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

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

...and to the entire article:

THE TYRANNY OF
PETTY COERCIONby
Marilynne Robinson
(Harper's Magazine, August 2004)

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.

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!

Get your own pirate name from fidius.org.

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.

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.