EMERGENCY EYES
A Web Journal
***
August 20, 2008
Bug On Rye
My bug got a bug on its bug. It didn't leap out or make a cry. It simply looked down at the part of itself with the bug on it. The bug on my bug looked up at the bug and smiled. My bug looked up at me and rolled its compound eyes. I smiled at my bug. A bug sandwich between two pieces of bread smiles.
*
August 19, 2008
The gracious editors of the Indiana Review have put online a book review that I wrote for issue 30.1.
*
August 17, 2008
And We Knew We Were in for It Now
The rainbows have run out on us. They pulled up anchor--well they pulled up their pots of gold--and lit out for the west. They said the smog's too thick here. We mentioned LA and waggled our eyebrows suggestively. The rainbows set their jaws and said Colorado. In our minds, visions of mountains, rushing streams, and friendly vegans ran about as if chased by arrows. We said, Can we come too? The rainbows shook their rainbows and then we heard the front door slam.
*
August 16, 2008
In Lieu of a Goodbye Note
She filled the kitchen cabinets with cellos. I came home one day from the factory, set down my tin lunchbox, opened the door above the sink, and two damp cellos fell into my arms. I went to fetch the mug I keep in the freezer, and half a dozen ice cold cellos hit my toes. I looked over and saw a burgundy torso rising out of the recycling bin, sunlight glinting off the strings almost seemed to be playing them. I could almost hear music there standing in the middle of the kitchen forgetting, for a moment or two, to wonder where dinner was.
*
August 15, 2008
And Won Big
The fugitive escaped from the Dairy Queen where she'd taken refuge since leaving high school since she wasn't learning anything there anyway. Carrying an overnight bag full of sunglasses and thick, glossy magazines, she stood at the corner Heartbreak and Desire. Putting two fingers between her cotton candy lips, she let out a whistle. The air she'd been holding in for far too long left her lungs, skipped out across the blacktop, and headed up the street and into the sky. Two seconds later, a bus flapped its wings, descending from pink, fleecy clouds. Landing with a sweetly scented puff, its doors hummed open--and the fugitive stepped in. No one in the town ever heard from her again. So she must have won.
*
August 10, 2008
RIP Isaac Hayes
*
August 9, 2008
Goodbye Pain in the Neck
Makes all the sense in the world, she said. I was in the backyard, hanging by the neck from the sugar maple tree. Such a beautiful name for a tree. I'd always thought this, sometimes actually said it out loud as I locked the backdoor and walked to the garage to drive to the factory for work. I was hanging from a tree that morning when she popped over unannounced. Samantha knew to just come into the backyard if I didn't answer the front door. She made her way around the side of the house, neatly skirting the thistles that reach out, and a view opened up of the lumpy back yard grass and me spinning at the end of blue mountain climber's rope dropping out of the maple tree's dark green center. I'd had one hell of a stiff neck for the last few days, for the last ten years or so really, and it occurred to me over my morning oatmeal that a good hanging might help. Stretch the spine a bit. Take the weight of the skull off the shoulders. And the knot was easy. I looked down as I spun at the end of the rope in the afternoon light. I saw Samantha--nothing--Samantha smiling--nothing--Samantha--nothing--Samantha leaving--nothing--nothing--nothing--nothing.
*
August 7, 2008
Dear You
I forgot how far away she'd moved. When I found I hadn't enough stamps in the house to get the letter I'd just written to her, I walked it down to the town PO. The man behind the counter stopped the humorous patter long enough to shake his head at me. Not enough stamps in that whole place to wing my letter to her. Move on. Can I help the next person in line? So I moved on. I went to the big city an hour away, to the main PO where all the mail of the world funnels through, where robotic arms fling it to where it belongs, where gentle digital eyes read handwritten addresses day after day. And after a day or two in line, I stood before the most beautiful woman I'd ever seen. She stood three feet above me, looking down at me through six inches of plexiglass and said "How may I help you?" without smiling. I pushed the letter through the slit down around where her belly button must have been winking despite all that gray synthetic uniform. She picked my letter up, using both her hands, and looked at me. I wasn't there anymore. I was in the parking lot swirling around with my arms out, my mouth pointed at the stars. My sugar powdered stars.
*
August 4, 2008
Today we finally went to find, and have a picnic at, the grave of Hoagy Carmichael . It's in the Rose Hill Cemetery across town. The good woman played one of our favorite songs of his, Two Sleepy People , on her ukulele which she brought for the occasion.
*
August 1, 2008
No Nothing
I find myself unable to believe a word she says. And that's unnerving in the extreme because she's my parole officer. Last night she called me up and told me she'd just bought a new pony and I should come over right away to see her new pony. "What's the hurry?" I said. I'd just opened a fresh beer at home. I didn't want to just walk out on it. "Is it some kind of dissolving pony or something?" "Yes," she said, "Yes it is. You have ten minutes until it's just a pile of blue powder on the kitchen floor." So I did what she said. I put down my beer and rushed over there. And of course I saw nothing. No pony. No powder.
*
July 31, 2008
Some day history will look back on right now and laugh .
*
July 30, 2008
Today, while biking home from campus, I was almost hit and killed and maimed and brutalized...by a guy flying along the sidewalk on his bicycle...talking on his cell phone at the same time. Talking on his cell phone while riding his bike through the twisty paths of campus... After I gathered my wits together and realized I'd escaped death, I pulled over and started laughing. I can only imagine his conversation: Yeah, hi dude. Yeah, like I'm on my bike. Dude. I'm biking, yeah. So, like, dude, yeah, I'm on my bike. Biking-I-am. Dude. So, like when are we gonna get together tonight. I'll be biking to get together. Dude. Pedal pedal, sweat sweat, pedal, pedal. Yeah. I'm on my bike. Yeah. I'm biking. Dude. Or perhaps something not quite that eloquent and vital. Thank goodness for these modern conveniences that make life so much simpler.
*
July 28, 2008
A good day for a Chihuly sculpture.
*
July 19, 2008
Ever wonder what it looks like to watch a beauty pageant at a county fair in southern Indiana? Well, click this link and you can watch it happen. They crown the queen 6 minutes into the show. Enjoy, if that's your idea of a good time.
*
July 15, 2008
Brown Ice Sculpture
She picked out a coffee table that has to be kept below 20 degrees Fahrenheit at all times. But why? I asked. Why would you buy us a coffee table that we have to keep so cold all the time? Our house isn't that cold. We wouldn't want our house that cold all the time. It'd probably make the TV crack in two. And we can't fit the coffee table in the freezer. We could put the freezer into the coffee table, but that wouldn't do any good. Why? Why would you pick out a coffee table like that?
*
July 9, 2008
My nephew Brian is doing a law school internship this summer in Ghana. He posted an album of pictures of a village he visited called Larabanga. Click the image of the 1421 mud and clay mosque below to view them.
*
July 7, 2008
I just found this fantastic short film (13 mins) of the truly wonderful Tobias Wolff short short story, "Bullet in the Brain." Read this four page story online . Listen to an mp3 of author T.C. Boyle reading it, thanks to The New Yorker's webpage. Then watch the short film.
They is, they is, they is…
*
July 5, 2008
Time for some really nice pictures of Mars , including some animated images of dust devils swirling across the landscape. Thanks J .
*
July 3, 2008
If you've never heard of the Amen Break , believe it or not you probably have. The YouTube video is a bit long, but it's fascinating--sort of a Genome project for contemporary music and hiphop. Pour yourself a libation of your own choosing, settle in and have a listen. It's quite enjoyable, and the YouTube video gets even more interesting as it goes along.
*
July 2, 2008
Old heroes die hard.
The sixteen year old that still lives, coughing his last, inside of me…is weeping. He's not salivating.
*
June 28, 2008
…And not it's time for a great blue heron .
*
June 27, 2008
The Invention of the Crowbar
You got bent out of shape bending me back into shape. Sorry. I could try to bend you back into shape, but that would probably bend me back out of shape again. Then we'd be back where we started, back where you found me, teetering.
*
June 25, 2008
The mulberry tree is in bloom. There's a tree in our front yard. It hangs above where our garden is. The tomato plants, the pepper plants, the three turnip plants that came up from seed alongside the two beet plants that came up from seed. The lettuce that's doing okay. The lettuce that the rabbits look at and drool over and sometimes I watch them from my office window and think, It's okay if you want to eat a little of our lettuce. I like you out there and if the lettuce brings you, so be it, but please don't eat all of the lettuce because I want to eat some of it myself along with my lover. When my lover walks around our garden these days, she does so in bare feet and the bottoms of her feet become stained with mulberry juice. It sticks and it lasts. When we made love the other day, my lover's feet were purple-black with mulberry juice along their bottoms. I kissed them. Tonight my feet are purple-black with mulberry juice along their bottoms. I saw this as I put them up on a chair on the back porch, while my love was asleep in bed with the windows open. I saw the stains of the berries on my feet and thought, This is summer. I'm glad to be here.
*
June 23, 2008
RIP George Carlin.
Thanks for all the times you made me piss my pants. When I saw him a few years ago at a casino in Kansas City, I laughed more in that hour than in any other hour of my life. One of the greats has died.
*
June 22, 2008
...And now it's time for a Gil Scott-Heron song.
*
June 20, 2008
Arboreal Propriety
Each leaf looks as if it's been glazed, waxed and glazed with a thick black layer of glue made to stick light to itself. The bark is taut, as if pulled by unseen hands the other side of the trunk. That knothole is a sort of rent in the bark fabric. Is that a knee peeking out? Is that a bit of lace?
*
June 19, 2008
In the Darkroom
Is there detail in the shadows?
There is detail in the shadows.
Are the highlights punchy?
They are. They are punchy.
Are they kicked out?
I believe so.
You believe so?
Yes, I do. I truly truly do.
But you're not sure.
What do you mean?
You said you believed so.
I said I believe so.
You do no know so.
I know so.
Are you sure?
Yes, I'm sure. I know so. And I am sure.
What do you know?
I can't remember.
I thought so.
You thought so?
And now I'm wondering about the shadows again.
There is detail in them.
So you say.
*
June 18, 2008
This Place Is a Nightmare
That little hillock of grass next to the parking meter, if you imagine it removed from the curb, the concrete, the run-down cityscape around it, the liquor stores with bars on the windows, the melted coolers--if you cut and paste it with your computer mind onto a sunny forested slope--it would fit completely. So, it's not the grass's fault.
*
June 17, 2008
How Do I Do?
It's not the worst things that could happen to someone, meeting yourself on a sidewalk late at night. Heading home from a club, heading out to the clubs, out for a stroll beneath an electricity storm, turning a corner and there you are. One does not realize one has met oneself on the street until one has already passed. Then thought, like a boiling kettle, sends up a few silver bubbles. Was that? Was I? Could it possibly be? You turn while still walking. Almost run smack into a parking meter. You do smack into a parking meter.
*
June 16, 2008
The Richard Pryor Alphabet. You need this in your life.
From my friend Abdel's very funky blog .
*
June 15, 2008
Backstroke Can Be a Survival Stroke
I don’t know what my swimming lessons have done for me. I cannot swim. I should make that clear from the get-go. My swimming lessons have not done that for me. Those hours spent on my back, half-submerged, floating with my ears beneath the tiny iron-blue stinky waves, listening to the bangs and booms of other bodies inside the body I was floating across, tracing my way along a line in the sky, a line of boards in the rafters above the pool. Sometimes late afternoon light fell on me from the dirty windows high up where there wouldn’t seem to be a chance of dirt. Sometimes my instructor yelling something important at me as I floated in my careful little straight line until I heard her and started breathing those spikes of water.
*
June 14, 2008
Coming Out of the Ether Haze
I realized everyone around me was laughing. There was a fullness to my chest that meant I'd been talking, filling my lungs and using the air to talk, before I'd woken up. And whatever I'd been saying had been making the nurses and the doctors laugh. The nurses who poked needles into the top of my hand, four nurses, how many it took to find a vein. The doctor, too. When a man is on his side, sick enough to seek medical attention, unconscious, with a camera up his fundament, he might be a word-a-minute laugh riot. This was what I learned from the sedatives, the lesson they taught me about fear.
*
June 13, 2008
Air Brakes Growling in the Distance
After they broke up, they got together to have sex. When that was over with, they went out to sit by the highway and watch traffic. At the end of a street, he climbed over the cyclone fence, reached back to pull it, making room for her to crawl beneath. He brought a tall bottle of some thick yellow liquid from his parents' liquor cabinet. They passed the bottle back and forth as the light faded and the automobiles below blinked on their little red and yellow lights. When the bottle was halfway dead, he asked her if they could still talk baby talk to each other, now that they were broken up. She said she didn't think that would be a good idea. He looked out at the blur of traffic and said okay. He reached to take the bottle from her hands.
*
June 8, 2008
An early Billy Connolly routine: The Cardinal's Visit.
*
June 6, 2008
On weekend mornings, sometimes, when I stumble out of bed, at around 2 pm because this is summer and "life is skittles and life is beer," I am wont to lumber into the office, easy as it lies just across the hall from the bedroom. In my somnambulistic haze, I find myself, to my shock and awe--and great pleasure--unexpectedly struck about the head repeatedly with lacy female undergarments. This is not, as you might be forgiven for thinking, dear reader, because of bacchanalian revels being regularly undertaken in that den of laptops and mucilage by a gaggle of damp woman-girls ensconced there for the purposes of gamic carnality. No. But you're getting warm. It is because, a few fortnights ago, the good woman (nubile, and damp and law student-y, as she is), in a moment of creative improvisation, hung a plastic tarantula device designed to hold for air-drying half a dozen female lacy undergarments from the ceiling fan. In a moment of unbelievable wit and creative improvisation, I retorted by turning said fan on. The sexy chandelier began to revolve. And revolve it did. Most vigorously. The good woman exclaimed, "Brilliant!" and now regularly employs said means to more quickly desiccate her lingerie. And I, debauched late-waker as I am, regularly receive the fringe, ahem, benefit of waking, sometimes, to a gentle, genial, genital battering of frills about the skull. And I love it.
*
June 5, 2008
*
June 2, 2008
Putting the Brain in Its Place
-or-
Happy Feet
It's good to be upside down at least twice a day. And not metaphorically. Do it alone if you need to. Your breasts might flop up under your chin. Your cock might turn up and be even sillier. But it's good for the heart. Good for the back. Good for the feet, too, to feel like they're in charge for once.
*
June 1, 2008
I can't believe it's June already...
*
May 29, 2008
Care to listen to some poems of mine?
I was recently featured on WFIU's The Poet's Weave , a poetry show on the local NPR radio station.
My segment was broadcast this last Sunday. You can listen to the 5 minute show as an MP3.
*
May 27, 2008
*
May 26, 2008
But My Darling, Must You End It For Good?
All the periods vanished from the book. Interestingly, though, the dots of the lowercase i's are still there--so we know it wasn't some sort of basic dot disappearance. Something about periods themselves attracted whatever thief or trickster pulled this crime. What sort of a person or persons are we dealing with here? What sort of a mind would conceive this? And how did--we'll call him Person X--pull this off, removing every period from A Girl's Book of Boys in the middle of the night as Lydia slept not two feet away in bed? We've questioned the victim, and she's told us she's a light sleeper. In fact, once a former boyfriend of hers tried to steal every other question mark from a volume of love poetry that she keeps on her office desk, and she heard it all the way from her bedroom where she lay sleeping. How someone got away with this period thing is a real stumper.
*
May 23, 2008
Who Needs Elves?
The sky pelts down clicks upon the land. The rain doesn't fall back at the sky. The earth keeps it, rolls it into grass and soil, sends it down rivers as rivers, into ocean basins. Waves. It all becomes waves. Whales sing through it. Eels and tube worms hide within it. French girls bathe topless in it. The jellyfish, the holy jellyfish crows itself within itself in the throne of it all.
*
May 22, 2008
Saint Ricky, The Tiny Dragon
Two words anyone would, I think, use to describe the sight of the six year old in the dragon costume striding confidently into the bad part of town: confident and defiant. "Halloween is Halloween," was all he said as he clutched the empty pillowcase between his sticky fingers, headed across the railroad tracks, and disappeared into the enveloping darkness of streets without lights, without lines down the middle. There was nothing we could do but head home and wait by the scanner. Hour one--nothing. Hour two--two fires and an armed robbery, but in the wrong area. Hour three--more nothing. Then hour four--it started with a few indecipherable barks, then silence, then the voices. Hundreds of voices rising in a warm throb that burst the speakers revealing itself as a hum in the actual air around us. We ran outside and the throb was even louder beneath an orange glow in the sky coming from the bad part of town. A chorus of voices raining down on us here in the good part of town washing the streets golden and glowing.
*
May 21, 2008
Knowledge Is Power (Mostly)
Somewhere I read that a certain percentage of the dust in a person's house (any person's house, even yours) comes from outer space. Space dust. Kind of could change one's whole perspective on housework, if one wasn't careful. Like the time I read that each breath a person takes likely contains a molecule of air that Hitler breathed. Makes you sort of hold your breath a little just reading something like that. Like the time I read that all milk one buys in a grocery store contains a certain amount of pus. Infected udders from abrasive mechanical milking machines. I basically stopped drinking milk for my whole life after reading that. I couldn't stop breathing, though. I need to breathe to be able to dust my house--which now is a kind of interstellar exploration. And plus, it's just as likely that I get a molecule of Gandhi each lungful.
*
May 20, 2008
A few days ago, I was doing some research about colorguard for a poem I was writing. I saw some things that frightened me .
*
May 18, 2008
Highway Highway
Along the vertiginous mountain road, the rusting wrecks spotting the valley below provide a kind of audience. Twisted hoods, dislodged doors turned flashing at the eye in the sky--sort of like clapping hands urging "Go on! Keep on! Whatever's at the end of the road can't be worse than the brittle embrace of these boulders below!" Look down--applause. Look up and grip the wheel more confidently. Tune the stereo to news from a happy place where happy people run everything and it's wonderful.
*
May 17, 2008
*
May 10, 2008
In celebration of spring (happy prancing) and being done with the school year (relieved and happy prancing), I'm taking a one week vacation from this here journal. I'll begin daily postings again Saturday May 17. Please return then. And, if you don’t already own a hammock, by all means go out and buy one. Good ones are like 70 bucks or so. Sell some plasma if you need to. They're worth it. If you have a tree to hang it under, and you do, and you then lie beneath said tree, everything will brighten in your life. If you don't have a tree, hang it somewhere, near an open window in your cold-water, walk-up garret, if that's more your speed. Everything will brighten nonetheless. Happy spring. And happy prancing.
*
May 8, 2008
Security camera footage of a man trapped in an elevator for 41 hours. Idiots worked on the other elevators in the building and never noticed the man trapped in the other one for over three days. There's a great article about this and elevators in general in the recent New Yorker. The film has moody piano music to go along with it. Enjoy. The film is like an existential statement of the situation of modern humanity...or something...
*
May 7, 2008
A pin-up page for antique garbage trucks. Here's one from the groovy 70s.
*
May 5, 2008
I just discovered someone who makes my head spin with his wonderfulness. His name is Ivor Cutler, and he was a Scottish absurdist poet/songwriter/musician/children's book author/elementary school teacher. He was also in the Beatles' film Magical Mystery Tour as the character Buster Bloodvessel. I recognized him from the film, but didn't learn how amazing he was until recently. Listening to the several albums of his I've just gotten is making me leap up and down and squeal. Here's a song of his that someone has made a little video for. It's a pip.
*
May 4, 2008
We Think We Might Have To Kill the Captain
I know, I know, I know. A badger's just not meant for the open sea. But this one asked so politely, just before we set sail. I didn't feel right refusing. Plus, on deck, a badger doesn't take up much space. If we really get that tight for elbow room, I'll throw a cabin boy or two overboard. Then maybe I'll make the badger second lieutenant. That way he can sleep in my cabin, and I can stay up all night listening to his grand purr and pomp.
*
May 3, 2008
It's Always Something
I just want to stare at the wall and not speak a word. I want to never feel hungry again. Having to put food in my belly, again and again or else my mind goes all rancid and hazy--I resent this. If I was a computer, or one of those silos down by the railroad tracks--no, if I was a rock, perhaps a boulder half submerged down at the bend of the Brief Life River--I'd be content and smiley then.
*
May 2, 2008
Ever heard of Post-Rock? Me neither until about a year ago. Now I keep hearing this term, and not knowing what it means. So I looked it up. Apparently it's used to describe bands who use rock instruments for non-rock-n-roll-type music (i.e. any rock band that doesn't try to sound like Aerosmith). Whatever the hell that means. Half the music I listen to could be described as such, anything that isn't classical, folk, jazz, or polka. (Yes, even post-ambient-glitch-dub .) So, in my opinion, it's a meaningless name. But here's info about it, in case you meet me (or any reasonably hip teenager) and want to talk the lingo.
*
April 28, 2008
It Must Be for Me
The water poured over the edge of the boat and started drowning all the dolphins on deck. It was a mess. They lolled this way and that, gasping, ceasing to gasp. In the ocean, bobbing up here and there in the black waves, the humans watched and pointed and rolled their eyes before diving back down again. On the ocean floor, hundreds of telephones were ringing.
*
April 27, 2008
Father Guido Sarducci’s Five Minute University
*
April 26, 2008
What's in a Name?
Donny pulled the laces out of his wingtips. He tied each end together, one after another. At the far end he tied a spoon from the silver service we got when we were married. Then he started swinging the spoon at the end of the shoelaces over his head. He got it going so fast it made a shushing noise that pulsed loud then soft then loud and so on. Almost like a snake on a trampoline. "Yes," I said. "And...? I asked you a question, Donny. What do you think we should name the baby? Are you going to answer me or are you going to keep with the helicopter impressions?"
*
April 23, 2008
Welcome Me
Even on a journey like this one that's going around the world, it's important to always know where your welcome mat is. I keep mine rolled up in my rucksack. I call it my Welcome Mat Rucksack. I like the sound of that. It's like poetry. I never wipe my feet on the welcome mat. The idea! I lie my head on it under the prickly stars and dream of wiping my feet on the moon. My actual shoes are caked three feet thick with the dust and mud of ages.
*
April 22, 2008
Eschewing Tibet and Other Mystical Places
I want to go outside and put my face against the ground where there are matted fur needles, oak leaves, and twigs brought down in the recent storms. I want to press myself against something, someplace that is real. I feel that under the trees, along the hedges where the fur needles collect, is a good place. It is true that inside this house is as real as outside. I cannot deny that. the floorboards that stretch out from beneath my journal beneath my pen are just as real. There's a little dust. Everything is in focus. I could press my face against the floor right here where I am, right where I got stuck all of a sudden with the desire to push into something real.
*
April 20, 2008
Pocketa-Pocketa-Pocketa-Queep
It's a jumpy poetry book. The poems jump about. Mark one, for example, the poem about a book club on page 129, the right facing page. The poem on the left will be about a police car. Today, that is. Tomorrow, as it's sitting on the shelf, the poem on page 128 will be a short one about lady bugs. You'll never know this, though. Which is probably for the best. It would only confuse you and get in the way of your enjoyment of your hobby of radio-controlled cars. The next time you actually take the book off the shelf and turn to page 129, the poem on the left will be about wild geese. You won't realize the difference, though. You'll just keep on ahead as usual.
*
April 19, 2008
Anticipatory Ripples Inside Our Seventy Percent Bodies
Some evenings we go to the reservoir hidden up in the hills to watch the geese land before the sun sets. After the sun sets, it's too dark to see. In the darkness, only the long calling comes to us.
*
April 18, 2008
Yes, we felt the earthquake this morning. Woke us up in bed. Yes, we also felt the aftershock about ten minutes ago. This must be what it’s like to live in California.
*
April 17, 2008
Wishful Garnishing
All the Spanish olives in the world won't turn a Diet Sprite into a dry martini.
*
April 16, 2008
Emperor Honeydew Is Not Amused
Who needs a coliseum? If you want to see people engaged in edgy, life and death struggles, all you need is a grocery store. It's more subtle in there than a coliseum--no lions, no men in damp loincloths (most likely). Scratch the surface, though, peel back the thin veneer of civilization, and you'll see... The blood, the sweat, the cloud of dust out of which a victor stumbles (perhaps holding the last case of Evian Water) and which folds around the crumpled defeated, growing smaller and denser, then finally disappearing. A hundred artichokes applaud. Thirty muskmelons sigh distractedly.
*
April 15, 2008
Acorn Boom
James was late getting to the prison laundry. He knew he had to be there by ten, but he also knew that the prison photographer would be arriving at eleven. The warden had decided there'd be a prison newsletter. The newsletter would never leave the prison. James knew that his mother would never see the picture--there was no way to send a copy all the way to Washington State, and even if there were, he'd never know which lumberjack camp to send it to. James was careful to remember the oak chip strung on string pulled from his prison pants. He wore it under his shirt, close to his heart, just to the left of the tattoo of the acorn. If anyone in the prison ever asked, he'd always tell them it was a tattoo of a hand grenade. He used to cut holes in his t-shirt so the acorn would be visible. Before he was taken out of the world and put behind bars, he'd even cut holes through his shirts, vests, and suit coats. The manager at the stock trading company he'd worked at on the outside called him into his office one day and asked him to stop. James looked at the man and said nothing, for a few minutes. Then he exploded.
*
April 14, 2008
Just To Make the Point
The driveway is gritty. It makes a dry crackling sound as you walk up it, a dry crackling sound as you walk down it. If a woman stands inside the house, if she stares at you out in the driveway, if she holds one hand flat against the window and keeps the other out of sight behind her... If she's there on the other side of the window as the August sun sets and the lights inside turn off, leaving you with only your reflection out there in the driveway looking in at a mirrored window... If the sun completely goes away... If your steps pull blue sparks from the quartz stones... If it looks like a cold fire propels your feet... If you can just make out the woman's face still watching you, seeing the flash of each step you take... If you keep your gaze upon her each time you turn and head back up the drive as the sun does whatever the sun does on the other side of the planet... Gritty. Still gritty.
*
April 13, 2008
Old Man Moon Lets You Lead
If you wait long enough, everyone you've ever known will walk past you and step on your fingers, if while you wait you're lying on the pavement with your arms and legs outstretched. This is the appropriate position in which to receive visitations from one's own ghosts. The moon will be a spotlight aimed right at you. The moon is amazingly obliging, will fulfill this role even without being asked. You don't dance with the oceans for millennia without getting good at intuiting desire.
*
April 12, 2008
A More Wretched Hive of Scum and Villainy
Invariably he's after the apple pie. I can't keep an apple pie good around here without him messing it up. Last time, he peeled the crust off, ate most of the filling, and replaced the gooey sweet apples with a pile of heads from Star Wars figures. Where he got all of them from, I'll never know. Then he put the crust back, so carefully you couldn't tell it had ever been taken off. Later that night, we had your aunts over for dinner, and afterwards Tom cut the pie. Out rolled all these little heads--Luke Skywalkers and Princess Leias--there was one from that walrus-faced thing in the bar on Tatooine whose buddy was the mashed-face guy who didn't like Luke and so Ben Kenobi cut his arm off--and even a couple Darth Vaders. If I'd have made something like a cheery pie, it might have made some kind of sense. Cherries being a little like little heads. Sticky little red heads. But being apple, none of it made sense.
*
April 11, 2008
All of That's Behind Me Now
I might be a man in a garbage can, but when I reflect upon where I used to live, I can only feel glad. Once upon a time, I lived in a castle complete with armies of perfumed concubines--each with a green stone in her navel, sweet mountain breezes in her hair. Or if not a castle, a mansion with a willing upstairs maid in every four-poster bed. Or if not a mansion, a humble ranch house with a wife who loved me and soothed my cares each evening. Or if not a ranch house, a one room shack where the boys and I would whoop it up till sunrise each day of the week and each weekend day too. Or if not a shack, a teepee tent with a dog who loved me and occasional English Lit majors who'd share my rucksack and warm the mouth of my emerald wine bottle. Or if not a teepee tent, then this garbage can and its nest of shredded love letters.
*
April 10, 2008
The New Royal Family of Bainbridge Township.
Before the highway came through, there was this dead end street with maybe ten houses ranged on acre lots each side. At the cul-de-sac at the far end, the developers hollowed out a spot in the tall trees and set one modest home. One of many such streets in our township. And then the highway came through. (One month after, a man was shot behind the counter of his gun shop and the newspaper said, "This is only the beginning.") The town trustees must have known the highway was coming for quite some time, but they kept it to themselves. The highway cut the street off just before the cul-de-sac. Three or four houses were torn away as a deep gully was cut across the old street. A new cul-de-sac was created halfway along the old street. Standing at the center of it, you can look out through the cyclone fence, out over the lanes of the highway below, at the house that was left alone at the other side. Behind a cyclone fence of its own, it sits deep in a ring of trees, a forest with a bite taken out of it. As the years pass, the house never seems to age. The family standing on the front porch can see us wave. They look right at us, but they never wave back.
*
April 9, 2008
If the Apron Fits
Most pastry chefs do not mix blood with the flour they sift. Most use a whisk or a long spoon, not a bone with spotted flesh still clinging here and there. Most would bake a turnover in an oven, not set it against a wall and stare at it with a mad eye until it caught fire. Most would finish it in powdered sugar, and she does that too. Most pastry chef's powdered sugar is just powdered sugar. It has nothing in it but powdered sugar. Not like hers.
*
April 8, 2008
At Robert Hass' poetry reading yesterday, the person who introduced announced that the Pulitzer Prizes for 2008 had just that afternoon been decided and that Robert Hass had won for his new book of poetry Time and Materials . So, that was pretty dramatic. The crowd burst into applause.
*
April 7, 2008
Robert Hass is an amazing poet. Today I get to hear him read, and before that I get to attend a masterclass with him. Yippee!
Here's a prose poem by him that knocks me out all the time.
A Story about the Body by Robert Hass
The young composer, working that summer at an artist's colony, had watched her for a week. She was Japanese, a painter, almost sixty, and he thought he was in love with her. He loved her work, and her work was like the way she moved her body, used her hands, looked at him directly when she mused and considered answers to his questions. One night, walking back from a concert, they came to her door and she turned to him and said, "I think you would like to have me. I would like that too, but I must tell you that I have had a double mastectomy," and when he didn't understand, "I've lost both my breasts." The radiance that he had carried around in his belly and chest cavity--like music--withered quickly, and he made himself look at her when he said, "I'm sorry I don't think I could." He walked back to his own cabin through the pines, and in the morning he found a small blue bowl on the porch outside his door. It looked to be full of rose petals, but he found when he picked it up that the rose petals were on top; the rest of the bowl--she must have swept the corners of her studio--was full of dead bees.
*
April 6, 2008
Having the flu means I've been watching more films than I usually have time for as a grad student. The other night I watched Bridge on the River Kwai for the first time. I don't really dig war films, except the odd ones like Dr. Strangelove and Kelly's Heroes. This film was fun, though, even with the goofiness of the super-macho American, lone cowboy character grandstanding in the midst of all the over-proper English officers--I guess they had to do that to make the film saleable to Hollywood. In the film, the British military prisoners whistle a famous song. Even if most people nowadays don't know the film, I bet everyone has heard this whistle song , whose title is actually the The Colonel Bogey March . After watching the movie, I researched the song and found out that it was written during WW I, and was famous then, even before Bridge on the River Kwai. In fact, it had gained many versions of rude and dirty folk verses. The first set revolve around variations of a first line which reads " Hitler has only got one ball ," and the others apparently have to do with children singing about ingesting Comet cleanser. Having learned this, I thought other people should know about it as well. Consider this a public service message from someone down with the flu.
*
April 5, 2008
Dig the wonderfulness of Hans Hemmert's yellow rubber photographs.
*
April 4, 2008
Moon Spoon June
There's a vine growing up the side of the house. I'm afraid it understands me. I hang my head out of a window and stare down at the wildness of it all. The leaves so green, looking can become a falling, a falling that might not end. There's always more green to fall into, more and more green instead of a bottom inside each leaf. A thousand emerald pools crawling up the side of my house. Unless rustled by a breeze, they are still in the daylight. It's at night, when I'm not looking, that they hatch more of themselves, more green pools to be lost within. Bloom moon mushroom loom doom carom zoom. All those Os are a little like the popping green windows that creep in the night up around me in this house where I lie in bed in a corner of a room that keeps pulling further away into its corner, or would, I should say, if there were anyone there to notice.
*
April 3, 2008
When I'm stuck at home sick, as I am right now with the flu--confound it--I like to watch Hitchcock's Rear Window about someone stuck at home recuperating and staring all day out the windows at the neighbors. Today, out my own windows, I saw one guy ride home on his bicycle, while a Siamese cat crept up an alley and two bunny rabbits chased each other by some daffodils. Not quite Hitchcockian, but there it is.
*
April 2, 2008
A Well-Ordered Kingdom
The dust under the bed is sovereign of its own kingdom. The floorboards standing all in a row: ordered fields as far as the king of the dust can see, as far as the bed goes--which is as far as anyone sensible would want to roam. The dust is a sensible ruler. On gusty days it strolls the limits of its kingdom, always returning to its castle at night: a pair of socks rolled inside out. Within, a roaring fire and brimming flagons of ale some long-limbed, deep-snouted canine curled up before the flames. Ears ready to prick at the king's call.
*
April 1, 2008
And Now for My Next Trick
Almost everyone has, at one time or another, noticed sunlight shimmering on a wall reflected from off a glass on a table. The light dances, its warped beauty captivates. When the magic gets old, a person will bump the table with a knee or a foot, to wake up the giggling light. Maybe reach out a hand and give the glass a shake, spilling a little in the process. This is just like when fur falls out of a magician's top hat.
*
March 31, 2008
Yesterday, the good woman brought in some daffodils we've got growing out in the front yard. They brought a smile to my half-dazed, flu hazed mind. And made me think of this video which I think I've posted before. I love this video so freakin' much.
*
March 30, 2008
Portrait of a Man, Any Man Really
The left side of my face (if you're me) is not happy with the world. My elephant's eye spends most of the day sunk away down in a corner where gravity--which is only the earth and how terribly big it is--pulls it. It's hot down there. My eye goes red and begins to boil. The right corner of my mouth pulls up--a horse rearing before a snake. That side's ear hangs off like a slipped stirrup. It catches the sun and shines against the right side of my face lifted and tight, the eye on this side clear and bright and ready for the world. Straight on. Between these, on the inside of my skull, is an emptiness, a deep space that stretches all the way back. In early days, scientists conjectured that somehow a man crossed back and forth across this split to be whole. Scientists still think that.
*
March 29, 2008
Last night, I read the poet Jack Gilbert for the first time. He's wonderful. He was a friend of the Beats back in the day, won the Yale Younger Poets Prize as a young man in 1962, then bugged off to Europe where he spent most of his life rambling and living on the cheap. In forty-some years, he's published only four books, the last in 2005. I read online last night that, over 80 now, he has Alzheimer's. More people should read him. Here's a poem from this third or forth book. (I can't make it not centered on the screen, as much as I despise that for verse. Sorry.) After the poem, click on the link to hear him read the poem aloud.
The Forgotten Dialect of the Heart
How astonishing it is that language can almost mean,
and frightening that it does not quite. Love, we say,
God, we say, Rome and Michiko, we write, and the words
get it wrong. We say bread and it means according
to which nation. French has no word for home,
and we have no word for strict pleasure. A people
in northern India is dying out because their ancient
tongue has no words for endearment. I dream of lost
vocabularies that might express some of what
we no longer can. Maybe the Etruscan texts would
finally explain why the couples on their tombs
are smiling. And maybe not. When the thousands
of mysterious Sumerian tablets were translated,
they seemed to be business records. But what if they
are poems or psalms? My joy is the same as twelve
Ethiopian goats standing silent in the morning light.
O Lord, thou art slabs of salt and ingots of copper,
as grand as ripe barley lithe under the wind's labor.
Her breasts are six white oxen loaded with bolts
of long-fibered Egyptian cotton. My love is a hundred
pitchers of honey. Shiploads of thuya are what
my body wants to say to your body. Giraffes are this
desire in the dark. Perhaps the spiral Minoan script
is not a language but a map. What we feel most has
no name but amber, archers, cinnamon, horses and birds.
Hear Jack Gilbert read The Forgotten Dialect of the Heart .
*
March 28, 2008
Making the Case for Homeopathy
He realized, after a few minutes, that he'd been staring at the sun. This is not good, he said to himself. I should stop. He forced his gaze to shift to his bookshelf. Odd that I had to force myself to look away from the sun. since it's so bad for me, you'd think my eyes wouldn't want to look at it in the first place. But it felt so good, like being thirsty and then drinking water. Like having Mom put her hand to my forehead when I have a headache. He noticed some difficulty making out the titles on the spines of the books, realized there were black sun-shaped smudges in his vision. He went to inspect his eyes in the bathroom mirror. Sure enough, there were these small black scabs across his pupils, irregular patches of darkness. With a pair of tweezers, gently he pried and peeled each scab away. With the water running very hot, he dropped each into the sink where they dissolved and ran in streaks down the drain. His vision was once again clear and sharp. Looking out the window, he saw garbage cans against the backyard shed, like cut glass vases in the morning's bursting light.
*
March 27, 2008
Take the Wallet, But Leave My Teddys
The far side of my hands--the flat parts karate choppers use to break bricks--are unusually furry. I recently discovered why. I have teddy bears on the far sides of my hands. If I tried to chop a cinder block, I'd crush the teddy bears. Self-defense isn't worth it if it means I have to live the rest of my life with the memory of those high-pitched, cute screams echoing in my ears.
*
March 26, 2008
Pay Attention to Me, Please
It happened in an instant. One moment she's looking at me, and I'm telling her about my new invention for a type of tomato that grows without a skin to make cooking preparation easier, and the next moment I'm still talking but she's not looking at me any more. Without recognizably tilting her head, her eyes rise up over me to look out through the cafe's windows, up into the sky above the buildings across the street. I sense the tug in her gaze and turn around to see she's pulled down snow from out of the gray clouds hanging low over all of us. The air suddenly full of swirling white specks landing on cars, the street, the newspaper boxes, and people--making everything pretty. Cute, even.
*
March 25, 2008
Margaret the Great, Explorer of New and Wonderful Worlds
Without really trying to, Margaret tore out all the joy Martin had left in him. He felt it leave his body, saw the last few purple shreds fly out into the bruised air between them. They slammed into Margaret. Her body sort of opened up to let them in, then it closed tight again. Martin shivered, suddenly deeply cold. Margaret pushed her hair out of her eyes and kept on talking. "...Maybe in a few years, after we've both lived a bit more, met new people, did some exploring..."
*
March 24, 2008
On the Job Training
"I don't believe in miracles, but I do believe in wonder," said Simon the waste disposal technician. The first frost of autumn was rising from the lawns, from tarry edges of the roads, from the corners of cardboard boxes sticking out of recycling containers. The sun was just above the tops of the trees at the end of the street--their leaves yellow and red and most of the colors in between. Simon stood on a small corrugated steel ledge at the back of the compressor truck. His partner that morning stood on an identical edge at the other side of the enormous, foul-smelling opening. Both men wore baggy, gray leather gloves and gripped the steel supports at eye level. "A bag of diamonds could fall at my feet out of the next can, and it wouldn't surprise me a bit. I'd pick it up."
*
March 23, 2008
Game Rule #1: Keepeth Your Eyes Peeled
Any balloon in the sky is a messenger. Bees are referees; their decision is final. If they land on any certain rose, that rose becomes the prize. Reaching for the rose with anything but one's hands is allowed. The mouth, the feet, the underpits of the arms—all acceptable. If a hanglider descends and lets off a series of flares, pay close attention to the order of the colors. That continuum is of a significance that cannot be overstressed. Everything, not only the winning and losing of the game, will most likely depend on correct deciphering of those colors.
*
March 22, 2008
Love Song of a Disease Vector
I've fallen in love with a discarded tire. I never knew anything could be as beautiful as a circular cave with a sloping wall where the sun disappears. I inch, I inch, I inch my way around. I call this "my orbit." I pass pulpy maple leaves, a tin can that washed in like a red-and-white meteor one stormy night. With light absorbed by the walls, my water is warmed, and I'm a kind of happy carrot in a simmering soup. Until the evening I turn myself inside out--my lungs become wings--and I bloom and buzz. I leave this dark doughnut I love, to find another body to enter, to dull my hum, to sip.
*
March 20, 2008
This makes me so happy.
"Your Love Was Good For Me" sung by Marva Whitney
*
March 16, 2008
"History" is a wonderful new poem by Stephen Dunn, from a recent New Yorker.
*
March 14, 2008
If Jeeves and Wooster did not exist, it would be necessary to invent them.
God bless P.G. Wodehouse.
*
March 12, 2008
Listen to Kurt Vonnegut read a short bit from Slaughterhouse Five.
*
March 11, 2008
Home Delivery
The decoys finally arrived. Tom took them out of the box, each one in a vacuum-sealed pouch, floating in a thick sea of white foam pellets. When he removed each from its bag, a faint scent of fresh paint wafted free. He lined the ducks up in a row going down the middle of the dining room table. He kicked a leg of the table and heard a splash.
*
March 9, 2008
The only thing I don't like about this website is the fact that I didn't think of it myself.
Go to the main page then start by clicking one of the "Selected Specimen" links along the left.
*
March 6, 2008
A nice short documentary about one of my favorite contemporary photographers, Todd Hido .
*
March 4, 2008
This is the coolest desk in the universe. I want it.
*
March 3, 2008
It's only a paper moon.
*
March 1, 2008
Listen to Harpo Marx speak, for real. He tells an anecdote from his early days when he played piano in a brothel. A few other sound bytes of him speaking can be found here. I stumbled over this thanks to my friend Kathryn's blog Bookhead .
*
February 29, 2008
Today, for the Creative Writing class I teach, I'm playing them this recording of James Tate reading his poem "Dream On," from the wonderful recorded poetry web archive PennSound.
*
February 28, 2008
The Jones, the Smiths, the Johnsons, Whatever
Nobody invited him. I sure didn't invite him. We would have asked Suzie if she'd invited him, but, as usual, she wasn't there. Tom was heading out to play basketball with a friend, and as he opened the front screen door, before he could step through, this small bald man stepped inside the house. He didn’t run in, he just stepped in--assuredly. Tom stood and stared. So did Joseph, from his chair over by the television. The little man walked through the living room and into the kitchen. I was in there pulling the strings out of snap peas. The little man walked past me and went over to stand in front of the microwave. He leaned forward, opened the door, and stuck his head inside. (Suzie should be seeing this, I thought to myself.) His head fit fine. We'd bought the biggest model after our last one broke. (It has started smoking, then cracked in half and turned the paint yellow in that corner.) Tom and Joseph came in to the kitchen, and together the three of us stood there looking at the little man with his head in our microwave. If Suzie had been there, we could have had our portrait taken.
*
February 27, 2008
These are some real good beards.
*
February 25, 2008
Down the Chute [Excerpted from Coming Clean: an Essay in Laundry]
I remember the time I climbed down through the laundry chute. I don't know what prompted this, perhaps just that air of unfettered exploration that strikes some children. Perhaps I'd had yet another dream of uncovering secret doors and passageways behind walls of my house, and wanted to try it out in real life. Either way, one afternoon I opened the bathroom closet door, crawled toward the open mouth of the chute, and lowered myself feet first down into the floor. It was fun for about a second, maybe a second and a half. The chute had a bend halfway down, so I was able to prop myself on a ledge in mid-descent. The reason my intrepid pleasure was short-lived was that, in building the chute, my father must never have thought that someone would actually try it out as an escape hatch, and so he didn't bother rounding off the points of the nails he pounded into it from the outside. This meant that the inside of the chute was studded with the sharp points of nails. The instant they began to catch, and tear, against my tender, Jolly Rancher-scented flesh, I recalled to myself how often I'd see a pair of underpants or an errant sock get caught along the chutes walls and hang there until I'd have to reach down and free them. So there I was, caught fast inside a tight tunnel, pinned both by tiny spikes and the general constriction of the chute. And suddenly, a vision came to me of one of the scariest memories of my infancy. Every winter, when How the Grinch Stole Christmas! played on television, I'd hide behind my mother on the sofa during two particular scenes. The first was when the Grinch got the idea to burglarize the cozy Whos down in Whoville and his devious smile kept on going and going until it curled up his entire face with evil. The second was the moment when, halfway down the chimney of his first house victim, he got stuck. That image of him bent in upon himself, pinched tight inside the chimney, made me squeal with claustrophobic fear. I wanted to squeal just the same when I myself got caught inside the laundry chute. And I may have; I don't remember for sure. What I do remember is that, like the Grinch, panicked though I may have been, I took a deep breath, revolved my bottom, and got my devious self moving again. I remember lowering myself, scratched and shaken, onto the humid, sour-smelling pile of laundry on the dark basement floor. (I'd neglected to prepare for my exploration by turning the lights on down there.) Standing on the cold concrete and smoothing down my jumbled t-shirt, I inspected the wounds along my torso. Bloodied but unbowed, I had survived and lived to explore another day.
*
February 24, 2008
Pentangle perform Willy O Winsbury. Dreamy…
*
February 23, 2008
Varying Levels of the Wrongness of Bees
A bee stung a bee on his bee. He turned purple, a clue to the fact that something really bad had happened. A purple bee is a thing that should not happen. A bee with pink hair or a sequined jacket--that can be okay. A huckleberry bee--and you got problems.
*
February 22, 2008
Beating
The sisters ran into the forest. One following the other until the follower slipped ahead and became the leader for a while. Around tall trunks they circled, below the dark canopy, along tunnels of underbrush until, eventually, they reached the heart of the forest. Sixty feet tall, it beat a deep throb that shook the matted pine needles all around on the forest floor. Giant trees on either side bent inwards, seeming to penetrate the top of the heart. Some branches carrying blood toward, the others transporting it--enriched a deep, scarlet--away. Above the thumping clearing, white birds circled, their wings flicked askew with each percussive lub, smoothed back into place on the dub. The sisters stood hand in hand--not knowing who had clasped first—for some time, watching, listening, the hairs on their arms shaking in unison. Only the failing evening light woke them from their reverie. A short glance from each to each, and the two approached the hot, red surface. With each free hand, they separated the taut cords of the convulsing outer flesh and, having opened an envelope in the beating curtain, they stepped inside. A flash of white, then a vanishing like the fluttering of a giant's eye as he's on his side, dreaming. The sisters were never seen again. The heart is still there in a clearing in the center of the dark forest. It beats less deeply now than it used to. The birds above, their flight now undisturbed, abandoned the air long ago for a life in the trees and the occasional final plummet to earth.
*
February 21, 2008
Not that it's likely, but if you live in Bloomington, Indiana, have nothing to do tonight, and feel like hearing some poetry, come out to the Harvest of Voices reading. I'll be one of the featured readers.
*
February 20, 2008
An antidote to the February doldrums. Joni Mitchell sings "California" in 1970. Stunning.
*
February 19, 2008
Around the World by Horse
The horse started out in North America. Then it left, via a route up the west coast and into Russia. The horse headed west. Slowly. It spent a good deal of time in Mongolia--the flowers on the high plateau were small, white, and delicious. It had exotic adventures in India. Continued west to Spain where some Spaniards grabbed the horse, took it by boat to the so-called New World. When the horse first touched ground, it leapt into the air. Landing again on all four legs, it put its nose into the air and blew.
*
February 17, 2008
I don't want to grow up either.
If Tom Waits didn't exist, it would be necessary to invent him.
*
February 16, 2008
'Round About Is Still a Way There
He knew it was raining because the rug was wet. That's also how he knew there was a hole in the roof. Useful rug. He knew there was a wetness because his toe was cold. His toe was cold because his sock was damp, after treading on the rug. Useful toe. A slight darkness of the rug. A slight lightness of the room from the light through the hole in the roof. He noticed neither. The man was blind. He knew this because he never learned about things like a great hole in his roof until something like his toe was cold.
*
February 15, 2008
The Blue Ribbon Glee Club sings The Pixies' "Where Is My Mind?"
*
February 14, 2008
Happy Valentine's Day, sweetie! I love you.
*
February 12, 2008
The Children Are Coming, Act Natural
In aisle eight, the wine bottles live. In rows on shelves, they stand around all pointed at the strip-lights above. Some are translucent yellow, some deep red and even opaque. Some have blue and silver labels, like the covers of volumes of nursery rhymes with stories about old ladies who make lumps of coal speak. Some have black labels with gold lettering, like books that have stories about men who befriend lions and sing songs together out under the starry sky. Late at night when the store is closed and the muzak has been silenced, the bottles dance. They dance on their dusty shelves, spinning and twirling carefully. They shake up their insides. By the time the store opens again early in the morning, they're back neatly in rows. The small bubbles ringed along the insides of their necks pop, one by one, and the wine is quiet. Composed. Ready.
*
February 11, 2008
Can You Tell the Difference Between a Star and a Satellite?
Driving by the xmas tree nursery, Chad suddenly stopped the car. He didn't even pull over to the side of the road first. He just hit the breaks, killed the engine, and threw open the door. Out he jumped and crossed in front of the headslights--two Chads burst into white flame for a second each and then went dark. And off he goes down the grassy verge. Over the ditch, he ran up the hill and into the orderly rows of perfect, pointed evergreens. I caught just a few snatches of his blue blazer as he passed between the first branches. Then I saw nothing, just the countless rows of green spikes all ranged along the hillside, their tops aimed at the little twinkling lights in the sky. I turned my head back inside the car, looked at the keys hanging from the silent ignition, and wished I'd have learned to drive a car back when I had the chance.
*
February 10, 2008
Onwards, Upwards (For Real This Time)
The road to paradise is paved with dead dogs. How odd that is, we said to each other when first we set out. We were heading up into the bright blue wonder in the sky, towards the woven gold and silver dome that regularly rings with a chorus of voices raised in awe. "Ungh," said Susan, as her heel slipped and lodged for a moment in the dried open mouth of a great Dane. "Try not to think of it," I said, wanting to be helpful. "Don't look down," Good advice. I wish I could have taken it myself, but I couldn't keep my eyes on the gossamer prize twinkling and shimmering above us. I keep looking down at the contorted bodies, the dull sheen-less coats of matted fur, the tongues stiff and lolling out of black-gummed mouths. Stumbling a bit as my foot caught on a stiff retriever's tail, I reached to take Susan's hand. I grabbed hold of my beloved's hand. I held it between my own. I squeezed.
*
February 9, 2008
Eggless Equity Annuity Limited
I can't understand a word she says when she's got the stones in her mouth. Maybe that's why she does it. I've always wondered. I thought at first it might be for some kind of diet, but she doesn't swallow the stones. And she keeps eating, even with them in her mouth. If anything she eats even more. I think the stones help the breakdown of the foodstuffs, as my sixth grade health teacher used to say. You know, the way a chicken will eat broken clam shells. She's like a chicken, only she doesn't lay any eggs. She works dawn till dusk at an insurance agency--instead of laying eggs.
*
February 6, 2008
Henrik Isaksson is a Danish photographer who takes some good pictures. I especially like the ones, on the front page of his site, of the cardboard boxes with little cut-out eyes.
*
February 5, 2008
MAYBE Across His Buttocks
On his left arm he has the word YES tattooed. On his right, NO. He bought a Rottweiler from a place in Florida that trains them to kill on command. Then, whenever he finds himself stymied with a difficult decision, he'll douse himself with beef broth and take a running leap at the dog. Later, after he's released from the hospital, he'll count up the wounds on each arm. The one with the most, that's the answer.
*
February 3, 2008
Watching the detectives.
*
January 29, 2008
David Byrne has an online journal. It rocks. Here's a recent, sexy entry about Dolphins having culture.
*
January 28, 2008
A short animated film of Mark Twain's War Prayer.
Read the story behind the War Prayer here.
*
January 25, 2008
Contact Allergy
She never eats her breakfast, feeling
revolted, even downright sick
if shown a custard--she'll be reeling.
If snuck within a meal, "A trick!"
she'll squeak. "You think that my attention
can be deceived like that?" Convention
and wisdom say a crack just ends
when out of shell, but Anna sends
herself around the bend with screaming,
with fearing that a crack will keep
on going up her arm, then leap
in jagged seams and split her. Scheming
to keep her body whole she begs
her lovers not to feed her eggs.
*
January 24, 2008
*
January 23, 2008
Photograph of someone camouflaged to fit into urban environments, by Laurent La Gamba.
*
January 22, 2008
What a Woman
-for Sarah-
She leaned toward me, over a plate of macaroons, and winked. It made a noise, like a popping sound. Under the still, grey light from the skylights, the sound was loud enough to snap the table in half. I looked down, saw it clatter to the floor, and everyone in the art museum cafe turned to look at us, some with forkfuls of quiche or dampened biscotti halfway to their mouth. I tried to smile. Then I tried to ignore them, acting composed even though my composure had left me as abruptly as the marble table out from under the macaroons. After a steadying breath or two, I gathered the courage to look again at the woman. I saw her smiling at me and my apparently attractive fluster. She reached out for a macaroon from the plate somehow still hovering there. The moment she lifted one, the rest fell away, thudding quietly onto the debris below. As she lifted the macaroon, I watched her lips open. I saw her teeth. They opened. I saw her pink little tongue extend in welcome. I saw the macaroon seem to preen itself for the honor of disappearing into her.
*
January 21, 2008
A good photograph of my favorite Rodin sculpture. I think it's called simply "Thought." He captured, in stone, something as ephemeral as the look on someone's face just as a thought occurs to them. Freaking amazing. I never get tired of looking at it.
*
January 20, 2008
Joseph K's Big Night on the Town
I'm the last man left on the street this evening. As far as you can see in either direction, no one. Only closed doors. A door suggests a person, someone for it to open for. A hand to reach for a lever. But I'm the only one out here. The light poles are also out here. My light poles as I like to call them.
*
January 17, 2008
This Kent Rogowski guy turns teddy bears inside out.
*
January 16, 2008
She Rattles Dishes
In the middle of the summer, there's always a night--usually under a new moon--when she disappears with a flashlight and a Ziplock bag. We know where to look for her now, drive up and down the street until we find her. She'll be prying insects from the grills of parked cars. We used to stand and shout. We used to plead and make threats. We even tried prying the tweezers from her hands, but not we deal with it in a much better way, less traumatic for all concerned. We throw open the trunk and turn on the spotlight installed where the spare tire used to be. She can't help herself--she leaves the speckled cars and crawls into the trunk, bulging Ziplock and all. Back home, we let her line her collected bodies up in stripes on the roof, then she comes back down, steps inside the kitchen, and turns into our reliable mother again.
*
January 14, 2008
A good word I just learned - Paraprosdokian.
*
January 13, 2008
Not the Man I Used to Be
There is a species of lemur that, as a youth, will grab its own arms or legs when falling out of a tree. Thinking it is grabbing at a branch, one can only assume. Like the time I saw Jane Goodall speak at the university auditorium. She said that monkeys possessed consciousness, because if someone put a red dot on the monkey's face, then put a mirror up to the monkey, it wouldn't reach out to the dot on the monkey in the mirror. It would see the dot on the face of the monkey in the mirror and then reach to remove the dot from its own face. That's self-consciousness, said Jane Goodall. Parakeets and cats will try to attack the reflection they see in a mirror. They'll leap out with beak or claw. This seems, given my own experience with self-consciousness, to be every bit as conclusive.
*
January 12, 2008
In Lieu of a Sandwich
If I bite down hard enough, I will eat my teeth. My teeth will chew up my teeth, powder the enamel, grind the milky stones into dust that, mixed with saliva, will paste into nourishing streams slow-moving down my throat. My stomach will bake my teeth into a bread that, steaming and soft, will nourish the body, fortify the bones, course through my blood all the redder. It is too bad that, after childhood, we each of us have but one set of teeth. Once those are gone, it's nothing but bone to bang against the underside of a skull, a sour drumbeat in a bone room hollowed out for hunger.
*
January 11, 2008
Buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo. This is a grammatically correct sentence. Far out.
*
January 10, 2008
Definitely the most unique email I have ever gotten as an Associate Instructor here at Indiana University. Names abbreviated to protect the innocent.
Dear C,
A student named K has e-mailed to tell me she will be missing class
this week because her boyfriend has been shot in the head.
--R
*
January 9, 2008
This Mr. Toledano guy takes some mighty nifty photographs.
*
January 8, 2008
Figure Study
"A woman is a series of bumps," said the artist. "If I want a woman to appear, all I have to do is get a bunch of bumps and arrange them right." The girl (whose name was Paula Kutruff) behind the counter at PetCo watched mutely as he reached for a bowl of small brown circular dog treats and began arranging them on the counter. "It isn't just a matter of breast bumps, butt bumps, and the head. It's more complicated. They teach you this in art school. You have to get the bumps in the right places, the right proportions." He went on talking as his hands flitted about, arranging the puppy snacks there by the cash register. The cashier, Paula, sighed, looked past the man at the other customers in line. She tried not to roll her enormous blue eyes—and thought about her plan to meet her boyfriend after work. She thought about a documentary she saw last night on manta rays. The man, still talking, suddenly stopped waving his hands about. She looked at him hoping to maybe see him holding out some money, something to indicate he was about to go away. On the counter between them, formed out of spheres of dog food, a small brown woman appeared. She stood up, shaking off a few crumbs in the process, and looked up at Paula, then back at the man, her creator. "Hey," she said, "Big Daddy. How's about shutting up and paying this girl so she can get on with her day?"
*
January 6, 2008
Happy Sixth Birthday to This Thing
Today is the sixth anniversary of this journal. Dang! Is it two thousand eight already? Yipes...
To mark the occasion, here are two fun things.
1. A video of a performance of John Cage's musical piece 4'33" performed by the BBC Symphony Orchestra in January 2004. If you're unfamiliar with the piece, here's some info about it. If you are familiar with it, and the very idea of it gets your undies in a twist, well all I can say is take a deep breath, relax a freakin' bit, and just watch the video. If you enjoy it, you don't have to tell your conservative friends. You can keep it to yourself. NOTE: turn up your computer speaker volume, but try not to listen to it on headphones; you should be able to also hear the sounds around you as you watch. (Video thanks to the splendid, wonderful, amazing online compendium of things avant-garde: UbuWeb .
2. A REQUEST:
I am working on an essay about Laundromats, specifically about real-life strange experiences people have had in Laundromats. So share with me your stories! I've created a yahoo email account LAUNDROMATSTORIES AT YAHOO.COM. Just address an email there (replacing "AT" with "@" of course) and send me a brief anecdote or story about the most interesting thing that ever happened to you in a Laundromat. What I ask from you, on the honor system, is to please keep it true--don't make anything up or exaggerate anything. If I use your anecdote in my essay, it will be completely anonymous--I won't mention your name or email address or anything at all. I will, though, email you a copy of the finished essay. If you know of anyone who has a good Laundromat story, feel free to send this request along.
*
January 5, 2008
Choose Your Own Adventure
-Or-
The Lady or the Omelet
As a child, she never ate breakfast, would scream if someone showed her a souffle. She wouldn't hold or even touch an egg, not even a closed carton of them. Somehow she got the idea that if she held an egg and the shell cracked, the break wouldn't stop at the egg shell--she believed it would continue onto her skin, splitting up along her arm, maybe even reaching her head, cleaving her face open. She wasn't afraid to hold a fragile tea cup, champagne flute, or a balloon. Only eggs. A chocolate cake could make her leave the room. She kept like this until the morning of her twenty-first birthday. Her boyfriend (a psychology major) couldn't believe her fear, and reaching across the kitchen one morning he put a raw egg into her hand as she stood hung-over and half asleep. Before she knew what was happening, he clapped her hand between his own, smashing the egg inside. By the time the yolk splashed against her feet, she'd--
*
January 4, 2008
Is This All There Is?
One arm of the scales holds a pair of scissors, mouth open around the thread that holds the dangling sword. On the other arm is a silver salver. Every word you say each day collects here: four per Have a nice day, eight each time you try out a Will you go to bed with me please? With each word, the scale slowly tips, the scissors creep closed, ready to sever the thread and let the sword fall tip first...into a steel mesh pillow that waits below, for nothing all that dramatic to happen, really.
*
January 3, 2008
The Reason We Have Rules
Once the train pulls out of the station, it's too late to get on. Even if you have wheels at the ends of your feet, even if you could catch up with a jet pack or something, the conductor won't let you on board. There are regulations, and if the regulations aren't followed, then there's no point in having them. When the waiters make their rounds, serving such nectar to the seated passengers, wafers of sunlight on bone china plates that glow and sing--if anyone notices you outside huffing and puffing to peer in, and they start making faces, waving the wafers at you, ostentatiously slurping the nectar with sloppy grins, you can believe the conductor will be by to nip that right in the bud.
*
January 2, 2008
What? What Is It You Want From Me?
She keeps bringing home those teeth, the ones that chatter when you wind them up. Their gums are bright red, like nobody's gums in real life. I don't know where she's getting them from. This town used to be full of magic supply stores--every other window downtown full of top hats and inflatable doves--but that was the old days. and yet there she is, day after day, arriving home with shopping bag after shopping bag bursting with those chattering teeth. The living room's the only place left in the house where you can sit down without fear of getting a nip. And even after all the discussions we've had, just last night she comes home with another two bags full. She sat next to me on the sofa, wound one up and set it on her knee there between us. When she let it go, it started away chattering. Chat-a-chat-a-chat-a-chat-a. She looked up at me, smiling, with her eyes open, expectant.
*
January 1, 2008
Katya's Hot Breath Ruffled the Damp Pages
In a used book about a man talking himself into falling to pieces, there's a piece of paper that's falling to pieces. It's yellowed at the edges, and that isn't even a lie I made up to add color and life to this. It really is yellowed at the edges. It has notes written on it in swirling, sloppy ball point pen. Now would be the time to quote a few lines to hold onto your interest as a reader, but truth is the notes aren't the least bit interesting. They read like the notes of a bored student jotting down thoughts she's heard before, phrases she thinks her teacher would like to believe come to her late at night when she sits in bed, wearing only a pair of sky-blue panties, and reads this book about a man falling to pieces. If I told you there was a stain of red wine at the bottom of the yellowed paper, I would be completely lying. Still, I'm surprised, each time I take the book in hand, that there isn't.
***
EMERGENCY EYES Archives
From January 2002 to December 2007 OFFLINE
*
*
*
*
*
*
All words and pictures Copyright HUBRIS Web Conceits