama, the sheer size of the animals and how close you can get to them
the butterfly exhibit
huge moths, kids distracted by “space odyssey,” which is basically a panic attack in a box
middle schoolers
i'm watching them
they're sitting on the bench watching nothing and an old man who clearly can't see very well comes by and says
-what are you watching?
and they say
-nothing.
and he says,
-yes, well, do take a rest. it is exhausting.... there is so much to see...
and hobbles away
.
i echo into the wildlife halls- “explore colorado”- look at the dioramas
little brass hoof prints under each one
the phones on the wall suggest some kind of communication with the exhibit- i imagine that i will pick them up and be able to hear the frozen living world behind the glass, as if over the phone the bushes will sound in the breeze, the birds will keep chirping, the elk will breathe without realizing the miracle they are committing via telephone..
but i pick up the reciever and a man's voice hisses through with facts about elk in mating season
the exhibits have the same efffect as one's most well-remembered baby dreams
and you think, simply, “how on earth are those deer.....flying?” as if caught mid-air, the dust caught static, caught-jumping
i just stand there and think,
how were they caught
jumping?
they float mid-air dynamic, caught midjump and snow globe sealed, alive unmoving still like the dust underfoot, under hoof.
buttons you can press to hear the sounds an animal makes, the musk-oxen staring down the wolves, the painted backgrounds of every diorama, the sheer size of the animals and how close you can get to them
the butterfly exhibit
huge moths, kids distracted by “space odyssey,” which is basically a panic attack in a box
middle schoolers
i'm watching them
they're sitting on the bench watching nothing and an old man who clearly can't see very well comes by and says
-what are you watching?
and they say
-nothing.
and he says,
-yes, well, do take a rest. it is exhausting.... there is so much to see...
and hobbles away
.
Wednesday, May 11, 2005
i don't really have anything in particular to write, but i want to push down that sparrow thing, because really, come on.
come on.
raining and cold.
i'm still in boulder, done with spring semester and taking a summer class called museums and society. i've come up with a project to do in coordination with the museum which will basically give me a key to the CU collections and a way to very very slowly write a book. i'm not sleeping very much. i'm not going to go to the pond alone anymore, since that has worked out strangely a few times lately. the birds on my porch are completely settled in and entirely intent on raising their children there.
and....it's raining. and i have to meet up with some kids who are going to give me a ride to the longmont museum.
i just considered text messaging, "fuck the written word," but i'm going to eat some breakfast instead.
text messaging, yes.
and that pretty much brings us up to date. i'll write something real later.
.
come on.
raining and cold.
i'm still in boulder, done with spring semester and taking a summer class called museums and society. i've come up with a project to do in coordination with the museum which will basically give me a key to the CU collections and a way to very very slowly write a book. i'm not sleeping very much. i'm not going to go to the pond alone anymore, since that has worked out strangely a few times lately. the birds on my porch are completely settled in and entirely intent on raising their children there.
and....it's raining. and i have to meet up with some kids who are going to give me a ride to the longmont museum.
i just considered text messaging, "fuck the written word," but i'm going to eat some breakfast instead.
text messaging, yes.
and that pretty much brings us up to date. i'll write something real later.
.
Tuesday, May 10, 2005
a sparrow
in love with the sky,
winging, says to her,
-my dear
i want to make things
wonderful
for
you.
.
in love with the sky,
winging, says to her,
-my dear
i want to make things
wonderful
for
you.
.
Thursday, May 05, 2005
i walk into the restaurant direct from a 7.30-10pm russian communism exam
i come in dizzy with the gulag
-i just wrote an entire blue book essay on "how bauman and shalamov say that bitterness is the last human emotion to die"...
i used the word “abattoir”
and then couldn’t get a song out of my head as a result
and now i come in and sit down and watch other people have margaritas for awhile
at dinner i grin, nod
then lean back with my arms crossed and turn into a deaf mute when the group rounds out to four
this happens from time to time...
the complete loss of speech
i stare at the piñatas
thinking, yelling at myself,
-you fucking failure to thrive....
but to tell you the truth i'm not actually that worried about it.
-so what are you working on now?
-i’m writing a western.
in the back two guys are milling around the kitchen and they help me struggle with the bathroom door, which, it turns out, is not broken, but locked
-oh.
we all say at once when the girl steps out finally, wielding her eyeliner
the guy in his red apron, the other guy in his goddamn fedora
-oh. it was LOCKED.
at the show i’m in a sea of fedoras and bad vintage and there’s a woman near me yelling at the stage,
-CALEB!!!!
and i really want to add
-your hair is AWFUL!!!
but i don’t. the girl next to me is glaring at me for some reason. she keeps knocking into me with her purse and staring daggers each time it happens, as if it's somehow my fault. at one point she dances into me and i seriously consider taking her wallet.
i’m in the kiddie section. the....goddamn.....fucking....kiddie section....
21+ to the left, 21- to the right, but it all eventually spills out onto the same floor-
-oh, wait....we actually don’t really have to split up....oh....oh you’re gone.
so i spend the evening alone
but good, good
the guy searches my bag thoroughly
-lotta books.
-two.
-welp. you're clean.
-yes, for three days now.
rock and roll..
lots of kids playing air instruments
the girl with the purse moves over and is replaced by her mom, who also glares at me
alone
i call lolly and she laughs at me
the kids, the kids
-caleb!!!!!
(your hair is awful.)
.
i come in dizzy with the gulag
-i just wrote an entire blue book essay on "how bauman and shalamov say that bitterness is the last human emotion to die"...
i used the word “abattoir”
and then couldn’t get a song out of my head as a result
and now i come in and sit down and watch other people have margaritas for awhile
at dinner i grin, nod
then lean back with my arms crossed and turn into a deaf mute when the group rounds out to four
this happens from time to time...
the complete loss of speech
i stare at the piñatas
thinking, yelling at myself,
-you fucking failure to thrive....
but to tell you the truth i'm not actually that worried about it.
-so what are you working on now?
-i’m writing a western.
in the back two guys are milling around the kitchen and they help me struggle with the bathroom door, which, it turns out, is not broken, but locked
-oh.
we all say at once when the girl steps out finally, wielding her eyeliner
the guy in his red apron, the other guy in his goddamn fedora
-oh. it was LOCKED.
at the show i’m in a sea of fedoras and bad vintage and there’s a woman near me yelling at the stage,
-CALEB!!!!
and i really want to add
-your hair is AWFUL!!!
but i don’t. the girl next to me is glaring at me for some reason. she keeps knocking into me with her purse and staring daggers each time it happens, as if it's somehow my fault. at one point she dances into me and i seriously consider taking her wallet.
i’m in the kiddie section. the....goddamn.....fucking....kiddie section....
21+ to the left, 21- to the right, but it all eventually spills out onto the same floor-
-oh, wait....we actually don’t really have to split up....oh....oh you’re gone.
so i spend the evening alone
but good, good
the guy searches my bag thoroughly
-lotta books.
-two.
-welp. you're clean.
-yes, for three days now.
rock and roll..
lots of kids playing air instruments
the girl with the purse moves over and is replaced by her mom, who also glares at me
alone
i call lolly and she laughs at me
the kids, the kids
-caleb!!!!!
(your hair is awful.)
.
Monday, May 02, 2005
birds have poor planning skills. i nearly scared one to death yesterday afternoon trying to take a picture of her with my phone. she was sitting on the little nest they've made on one of the pillars of my porch, right up where the porchlight stays on all night, her tail pressed flat against the wood. i tried to very nonchalantly hold my phone up high enough to get a picture. she flipped out and fluttered out of there fast as anything. lighted on a branch a little ways away and chirped angrily. apparently it is possible to chirp angrily. they aren't exactly nesting yet, though. there's snow on the ground. it's been snowing for about three days. it's exam week, in may, there's snow on the ground, and i haven't left my house in about two days.
this is not to say i've been studying, though. i've been making a series of drawings of men with guns fighting a clock.
very slowly losing my mind.
the view out the window over my sink looks like truckee, CA, with all the brown rooftops covered with snow. owen and i passed through truckee on the train, stopped there for about two hours without any explanation. we sat there and looked out the window at the snowed-in town. we watched a guy standing next to the train, waiting to cross, waiting for the train to pass. but we'd stopped, and there was no way in hell he could go around it. so he just stood there. two hours we were there, cutting through truckee, cutting it in half like a rolling berlin wall. that's the only distressing thing about train travel. especially from colorado to california in the dead of winter. you stop, for no apparent reason, for hours at a time, way up in the middle of nowhere, in the middle of the blue night, in places like donner pass.
but last night. chambord, the bottle like some glorious gold-and-glass bomb. reading about sickle cell anemia for my physical anthropology test. then reading "kolyma tales" in bed for my russian communism exam, in which about every third story the character commits suicide after being sent off to clear a road in the middle of the russian wilderness.
it all made for incredible dreams.
.
this is not to say i've been studying, though. i've been making a series of drawings of men with guns fighting a clock.
very slowly losing my mind.
the view out the window over my sink looks like truckee, CA, with all the brown rooftops covered with snow. owen and i passed through truckee on the train, stopped there for about two hours without any explanation. we sat there and looked out the window at the snowed-in town. we watched a guy standing next to the train, waiting to cross, waiting for the train to pass. but we'd stopped, and there was no way in hell he could go around it. so he just stood there. two hours we were there, cutting through truckee, cutting it in half like a rolling berlin wall. that's the only distressing thing about train travel. especially from colorado to california in the dead of winter. you stop, for no apparent reason, for hours at a time, way up in the middle of nowhere, in the middle of the blue night, in places like donner pass.
but last night. chambord, the bottle like some glorious gold-and-glass bomb. reading about sickle cell anemia for my physical anthropology test. then reading "kolyma tales" in bed for my russian communism exam, in which about every third story the character commits suicide after being sent off to clear a road in the middle of the russian wilderness.
it all made for incredible dreams.
.
Saturday, April 30, 2005
the business at hand-
1. trap doors that have nothing to do with electrical fuses.
2. love and shame and the ensuing awkwardness.
3. radio cure versus radio war in a STEREO CAGE MATCH.
this blog lost all semblance of logic awhile ago, didn't it.
didn't it.
ah well.
...
my ears have been bothering me lately. for the past few months, actually. and apparently i keep complaining about it without realizing it, because three different people have said to me, there at the butcher block table,
-oh my god! i know why your ears are bothering you!
-did i say my ears were bothering me?
-yeah.
-oh. weird. because…..they are.
-it’s the cap guns! and all the other….explosives…..you set off…..in confined spaces.
-oh god....you're right.
i’m going deaf from cap guns and gunpowder snaps and champagne poppers.
i’m a very festive person.
but this morning, flat out, i wanted a cure. my ears were killing, my throat was killing. i wanted someone to fix me the way i’ve imagined for others
the emerald city cure
where they'll pull you in, and singing, take off your jacket, force off shoes
and clean you up, fix you
they could somehow fix broken sad hands, broken sad tongue
-clip clip here, scrub scrub there
a couple of la dee das...
this morning i needed something to help my headache, my ears
and i remembered those hearing tests at elementary school, with the huge headphones and the little tones they played for you
little tones that sounded like little colors
little hearing test colors..
mm.
i need to take better care of myself.
.
1. trap doors that have nothing to do with electrical fuses.
2. love and shame and the ensuing awkwardness.
3. radio cure versus radio war in a STEREO CAGE MATCH.
this blog lost all semblance of logic awhile ago, didn't it.
didn't it.
ah well.
...
my ears have been bothering me lately. for the past few months, actually. and apparently i keep complaining about it without realizing it, because three different people have said to me, there at the butcher block table,
-oh my god! i know why your ears are bothering you!
-did i say my ears were bothering me?
-yeah.
-oh. weird. because…..they are.
-it’s the cap guns! and all the other….explosives…..you set off…..in confined spaces.
-oh god....you're right.
i’m going deaf from cap guns and gunpowder snaps and champagne poppers.
i’m a very festive person.
but this morning, flat out, i wanted a cure. my ears were killing, my throat was killing. i wanted someone to fix me the way i’ve imagined for others
the emerald city cure
where they'll pull you in, and singing, take off your jacket, force off shoes
and clean you up, fix you
they could somehow fix broken sad hands, broken sad tongue
-clip clip here, scrub scrub there
a couple of la dee das...
this morning i needed something to help my headache, my ears
and i remembered those hearing tests at elementary school, with the huge headphones and the little tones they played for you
little tones that sounded like little colors
little hearing test colors..
mm.
i need to take better care of myself.
.
Thursday, April 28, 2005
appalling appeal
a music box lullaby
business plans
-what we'll need is a big house
-yeah
-with an empty back room, like a cleared-out dining room
-yeah, sort of like a ballroom
-yeah
parties, sparkling windows....
rough-clothed, we'll wander, rough dancing
statues in a garden of a stone she-wolf, of romulus and remus
they'll be wrapped in white christmas lights in the winter
napoleon's sixth birthday
a languid business partner
a music box sound, lullaby, with dark night outside
the worst baby-dream i remember-
i'm alone in our house in boston, utterly alone, and it's surrounded by wolves. grimm wolves, big gray german-looking things
terrifying
but that feeling of the nursery with all that going on outside
is probably what i've successfully cultivated in my own everyday psyche....nursery inside, fairy tale wolf without....
a shock gives me a stroke
fight-flight and my left arm is literally numb from it
i'm shaking it to get the feeling back
and with the house lingering with the smell of cologne
i settle at the butcher block table with my cap guns, my firecrackers, my edith piaf
i eat hot soup and read the paper
toast with honey
lots of honey
milk, tea, honey
wine
honey
to stave off something
something.
finally, with my arm still tingling
but feeling like i've just eaten at the table of john the baptist
i crawl under the red cover
to the light of new white christmas lights
and go to bed
at ten.
.
a music box lullaby
business plans
-what we'll need is a big house
-yeah
-with an empty back room, like a cleared-out dining room
-yeah, sort of like a ballroom
-yeah
parties, sparkling windows....
rough-clothed, we'll wander, rough dancing
statues in a garden of a stone she-wolf, of romulus and remus
they'll be wrapped in white christmas lights in the winter
napoleon's sixth birthday
a languid business partner
a music box sound, lullaby, with dark night outside
the worst baby-dream i remember-
i'm alone in our house in boston, utterly alone, and it's surrounded by wolves. grimm wolves, big gray german-looking things
terrifying
but that feeling of the nursery with all that going on outside
is probably what i've successfully cultivated in my own everyday psyche....nursery inside, fairy tale wolf without....
a shock gives me a stroke
fight-flight and my left arm is literally numb from it
i'm shaking it to get the feeling back
and with the house lingering with the smell of cologne
i settle at the butcher block table with my cap guns, my firecrackers, my edith piaf
i eat hot soup and read the paper
toast with honey
lots of honey
milk, tea, honey
wine
honey
to stave off something
something.
finally, with my arm still tingling
but feeling like i've just eaten at the table of john the baptist
i crawl under the red cover
to the light of new white christmas lights
and go to bed
at ten.
.
Sunday, April 24, 2005
-i'll score and drown at the same time.
.
.
Tuesday, April 19, 2005
-i don't want people to think i'm marrying you for your money. i love you for your.....less.....tangible.....quality.
a heaving draft, perfect light through the windows of the cafe. the wingless ambassador says, "i love you, windowshade."
-oh god look, there's a leaf in my salad.
-isn't that the idea?
-no, like an oak leaf, look.
-that's a maple leaf.
-it's not a maple leaf.
-what is it, then?
-i don't know, but it shouldn't be in salad.
-eat it.
-no. it's probably poison.
-well eat around it and i'm sure you'll be fine.
a chip in a drinking glass
now that you know where it is just drink out of the other side
-what do you do for a living?
-i repair swinging doors.
walking, and i'm wondering, whistling, snapping, if any of this, the breeze, the birds, the sun, the windows, the crowds, is actually allowed.
thinking
why is a raven
like a writing desk....
why is a raven like a writing desk?
"Have you guessed the riddle yet?" the Hatter said, turning to Alice again.
"No, I give it up," Alice replied. "What's the answer?"
"I haven't the slightest idea," said the Hatter.
"Nor I," said the March Hare.
Alice sighed wearily. "I think you might do something better with the time," she said, "than wasting it in asking riddles that have no answers."
and there we have it.
..
a heaving draft, perfect light through the windows of the cafe. the wingless ambassador says, "i love you, windowshade."
-oh god look, there's a leaf in my salad.
-isn't that the idea?
-no, like an oak leaf, look.
-that's a maple leaf.
-it's not a maple leaf.
-what is it, then?
-i don't know, but it shouldn't be in salad.
-eat it.
-no. it's probably poison.
-well eat around it and i'm sure you'll be fine.
a chip in a drinking glass
now that you know where it is just drink out of the other side
-what do you do for a living?
-i repair swinging doors.
walking, and i'm wondering, whistling, snapping, if any of this, the breeze, the birds, the sun, the windows, the crowds, is actually allowed.
thinking
why is a raven
like a writing desk....
why is a raven like a writing desk?
"Have you guessed the riddle yet?" the Hatter said, turning to Alice again.
"No, I give it up," Alice replied. "What's the answer?"
"I haven't the slightest idea," said the Hatter.
"Nor I," said the March Hare.
Alice sighed wearily. "I think you might do something better with the time," she said, "than wasting it in asking riddles that have no answers."
and there we have it.
..
Friday, April 15, 2005
i buy an apple on the walk home so i have something to hold on to. i want to eat it while i walk but it occurs to me, as i pick one out of the massive green cannonball-pile, that i really should wash it before doing anything of the sort. i watch the woman behind the counter as she rings me up and fondles my apple and i think of how many greasy dollar bills she’s handled in the past hour. so i decide against tuberculosis and wind up just playing with it on my way home. memorizing its shape, tossing it back and forth as i walk, wondering if i’m imagining that there’s a fairy tale about a singing apple or if there really is one....and what the hell a singing apple would look like anyway..
my boots are too big and i’m clomping along up the hill and throwing the apple to the off beat
thinking, worrying, actually-
i'm supposed to take all these courses now, poetry mostly, and i've been realizing lately that when i pick up literary magazines.......i always, always skip the poetry.
which is a bad sign.
god, i'm going to get RICH.
-a walking revelation washed out like a sheet in the sun. you know, like a laundry detergent ad, but one that you’re in.
fuck all. fuck all.
anyway.
my parents are coming this weekend and i cleaned everything. i even dusted the dollhouse furniture on my fridge
picked up the little vase and wiped the top of the little red table
restacked all the piles
threw out cigarettes, threw out bottles
cleaned the fish
or his bowl, rather
-you’re nesting.
-I’m NESTING?
set the tin soldiers in a line or two, re-stuck the map to the wall
trailed off in a way that seemed meaningful but probably wasn't.
more importantly, though- christ, i am looking forward to some nice, free food this weekend. no more tubercular apples cut with a jack-o-lantern knife. no more. for the love of god.
.
my boots are too big and i’m clomping along up the hill and throwing the apple to the off beat
thinking, worrying, actually-
i'm supposed to take all these courses now, poetry mostly, and i've been realizing lately that when i pick up literary magazines.......i always, always skip the poetry.
which is a bad sign.
god, i'm going to get RICH.
-a walking revelation washed out like a sheet in the sun. you know, like a laundry detergent ad, but one that you’re in.
fuck all. fuck all.
anyway.
my parents are coming this weekend and i cleaned everything. i even dusted the dollhouse furniture on my fridge
picked up the little vase and wiped the top of the little red table
restacked all the piles
threw out cigarettes, threw out bottles
cleaned the fish
or his bowl, rather
-you’re nesting.
-I’m NESTING?
set the tin soldiers in a line or two, re-stuck the map to the wall
trailed off in a way that seemed meaningful but probably wasn't.
more importantly, though- christ, i am looking forward to some nice, free food this weekend. no more tubercular apples cut with a jack-o-lantern knife. no more. for the love of god.
.
Thursday, April 14, 2005
sing through pursed lips, get up on your toes and leeaaan
i burned my arm reaching across the toaster to plug in my phone
-AAAASHHHhhhhh
held my wrist, bared my teeth in that little unmoving inward dance you do when all you can do is wait for pain to pass. it did, and then i promptly forgot about it, went out and got the paper in my coat, fed the birds, looked at the mountains, until i noticed later that i was pretty thoroughly burned right on the wrist under the heel of my palm. now i have a giant, fraying bandage on. it’s mad sexy.
i don’t think i’ve ever said the words “mad sexy” before. i promise never to do it again.
-look i did damage to myself.
-jesus, how?
-breakfast.
the sun’s finally down and my neighbors are out having a cookout. my windows are open. i’m switching seamlessly between working on a primate behavior project, a russian communism take-home, a paper on emily dickinson, and nothing at all.
.
i burned my arm reaching across the toaster to plug in my phone
-AAAASHHHhhhhh
held my wrist, bared my teeth in that little unmoving inward dance you do when all you can do is wait for pain to pass. it did, and then i promptly forgot about it, went out and got the paper in my coat, fed the birds, looked at the mountains, until i noticed later that i was pretty thoroughly burned right on the wrist under the heel of my palm. now i have a giant, fraying bandage on. it’s mad sexy.
i don’t think i’ve ever said the words “mad sexy” before. i promise never to do it again.
-look i did damage to myself.
-jesus, how?
-breakfast.
the sun’s finally down and my neighbors are out having a cookout. my windows are open. i’m switching seamlessly between working on a primate behavior project, a russian communism take-home, a paper on emily dickinson, and nothing at all.
.
in 1989 we lived in california for a year. i was five. we were at a barbeque when i met matt, who was four and a half. our parents introduced us to each other and we both scowled. we kept an eye on each other throughout the party. grass stained, we glared, until finally, with him wielding a watering can and me wielding a hose, we tore at each other from across the lawn and went at it, entirely intent on killing one another. by the time our parents noticed what was happening, we'd smacked each other a couple times and generally disrupted the whole gathering.
-what the HELL??
our moms came running and separated us, each of them saying,
-oh god, i'm sure it was my kid, i'm so sorry.
naturally, matt and i became best friends, and waged many wars against other children. one time we found a credit card under the bleachers at stanford. another time we hid an egg in a sock behind the radiator in his parents' kitchen so that we could have a pet chicken. (my brother and i also did that at some point. i just really wanted a chicken, i guess.)
it was with matt that i discovered that with two flashlights you can make anyone look like they're crying. we thought it was hilarious. you hold one light up and one light down, and the double-reflection gives the impression of pools, of tears. we could make anyone look like they were confessing something.
-ellen, don't shine those in my eyes.
my dad says tearfully.
i kind of miss the garden hose/ watering can interaction. i sort of wish someone would attack me with a watering can at a party.
.
just a heads up: when a post doesn't have anything resembling a punchline, it means i have a shit ton of work to do and am not doing it. this is most of the time.
once again, as you were.
.
-what the HELL??
our moms came running and separated us, each of them saying,
-oh god, i'm sure it was my kid, i'm so sorry.
naturally, matt and i became best friends, and waged many wars against other children. one time we found a credit card under the bleachers at stanford. another time we hid an egg in a sock behind the radiator in his parents' kitchen so that we could have a pet chicken. (my brother and i also did that at some point. i just really wanted a chicken, i guess.)
it was with matt that i discovered that with two flashlights you can make anyone look like they're crying. we thought it was hilarious. you hold one light up and one light down, and the double-reflection gives the impression of pools, of tears. we could make anyone look like they were confessing something.
-ellen, don't shine those in my eyes.
my dad says tearfully.
i kind of miss the garden hose/ watering can interaction. i sort of wish someone would attack me with a watering can at a party.
.
just a heads up: when a post doesn't have anything resembling a punchline, it means i have a shit ton of work to do and am not doing it. this is most of the time.
once again, as you were.
.
Tuesday, April 12, 2005
walking to put my phone bill in the mailbox i pass a boy carrying flowers wrapped in a cone of green paper. he's holding them awkwardly, low down, like he doesn't want anyone to think they're for him. but if he'd hold them up, hold them properly.....comparisons to beauty queens be damned.....you stride along with that bouquet, kid, and damn. handsome flowers, like natural parade ribbons.
and everyone he passed, watching, would yell, oh, lovely lovely
LOVELY BOY!!!!
at least wear a carnation on your lapel. bang bang bang, like the smell of a cap gun, like the sound of a perfect rock band.
but i guess that would put a lot of pressure on him.
i guess it's much more likely that someone would just yell "fag" but that's just a chance you have to learn how to take.
.
and everyone he passed, watching, would yell, oh, lovely lovely
LOVELY BOY!!!!
at least wear a carnation on your lapel. bang bang bang, like the smell of a cap gun, like the sound of a perfect rock band.
but i guess that would put a lot of pressure on him.
i guess it's much more likely that someone would just yell "fag" but that's just a chance you have to learn how to take.
.
Monday, April 11, 2005
straw brittle, glorious but dead in the water,
you twist off the cap and say,
-hey kid, it’ll work better now.
and oh it’s good. it's very, very good.
at the zoo the wolves are just lanky white yard dogs. i stand there and watch them. i'm leaning on the railing and i can see them there through the fence, on the ground fifty feet away from me. flattened, sleeping. a guy in a cap comes up next to me and does that whistle trill thing through his hands, to try to get their attention- you know-
-oooooohooooo oooohoooooo
he's trying to commune with the wolves. they're trying to sleep. they don't look up, and i really want to tell him, as sweet as his efforts are,
-you know they’re really not that complicated.
all that spirit animal nonsense the plasticized t-shirts have ruined them with
they pull down meat, they run and bite the hell out of each other’s scrawny legs. they're filthy, MAD. grimm's wolves. they’re just crazy dogs, and like you, they’re that much better for it. they’re not praying to the moon, you idiots, they’re catcalling it.
heeeeey baby. heeeey sugar sugar.
and THAT is fucking beautiful. i don't know why people always insist that animals are hippies.
-
you wake up in gardens, in topsoil, on a fringe of grass and mulch. it smells good, like that dark dirt that things grow in.
-oh.
always safe, hidden under a bush, blending into the shadow of a tree
a dog finds you
the hum of a plane
birds singing
brutally hot sun wakes you
and you wake up looking at the sky
-ah. haa.
you're in the garden, near a stone cherub
emotionally scrawny, nothing but hip and collarbones
(emotionally)
but smiling broken
and i say ha,
-call it whatEVER you want…call it whatever you want.
i have an old stoli bottle filled with water in the fridge and i keep pouring myself tumblers. it’s just water, but i notice my neighbors staring in my windows as i sit there, book in hand, half-empty stoli bottle sweating beads on the table. they’ve been looking in my windows a lot lately.
i whap the top of the doorfacing three times
in a vow
i’m smiling to a beat
so much to fucking do, but i’m alright, alright, alright
standing in line for coffee on friday morning, lungs dusky, chest killing, heart rolling around like a billiard ball
but i’m alright, alright
making room, breathing
alright, allllright
the woman slams the coffee into my hand and spills it all over my arm and the whole cafe gasps.....
and the woman flips out
-oh HON! i'll get you some ice!
but i laugh
-i’m alright, i’m alright
and i am, because it’s a lousy coffee shop, and luckily, the coffee’s always lukewarm.
-
you twist off the cap and say,
-hey kid, it’ll work better now.
and oh it’s good. it's very, very good.
at the zoo the wolves are just lanky white yard dogs. i stand there and watch them. i'm leaning on the railing and i can see them there through the fence, on the ground fifty feet away from me. flattened, sleeping. a guy in a cap comes up next to me and does that whistle trill thing through his hands, to try to get their attention- you know-
-oooooohooooo oooohoooooo
he's trying to commune with the wolves. they're trying to sleep. they don't look up, and i really want to tell him, as sweet as his efforts are,
-you know they’re really not that complicated.
all that spirit animal nonsense the plasticized t-shirts have ruined them with
they pull down meat, they run and bite the hell out of each other’s scrawny legs. they're filthy, MAD. grimm's wolves. they’re just crazy dogs, and like you, they’re that much better for it. they’re not praying to the moon, you idiots, they’re catcalling it.
heeeeey baby. heeeey sugar sugar.
and THAT is fucking beautiful. i don't know why people always insist that animals are hippies.
-
you wake up in gardens, in topsoil, on a fringe of grass and mulch. it smells good, like that dark dirt that things grow in.
-oh.
always safe, hidden under a bush, blending into the shadow of a tree
a dog finds you
the hum of a plane
birds singing
brutally hot sun wakes you
and you wake up looking at the sky
-ah. haa.
you're in the garden, near a stone cherub
emotionally scrawny, nothing but hip and collarbones
(emotionally)
but smiling broken
and i say ha,
-call it whatEVER you want…call it whatever you want.
i have an old stoli bottle filled with water in the fridge and i keep pouring myself tumblers. it’s just water, but i notice my neighbors staring in my windows as i sit there, book in hand, half-empty stoli bottle sweating beads on the table. they’ve been looking in my windows a lot lately.
i whap the top of the doorfacing three times
in a vow
i’m smiling to a beat
so much to fucking do, but i’m alright, alright, alright
standing in line for coffee on friday morning, lungs dusky, chest killing, heart rolling around like a billiard ball
but i’m alright, alright
making room, breathing
alright, allllright
the woman slams the coffee into my hand and spills it all over my arm and the whole cafe gasps.....
and the woman flips out
-oh HON! i'll get you some ice!
but i laugh
-i’m alright, i’m alright
and i am, because it’s a lousy coffee shop, and luckily, the coffee’s always lukewarm.
-
Sunday, April 10, 2005
dromedary versus bactrian camels, one hump versus two, hot arid desert versus cold mountain desert.
i'm at the zoo, alone, as it closes. the sun is setting. it's dusky and quiet, with rumors of rain and snow, and i'm the only one around, save for a few straggling families who are trying to find the exit.
the animals are relaxed. the red pandas are out and they stare me down, as do the waterbuck and the polar bears. the later you stay at the zoo, i suppose, the more significant you become. no one stays behind beyond a certain time but those people who essentially work for the animals. so as i walk, the reindeer, the rhino, the giraffes, all stare, wanting something, wondering what it is they want, but knowing it's SOMETHING and it might have something to do with me.
i don't know where the exit is. it's six o'clock. the zoo closes at six. i'm slightly afraid of getting locked in. and then again, slightly not.
there in the company of two staring red pandas, across from three sleeping dromedary camels. the capybaras in with the howler monkeys. the bird house. the baby black breasted leaf turtles who crane their necks when i come in. the vietnamese walking sticks. the stork. the kimodo dragon. the zebras.
splendid.
.
i'm at the zoo, alone, as it closes. the sun is setting. it's dusky and quiet, with rumors of rain and snow, and i'm the only one around, save for a few straggling families who are trying to find the exit.
the animals are relaxed. the red pandas are out and they stare me down, as do the waterbuck and the polar bears. the later you stay at the zoo, i suppose, the more significant you become. no one stays behind beyond a certain time but those people who essentially work for the animals. so as i walk, the reindeer, the rhino, the giraffes, all stare, wanting something, wondering what it is they want, but knowing it's SOMETHING and it might have something to do with me.
i don't know where the exit is. it's six o'clock. the zoo closes at six. i'm slightly afraid of getting locked in. and then again, slightly not.
there in the company of two staring red pandas, across from three sleeping dromedary camels. the capybaras in with the howler monkeys. the bird house. the baby black breasted leaf turtles who crane their necks when i come in. the vietnamese walking sticks. the stork. the kimodo dragon. the zebras.
splendid.
.
Wednesday, April 06, 2005
-send me balloons. but no mylars, please. they never deflate and i can't bear to pop them...
two years ago today this blog started. two years ago a few days ago i sat with my brother over coffee and napkins with a blue ballpoint pen, trying to think of a name for it. we played around with several. some were bad, some were good. all were very strange and off-topic. we finally settled on the borrowed line, which comes from a mayakovsky poem, which goes something like, "...and the lyrical castrates, who are only too glad to shove in a borrowed line!"
lyrical castrates, that's right.
so now i'm sitting here, after walking two miles to buy birdseed and then walking two miles back to my house with the two ten pound bags of said birdseed swung over my hip like a toddler (i am the saint of sparrows. and the bane of the public transportation system, since i prefer to walk everywhere) and i don't really have anything in particular to say right now. maybe later i'll take this down or change it or add to it. something.
i think this is the best post i've ever written.
as you were.
.
two years ago today this blog started. two years ago a few days ago i sat with my brother over coffee and napkins with a blue ballpoint pen, trying to think of a name for it. we played around with several. some were bad, some were good. all were very strange and off-topic. we finally settled on the borrowed line, which comes from a mayakovsky poem, which goes something like, "...and the lyrical castrates, who are only too glad to shove in a borrowed line!"
lyrical castrates, that's right.
so now i'm sitting here, after walking two miles to buy birdseed and then walking two miles back to my house with the two ten pound bags of said birdseed swung over my hip like a toddler (i am the saint of sparrows. and the bane of the public transportation system, since i prefer to walk everywhere) and i don't really have anything in particular to say right now. maybe later i'll take this down or change it or add to it. something.
i think this is the best post i've ever written.
as you were.
.
Monday, April 04, 2005
a warm, still, quiet sunday night. i head down the hill, pacing, wearing my shoes out. it's getting dark. i walk over the bridge. underneath, the water's darkening, getting deeper as the stars come out. i stretch out my legs, walking the lines of the sidewalk, alternately looking up at the sky and back down at my feet. i'm singing fats waller under my breath to the cars speeding past me-
"i love you- i love you- so to speak!"
downtown everything's closed early. no one's around, just me and the early closed shops with their still lit-up windows. jewelry shops displaying little plastic stands shaped like necks and hands, now missing necklaces, bracelets, rings. the jewelry's all locked up in dark safes, and those display half-mannequins feel naked without them, there, still under a soft spotlight in the window. i only pass a few people. couples, the women shivering because everything's cooling down now that the sun has set and they forgot, when they left the house in the daylight, that that sort of thing happens.
i walk home in the cool dark, back up the hill with the speeding cars behind me. against the wall with the headlights speeding past, i know i shouldn't be out here, the bushes are smudges, the traffic is daunting and loud. i pass a homeless man i see almost everyday. he's strung with beads and chains. a leather jacket, a vest, and then what must be pounds and pounds of beads, necklaces, chains around his neck. he jingles as he passes me, and i hear him, musical, getting farther and farther away. like bear bells. if the bear wore the bells. or if i were the bear.
today, in the antique shop, i poke around without the intention of buying anything. there's a shelf of old bottles in the back, an archaeological medicine cabinet. bottles of soap, bottles of medicinal powders. pills. i wonder, briefly, what would happen if i ingested the "persian powder." i can't tell what any of it's for. tonics. fragrances.
i spot a little blue bottle with a cap and a faded label. all it says on it is "not medicinal." i unscrew the cap and look inside. it's about half-full of a lovely silvery-green powder. naturally, i stick my pinky finger in the stuff. i pull my hand out and look at my finger, on which the powder is turning, liquid-like, from a stark silver-green color, to a bright, glaring purple.
-oh.
i say, watching it, still sort of amused,
-oh, it turns purple...
and then i try to wipe it off the tip of my finger with my other fingers, and find that i'm just spreading it
badly
-uh....... OH. oh? OH.
and it sort of spreads more, and more, until i've put the bottle down and am quietly panicking, frantically trying to rub the purple off my hands, and instead succeeding only in covering all my fingers with the stuff
-jeeeeesus....what in god's.....what.....PURPLE....
i stand there and examine my hands, which have now, with the exception of a few bare splotches on the base of my palms and a few knuckles, turned a thick, antique, "not medicinal," inky purple.
i look to the front of the shop, where the old man is reading a newspaper. the shop is a labyrinth of shelves, tables. it's easy to hide from view, and it took the owners a while to trust that i wasn't going to shoplift anything.
i start to pull my sleeves down over my hands, but decide that i can't leave the shop so obviously hiding something. i waved to him on the way in with unpurpled hands. i imagine walking out and waving to him, my wave just a big streak of ink.....
the man is very talkative......the man asks a lot of questions.....
i decide i have to buy something and hide my hands the whole time.
i buy a little three-dollar bell. i put the money on the counter while his back is turned, and scoop the bell up while he gets the reciept, which i refuse with a smile and a shake of my head.
-oh, no, i don't need it.
he doesn't notice my hands, which is a miracle.
i leave the shop and trot along pearl street, purple fingers splayed, convincing myself that i'm poisoned.
i stop in front of a kid's clothing store, which is displaying four little lacy dresses in the window that are, interestingly enough, the exact color of my hands. i stop for a moment and compare the two, before resuming my quiet panic.
when i get to a sink, i can't get the purple off, and the bowl fills up with blue-black soapy water.
-i'm going to die.
but after four washings my hands are nearly back to normal. i pass the dresses again on my way home and hold my hands up. the contrast is reassuring, if less aesthetically pleasing.
.
"i love you- i love you- so to speak!"
downtown everything's closed early. no one's around, just me and the early closed shops with their still lit-up windows. jewelry shops displaying little plastic stands shaped like necks and hands, now missing necklaces, bracelets, rings. the jewelry's all locked up in dark safes, and those display half-mannequins feel naked without them, there, still under a soft spotlight in the window. i only pass a few people. couples, the women shivering because everything's cooling down now that the sun has set and they forgot, when they left the house in the daylight, that that sort of thing happens.
i walk home in the cool dark, back up the hill with the speeding cars behind me. against the wall with the headlights speeding past, i know i shouldn't be out here, the bushes are smudges, the traffic is daunting and loud. i pass a homeless man i see almost everyday. he's strung with beads and chains. a leather jacket, a vest, and then what must be pounds and pounds of beads, necklaces, chains around his neck. he jingles as he passes me, and i hear him, musical, getting farther and farther away. like bear bells. if the bear wore the bells. or if i were the bear.
today, in the antique shop, i poke around without the intention of buying anything. there's a shelf of old bottles in the back, an archaeological medicine cabinet. bottles of soap, bottles of medicinal powders. pills. i wonder, briefly, what would happen if i ingested the "persian powder." i can't tell what any of it's for. tonics. fragrances.
i spot a little blue bottle with a cap and a faded label. all it says on it is "not medicinal." i unscrew the cap and look inside. it's about half-full of a lovely silvery-green powder. naturally, i stick my pinky finger in the stuff. i pull my hand out and look at my finger, on which the powder is turning, liquid-like, from a stark silver-green color, to a bright, glaring purple.
-oh.
i say, watching it, still sort of amused,
-oh, it turns purple...
and then i try to wipe it off the tip of my finger with my other fingers, and find that i'm just spreading it
badly
-uh....... OH. oh? OH.
and it sort of spreads more, and more, until i've put the bottle down and am quietly panicking, frantically trying to rub the purple off my hands, and instead succeeding only in covering all my fingers with the stuff
-jeeeeesus....what in god's.....what.....PURPLE....
i stand there and examine my hands, which have now, with the exception of a few bare splotches on the base of my palms and a few knuckles, turned a thick, antique, "not medicinal," inky purple.
i look to the front of the shop, where the old man is reading a newspaper. the shop is a labyrinth of shelves, tables. it's easy to hide from view, and it took the owners a while to trust that i wasn't going to shoplift anything.
i start to pull my sleeves down over my hands, but decide that i can't leave the shop so obviously hiding something. i waved to him on the way in with unpurpled hands. i imagine walking out and waving to him, my wave just a big streak of ink.....
the man is very talkative......the man asks a lot of questions.....
i decide i have to buy something and hide my hands the whole time.
i buy a little three-dollar bell. i put the money on the counter while his back is turned, and scoop the bell up while he gets the reciept, which i refuse with a smile and a shake of my head.
-oh, no, i don't need it.
he doesn't notice my hands, which is a miracle.
i leave the shop and trot along pearl street, purple fingers splayed, convincing myself that i'm poisoned.
i stop in front of a kid's clothing store, which is displaying four little lacy dresses in the window that are, interestingly enough, the exact color of my hands. i stop for a moment and compare the two, before resuming my quiet panic.
when i get to a sink, i can't get the purple off, and the bowl fills up with blue-black soapy water.
-i'm going to die.
but after four washings my hands are nearly back to normal. i pass the dresses again on my way home and hold my hands up. the contrast is reassuring, if less aesthetically pleasing.
.
Sunday, March 27, 2005
4.30am, keep in mind, on this, easter, and my brother's birthday.
what a MESS.
and a happy birthday.
last summer. late june, specifically. speechless, i grind away, free and unemployed, i talk with absent colorado about birds and ships and gardens and dead men. i plot out nonsense with one hand and dredge up obscure facts like water out of a well with the other. this fills days. and i'm distracted on this day until my brother comes in and tells me, hands behind his back,
-pick a hand.
i pick the right hand, annoyed because i'm impatient and, like i said, am busy, plotting nonsense with one hand and conjuring water with the other.
restless and aimless, leaving the proles to thread the machines and sit in headphones while it hails outside
and i have no interest, right now, in whatever anyone else holds in their hands. (i'm building an imaginary sheet fort over the dining room chairs and am trying to convince someone, anyone to come in with me.)
but here is one of the two who shared actual sheet forts with me, and, were the three of us not too physically big for it, would still do so now. so i pick his right hand. and he gives me a book of stamps, turning them over in his fingers, which have flat nails like my grandmother's.
-hey, awesome
i say, turning back to the nonsense i'm always working on
and he says,
-no. pick another hand.
so i pick the left hand and he gives me a ukulele with glinting strings
and i laugh and notice suddenly that the windows are very clean
laughing.
it's my birthday, and i remember, tapping a string with a finger
when i was seven and jess woke me early in the morning to sit outside in the sun with them and with the dog. i'd just finished school the day before and the morning, completely open, glared, softly, made of equal parts broken china and windows and curved, small pieces of metal- the spout of a creamer, the hammer of a bell. delicate for the time being, but the day was about to open up hot into squirt guns, water balloons. dirt, grass
and green, sitting there with the four of them and the yellow dog and the smell of the woods, there, behind them-
that smudge of dark green where the lawn dipped down into the ridiculously steep hill that led to the creek. the woods which, i felt, and still feel, held, in the dark and occasional broken light, the warm-moving, strongly shy beasts of everything that had ever happened to me and everything that would ever happen to me. and out there on the wayback patio i turned eight, and felt it, like the hands of a clock crossing
and last summer, turning twenty with the book of stamps and the ukulele, suddenly, conjuring water seemed like absolutely nothing.
.
i'm a little terrified to go in and either hold my hands and play stupid or play blinded-by-the-light
(i wish it could be left to this...)
or clever, always clever...
(and, instead of telling anyone, i wish you'd just asked me to dinner.)
but that doesn't happen.
.
there's always that worry, of the cryptic thing my aunt said, from the corner of her leather couch, there in her house at two in the morning, she with her dorals and me with my coffee
staring at that glass and metal ashtray of hers that i've coveted since i was five
and she said something along the lines of
"someday
you won't be the meeting place
i mean
it won't all
be
(and i think she gestured here)
about
YOU."
and i thought,
-oh, shit.
.
it all edges between knowing and hunting
whether you spot the beast in the woods, and catching your breath delighted, see him as he passes through a patch of light
or whether he'll come up behind you like a bad dream, and huge and hairy, encircle you, dark like an unfriendly coat closet.
but thinking, now, of jessie and owen, and of the big front door in boston, and the rock with the elephant carved into it, and the tile by the back door. the den, which smelled like wood and like the deep sound the big drawer made when opened. the loose string on the back of the driver's seat of the jeep wagoneer that you could make sing if you rubbed it back and forth on the leather.
getting in the closet to see something that supposedly glowed in the dark- the coat closet, which smelled like our parents going out, or the utility closet, which smelled like dust and hard wood. the keyholes of those closets, still, when we moved away, stuck with tiny trident gum wrappers i'd stuffed in there at the age of four. the slanting roof over the bed in jessie's room. the little stand-up bulbs of cheap glass in all our windows, with the black plastic arrows that spun in the sun. the turtle, whose lost pieces of shell sat cleaned, like pieces of mahogany seashell, by his tank.
.
exposed, the lions at the zoo. they're caged, really, only at feeding time.
they come into the building, into the little barbarian cages in the walls of the ancient building with its echoing red tile and the words "lion house" carved in stone over the big doors. the building has high ornate ceilings, from back in the days when zoos were just lazy circuses. the lions are moved from their regular dismal jungle-y enclosure through a series of metal doors to these little shining cage-rooms. bars between them and the mobs of three-year olds and their parents.
the keepers throw dead rabbits to them while children gawk and my chest thuds with a great, crippled tawny love. what you wouldn't give to just eat me, i think, and love them for it. everything taut and warm. lovely and horrible. love in the form of an enormous meat-eating thing with teeth and paws the size of platters. perfect, really.
and, hell. who's ever heard of an unfriendly coat closet, anyway.
.
what a MESS.
and a happy birthday.
last summer. late june, specifically. speechless, i grind away, free and unemployed, i talk with absent colorado about birds and ships and gardens and dead men. i plot out nonsense with one hand and dredge up obscure facts like water out of a well with the other. this fills days. and i'm distracted on this day until my brother comes in and tells me, hands behind his back,
-pick a hand.
i pick the right hand, annoyed because i'm impatient and, like i said, am busy, plotting nonsense with one hand and conjuring water with the other.
restless and aimless, leaving the proles to thread the machines and sit in headphones while it hails outside
and i have no interest, right now, in whatever anyone else holds in their hands. (i'm building an imaginary sheet fort over the dining room chairs and am trying to convince someone, anyone to come in with me.)
but here is one of the two who shared actual sheet forts with me, and, were the three of us not too physically big for it, would still do so now. so i pick his right hand. and he gives me a book of stamps, turning them over in his fingers, which have flat nails like my grandmother's.
-hey, awesome
i say, turning back to the nonsense i'm always working on
and he says,
-no. pick another hand.
so i pick the left hand and he gives me a ukulele with glinting strings
and i laugh and notice suddenly that the windows are very clean
laughing.
it's my birthday, and i remember, tapping a string with a finger
when i was seven and jess woke me early in the morning to sit outside in the sun with them and with the dog. i'd just finished school the day before and the morning, completely open, glared, softly, made of equal parts broken china and windows and curved, small pieces of metal- the spout of a creamer, the hammer of a bell. delicate for the time being, but the day was about to open up hot into squirt guns, water balloons. dirt, grass
and green, sitting there with the four of them and the yellow dog and the smell of the woods, there, behind them-
that smudge of dark green where the lawn dipped down into the ridiculously steep hill that led to the creek. the woods which, i felt, and still feel, held, in the dark and occasional broken light, the warm-moving, strongly shy beasts of everything that had ever happened to me and everything that would ever happen to me. and out there on the wayback patio i turned eight, and felt it, like the hands of a clock crossing
and last summer, turning twenty with the book of stamps and the ukulele, suddenly, conjuring water seemed like absolutely nothing.
.
i'm a little terrified to go in and either hold my hands and play stupid or play blinded-by-the-light
(i wish it could be left to this...)
or clever, always clever...
(and, instead of telling anyone, i wish you'd just asked me to dinner.)
but that doesn't happen.
.
there's always that worry, of the cryptic thing my aunt said, from the corner of her leather couch, there in her house at two in the morning, she with her dorals and me with my coffee
staring at that glass and metal ashtray of hers that i've coveted since i was five
and she said something along the lines of
"someday
you won't be the meeting place
i mean
it won't all
be
(and i think she gestured here)
about
YOU."
and i thought,
-oh, shit.
.
it all edges between knowing and hunting
whether you spot the beast in the woods, and catching your breath delighted, see him as he passes through a patch of light
or whether he'll come up behind you like a bad dream, and huge and hairy, encircle you, dark like an unfriendly coat closet.
but thinking, now, of jessie and owen, and of the big front door in boston, and the rock with the elephant carved into it, and the tile by the back door. the den, which smelled like wood and like the deep sound the big drawer made when opened. the loose string on the back of the driver's seat of the jeep wagoneer that you could make sing if you rubbed it back and forth on the leather.
getting in the closet to see something that supposedly glowed in the dark- the coat closet, which smelled like our parents going out, or the utility closet, which smelled like dust and hard wood. the keyholes of those closets, still, when we moved away, stuck with tiny trident gum wrappers i'd stuffed in there at the age of four. the slanting roof over the bed in jessie's room. the little stand-up bulbs of cheap glass in all our windows, with the black plastic arrows that spun in the sun. the turtle, whose lost pieces of shell sat cleaned, like pieces of mahogany seashell, by his tank.
.
exposed, the lions at the zoo. they're caged, really, only at feeding time.
they come into the building, into the little barbarian cages in the walls of the ancient building with its echoing red tile and the words "lion house" carved in stone over the big doors. the building has high ornate ceilings, from back in the days when zoos were just lazy circuses. the lions are moved from their regular dismal jungle-y enclosure through a series of metal doors to these little shining cage-rooms. bars between them and the mobs of three-year olds and their parents.
the keepers throw dead rabbits to them while children gawk and my chest thuds with a great, crippled tawny love. what you wouldn't give to just eat me, i think, and love them for it. everything taut and warm. lovely and horrible. love in the form of an enormous meat-eating thing with teeth and paws the size of platters. perfect, really.
and, hell. who's ever heard of an unfriendly coat closet, anyway.
.
Wednesday, March 23, 2005
drifting, fog on the ocean.
specifics of numbers, of colors, sweet in a way,
new leaves, three mugs, a yellow dog
-it’s a gray hardcover book.
-oh. i’ve never seen that.
-never?
-never.
four chairs, three plants, ten roses, a table knife
-one two three four five six tiles
-what are you counting?
-tiles.
he jumps out the window and runs across four lawns.
no moon, rain like with a movie fire hose.
my sister’s room in california, a week off from school. spring break. peers are finally over cancun, over…..whereever else they used to go….
-i’m just going home. i’m so tired.
so tired, tiring
they actually write their papers, work in buildings near my house where the sun shines on the windows so hard that i can’t, when i try to look through, even see if they’re in there
-do you see me walk by?
-every goddamn day.
the sun just passed behind a cloud
a jet’s passing overhead
there are so many birds here
the dog downstairs with the news
want to
-really?
-yeah.
-that’s…odd.
-no it’s not.
blue trim around a window
inappropriate thank yous
-that’s…
and i’m laughing, doom
a shadow puppet theatre
my birds aren’t there in front of my house in colorado, or if they are they’re disappointed, the feeder empty for days, but maybe, from inside my empty apartment, the silhouettes still play against the shades- shadows of everything- cities, caravans, the shadow of a tiny solar system, the shadow of a bastard private detective in a black hat
probably not, though
-you think they have parties at night? tiny parties?
my neighbor with the chocolate lab puppy named “boulder”
the upstairs neighbor who wakes up at the exact same time as me and has the same routine of getting up early, hours before class, and still managing to be late once nine actually rolls around
the other neighbor with no mattress on the floor
the last, across the hall from me, so surly, who won’t say hi,
my door with the scuff kick marks
-lotta history there.
i can hear my phone ringing through the door
the trill of the bell, and i can’t find my keys because i can never find my damn keys
one two three four rings i get the door open and they’re gone
the cable company, damn them, is gone.
.
specifics of numbers, of colors, sweet in a way,
new leaves, three mugs, a yellow dog
-it’s a gray hardcover book.
-oh. i’ve never seen that.
-never?
-never.
four chairs, three plants, ten roses, a table knife
-one two three four five six tiles
-what are you counting?
-tiles.
he jumps out the window and runs across four lawns.
no moon, rain like with a movie fire hose.
my sister’s room in california, a week off from school. spring break. peers are finally over cancun, over…..whereever else they used to go….
-i’m just going home. i’m so tired.
so tired, tiring
they actually write their papers, work in buildings near my house where the sun shines on the windows so hard that i can’t, when i try to look through, even see if they’re in there
-do you see me walk by?
-every goddamn day.
the sun just passed behind a cloud
a jet’s passing overhead
there are so many birds here
the dog downstairs with the news
want to
-really?
-yeah.
-that’s…odd.
-no it’s not.
blue trim around a window
inappropriate thank yous
-that’s…
and i’m laughing, doom
a shadow puppet theatre
my birds aren’t there in front of my house in colorado, or if they are they’re disappointed, the feeder empty for days, but maybe, from inside my empty apartment, the silhouettes still play against the shades- shadows of everything- cities, caravans, the shadow of a tiny solar system, the shadow of a bastard private detective in a black hat
probably not, though
-you think they have parties at night? tiny parties?
my neighbor with the chocolate lab puppy named “boulder”
the upstairs neighbor who wakes up at the exact same time as me and has the same routine of getting up early, hours before class, and still managing to be late once nine actually rolls around
the other neighbor with no mattress on the floor
the last, across the hall from me, so surly, who won’t say hi,
my door with the scuff kick marks
-lotta history there.
i can hear my phone ringing through the door
the trill of the bell, and i can’t find my keys because i can never find my damn keys
one two three four rings i get the door open and they’re gone
the cable company, damn them, is gone.
.
Tuesday, March 22, 2005
my dad is watching the news. without looking away from the screen, he says to the room:
-i wish i had a rowboat.
.
-i wish i had a rowboat.
.
Monday, March 21, 2005
fine, all of it
the striped jacket, the missed tails
the thudding to the floor on arm, hand, back and head
-it's fine, i'm fine
all fine
dinners
a bottle of wine and then sleep
holiday, grant somersaults
the well-sleep, the downstairs-singing sleep
the sleep of locked train cars.
a good night good-night.
.
the striped jacket, the missed tails
the thudding to the floor on arm, hand, back and head
-it's fine, i'm fine
all fine
dinners
a bottle of wine and then sleep
holiday, grant somersaults
the well-sleep, the downstairs-singing sleep
the sleep of locked train cars.
a good night good-night.
.
Friday, March 18, 2005
i change the fishbowl, keeping waldemar, who is a blue siamese fighting fish, in a soup bowl while i polish the glass and the rocks. i let the water run over the empty fishbowl’s rim, look out the window at the snow still on the rooftops. when it’s all finally clean i catch the fish in a cup and pour him back into his bowl. his fins and tail are long, ridiculous, so the current stirred up by the pouring is too much for him. he sails around the swirling bowl for a good six seconds, completely helpless to swim in any way, like a woman in a ballgown thrown into the ocean who at least had the presence of mind to toss off her high heeled shoes.
i’m talking on the phone and eating an apple with a knife- a small pearing knife that’s originally from a supermarket jack-o-lantern kit. i don’t think i particularly like fruit, but the knife helps with making it more interesting. cutting it into odd shapes. cutting apples as if they were going to be jack-o-lanterns. peeling and gutting each grapefruit section carefully like a bright new fish- some strange kind of meat.
but on the phone, i cut the apple in a way i haven’t in years and years, which is right down the center- right down the equator between the stem and the base. i put the knife down and stare. how the hell did i forget that there are stars in the centers of apples? i call my mom a few hours later, and she says
-yeah.
-i’d completely forgotten that.
-we used to make prints with them, remember?
-yeah, i was thinking of that.
and i think for the rest of the day that i should get some little cups of potting soil and some beans and see what happens there. besides a general loss of self-respect on my part.
.
i’m talking on the phone and eating an apple with a knife- a small pearing knife that’s originally from a supermarket jack-o-lantern kit. i don’t think i particularly like fruit, but the knife helps with making it more interesting. cutting it into odd shapes. cutting apples as if they were going to be jack-o-lanterns. peeling and gutting each grapefruit section carefully like a bright new fish- some strange kind of meat.
but on the phone, i cut the apple in a way i haven’t in years and years, which is right down the center- right down the equator between the stem and the base. i put the knife down and stare. how the hell did i forget that there are stars in the centers of apples? i call my mom a few hours later, and she says
-yeah.
-i’d completely forgotten that.
-we used to make prints with them, remember?
-yeah, i was thinking of that.
and i think for the rest of the day that i should get some little cups of potting soil and some beans and see what happens there. besides a general loss of self-respect on my part.
.
Thursday, March 17, 2005
"full cargo of long-ago light.....FULL CARGO.....of LONG-AGO LIGHT!!"
i'm supposed to be writing a paper, and i am, in a way. but i'm also watching "big bad love" for about the hundredth time this week. which would explain the above quote.
i'm watching my fish where he is up in his bowl on the windowsill (above the sink, incidentally, which is a wise choice) and i keep shouting to myself in a fake rolling mississippi accent
-FULL CARGO.....of LONG-AGO LIGHT!!
because it's a damn good line, and there's no one around. except YOU.
spring break starts tomorrow. no saint patrick's day celebrations tonight because i have a primate behavior exam tomorrow.
it's funny, though, because in theory drinking and the banishment of snakes should make for a cool holiday.. but when it comes down to it, around here at least....everyone just gets as drunk as they always do...except in a different color.. although maybe that makes all the difference...
to answer your question, no, i don't know why all my posts have been strange, cryptic, crappy verse-like things lately. probably a combination of laziness and my recent discovery that most people are easily entertained.
anyway. wish me luck.
.
i'm supposed to be writing a paper, and i am, in a way. but i'm also watching "big bad love" for about the hundredth time this week. which would explain the above quote.
i'm watching my fish where he is up in his bowl on the windowsill (above the sink, incidentally, which is a wise choice) and i keep shouting to myself in a fake rolling mississippi accent
-FULL CARGO.....of LONG-AGO LIGHT!!
because it's a damn good line, and there's no one around. except YOU.
spring break starts tomorrow. no saint patrick's day celebrations tonight because i have a primate behavior exam tomorrow.
it's funny, though, because in theory drinking and the banishment of snakes should make for a cool holiday.. but when it comes down to it, around here at least....everyone just gets as drunk as they always do...except in a different color.. although maybe that makes all the difference...
to answer your question, no, i don't know why all my posts have been strange, cryptic, crappy verse-like things lately. probably a combination of laziness and my recent discovery that most people are easily entertained.
anyway. wish me luck.
.
Monday, March 14, 2005
not quite.
i want to meet someone who is perpetually late for a wedding
sisyphus who can't find his keys
with mudstained suit, pulled tie, face flushed red and dark from late sleep and embarassment- lazy but seeing
a crust of bread on the way out the door
he throws down his backpack before remembering that he brought his mom's heirloom clock in for show-and-tell
a blunt crack
and he sits down slowly, looking at the bag on the floor in which the glass has just broken, unseen
-ooohhh shit.
sitting here, feeling like i'm being poked, pinched. having my ears flicked.
i have the patience of a hindu cow. a very, very impatient hindu cow.
.
i want to meet someone who is perpetually late for a wedding
sisyphus who can't find his keys
with mudstained suit, pulled tie, face flushed red and dark from late sleep and embarassment- lazy but seeing
a crust of bread on the way out the door
he throws down his backpack before remembering that he brought his mom's heirloom clock in for show-and-tell
a blunt crack
and he sits down slowly, looking at the bag on the floor in which the glass has just broken, unseen
-ooohhh shit.
sitting here, feeling like i'm being poked, pinched. having my ears flicked.
i have the patience of a hindu cow. a very, very impatient hindu cow.
.
Saturday, March 12, 2005
red shoes and perfume that smells like old overripe fruit
(be on my side with your houseburning eyes)
they build a house around me while i’m lying on the wet grass unconscious. it has a door. a window.
there by the mailboxes, you, lit with a cigarette
not a beast, exactly, but some kind of animal, out there waiting for me by the gold numbers. like the animals i knew were down the hill in the woods in boston at night. moving around in the dark, making odd noises. crooning nighttime to themselves.
-1135 and then call you.
-yes.
watching old westerns as a kid i always felt for the horses when their riders were shot and stayed in the stirrups, and they kept running, at the command of a dead man
similarly, the ones freed as their man got shot and sailed off the back, and they kept running stupid through the bullets
you fill the empty whiskey bottle with water
and i'm vicious
the water pressure only changes when i’m not ready for it
and i conserve my energy by flipping through tiny, exquisite napoleon cigarette cards
bonaparte in egypt, 1798
napoleon at boulogne, 1805
bonaparte crossing the alps, 1800
tiny color drawings of him on his horse, against yellow sand. seeing the world and taking it.
that was the LIFE, kids.
and instead of writing what i need to, what's thudding around inside my chest, i pace, snapping
and smile and enjoy the feeling of my own hand resting on the back of my neck while the paper flaps under me
and i have not a thing to say for myself.
.
(be on my side with your houseburning eyes)
they build a house around me while i’m lying on the wet grass unconscious. it has a door. a window.
there by the mailboxes, you, lit with a cigarette
not a beast, exactly, but some kind of animal, out there waiting for me by the gold numbers. like the animals i knew were down the hill in the woods in boston at night. moving around in the dark, making odd noises. crooning nighttime to themselves.
-1135 and then call you.
-yes.
watching old westerns as a kid i always felt for the horses when their riders were shot and stayed in the stirrups, and they kept running, at the command of a dead man
similarly, the ones freed as their man got shot and sailed off the back, and they kept running stupid through the bullets
you fill the empty whiskey bottle with water
and i'm vicious
the water pressure only changes when i’m not ready for it
and i conserve my energy by flipping through tiny, exquisite napoleon cigarette cards
bonaparte in egypt, 1798
napoleon at boulogne, 1805
bonaparte crossing the alps, 1800
tiny color drawings of him on his horse, against yellow sand. seeing the world and taking it.
that was the LIFE, kids.
and instead of writing what i need to, what's thudding around inside my chest, i pace, snapping
and smile and enjoy the feeling of my own hand resting on the back of my neck while the paper flaps under me
and i have not a thing to say for myself.
.
wake up to a foot of snow on the ground and it's still going.
coffee shop banter really confuses me. the jamaican guy started it, calling everyone "darling," and then the rest of them picked it up and things just got cloying and confused and weird in general. now the new employees fall right into it.
-more hashbrowns, sugar?
the newest girl, who probably started working there over break, has called me "dear" three times already.
i can't get with that.
washing the fish in the sink.
white falling out of blue and back into white.
your medals came and they're heavy and glorious.
.
coffee shop banter really confuses me. the jamaican guy started it, calling everyone "darling," and then the rest of them picked it up and things just got cloying and confused and weird in general. now the new employees fall right into it.
-more hashbrowns, sugar?
the newest girl, who probably started working there over break, has called me "dear" three times already.
i can't get with that.
washing the fish in the sink.
white falling out of blue and back into white.
your medals came and they're heavy and glorious.
.
Tuesday, March 08, 2005
i leave the dream the way i’d leave a room, saying
“i have to go right now,” to the people in it.
i pull my hand away
in front of the window
in front of the soaked floating table
and he tells me,
“if you can breathe underwater you don’t need to learn how to swim.”
so sail down, kid
drift down, swim down- down deep under the ocean
and tie yourself to a rock with a ratted rope
mists of blue and green surround you
swimming with the slow unmoving sway of dark gray and clear light
dances in bare feet
your head spins with the estuary calliope
and breathing ships pass above you, sweeping their underwater beacons over you softly.
you wait there with the schools of fish and living lights for the tide to roll back out
and glorious, uncover you, head bare and wet
voice misting out like the breath of a working horse.
soon you can see the moon again
and the sky out there on the cool wet plain
the night singing in its dark wool suit and beautiful deep-sea dress shoes
.
“i have to go right now,” to the people in it.
i pull my hand away
in front of the window
in front of the soaked floating table
and he tells me,
“if you can breathe underwater you don’t need to learn how to swim.”
so sail down, kid
drift down, swim down- down deep under the ocean
and tie yourself to a rock with a ratted rope
mists of blue and green surround you
swimming with the slow unmoving sway of dark gray and clear light
dances in bare feet
your head spins with the estuary calliope
and breathing ships pass above you, sweeping their underwater beacons over you softly.
you wait there with the schools of fish and living lights for the tide to roll back out
and glorious, uncover you, head bare and wet
voice misting out like the breath of a working horse.
soon you can see the moon again
and the sky out there on the cool wet plain
the night singing in its dark wool suit and beautiful deep-sea dress shoes
.
Thursday, March 03, 2005
-when a fire starts to burn, there's a lesson you must learn, something something, then you'll see, you'll avoid catastrophe.
.
.
Monday, February 28, 2005
i finally got into a classroom on the weekend. an empty lecture hall with orange chairs. i've had two classes there. i can never get into the buildings on the weekend, and i always have the notion that i'll work well in an empty classroom with the light slanting in and no one around.
yesterday i tried the door like i always do and for once it was open. i walked in a little ways and saw why it was open-. multitudes of asians and their children. some kind of conference. get-together. something official, anyway. japanese was clattering down the halls- little kids yelling at each other. there were three classrooms full of women doing calisthenics to incessant pop music. dozens of their children in the hallway, just wandering. men in suits. it was bustling. none of them looked at me.
i made my way upstairs to the empty classroom. the door creaked shut behind me and muffled their voices and the kids' screeching sneakers.
i put down my bag and took off my jacket. left the lights off. stood for a moment, wondering if anyone was going to come in and tell me to leave. watched blurry shapes of kids and suits fog-streak past the opaque glass in the door. the red smear shirt of a little kid running. the black bulk of two men in suits walking.
i decided they didn't care, and made for the chalkboard, thinking
HELL, today is a banner day.
.
yesterday i tried the door like i always do and for once it was open. i walked in a little ways and saw why it was open-. multitudes of asians and their children. some kind of conference. get-together. something official, anyway. japanese was clattering down the halls- little kids yelling at each other. there were three classrooms full of women doing calisthenics to incessant pop music. dozens of their children in the hallway, just wandering. men in suits. it was bustling. none of them looked at me.
i made my way upstairs to the empty classroom. the door creaked shut behind me and muffled their voices and the kids' screeching sneakers.
i put down my bag and took off my jacket. left the lights off. stood for a moment, wondering if anyone was going to come in and tell me to leave. watched blurry shapes of kids and suits fog-streak past the opaque glass in the door. the red smear shirt of a little kid running. the black bulk of two men in suits walking.
i decided they didn't care, and made for the chalkboard, thinking
HELL, today is a banner day.
.
Friday, February 25, 2005
-i want you to want something from me.
-wull...
-no, just please, please. take something from me. please.
-i...
-look, here try to take my watch from me.
-i...
-steal my fucking watch!
.
for what it's worth, boys and girls, i just found out that you can take a boat from yugoslavia to italy. or vice versa.
and the pelagosa islands are between yugoslavia and italy in the adriatic sea.
but.....my atlas doesn't have portugal in it for some reason.
i'm going to make crowns for children for a living.
a dog with a broad leather collar and a boxer who wraps his hands and writes stories.
that sort of thing.
i need to buy a picture of a ballerina or flamenco dancers or something to balance out all the images of war and birds on my walls.
i'll get back to the standard blog "i went to class today and it was funny" writing you so sorely want soon. i just haven't been in the mood lately.
off to learn more about monkey behavior.
today we're doing drills and mandrills.
there's....really not too much difference between the two.
.
-wull...
-no, just please, please. take something from me. please.
-i...
-look, here try to take my watch from me.
-i...
-steal my fucking watch!
.
for what it's worth, boys and girls, i just found out that you can take a boat from yugoslavia to italy. or vice versa.
and the pelagosa islands are between yugoslavia and italy in the adriatic sea.
but.....my atlas doesn't have portugal in it for some reason.
i'm going to make crowns for children for a living.
a dog with a broad leather collar and a boxer who wraps his hands and writes stories.
that sort of thing.
i need to buy a picture of a ballerina or flamenco dancers or something to balance out all the images of war and birds on my walls.
i'll get back to the standard blog "i went to class today and it was funny" writing you so sorely want soon. i just haven't been in the mood lately.
off to learn more about monkey behavior.
today we're doing drills and mandrills.
there's....really not too much difference between the two.
.
Wednesday, February 23, 2005
-you're in my will.
-really? what are you leaving me?
-nothing, but i mention you several times.
.
-really? what are you leaving me?
-nothing, but i mention you several times.
.
Sunday, February 20, 2005
the dear ambush.
.
(-it does nothing but RAIN here
nothing
GROWS)
i could lie down in a raining field and happily go waterblind with that green and gray. just bring me the field and the rain and the green and the gray. i want the ocean for a bit. the fog.
ooh, chinatown.
it isn’t raining here. it’s actually quite sunny.
.
i trolled the alleyway for months afterward. passed the shop that said “village cleaner” on the front and “cleaning village” on the back. if i ever brought them any business i would go in the back door, because really, who knows dry cleaning better than a village entirely devoted to it.
a reading the other night. i’m late after an evening of whiskey and conversations about piano repair. i scramble over there in the freezing dark, feeling my extremities go from flushed hot to numb cold.
-LOWERS lowers...
i’m shivering to myself
-whiskey LOWERS your body temperature...
idiot...
i get to the reading, but i leave after hearing an english guy read. i like him, but the woman after him is dismal so i burst out of the back door and out into the frozen night again
once again singing
-lowerslowerslowers you idiot......AAAASSHHHhhhh
freezing.
a few days later i wake up and do what i always do. feed the birds. throw on a coat. head downtown for coffee. lean out over the bridge as i cross it. look at the swings in the snow by the creek.
down at the bakery i’m waiting for my coffee when suddenly i see the english poet i’d seen reading a few nights before.
he’s in a light brown suit with a red handkerchief sticking out of his coat pocket. i watch him. reddish blond hair, reddish blond beard. he’s ordering coffee and muffins. what appears to be his wife comes in and changes her order. on her hip is their three-year old boy. the wife, american, is in a nice long green coat. the little boy is in a ruined multicolored wool sweater. it looks like a ragrug we had in boston, but he handles it well. tousled the way a kid should be. not precious. i watch them and like them.
i head outside with my coffee and sit at my usual table by the gargoyle-like statue of a cat in the bushes. they sit nearby and i watch them. the little boy keeps wandering off. there’s a little cart over by where i’m sitting and he comes over and starts fooling around with it. the mother gets up and comes over to him, clearly wanting him to come sit and eat. she does what i find so annoying, what i see so many people doing with little kids. she overexplains the situation. the kid’s pulling on the cart and the mother says,
-yes. that’s the recycling wagon.
the recycling wagon.
-that’s the recycling wagon, honey, see, they use it to transport the recycling.
the little kid looks up at her and says,
-CAR.
-yes, it's the recycling wagon.
-CAR.
and i decide that the kid is awesome.
she leaves him to the recycling wagon. after a few minutes his dad calls over in rough british accent.
-ambrose, come have your muffin.
and he does.
the kid's name was AMBROSE, for chrissake. i know that means nothing to you but it means quite a bit to me.
damn.
and scene.
.
.
(-it does nothing but RAIN here
nothing
GROWS)
i could lie down in a raining field and happily go waterblind with that green and gray. just bring me the field and the rain and the green and the gray. i want the ocean for a bit. the fog.
ooh, chinatown.
it isn’t raining here. it’s actually quite sunny.
.
i trolled the alleyway for months afterward. passed the shop that said “village cleaner” on the front and “cleaning village” on the back. if i ever brought them any business i would go in the back door, because really, who knows dry cleaning better than a village entirely devoted to it.
a reading the other night. i’m late after an evening of whiskey and conversations about piano repair. i scramble over there in the freezing dark, feeling my extremities go from flushed hot to numb cold.
-LOWERS lowers...
i’m shivering to myself
-whiskey LOWERS your body temperature...
idiot...
i get to the reading, but i leave after hearing an english guy read. i like him, but the woman after him is dismal so i burst out of the back door and out into the frozen night again
once again singing
-lowerslowerslowers you idiot......AAAASSHHHhhhh
freezing.
a few days later i wake up and do what i always do. feed the birds. throw on a coat. head downtown for coffee. lean out over the bridge as i cross it. look at the swings in the snow by the creek.
down at the bakery i’m waiting for my coffee when suddenly i see the english poet i’d seen reading a few nights before.
he’s in a light brown suit with a red handkerchief sticking out of his coat pocket. i watch him. reddish blond hair, reddish blond beard. he’s ordering coffee and muffins. what appears to be his wife comes in and changes her order. on her hip is their three-year old boy. the wife, american, is in a nice long green coat. the little boy is in a ruined multicolored wool sweater. it looks like a ragrug we had in boston, but he handles it well. tousled the way a kid should be. not precious. i watch them and like them.
i head outside with my coffee and sit at my usual table by the gargoyle-like statue of a cat in the bushes. they sit nearby and i watch them. the little boy keeps wandering off. there’s a little cart over by where i’m sitting and he comes over and starts fooling around with it. the mother gets up and comes over to him, clearly wanting him to come sit and eat. she does what i find so annoying, what i see so many people doing with little kids. she overexplains the situation. the kid’s pulling on the cart and the mother says,
-yes. that’s the recycling wagon.
the recycling wagon.
-that’s the recycling wagon, honey, see, they use it to transport the recycling.
the little kid looks up at her and says,
-CAR.
-yes, it's the recycling wagon.
-CAR.
and i decide that the kid is awesome.
she leaves him to the recycling wagon. after a few minutes his dad calls over in rough british accent.
-ambrose, come have your muffin.
and he does.
the kid's name was AMBROSE, for chrissake. i know that means nothing to you but it means quite a bit to me.
damn.
and scene.
.
Monday, February 14, 2005
i'm afraid you'll either catch cold or catch fire
.
in the garden i feel like taking a bite out of a rose
.
the toy soldiers get knocked off the top of the refrigerator when someone slams into the door
vodka infused with figs, figs infused with vodka, that sort of thing
the philosophy being that nothing should ever be left alone.
.
the upstairs neighbor's creaking routine.
.
throwing a tank of helium through the window of a local cafe.
(-oh wait, we'd be arrested for arson.)
.
i'm reading in the crook of a tree over the creek. i've got three tiny antique spoons i've just bought laid out in front
.
in the garden i feel like taking a bite out of a rose
.
the toy soldiers get knocked off the top of the refrigerator when someone slams into the door
vodka infused with figs, figs infused with vodka, that sort of thing
the philosophy being that nothing should ever be left alone.
.
the upstairs neighbor's creaking routine.
.
throwing a tank of helium through the window of a local cafe.
(-oh wait, we'd be arrested for arson.)
.
i'm reading in the crook of a tree over the creek. i've got three tiny antique spoons i've just bought laid out in front