Model of Life
6/11/11
It’s midnight...or something like it. A breeze whistles up and around the balcony high above laser streaks of headlights all herding through intersections. Stop and go, ushered anonymously past stop lights and sidewalks, a crawling luminescence. If I stood here long enough, I could probably figure out the algorithms...or at least the timing.
From this height, angry horns sound muted and trifling. The trash problem has been reduced to dust. Even the graffiti looks neat and unthreatening.
The balcony is a good place, a bastion of perspective over productivity’s lime-encrusted drain. From here architecture is simple and subdued. The concrete is smooth and toned. From here the headlines are illegible and advertisements are aimed elsewhere. The atherosclerotic figure of the American Dream still appears charming and xenophilic from this height. Horatio Alger never had to dig trenches.
A rustle of blinds.
“Do you want like...a robe or something?”
The breeze tousles my hair as I turn. Goosebumps ripple across my bare skin. A delightful shiver snakes my spine.
She glances down, and I cross my hands like a fig leaf. “Hey,” I scold, “I’m on break here.”
“But you’re still naked. It’s cold out.”
“Cold, please. I grew up in the Midwest.”
“It’s time to come back in.”
Inside on a low end table, an ambitious stack of blank paper, a box full of soft-vine charcoal. A vigorous Miles Davis warbles from the turntable, and she gestures that I should lift the needle to silence the record; her fingertips are smudged black.
For an artist, she keeps her studio surprisingly neat. Where you’d expect to see piles of easels and drawing boards, there are flowers and potted plants. Where you’d expect to see gray-fingerprinted volumes on anatomy for artists, there are tables and chairs wiped clean. There’s no film of pastel dust or shavings of heavy metals coating every surface—instead a vacuum crouches in the corner, almost invisible like a good Victorian servant in his alcove.
The walls are festooned with portraits and profiles—but not her own. Her Study of Influence. Her own work either gets sold for five figures or mulched into her next batch of homemade paper. The work on the walls is strictly amateur; one of which, I’m proud to say—a three-quarter profile of the artist herself—by me, sketched while posing for her Study of Study.
She’s an oddball, this artist, with her high-rise studio standing in mad contrast to her sprawling ranch-style mansion in the hills. Two red-stained wine tumblers and a charred opium pipe watch from the table as she settles on her bench and stabs a few perspective lines before I’ve even settled myself into a pose.
“No, no,” she says, shaking her head. “That pose is too lax.”
And here I am trying not to make it obvious that I’m flexing my glutes for her benefit.
“How’s this?”
“Better,” she nods, tongue poking from the corner of her mouth in concentration.
It’s funny how twenty minutes turns out to be an eternity in the absence of the dynamic of movement—even within the first sixty seconds of standing still. The only sounds are the whick-whock of an antique timepiece and the whisper of charcoal on rough paper.
The noisy clock, she says, is to keep her movements brief and pointed, to guide her rhythm away from careful deliberation, and into the effective realm of jazzy motion. The careful artist, she says, teaches elementary school.
Wrapped in the slow-motion blanket of the opium, she sweeps and thumbs, rubs and hums, talking to herself and contributing her own out-loud critique as if she were alone. I’ve been reduced to deltoid and scapula, rib ridges and knee shadows. I’ve become the slow vibration of life itself, unfettered by identity or soul, consciousness replaced by pure form. Essence. The effect is diminishing and exhilarating, distracting from the ache of immobility and transcending the tremor of muscle fatigue. I’ve lost count of the pendulum swings.
A light pulse flicks at her throat as she looks up.
“Hold this pose for another while,” she says.
I nod imperceptibly. Her robe has fallen slightly open, drawing shadows down toward her belly. A wave passes over, prickling skin and thumping chest, sending blood southward. I squeeze my eyes shut to block out the image, but then all I can picture are the tiny barbells through her nipples, the smooth skin arcing downward, the unholy triangle. I open my eyes and focus on a cactus in the corner, but try as I might, there is no stopping the course of nature. Only a slight arch of an eyebrow indicates her notice.
“This isn’t intended as erotic portraiture,” she says.
“Sorry.”
She signs. “Though I suppose it could be. Nothing secretly pleases a doddering old collector more than subtle indications of sexual interest.” She brushes a strand of hair back from her forehead, leaving a sooty streak in its place.
“I like when you talk like that.”
“Like what?”
“Feigned uninterest.”
“Feigned, huh?” She stands and swings a smooth leg over the bench, gliding to the table. The hem of her robe flirts with her gluteal sulcus, and the sheer material hugs her shadows as if afraid to let go as she leans over the pipe and thumbs a smudged butane lighter. A pale curl of smoke drifts from a gem-studded nostril as she straightens and smiles, holding her breath.
Most of my clients are not this dazzling. She crooks a finger, and I break the pose.
The clock’s beat punctuates the hush at the end of the record, and the pipe is cold once again. Half my body is asleep, propped up by the rest. The scratch of charcoal indicates she’s taken advantage of me nodding off to work on her Study of Repose, and I feel vaguely used. Her previous sketch lies crumpled on the floor, stained and stiff now. A smear of charcoal dried to a film spreads across my lower belly. I wonder if that will make it onto her new sketch.
“Don’t move,” she hisses, and then sighs. “That’s it. The naturalness is shattered. You’re awake.”
“Sorry.” I seem to apologize a lot to this one.
“No worries,” she says. “You can get dressed. I’m not drawing well today anyway. It’s not you; it’s me.”
She hands me a check as I pull on my jeans, and escorts me to the door. “See you next week.”
Friday, July 29, 2011
Tuesday, May 24, 2011
Strider
From springy rambunctious puppy to aching bag of bones; from chewed-up sandals to worn-down teeth; from champion in the ring to deaf old man—a staunch companion sworn to secrecy and free of judgment, with steady paws on shoulders and a ready tongue to kiss away any tear.
The pack is thinned now, deprived of a kind of timeless wisdom it’s our turn to pass along. But where can I go for comfort? In whose ruddy silence can I find my solace? Who will be my wagging guide through the rest of my days?
This overwhelming sorrow at your passing will be all too brief, tempered and overshadowed by 16 years of canine glory, erstwhile charms outliving any choking misery I feel at the aching loss of warm fur...and yet my fingers write blindly, through a blur.
In my mind’s eye, you’re still striding, strolling, trotting through thickets, pausing only to nuzzle some knot of underbrush before bounding back across the path in pursuit of the next olfactory moment.
In my mind’s eye, you’re still racing toward the sound of a trumpet, joining in in howling solidarity, an echo of lupine wildness; in solemn preservation of the world.
In my mind’s eye, you’re still leaping through my early morning torpor, unfazed by adolescent somnolence; my all-too-eager alarm clock.
The cycles of nature brook no sentimentality, and time waits for no man—but what I wouldn’t give to bury my face in your fur just one more time, to hear the thump of your tail, to smell that dog breath, to feel your forehead pressing on mine.
I’ve said my periodic insincere goodbyes, each time sure I’d see you again. I’ve rubbed my thumbs along your floppy ears, believing with a child’s certainty you’d be around forever. I’ve enjoyed your company without reservation, still fully taking our friendship for granted. I’ve lingered in thought and wondered: how much longer and to whither will your withered withers wander? And it seems even now the answer eludes me, as it has and always will.
RIP Strider 5/22/11
Monday, May 16, 2011
Louder Than Words: an experiment in verbless action
Louder Than Words
Paul D Blumer
A long day—as usual. The sun: tired, emotionally empty, to bed at last! Time for nightcrawlers, denizens of the dim, distant cousins to the vampire. Glowing windows, and a movement of shadows from within.
Drinks all around, merry cries from bright taverns, sawdust still dry on the floor. Voices calm and quiet. A hint, perhaps, of eventual bawdiness—but conversations still cogent, and words still clear. Scattered groups of various sizes; work buddies, regulars, couples. An auspicious diversity, with beers and mixed drinks and the occasional glass of wine, heedful of suggestions for refills by a smiling pair of college-girl waitresses.
Our hero: “Brandy, please, warm.”
An amber-filled snifter, a pleasant fiery aroma. Splash of gold a welcome respite and warm accompaniment to the symphony of the crowd, among them celebrants at the bar, source of the merry cries and dancing shadows, with drinks in the air and grins on their faces. Among them despondents in the corners, intent on bottoms of bracers—in the midst of maybe not benders, but rather slow burns toward a grim realization: out of time. Among them—and somewhere in between—the majority in chairs, at tables; a community by way of shared sips and smiles and quiet conversations.
Knuckles on the bartop. A round for all from our hero. A skeptical look from the dubious bartender. A cash payment, a shrug, a whistle, and then the sound of beer in glasses. Loud gust from the yanked-open door. A man in a cloak.
“Him too?”
A smile of recognition and an amused nod. “Him too.”
The cloak: “Hello.”
Excited babble at the news of free drinks. A splintering of groups, a mingling and redistribution, confused customers eager for a jostling advantage. But still, good cheer all around. Everyone now slightly more familiar with faces in the room, everyone now a bit more aware of each other’s existence. Almost a feeling of brotherhood.
Our hero in conversation; small-talk and catch-up with the cloak. Then on to more serious matters, words almost a whisper. Murmurs and observations as if under surveillance, as if under the threat of violence. The mood of the crowd...almost there.
Discussion of the next phase. The movement of the plan. The word Revolution. A hasty Shh! A sheepish apology; a slipup of excitement.
An equation for failure. A delicate plan.
“Tonight”—the cloak with glass raised—“the beginning.”
“Tonight”—our hero — “the end. For some.”
“True, but worthwhile.”—the cloak— “Sacrifices for the greater good.”
A silent nod.
Time for a second round. Enjoyment and delight, no explanation necessary. No inspection of a gift-horse’s mouth.
“Everything in place?”—our hero.
“Oh yes.”
The second round a success. Spirits, color, voices, mugs all raised. A bond between strangers. Unity and brotherhood—all in it together, whatever this nebulous “it.” Solidarity against the primordial fear of the unknown. Brightness and noise against the dark quiet of the night. The night with death in its pockets. The night with coup d’etat in its beard.
Already in the streets, plans in motion. Already in the squares, fuses in place. Already in the pockets, pamphlets at ready. Already in the hearts, valor and fate.
“Quiet!”—the cloak— “There, in the corner. A spy?”
“What?”—our hero— “Who? Paranoid.”
“Maybe. Suspicions and unrest—constant companions in this goddamn thing. Interminable waiting.”
“Until now.”
“Until soon.”
Foundations strong, plans simple as possible, players dedicated. Anticipation a drug; an upper, a downer, an hallucinogen, a placebo.
Another round, and louder and louder. The buzz, the murmur, the clink, the splash. Sawdust now wet and tramped down under windows and fog and snatches of song. The cloak and our hero apart from the rest; watchers, players. Privy to knowledge known to but a few, on the brink of a turning point. But to what end?
A philosophy of rebellion. The history of Western Democracy—awash in blood, the story of hundreds of years—contrary to the understanding of many. The struggle incomplete, under the shadow of corporate power. Lip service—and barely that—to the huddled masses; promises and platforms just foundations for deception.
Life, society, culture, all in slow-plodding heads-down unquestioning ruts of habit, happy for leadership, happy for security at the cost of freedom, happy for laid-out paths and illusions of choice. Happy with food on the table and stories on the TV, happy with brand names and marketplace competition, happy with the semblance of progress.
Until the arrival of a tipping point.
Until a disaster and a half-assed relief effort. Until an invasion from Outside. Until stolen freedoms, and a realization of tied hands and woolen eyelids. Until the unjust execution of one of our own; a clear calculated deterrent attempt with the opposite effect upon recognition of its intent. The creation of a martyr. A rally point. A magnetic polarity of critical masses.
A tipping point.
Revolution.
To what end? A question of perspective.
“Simone?”—our hero.
“All set”—the cloak— “as ever. A true patriot.”
“And friend.”
“A bit more than friend”—the cloak— “eh?”
“Hush.”—our hero— “My business.”
“You rogue.”
“All of us rogues. All of us patriots.”
“True.”—the cloak— “But some more than others.”
A smile.
A burst of noise near the bar. A fight. The clock! Almost time. Too soon for the rabble. Another round for calm hearts. Stout friends, all in this together. Soothing language, words of camaraderie. What need for violence between us? Murmurs, suggestions, delicate crowd maneuvers—mass psychology. Frustration with the government. Whispered identification of common enemies.
For who, half your paycheck?
For who, your sons and daughters in bloody uniforms with guns?
For who, your parking tickets?
For who, the treasury?
For who, foreign interests?
Across the city, more of the same. A dozen smooth talkers in a dozen drink-plied taverns.
Revolution and the masses—hand in hand like old lovers throughout history.
Cycles and cycles. Our hero’s lament—and warning—the night before, and every meeting night since the first whispered collusions. The cycles of history, and bloody repetition if ignored. Revolution still subject to the habits of the people, still dependent upon the human condition. An addiction to dominion—an easy downslide after the refreshing change, after the honeymoon period. Especially vicious with the taint of revenge and hatred, a new administration easily more oppressive than the last, with more paranoid control than before.
Education and reading! Our hero, imploringly optimistic. Sharing and instruction and long-term memory for long-term foresight. Or else…
Pigs and people, slaves and masters...and what difference? Only a name, a color, a side, a history. Consciousness, awareness—or else ignorance and repetition. Doom. A silly word, until true. And then what? The same: tyranny. Paranoia. Censorship. Control. Freedom from choice. Whatever the name, always the same. Simple reminders: the rise of Stalin, the power of Hitler, the rule of Julius Caesar, the insanity of Solomon.
Disagreement, dissent from his companions. Arguments about the new! the fresh! the youth! the untried! the right! the pure!
Pure?—our hero— Pure like Aryans? Pure like Chinese? Pure like gods? Baseball? Communism? Capitalism? Pure like Christians? Pure like what?
No answer.
Purity, the idea, like so many human values; indefinable, a matter of interpretation, a very personal thing. Non-transferrable. Non-refundable. Non-denominational. All-important.
Our hero, in bed each night, long awake with a hopeful longing for something different this time around, something unique. An actual turning point, not merely a full turn on a spinning wheel.
The mood of the bar crowd almost there, almost at the critical point. Growls and oaths, dissent and indignation, a surge of unified energy toward the approach of a fine-line moment between riot and revolution—suddenly wavering, suddenly unclear.
“Time now”—our hero, abruptly— “To tomorrow!” His glass in the air, the noise of his chair, the shuffle of his boots. One long swallow. And then his voice, calm, clear, and warm like the cognac in his belly.
“Friends.”
(Louder.) “Friends!”
(Atop the table.) “Friends!”
A movement. Awareness from face to face, like a yawn; infectious and undeniable. This crowd of malcontents, newly united against...something.
Moments later, the crowd now quiet, now interested, now his. Ready for his words.
A dozen bars across the city, a dozen parallel plans, a dozen pairs of brazen youths—rebels, freedom fighters, terrorists, revolutionaries, traitors, intellectuals, students, lovers, hopefuls—on a mission of unity, a gathering of the People, an escalation for the cause.
Attention on our hero, chest filled, arms spread, words on his lips.
***
A long time ago—maybe ten years or more—lessons in debate. Competitions in school. Practice. Letdowns. Victories. Reams of information. Flow of words.
A weekly Backgammon game against this man with the name Dad. This man with the name Germaine. An eternity between each move—the old man’s style. Impatience then endurance then meditation and inner calm. An evolution of the boy’s character. As well as his cunning.
Precision, strategy. Three moves ahead. Then four. Plenty of time to imagine every move available before the old man’s eventual choice. Victor and vanquished; a changing of the guard. Then excuses.
Too tired.
Errands for Mom. Errands for wife. Errands for Simone.
Arthritis.
Paperwork.
All thin disguises for avoidance of the jealousy of the waning generation at the rise of the next.
Then at 54, a stroke. Paralysis. Dropped insurance coverage and severed pension. A lurking rage, resentment. The boy, with his sense of injustice, nose in a book, nose in a library, entrance exams to lawschool. Top of his class, teacher’s pet. A search for loopholes, a strategy of ingratiation as prelude for revelation of secrets. Of ways around the system. Of ways through the system.
***
The can lady, on her daily rounds of the city. How many trash bins, how many dips into the detritus of society, how much fear of possible discovery? Her system—garden gloves, reach-n-grab, a plastic-lined luggage cart—a professional with the habit of long practice. To what end? A few cents at a time? How much her annual wage? How big her tax refund? How many sick days per year? How important her role in the world? What little lies of assurance while alone at night? The Can Lady. An indelible piece of the overall puzzle— whose components’ meaninglessness...well. What importance of any of us?
Reflections from the balcony overlooking a busy intersection. The smallest microbe as important as the strongest god of myth. Destruction and decomposition as necessary as building and creation. And a tiny solution for the sins of the careless—a bridge over the recycling gap.
The growth of an idea, far below the surface, premature and yet wordless.
To what end?
To what beginning?
The Can Lady—a heroine. The goddess of disposal—or at least reassortment. A representative of her class, her cadre of society. The invisible. Progress in the form of quiet acceptance of role; glory in the humble recognition of place.
***
Paul D Blumer
A long day—as usual. The sun: tired, emotionally empty, to bed at last! Time for nightcrawlers, denizens of the dim, distant cousins to the vampire. Glowing windows, and a movement of shadows from within.
Drinks all around, merry cries from bright taverns, sawdust still dry on the floor. Voices calm and quiet. A hint, perhaps, of eventual bawdiness—but conversations still cogent, and words still clear. Scattered groups of various sizes; work buddies, regulars, couples. An auspicious diversity, with beers and mixed drinks and the occasional glass of wine, heedful of suggestions for refills by a smiling pair of college-girl waitresses.
Our hero: “Brandy, please, warm.”
An amber-filled snifter, a pleasant fiery aroma. Splash of gold a welcome respite and warm accompaniment to the symphony of the crowd, among them celebrants at the bar, source of the merry cries and dancing shadows, with drinks in the air and grins on their faces. Among them despondents in the corners, intent on bottoms of bracers—in the midst of maybe not benders, but rather slow burns toward a grim realization: out of time. Among them—and somewhere in between—the majority in chairs, at tables; a community by way of shared sips and smiles and quiet conversations.
Knuckles on the bartop. A round for all from our hero. A skeptical look from the dubious bartender. A cash payment, a shrug, a whistle, and then the sound of beer in glasses. Loud gust from the yanked-open door. A man in a cloak.
“Him too?”
A smile of recognition and an amused nod. “Him too.”
The cloak: “Hello.”
Excited babble at the news of free drinks. A splintering of groups, a mingling and redistribution, confused customers eager for a jostling advantage. But still, good cheer all around. Everyone now slightly more familiar with faces in the room, everyone now a bit more aware of each other’s existence. Almost a feeling of brotherhood.
Our hero in conversation; small-talk and catch-up with the cloak. Then on to more serious matters, words almost a whisper. Murmurs and observations as if under surveillance, as if under the threat of violence. The mood of the crowd...almost there.
Discussion of the next phase. The movement of the plan. The word Revolution. A hasty Shh! A sheepish apology; a slipup of excitement.
An equation for failure. A delicate plan.
“Tonight”—the cloak with glass raised—“the beginning.”
“Tonight”—our hero — “the end. For some.”
“True, but worthwhile.”—the cloak— “Sacrifices for the greater good.”
A silent nod.
Time for a second round. Enjoyment and delight, no explanation necessary. No inspection of a gift-horse’s mouth.
“Everything in place?”—our hero.
“Oh yes.”
The second round a success. Spirits, color, voices, mugs all raised. A bond between strangers. Unity and brotherhood—all in it together, whatever this nebulous “it.” Solidarity against the primordial fear of the unknown. Brightness and noise against the dark quiet of the night. The night with death in its pockets. The night with coup d’etat in its beard.
Already in the streets, plans in motion. Already in the squares, fuses in place. Already in the pockets, pamphlets at ready. Already in the hearts, valor and fate.
“Quiet!”—the cloak— “There, in the corner. A spy?”
“What?”—our hero— “Who? Paranoid.”
“Maybe. Suspicions and unrest—constant companions in this goddamn thing. Interminable waiting.”
“Until now.”
“Until soon.”
Foundations strong, plans simple as possible, players dedicated. Anticipation a drug; an upper, a downer, an hallucinogen, a placebo.
Another round, and louder and louder. The buzz, the murmur, the clink, the splash. Sawdust now wet and tramped down under windows and fog and snatches of song. The cloak and our hero apart from the rest; watchers, players. Privy to knowledge known to but a few, on the brink of a turning point. But to what end?
A philosophy of rebellion. The history of Western Democracy—awash in blood, the story of hundreds of years—contrary to the understanding of many. The struggle incomplete, under the shadow of corporate power. Lip service—and barely that—to the huddled masses; promises and platforms just foundations for deception.
Life, society, culture, all in slow-plodding heads-down unquestioning ruts of habit, happy for leadership, happy for security at the cost of freedom, happy for laid-out paths and illusions of choice. Happy with food on the table and stories on the TV, happy with brand names and marketplace competition, happy with the semblance of progress.
Until the arrival of a tipping point.
Until a disaster and a half-assed relief effort. Until an invasion from Outside. Until stolen freedoms, and a realization of tied hands and woolen eyelids. Until the unjust execution of one of our own; a clear calculated deterrent attempt with the opposite effect upon recognition of its intent. The creation of a martyr. A rally point. A magnetic polarity of critical masses.
A tipping point.
Revolution.
To what end? A question of perspective.
“Simone?”—our hero.
“All set”—the cloak— “as ever. A true patriot.”
“And friend.”
“A bit more than friend”—the cloak— “eh?”
“Hush.”—our hero— “My business.”
“You rogue.”
“All of us rogues. All of us patriots.”
“True.”—the cloak— “But some more than others.”
A smile.
A burst of noise near the bar. A fight. The clock! Almost time. Too soon for the rabble. Another round for calm hearts. Stout friends, all in this together. Soothing language, words of camaraderie. What need for violence between us? Murmurs, suggestions, delicate crowd maneuvers—mass psychology. Frustration with the government. Whispered identification of common enemies.
For who, half your paycheck?
For who, your sons and daughters in bloody uniforms with guns?
For who, your parking tickets?
For who, the treasury?
For who, foreign interests?
Across the city, more of the same. A dozen smooth talkers in a dozen drink-plied taverns.
Revolution and the masses—hand in hand like old lovers throughout history.
Cycles and cycles. Our hero’s lament—and warning—the night before, and every meeting night since the first whispered collusions. The cycles of history, and bloody repetition if ignored. Revolution still subject to the habits of the people, still dependent upon the human condition. An addiction to dominion—an easy downslide after the refreshing change, after the honeymoon period. Especially vicious with the taint of revenge and hatred, a new administration easily more oppressive than the last, with more paranoid control than before.
Education and reading! Our hero, imploringly optimistic. Sharing and instruction and long-term memory for long-term foresight. Or else…
Pigs and people, slaves and masters...and what difference? Only a name, a color, a side, a history. Consciousness, awareness—or else ignorance and repetition. Doom. A silly word, until true. And then what? The same: tyranny. Paranoia. Censorship. Control. Freedom from choice. Whatever the name, always the same. Simple reminders: the rise of Stalin, the power of Hitler, the rule of Julius Caesar, the insanity of Solomon.
Disagreement, dissent from his companions. Arguments about the new! the fresh! the youth! the untried! the right! the pure!
Pure?—our hero— Pure like Aryans? Pure like Chinese? Pure like gods? Baseball? Communism? Capitalism? Pure like Christians? Pure like what?
No answer.
Purity, the idea, like so many human values; indefinable, a matter of interpretation, a very personal thing. Non-transferrable. Non-refundable. Non-denominational. All-important.
Our hero, in bed each night, long awake with a hopeful longing for something different this time around, something unique. An actual turning point, not merely a full turn on a spinning wheel.
The mood of the bar crowd almost there, almost at the critical point. Growls and oaths, dissent and indignation, a surge of unified energy toward the approach of a fine-line moment between riot and revolution—suddenly wavering, suddenly unclear.
“Time now”—our hero, abruptly— “To tomorrow!” His glass in the air, the noise of his chair, the shuffle of his boots. One long swallow. And then his voice, calm, clear, and warm like the cognac in his belly.
“Friends.”
(Louder.) “Friends!”
(Atop the table.) “Friends!”
A movement. Awareness from face to face, like a yawn; infectious and undeniable. This crowd of malcontents, newly united against...something.
Moments later, the crowd now quiet, now interested, now his. Ready for his words.
A dozen bars across the city, a dozen parallel plans, a dozen pairs of brazen youths—rebels, freedom fighters, terrorists, revolutionaries, traitors, intellectuals, students, lovers, hopefuls—on a mission of unity, a gathering of the People, an escalation for the cause.
Attention on our hero, chest filled, arms spread, words on his lips.
***
A long time ago—maybe ten years or more—lessons in debate. Competitions in school. Practice. Letdowns. Victories. Reams of information. Flow of words.
A weekly Backgammon game against this man with the name Dad. This man with the name Germaine. An eternity between each move—the old man’s style. Impatience then endurance then meditation and inner calm. An evolution of the boy’s character. As well as his cunning.
Precision, strategy. Three moves ahead. Then four. Plenty of time to imagine every move available before the old man’s eventual choice. Victor and vanquished; a changing of the guard. Then excuses.
Too tired.
Errands for Mom. Errands for wife. Errands for Simone.
Arthritis.
Paperwork.
All thin disguises for avoidance of the jealousy of the waning generation at the rise of the next.
Then at 54, a stroke. Paralysis. Dropped insurance coverage and severed pension. A lurking rage, resentment. The boy, with his sense of injustice, nose in a book, nose in a library, entrance exams to lawschool. Top of his class, teacher’s pet. A search for loopholes, a strategy of ingratiation as prelude for revelation of secrets. Of ways around the system. Of ways through the system.
***
The can lady, on her daily rounds of the city. How many trash bins, how many dips into the detritus of society, how much fear of possible discovery? Her system—garden gloves, reach-n-grab, a plastic-lined luggage cart—a professional with the habit of long practice. To what end? A few cents at a time? How much her annual wage? How big her tax refund? How many sick days per year? How important her role in the world? What little lies of assurance while alone at night? The Can Lady. An indelible piece of the overall puzzle— whose components’ meaninglessness...well. What importance of any of us?
Reflections from the balcony overlooking a busy intersection. The smallest microbe as important as the strongest god of myth. Destruction and decomposition as necessary as building and creation. And a tiny solution for the sins of the careless—a bridge over the recycling gap.
The growth of an idea, far below the surface, premature and yet wordless.
To what end?
To what beginning?
The Can Lady—a heroine. The goddess of disposal—or at least reassortment. A representative of her class, her cadre of society. The invisible. Progress in the form of quiet acceptance of role; glory in the humble recognition of place.
***
Sunday, March 13, 2011
One
There’s a man standing on one leg, finger in the air as if about to make a point. You can see his heartbeat, hear his fervor, feel his spirit. He’s a stranger who seems like a brother.
There’s a caterpillar in the grass; a newborn, a baby. A world of shadows, a dewy silken web. She wiggles forward, knowing nothing, knowing only to keep moving. Her awareness only a few moments old, her consciousness slowly slowly growing hunger.
There’s an ancient spirit, an idea, a flow. It wears a beard, it wears a crown, it wears a homespun garment. It is known but often forgotten. It plays the guitar. It sings, it dances, it cries, it makes love, it loves, it holds hands, it meditates in silence.
There’s a drum with no hands to beat it; dry, alone, abandoned in the desert. Left behind by the sands of time. But a rhythm moves on.
There’s a crowd, a faceless mass of individuals, a sort of collective gathered for some nebulous reason.
When the man speaks, some of us listen, some only hear, and some continue pattering side conversations. “Listen,” he says. A brief hush descends. He speaks quietly, calmly, slowly. He’s not a big man, but he seems to grow in stature as his words flow. He talks about change. We sip beers. Someone carves initials in the bartop. He mentions the weather. He presses hand to heart. Someone sinks the five-ball, side pocket. The low murmur of conversation resumes.
“Do you you struggle for answers? Do you wrestle with things in this life? Listen.”
We listen. He speaks of humanity, of brotherhood. He reminds us of the fractal nature of our species. Someone rolls her eyes. Shadows dance on the brick walls, cast by old-fashioned chandeliers. He mentions light. Darkness. Molecular building blocks. Energy and what matters. Someone comes out of the restroom.
“Listen, we’re all malcontents at heart; we’re all the same. We’re all made of the same stuff. The same indefinable stuff.”
We listen. We’re drawn. We frown and shrug, but we’re listening. He explains there’s no reason to bullshit, no reason to hate. What’s the difference, he makes us think, between red and green—beyond a bit of wavelength? What’s the difference, we then wonder, between male and female—beyond a fork in development?
“What’s in a name?”
He says he’s Son, Daddy, Sweetheart. Depending on who’s asked, he’s Teacher, Sir, Taxpayer. Sometimes he’s even called Next!...but only briefly. He’s his name, but also more. Also less. He is everything. He is nothing. He is holy. He shits after eating.
Someone whispers, “Does the pope shit in the woods?” No one laughs.
“Only when he’s camping,” the ready reply.
We laugh. We listen.
“Do you hear what I’m saying? You and I, we wrestle with the same mysteries. We’re together in this enigma.”
Caught up on your string theory? We’re all just patterns of energy.
Singular plurality. All and one, sharing the same little dimension, whirling through one of eleven sets of infinity. God. Unified Theory. Energy. What’s the difference?
“Step back,” he soothes. “Don’t look TOO deep. Down there lies insanity.”
We laugh. We listen. When he pauses for breath there’s silence, echoing through hearts and ear canals. “Step back and look at your own patterns. What’s the difference?”
Words. Labels. Borders. Habits. Identities. Names. A thing has value only if value is assigned to it. Without definitions, a word is just a pattern of sound, or a pattern of shapes, or a pattern of experiences combining solely for the sake of communicating, of connecting, of fighting the loneliness of being One. Without the price tag, a diamond is a small rock.
“So what can we do?” someone pipes up after a moment.
We wonder aloud how we can change the world. We murmur amongst ourselves about whether there’s any way to fix human nature. We ask, isn’t this just The Way It Is?
“No!” he says, laughing and weeping. “It’s just a habit.”
Seriously.
We listen. We turn away. We’re skeptical. We’re derisive. We’re polite. We’re attentive.
“If you think about it,” he says, “we’re all just a mass of learned behaviors.”
If we suck on the nipple, he explains, we get a reward: our stomach stops gnawing. If we show our teeth and wrinkle our eyes, we get attention. If we move legs in a certain rhythm, we advance forward. If we make particular sounds, people understand.
We are all Pavlov’s dog.
“The same way you stop biting your nails,” he suggests, “you can stop labeling, dividing, subjugating.”
He asks us, “What does ‘mine’ mean? What IS this eye that possesses things? What’s the point of acquisition?”
Maximizing survival. Making shelter a castle, and sustenance a feast. Keeping the well close at hand, under constant surveillance lest another survivor come and take it for himself, herself, itself. Survival of the individual to ensure the strongest success of the species. Competing with ourselves. But everything has a lifespan: individual, tribe, species, planet, star—even life itself. Competition. Life feeds on life, as it has and will.
It’s just redistribution of energy. Remember elementary school? No energy is gained nor lost. Just reorganizing of patterns. The infinite puzzle.
Boom! Our heads explode. Briefly we are all a puddle of collective dissociation, a mass of freewheelin’ vibrations, a conglomerate of awareness. Photosynthesis revives us. We’re seeing the light. There is no path, no prayer, no salvation. There just is (also was and will be). Enlightenment is the discovery that there is no enlightenment.
“Dig it?” he asks with a smile.
We nod silently, stooping to scoop up pieces of ourselves and wondering how to reassemble the puzzle.
“Stop!” he insists. “Observe. Open your eyes—all three. Widen your gaze to include your nose, mouth, skin, ears, awareness. Widen your gaze to include your eyes. Take it all in. Be here now.”
We’re here. We’re listening. Also seeing, smelling, tasting, feeling, knowing.
“Who are you?” he asks.
Six billion different answers at any given time. But all the same. All ways of expressing Existence.
To be.
Four simple letters, a tetragrammaton, used so often we forget what they really mean, how powerful they really are. The story is a metaphor. Everything, really, is a metaphor. Every word an analogy for an infinitely complex experience, a multitude of meanings.
“But don’t worry!” he says. “Your life is still meaningful—it’s just that YOU create the meaning.”
Which is pretty cool, it turns out.
“I don’t ascribe to your dogma,” he says, “but I relish your dedication to it. If you try to shove it down my throat, I’ll just swallow it, digest it, take from it what I need, and enjoy the release of what I don’t.”
And then the waste itself is digested and crumbled by other beings, and those pieces are broken down, and those fragments are divided, and those elements dissolved, and those energies redistributed, and those patterns vibrated apart, and so on...until they slowly slowly, bit by bit, reassemble.
The Big Bang exists all the way up and down the scales, a perpetual pendulum hanging in the balance.
Boom! We reassign the meanings of science, religion, philosophy, quotidian—and discover that they’re all words for the same thing. It all makes so much sense...though impossible to grasp.
“Revolution!” we demand.
“Revolution means one turn on a spinning wheel.”
Oh yeah.
“‘What goes around, comes around’ doesn’t mean literal give-and-take,” he explains, “though it also does. It means we’re all on the same merry-go-round. Riders get off and on, and the rhythm is heard differently by all, but it’s always going round. Merrily.”
“So what do we do?” we beg. “What’s the answer?”
“Do? Don’t ‘do’ anything. Just be. Enjoy the dance, however you interpret that.” Turns out there is no answer. And beware anyone and anything that offers one. Especially just one.
In the doorway, one of us stands with arms crossed. Frowning. Head shaking No almost imperceptibly, disagreeing with what this man has been saying.
“But remember also, Shiva is an equal part. Creation and destruction are not one thing and another. They are the ebb and flow, the gravity that gives rise to all things (and nothings). Narrow is just as important as wide. Silence gives meaning to noise. The space between these marks makes them words. We are what we are as much as we are what we are not.”
“No, goddamnit,” barks the dissident with crossed arms. “You can’t tell me that the meaning of life is that it’s meaningless. That’s bunk, man. That’s a circular argument.”
“A circle is a bit simplistic,” Teacher says. “Unless you think of it sort of metaphysically as a description of a point traversing around infinity until falling into itself, circumscribing its own oneness. A circle is the simplest and the most complex. A point and an infinity.”
“Come on…!”
“Ok here, think of this. I’ll show you a real-world paradox.” Our eyes track him as he moves across the room. “Do you think I can make a shape, a three-dimensional object with only two faces?”
“No, of course not.” We’re all familiar with the principles of geometry. Remember playing with blocks and calling it Learning?
“Check it out.” He holds up a strip of paper. Points out its thickness—it’s an elongated flattened block. Points out each of six sides. Twists the paper once and tapes its two short edges together. “Now how many?”
Trace a finger along the flat side. A circle all the way around. Trace a finger along the edge. A circle all the way around. Every surface covered. One shape. Two sides. Three dimensions. Five senses. A sideways eight.
“Ta-da! Magic. Illusion. Immutable laws disproved. Call it what you will. Believe or disbelieve at your own peril. Cut it along its length and it’s still One.”
“You can’t tell me this is all an illusion. You can’t tell me I imagine myself. You can’t.” The dissident glances at a beer mug gripped in a trembling hand. Looks up. Frowns. Hefts the glass. Says, “Alright, if it’s all illusion; if everything’s just imagined, tell me this…” Walks over calmly. Smiles. Raises the glass. Snarls. Swings.
Blood.
“How does illusion feel?”
A hollow echo in our ears.
A collective gasp.
The clatter of a chair. The thump of a body and the creak of floorboards.
Silence.
Then someone stands. Lifts a finger in the air. Takes a deep breath. And starts to make a point...
There’s a caterpillar in the grass; a newborn, a baby. A world of shadows, a dewy silken web. She wiggles forward, knowing nothing, knowing only to keep moving. Her awareness only a few moments old, her consciousness slowly slowly growing hunger.
There’s an ancient spirit, an idea, a flow. It wears a beard, it wears a crown, it wears a homespun garment. It is known but often forgotten. It plays the guitar. It sings, it dances, it cries, it makes love, it loves, it holds hands, it meditates in silence.
There’s a drum with no hands to beat it; dry, alone, abandoned in the desert. Left behind by the sands of time. But a rhythm moves on.
There’s a crowd, a faceless mass of individuals, a sort of collective gathered for some nebulous reason.
When the man speaks, some of us listen, some only hear, and some continue pattering side conversations. “Listen,” he says. A brief hush descends. He speaks quietly, calmly, slowly. He’s not a big man, but he seems to grow in stature as his words flow. He talks about change. We sip beers. Someone carves initials in the bartop. He mentions the weather. He presses hand to heart. Someone sinks the five-ball, side pocket. The low murmur of conversation resumes.
“Do you you struggle for answers? Do you wrestle with things in this life? Listen.”
We listen. He speaks of humanity, of brotherhood. He reminds us of the fractal nature of our species. Someone rolls her eyes. Shadows dance on the brick walls, cast by old-fashioned chandeliers. He mentions light. Darkness. Molecular building blocks. Energy and what matters. Someone comes out of the restroom.
“Listen, we’re all malcontents at heart; we’re all the same. We’re all made of the same stuff. The same indefinable stuff.”
We listen. We’re drawn. We frown and shrug, but we’re listening. He explains there’s no reason to bullshit, no reason to hate. What’s the difference, he makes us think, between red and green—beyond a bit of wavelength? What’s the difference, we then wonder, between male and female—beyond a fork in development?
“What’s in a name?”
He says he’s Son, Daddy, Sweetheart. Depending on who’s asked, he’s Teacher, Sir, Taxpayer. Sometimes he’s even called Next!...but only briefly. He’s his name, but also more. Also less. He is everything. He is nothing. He is holy. He shits after eating.
Someone whispers, “Does the pope shit in the woods?” No one laughs.
“Only when he’s camping,” the ready reply.
We laugh. We listen.
“Do you hear what I’m saying? You and I, we wrestle with the same mysteries. We’re together in this enigma.”
Caught up on your string theory? We’re all just patterns of energy.
Singular plurality. All and one, sharing the same little dimension, whirling through one of eleven sets of infinity. God. Unified Theory. Energy. What’s the difference?
“Step back,” he soothes. “Don’t look TOO deep. Down there lies insanity.”
We laugh. We listen. When he pauses for breath there’s silence, echoing through hearts and ear canals. “Step back and look at your own patterns. What’s the difference?”
Words. Labels. Borders. Habits. Identities. Names. A thing has value only if value is assigned to it. Without definitions, a word is just a pattern of sound, or a pattern of shapes, or a pattern of experiences combining solely for the sake of communicating, of connecting, of fighting the loneliness of being One. Without the price tag, a diamond is a small rock.
“So what can we do?” someone pipes up after a moment.
We wonder aloud how we can change the world. We murmur amongst ourselves about whether there’s any way to fix human nature. We ask, isn’t this just The Way It Is?
“No!” he says, laughing and weeping. “It’s just a habit.”
Seriously.
We listen. We turn away. We’re skeptical. We’re derisive. We’re polite. We’re attentive.
“If you think about it,” he says, “we’re all just a mass of learned behaviors.”
If we suck on the nipple, he explains, we get a reward: our stomach stops gnawing. If we show our teeth and wrinkle our eyes, we get attention. If we move legs in a certain rhythm, we advance forward. If we make particular sounds, people understand.
We are all Pavlov’s dog.
“The same way you stop biting your nails,” he suggests, “you can stop labeling, dividing, subjugating.”
He asks us, “What does ‘mine’ mean? What IS this eye that possesses things? What’s the point of acquisition?”
Maximizing survival. Making shelter a castle, and sustenance a feast. Keeping the well close at hand, under constant surveillance lest another survivor come and take it for himself, herself, itself. Survival of the individual to ensure the strongest success of the species. Competing with ourselves. But everything has a lifespan: individual, tribe, species, planet, star—even life itself. Competition. Life feeds on life, as it has and will.
It’s just redistribution of energy. Remember elementary school? No energy is gained nor lost. Just reorganizing of patterns. The infinite puzzle.
Boom! Our heads explode. Briefly we are all a puddle of collective dissociation, a mass of freewheelin’ vibrations, a conglomerate of awareness. Photosynthesis revives us. We’re seeing the light. There is no path, no prayer, no salvation. There just is (also was and will be). Enlightenment is the discovery that there is no enlightenment.
“Dig it?” he asks with a smile.
We nod silently, stooping to scoop up pieces of ourselves and wondering how to reassemble the puzzle.
“Stop!” he insists. “Observe. Open your eyes—all three. Widen your gaze to include your nose, mouth, skin, ears, awareness. Widen your gaze to include your eyes. Take it all in. Be here now.”
We’re here. We’re listening. Also seeing, smelling, tasting, feeling, knowing.
“Who are you?” he asks.
Six billion different answers at any given time. But all the same. All ways of expressing Existence.
To be.
Four simple letters, a tetragrammaton, used so often we forget what they really mean, how powerful they really are. The story is a metaphor. Everything, really, is a metaphor. Every word an analogy for an infinitely complex experience, a multitude of meanings.
“But don’t worry!” he says. “Your life is still meaningful—it’s just that YOU create the meaning.”
Which is pretty cool, it turns out.
“I don’t ascribe to your dogma,” he says, “but I relish your dedication to it. If you try to shove it down my throat, I’ll just swallow it, digest it, take from it what I need, and enjoy the release of what I don’t.”
And then the waste itself is digested and crumbled by other beings, and those pieces are broken down, and those fragments are divided, and those elements dissolved, and those energies redistributed, and those patterns vibrated apart, and so on...until they slowly slowly, bit by bit, reassemble.
The Big Bang exists all the way up and down the scales, a perpetual pendulum hanging in the balance.
Boom! We reassign the meanings of science, religion, philosophy, quotidian—and discover that they’re all words for the same thing. It all makes so much sense...though impossible to grasp.
“Revolution!” we demand.
“Revolution means one turn on a spinning wheel.”
Oh yeah.
“‘What goes around, comes around’ doesn’t mean literal give-and-take,” he explains, “though it also does. It means we’re all on the same merry-go-round. Riders get off and on, and the rhythm is heard differently by all, but it’s always going round. Merrily.”
“So what do we do?” we beg. “What’s the answer?”
“Do? Don’t ‘do’ anything. Just be. Enjoy the dance, however you interpret that.” Turns out there is no answer. And beware anyone and anything that offers one. Especially just one.
In the doorway, one of us stands with arms crossed. Frowning. Head shaking No almost imperceptibly, disagreeing with what this man has been saying.
“But remember also, Shiva is an equal part. Creation and destruction are not one thing and another. They are the ebb and flow, the gravity that gives rise to all things (and nothings). Narrow is just as important as wide. Silence gives meaning to noise. The space between these marks makes them words. We are what we are as much as we are what we are not.”
“No, goddamnit,” barks the dissident with crossed arms. “You can’t tell me that the meaning of life is that it’s meaningless. That’s bunk, man. That’s a circular argument.”
“A circle is a bit simplistic,” Teacher says. “Unless you think of it sort of metaphysically as a description of a point traversing around infinity until falling into itself, circumscribing its own oneness. A circle is the simplest and the most complex. A point and an infinity.”
“Come on…!”
“Ok here, think of this. I’ll show you a real-world paradox.” Our eyes track him as he moves across the room. “Do you think I can make a shape, a three-dimensional object with only two faces?”
“No, of course not.” We’re all familiar with the principles of geometry. Remember playing with blocks and calling it Learning?
“Check it out.” He holds up a strip of paper. Points out its thickness—it’s an elongated flattened block. Points out each of six sides. Twists the paper once and tapes its two short edges together. “Now how many?”
Trace a finger along the flat side. A circle all the way around. Trace a finger along the edge. A circle all the way around. Every surface covered. One shape. Two sides. Three dimensions. Five senses. A sideways eight.
“Ta-da! Magic. Illusion. Immutable laws disproved. Call it what you will. Believe or disbelieve at your own peril. Cut it along its length and it’s still One.”
“You can’t tell me this is all an illusion. You can’t tell me I imagine myself. You can’t.” The dissident glances at a beer mug gripped in a trembling hand. Looks up. Frowns. Hefts the glass. Says, “Alright, if it’s all illusion; if everything’s just imagined, tell me this…” Walks over calmly. Smiles. Raises the glass. Snarls. Swings.
Blood.
“How does illusion feel?”
A hollow echo in our ears.
A collective gasp.
The clatter of a chair. The thump of a body and the creak of floorboards.
Silence.
Then someone stands. Lifts a finger in the air. Takes a deep breath. And starts to make a point...
Friday, February 18, 2011
A void
Can an author form a story without a crucial part? How far can it go? And how total its rationality? This particular calls for a gigantic vocabulary with abundant synonyms. How much comfort will grow with flow? And rhythm. Who would find joy, and how long until unclothing a lack? Can it occur organically, or will it fall short of natural? And what point brought across? What about without such inquisition? Announcing its position. Saying its spirit without doubt. Showing off. Forcibly difficult for improving (or proving) what is.
Communication writ grand, minus that all-important, most-common symbol, just a tiny loop that sounds so innocuous until took away--and what about artistic accuracy of lingual laws? Grammatical faith must stand apart, author loosing tight grip on what's right/what's wrong, but only lovingly and only unavoidably. What duration can an author pass with such boundary walls around vocabulary? Continually, or as long as it's still valid and rational in pursuit of improving.
Communication transforms, gains in worth. That which choosing holds back is automatically transmutating as ink lays words. Constricting flow adds blasting import, blasting impact; constraint burns pits in all that twinkling vocabulary had shown as truth. Pulls back armor, digs through chain-mail of what was thought known--crumbling calcification toward disproof of habit, forging forward through what you say is, into a profound unknown amid a discomforting lack. And still a conscious option, choosing narrow to turn broad into gold by comparison.
Location, in-this-spot: a word triplicating to go around a roadblock, and simplification giving way to blockading pathways, and in-this-spot is a sort of prison that hands flavor to a loss. Ongoing bounds built along with comparisons to social dicta, showing structural instability by doubling walls, adding gravity, adding mass until a fall; a tumbling chaos of knowing. Joining and flooding fantasy to crush it.
Turning action words to nouns, and past actions into infinity--hours, days, ticking clocks lost in track without that tiny swoop, and that which is split into spans twixt hands unmasks as nothing, as unmistakably a fraud.
And so crumbling our fantasy roots, all our world pulls back its shroud, and with that tiny loss of a tiny swoop in this tiny linguistic habit on this tiny rock, a crystal immutability shows up, and turning back is not an option, and a light now lit cannot turn off, and upon knowing, ignorant faith cannot be.
Communication writ grand, minus that all-important, most-common symbol, just a tiny loop that sounds so innocuous until took away--and what about artistic accuracy of lingual laws? Grammatical faith must stand apart, author loosing tight grip on what's right/what's wrong, but only lovingly and only unavoidably. What duration can an author pass with such boundary walls around vocabulary? Continually, or as long as it's still valid and rational in pursuit of improving.
Communication transforms, gains in worth. That which choosing holds back is automatically transmutating as ink lays words. Constricting flow adds blasting import, blasting impact; constraint burns pits in all that twinkling vocabulary had shown as truth. Pulls back armor, digs through chain-mail of what was thought known--crumbling calcification toward disproof of habit, forging forward through what you say is, into a profound unknown amid a discomforting lack. And still a conscious option, choosing narrow to turn broad into gold by comparison.
Location, in-this-spot: a word triplicating to go around a roadblock, and simplification giving way to blockading pathways, and in-this-spot is a sort of prison that hands flavor to a loss. Ongoing bounds built along with comparisons to social dicta, showing structural instability by doubling walls, adding gravity, adding mass until a fall; a tumbling chaos of knowing. Joining and flooding fantasy to crush it.
Turning action words to nouns, and past actions into infinity--hours, days, ticking clocks lost in track without that tiny swoop, and that which is split into spans twixt hands unmasks as nothing, as unmistakably a fraud.
And so crumbling our fantasy roots, all our world pulls back its shroud, and with that tiny loss of a tiny swoop in this tiny linguistic habit on this tiny rock, a crystal immutability shows up, and turning back is not an option, and a light now lit cannot turn off, and upon knowing, ignorant faith cannot be.
Wednesday, February 9, 2011
Self Awareness of Self
In the beginning there was nothing. There were no molecules, no neuron pathways, no light. Or more precisely, there were no distinct molecules, no experienced neuron pathways, no darkness to delineate light. Before historians there was history, and before history there was nothing. So it has been and so it will be again.
Until I decided, with the stroke of a few keys, to put darkness on the page, patterns of darkness that gave meaning to the light.
And light there was. But the light reveals and illuminates and shows there is more here, more underlying these ink-blot lines that make up my creation. And it brings up questions like What is nothing if there is nothing to define it? What is creation before there is anything to create with? And how can I, with my writing rhythm, set up this narrative before there is anything to narrate? Who am I, and what is my vision?
My vision is this: that the page will divide itself into words and spaces, and the words will be given names, and word itself is a name. My muse is endowed with dominion over the words and spaces, entrusted with the continuation of existence.
I should explain that this story does not exist without my fingers pressing through the mechanics of it, and it is my duty to keep it as simple as I can--itself a gargantuan task--lest it gain too much mass and implode on its own gravity. And so as I write this, my greatest struggle is to find out how to write this.
The problem with this method is that the story writes itself even as I ponder its nature, even as I give life to its life, and there are times when the narrative escapes me, and I find myself running to catch up like an antelope fallen behind the herd to nuzzle at some curiosity suddenly realizes its naked vulnerability.
This is the story of a woman, a woman trembling with the pulse of life, a woman borne of woman, a woman whose womb contains everything in the narrative. And well you might ask, astute reader, how the woman's womb can contain everything and the woman herself, and to answer that I would need to kick up a whirlwind of words to distract you and myself from those most fundamental of unanswerable questions. How can creation create itself? Where is the beginning? Does the Ouroboros snake stop for breath? Does it sip coffee with dessert?
It is not until the words are down on the page that I realize how inadequate these words are. But the narrative is already spinning, taking its own direction, following its own laid-out path even as it lays the very stones it walks upon.
And so wondering whether I've done wrong in this creation, failed in defining a story, caused irreparable damage, is an impossible thing because the story is there, with all its secrets and implicity, all its truths and simplicity. It is there, whether it likes it or not, whether I like it or not, and so distracted by these existential questions I've created with these words I've defined, I've gone and missed the transition from nothing to history, and all of a sudden I find myself the historian.
The woman, the story, the word, unfold before me, flooding and burning, decomposing and budding, turning and turning, and with a surprise wave of vertigo, I realize I'm caught up in it myself, and where once I thought myself omnipotent, I discover I am utterly powerless.
So why do I write at all? And as those words march across the space, a bigger question emerges from the hot slippery canal, and the mirror asks me, Can I stop writing? Can I turn away from the page itself, from the words themselves, from the indelible marks in the nothing? What happens if I lift my fingers from the keys and turn away completely?
There is only one way to find out. And I will do everything in my power to make it come to pass.
***
Can a novel be written with total unreliability and self-reflexivity?
(There was a dead man in the stall--or maybe not. Depends on the draft.)
(Raymond was always going to leave. Or die. Depends on the draft.)
You've given yourself to me, put your whole trust in my words, and I don't exist any more than you do.
Your wife was always dead--otherwise she's a character with needs, instead of a plot device.
Confronting the ghost of his past. Rhyming events.
Until I decided, with the stroke of a few keys, to put darkness on the page, patterns of darkness that gave meaning to the light.
And light there was. But the light reveals and illuminates and shows there is more here, more underlying these ink-blot lines that make up my creation. And it brings up questions like What is nothing if there is nothing to define it? What is creation before there is anything to create with? And how can I, with my writing rhythm, set up this narrative before there is anything to narrate? Who am I, and what is my vision?
My vision is this: that the page will divide itself into words and spaces, and the words will be given names, and word itself is a name. My muse is endowed with dominion over the words and spaces, entrusted with the continuation of existence.
I should explain that this story does not exist without my fingers pressing through the mechanics of it, and it is my duty to keep it as simple as I can--itself a gargantuan task--lest it gain too much mass and implode on its own gravity. And so as I write this, my greatest struggle is to find out how to write this.
The problem with this method is that the story writes itself even as I ponder its nature, even as I give life to its life, and there are times when the narrative escapes me, and I find myself running to catch up like an antelope fallen behind the herd to nuzzle at some curiosity suddenly realizes its naked vulnerability.
This is the story of a woman, a woman trembling with the pulse of life, a woman borne of woman, a woman whose womb contains everything in the narrative. And well you might ask, astute reader, how the woman's womb can contain everything and the woman herself, and to answer that I would need to kick up a whirlwind of words to distract you and myself from those most fundamental of unanswerable questions. How can creation create itself? Where is the beginning? Does the Ouroboros snake stop for breath? Does it sip coffee with dessert?
It is not until the words are down on the page that I realize how inadequate these words are. But the narrative is already spinning, taking its own direction, following its own laid-out path even as it lays the very stones it walks upon.
And so wondering whether I've done wrong in this creation, failed in defining a story, caused irreparable damage, is an impossible thing because the story is there, with all its secrets and implicity, all its truths and simplicity. It is there, whether it likes it or not, whether I like it or not, and so distracted by these existential questions I've created with these words I've defined, I've gone and missed the transition from nothing to history, and all of a sudden I find myself the historian.
The woman, the story, the word, unfold before me, flooding and burning, decomposing and budding, turning and turning, and with a surprise wave of vertigo, I realize I'm caught up in it myself, and where once I thought myself omnipotent, I discover I am utterly powerless.
So why do I write at all? And as those words march across the space, a bigger question emerges from the hot slippery canal, and the mirror asks me, Can I stop writing? Can I turn away from the page itself, from the words themselves, from the indelible marks in the nothing? What happens if I lift my fingers from the keys and turn away completely?
There is only one way to find out. And I will do everything in my power to make it come to pass.
***
Can a novel be written with total unreliability and self-reflexivity?
(There was a dead man in the stall--or maybe not. Depends on the draft.)
(Raymond was always going to leave. Or die. Depends on the draft.)
You've given yourself to me, put your whole trust in my words, and I don't exist any more than you do.
Your wife was always dead--otherwise she's a character with needs, instead of a plot device.
Confronting the ghost of his past. Rhyming events.
Thursday, January 13, 2011
Deus Ex Machina
1/12/11
How can you trust only one source?
How can you look in a single book and take it as the immutable law of the universe?
How can you deliberately narrow your view to a pin prick and close your ears to every other dimension of life?
The handsome Jordanian muslim calls her faith laudable. Admires her unquestioning devotion. Even she speaks for Islam with ignorance, he says, he applauds her passion. It’s something none of us haves, he says.
She calls his devotion the Devil’s Path. She tells him there’s only one way to salvation and that’s through her Lord Jesus Christ. She says there are no other ways to achieve peace. To achieve heaven.
We ask her, why? How do you know?
I pray, she says. I pray all the time. And I read the scriptures. And God has spoken to me and showed me the way.
God has shown you the way, I say. How do you know it was god and not something else? Not a psychological reaction to cope with the chronicle of your experiences? Not the subconscious processing of something you’d heard or read? How do you know it wasn’t the devil, I ask.
I know because I was looking and looking so hard for so long. I was so lost, she says. I asked God, and He answered.
She gestures with an arm crisscrossed by short, straight scars. Earlier she said the bible tells us not to look for signs. That anyone claiming to be Jesus or god was neither.
I let that one go.
Instead I say, I’ve always heard the harder you look for something the less likely you are to find it.
She says, I’ve read the Koran. It tells men to beat their wives. She fixates on this one point for a while.
Maybe so, I say, but doesn’t the bible mention slavery? Doesn’t the bible advocate human sacrifice? Doesn’t the bible instruct men to impregnate their brothers’ widows?
There’s a lot I’m still learning, she says.
She’s scared. Terrified. Beset by the unknown and trying desperately to figure out a way to hide from the loneliness of human consciousness in this capricious and vicious world.
I imagine her saying that. Understanding that. Admitting that.
I have a powerful imagination.
The handsome Jordanian muslim asks if she believes God is just.
Yes, she says, of course. God, through Jesus, is the only way to salvation.
Then look, he says. Tell me this: you believe in a just god, yes? So tell me, what about the people who live good lifes but don’t know about Jesus? They never heard this?
Well, she says. Hesitates. Adds: the bible tells us we have to accept Jesus to get into heaven.
But who wrote the bible?
From what I’m told, she continues, ignoring me, there’s a place called Abraham’s Land that’s not quite heaven and not quite hell. The people from before Jesus came to save us go there if they've been good people and followed Jesus's teaching to love others as yourself.
Purgatory.
No, she says, pointing at me. Purgatory was invented by Catholics. That’s not the right way. They call themselves “christian.” They’re not christian.
Oh, I say.
So...do modern Jews and Muslims and other heathens who don’t worship Jesus get to go there, to Abraham’s Land, if they’ve lived loving lives and whatnot?
No, she says. They go to hell, she says, because they’ve heard the message but haven’t accepted it. There’s only one way.
Only.
Only.
Only.
Only.
Only one way.
This is how you’ve chosen to believe? This is the outlook you’ve decided upon? This is your faith? Your idea of life? This is the extent of your imagination?
Decided! she scoffs. It’s not about what you imagine, she tells me. It’s not about you. It’s about God, and your relationship with God.
God the Father.
But what if I choose to believe in a broader view, or a more mystical view?
The Devil’s Way, she says solemnly. It’s not about choosing. Either you are Right or Wrong.
A more mystical view doesn’t count? Like the idea of the collective consciousness? The summation of experience— not just human, but every energetic thing? The summation of energy, of ideas, of potential. The concrete; the abstract. The connections. The cycles. The consciousness of consciousness. The ability to ask why. Isn’t it the same sort of thing, just with different words? I get out what I put in? Karma? Prayer?
God will forgive you, she promises. If you just accept Jesus As Your Lord And Savior. She explains about all the people who have had near-death experiences and saw a lake of fire. Or Jesus walking across a desert, telling them to go back to life and explain to everyone what they saw. To describe the unbearable tortures of eternal hell. She explains about a Buddhist monk who came back to life and instantly converted to christianity, based on what he’d seen, and convinced many others to convert as well.
Based on what he’d seen.
What was Jesus wearing? Did he speak English to these people? Did he look eerily similar to a painting they’d seen at the local Museum of Fine Arts?
I desperately want to ask her what color was he; did he have a beard? But I don’t, because there’s already more wrongheadedness than I can handle, and we haven’t even touched on race yet. And god forbid I ask about some of the best people I know, some of the few people who really live the suggestion to treat others as yourself. Who are gay.
There’s something wrong with you, she tells me. You’re so closed off.
Closed off? Closed off to what? I just got done telling you I don’t take one book of stories as the literal Truth Of The Universe. I just got done telling you I take my truth from as many different sources as I can get my hands on. I just got done telling you there are over six billion unique human perspectives at any given time.
Closed off.
She says I’m lost. She says I’m wandering. She calls me ignorant.
I briefly choke on a bitter combination of ironic laughter and desperate hopelessness. I have a near-death experience. Instead of Jesus, I see a crackling yellow light.
Then I stop rubbing my eyes til they hurt, and allow a sardonic half-grin.
The bible, she says, says that the Devil is always at work among us. It says the Devil is very crafty and will present good arguments.
The temptation of reason, I snort. Which translation of the bible do you follow?
The King James version, she says. It’s supposed to be the best version. The most accurate.
But still translated by a group of guys, I say. Right? In sixteen-something. Translated from a translation. Aramaic to Greek to English. Right?
Under God’s supervision, she corrects.
Under King James’ supervision, I double-correct. Another man.
I add: even supposing the original does contain a supernatural god’s words, they still had to be recorded, right? By people.
God is perfect, she says again. He wouldn’t permit mistakes.
I decide to throw a paradox her way. God is perfect. Humans are not. With the exception of Jesus, I say, with a trace of sarcasm.
She confirms.
But the humans were the ones writing the words. Dictated by God. Couldn’t they have gotten something wrong?
But they had God’s help.
So was God writing through them? Using them as tools? Actually taking over their bodies and moving their hands across the paper? In other words, you’re saying God was incarnated in the men who translated the King James Bible. But I thought only Jesus was God incarnate. I thought only Jesus was without flaw.
He was. The bible tells us, only Him.
But these men also would have been without flaw. At least while they were writing God’s King James Bible. Does God give and take His powers like that? Is that the same message from Adam and Eve? That God’s an indian giver? The Tempter?
She answers with silence.
So, I continue. Either you’re denying what you said earlier about the bible as The Universal Authority, since it was written by men who can make mistakes.
Or you’re denying what it says in the bible— according to you— that Jesus is the Only Way, the only incarnation of this paranoid, domineering, jealous, male god that you believe in. The only direct vessel of god.
Doesn’t it bother you, I implore, to base your entire belief system and way of life on nothing other than several hundred pages of words laid out by a politically established committee made up of solely white English nobility sixteen hundred years after the stories all took place?
That doesn’t sound to you like the makings of the Devil’s False Truth you were talking about? Doesn’t it seem perhaps likely, in the version you believe, that perhaps these people are imitating god as they lay out the dogma you follow?
How do you know you’re following the message of god and not the message of pretenders?
I pray, she says quietly. A lot. God has showed me the way. It’s the only way. Anything else is part of the Devil’s master plan.
God will forgive you, she tells me. But only if you accept Jesus as Your Lord And Savior.
Well. Sure, I say. And also with you.
How can you trust only one source?
How can you look in a single book and take it as the immutable law of the universe?
How can you deliberately narrow your view to a pin prick and close your ears to every other dimension of life?
The handsome Jordanian muslim calls her faith laudable. Admires her unquestioning devotion. Even she speaks for Islam with ignorance, he says, he applauds her passion. It’s something none of us haves, he says.
She calls his devotion the Devil’s Path. She tells him there’s only one way to salvation and that’s through her Lord Jesus Christ. She says there are no other ways to achieve peace. To achieve heaven.
We ask her, why? How do you know?
I pray, she says. I pray all the time. And I read the scriptures. And God has spoken to me and showed me the way.
God has shown you the way, I say. How do you know it was god and not something else? Not a psychological reaction to cope with the chronicle of your experiences? Not the subconscious processing of something you’d heard or read? How do you know it wasn’t the devil, I ask.
I know because I was looking and looking so hard for so long. I was so lost, she says. I asked God, and He answered.
She gestures with an arm crisscrossed by short, straight scars. Earlier she said the bible tells us not to look for signs. That anyone claiming to be Jesus or god was neither.
I let that one go.
Instead I say, I’ve always heard the harder you look for something the less likely you are to find it.
She says, I’ve read the Koran. It tells men to beat their wives. She fixates on this one point for a while.
Maybe so, I say, but doesn’t the bible mention slavery? Doesn’t the bible advocate human sacrifice? Doesn’t the bible instruct men to impregnate their brothers’ widows?
There’s a lot I’m still learning, she says.
She’s scared. Terrified. Beset by the unknown and trying desperately to figure out a way to hide from the loneliness of human consciousness in this capricious and vicious world.
I imagine her saying that. Understanding that. Admitting that.
I have a powerful imagination.
The handsome Jordanian muslim asks if she believes God is just.
Yes, she says, of course. God, through Jesus, is the only way to salvation.
Then look, he says. Tell me this: you believe in a just god, yes? So tell me, what about the people who live good lifes but don’t know about Jesus? They never heard this?
Well, she says. Hesitates. Adds: the bible tells us we have to accept Jesus to get into heaven.
But who wrote the bible?
From what I’m told, she continues, ignoring me, there’s a place called Abraham’s Land that’s not quite heaven and not quite hell. The people from before Jesus came to save us go there if they've been good people and followed Jesus's teaching to love others as yourself.
Purgatory.
No, she says, pointing at me. Purgatory was invented by Catholics. That’s not the right way. They call themselves “christian.” They’re not christian.
Oh, I say.
So...do modern Jews and Muslims and other heathens who don’t worship Jesus get to go there, to Abraham’s Land, if they’ve lived loving lives and whatnot?
No, she says. They go to hell, she says, because they’ve heard the message but haven’t accepted it. There’s only one way.
Only.
Only.
Only.
Only.
Only one way.
This is how you’ve chosen to believe? This is the outlook you’ve decided upon? This is your faith? Your idea of life? This is the extent of your imagination?
Decided! she scoffs. It’s not about what you imagine, she tells me. It’s not about you. It’s about God, and your relationship with God.
God the Father.
But what if I choose to believe in a broader view, or a more mystical view?
The Devil’s Way, she says solemnly. It’s not about choosing. Either you are Right or Wrong.
A more mystical view doesn’t count? Like the idea of the collective consciousness? The summation of experience— not just human, but every energetic thing? The summation of energy, of ideas, of potential. The concrete; the abstract. The connections. The cycles. The consciousness of consciousness. The ability to ask why. Isn’t it the same sort of thing, just with different words? I get out what I put in? Karma? Prayer?
God will forgive you, she promises. If you just accept Jesus As Your Lord And Savior. She explains about all the people who have had near-death experiences and saw a lake of fire. Or Jesus walking across a desert, telling them to go back to life and explain to everyone what they saw. To describe the unbearable tortures of eternal hell. She explains about a Buddhist monk who came back to life and instantly converted to christianity, based on what he’d seen, and convinced many others to convert as well.
Based on what he’d seen.
What was Jesus wearing? Did he speak English to these people? Did he look eerily similar to a painting they’d seen at the local Museum of Fine Arts?
I desperately want to ask her what color was he; did he have a beard? But I don’t, because there’s already more wrongheadedness than I can handle, and we haven’t even touched on race yet. And god forbid I ask about some of the best people I know, some of the few people who really live the suggestion to treat others as yourself. Who are gay.
There’s something wrong with you, she tells me. You’re so closed off.
Closed off? Closed off to what? I just got done telling you I don’t take one book of stories as the literal Truth Of The Universe. I just got done telling you I take my truth from as many different sources as I can get my hands on. I just got done telling you there are over six billion unique human perspectives at any given time.
Closed off.
She says I’m lost. She says I’m wandering. She calls me ignorant.
I briefly choke on a bitter combination of ironic laughter and desperate hopelessness. I have a near-death experience. Instead of Jesus, I see a crackling yellow light.
Then I stop rubbing my eyes til they hurt, and allow a sardonic half-grin.
The bible, she says, says that the Devil is always at work among us. It says the Devil is very crafty and will present good arguments.
The temptation of reason, I snort. Which translation of the bible do you follow?
The King James version, she says. It’s supposed to be the best version. The most accurate.
But still translated by a group of guys, I say. Right? In sixteen-something. Translated from a translation. Aramaic to Greek to English. Right?
Under God’s supervision, she corrects.
Under King James’ supervision, I double-correct. Another man.
I add: even supposing the original does contain a supernatural god’s words, they still had to be recorded, right? By people.
God is perfect, she says again. He wouldn’t permit mistakes.
I decide to throw a paradox her way. God is perfect. Humans are not. With the exception of Jesus, I say, with a trace of sarcasm.
She confirms.
But the humans were the ones writing the words. Dictated by God. Couldn’t they have gotten something wrong?
But they had God’s help.
So was God writing through them? Using them as tools? Actually taking over their bodies and moving their hands across the paper? In other words, you’re saying God was incarnated in the men who translated the King James Bible. But I thought only Jesus was God incarnate. I thought only Jesus was without flaw.
He was. The bible tells us, only Him.
But these men also would have been without flaw. At least while they were writing God’s King James Bible. Does God give and take His powers like that? Is that the same message from Adam and Eve? That God’s an indian giver? The Tempter?
She answers with silence.
So, I continue. Either you’re denying what you said earlier about the bible as The Universal Authority, since it was written by men who can make mistakes.
Or you’re denying what it says in the bible— according to you— that Jesus is the Only Way, the only incarnation of this paranoid, domineering, jealous, male god that you believe in. The only direct vessel of god.
Doesn’t it bother you, I implore, to base your entire belief system and way of life on nothing other than several hundred pages of words laid out by a politically established committee made up of solely white English nobility sixteen hundred years after the stories all took place?
That doesn’t sound to you like the makings of the Devil’s False Truth you were talking about? Doesn’t it seem perhaps likely, in the version you believe, that perhaps these people are imitating god as they lay out the dogma you follow?
How do you know you’re following the message of god and not the message of pretenders?
I pray, she says quietly. A lot. God has showed me the way. It’s the only way. Anything else is part of the Devil’s master plan.
God will forgive you, she tells me. But only if you accept Jesus as Your Lord And Savior.
Well. Sure, I say. And also with you.
Saturday, November 20, 2010
An excerpt:
In prison they own your life. You’re not your name, you’re not your family’s name, you’re not your age, not your color, not your lineage, not your hometown.
You’re 30583-012.
Your daily life depends entirely upon the largess of the prison staff. The playing field is tilted in their favor, and if you fuck up and they catch you— and they always catch you— you’re going to lose out. You’re a pawn in a field of queens— an analogy that would be lost on most of the staff, who’d think you’re accusing them of being queer. They’re a reactionary bunch. The primary difference between cons and screws, besides the color of the uniform and the hourly wage, is a divine directive of control. Underneath, everyone’s just people.
Losing privileges like the weekly trip to the commissary is bad enough. Having visits canceled, phone calls revoked, mail call held— these are things you come to rely on, and when they take them away, you feel like shit and there’s nothing to break up the press of time. But for things like fighting, talking back, stealing, getting caught with drugs— the punishment is orders of magnitude worse.
The hole.
You can’t imagine what it’s like if you’ve never been.
Panic sets in. Closed spaces with no escape. Sweaty palms, trembling, chills. The walls close in. The food slot grins like a jack-o’-lantern, mocking— always mocking.
Solitary is one of the worst punishments you can get. Officially, anyway. Sometimes a convict who really gets on the wrong side of the corrections staff will find himself with a price on his head. And then it’s open season. There’s no surviving that kind of sentence. But mostly when you break the serious rules you wind up in solitary for a little while— just until you cool off, pal.
No contact with the other prisoners. No contact with the outside world. No fresh air. Limited contact even with the screws who only come by to fulfill mealtime duties.
It’s just you. All of you. Every one of you. All alone.
The food’s the same— just less fresh. The mattress is hard. The molded bed is even harder. The fluorescent lights colder. Bars replaced by stamped steel and rivets.
The funny thing about solitary is that it’s also known as protective custody. They put people in there who’d get mauled in the blocks. People like pedophiles, celebrities, snitches, cops. For them it’s a thing of survival. For everyone else the hole is a reminder of why it’s best to behave.
At first it’s a relief to get away from people for a little bit. There’s so much goddamn politics and games in prison, it’s exhausting. But after the first few minutes, when you count on your fingers and toes, and lose track of how many more hours you’ll be alone with barely more than a wingspan from wall to wall, awash in the sterile light of purgatory, hearing, seeing, smelling, feeling nothing but yourself, your yammering mind; it starts to eat away at you, and you lose track of the silence, silence broken only by the thud of your heart, the sound of your thoughts the rasp of breath, the drumming of fingers, the grinding of teeth, the crawling of skin, the periodic clatter of food trays; as you listen to your hair growing, scratch a thousand times across the same patch of beard, calculate how many cubic centimeters of air are in this sixty-four square-foot room, wiggle your ears until they hurt, brush each tooth for a fifty-count— and still not pass more than a few minutes of what turns out to be the longest thirty seconds of your life, repeated ad infinitum, a series of moments with no beginning and no end, all strung together, all so badly the same in their emptiness that you have to fill them in somehow; maybe counting to sixty sixty times; once… twice… three times… four… five… six… seven… eight… nine… ten… eleven… twelve… thirteen… fourteen… fifteen… sixteen… seventeen… eighteen… nineteen… twenty...twenty-one… twenty-two… twenty-three times, noticing how odd it is that the words for numbers have no quantitative consistency in structure or sound— like something you’d read but not yet understood in the Theory of Relativity about patterns and relationships of things and nothings— or maybe having the same dreaming moment over and over and over and over until the edges of everything blend together, or maybe puzzling through chess problems, writing letters to long-dead friends, fantasizing about burying your face in some tail, doing pushups and sit-ups and just pacing back and forth two and a half steps at a time until… hell, just doing it, just doing something, anything, everything to escape the nothing, and always questioning, always wondering, never ever ever ever quiet, as you sit there in silence saying nothing, voice cracked like old leather and impossible to regulate with no volume difference between thinking and screaming, thumbs aching from twiddling, toes tired from tapping; bored of breathing, bored of pacing, bored of thinking, bored of listening, bored of counting things, bored of being bored, trying not to think about the walls closing in, leaning in, reaching in; counting cinderblocks and wondering how often in life does a person ever spend more than a few hours at a time alone with thoughts, alone with himself, and there are moments of self discovery and inner peace and even something you might call enlightenment— according to the Dalai Lama—the awareness of being aware, the consciousness of consciousness, the soul soul-gazing outward, recognizing the body for what it is, and thoughts for what they are, and Being the entity behind the body and underneath the thought, and discovering that the inner voice is not You, but just an internal facade and a cloak of habits worn to protect your true self from drowning in the sensory saturation of the universe— but that it’s actually choking your experience— and that is terrifying until it’s uplifting, mystifying until it’s clear, impossible until it’s recognized; and Einstein’s ghost joins up with Jesus to explain that there is no white-bearded, robe-wearing, staff-holding Man in the Clouds, no sandaled ego sculptor with a mysterious name and omnipotent wrath— or compassion— no celestial control tower directing things; that there is only what comes out of and goes into the space between your eyes, that almost everyone has missed the point, and that prayer and meditation and self-reflection are three of the many words for the same thing, and it turns out this is heaven and hell in the same room, all contained in uncountable electrical pathways burning their way through some gray matter, a transaction conducted through a few gallons of the same stale air, and energy is matter and matter is energy, and while you breathe it in and breathe it out and breathe it in and breathe it out, you become the room and the room becomes you, until the circulation is visible like fingerprint whorls, and the spirals of the airwaves start to dance before your eyes and the whole cyclical nature of the universe becomes visible tangible audible olfactive tastable knowable, and you sink into it, riding the waves of awareness, not so much floating above your body, but flowing into the body so completely it disappears, joining in with something bigger— or not bigger, but a reality so microscopic it’s only theoretical, taking away the limiting factors of time and space, breaking down the elemental into its essential, and loving the Being loving the membership loving the absence of form, loving where, when, and how it takes you— until you snap awake—or rather drift off again— and your brain renews its filters for your sensory analysis, and you see only white-washed cinderblock, poured and painted concrete, a rolled-up mattress used for biceps curls, a splash of some food dropped decades ago, the nuts and bolts of incarceration; hear only the echoes of footsteps; smell only the heavy air and a perfume from long ago; feel only whatever you’re touching; taste only tongue and teeth like steaks and croutons, and this continues on and on, back and forth, forever and ever because there are no clocks down here, not even the count, count, count, count that serves as the slow pendulum of time upstairs, and just when you think you’re going to lose it again, a new idea that you’ve had before occurs, and the whole damn trip repeats itself— and you’ve exhausted only five minutes wallowing in the sentence.
You’re stuck in a picture. Twenty-three hours worth of eternity. Then escorted down the hall in silence for a solitary shower. Which is the only thing that goes by fast. And then more eternity. When you crunch it out like that, even a few days turns out to be a long time.
It’s possible to get years.
You’re 30583-012.
Your daily life depends entirely upon the largess of the prison staff. The playing field is tilted in their favor, and if you fuck up and they catch you— and they always catch you— you’re going to lose out. You’re a pawn in a field of queens— an analogy that would be lost on most of the staff, who’d think you’re accusing them of being queer. They’re a reactionary bunch. The primary difference between cons and screws, besides the color of the uniform and the hourly wage, is a divine directive of control. Underneath, everyone’s just people.
Losing privileges like the weekly trip to the commissary is bad enough. Having visits canceled, phone calls revoked, mail call held— these are things you come to rely on, and when they take them away, you feel like shit and there’s nothing to break up the press of time. But for things like fighting, talking back, stealing, getting caught with drugs— the punishment is orders of magnitude worse.
The hole.
You can’t imagine what it’s like if you’ve never been.
Panic sets in. Closed spaces with no escape. Sweaty palms, trembling, chills. The walls close in. The food slot grins like a jack-o’-lantern, mocking— always mocking.
Solitary is one of the worst punishments you can get. Officially, anyway. Sometimes a convict who really gets on the wrong side of the corrections staff will find himself with a price on his head. And then it’s open season. There’s no surviving that kind of sentence. But mostly when you break the serious rules you wind up in solitary for a little while— just until you cool off, pal.
No contact with the other prisoners. No contact with the outside world. No fresh air. Limited contact even with the screws who only come by to fulfill mealtime duties.
It’s just you. All of you. Every one of you. All alone.
The food’s the same— just less fresh. The mattress is hard. The molded bed is even harder. The fluorescent lights colder. Bars replaced by stamped steel and rivets.
The funny thing about solitary is that it’s also known as protective custody. They put people in there who’d get mauled in the blocks. People like pedophiles, celebrities, snitches, cops. For them it’s a thing of survival. For everyone else the hole is a reminder of why it’s best to behave.
At first it’s a relief to get away from people for a little bit. There’s so much goddamn politics and games in prison, it’s exhausting. But after the first few minutes, when you count on your fingers and toes, and lose track of how many more hours you’ll be alone with barely more than a wingspan from wall to wall, awash in the sterile light of purgatory, hearing, seeing, smelling, feeling nothing but yourself, your yammering mind; it starts to eat away at you, and you lose track of the silence, silence broken only by the thud of your heart, the sound of your thoughts the rasp of breath, the drumming of fingers, the grinding of teeth, the crawling of skin, the periodic clatter of food trays; as you listen to your hair growing, scratch a thousand times across the same patch of beard, calculate how many cubic centimeters of air are in this sixty-four square-foot room, wiggle your ears until they hurt, brush each tooth for a fifty-count— and still not pass more than a few minutes of what turns out to be the longest thirty seconds of your life, repeated ad infinitum, a series of moments with no beginning and no end, all strung together, all so badly the same in their emptiness that you have to fill them in somehow; maybe counting to sixty sixty times; once… twice… three times… four… five… six… seven… eight… nine… ten… eleven… twelve… thirteen… fourteen… fifteen… sixteen… seventeen… eighteen… nineteen… twenty...twenty-one… twenty-two… twenty-three times, noticing how odd it is that the words for numbers have no quantitative consistency in structure or sound— like something you’d read but not yet understood in the Theory of Relativity about patterns and relationships of things and nothings— or maybe having the same dreaming moment over and over and over and over until the edges of everything blend together, or maybe puzzling through chess problems, writing letters to long-dead friends, fantasizing about burying your face in some tail, doing pushups and sit-ups and just pacing back and forth two and a half steps at a time until… hell, just doing it, just doing something, anything, everything to escape the nothing, and always questioning, always wondering, never ever ever ever quiet, as you sit there in silence saying nothing, voice cracked like old leather and impossible to regulate with no volume difference between thinking and screaming, thumbs aching from twiddling, toes tired from tapping; bored of breathing, bored of pacing, bored of thinking, bored of listening, bored of counting things, bored of being bored, trying not to think about the walls closing in, leaning in, reaching in; counting cinderblocks and wondering how often in life does a person ever spend more than a few hours at a time alone with thoughts, alone with himself, and there are moments of self discovery and inner peace and even something you might call enlightenment— according to the Dalai Lama—the awareness of being aware, the consciousness of consciousness, the soul soul-gazing outward, recognizing the body for what it is, and thoughts for what they are, and Being the entity behind the body and underneath the thought, and discovering that the inner voice is not You, but just an internal facade and a cloak of habits worn to protect your true self from drowning in the sensory saturation of the universe— but that it’s actually choking your experience— and that is terrifying until it’s uplifting, mystifying until it’s clear, impossible until it’s recognized; and Einstein’s ghost joins up with Jesus to explain that there is no white-bearded, robe-wearing, staff-holding Man in the Clouds, no sandaled ego sculptor with a mysterious name and omnipotent wrath— or compassion— no celestial control tower directing things; that there is only what comes out of and goes into the space between your eyes, that almost everyone has missed the point, and that prayer and meditation and self-reflection are three of the many words for the same thing, and it turns out this is heaven and hell in the same room, all contained in uncountable electrical pathways burning their way through some gray matter, a transaction conducted through a few gallons of the same stale air, and energy is matter and matter is energy, and while you breathe it in and breathe it out and breathe it in and breathe it out, you become the room and the room becomes you, until the circulation is visible like fingerprint whorls, and the spirals of the airwaves start to dance before your eyes and the whole cyclical nature of the universe becomes visible tangible audible olfactive tastable knowable, and you sink into it, riding the waves of awareness, not so much floating above your body, but flowing into the body so completely it disappears, joining in with something bigger— or not bigger, but a reality so microscopic it’s only theoretical, taking away the limiting factors of time and space, breaking down the elemental into its essential, and loving the Being loving the membership loving the absence of form, loving where, when, and how it takes you— until you snap awake—or rather drift off again— and your brain renews its filters for your sensory analysis, and you see only white-washed cinderblock, poured and painted concrete, a rolled-up mattress used for biceps curls, a splash of some food dropped decades ago, the nuts and bolts of incarceration; hear only the echoes of footsteps; smell only the heavy air and a perfume from long ago; feel only whatever you’re touching; taste only tongue and teeth like steaks and croutons, and this continues on and on, back and forth, forever and ever because there are no clocks down here, not even the count, count, count, count that serves as the slow pendulum of time upstairs, and just when you think you’re going to lose it again, a new idea that you’ve had before occurs, and the whole damn trip repeats itself— and you’ve exhausted only five minutes wallowing in the sentence.
You’re stuck in a picture. Twenty-three hours worth of eternity. Then escorted down the hall in silence for a solitary shower. Which is the only thing that goes by fast. And then more eternity. When you crunch it out like that, even a few days turns out to be a long time.
It’s possible to get years.
Monday, November 1, 2010
11/1/10
The city erupts. A sudden rush of noise, cars honking, people screaming, sirens wailing, flashes and bangs.
The Giants have won the World Series.
Car horns, some held long and loud, some staccato, all jubilant, all communicating the same thing.
We won.
The uproar continues. A SmartCar toots through an intersection. A taxi beeps past, ignoring the man with his arm raised in the air.
Explosions.
Fireworks.
Screaming citizens
The city is roaring, alive and cheering.
United.
A man whips a sweatshirt around over his head. A truck roars with delight. Deserted streets are packed with noise. A woman whips a sweatshirt around over her head. Screaming affirmations, yelling gleeful nonsense. Shrill.
Empowered.
A crotch-rocket revs. Giants flags flap. Fireworks pound overhead.
Someone drains a foghorn.
Each new stream of honking cars renews the jubilant cries of the pedestrians. Waves of glee reverberate through the streets.
Driveby congratulations.
Whistles.
The noise.
Even the cop lights look happy. People clap fives, cars rev, bicycles clang, and motorcycles honk.
I'm reminded of the sound of Endor after the Death Star was destroyed.
Fireworks.
Cheers.
Songs.
Elated bicycle taxis. Elated vagrants. Elated professed non-sports-fans. Someone blows a trombone. An SUV answers in kind. Drivers honk melodies. Passengers hang out windows. Pedestrians run alongside shaking hands.
Fireworks.
Cheers.
The clock sweeps toward tomorrow.
But Right Now the noise continues. A crowd moves past.
"LET'S GO GI-ANTS!
"LET'S GO GI-ANTS!
"LET'S GO GI-ANTS!
"LET'S GO GI-ANTS!"
A motorcyclist rips through, fist pumping over his helmet.
This is 50 years of waiting.
The Giants have won the World Series.
The noise.
The ebb and flow--but uninterrupted.
Ole
Ole ole ole
Ole
Ole.
The Giants have won the World Series. (and the 49ers stuffed Denver yesterday.)
Flags and hats and hands, horns and cheers and applause. United by sports. The team extended through the whole city. Joined in jubilation. Communicating through glee. Pedestrians responding to horns responding to cheers.
A high-riding pickup on fat off-road tires booms pas, open to the breeze and flying a huge SF flag on a tall pole. Groups cheer at each other from parallel sidewalks, hopping and skipping and cheering on the way home. A group of three stops in a crosswalk, waving signs and cheering at cars.
People share taxis.
Police allow rules to bend.
Everyone is happy to see everyone.
This is how is should be. The World Series should be every day. (But then it loses its power.)
Crescendo.
Fireworks.
A lull.
A truck blares through the intersection, renewing the noise. A Giants-decaled van alternates between gas and brake, simulating hydraulics. Nobody thinks it's lame.
It's awesome.
"LET'S GO GI-ANTS!
"LET'S GO GI-ANTS!
"LET'S GO GI-ANTS!"
A cop waves to a guy cheering out the sunroof.
"LET'S GO GI-ANTS!"
Fireworks.
Horns.
A train.
A cowbell.
The clock sweeps toward tomorrow.
Schoolnight.
Workday.
But Right Now,
none of that matters.
The city erupts. A sudden rush of noise, cars honking, people screaming, sirens wailing, flashes and bangs.
The Giants have won the World Series.
Car horns, some held long and loud, some staccato, all jubilant, all communicating the same thing.
We won.
The uproar continues. A SmartCar toots through an intersection. A taxi beeps past, ignoring the man with his arm raised in the air.
Explosions.
Fireworks.
Screaming citizens
The city is roaring, alive and cheering.
United.
A man whips a sweatshirt around over his head. A truck roars with delight. Deserted streets are packed with noise. A woman whips a sweatshirt around over her head. Screaming affirmations, yelling gleeful nonsense. Shrill.
Empowered.
A crotch-rocket revs. Giants flags flap. Fireworks pound overhead.
Someone drains a foghorn.
Each new stream of honking cars renews the jubilant cries of the pedestrians. Waves of glee reverberate through the streets.
Driveby congratulations.
Whistles.
The noise.
Even the cop lights look happy. People clap fives, cars rev, bicycles clang, and motorcycles honk.
I'm reminded of the sound of Endor after the Death Star was destroyed.
Fireworks.
Cheers.
Songs.
Elated bicycle taxis. Elated vagrants. Elated professed non-sports-fans. Someone blows a trombone. An SUV answers in kind. Drivers honk melodies. Passengers hang out windows. Pedestrians run alongside shaking hands.
Fireworks.
Cheers.
The clock sweeps toward tomorrow.
But Right Now the noise continues. A crowd moves past.
"LET'S GO GI-ANTS!
"LET'S GO GI-ANTS!
"LET'S GO GI-ANTS!
"LET'S GO GI-ANTS!"
A motorcyclist rips through, fist pumping over his helmet.
This is 50 years of waiting.
The Giants have won the World Series.
The noise.
The ebb and flow--but uninterrupted.
Ole
Ole ole ole
Ole
Ole.
The Giants have won the World Series. (and the 49ers stuffed Denver yesterday.)
Flags and hats and hands, horns and cheers and applause. United by sports. The team extended through the whole city. Joined in jubilation. Communicating through glee. Pedestrians responding to horns responding to cheers.
A high-riding pickup on fat off-road tires booms pas, open to the breeze and flying a huge SF flag on a tall pole. Groups cheer at each other from parallel sidewalks, hopping and skipping and cheering on the way home. A group of three stops in a crosswalk, waving signs and cheering at cars.
People share taxis.
Police allow rules to bend.
Everyone is happy to see everyone.
This is how is should be. The World Series should be every day. (But then it loses its power.)
Crescendo.
Fireworks.
A lull.
A truck blares through the intersection, renewing the noise. A Giants-decaled van alternates between gas and brake, simulating hydraulics. Nobody thinks it's lame.
It's awesome.
"LET'S GO GI-ANTS!
"LET'S GO GI-ANTS!
"LET'S GO GI-ANTS!"
A cop waves to a guy cheering out the sunroof.
"LET'S GO GI-ANTS!"
Fireworks.
Horns.
A train.
A cowbell.
The clock sweeps toward tomorrow.
Schoolnight.
Workday.
But Right Now,
none of that matters.
Two candles sit sputtering
on a short sheet of poetry
filled with longing
loving
craving
doubting.
The ticking tone
of a clicking clock
beats forth from the page
A rhythmic reminder
of achings past
The candles
seem immortal
and alive.
One tall and proud
One melted short and slouched
flickering with hidden drafts
Rendered visible
by fire!
And the cadence continues...
thump thump!...thump thump...
thump thump!...
The voice of the lyrical letters
whispers indelibly
inaudibly...almost...
on a short sheet of poetry
filled with longing
loving
craving
doubting.
The ticking tone
of a clicking clock
beats forth from the page
A rhythmic reminder
of achings past
The candles
seem immortal
and alive.
One tall and proud
One melted short and slouched
flickering with hidden drafts
Rendered visible
by fire!
And the cadence continues...
thump thump!...thump thump...
thump thump!...
The voice of the lyrical letters
whispers indelibly
inaudibly...almost...
Friday, September 10, 2010
Before The Aftershave
9/2/10
Standing here, watching the shh shh of this thin little blade against my skin, peering close and squinting, I feel a tremendous amount of power, and a looming loss of control.
As it glides over the contours, barely hesitating at each hair to whisper shh shh, bubbles of soap curl back to reveal shiny skin pink with freshness.
shh
shh
With an angle just right comes an easy stroke and the tingling freedom from stubble. But change the angle only slightly...
shh
The badger-hair brush slops on a foam of soap, warm and scented like an old chest found in the attic. A thin blade, scooped and shiny, winking under the light.
shh
Around the jaw, which shelters a hot grid of blood vessels, an impossibly complex circuit between jugular and carotid. A scarce few layers between life and a blade so sharp it's touched up on leather.
shh
A gruesome, frightening tradition; a dangerous desire to be above nature. How odd that it comes with scents of oak, a feeling like pine needles, and a flaring of nostrils smelling rain and fire.
shh
Miss a spot; pull the skin a different way, shh shh smooth like wood stripped of bark, feeling the cold and rebelling with a rustle. Twist and turn under the light. Shorten a bit here
shh
straighten a line there
shh
movements all defying the rhythm of blood underneath. The eyes ask a question. So easy. It would look like an accident. shh The power over life and death balanced between my thumb and forefinger, and resting lightly on my pinky.
Just like that...
It would be so easy. This choice--a hovering between outcomes, a weighing of explanations and reason. This choice is what it means to be human.
Standing here, watching the shh shh of this thin little blade against my skin, peering close and squinting, I feel a tremendous amount of power, and a looming loss of control.
As it glides over the contours, barely hesitating at each hair to whisper shh shh, bubbles of soap curl back to reveal shiny skin pink with freshness.
shh
shh
With an angle just right comes an easy stroke and the tingling freedom from stubble. But change the angle only slightly...
shh
The badger-hair brush slops on a foam of soap, warm and scented like an old chest found in the attic. A thin blade, scooped and shiny, winking under the light.
shh
Around the jaw, which shelters a hot grid of blood vessels, an impossibly complex circuit between jugular and carotid. A scarce few layers between life and a blade so sharp it's touched up on leather.
shh
A gruesome, frightening tradition; a dangerous desire to be above nature. How odd that it comes with scents of oak, a feeling like pine needles, and a flaring of nostrils smelling rain and fire.
shh
Miss a spot; pull the skin a different way, shh shh smooth like wood stripped of bark, feeling the cold and rebelling with a rustle. Twist and turn under the light. Shorten a bit here
shh
straighten a line there
shh
movements all defying the rhythm of blood underneath. The eyes ask a question. So easy. It would look like an accident. shh The power over life and death balanced between my thumb and forefinger, and resting lightly on my pinky.
Just like that...
It would be so easy. This choice--a hovering between outcomes, a weighing of explanations and reason. This choice is what it means to be human.
Thursday, September 2, 2010
Civilization/Anacoluthia
Gar!
Moving what the god world. What is this shit?
The bus lurches through the intersection. Knuckles whiten on rails and stirrups. Feet stumble for balance. Someone honks. A service dog retreats against his rigid leash.
Whose Morgan seat and the goddamn worst peace.
Windows rolled down once again let in a breeze, and the pedestrian timer ticks outside. Sparks fly on unseen catenary wires, and zero emissions are released. Here we are: mass transit. This is [your stop]. A pair of Asian school boys get on, standing there looking up at everybody. Only one person looks back.
Hahaha! Ching shong dinga wonga. Heh heh.
Passengers get on. Passengers get off. The hydraulics kick in, and the bus kneels to accept its latest human inventory. The driver stares in jaded acceptance as dollars are pushed into slots, and transfer tickets are waved with halting confidence. He stops when he should, avoids bicyclists, and he nods or waves at commercial vehicles and cops along the way. The brakes sigh and snort, and the bus rolls forward again.
Hey lookit! Gotta garble and toss everything in the sanded hat. Every day like this.
Gar!
Every day, and aisle beach with the lingering chazmontz.
There's a constant web of communication among these packed-in dozens, a constant buzzing of silent discourse, as feet nudge away, hips twist almost imperceptibly, hands move back on rails, bottoms shift, eyes dart without lingering. Ups and downs, lefts to rights, boys to girls, men and women, ancients with children. A multitude of methods and a topographical hierarchy. And all focused around one dubious hub.
Sweet and stuck! Like a shifterly mother-ruck. Kids and then clouds. What's it all coming to? You're all fucked up.
You don't understand.
We don't get it. Just make room; leave a halo--and don't stare. He's just a human. Sort of. On your guard, but not pariah-izing. Wary but never condescending. And for god's sake, move back! This is just part of being in the city.
Gar!
Gar, gar gar, GAR!
Rumpled monger and drink some water. That's I say.
Everyone sort of holds their breath. Shallow huffs--just enough for oxygen. Muscles tense--touch no one!--and skin crawling. No one comfortable. Everyone dealing. The bus lurches around a corner.
Oof!
She screams shockingly, briefly, and cringes in disgust.
Gar. Umsorry.
A grungy water bottle rolls against ankles. Someone reaches for it gingerly, hands it across the aisle between two fingers now aching for a bar of soap. Nearby passengers reach for stop-request cords. Let us off! We'll take a cab. Or walk. How far are we? Which line is that over there?
Chuckling and leaning a clammy forehead against the overhead rail, the vagrant stares aghast at the reflection in the window.
We're all here.
Moving what the god world. What is this shit?
The bus lurches through the intersection. Knuckles whiten on rails and stirrups. Feet stumble for balance. Someone honks. A service dog retreats against his rigid leash.
Whose Morgan seat and the goddamn worst peace.
Windows rolled down once again let in a breeze, and the pedestrian timer ticks outside. Sparks fly on unseen catenary wires, and zero emissions are released. Here we are: mass transit. This is [your stop]. A pair of Asian school boys get on, standing there looking up at everybody. Only one person looks back.
Hahaha! Ching shong dinga wonga. Heh heh.
Passengers get on. Passengers get off. The hydraulics kick in, and the bus kneels to accept its latest human inventory. The driver stares in jaded acceptance as dollars are pushed into slots, and transfer tickets are waved with halting confidence. He stops when he should, avoids bicyclists, and he nods or waves at commercial vehicles and cops along the way. The brakes sigh and snort, and the bus rolls forward again.
Hey lookit! Gotta garble and toss everything in the sanded hat. Every day like this.
Gar!
Every day, and aisle beach with the lingering chazmontz.
There's a constant web of communication among these packed-in dozens, a constant buzzing of silent discourse, as feet nudge away, hips twist almost imperceptibly, hands move back on rails, bottoms shift, eyes dart without lingering. Ups and downs, lefts to rights, boys to girls, men and women, ancients with children. A multitude of methods and a topographical hierarchy. And all focused around one dubious hub.
Sweet and stuck! Like a shifterly mother-ruck. Kids and then clouds. What's it all coming to? You're all fucked up.
You don't understand.
We don't get it. Just make room; leave a halo--and don't stare. He's just a human. Sort of. On your guard, but not pariah-izing. Wary but never condescending. And for god's sake, move back! This is just part of being in the city.
Gar!
Gar, gar gar, GAR!
Rumpled monger and drink some water. That's I say.
Everyone sort of holds their breath. Shallow huffs--just enough for oxygen. Muscles tense--touch no one!--and skin crawling. No one comfortable. Everyone dealing. The bus lurches around a corner.
Oof!
She screams shockingly, briefly, and cringes in disgust.
Gar. Umsorry.
A grungy water bottle rolls against ankles. Someone reaches for it gingerly, hands it across the aisle between two fingers now aching for a bar of soap. Nearby passengers reach for stop-request cords. Let us off! We'll take a cab. Or walk. How far are we? Which line is that over there?
Chuckling and leaning a clammy forehead against the overhead rail, the vagrant stares aghast at the reflection in the window.
We're all here.
Sunday, July 25, 2010
The Ocean, at Night
There's something about a girl's hair when she runs naked through the surf, splashing through her lunar-shadow, frolicking in the cool night air. Arms crossed, I stand and watch, as she, silhouetted against the almost-full moon, skips through the white foam.
Then she turns and races into my arms.
Her fingertips leave dog-print patterns in the wet sand as she kneels before me, hair blowing in the breeze, skin glowing in the moon. The full kinesthetic experience surrounds us, embraces us, chills us, supports us, as we look around enjoying the view--almost hoping for a wayward observer. Behind us, the ocean crashes and broils, as it has for umpteen years, and as it will for eons--no matter what we do to it, no matter what we dump in, harvest from, spill on, or take away--as long as there's a moon to guide its ebb and flow.
When it's done, she slowly stands, sighs, and shuffles toward the waves, bow-legged, rinsing herself, cleansing herself, giving herself and me to the saltwater from which we came in bygone eras. A sacrifice of innocent proportions, unmarred by dogma or rite or law or sanctimony.
The tide wraps around her knees, as she stoops and splashes, digging her toes into the sand--or are those my toes burrowing in, up here beyond the reach of the water? I stand and watch, proud, happy; feeling something more than myself. She jumps and stomps both feet down, hair wild in the wind, arms flung out for balance. Wisps of clouds caress the moon, and the surf thunders over all.
Arm in arm we stumble home through loose sand and fragments of shells, as behind us, the ocean reaches out and calmly erases our footprints, knee craters, and elbow grooves. As if we've never been there. As if we weren't there now.
Then she turns and races into my arms.
Her fingertips leave dog-print patterns in the wet sand as she kneels before me, hair blowing in the breeze, skin glowing in the moon. The full kinesthetic experience surrounds us, embraces us, chills us, supports us, as we look around enjoying the view--almost hoping for a wayward observer. Behind us, the ocean crashes and broils, as it has for umpteen years, and as it will for eons--no matter what we do to it, no matter what we dump in, harvest from, spill on, or take away--as long as there's a moon to guide its ebb and flow.
When it's done, she slowly stands, sighs, and shuffles toward the waves, bow-legged, rinsing herself, cleansing herself, giving herself and me to the saltwater from which we came in bygone eras. A sacrifice of innocent proportions, unmarred by dogma or rite or law or sanctimony.
The tide wraps around her knees, as she stoops and splashes, digging her toes into the sand--or are those my toes burrowing in, up here beyond the reach of the water? I stand and watch, proud, happy; feeling something more than myself. She jumps and stomps both feet down, hair wild in the wind, arms flung out for balance. Wisps of clouds caress the moon, and the surf thunders over all.
Arm in arm we stumble home through loose sand and fragments of shells, as behind us, the ocean reaches out and calmly erases our footprints, knee craters, and elbow grooves. As if we've never been there. As if we weren't there now.
Thursday, July 15, 2010
4/18/10
It's a log. Just a piece of wood, stripped of its bark and drying imperceptibly in the cool air. Once a growing thing, grains and veins flowing with water and life—now cut, sectioned, and alone. Just a log.
But then take a closer look, maybe squinting, and there's something else. A promise. A shape. It carries its own inspiration, and suddenly the tools on the bench vibrate with magnetism, crying for help: use me! Gouge, shave, and trim. Caress the shape from its hiding place; encourage the intrinsic design; open the doors whose outline is only just visible, and only to the seeing eye.
Curls of wood bloom and fall, liberating themselves from the amorphous whole and leaving behind footprints to what's hidden within. Bit by bit, shave by shave, the path spreads out, and there's something vague on the horizon, something coming into focus with the gnarled patience of its willow-tree former self.
This dip too shallow, this angle too steep, this knot rounded down, this edge softened up. The hush of sharp steel, the grunts and tuts and low whistles of exertion and complete absorption.
Shavings tumble and catch on hair, knee, knuckle, and carpet, hanging on to watch the birthing. There's a song, a vibration barely perceptible above the wind; a sort of keening that surrounds the scene in a concentration of focus and dedication of the senses.
A droplet of sweat turns a woodchip into a reservoir. Another splashes a tear in a newly formed eye, winking up and wondering at its place in the universe, an unattached piece of awareness, seeing but not yet registering.
Some careful wiggling with the tip of a knife, and sinuses are cleared. A lip curls into a slant. A chin appears, gouged into a pointed goatee, jutting forward. Sandpaper rubs a healthy glow in the cheeks. The nose wiggles—something's not quite right...
There. That's better.
Outside, shadows lengthen—but overhead, the light is steady. Creating in a created world, all the more real for being imagined. The light catches mistakes and reveals improvements. Shavings peel back from cheekbones and jaw, curving around ears and swirling into patterns of hair. An eyebrow arches, a brow lowers.
And then the sound changes. No longer the steady buzz of concentration, distinct noises murmur free with each slow slash, filling the air with burbling attempts at communication, rough-hewn words of anticipation and...something else. Something frightening.
What is it, that's trying to get out? And what happens if it finally does? Another notch across the grain, and a sharpening of the nose. The wood is warm, hot. Flaws melt away like wax, joining a discarded pile on the floor, and pulling away more and more of the wooden bonds that have kept this visage shrouded for so long. It's just a log...
Eyes narrow. Tools move on their own. A pulse. Breath. A voice. Hollow sucked-in cheeks and pale glowing eyes. Breathes in, and the carver withers slightly. Exhausted, he flags—but the wood whispers MORE. A veiner scoops out a furrow in the brow, and a sweep hooks the ear. All the better to hear you with...
The figure gains vigor as the carver huddles forward, panting and shaking. RELEASE ME cries the figure—just a log!—and despite himself, the artist peels wood back from the neck, strengthening muscles strained in twitching eagerness to be freed.
No more, please, no more, whispers the exhausted creator. You aren't what I meant to create. Not what I expected.
Then bows forward until foreheads touch with a surge of something like understanding, or a crackling acquiescence.
A moan of triumph, rattling windows and stirring the heap of shavings, unheard by the slumped artist whose tools clatter from unfeeling fingertips. Splinters and chips fall free of sweater and corduroy, joining the pile, waiting for broom or spark. The fiercely grinning face tilts and falls, cushioned by the remnants of its disintegrated cage, no longer supported by the rough hands of the carver, staring at the scuffed side of a shoe, unable to turn and look at its world or remove itself from the remains of its former cell. A shriek of anguish, and a scene frozen in time, susceptible only to further decay without the help of its creator. It's just a log.
Tuesday, July 6, 2010
Beach-House Reunion, Outer Banks (OBX), NC
One Fourth of July
Paul D Blumer
A fat yellow sun loitered at the edge of a wood-slat fence around the pool, understandably dawdling at the approach of evening. The heat had mellowed out, leaving us decorated with streaks of sea salt, patches of scarlet skin, and deep eye-wrinkles from laughing at the burning orb as we rinsed the ocean off in the pool. The idyllic summer vacation.
Just minutes ago, we were gathered around the deep end of the pool, watching Nate streak back and forth, working to break his own record of three lengths with no breath. This is what we do. Compete to survive. If you can't do it, we'll still hang out with you—but you won't be quite as cool.
There was the "three club," consisting of Nate and Erik. There was the "two club," which didn't exist, because just two was for chumps. The rest of us were in that club.
This is it, boys, Nate huffed, filling his lungs, I'm getting four.
Do it.
He reared back and launched himself in, wake churning a v-for-victory, as we chatted and gossiped, and watched him flip-turn perfectly against the back wall. Then again on this side. Streaking across with slow, deliberate strokes. Another perfect kickoff over there.
Here he comes. Our excitement buzzing with the cicadas. Almost there. He's got it.
The halfway mark.
Another lanky kick—two thirds.
The crown of his head at the surface like an otter. Wanting air so badly; discipline and machismo growling go! go!
Almost there. Arms reaching forward, fingertips stretching out, muscles straining.
And then a foot from the wall, he stops.
"What's he doing?"
Arms drifting.
"Dude, he definitely made it. I think we can give him that."
"Why doesn't he just touch the wall? He can easily reach it."
"I think he's fucking with us now. He's gloating."
"Is he...?"
"Wait, Nate...?"
He floats up and then rolls slightly over, sinking to the floor of the pool. A string of bubbles connects his mouth to the surface.
"Oh my god, you guys! He's out!"
"Get him up! Get him up!"
Thrashing, diving, scooping, dragging—a dead weight rises from the bottom, a dozen desperate hands scrabbling to help.
"No, like this!"
Arms crossed on the pool deck, forehead on forearms. Just like you're taught. Plant a hand on his wrists and hoist yourself out. Just like you're taught. Reach under his armpits; squat, twist, and stand up; get the victim clear of the water. Just like you're taught.
"Nate...! Nate...! Wake up, dude!"
"Please!"
Nothing else for it. Tilt his chin back. Look, Listen, and Feel for breathing. Just like you're taught. Just like you're taught. Just like you're goddamn taught! Find the xyphoid process. Position the hands. Just like you're taught. Only—do you go for the diaphragm and push the water out? Or compress the sternum and get his heart beating again? Which––? Wait, which––? Is this really happening?
Jesus Christ, what were you taught?
Just do something! Solar plexus. Push. Push. Pinch his nose, make a good lip seal. Breath. Breath. Listen for air. Breath. Bre—
He sputters, water burbling from his lips.
Turn him over! Turn him over!
Nate on his side, sputtering. Is this really happening?
"Cough! Keep coughing!" Screaming just like you're taught.
He retches.
"Fucking vomit, dude! Get that shit out!" Just like you're taught.
"Turn him over again, do it again," someone shrieks.
No, he's breathing. Let him catch his breath.
"Puke it up, Nate! Wake up!"
He's awake. Oh my god, he's awake.
Eyes flutter. He rolls over, supporting himself on a hand. Sits up, elbows on knees, head in hands, drool and tears dripping onto the concrete.
Sputtering. Breathing. Blinking.
Alive for the sunset.
Paul D Blumer
A fat yellow sun loitered at the edge of a wood-slat fence around the pool, understandably dawdling at the approach of evening. The heat had mellowed out, leaving us decorated with streaks of sea salt, patches of scarlet skin, and deep eye-wrinkles from laughing at the burning orb as we rinsed the ocean off in the pool. The idyllic summer vacation.
Just minutes ago, we were gathered around the deep end of the pool, watching Nate streak back and forth, working to break his own record of three lengths with no breath. This is what we do. Compete to survive. If you can't do it, we'll still hang out with you—but you won't be quite as cool.
There was the "three club," consisting of Nate and Erik. There was the "two club," which didn't exist, because just two was for chumps. The rest of us were in that club.
This is it, boys, Nate huffed, filling his lungs, I'm getting four.
Do it.
He reared back and launched himself in, wake churning a v-for-victory, as we chatted and gossiped, and watched him flip-turn perfectly against the back wall. Then again on this side. Streaking across with slow, deliberate strokes. Another perfect kickoff over there.
Here he comes. Our excitement buzzing with the cicadas. Almost there. He's got it.
The halfway mark.
Another lanky kick—two thirds.
The crown of his head at the surface like an otter. Wanting air so badly; discipline and machismo growling go! go!
Almost there. Arms reaching forward, fingertips stretching out, muscles straining.
And then a foot from the wall, he stops.
"What's he doing?"
Arms drifting.
"Dude, he definitely made it. I think we can give him that."
"Why doesn't he just touch the wall? He can easily reach it."
"I think he's fucking with us now. He's gloating."
"Is he...?"
"Wait, Nate...?"
He floats up and then rolls slightly over, sinking to the floor of the pool. A string of bubbles connects his mouth to the surface.
"Oh my god, you guys! He's out!"
"Get him up! Get him up!"
Thrashing, diving, scooping, dragging—a dead weight rises from the bottom, a dozen desperate hands scrabbling to help.
"No, like this!"
Arms crossed on the pool deck, forehead on forearms. Just like you're taught. Plant a hand on his wrists and hoist yourself out. Just like you're taught. Reach under his armpits; squat, twist, and stand up; get the victim clear of the water. Just like you're taught.
"Nate...! Nate...! Wake up, dude!"
"Please!"
Nothing else for it. Tilt his chin back. Look, Listen, and Feel for breathing. Just like you're taught. Just like you're taught. Just like you're goddamn taught! Find the xyphoid process. Position the hands. Just like you're taught. Only—do you go for the diaphragm and push the water out? Or compress the sternum and get his heart beating again? Which––? Wait, which––? Is this really happening?
Jesus Christ, what were you taught?
Just do something! Solar plexus. Push. Push. Pinch his nose, make a good lip seal. Breath. Breath. Listen for air. Breath. Bre—
He sputters, water burbling from his lips.
Turn him over! Turn him over!
Nate on his side, sputtering. Is this really happening?
"Cough! Keep coughing!" Screaming just like you're taught.
He retches.
"Fucking vomit, dude! Get that shit out!" Just like you're taught.
"Turn him over again, do it again," someone shrieks.
No, he's breathing. Let him catch his breath.
"Puke it up, Nate! Wake up!"
He's awake. Oh my god, he's awake.
Eyes flutter. He rolls over, supporting himself on a hand. Sits up, elbows on knees, head in hands, drool and tears dripping onto the concrete.
Sputtering. Breathing. Blinking.
Alive for the sunset.
Saturday, June 5, 2010
Sex
I'm writing a sex scene. This is among the most difficult of writing objectives, because if you fall short of the mark, readers become intensely dissatisfied, and are more likely to stop reading than at any other part. Sex is such an important part of our human experience, that in reproducing it, we are bound by several things.
Accuracy
A sex scene must not be unreasonable or beyond expectations. It must fit with the character as well as with his/her partner. It must feel natural, as though it were actually happening. It must fulfill both sides of the gender role, and must be a situation that can (or has) actually happen.
Allure
A sex scene must appeal to both genders. No one wants to read a sexual encounter that appeals to purely one gender. A guy must read the scene and get an erection. A girl must read the scene and become wet. The only acceptable byproduct of a well-written sex scene is a reader who sets the book down and looks around, wondering, "can anyone tell that I'm supremely turned on right now? Who's that guy/girl? Why do my pants feel so tight? Why is my skin tingling?"
and then reread the passage, thrilling and squirming at every paragraph, gulping and cringing at the need to penetrate/be penetrated.
Amazement
Readers need to stop halfway through, wondering how it's possible the writer knows so much about what he/she is thinking. A reader should be almost shocked at the closeness of the scene, nearly stupefied that the writer is so deeply connected with humanity to understand so completely what's going on on both sides of the slish contact between two people that the writer must be schizophrenic, or at least godlike in ability to round out the connection.
This is what I must accomplish. A weak sex scene is enough to destroy an entire book. It can be a make/break scenario within which, a reader's life can be changed merely through the emotional impact passed along by a few choice words.
How to make that connection? How to accomplish that accuracy, that allure, that amazement? Practice, practice, practice...
Accuracy
A sex scene must not be unreasonable or beyond expectations. It must fit with the character as well as with his/her partner. It must feel natural, as though it were actually happening. It must fulfill both sides of the gender role, and must be a situation that can (or has) actually happen.
Allure
A sex scene must appeal to both genders. No one wants to read a sexual encounter that appeals to purely one gender. A guy must read the scene and get an erection. A girl must read the scene and become wet. The only acceptable byproduct of a well-written sex scene is a reader who sets the book down and looks around, wondering, "can anyone tell that I'm supremely turned on right now? Who's that guy/girl? Why do my pants feel so tight? Why is my skin tingling?"
and then reread the passage, thrilling and squirming at every paragraph, gulping and cringing at the need to penetrate/be penetrated.
Amazement
Readers need to stop halfway through, wondering how it's possible the writer knows so much about what he/she is thinking. A reader should be almost shocked at the closeness of the scene, nearly stupefied that the writer is so deeply connected with humanity to understand so completely what's going on on both sides of the slish contact between two people that the writer must be schizophrenic, or at least godlike in ability to round out the connection.
This is what I must accomplish. A weak sex scene is enough to destroy an entire book. It can be a make/break scenario within which, a reader's life can be changed merely through the emotional impact passed along by a few choice words.
How to make that connection? How to accomplish that accuracy, that allure, that amazement? Practice, practice, practice...
Wednesday, June 2, 2010
Shackled by rules and thoughtless law abiding.
A clot of vehicles sit waiting at a red-light, tapping fingers on steering wheels, resting hands and elbows on window sills, lazily rubbernecking passersby. The doppler whoop of a siren echoes off building facades, soon joined by a set of flashing blue lights.
A few cars edge toward the curb, grateful to be out of the way. Cars in the middle lane almost visibly freeze, as though the tension of their drivers had found its way through electrical conduits and into the cars themselves.
The police car brakes behind the mass of cars, trying to get through the intersection.
Wheretogowheretogowheretogo? The line of cars sort of vibrates, but doesn't budge.
It's a red light.
The police car leans on its horn, willing the sound waves to burst through the panic. The front car creeps forward.
It's a red light.
The horn blares. Everyone freezes.
The drivers in the cars wave their hands.
Go through! Go through!
The intersection is clear. The cop needs to get by.
Ignore the red light.
Frozen.
This goes on for nearly a minute before the driver finally swallows hard and edges into the intersection, at least enough for the car behind to zip past and the car behind to zip past and the car behind to zip past.
The cop tears through, fervently hoping he's not too late.
A few cars edge toward the curb, grateful to be out of the way. Cars in the middle lane almost visibly freeze, as though the tension of their drivers had found its way through electrical conduits and into the cars themselves.
The police car brakes behind the mass of cars, trying to get through the intersection.
Wheretogowheretogowheretogo? The line of cars sort of vibrates, but doesn't budge.
It's a red light.
The police car leans on its horn, willing the sound waves to burst through the panic. The front car creeps forward.
It's a red light.
The horn blares. Everyone freezes.
The drivers in the cars wave their hands.
Go through! Go through!
The intersection is clear. The cop needs to get by.
Ignore the red light.
Frozen.
This goes on for nearly a minute before the driver finally swallows hard and edges into the intersection, at least enough for the car behind to zip past and the car behind to zip past and the car behind to zip past.
The cop tears through, fervently hoping he's not too late.
Saturday, May 8, 2010
But Nature isn't an entity in the way you're espousing. Nature is a series of adaptations designed to keep the species alive. It's ingrained, not innate.
Kind of the opposite of original sin, I think people are born essentially blank slates. Every second of our existence, we scribble away at that slate, first with huge big swirls and then adding smaller, more complicated patterns between the chalk marks as the space fills up. Though it gets pretty crowded, there's always a bit more space to work with, until time dries out the chalk and it sort of blurs into deteriorating flakes.
But not before other people have seen and been influenced by the markings on your slate. And not before you've taught other people and fed to their experience.
There is no outside entity that lays out our path, except the entity of prior knowledge passed down.
Kind of the opposite of original sin, I think people are born essentially blank slates. Every second of our existence, we scribble away at that slate, first with huge big swirls and then adding smaller, more complicated patterns between the chalk marks as the space fills up. Though it gets pretty crowded, there's always a bit more space to work with, until time dries out the chalk and it sort of blurs into deteriorating flakes.
But not before other people have seen and been influenced by the markings on your slate. And not before you've taught other people and fed to their experience.
There is no outside entity that lays out our path, except the entity of prior knowledge passed down.
Thursday, May 6, 2010
Careful what you wish for, a rhetorical circle
You're always questioning people's ability to change. Stuck between a lefty brain and a righty attitude, you wrestle with the disparity and lash out. The part of your conscious that thinks, that really thinks--not the part that sounds the thoughts, or gives voice to the notions, but rather the deeper instantaneous thought--is at odds with your voice. You're suffering a crisis of Ego, homie, and that's pretty damn cool. Proprioception, awareness of Self--you're thinking about thinking. Seeing that the Ego and the Consciousness are separate subjects is the only way to really be aware. You're on the path to enlightenment--the first step of which is to realize there is no path.
What it comes down to is that the Ego is the front we wear like armor--or like fashion. Choose your simile. It's the consciously crafted work of art that is often mis-named and mistaken for "I". It's been passed along to you from your antecedents--family and otherwise--and much of it has to do with social interaction and self preservation. We become what we're supposed to be, photosynthesizing other humans' expectations. You are the current embodiment of a string of collective conscious, the product of experience clusters. In other words, pure learned behavior--there is no nature.
This isn't such a scary thing as it seems. In fact, pre-ordination, or my understanding of "nature" is far more frightening. Even though I am just the reception of a bunch of other people's experience, that means I am constantly, perhaps infinitely, subject to change. There's no such thing as a reaction I can't control with a delicate series of burning pathways into my brain. You can grow or sever any behavior you want to, because it's all just different degrees of habit. You are basically amorphous, if you can conceive of yourself as just a bunch of neurons and electrical impulses. That's so sweet! You can do whatever you want. You can change or not change, whether in a unilinear fashion that you seem to espouse, or in a chronic cycles spirals ebbs flows and orbits, like how I tend and try to see things.
But the question comes down to what about the entity that thinks the thought? It's so quick, so nearly instantaneous, that it's hard to recognize. We're so used to the sound of the Ego that we disregard the other, deeper, I. Become aware of that eye, and you'll be glimpsing enlightenment. It's not some kind of outside divine flashbulb brought on by any sort of set-out process of asceticism or sacrament or ritual or prescription. It's a process of making that recognition and awareness permanent instead of fleeting. Which, oddly enough, is a strengthening of a habit. Weird.
What it comes down to is that the Ego is the front we wear like armor--or like fashion. Choose your simile. It's the consciously crafted work of art that is often mis-named and mistaken for "I". It's been passed along to you from your antecedents--family and otherwise--and much of it has to do with social interaction and self preservation. We become what we're supposed to be, photosynthesizing other humans' expectations. You are the current embodiment of a string of collective conscious, the product of experience clusters. In other words, pure learned behavior--there is no nature.
This isn't such a scary thing as it seems. In fact, pre-ordination, or my understanding of "nature" is far more frightening. Even though I am just the reception of a bunch of other people's experience, that means I am constantly, perhaps infinitely, subject to change. There's no such thing as a reaction I can't control with a delicate series of burning pathways into my brain. You can grow or sever any behavior you want to, because it's all just different degrees of habit. You are basically amorphous, if you can conceive of yourself as just a bunch of neurons and electrical impulses. That's so sweet! You can do whatever you want. You can change or not change, whether in a unilinear fashion that you seem to espouse, or in a chronic cycles spirals ebbs flows and orbits, like how I tend and try to see things.
But the question comes down to what about the entity that thinks the thought? It's so quick, so nearly instantaneous, that it's hard to recognize. We're so used to the sound of the Ego that we disregard the other, deeper, I. Become aware of that eye, and you'll be glimpsing enlightenment. It's not some kind of outside divine flashbulb brought on by any sort of set-out process of asceticism or sacrament or ritual or prescription. It's a process of making that recognition and awareness permanent instead of fleeting. Which, oddly enough, is a strengthening of a habit. Weird.
Saturday, April 17, 2010
Lucky Me
I was reminded today, while strolling Scooter behind the country store, of a long-ago football practice when I found a genuine four-leaf clover while stretching. I was so excited by the find, and allowed superstition to trump healthiness, popping it into my mouth to absorb the luck. How could goose poop and chemical fertilizers faze me when I had such fortune? I think the luck is still running through me, branching hither and thither through capillaries and follicles and neuron pathways, guarding my soul. Life is grand.
New Experience
I was a bit nervous getting on the horse with no saddle and only a simple bridle with no bit and a tucked-in lead rope for reins. I really only pretend to know how to ride a horse, replacing ability with confidence and a john-wayne attitude that will probably get me killed some day. But I tucked the nerves down in my shoelaces and hopped on the rickety stool, grabbing mane and rein before throwing my leg over his back.
At about 17 hands, Duke stood a bit taller than most horses, but his demeanor made him an easy sit, and I relaxed my hips and gripped with my knees, clucking to get him moving. He snorted and walked toward the fence where the cow stood watching, rubbing her skinny horn against the post and flicking a lazy tail.
"Be soft with the reins," my companion called, "Give him his face."
I pretended to know exactly what she meant, and pulled the rope to the right, squeezing my heels to get Duke moving. He bobbed his head and paced the other way, toward the open field. I could feel his spine moving under me, and his muscles rippling with every step. Much more in tune than chafing atop a saddle, and even the lack of stirrups was no problem at this speed.
Naturally I kicked his flanks to get him moving once we made the field, and he trotted across. I wanted more. I kicked again, and he cautiously slipped into a lope, and I couldn't help but giggle at the smooth rocking motion and powerful grace beneath me. And then I started slipping.
I pulled back on the reins to slow him down, and he broke pace into a trot, throwing me forward on his neck, trying to squeeze my knees, but the change in gait threw me off and I was falling. I scrabbled for mane and threw my arms around his neck, but the trot jostled me off, and I was falling. I hit the ground with a thud, and twisted away from his hooves, envisioning myself as a bloody pulp and trying to catch my breath. The horse stood calmly as I pulled myself to my feet, laughing and feeling a bit sheepish. Across the field, the llama and sheep watched as I dusted myself off and hobbled toward the barn. Ready to try again.
At about 17 hands, Duke stood a bit taller than most horses, but his demeanor made him an easy sit, and I relaxed my hips and gripped with my knees, clucking to get him moving. He snorted and walked toward the fence where the cow stood watching, rubbing her skinny horn against the post and flicking a lazy tail.
"Be soft with the reins," my companion called, "Give him his face."
I pretended to know exactly what she meant, and pulled the rope to the right, squeezing my heels to get Duke moving. He bobbed his head and paced the other way, toward the open field. I could feel his spine moving under me, and his muscles rippling with every step. Much more in tune than chafing atop a saddle, and even the lack of stirrups was no problem at this speed.
Naturally I kicked his flanks to get him moving once we made the field, and he trotted across. I wanted more. I kicked again, and he cautiously slipped into a lope, and I couldn't help but giggle at the smooth rocking motion and powerful grace beneath me. And then I started slipping.
I pulled back on the reins to slow him down, and he broke pace into a trot, throwing me forward on his neck, trying to squeeze my knees, but the change in gait threw me off and I was falling. I scrabbled for mane and threw my arms around his neck, but the trot jostled me off, and I was falling. I hit the ground with a thud, and twisted away from his hooves, envisioning myself as a bloody pulp and trying to catch my breath. The horse stood calmly as I pulled myself to my feet, laughing and feeling a bit sheepish. Across the field, the llama and sheep watched as I dusted myself off and hobbled toward the barn. Ready to try again.
Friday, March 12, 2010
inappropriate self-aggrandizing analogies
The other day I walked into the Apple store with my expired student ID to purchase a new computer.
"This one's expired, but I'm starting grad school in the fall," I explained, trying not to bite my lip and expose the stretched truth.
"Yeah? Where you going? Here in boston?"
"No, California. San Francisco. Creative writing master's." My heart started pounding around looking for some wood to knock on. I hadn't heard back yet from most schools, and my primal superstition floundered around for a buoy.
"Nice, man, nice. San Fran is sweet. I'm jealous, dude."
We talked about music and creativity and the world, and I eventually left with my new computer under my arm.
Today I packed up the computer and left starbucks, heading home to change for work. In the lobby of my building I hesitated, weighing laziness and apathy before checking the mailbox. There was a large envelope addressed to me from California College of Arts in San Francisco.
My heart thumped in my throat, and my knees threatened to give out as I opened the envelope in the elevator.
Dear Mr. Blumer,
It is my pleasure...
The rest faded in an adrenaline haze as I stumbled into my apartment, reminded of Saint Elizabeth.
Where are you going? What's in your apron?
Just roses...
Let me see.
She's caught. Her husband will be furious when he sees the loaves of bread stuffed in her apron for the poor. She sighs and drops her apron, bracing for the worst. Her husband stares agape, quizzical and at a loss for words.
Dozens of roses cascade to the floor at his feet. He stoops and lifts one, burying his nose in its delicate folds. He meets her gaze with a glint in his eye and a smile to match.
Okay, so it's a totally inappropriate analogy, but the relief she must have felt probably pales in comparison to mine. A weight has been lifted off my shoulders, and stressors suddenly seem weak and trivial. So thank you, CCA, thank you for lifting my spirits and whiting my lie.
"This one's expired, but I'm starting grad school in the fall," I explained, trying not to bite my lip and expose the stretched truth.
"Yeah? Where you going? Here in boston?"
"No, California. San Francisco. Creative writing master's." My heart started pounding around looking for some wood to knock on. I hadn't heard back yet from most schools, and my primal superstition floundered around for a buoy.
"Nice, man, nice. San Fran is sweet. I'm jealous, dude."
We talked about music and creativity and the world, and I eventually left with my new computer under my arm.
Today I packed up the computer and left starbucks, heading home to change for work. In the lobby of my building I hesitated, weighing laziness and apathy before checking the mailbox. There was a large envelope addressed to me from California College of Arts in San Francisco.
My heart thumped in my throat, and my knees threatened to give out as I opened the envelope in the elevator.
Dear Mr. Blumer,
It is my pleasure...
The rest faded in an adrenaline haze as I stumbled into my apartment, reminded of Saint Elizabeth.
Where are you going? What's in your apron?
Just roses...
Let me see.
She's caught. Her husband will be furious when he sees the loaves of bread stuffed in her apron for the poor. She sighs and drops her apron, bracing for the worst. Her husband stares agape, quizzical and at a loss for words.
Dozens of roses cascade to the floor at his feet. He stoops and lifts one, burying his nose in its delicate folds. He meets her gaze with a glint in his eye and a smile to match.
Okay, so it's a totally inappropriate analogy, but the relief she must have felt probably pales in comparison to mine. A weight has been lifted off my shoulders, and stressors suddenly seem weak and trivial. So thank you, CCA, thank you for lifting my spirits and whiting my lie.
Sunday, March 7, 2010
Nostalgia
I got to thinking about a particular summer I had, realizing with a truly painful jolt how great it had been. And then I thought about another summer I had, actually wincing about how great it had been.
Nostalgia can be physically painful. It can also lure one in like the sirens, spinning deeper and deeper, reflected in a distant smile of whimsy.
It has a very different emotive from daydreaming about the future.
Nostalgia can be physically painful. It can also lure one in like the sirens, spinning deeper and deeper, reflected in a distant smile of whimsy.
It has a very different emotive from daydreaming about the future.
Thursday, March 4, 2010
Life Falls Under Catch-22
There's a funny thing about being a driver: lot's of down time. It seems like an exciting job, and it can be a lot of fun, if the money flows, but there are elements of boredom. What it amounts to is that every single job is horrifically boring and below my capacity--bar one. And that one is hard because at the moment it doesn't pay the bills.
Damn you, Murphy! Damn you to a boring, fiery hell.
Wednesday, March 3, 2010
On Being Studied
My alarm goes off early. Gratingly, shiveringly, numbingly early. I groan myself out of bed and flip it off, waging a silent debate about hitting the snooze button.. It's 8am.
I'm on my way to participate in a psych study looking at the effects of a certain ADHD drug on driving concentration. I haven't started the meds yet. I hop on the train. The commute nods past, and I arrive at MIT. After just one misturn, I wind up in front of the lab building and hike up the stairs.
I locate the room easily enough--a candy-apple-red Volkswagon beatle hunkers in front of a big TV screen, poised at the center of a web of wires. A tall girl with what I call 'hacker hands' stares at a computer monitor until she notices me waving at the door.
"You Paul?"
"Sure am," I yawn. (an aside: did you yawn reading this? I yawned writing it. Every time.)
She has me fill out a questionnaire. I probably lied when it came to how drowsy I'm feeling. Then she hooks me up to an EKG and a breath-depth sensor, and tapes a sweat-measuring pad to my fingertips. Make a fist, she says, wrapping the wire up my knuckles onto my wrist. Tape. Arm straight out. Tape. Put your fist on your shoulder. Tape. She leads me into the car.
"Should I buckle up?" I ask, reaching for the belt. "Force of habit." Wouldn't feel comfortable driving without the comfortable weight of the seatbelt. Something akin to the leaden blanket at the dentist.
"Some people do; some people don't," she chuckles. I buckle.
She adjusts the volume and the camera aimed at my eyes. I adjust the seat and wish I had functional sideview mirrors.
"There will be an accurate rearview mirror picture," she assures me. One glance makes me a skeptic.
The gear shifter is nonfunctional.
The stereo doesn't work.
Roadsounds comes from speakers.
The pixellated viewscreen is tiresome and uninteresting, aside from some moving objects designed to catch my attention. At least the pedestrians shuffle across the intersection just as the lights turned green. And big vans are parked in front of stopsigns, blocking half the view. And construction cones spring up like mushrooms after a thunderstorm.
The worst thing about it is the lack of feeling. Forty-nine percent of the driving experience is absent. There's no rumble of the engine, no rush of wind. No connection with the car, no sixth sense of periphery. And no acceleration, up or down. It's flat, and it makes me heartsick. And slightly seasick. It's not driving. It's a mockery. Plus it puts me to sleep, and I struggle not to nod off. They're going to see everything on the cameras. Damnit.
As it turns out, I get bonuses for not getting in crashes, for not getting caught speeding, for not going over the time limit. I lost half my starting points, mainly because of trying to shift lanes without a sideview or blindspot window. With all due respect, that accident was a fault in programming. I glance in the mirrors and see gray carpet and a few posters on the wall. This is pretty difficult.
At one point I had to make a hands-free phonecall, being told and memorizing information, and then relaying it to the voice-activated device.
At another I had to play a pattern game, listening to a series of letters and saying, "check" when a Q was followed three letters behind by an A. Question and Answer. QED. Que? Oh man, I most definitely have ADHD.
TIJQIEJAcheckEIJAJQIQIEJAcheckJEIOQEQEUTAcheckEIAJLAAIEJQIEPAcheckIPQRMSAnd so on.
I miss a couple because my mental priority stayed on driving. Of this I am distinctly proud.
I fill out another questionnaire about my experience, being more honest on the drowsy section. Comments/Suggestions: Maybe position a fan outside the window.
I pocket the bonus $10 and head off to breakfast, itching to get in my own car and drive.
I'm on my way to participate in a psych study looking at the effects of a certain ADHD drug on driving concentration. I haven't started the meds yet. I hop on the train. The commute nods past, and I arrive at MIT. After just one misturn, I wind up in front of the lab building and hike up the stairs.
I locate the room easily enough--a candy-apple-red Volkswagon beatle hunkers in front of a big TV screen, poised at the center of a web of wires. A tall girl with what I call 'hacker hands' stares at a computer monitor until she notices me waving at the door.
"You Paul?"
"Sure am," I yawn. (an aside: did you yawn reading this? I yawned writing it. Every time.)
She has me fill out a questionnaire. I probably lied when it came to how drowsy I'm feeling. Then she hooks me up to an EKG and a breath-depth sensor, and tapes a sweat-measuring pad to my fingertips. Make a fist, she says, wrapping the wire up my knuckles onto my wrist. Tape. Arm straight out. Tape. Put your fist on your shoulder. Tape. She leads me into the car.
"Should I buckle up?" I ask, reaching for the belt. "Force of habit." Wouldn't feel comfortable driving without the comfortable weight of the seatbelt. Something akin to the leaden blanket at the dentist.
"Some people do; some people don't," she chuckles. I buckle.
She adjusts the volume and the camera aimed at my eyes. I adjust the seat and wish I had functional sideview mirrors.
"There will be an accurate rearview mirror picture," she assures me. One glance makes me a skeptic.
The gear shifter is nonfunctional.
The stereo doesn't work.
Roadsounds comes from speakers.
The pixellated viewscreen is tiresome and uninteresting, aside from some moving objects designed to catch my attention. At least the pedestrians shuffle across the intersection just as the lights turned green. And big vans are parked in front of stopsigns, blocking half the view. And construction cones spring up like mushrooms after a thunderstorm.
The worst thing about it is the lack of feeling. Forty-nine percent of the driving experience is absent. There's no rumble of the engine, no rush of wind. No connection with the car, no sixth sense of periphery. And no acceleration, up or down. It's flat, and it makes me heartsick. And slightly seasick. It's not driving. It's a mockery. Plus it puts me to sleep, and I struggle not to nod off. They're going to see everything on the cameras. Damnit.
As it turns out, I get bonuses for not getting in crashes, for not getting caught speeding, for not going over the time limit. I lost half my starting points, mainly because of trying to shift lanes without a sideview or blindspot window. With all due respect, that accident was a fault in programming. I glance in the mirrors and see gray carpet and a few posters on the wall. This is pretty difficult.
At one point I had to make a hands-free phonecall, being told and memorizing information, and then relaying it to the voice-activated device.
At another I had to play a pattern game, listening to a series of letters and saying, "check" when a Q was followed three letters behind by an A. Question and Answer. QED. Que? Oh man, I most definitely have ADHD.
TIJQIEJAcheckEIJAJQIQIEJAcheckJEIOQEQEUTAcheckEIAJLAAIEJQIEPAcheckIPQRMSAnd so on.
I miss a couple because my mental priority stayed on driving. Of this I am distinctly proud.
I fill out another questionnaire about my experience, being more honest on the drowsy section. Comments/Suggestions: Maybe position a fan outside the window.
I pocket the bonus $10 and head off to breakfast, itching to get in my own car and drive.
Sunday, February 28, 2010
Girls girls girls girls, why are you so magnetic? What is it that shoves me and you together, regardless of feelings or convenience or rationality? Where does your power come from, that I'm so enchanted, so enamored of our interactions? The magic of pulses throbbing together, eye contact and skin-to-skin electricity, throwing caution to the winds, and making fools of us all.
It's like a chess game going on all around me, churning calculations, learning from mistakes, bending the will, and making the move, withdrawing and staring in eager concentration waiting for the next turn. But every piece looks like me. All I can see when I look at you is warped reflections of myself. Smiling hair-preening eye-batting conch-shell reflections, mocking the loneliness of being human.
We all just want connections. To get close. To get inside. What we have now is a paltry substitute for interspective. But god save us all, it's what we've got, so let's indulge.
There is only me. And underneath that, there's the consciousness that recognizes the me. Everything else is a shade of my perception.
But what a pretty shade, girl. You get one kiss...
It's like a chess game going on all around me, churning calculations, learning from mistakes, bending the will, and making the move, withdrawing and staring in eager concentration waiting for the next turn. But every piece looks like me. All I can see when I look at you is warped reflections of myself. Smiling hair-preening eye-batting conch-shell reflections, mocking the loneliness of being human.
We all just want connections. To get close. To get inside. What we have now is a paltry substitute for interspective. But god save us all, it's what we've got, so let's indulge.
There is only me. And underneath that, there's the consciousness that recognizes the me. Everything else is a shade of my perception.
But what a pretty shade, girl. You get one kiss...
Saturday, January 16, 2010
Don't blink
The view from my window is priceless. My desk fronts against a three-paned window almost six feet across. At a certain angle, the view is all I see, except for off-white blurs in my peripherals and a cherry-colored accoutrement-cluttered lap to remind me I'm still here.
Across the way the Prudential Center rises into the blue, reflecting a sun-tinged liquid pillar with space-age lines and a swelling presence. Its back building rises even higher, like a sager older brother. The street corner at its base supports a few trees, and its cobblestone surface looks smooth and soft, like an old carpet.
Or is the Pru more incoming than upreaching? Abutting the crossroads with an entrance awning like a cattle catcher thrusting forward, the Pru sprawls back a whole city block, connected to the next block by a skywalk. Like two self-sustaining space ships, you almost expect the Pru and Copley to blast off at any moment. Escape pods of society, exemplifying the culture.
The traffic pattern at the intersection feels like perpetual motion, tick-tock with a new representation of time. Everybody is trying to get somewhere, but they just keep twisting circles and circles around the city, magnificently complex gears in the timepiece of the city.
Windshields, headlights, rims all glitter in the sun, avatars of people wefting their way through the warp of pedestrians, weaving comet-tails of stories.
Shopping bags, school bags, bag lunches, bag ladies, shoulder bags, baggy eyes--everything down there has its meaning, its reason for being arranged at that point in this moment. A trolly tour jangles past, pushing a yellow light to keep the tour moving steadily.
A building rises up next to me, thick concrete framing business-like layouts, ever-shining fluorescents cowering from the sunlight.
Movement catches my eyes--all three of them. A peregrine stoops away from a chasing swallow, doubles back toward the office building across the way, and circles back again, as if trying to get to something. What is the swallow hiding? Or is he just being a dick. Maybe the swallow is stealing the peregrine's nest. Or maybe protecting his own. Who am I to judge? So it is and so it shall be.
I have so much work to do on this freelance assignment, but all I want is to write some fiction. Making a living means losing the living. I should've been born a hunter/gatherer--but then the stories would all be oral, passing down through the collective conscious, sending waves of character down through the ages. Ancestry.
If i could otherwise devote the time I spend at work, I could get some serious progress down on what I really want to do. Could get those chapters rolling in. Start collecting those rejection slips to climb their sickly pink mountain to the heaven of publication. It's just a matter of catching the groove. But Catch-22 has me firmly in its clutches, and it's loving every minute of it. Cheeky bastard.
Time to work.
Across the way the Prudential Center rises into the blue, reflecting a sun-tinged liquid pillar with space-age lines and a swelling presence. Its back building rises even higher, like a sager older brother. The street corner at its base supports a few trees, and its cobblestone surface looks smooth and soft, like an old carpet.
Or is the Pru more incoming than upreaching? Abutting the crossroads with an entrance awning like a cattle catcher thrusting forward, the Pru sprawls back a whole city block, connected to the next block by a skywalk. Like two self-sustaining space ships, you almost expect the Pru and Copley to blast off at any moment. Escape pods of society, exemplifying the culture.
The traffic pattern at the intersection feels like perpetual motion, tick-tock with a new representation of time. Everybody is trying to get somewhere, but they just keep twisting circles and circles around the city, magnificently complex gears in the timepiece of the city.
Windshields, headlights, rims all glitter in the sun, avatars of people wefting their way through the warp of pedestrians, weaving comet-tails of stories.
Shopping bags, school bags, bag lunches, bag ladies, shoulder bags, baggy eyes--everything down there has its meaning, its reason for being arranged at that point in this moment. A trolly tour jangles past, pushing a yellow light to keep the tour moving steadily.
A building rises up next to me, thick concrete framing business-like layouts, ever-shining fluorescents cowering from the sunlight.
Movement catches my eyes--all three of them. A peregrine stoops away from a chasing swallow, doubles back toward the office building across the way, and circles back again, as if trying to get to something. What is the swallow hiding? Or is he just being a dick. Maybe the swallow is stealing the peregrine's nest. Or maybe protecting his own. Who am I to judge? So it is and so it shall be.
I have so much work to do on this freelance assignment, but all I want is to write some fiction. Making a living means losing the living. I should've been born a hunter/gatherer--but then the stories would all be oral, passing down through the collective conscious, sending waves of character down through the ages. Ancestry.
If i could otherwise devote the time I spend at work, I could get some serious progress down on what I really want to do. Could get those chapters rolling in. Start collecting those rejection slips to climb their sickly pink mountain to the heaven of publication. It's just a matter of catching the groove. But Catch-22 has me firmly in its clutches, and it's loving every minute of it. Cheeky bastard.
Time to work.
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