ok, so i've made the standards new year's resolutions already (losing weight, getting in shape, putting my life together, etc..), but i'm also putting together a few projects that require some
technological expertise, which i am slowly attempting to gain.
first off, is the whole book-writing project... and i've got my laptop, so that's good to go (though the reading list i've been accumulating for research is really rather odd... i'll post a bit of it sometimes), though i've got to do something this week about the problems i'm having with it since my friend placed a drink next to my keyboard when i wasn't looking and helped me figure out how to spill rootbeer across my shiny new high-powered computer.
additionally, i'm attempting to get some more work in video production... also have the software in place for that (sony vegas 6.0 with dvd architect... sweet). in fact, i've already done a project for a friend through work, where i took about 800 some photographs, scanned them (with my a lovely canon mp500 scanner/printer) and made a video collage with music and transitions and such out of them. turned out a bit better than i had expected, especially considering the fact that the entire project had to be churned out in a little under a week, from receiving the photos to having the finished dvd. zoiks.
the other real project that i'm working on is a cd of my poetry. i recently ordered a sony mz-rh10 minidisc recorder. portable, clean sound (from the online reviews i've read) and both line level and mic level inputs. that, combined with the audio-technica electret condenser microphone that i've ordered will make me a mobile recording studio (oh, those and the shure in-ear headphones that i also picked up), and considering i'm planning on using a small catalog of found sounds, should make things move along fairly quickly once i get started.
i've also decided not to put any time frames on these projects, but to just begin with a clearly defined plan on how to get the work done. one thing i've noticed about myself... timelines aren't an impetus for artistic work, but actuallly beginning the work sort of makes it feed upon itself... the actual act of creating and editing is really where the joy in the art lives.
Thursday, December 29, 2005
Monday, December 19, 2005
the social progressives
ok, so anybody read about this?
first, off, yay for judges in south africa.
second... um... this makes south africa the socially progressive couple down the block, right? so, uh... south africa... south africa... you remember that place... apartheid... south africa... yeah... that place... is more socially progressive than oh... almost every state in the union? they were able to get this through their high courts, and we couldn't??
South Africa's high court approves gay marriage
Decision paves way for homosexual unions, a first for the continent
JOHANNESBURG, South Africa - South Africa's highest court ruled Thursday it is unconstitutional to bar gay marriage, paving the way for this country to become the first in Africa to legalize homosexual unions.
Gay rights activists welcomed the ruling on a continent where homosexuality remains largely taboo.
In its ruling, the court gave the country's parliament a year to change the legal definition of marriage to include same-sex couples.
"We were thinking we would be calling our friends today and inviting them to our wedding," said Fikile Vilakazi, of the Forum for the Empowerment of Women, who proposed to her partner more than six months ago. "Now they are asking us to wait another year."
South Africa recognized the rights of gay people in the constitution adopted after apartheid ended in 1994, which prohibits discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation. But married couples have numerous rights still denied gay couples, including the ability to make decisions on each other's behalf in medical emergencies, and inheritance rights if a partner dies without a will.
Marriage is defined in South Africa's common law and Marriage Act as a union between a man and a woman. The Constitutional Court has instructed Parliament to add the words "or spouse" to the definition within a year, or else the change will automatically be effected by the courts.
first, off, yay for judges in south africa.
second... um... this makes south africa the socially progressive couple down the block, right? so, uh... south africa... south africa... you remember that place... apartheid... south africa... yeah... that place... is more socially progressive than oh... almost every state in the union? they were able to get this through their high courts, and we couldn't??
South Africa's high court approves gay marriage
Decision paves way for homosexual unions, a first for the continent
JOHANNESBURG, South Africa - South Africa's highest court ruled Thursday it is unconstitutional to bar gay marriage, paving the way for this country to become the first in Africa to legalize homosexual unions.
Gay rights activists welcomed the ruling on a continent where homosexuality remains largely taboo.
In its ruling, the court gave the country's parliament a year to change the legal definition of marriage to include same-sex couples.
"We were thinking we would be calling our friends today and inviting them to our wedding," said Fikile Vilakazi, of the Forum for the Empowerment of Women, who proposed to her partner more than six months ago. "Now they are asking us to wait another year."
South Africa recognized the rights of gay people in the constitution adopted after apartheid ended in 1994, which prohibits discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation. But married couples have numerous rights still denied gay couples, including the ability to make decisions on each other's behalf in medical emergencies, and inheritance rights if a partner dies without a will.
Marriage is defined in South Africa's common law and Marriage Act as a union between a man and a woman. The Constitutional Court has instructed Parliament to add the words "or spouse" to the definition within a year, or else the change will automatically be effected by the courts.
Tuesday, December 13, 2005
don't die... or go to jail?
okay, so reading through the news today... and have you seen this? i mean, have you seen this?? read on, dear reader (or not so dear and anonymous browser... you know who you are):
BIRITIBA MIRIM, Brazil (AP) -- There's no more room to bury the dead, they can't be cremated and laws forbid a new cemetery. So the mayor of this Brazilian farm town has proposed a solution: outlaw death.
Mayor Roberto Pereira da Silva's proposal to the Town Council asks residents to "take good care of your health in order not to die" and warns that "infractors will be held responsible for their acts."
The bill, which sets no penalty for passing away, is meant to protest a federal law that has barred a new or expanded cemetery in Biritiba Mirim, a town of 28,000 people 45 miles east of Sao Paulo.
"Of course the bill is laughable, unconstitutional, and will never be approved," said Gilson Soares de Campos, an aide to the mayor. "But can you think of a better marketing strategy?"
A 2003 decree by Brazil's National Environment Council bars new or expanded cemeteries in so-called permanent preservation areas or in areas with high water tables. Environmental protection measures rule out cremation.
That left no option for Biritiba Mirim, a town on the so-called "green belt" of rich farmland that supplies fruits and vegetables for Sao Paulo, Brazil's biggest city. The town produces 90 percent of the watercress consumed in Brazil.
Most of Biritiba Mirim sits above the underground water source for about 2 million people in Sao Paulo, de Campos said. The rest is covered by protected forest.
More than 50,000 people already are buried in the 3,500 crypts and tombs in Biritiba Mirim's municipal cemetery, which was inaugurated in 1910.
The cemetery ran out of space last month, and 20 residents who have died since November were forced to share a crypt. But even that solution has limits.
"We have even buried people under the walkways," de Campos said, predicting that crypts will reach capacity in six months. "Look, people are going to die. A solution has to be found, or we'll have to break the law."
At least 20 towns within 60 miles of Biritiba Mirim have a similar dilemma, de Campos said, though none has ordered its citizens not to die.
Biritiba Marim isn't the first Brazilian town to draw attention with an unusual law. A few years ago, a mayor in Parana state banned the sale of condoms, arguing that his town needed to increase its population to keep qualifying for federal aid. Drugstores ignored the ban.
De Campos said his town wants the Environment Council to change the wording of the cemetery decree to allow exceptions approved by environmentalists.
Biritiba Mirim has set aside public land -- five times the size of the current graveyard -- for a cemetery that environmental experts from the University of Sao Paulo say "will not affect the region's water tables or surrounding environment," de Campos said.
The Environment Council declined to comment before a meeting to discuss the matter with local officials Thursday.
Meanwhile, town officials say they are hoping no one else dies.
BIRITIBA MIRIM, Brazil (AP) -- There's no more room to bury the dead, they can't be cremated and laws forbid a new cemetery. So the mayor of this Brazilian farm town has proposed a solution: outlaw death.
Mayor Roberto Pereira da Silva's proposal to the Town Council asks residents to "take good care of your health in order not to die" and warns that "infractors will be held responsible for their acts."
The bill, which sets no penalty for passing away, is meant to protest a federal law that has barred a new or expanded cemetery in Biritiba Mirim, a town of 28,000 people 45 miles east of Sao Paulo.
"Of course the bill is laughable, unconstitutional, and will never be approved," said Gilson Soares de Campos, an aide to the mayor. "But can you think of a better marketing strategy?"
A 2003 decree by Brazil's National Environment Council bars new or expanded cemeteries in so-called permanent preservation areas or in areas with high water tables. Environmental protection measures rule out cremation.
That left no option for Biritiba Mirim, a town on the so-called "green belt" of rich farmland that supplies fruits and vegetables for Sao Paulo, Brazil's biggest city. The town produces 90 percent of the watercress consumed in Brazil.
Most of Biritiba Mirim sits above the underground water source for about 2 million people in Sao Paulo, de Campos said. The rest is covered by protected forest.
More than 50,000 people already are buried in the 3,500 crypts and tombs in Biritiba Mirim's municipal cemetery, which was inaugurated in 1910.
The cemetery ran out of space last month, and 20 residents who have died since November were forced to share a crypt. But even that solution has limits.
"We have even buried people under the walkways," de Campos said, predicting that crypts will reach capacity in six months. "Look, people are going to die. A solution has to be found, or we'll have to break the law."
At least 20 towns within 60 miles of Biritiba Mirim have a similar dilemma, de Campos said, though none has ordered its citizens not to die.
Biritiba Marim isn't the first Brazilian town to draw attention with an unusual law. A few years ago, a mayor in Parana state banned the sale of condoms, arguing that his town needed to increase its population to keep qualifying for federal aid. Drugstores ignored the ban.
De Campos said his town wants the Environment Council to change the wording of the cemetery decree to allow exceptions approved by environmentalists.
Biritiba Mirim has set aside public land -- five times the size of the current graveyard -- for a cemetery that environmental experts from the University of Sao Paulo say "will not affect the region's water tables or surrounding environment," de Campos said.
The Environment Council declined to comment before a meeting to discuss the matter with local officials Thursday.
Meanwhile, town officials say they are hoping no one else dies.
hi de hi de ho ho ho
...or something to that effect. serves me right for listening to cab calloway and christmas music in the same weekend. though, truthfully, the christmas music wasn't my fault... well, okay, it was kinda, as i was the one actually playing it... but it was a holiday event, so i was forced to play music. i cannot emphasize enough, though, the number of people who thanked me very heartily for mixing it up and not force feeding them a steady diet of holiday cheer. how many versions can you play of winter wonderland in one night anyways?
two.
then people start to notice.
i have to mention two very nice surprises... er, make that three, but two are in the same category.
first, i'm doing this job where i'm attempting to create an 8 to 12 minute video in under a week, involving many pictures that need to be scanned in, plus music and transitions... the whole shebang. that's not the surprising part.
the surprising part is that i went out and purchased a brand spankin' new canon mp500 multifunction printer/scanner... and the durn thing actually works better than advertised! it's the first time i've had a machine suggest one way of doing something (scanning multiple documents) and i've said, 'no, don't worry, mr. machine, i already know how i want to handle this' (making contact sheets of multiple photos so i can go back and crop out the areas that i need) and then sat back after doing three pages and realized that hey... mr machine knows whereof it speaks... in it's silent machine-like way. and it didn't even gloat when i realized the error of my ways.
on the plus side of this kinda embarassing submission to technology is the fact that i talked the salesperson at compusa out of trying to recommend an hp (i've had them before and while decent machines, their print quality never impresses me for the price you're paying), and even his trusty back up recommendation of epson (excellent quality printing and features, but too many stories abounding about the printheads that are designed to fail after two years). he came back with specs (a nice touch that the sales people at compusa do... they do research for you, even if you've already done it beforehand...) for the model that i wanted and kept remarking about how it surprised him the number of features and quality of print you get for the price. go cnet.com and amazon reviewers united... plus a couple of other sites that i browsed before purchasing.
the other two combined surprises? music. madeleine peyroux and maria muldaur. both keepers of the flame of old timey music. madeleine is more jazzy, maria more bluesy, but they both have excellent bands behind them, and understand the heart of old time music, and more importantly, really seem to love what they're doing.
and maria got her start in a jug band! a jug band, i say! and madeleine has marc ribot playing his ever excellent strings (see tom waits... mule variations among others... the man can play, out and out)! did i mention that madeleine also covers edith piaf... en francais?
hi de hi de ho ho ho
two.
then people start to notice.
i have to mention two very nice surprises... er, make that three, but two are in the same category.
first, i'm doing this job where i'm attempting to create an 8 to 12 minute video in under a week, involving many pictures that need to be scanned in, plus music and transitions... the whole shebang. that's not the surprising part.
the surprising part is that i went out and purchased a brand spankin' new canon mp500 multifunction printer/scanner... and the durn thing actually works better than advertised! it's the first time i've had a machine suggest one way of doing something (scanning multiple documents) and i've said, 'no, don't worry, mr. machine, i already know how i want to handle this' (making contact sheets of multiple photos so i can go back and crop out the areas that i need) and then sat back after doing three pages and realized that hey... mr machine knows whereof it speaks... in it's silent machine-like way. and it didn't even gloat when i realized the error of my ways.
on the plus side of this kinda embarassing submission to technology is the fact that i talked the salesperson at compusa out of trying to recommend an hp (i've had them before and while decent machines, their print quality never impresses me for the price you're paying), and even his trusty back up recommendation of epson (excellent quality printing and features, but too many stories abounding about the printheads that are designed to fail after two years). he came back with specs (a nice touch that the sales people at compusa do... they do research for you, even if you've already done it beforehand...) for the model that i wanted and kept remarking about how it surprised him the number of features and quality of print you get for the price. go cnet.com and amazon reviewers united... plus a couple of other sites that i browsed before purchasing.
the other two combined surprises? music. madeleine peyroux and maria muldaur. both keepers of the flame of old timey music. madeleine is more jazzy, maria more bluesy, but they both have excellent bands behind them, and understand the heart of old time music, and more importantly, really seem to love what they're doing.
and maria got her start in a jug band! a jug band, i say! and madeleine has marc ribot playing his ever excellent strings (see tom waits... mule variations among others... the man can play, out and out)! did i mention that madeleine also covers edith piaf... en francais?
hi de hi de ho ho ho
Monday, December 12, 2005
sleep: over-rated?
i wouldn't know lately, as i haven't been doing too much of it lately.
at work, we've been busy building an outdoor ice rink. in southern california. where we don't have weather, just minor variations on summer.
also, not sure if you've heard about this... but there's this little holiday thing that takes place every year around this time. it's pretty freaky. people buy over-priced gifts for other people and give them away. sometimes those other people even give the giver over-priced gifts also.
just out of curiosity: how many gifts do you remember off the top of your head from christmases past?
i remember the fire truck that i got when i was six. the freakin' thing was better than the batmobile, except that i didn't get to wear a cape while driving it. believe me... i asked.
more later. time to research some printers and scanners for the side-job that i've got lined up, which is going to pay for a lot of over-priced gifts that i hope will make people smile for at least 2.5 seconds. i'll be counting.
at work, we've been busy building an outdoor ice rink. in southern california. where we don't have weather, just minor variations on summer.
also, not sure if you've heard about this... but there's this little holiday thing that takes place every year around this time. it's pretty freaky. people buy over-priced gifts for other people and give them away. sometimes those other people even give the giver over-priced gifts also.
just out of curiosity: how many gifts do you remember off the top of your head from christmases past?
i remember the fire truck that i got when i was six. the freakin' thing was better than the batmobile, except that i didn't get to wear a cape while driving it. believe me... i asked.
more later. time to research some printers and scanners for the side-job that i've got lined up, which is going to pay for a lot of over-priced gifts that i hope will make people smile for at least 2.5 seconds. i'll be counting.
Thursday, December 01, 2005
revision: moments
ok, so i'm working on this piece... yet again. i finished a draft and was thinking.. yeah... all right.
then i realized that was the cold talking, telling me to go to bed and forget about this writing thing.
i don't like the cold telling me what to do, and i'm not too crazy about settling for something less than what i'm capable of creating. however, the orange juice has run out and so has the nyquil.
so, here's another draft. more work will be done. suggestions, as always are welcome.
We leave these moments unfinished,
like sketches: deep tongue kisses
of graphite stranded like a dead ocean,
sand and heat on bare white paper.
Notice the use of space,
how the contour of a line might suggest
the pink curve of lips caught mid-smile,
breath being drawn into lungs the moment
before a kiss, or a shy bend of linen sheets
half-exposing a tangle of limbs;
how the page begs for color,
the way a grey September morning welcomes
the slow invasion of light, adding color
by degrees, layers of gold and brown and autumn
gathered like leaves ready to burn;
how the small gouges taken from the skin of the page
might remind you of Jackson Pollock, cigarette trembling
in his mouth, paint mixed with shards of glass
tumbling from the open vein of the bucket in his hands,
in the moments before the scrape and the scratch,
the terrible gentleness of the trowel and the knife,
the desperate precision of a derailed train
jumping back on its track—
were you so inclined to think that way,
on a sunday afternoon, in a city named for a state
where the page of the book you were reading
just turned in the breeze, your thumb slipping
into the margin a second too late.
then i realized that was the cold talking, telling me to go to bed and forget about this writing thing.
i don't like the cold telling me what to do, and i'm not too crazy about settling for something less than what i'm capable of creating. however, the orange juice has run out and so has the nyquil.
so, here's another draft. more work will be done. suggestions, as always are welcome.
We leave these moments unfinished,
like sketches: deep tongue kisses
of graphite stranded like a dead ocean,
sand and heat on bare white paper.
Notice the use of space,
how the contour of a line might suggest
the pink curve of lips caught mid-smile,
breath being drawn into lungs the moment
before a kiss, or a shy bend of linen sheets
half-exposing a tangle of limbs;
how the page begs for color,
the way a grey September morning welcomes
the slow invasion of light, adding color
by degrees, layers of gold and brown and autumn
gathered like leaves ready to burn;
how the small gouges taken from the skin of the page
might remind you of Jackson Pollock, cigarette trembling
in his mouth, paint mixed with shards of glass
tumbling from the open vein of the bucket in his hands,
in the moments before the scrape and the scratch,
the terrible gentleness of the trowel and the knife,
the desperate precision of a derailed train
jumping back on its track—
were you so inclined to think that way,
on a sunday afternoon, in a city named for a state
where the page of the book you were reading
just turned in the breeze, your thumb slipping
into the margin a second too late.
Tuesday, November 29, 2005
obsessing much?
discovered today that i'm working too hard on the bike. i set the seat too close to the pedals and so my legs were scrunching up into me belly! set it back a peg and voila! still did 40 minutes but added an extra mile and a half to my distance theoretically traveled in a sitting position without having to balance or look where i was going, which is lucky considering my nose was buried in a book the entire time.
two things of note today:
did you read about the girl who died in quebec because of her allergies to peanuts? she went into anaphylactic shock after kissing her boyfriend who had eaten a peanut butter sandwich hours earlier. 15 years old. kisses her boyfriend, then dies after doctors are unable to revive her, in spite of receiving a timely shot of adrenalin.
15 years old.
damn.
...do i seem to be obsessing on death these days? could it have something to do with reading too many news stories? something to do with my own age?
oh, and peanut allergies have been on the rise in recent decades, possibly having to do with baby creams or lotions that use peanut oil in them that cause children to develop allergies later in life.
the other thing of note (i know... you're probably saying to yourself... anything happy or at least not so depressing? and the answer would be no.): november 29th marks the 141st anniversary of the sand creek massacre.
for those non-history buffs, or who just kinda listened in high school when the hisotry teacher talked about the battle of sand creek (if they dealt with it at all.. which isn't a guarantee, considering it came near the tail end of the civil war), here's a quick summary.
a band of southern cheyenne and arapahoe indians, camped outside of fort lyon, colorado were attacked and killed by a force of colorado volunteers led by col. john chivington.
having led his band of people under the protection of major edward wynkoop, their informal leader, black kettle, was determined to make peace, in spite of raids by other bands of cheyenne who found it impossible to live on the government hand outs doled out by the indian agents (read more about it... the history channel and also pbs have excellent resources about this whole incident).
black kettle flew a white truce flag and also an american flag (a gift from general nelson miles who assured him that as long as he honored the treaties and flew this flag that no harm would come to him or his people from the us army). the soldiers attacked near dawn, while many of the indian men were out hunting, having been given permission to hunt near the fort. apparently, many of the soldiers were also drunk when they attacked (near dawn). more than 100 women and children, along with 28 native men were killed. then the corpses were scalped and many of the bodies were mutilated, before the company of volunteers paraded the body parts through the streets of denver.
during the intermission at a downtown theatre, the scalps were shown to the applause of approving crowds (bitter over being raided by the indians).
later investigations 'strongly condemned' the attacks and mutilations, but because chivington resigned his commission, they found that they were unable punish him, as he was no longer under military jurisdiction.
yeah.
all of which leads me to post this, courtesy of sherman alexie, and availabe in his book, first indian on the moon. check it out. seriously. me? i need sleep.
Tiny Treaties
What I remember most about loving you
that first year is the December night
I hitchhiked fifteen miles through a blizzard
after my reservation car finally threw a rod
on my way back home from touching
your white skin again. Wearing basketball shoes
and a U.S. Army Surplus jacket
my hair long, unbraided, and magnified
in headlights of passing cars, trucks, two snowplows
that forced me off the road, escaping
into the dormant wheat fields. I laughed
because I was afraid but I wasn't afraid
of dying, just afraid of dying
in such a stupid manner. All the Skins
would laugh into their fists
at my wake. All the cousins would tell my story
for generations. I would be the perfect reservation metaphor:
a twentieth century Dull Knife
pulling his skinny ass and dreams
down the longest highway in tribal history.
What I imagine now
is the endless succession of white faces
hunched over steering wheels, illuminated
by cigarettes and dashboard lights, white faces
pressed against windows as cars passed by me
without hesitation. I waited seconds into years
for a brake light, that smallest possible treaty
and I made myself so many promises
that have since come true
but I never had the courage to keep
my last promise, whispered
just before I topped a small hill
and saw the 24-hour lights
of the most beautiful 7-11 in the world.
With my lungs aching, my hands and feet
frozen and disappearing, I promised
to ask if you would have stopped
and picked me up if you didn't know me
a stranger Indian who would have fallen in love
with the warmth of your car, the radio
and the steady rhythm
of windshield wipers over glass, of tires
slicing through ice and snow. I promised
to ask you that question every day
for the rest of our lives
but I won't ask you even
once. I'll just remain quiet
when memories of that first year
come roaring through my thin walls
and shake newspapers and skin.
I'll just wrap myself
in old blankets, build fires
from bald tires and abandoned houses
and I won't ask you the question
because I don't want to know the answer.
--sherman alexie
two things of note today:
did you read about the girl who died in quebec because of her allergies to peanuts? she went into anaphylactic shock after kissing her boyfriend who had eaten a peanut butter sandwich hours earlier. 15 years old. kisses her boyfriend, then dies after doctors are unable to revive her, in spite of receiving a timely shot of adrenalin.
15 years old.
damn.
...do i seem to be obsessing on death these days? could it have something to do with reading too many news stories? something to do with my own age?
oh, and peanut allergies have been on the rise in recent decades, possibly having to do with baby creams or lotions that use peanut oil in them that cause children to develop allergies later in life.
the other thing of note (i know... you're probably saying to yourself... anything happy or at least not so depressing? and the answer would be no.): november 29th marks the 141st anniversary of the sand creek massacre.
for those non-history buffs, or who just kinda listened in high school when the hisotry teacher talked about the battle of sand creek (if they dealt with it at all.. which isn't a guarantee, considering it came near the tail end of the civil war), here's a quick summary.
a band of southern cheyenne and arapahoe indians, camped outside of fort lyon, colorado were attacked and killed by a force of colorado volunteers led by col. john chivington.
having led his band of people under the protection of major edward wynkoop, their informal leader, black kettle, was determined to make peace, in spite of raids by other bands of cheyenne who found it impossible to live on the government hand outs doled out by the indian agents (read more about it... the history channel and also pbs have excellent resources about this whole incident).
black kettle flew a white truce flag and also an american flag (a gift from general nelson miles who assured him that as long as he honored the treaties and flew this flag that no harm would come to him or his people from the us army). the soldiers attacked near dawn, while many of the indian men were out hunting, having been given permission to hunt near the fort. apparently, many of the soldiers were also drunk when they attacked (near dawn). more than 100 women and children, along with 28 native men were killed. then the corpses were scalped and many of the bodies were mutilated, before the company of volunteers paraded the body parts through the streets of denver.
during the intermission at a downtown theatre, the scalps were shown to the applause of approving crowds (bitter over being raided by the indians).
later investigations 'strongly condemned' the attacks and mutilations, but because chivington resigned his commission, they found that they were unable punish him, as he was no longer under military jurisdiction.
yeah.
all of which leads me to post this, courtesy of sherman alexie, and availabe in his book, first indian on the moon. check it out. seriously. me? i need sleep.
Tiny Treaties
What I remember most about loving you
that first year is the December night
I hitchhiked fifteen miles through a blizzard
after my reservation car finally threw a rod
on my way back home from touching
your white skin again. Wearing basketball shoes
and a U.S. Army Surplus jacket
my hair long, unbraided, and magnified
in headlights of passing cars, trucks, two snowplows
that forced me off the road, escaping
into the dormant wheat fields. I laughed
because I was afraid but I wasn't afraid
of dying, just afraid of dying
in such a stupid manner. All the Skins
would laugh into their fists
at my wake. All the cousins would tell my story
for generations. I would be the perfect reservation metaphor:
a twentieth century Dull Knife
pulling his skinny ass and dreams
down the longest highway in tribal history.
What I imagine now
is the endless succession of white faces
hunched over steering wheels, illuminated
by cigarettes and dashboard lights, white faces
pressed against windows as cars passed by me
without hesitation. I waited seconds into years
for a brake light, that smallest possible treaty
and I made myself so many promises
that have since come true
but I never had the courage to keep
my last promise, whispered
just before I topped a small hill
and saw the 24-hour lights
of the most beautiful 7-11 in the world.
With my lungs aching, my hands and feet
frozen and disappearing, I promised
to ask if you would have stopped
and picked me up if you didn't know me
a stranger Indian who would have fallen in love
with the warmth of your car, the radio
and the steady rhythm
of windshield wipers over glass, of tires
slicing through ice and snow. I promised
to ask you that question every day
for the rest of our lives
but I won't ask you even
once. I'll just remain quiet
when memories of that first year
come roaring through my thin walls
and shake newspapers and skin.
I'll just wrap myself
in old blankets, build fires
from bald tires and abandoned houses
and I won't ask you the question
because I don't want to know the answer.
--sherman alexie
Monday, November 28, 2005
ridin' research
so i bought an exercise bike. thought it would be a good way to spin my wheels while working on the research for that whole book project thingamabobajigger.
more fun than i expected, actually. planned on thirty minutes, but went forty the first time because i wasn't done with the chapter.
now it's just a matter of committing to that time and the reading and we'll be off and biking, right?
meanstwhile, the more i learn, the more i learn that i've got a lot of reading ahead of me. there are so many things that we take for granted in our everyday lives. light. plumbing. cars. email. food. music. food.
did i say food?
no mcdonald's until what, the early 50's? anybody know when they were founded? anybody? bueller?
bueller?
...bueller?
and then reading more headlines... the trial of saddam hussein, an explosion in a mine in china, and then the one that sticks with me: heiress to samsung fortune commits suicide.
evidently the young lady (age 26) was worth about 170 million dollars and was in new york at graduate school attempting to learn more about art to help run samsung's cultural foundation.
and she hung herself with an electrical cord.
have you ever had somebody you know commit suicide, or attempt it? i have. and the number of people can't be counted on one hand. have you ever thought about it? more than idly? who hasn't, right?
who hasn't found themselves at the end of a dark tunnel of a day when decisions and breathing and finding a reason to wake up in the morning seem to be harder than choosing the longest, most dreamless sleep we'll ever know. but what is that thing, that one reason, or that one moment when we decide tomorrow's another day, and maybe we haven't hit rock bottom yet, or somebody out there would miss us more than we care to admit, or whatever reason it is that makes us draw one more ragged breath, then another, and another... until the pain and loneliness seem somehow manageable.
and why is it we don't always find that answer? or provide that reason to those we love... or to ourselves?
...
some joni mitchell lyrics i'm going to fall asleep to tonight, as channeled by diana krall and her piano:
I met a woman
She had a mouth like yours
She knew your life
She knew your devils and your deeds
And she said,
"Go to him, stay with him if you can
But be prepared to bleed"
Oh but you are in my blood
You're my holy wine
You're so bitter, bitter and so sweet
Oh, I could drink a case of you, darling
Still I'd be on my feet
I would still be on my feet
more fun than i expected, actually. planned on thirty minutes, but went forty the first time because i wasn't done with the chapter.
now it's just a matter of committing to that time and the reading and we'll be off and biking, right?
meanstwhile, the more i learn, the more i learn that i've got a lot of reading ahead of me. there are so many things that we take for granted in our everyday lives. light. plumbing. cars. email. food. music. food.
did i say food?
no mcdonald's until what, the early 50's? anybody know when they were founded? anybody? bueller?
bueller?
...bueller?
and then reading more headlines... the trial of saddam hussein, an explosion in a mine in china, and then the one that sticks with me: heiress to samsung fortune commits suicide.
evidently the young lady (age 26) was worth about 170 million dollars and was in new york at graduate school attempting to learn more about art to help run samsung's cultural foundation.
and she hung herself with an electrical cord.
have you ever had somebody you know commit suicide, or attempt it? i have. and the number of people can't be counted on one hand. have you ever thought about it? more than idly? who hasn't, right?
who hasn't found themselves at the end of a dark tunnel of a day when decisions and breathing and finding a reason to wake up in the morning seem to be harder than choosing the longest, most dreamless sleep we'll ever know. but what is that thing, that one reason, or that one moment when we decide tomorrow's another day, and maybe we haven't hit rock bottom yet, or somebody out there would miss us more than we care to admit, or whatever reason it is that makes us draw one more ragged breath, then another, and another... until the pain and loneliness seem somehow manageable.
and why is it we don't always find that answer? or provide that reason to those we love... or to ourselves?
...
some joni mitchell lyrics i'm going to fall asleep to tonight, as channeled by diana krall and her piano:
I met a woman
She had a mouth like yours
She knew your life
She knew your devils and your deeds
And she said,
"Go to him, stay with him if you can
But be prepared to bleed"
Oh but you are in my blood
You're my holy wine
You're so bitter, bitter and so sweet
Oh, I could drink a case of you, darling
Still I'd be on my feet
I would still be on my feet
Saturday, November 26, 2005
where do you write?
okay, so for the past few months, i've been spending more time and energy in trying to vary not only when and how, but where i write. used to be a hardcore sit-in-front-of-the-computer-and-type kinda guy, but that was mainly a force of habit combined with very poor penmanship skills.
that and i used to be a very quick and accurate typer. now, not so much, but hey, lack of practice makes lack of perfection, yeah?
but last year in idyllwild, while at poetry camp, i discovered that i really enjoyed lying on my stomach and writing longhand. or scribbled longhand/block letters... depending on how fast i was writing. the surprising thing was how i found myself leaning into the page as i was furiously and illegibly scratching letters into the page. it became a much more visceral experience than it had been previously... like back when i used to work out on a regular basis... that kind of intensity into ordering the words in just the right way.
and two weeks ago, i finally broke down and bought a couple of those cute little writing journals that you see people who fancy themselves writers carrying to places like starbuck's and squinting their pricily caffeinated eyes into and pouring out their souls like a custom carafe of coffee.
i find myself switching places, styles and times much more often lately, now that i've provided myself with more tools... and the funny thing is... i find myself changing how i word things depending on where i am and what i'm writing with/on. the funniest part is that i've been using it in editing mode very heavily. if i get stuck in a particular phrase or mode of thinking and start banging my head against the wall... i switch modes. rewrite a typed page into the journal. transcribe a journal entry into an email so i can work at it from any computer. lie down and scribble.
the most helpful part has been making sure that when i'm burning out on an approach i either a) switch modes or b) i start over in the mode that i'm in... meaning that i transcribe whatever i've done so far... allowing myself just by the physical process of writing to pull myself back into that frame of mind... it's amazing how your body will lead your mind where it needs to go when you start learning the right tricks to let it wander a bit more freely than our nine to five lives seem to allow us to explore.
that and i used to be a very quick and accurate typer. now, not so much, but hey, lack of practice makes lack of perfection, yeah?
but last year in idyllwild, while at poetry camp, i discovered that i really enjoyed lying on my stomach and writing longhand. or scribbled longhand/block letters... depending on how fast i was writing. the surprising thing was how i found myself leaning into the page as i was furiously and illegibly scratching letters into the page. it became a much more visceral experience than it had been previously... like back when i used to work out on a regular basis... that kind of intensity into ordering the words in just the right way.
and two weeks ago, i finally broke down and bought a couple of those cute little writing journals that you see people who fancy themselves writers carrying to places like starbuck's and squinting their pricily caffeinated eyes into and pouring out their souls like a custom carafe of coffee.
i find myself switching places, styles and times much more often lately, now that i've provided myself with more tools... and the funny thing is... i find myself changing how i word things depending on where i am and what i'm writing with/on. the funniest part is that i've been using it in editing mode very heavily. if i get stuck in a particular phrase or mode of thinking and start banging my head against the wall... i switch modes. rewrite a typed page into the journal. transcribe a journal entry into an email so i can work at it from any computer. lie down and scribble.
the most helpful part has been making sure that when i'm burning out on an approach i either a) switch modes or b) i start over in the mode that i'm in... meaning that i transcribe whatever i've done so far... allowing myself just by the physical process of writing to pull myself back into that frame of mind... it's amazing how your body will lead your mind where it needs to go when you start learning the right tricks to let it wander a bit more freely than our nine to five lives seem to allow us to explore.
Friday, November 18, 2005
sleep is for the dead
as seems to be my way when i can't sleep... or on those nights when i know that i have to be in another one of the armpits of southern california at the buttcrack of dawn, i'm up late reading the news online, trying to get in a workout and listening with new ears to music.
from patty griffin:
say goodbye to the old street
that never cared much for you anyway
and the different colored doorways
you thought would let you in one day
...interspersed with a sampling of headlines, courtesy of cnn:
Documents: Teen murder suspect plotted killing spree,
and
Did 'South Park' go too far in mocking Tom Cruise?
i walk down to the railroad track and ride a rusty train
with a million other faces
i shoot through the city veins
goodbye, goodbye, goodbye old friend
you wanted to be free
somewhere beyond the bitter end
is where I wanna be
Scores killed in suicide bombings,
and
Ex-CIA boss: Cheney is 'vice president for torture'.
how the sky turns to fire
against a telephone wire
it burns the last of the day down
and I'm the last one hanging around
waiting on a train track
and the train never comes back
and even I'm getting tired
of useless desires
...then i go back to my online shopping... looking for decent prices on a new pair of workpants.
from patty griffin:
say goodbye to the old street
that never cared much for you anyway
and the different colored doorways
you thought would let you in one day
...interspersed with a sampling of headlines, courtesy of cnn:
Documents: Teen murder suspect plotted killing spree,
and
Did 'South Park' go too far in mocking Tom Cruise?
i walk down to the railroad track and ride a rusty train
with a million other faces
i shoot through the city veins
goodbye, goodbye, goodbye old friend
you wanted to be free
somewhere beyond the bitter end
is where I wanna be
Scores killed in suicide bombings,
and
Ex-CIA boss: Cheney is 'vice president for torture'.
how the sky turns to fire
against a telephone wire
it burns the last of the day down
and I'm the last one hanging around
waiting on a train track
and the train never comes back
and even I'm getting tired
of useless desires
...then i go back to my online shopping... looking for decent prices on a new pair of workpants.
Tuesday, November 15, 2005
new? yeah, new
okay, so i may have mentioned that i wrote a bit while i was up in the aforementioned cabin type thing building bombs... er... reading and hiking. yeah.
so, here's something that i was working on. and, no, it's not really new new... it's a revision of something else i posted earlier, but that makes is kinda new, right?
Poems in the Key of X: Rogue without a Cause
Marie starts too many conversations
with “—Ophelia knew how to swim.”
She finds herself kissing strangers,
drawn to the scent of an open wound;
reading their lips like tea leaves,
like tarot cards, like a leper’s smile.
She’s a cigarette searching for a lung.
She’s comforting like Prometheus with
a broken lighter. She’s learned the awful
difference between mirrors and windows.
Her favorite place is silence, her favorite
color: evening. Marie knows secrets to make
the cotton blush. Her ribs are recovering
from their dreams of shrinking. Her voice
is coal dust after a cave in. Abandoned shadows
lurk in the grotto of her skull, gas lamps pale
and guttering in their hands, yellow fingers of light
interpreting stone. She gathers flowers
with her eyes and waits for tomorrow to arrive
like a train. Her night light is a burning cross,
but she doesn’t hold a grudge against the rain
anymore. Fire only knows one way to burn.
so, here's something that i was working on. and, no, it's not really new new... it's a revision of something else i posted earlier, but that makes is kinda new, right?
Poems in the Key of X: Rogue without a Cause
Marie starts too many conversations
with “—Ophelia knew how to swim.”
She finds herself kissing strangers,
drawn to the scent of an open wound;
reading their lips like tea leaves,
like tarot cards, like a leper’s smile.
She’s a cigarette searching for a lung.
She’s comforting like Prometheus with
a broken lighter. She’s learned the awful
difference between mirrors and windows.
Her favorite place is silence, her favorite
color: evening. Marie knows secrets to make
the cotton blush. Her ribs are recovering
from their dreams of shrinking. Her voice
is coal dust after a cave in. Abandoned shadows
lurk in the grotto of her skull, gas lamps pale
and guttering in their hands, yellow fingers of light
interpreting stone. She gathers flowers
with her eyes and waits for tomorrow to arrive
like a train. Her night light is a burning cross,
but she doesn’t hold a grudge against the rain
anymore. Fire only knows one way to burn.
Sunday, November 13, 2005
mmm, trees
ok, so just returned from four days in the woods in a cabin with two of me good friends. got much done... finished re-reading dracula, got part way through four other books that i brought along for further research in the ongoing book project, and was also given a terrific gift of this newspaper called 'chronicles of the old west.' the paper puts together news from the old west and presents it as it would've been done in the original papers, complete with pictures, diagrams and photos... and some historical perspectives thrown in for good measure. very tasty gift!
unexpected high point of the trip (aside from some terrificly good and bad sonny chiba flicks, and surprisingly tasty franks and beans, you say?) had to have been the short hike i took alone on saturday afternoon. the hike was fairly non-descript at first, wandering across a meadow, through the grounds of the local firestation, and then up along highway 243. however, on the way back from the mostly uphill trek, i took a short detour off the road to get a better view of the setting sun.
watching the sun dive behind the mountains in slow motion, and watching the birds caught in the light, transforming them into dust motes falling across the suddenly endless valley reminded me that words are terrific tools... like verbs are shovels, adjectives are buckets, and so on... but trying to describe the humbling experience of watching your self-centered perspective suddenly grow, and seeing the world expand around you, with sweat dripping off your brow and the sounds of wind passing among the trees, the small crunches of leaves as you adjusted your perch... well, it's like trying to dig a grave with a toothpick.
will look further into my bag of tricks and see if i can find a shovel, or at least a broom to clean all of this up. meanwhile... try to imagine it... or better yet, go find yourself a patch of nature, something with cars no nearer than 3 miles and watch the sun set. you'll see what i'm talking about, i hope.
unexpected high point of the trip (aside from some terrificly good and bad sonny chiba flicks, and surprisingly tasty franks and beans, you say?) had to have been the short hike i took alone on saturday afternoon. the hike was fairly non-descript at first, wandering across a meadow, through the grounds of the local firestation, and then up along highway 243. however, on the way back from the mostly uphill trek, i took a short detour off the road to get a better view of the setting sun.
watching the sun dive behind the mountains in slow motion, and watching the birds caught in the light, transforming them into dust motes falling across the suddenly endless valley reminded me that words are terrific tools... like verbs are shovels, adjectives are buckets, and so on... but trying to describe the humbling experience of watching your self-centered perspective suddenly grow, and seeing the world expand around you, with sweat dripping off your brow and the sounds of wind passing among the trees, the small crunches of leaves as you adjusted your perch... well, it's like trying to dig a grave with a toothpick.
will look further into my bag of tricks and see if i can find a shovel, or at least a broom to clean all of this up. meanwhile... try to imagine it... or better yet, go find yourself a patch of nature, something with cars no nearer than 3 miles and watch the sun set. you'll see what i'm talking about, i hope.
Thursday, November 10, 2005
cup o' courage, anyone?
okay, so this floored me when i read it. here's the beginning excerpt, and then a link to the website that pointed me in the right direction, so to speak.
THE TYRANNY OF PETTY COERCION by Marilynne Robinson
From the spring issue of Social Research
Robinson's novel, Gilead, will be published by Farrar, Straus, and Giroux in November
Courage seems to me dependent on cultural definition. By this I do not mean only that it is a word that blesses different behaviors in different cultures, though that is clearly true. I mean also, and more importantly, that courage is rarely expressed except where there is sufficient consensus to support it. Theologians used to write about a prevenient grace, which enables the soul to accept grace itself. Perhaps there must also be a prevenient courage to nerve one to be brave. It is we human beings who give one another permission to show courage, or, more typically, withhold such permission. We also internalize prohibitions, enforcing them on ourselves- prohibitions against, for example, expressing an honest doubt, or entertaining one. This ought not to be true in a civilization like ours, historically committed to valuing individual conscience and free expression. But it is.
Physical courage is remarkably widespread in this population. There seem always to be firefighters to deal with the most appalling conflagrations and doctors to deal with the most novel and alarming illnesses. It is by no means to undervalue courage of this kind to say it is perhaps expedited by being universally recognized as courage. Those who act on it can recognize the impulse and act confidently, even at the greatest risk to themselves.
Moral and intellectual courage are not in nearly so flourishing a state, even though the risks they entail- financial or professional disadvantage, ridicule, ostracism- are comparatively minor. I propose that these forms of courage suffer from the disadvantage of requiring new definitions continually, which must be generated out of individual perception and judgment. They threaten or violate loyalty, group identity, the sense of comme il faut. They are, intrinsically, outside the range of consensus.
Social comity is no doubt dependent on a degree of like-mindedness in a population. It does sometimes help when we are in general agreement about basic things. Indeed, consensus is so powerful and so effectively defended that I suspect it goes back to earliest humanity, when our tribes were small and vulnerable, and schism and defection were a threat to survival. But it should never be forgotten how much repression and violence consensus can support, or how many crimes it has justified.
THE TYRANNY OF PETTY COERCION by Marilynne Robinson
From the spring issue of Social Research
Robinson's novel, Gilead, will be published by Farrar, Straus, and Giroux in November
Courage seems to me dependent on cultural definition. By this I do not mean only that it is a word that blesses different behaviors in different cultures, though that is clearly true. I mean also, and more importantly, that courage is rarely expressed except where there is sufficient consensus to support it. Theologians used to write about a prevenient grace, which enables the soul to accept grace itself. Perhaps there must also be a prevenient courage to nerve one to be brave. It is we human beings who give one another permission to show courage, or, more typically, withhold such permission. We also internalize prohibitions, enforcing them on ourselves- prohibitions against, for example, expressing an honest doubt, or entertaining one. This ought not to be true in a civilization like ours, historically committed to valuing individual conscience and free expression. But it is.
Physical courage is remarkably widespread in this population. There seem always to be firefighters to deal with the most appalling conflagrations and doctors to deal with the most novel and alarming illnesses. It is by no means to undervalue courage of this kind to say it is perhaps expedited by being universally recognized as courage. Those who act on it can recognize the impulse and act confidently, even at the greatest risk to themselves.
Moral and intellectual courage are not in nearly so flourishing a state, even though the risks they entail- financial or professional disadvantage, ridicule, ostracism- are comparatively minor. I propose that these forms of courage suffer from the disadvantage of requiring new definitions continually, which must be generated out of individual perception and judgment. They threaten or violate loyalty, group identity, the sense of comme il faut. They are, intrinsically, outside the range of consensus.
Social comity is no doubt dependent on a degree of like-mindedness in a population. It does sometimes help when we are in general agreement about basic things. Indeed, consensus is so powerful and so effectively defended that I suspect it goes back to earliest humanity, when our tribes were small and vulnerable, and schism and defection were a threat to survival. But it should never be forgotten how much repression and violence consensus can support, or how many crimes it has justified.
...and to the entire article:
THE TYRANNY OF
PETTY COERCIONby
Marilynne Robinson
(Harper's Magazine, August 2004)
Monday, November 07, 2005
mmm, broth
two words i never thought i'd be using together. however, while running a thousand degree (or so) fever this weekend, those words did bump up against each other in my brain.
not too unusual when you consider that it was the only meal i ate all weekend. okay, unless you count two separate times i ate reese's peanut butter cups. and those don't count, because i wasn't really hungry, but woke up in the middle of the night thinking "i really ought to be eating something," and lo and behold there sat my roomie's stash of peanut butter cups within finger's distance!
on the plus side, chicken broth brings back memories of sick days as a child, when mom and dad thought chicken broth was penicillin.
on the other plus side, fever seems to work out plot questions for me in the book i'm working on. for example, when looking over the events of the little bighorn (long story about why a book would deal with the battle of the little bighorn), many answers were boiled down for me in a very humbling way. more on this later after i get more sleep and more broth.
mmmm, broth.
not too unusual when you consider that it was the only meal i ate all weekend. okay, unless you count two separate times i ate reese's peanut butter cups. and those don't count, because i wasn't really hungry, but woke up in the middle of the night thinking "i really ought to be eating something," and lo and behold there sat my roomie's stash of peanut butter cups within finger's distance!
on the plus side, chicken broth brings back memories of sick days as a child, when mom and dad thought chicken broth was penicillin.
on the other plus side, fever seems to work out plot questions for me in the book i'm working on. for example, when looking over the events of the little bighorn (long story about why a book would deal with the battle of the little bighorn), many answers were boiled down for me in a very humbling way. more on this later after i get more sleep and more broth.
mmmm, broth.
Saturday, November 05, 2005
say my pirate name! yarrr
My pirate name is:
Mad Sam Bonney
Every pirate is a little bit crazy. You, though, are more than just a little bit. You can be a little bit unpredictable, but a pirate's life is far from full of certainties, so that fits in pretty well. Arr!
Friday, November 04, 2005
re-write: orpheus
this is something older that i've been meaning to mess with for a while, and finally have tweaked it a bit.
Orpheus Explains
The lightning flash
kissed the tree into a skeleton
the way my lips wanted
to press yours into full bloom.
We stood on the hill,
ignoring how we shuddered
against the night;
discussed the mathematics of desire:
the splendid geometry of you compared
to the intriguing proximity of us.
Eyes touched lips
then found safer ground,
as we explored our chemistry
without stepping over
the moonlit line
we longed to cross.
We said goodbye
then hugged… ten,
maybe twenty times…
each kiss of our stomachs and shoulders
fractionally longer
and closer than the last.
The fog-shaped statues of our breath
divided the distance between us,
but I spoke to you
about my girlfriend;
one time zone away,
but not yet gone.
Your hands in mine, flex marginally
while I study their shape,
and I can’t look up,
must not leave their intricate design,
because if I do,
I’ll see eyes, hair, lips;
lips in full bloom.
Orpheus Explains
The lightning flash
kissed the tree into a skeleton
the way my lips wanted
to press yours into full bloom.
We stood on the hill,
ignoring how we shuddered
against the night;
discussed the mathematics of desire:
the splendid geometry of you compared
to the intriguing proximity of us.
Eyes touched lips
then found safer ground,
as we explored our chemistry
without stepping over
the moonlit line
we longed to cross.
We said goodbye
then hugged… ten,
maybe twenty times…
each kiss of our stomachs and shoulders
fractionally longer
and closer than the last.
The fog-shaped statues of our breath
divided the distance between us,
but I spoke to you
about my girlfriend;
one time zone away,
but not yet gone.
Your hands in mine, flex marginally
while I study their shape,
and I can’t look up,
must not leave their intricate design,
because if I do,
I’ll see eyes, hair, lips;
lips in full bloom.
Thursday, November 03, 2005
new work: rogue without a cause
okay, something new that i'm toying with. a little departure in style for me... but change is good, yeah?
Poems in the Key of X: Rogue without a Cause
Marie starts too many conversations
with "—Ophelia knew how to swim."
She finds herself kissing strangers,
drawn to the scent of an open wound;
reading their lips like tea leaves,
like tarot cards, like a leper’s smile.
She’s a half-lit cigarette in search
of a lung, a flask of whiskey
tucked in the Senator’s hip pocket.
She’s comforting like Prometheus
with a broken lighter… or a burning cross.
She’s starting to learn the awful difference
between mirrors and windows, rosaries and candles.
Her smile is borrowed from the library, her laughter stolen
from a music box. Her favorite place is silence,
her favorite color: evening. Marie knows secrets
to make the cotton blush. Her ribs are recovering
from their dreams of shrinking. Her voice is coal dust
after a cave-in. From her grandmother, she inherited
the art of wilting and a mean left hook. From the grandfather
clock, she took steady hands and a blank smile.
She's learned that moonlight manufactures lies,
and backseat bargains aren’t worth the price
of the steam they’re written in. She hears voices
echoing from the chasm of her mouth,
ripples spreading across the pond
of her eye. There are abandoned shadows
lurking in the grotto of her skull, gas lamps
pale and guttering in their hands, yellow fingers
of light interpreting stone. Marie has waded
into the mass of humanity swimming around her,
shutting her eyes to the river of flesh and motion,
her arms just now beginning to tire.
Poems in the Key of X: Rogue without a Cause
Marie starts too many conversations
with "—Ophelia knew how to swim."
She finds herself kissing strangers,
drawn to the scent of an open wound;
reading their lips like tea leaves,
like tarot cards, like a leper’s smile.
She’s a half-lit cigarette in search
of a lung, a flask of whiskey
tucked in the Senator’s hip pocket.
She’s comforting like Prometheus
with a broken lighter… or a burning cross.
She’s starting to learn the awful difference
between mirrors and windows, rosaries and candles.
Her smile is borrowed from the library, her laughter stolen
from a music box. Her favorite place is silence,
her favorite color: evening. Marie knows secrets
to make the cotton blush. Her ribs are recovering
from their dreams of shrinking. Her voice is coal dust
after a cave-in. From her grandmother, she inherited
the art of wilting and a mean left hook. From the grandfather
clock, she took steady hands and a blank smile.
She's learned that moonlight manufactures lies,
and backseat bargains aren’t worth the price
of the steam they’re written in. She hears voices
echoing from the chasm of her mouth,
ripples spreading across the pond
of her eye. There are abandoned shadows
lurking in the grotto of her skull, gas lamps
pale and guttering in their hands, yellow fingers
of light interpreting stone. Marie has waded
into the mass of humanity swimming around her,
shutting her eyes to the river of flesh and motion,
her arms just now beginning to tire.
Sunday, October 30, 2005
more worky outie
listening to kris delmhorst, covering peter mulvey's 'ithaca' (i've always worked out better... or should i say that i've had better workouts, while listening to slow, intense music, rather than loud, pulsing music... maybe that says something about me?):
we leave this cursed city
the same way we come in,
we trace the roads
on our way out, we shed
our uncertainties like clothes...
then i spend time cruising the news in between sets of reps (again, one of those odd quirks... i love reading in between sets... think a little less about the aches and pains, i guess). i find headlines like 'j.lo craves an oscar' a few inches from 'nation honors rosa parks' and a few more inches to 'Claim of responsibility for deadly India blasts.'
love will never listen to us,
why should it?
love knows the score,
builds better songs than we do,
sings a better metaphor....
we leave this cursed city
the same way we come in,
we trace the roads
on our way out, we shed
our uncertainties like clothes...
then i spend time cruising the news in between sets of reps (again, one of those odd quirks... i love reading in between sets... think a little less about the aches and pains, i guess). i find headlines like 'j.lo craves an oscar' a few inches from 'nation honors rosa parks' and a few more inches to 'Claim of responsibility for deadly India blasts.'
love will never listen to us,
why should it?
love knows the score,
builds better songs than we do,
sings a better metaphor....
Thursday, October 27, 2005
typing
while wearing weight gloves... not so easy.
why do i always seem to get the urge to write while sweating? what's up with that? could it be that two healthy things go together? body sweat and mental sweat consipiring together to make good things happen?
naaaaah.
however, i've begun doing some hardcore research on this book-type thing that i've kinda overcommitted myself to writing.
something interesting that came to mind during the research. anybody else notice the similarity between the current war in iraq and the holy crusades of long gone? not overt similarities with people chanting in the streets about killing the infidels (though, would that surprise anyone?), but the idea that the ends justify the means? just a historical comparison... not sure if anybody else sees it, but then again, i've been buried in history books lately.
speaking of which, this is odd: my huge amazon.com order shipped in bits and pieces, which is wont to happen... but my copy of the king james bible and the liber chaotica shipped together. is this about balance, or something stranger going on? only time will tell.
also on the subject of history, but more of an emotional history sidebar: been working over a new piece in my mind, and it's been occurring to me more and more how much of our history we drag around with ourselves on a daily basis... like the fact that i don't like to have my back touched... it's a defense mechanism, or subconscious something or other, but i tend to jump just about anytime somebody puts hands along my back... even close, intimate friends or lovers... it's just another bit of flotsam and jetsam of my emotional history poking it's head out of the closet and saying "boo."
more later, after i've had time to digest it a bit.
why do i always seem to get the urge to write while sweating? what's up with that? could it be that two healthy things go together? body sweat and mental sweat consipiring together to make good things happen?
naaaaah.
however, i've begun doing some hardcore research on this book-type thing that i've kinda overcommitted myself to writing.
something interesting that came to mind during the research. anybody else notice the similarity between the current war in iraq and the holy crusades of long gone? not overt similarities with people chanting in the streets about killing the infidels (though, would that surprise anyone?), but the idea that the ends justify the means? just a historical comparison... not sure if anybody else sees it, but then again, i've been buried in history books lately.
speaking of which, this is odd: my huge amazon.com order shipped in bits and pieces, which is wont to happen... but my copy of the king james bible and the liber chaotica shipped together. is this about balance, or something stranger going on? only time will tell.
also on the subject of history, but more of an emotional history sidebar: been working over a new piece in my mind, and it's been occurring to me more and more how much of our history we drag around with ourselves on a daily basis... like the fact that i don't like to have my back touched... it's a defense mechanism, or subconscious something or other, but i tend to jump just about anytime somebody puts hands along my back... even close, intimate friends or lovers... it's just another bit of flotsam and jetsam of my emotional history poking it's head out of the closet and saying "boo."
more later, after i've had time to digest it a bit.
Tuesday, October 25, 2005
ayyyyyyy!!!!
okay, so beginning this whole exercise thing again.
aside from the physical torture being self-imposed, i've been doing most of it facing a mirror, and trying to catch a glimpse of the person that i think still lives there. it's surprising how physical exertion almost always forces me into introspection.
and is it any wonder i gave it up?
aside from the physical torture being self-imposed, i've been doing most of it facing a mirror, and trying to catch a glimpse of the person that i think still lives there. it's surprising how physical exertion almost always forces me into introspection.
and is it any wonder i gave it up?
Monday, September 19, 2005
Yarrrr!!!
Ahoy there! It's Talk Like a Pirate Day! Avast ye landlubbers and get your hook into this! Arrrrrr.
All Things Considered, September 19, 2003 · Today, as many may not know, is International Talk Like a Pirate Day. The holiday was decreed in 1995 by two Oregonians, John Bauer and Mark Summers, who then and every year since -- for just one day a year -- have sprinkled their discourse with the odd "ahoy" and "avast" and addressed all and sundry as "me hearties."
But now, on this ninth annual observance, the question is raised: Has success spoiled International Talk Like a Pirate Day? Columnist Dave Barry, the holiday's single most important booster, says he's fed up with the holiday -- sort of. He tells NPR's Robert Siegel that people need to expand their pirate vocabulary beyond "Arrrr."
Expand your pirate lingo with these excerpts from the Official Talk Like a Pirate Day Web Site:
Basic Pirate Lingo
Pirate lingo is rich and complicated, sort of like a good stew. Here are the five basic words that you cannot live without. Master them, and you can face Talk Like a Pirate Day with a smile on your face and a parrot on your shoulder, if that's your thing.
Ahoy! -- "Hello!"
Avast! -- Stop and give attention. It can be used in a sense of surprise, "Whoa! Get a load of that!" which today makes it more of a "Check it out" or "No way!" or "Get off!"
Aye! -- "Why yes, I agree most heartily with everything you just said or did."
Aye aye! -- "I'll get right on that sir, as soon as my break is over."
Arrr! -- This one is often confused with arrrgh, which is of course the sound you make when you sit on a belaying pin. "Arrr!" can mean, variously, "yes," "I agree," "I'm happy," "I'm enjoying this beer," "My team is going to win it all," "I saw that television show, it sucked!" and "That was a clever remark you or I just made." And those are just a few of the myriad possibilities of Arrr!
Advanced Pirate Lingo
Once you've mastered the basics, you're ready to start expanding your pirate vocabulary. Try these for starters:
Beauty -- The best possible pirate address for a woman. Always preceded by "me," as in, "C’mere, me beauty," or even, "me buxom beauty," to one particularly well endowed. You'll be surprised how effective this is.
Bilge rat -- The bilge is the lowest level of the ship. It's loaded with ballast and slimy, reeking water. A bilge rat, then, is a rat that lives in the worst place on the ship. On TLAP Day: A lot of guy humor involves insulting your buddies to prove your friendship. It's important that everyone understand you are smarter, more powerful and much luckier with the wenches than they are. Since bilge rat is a pretty dirty thing to call someone, by all means use it on your friends.
Bung hole -- Victuals on a ship were stored in wooden casks. The stopper in the barrel is called the bung, and the hole is called the bung hole. That's all. It sounds a lot worse, doesn't it? On TLAP Day: When dinner is served you'll make quite an impression when you say, "Well, me hearties, let's see what crawled out of the bung hole." That statement will be instantly followed by the sound of people putting down their utensils and pushing themselves away from the table. Great! More for you!
All Things Considered, September 19, 2003 · Today, as many may not know, is International Talk Like a Pirate Day. The holiday was decreed in 1995 by two Oregonians, John Bauer and Mark Summers, who then and every year since -- for just one day a year -- have sprinkled their discourse with the odd "ahoy" and "avast" and addressed all and sundry as "me hearties."
But now, on this ninth annual observance, the question is raised: Has success spoiled International Talk Like a Pirate Day? Columnist Dave Barry, the holiday's single most important booster, says he's fed up with the holiday -- sort of. He tells NPR's Robert Siegel that people need to expand their pirate vocabulary beyond "Arrrr."
Expand your pirate lingo with these excerpts from the Official Talk Like a Pirate Day Web Site:
Basic Pirate Lingo
Pirate lingo is rich and complicated, sort of like a good stew. Here are the five basic words that you cannot live without. Master them, and you can face Talk Like a Pirate Day with a smile on your face and a parrot on your shoulder, if that's your thing.
Ahoy! -- "Hello!"
Avast! -- Stop and give attention. It can be used in a sense of surprise, "Whoa! Get a load of that!" which today makes it more of a "Check it out" or "No way!" or "Get off!"
Aye! -- "Why yes, I agree most heartily with everything you just said or did."
Aye aye! -- "I'll get right on that sir, as soon as my break is over."
Arrr! -- This one is often confused with arrrgh, which is of course the sound you make when you sit on a belaying pin. "Arrr!" can mean, variously, "yes," "I agree," "I'm happy," "I'm enjoying this beer," "My team is going to win it all," "I saw that television show, it sucked!" and "That was a clever remark you or I just made." And those are just a few of the myriad possibilities of Arrr!
Advanced Pirate Lingo
Once you've mastered the basics, you're ready to start expanding your pirate vocabulary. Try these for starters:
Beauty -- The best possible pirate address for a woman. Always preceded by "me," as in, "C’mere, me beauty," or even, "me buxom beauty," to one particularly well endowed. You'll be surprised how effective this is.
Bilge rat -- The bilge is the lowest level of the ship. It's loaded with ballast and slimy, reeking water. A bilge rat, then, is a rat that lives in the worst place on the ship. On TLAP Day: A lot of guy humor involves insulting your buddies to prove your friendship. It's important that everyone understand you are smarter, more powerful and much luckier with the wenches than they are. Since bilge rat is a pretty dirty thing to call someone, by all means use it on your friends.
Bung hole -- Victuals on a ship were stored in wooden casks. The stopper in the barrel is called the bung, and the hole is called the bung hole. That's all. It sounds a lot worse, doesn't it? On TLAP Day: When dinner is served you'll make quite an impression when you say, "Well, me hearties, let's see what crawled out of the bung hole." That statement will be instantly followed by the sound of people putting down their utensils and pushing themselves away from the table. Great! More for you!
Thursday, September 15, 2005
in progress
okay... so this is what i'm working on currently... no title and no end... but here it be:
We leave these moments unfinished,
like sketches for a painting: deep tongue kisses
of graphite stranded like waves of a dead ocean,
now just sand and heat on bare white paper.
Notice the use of space,
the bone structure of hands…
fingers crossing like the legs of first time lovers
reaching blindly, finding themselves
not alone, so gloriously not alone
in the half light of dawn,
how the page begs for color,
for flesh to drape across this milky
skeleton, like canvas covering wind,
like lungs given shape by breath,
like a lover becoming blood,
pulsing in your ears after a rough night’s sleep,
how the small gouges taken from the skin of the page
might remind you of Jackson Pollock, cigarette trembling
(with what could be a caffeine buzz) from his mouth,
paint mixed with shards of glass tumbling from the open vein
of the bucket in his hands, in the moments before the scrape
and the scratch, the terrible gentleness of the trowel
and the knife, the desperate precision of a derailed train
jumping back on its track,
were you so inclined, to think that way.
We leave these moments unfinished,
like sketches for a painting: deep tongue kisses
of graphite stranded like waves of a dead ocean,
now just sand and heat on bare white paper.
Notice the use of space,
the bone structure of hands…
fingers crossing like the legs of first time lovers
reaching blindly, finding themselves
not alone, so gloriously not alone
in the half light of dawn,
how the page begs for color,
for flesh to drape across this milky
skeleton, like canvas covering wind,
like lungs given shape by breath,
like a lover becoming blood,
pulsing in your ears after a rough night’s sleep,
how the small gouges taken from the skin of the page
might remind you of Jackson Pollock, cigarette trembling
(with what could be a caffeine buzz) from his mouth,
paint mixed with shards of glass tumbling from the open vein
of the bucket in his hands, in the moments before the scrape
and the scratch, the terrible gentleness of the trowel
and the knife, the desperate precision of a derailed train
jumping back on its track,
were you so inclined, to think that way.
Wednesday, August 24, 2005
days
so the reading that i help run is celebrating it's fifth anniversary.
and yesterday was my birfday.
am i getting old(er)?
and yesterday was my birfday.
am i getting old(er)?
Tuesday, August 23, 2005
Nun rapped for wild dancing
BRUSSELS, Belgium (Reuters) -- A Belgian nun's acrobatic and indecorous dancing with a missionary during the Catholic World Youth Day in Germany over the weekend earned her a reprimand from her mother superior, a Belgian paper said on Tuesday.
Daily Het Laatste Nieuws showed pictures of a dancing Johanne Vertommen being held up in the air by the missionary, and then clinging to him with her legs wrapped around his body.
"I wouldn't do this at home but at such occasions I get carried away by the enthusiasm of the group," the 29-year-old told the paper later.
"My mother superior raised the issue today: she thinks I should watch out a bit and bear in mind that I represent our community," Vertommen said.
Pope Benedict attended the celebration at the Marienfeld, outside Cologne, in the presence of some 700,000 people.
Daily Het Laatste Nieuws showed pictures of a dancing Johanne Vertommen being held up in the air by the missionary, and then clinging to him with her legs wrapped around his body.
"I wouldn't do this at home but at such occasions I get carried away by the enthusiasm of the group," the 29-year-old told the paper later.
"My mother superior raised the issue today: she thinks I should watch out a bit and bear in mind that I represent our community," Vertommen said.
Pope Benedict attended the celebration at the Marienfeld, outside Cologne, in the presence of some 700,000 people.
Monday, August 22, 2005
eh
so, tomorrow's my birfday, and i feel like i should be writing.
but, i'm not.
instead, i'm posting something from the idyllwild workshops that i'm fiddling with:
If your breath is a golden platter
and your lungs live beneath the ground;
I need my eyes to go on without me
and a lifetime of whispers to step out of the shadows.
I can see the parachute silk of your spine
and the burning clouds of your lips.
I fight against the wounding of a moment
and the splendid confessions of your hands,
but leave me my fireworks and starfish,
like a dram, a draught, a potion.
Surround me with your night-time breathing
but do not let me taste the cornfield in your smile.
but, i'm not.
instead, i'm posting something from the idyllwild workshops that i'm fiddling with:
If your breath is a golden platter
and your lungs live beneath the ground;
I need my eyes to go on without me
and a lifetime of whispers to step out of the shadows.
I can see the parachute silk of your spine
and the burning clouds of your lips.
I fight against the wounding of a moment
and the splendid confessions of your hands,
but leave me my fireworks and starfish,
like a dram, a draught, a potion.
Surround me with your night-time breathing
but do not let me taste the cornfield in your smile.
Thursday, August 18, 2005
similar minds?
| Cattell's 16 Factor Test Results
|
personality tests by similarminds.com
Monday, August 15, 2005
leopards, farmers and tongues, oh my!
something newish, still very much in progress...
Stealing Thunder from the Storm's Mouth
based on the true story of a Kenyan farmer
who reached into the mouth of an attacking leopard
Of course your name would be Daniel,
and you would listen to the voice
buzzing at you like a vengeful fly--
which you say must have come from God.
It followed that the voice urged you to drop
the machete and use your fist as a dowsing wand
to divine the squirming snake of his tongue.
Then, slow as prophecy,
the tearing of the tongue—
like the baobab tree,
roots torn from the prairie soil
it had always known as home,
tossed across the sky by the hand of god,
followed by the tongueless screams of the dying.
What suprises me is how you lay there, grandfather,
gifting the beast with your sad smile,
waiting for the neighbors to load you into their rusted truck
and take you to the hospital, some 30 minutes away.
How you half-raised your blood-soaked hand in farewell,
but did not tell anyone how the leopard had come to steal your words,
so it might return and pour your voice
like fresh-cooked oatmeal into the ears of your children,
and your children's children.
How you'd heard those lullabyes rustling;
how each clan, each animal, each family has a song it sings;
how your father had pulled you aside one sunday
and taught you that words are smelted in the forge of the mind,
cast on the anvil of the tongue and sliced their way
through the armor of the ear before finding their way home.
How you'd handed the torn piece of tongue
to your eldest son, wrapped in white cloth
and asked him to save it for you, so after the bandages,
after the recovery, after the return to your farm,
you might go with him to burn the thing
and hear a familiar voice drifting through the smoke
up into what you can only call heaven.
Stealing Thunder from the Storm's Mouth
based on the true story of a Kenyan farmer
who reached into the mouth of an attacking leopard
Of course your name would be Daniel,
and you would listen to the voice
buzzing at you like a vengeful fly--
which you say must have come from God.
It followed that the voice urged you to drop
the machete and use your fist as a dowsing wand
to divine the squirming snake of his tongue.
Then, slow as prophecy,
the tearing of the tongue—
like the baobab tree,
roots torn from the prairie soil
it had always known as home,
tossed across the sky by the hand of god,
followed by the tongueless screams of the dying.
What suprises me is how you lay there, grandfather,
gifting the beast with your sad smile,
waiting for the neighbors to load you into their rusted truck
and take you to the hospital, some 30 minutes away.
How you half-raised your blood-soaked hand in farewell,
but did not tell anyone how the leopard had come to steal your words,
so it might return and pour your voice
like fresh-cooked oatmeal into the ears of your children,
and your children's children.
How you'd heard those lullabyes rustling;
how each clan, each animal, each family has a song it sings;
how your father had pulled you aside one sunday
and taught you that words are smelted in the forge of the mind,
cast on the anvil of the tongue and sliced their way
through the armor of the ear before finding their way home.
How you'd handed the torn piece of tongue
to your eldest son, wrapped in white cloth
and asked him to save it for you, so after the bandages,
after the recovery, after the return to your farm,
you might go with him to burn the thing
and hear a familiar voice drifting through the smoke
up into what you can only call heaven.
Saturday, August 13, 2005
a conversation over tut
took a good friend to see king tut the other day, and she told me that i have 'fear of intimacy,' written across my forehead.
of course, this put me on the defensive and forced me to explain that i have a fear of intimacy with the wrong person.
...come again?
yeah, so there it is.
or so i thought.
this conversation led to me to some deep thinking (not my favorite activity of late, especially when it comes to realizing how much of a broken aquarium my emotional life has become), and i realized what a cop-out i've been living for the past year or so.
i've been dating mainly women whom i'm not interested in. at least not long-term. it takes the pressure off, i guess to know that there's no way that it's going to last. finding somebody who i can laugh with, and have a bit of fun, but who doesn't really want or need anything below a surface conversation... whose idea of a deep connection involves gossip about their best friend's life and how truly fucked up it is, and why their life is infinitely better and don't you just love those strappy little shoes they just bought?
but this friend likes to talk about how her ex-lover broke her heart and yet, she'd still go back to him in a hearbeat if he came knocking at her door. and i found myself confessing that my ex, who lives in kansas, has a free pass through my door any time, any place, even though we haven't talked in over a year. plus, the last serious ex (the last one i actually spilt some emotional blood with... who made me hope for something before seeking therapy, breaking off our very stilted relationship and then went overseas and came back with a new husband) found a way to pull my spine out and wave it in front of me and point out that standing on two feet is highly over-rated.
all of which led to a conversation about two other of our mutal friends, who we consider to be an incredible couple and how love is just love... and isn't it a shame people look at two men holding hands like they're a racially mixed couple in atlanta, circa 1950? isn't love hard enough to hold onto without finding ways to put it in a frame that belongs to somebody else and tacking it to a wall?
and right about now, said friend is moving into her new apartment in iowa, and i find myself missing her and her ability to draw me into conversations like these, in spite of myself.
midwestern girls will be the death of me, in the best way.
of course, this put me on the defensive and forced me to explain that i have a fear of intimacy with the wrong person.
...come again?
yeah, so there it is.
or so i thought.
this conversation led to me to some deep thinking (not my favorite activity of late, especially when it comes to realizing how much of a broken aquarium my emotional life has become), and i realized what a cop-out i've been living for the past year or so.
i've been dating mainly women whom i'm not interested in. at least not long-term. it takes the pressure off, i guess to know that there's no way that it's going to last. finding somebody who i can laugh with, and have a bit of fun, but who doesn't really want or need anything below a surface conversation... whose idea of a deep connection involves gossip about their best friend's life and how truly fucked up it is, and why their life is infinitely better and don't you just love those strappy little shoes they just bought?
but this friend likes to talk about how her ex-lover broke her heart and yet, she'd still go back to him in a hearbeat if he came knocking at her door. and i found myself confessing that my ex, who lives in kansas, has a free pass through my door any time, any place, even though we haven't talked in over a year. plus, the last serious ex (the last one i actually spilt some emotional blood with... who made me hope for something before seeking therapy, breaking off our very stilted relationship and then went overseas and came back with a new husband) found a way to pull my spine out and wave it in front of me and point out that standing on two feet is highly over-rated.
all of which led to a conversation about two other of our mutal friends, who we consider to be an incredible couple and how love is just love... and isn't it a shame people look at two men holding hands like they're a racially mixed couple in atlanta, circa 1950? isn't love hard enough to hold onto without finding ways to put it in a frame that belongs to somebody else and tacking it to a wall?
and right about now, said friend is moving into her new apartment in iowa, and i find myself missing her and her ability to draw me into conversations like these, in spite of myself.
midwestern girls will be the death of me, in the best way.
Friday, August 12, 2005
some thoughts on walking
okay, so this is pretty much the lowest common denominator as far as travel goes, right? Stick your left foot out, stick your right foot out... follow them. Occasionally, shake them all about to complete the hokey pokey.
i probably shouldn't admit this, but walking can be hard. right now, i'm alternating between a mile and a half during lunch at a regional park, and three miles at home around the local college campus. they time out around the same as the park includes a fairly hellacious (for me) ascent at the beginning of the trail, plus the usual rise and fall of walking along the crest of a small hilly range.
if it's not the fact that you're swallowing the not so clean air that we call a sky in southern california, then you're probably doing your best to avoid killing your shins on the concrete sidewalks.
good shoes. that's a key. good shoes and good music to take your mind off the fact that you're walking in a series of straight lines, ending up in the same place you started and discovering exactly nothing new about the land you've just crossed.
quite a difference from the blue... seriously blue skies when you get more than 45 minutes away from a major metropolitan area. you may still be drowning in your own lungs, but it seems like it's worth it. at least until you wake up in the morning and your knees are sending you hate mail.
i probably shouldn't admit this, but walking can be hard. right now, i'm alternating between a mile and a half during lunch at a regional park, and three miles at home around the local college campus. they time out around the same as the park includes a fairly hellacious (for me) ascent at the beginning of the trail, plus the usual rise and fall of walking along the crest of a small hilly range.
if it's not the fact that you're swallowing the not so clean air that we call a sky in southern california, then you're probably doing your best to avoid killing your shins on the concrete sidewalks.
good shoes. that's a key. good shoes and good music to take your mind off the fact that you're walking in a series of straight lines, ending up in the same place you started and discovering exactly nothing new about the land you've just crossed.
quite a difference from the blue... seriously blue skies when you get more than 45 minutes away from a major metropolitan area. you may still be drowning in your own lungs, but it seems like it's worth it. at least until you wake up in the morning and your knees are sending you hate mail.
Thursday, August 11, 2005
Okay, enough pirate graffitti
time to get down to business. Though, can you imagine Blackbeard with a spray can?
Something recent that I've been working on:
le métro de regret
Each night, I slip down the stairs beneath
the surface of the skin of the earth. I pay my fee,
join the sad crush of the lost, and ride.
It is, as are all the sad arts, undeniably
french. Edith Piaf would be proud, were she not
so busy breaking our hearts.
The other travelers are whispers of their daytime selves.
Sometimes, we find ourselves caught,
our destinations unexpectedly exposed in the pale
lamplight. Without a word, we shuffle our feet,
board a different train without asking where it's going.
Only later do we realize the sad traveler,
mouth half open catching their breath, might
have been asking the same question sleeping
in our throats, and so we reach a hand to the cold
surface of the window, seeing a mirror reflection
wearing a better coat, longer scarf
rolling away beneath the insomniac city.
We ride all night sometimes, not in the gum-chewing
New York subway fashion, but like a glass of wine
you thought you paid too much for, only to discover its scent
on your tongue while making love two years later.
In the morning, we sleep or pretend to sleep.
In our beds, at our desks, driving our cars,
we shuffle through another number on our
calendar, wondering where we've been.
Something recent that I've been working on:
le métro de regret
Each night, I slip down the stairs beneath
the surface of the skin of the earth. I pay my fee,
join the sad crush of the lost, and ride.
It is, as are all the sad arts, undeniably
french. Edith Piaf would be proud, were she not
so busy breaking our hearts.
The other travelers are whispers of their daytime selves.
Sometimes, we find ourselves caught,
our destinations unexpectedly exposed in the pale
lamplight. Without a word, we shuffle our feet,
board a different train without asking where it's going.
Only later do we realize the sad traveler,
mouth half open catching their breath, might
have been asking the same question sleeping
in our throats, and so we reach a hand to the cold
surface of the window, seeing a mirror reflection
wearing a better coat, longer scarf
rolling away beneath the insomniac city.
We ride all night sometimes, not in the gum-chewing
New York subway fashion, but like a glass of wine
you thought you paid too much for, only to discover its scent
on your tongue while making love two years later.
In the morning, we sleep or pretend to sleep.
In our beds, at our desks, driving our cars,
we shuffle through another number on our
calendar, wondering where we've been.
In the beginning
there was a blog. And the blog was good.
Now, it's not.
Will be posting poems, poems-in-progress, strange news and other assorted oddities here.
Now, it's not.
Will be posting poems, poems-in-progress, strange news and other assorted oddities here.
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