Fire in the Hole

islands

2007-03-09T11:09:00.000-05:00

Me: I’ve sent this reviewer several pleas and still have gotten no response. His review is very late. What do you want to do?

Him: Send another reminder and tell him it’s urgent.

Me: That’s what I wrote in the last two e-mails. The manuscript was submitted three months ago.

Him: Tell him again. Keep telling him. Some people just need that.

Me: It’s very rude.

Him: Some people are just like that.

Me: I don’t have to like it.

Him: But you have to deal with it.

That's true. This is an example from a big barrel of both personal and impersonal islandic episodes.

My boss just delivered another life lesson. This one I already knew, but at nearly age 31 I don’t want to accept it, like a 4-year-old. I give consideration to other people and think I’ll get the same in return from everyone. Living on the East Coast should have worked this out of my Midwestern system, but it hasn’t yet. This will be the thing that either brings me down for good or which I transcend—into drug-like bliss where I’m able to smile at it.

Or maybe I’m not as considerate as I think, and maybe I am getting what’s due to me from sources indirect. It’s hard to tell from inside.

Or maybe this is just modern human protocol.

brotherhood

2007-02-28T17:40:00.000-05:00

Last night I had a curious dream I’m going to try to bang out before I have to leave this seat.

I was on a bus, a public bus, I suppose, but it was smaller, somewhere between a regular yellow school bus and a short one, though it was white on the outside.

The café scene came either before or after the bus scene, or intermittently. I was with my grandma and my cousin Julie. Maybe we were headed somewhere and we needed something to eat. I don’t know why precisely the same bus would have waited for us.

Nobody in the café took interest in our interest in getting something to eat. We settled on something quick to take out with us. Coffee maybe. Maybe a muffin.

On the bus were roughly 14 people, maybe 12, including Uma Thurman and Brad Pitt. I had pre-dream knowledge, i.e., had learned earlier in the dream but also at the same time, that this was the scene in the movie when Uma’s emotional thrust comes to a head and blows.

She’s sitting next to Brad. All is quiet. She starts singing "Frere Jacques," quiet and pleasant. Then the melody overtakes her, she sings loudly, stands up, makes motions with her arms to get other people singing. A few chime in out of fear of the red her eyes and face have filled with. She’s got the animal rushing through her, blonde hair flying.

She looks at me, singing more loudly. I bob my head, sway, mumble out a few words to the song. Obviously, she’s disappointed, but Christ, was it up to me to make a monster happy?

She runs to the back of the bus, singing and thrashing—then leaps forward into Brad’s seat, gnashing a chunk out of his shoulder, bare for some reason, drawing much blood. She bites at his head many times, thrashing.

I had known this would happen. I had seen it.

another person in the palm tree

2007-02-15T19:39:00.000-05:00

The other side of the world returned me plagued by post-nasal drip and an elderly hack in my throat.

Almost two weeks ago I boarded a plane that would fly, 17 hours direct, to Bangkok. This was my first time in southeast Asia. The purpose: business need not be separate from pleasure. The air in the city was naseous with pollution. Despite it, I enjoyed a swank hotel with staff who treated me like royalty, solid gold Buddhas, ornately architectured temples, mystery food, karaoke, elephants, a sword fight, jackfruit, Singha, and many a taxi ride with silent drivers. The rest will remain secret to the public what has already been exposed in private pockets.

From comfortably warm to bite cold, I am back on America's east coast, pelleted by snow and ice like sand in the face and testy piles of brownish white that keep my car from going forward. Some people standing by laugh, some help to push; some do both.

And Valentine's Day has passed. During the angsty era I dishonored this day with black clothing and grim face. Post-angsty era, I just ignored it. This year I realized something: I don't care for the holiday. Its candy hearts and ridiculous teddy bears in support of one's love for another that should be active throughout the rest of the year anyway I find to be silly. Nevertheless, in the past years, when I've stubbornly resisted honoring the day, I felt myself stubbornly resisting the holiday instead of truly not caring. Social conditioning, I suppose. With preface, I requested the especially loved one's presence but with no streamers of goofy chocolates. Another weight lifted, psychocyst dissolved.

A few days ago a woman at work suggested our mini-fridge wasn't working, arguing that the temperature should be at 32 degrees and not at the upper 40-something it was at. I thought a second. No. 32 degrees is freezing and, thus, more appropriate for the freezer. The next day the baked tofu and soy yogurt I'd brought to work were frozen. The yogurt was tasty in this condition, the tofu not so much. Usually, I consider the fridge woman to be smart, down-to-earth. Maybe this wasn't her field of expertise, or maybe she was just having an off moment. Then it occurred to me that such a situation might be confirmation of not only the benefit but also the necessity of sharing one's life with another, and in the same household--so the significant other can see the refrigerator is set too cold.

This morning as I attempted to drive home from my especially loved one's abode, my car's wheels just spun in the snow and I got no further than half-way out of the parking spot. I couldn't get out and push and drive at the same time. Another situation calling up the necessity in this case of having another person close by, in this case the neighbor who happened to be walking by. I'd have sat there spinning snow all day if not for another person.

In Bangkok, another person traveling with me may have made the trip richer. I say this as a person who both wants and needs very much time alone. I enjoy seeing a movie by myself, seeing live music by myself, reading for hours entirely in solitude. I also like traveling by myself. However, the times I saw something I wanted to share with somebody, and couldn't even share it with a stranger because, at least in several instances, nobody around me spoke the same language as me, began to feel lonely. Not agonizingly so, just something to notice.

The flipside of not being able to share at the time is that observations gestated until I wrote them down and, then, experienced them again in a new way and made them more permanent.

Nevertheless, the close presence of another person bears light and forward motion, a multi-faceted view and act.

bathroom snaps and hotcakes

2006-12-29T14:08:00.000-05:00

Some day I will snap and tell all the secrets and behind-the-backs I’ve been told, thereby bloody-facing the melodrama that gets fabricated in this workplace.

That said, I’ve got another bathroom tale.

Last week, someone beat me to the closer bathroom so I trekked to the far bathroom that smells like flowers and poop. One person was in one stall; I went to the other. As I was shutting the door, I saw That Woman (our office leader who wants to steal both my office and my potential for smiling) come in as the person in the other stall came out. They began speaking a craggy string of names and office politics. I didn’t care. I don’t care. I won’t care. Besides, I was peeing, a time during which I tune out things involving other people.

They began whispering. Clearly dirty gossip was happening. One of them (M) said to the other, "Who’s in there?" And they took their whisper a notch quieter. "I think it’s Sara," one of them said, and they continued to whisper. One always hears one’s name in whispers, whether it’s there or not.

And then M said: "I shouldn’t be looking in there."

I looked up and the woman was actually looking into my stall through the crack where the door latches.

My first thought: "What the fuck?" Dignified and real. My second thought: "What the fuck."

When I came out of the stall, That Woman said, "Oh it’s Sara. She’s Switzerland. She won’t talk."

And, no, I wouldn’t talk because, like I said, I don’t care. However, because my privacy had just been seriously invaded, I wanted to talk, though I would never do so, and I hadn’t actually heard anything anyway—because I keep to myself in the bathroom.

"I actually have Swiss ancestry," I said to them. This is true, and it was the only thing I could think of to say to keep from feeling uncomfortable and glaring hot strawberries into their cheeks.

That Woman tried to make conversation about my new haircut, but I was done with them. Or so I thought.

Later in the day we had farewell office cake for one of the staff. I walked in and sat in one of few available seats, which happened to put me between That Woman and M.

(History: for some reason, at work, I can’t put food of any kind into my mouth without somebody commenting on how much or how little I’m eating, or simply observing and naming what I’m eating, followed by a comment that I’m thin. For those of you who have never seen me, I’m thin but not grossly so. I'll say no more so and instead bite my bitter.)

M looked at my empty plate and said (to me, mind you): "Look, Sara finished her whole piece of cake."

I like cake.

I had no response. I don’t think an appropriate one is possible.

M: "I just didn’t know you ate cake. I mean I’ve never seen you eat cake. It’s just that you’re so thin. I mean, do you eat?"

Me: "I’d be dead if I didn’t."

(pause) (pause) (pause)

M: "I just meant do you eat a lot…"

I don’t know what else she said. I tuned her out. It was clear I’d caught her off guard and offended her. I considered apologizing for being short with her. But objectively I thought it was a funny piece of dialogue between us and, besides, she’d looked in at me while I was using the bathroom. She needed a snap in the face.

fantasy football in the white-tile way

2006-12-12T16:09:00.000-05:00

Stupid tired is the day, in which sense I am the day.

Here is a fantasy I keep having on my way to the bathroom here at the hospital—but first the backstory:

Where my office at work used to be, the closest bathroom is a two-staller which is always out of at least one of the following: toilet seat covers, toilet paper, hand soap, or paper towels. And always it smells like any of the following combinations: flowers + poop, papaya + poop, pine + poop. You get the idea.

Where my office is now, the closest bathroom is a private, one-person, spacious room with a toilet and sink. What a boon. Unfortunately, this bathroom is often occupied. Worse, however, is this:

I’m on my way, walking fast as I always do—and yet faster when I think I hear footsteps that sound like they're headed to the bathroom. (This is what urgent pointed purpose sounds like, no matter particular click or pad of the shoe on the tile. It’s the way it hits that speaks clearly.) One of two things often happens:

1. Someone walks out into the hallway just before I do, in front of me, and I can hear by the footsteps, see by the sway of the back of the head, that that person is headed to where I’m headed.

2. Someone rounds the corner, from the direction opposite me, and heads toward the bathroom. This person will beat me there because the corner is just a leap from the bathroom door, while I still have a whole hallway to cover.

My fantasy is this, and I’m particularly eager to enact it on people in Category 1 because those people will be unsuspecting:

Just as Person 1 reaches the bathroom door, I take off running at him or her (it’s usually a her), leap quietly like a cat from a few feet away, pushing the person aside, and, as I land in the bathroom, kick shut the door.

Person 1 would never know what hit her. And she, instead of I, would have to pad a little further to the two-stall bathroom where people are likely to enter and launch into talk, sigh, or moan.

tongues

2006-12-04T18:40:00.000-05:00

Never imagined I’d find myself watching boxing on TV in a room full of Germans. Being in the presence of multilingual, even bilingual, people makes me feel dumb and lazy. I love language, but I cannot speak another language well enough to communicate. I’ve spent many hours and pencils memorizing grammars and reading the codes. In high school, French, but that was high school, and not having spent any time around the French, the nasally strings of vowels are half-sleeping in me. In college, Latin and Greek (the latter of the ancient variety, which is nothing like the modern spoken variety). I haven’t spent any time around long-dead toga-wearing folk either. In a room with only three native English-speakers, the dozen Germans that night for the most part spoke English.

I continue to find myself with polyglots. They’re speaking to each other, to me, to waiters, reading menus, and I’m looking like a deer. One girl, Polish, told me I’m lucky to know English because things are easier and more accessible that way. I suppose this is true, but that isn’t my way of life. Making things more difficult than they need to be is part of my personality. (Why? I asked the tree. It could not tell me. And so I licked it.) Meanwhile I try to rake back languages I’ve learned and begun to lose, by bobbing my head in occasional buckets of it. You should see my wet wet chin.

And there are other sorts of languages to learn: those of boxing and football. Before I die I will understand why it’s engaging to watch two men pummel each other when they’re not angry about anything (and maybe why people pay hundreds of dollars to see this done live). I made some headway regarding football, the American variety, this weekend. Why learn these languages? Because I don’t want to leave any avenue untouched. Because I’m a pervert in the park.

i once was hot but now i jitter

2006-11-30T17:12:00.000-05:00

Earlier a visual memory came to me: when I was a little girl, at the grocery store with my mom, I wandered away. She looked up and down aisles for me and finally located me lying down in the freezer where the frozen pizzas were kept. "I was hot," I told her.

Frenetic-thought day, pictures and booms, and then quick inner-visual show about blood pressure running to the sound of accordions and a mouse occurred, and a wonder about sickness of no specific sort. The bathrooms here are not clean and that can’t help the sickness.

It would be a whole different world if we began each of our words with a z. Zand zthen zI zsaid zto zher, zbite zme. It would be a whole world different if none of us had noses. This possibility has been visiting me for the past 15 years.

I hope universal nose-loss doesn’t ever happen because it creeps me out as much as plastic mechanical toys that sing and dance.

There is no theme here but bad coffee jitters and a stack child-high of manuscripts on circadian rhythm, and an accordion that continues to loop storyward partially eastward, and gravel.

long days there have been*

2006-11-28T18:00:00.000-05:00

On random occasion I wonder if I'm psychologically disturbed or neurologically unfortunate and nobody's had the heart to tell me all these years. And that's why people are nice to me even when I'm socially craggy.

On other occasions I wonder if people I know are so disturbed or unfortunate and nobody's bothered to tell them, and I've not tapped in because I tend to accept what's before me, view it, and consider it.

How ever to know...another vocal cord down the tubes.

*Life has been very busy lately. If anyone's still out there I may or may not be back soon.

in a cautiously indirect manner

2006-10-26T10:54:00.000-04:00

Crabwise means sideways. Sometimes that’s the only way to get through to people who don’t know how to listen. Crabwise also means ‘in a cautiously indirect manner.’

I’d like to write a book called The Public Bathroom Diaries, or perhaps just start a blog on the topic. Among other behaviors I find odd, about 90% of the time that I use the two-stall bathroom at work (mainly when I am already in one stall and another person comes in), the person who enters the stall next to me sighs, moans or sings. Occasionally that person speaks to me. Intuitively I think the sighing and moaning is a faux expression of exhaustion by that person who really just wants to let you know she’s there and because the silence is uncomfortable for her. The faux exhaustion is common where I work and, possibly, common in many office environments: people are unhappy with their station and so complain about their jobs, and they all think they’ve got the worst lot. Never have I walked into a public bathroom and sighed or moaned, or sang. I’m inclined to say something crude when it happens. You got the runs again? I know—it’s frustrating. You’ll get through it. And then I’ll step up on my pot and lean over the wall to pat her on the back.

Crabwise there are cameras watching your every move, so sing out loud your every secret.

innocent quicky

2006-10-12T17:07:00.000-04:00

congratulate the whirling girl for not telling anyone to fuck off today. and for not smacking anyone into distant galaxies.

today was a day when when men with sky-high degrees didn't do well being corrected by what they perceive as midget-minds. a matter of perception.

if the behavior of men in traffic gathered at the foot of the turnpike tolls is any indication of the potential for ever achieving world peace, give up now.

car fires, plane fires, and face fires. early october 2006 is behaving like february 2001, when bottoms dropped out and tops refused to admit they'd ever existed.

the whirling girl has been tight-busy in the warm office. send word that she currently is whirling a couple of clones into action.

posterity

2006-10-06T14:14:00.000-04:00

Today was the hoot I couldn’t make head or tail of. A piece of mail, neon green and wordless, blew my mind across the shining sea, air full of busted bombs. I threw up and called it today. Pressing re-wind, satans emerged from what previously I misunderstood, the art of living, sparking an idea for this life’s thesis. Soon everything converged like pie, except for rhubarbs, who were striking in front of the capitolium in Aruba (i.e., vacation of the tiki-and-fruit sort). Now I stand in the line-up, begging the police photographer to shoot my arm in every possible position.

when the room is a mess

2006-10-05T17:11:00.000-04:00

Go home to your doctors. Leave behind your whiskey and spirit-glass. Already you tripped over the full length of the mirror and caused a falling out between alter-altars. Today is the old Tuesday when rain holds back and grapes turn to stomp on feet. Things in waiting get done in a flash and all abdominal scars heal. Hearts are another thing, on a timescale bigger than galactic. A bowl of cereal will get you through the day healthily; an apple, a year. Arbitrary vessels hold all sorts of ambitious wisdom that may or may not be strung to any anchor.

dream leak 1

2006-10-04T17:36:00.000-04:00

Zeitgeber arrived and everyone took out their hummus and veggies, thinking it was time to meal. But no. Day waned down like a cocktail in a flute, and the goat-god drew the curtains. We were in for a gruesome night, it seemed, tuba moaning and all. Again I didn’t catch the baseball, though it came right at me. Honest, I forgot I was playing, I told the team, thinking it was time to steal. Really, Zeitgeber was way overdressed for this ship, and had no proper baton. Who are you gonna sleep next to tonight? The fan, prism, or pitchfork?

swiveling the waist

2006-10-03T17:44:00.000-04:00

Are you wearing shorts today? It’s degenerate but preferable to wearing nothing on the iceberg where your capacity to carry things diminishes with each helicopter flown by. The woman on the ground sighs when she wastes away. It’s the nature of the beast to stink and sink, she clarifies. Hoard your belongings to sink you quicker, wrote the one devil on a pirate ship in the core of earth. He wears shorts, true. He wears patients when they’re dead of faith. He wears complacence on
Sundays, like a riverbank. Spot the necklace, learn to swim again, smoke your druthers done.

transmission in disjunctive couples

2006-10-02T16:01:00.000-04:00

Sometimes a pony gets wet. Sometimes a girl gets rest. Sometimes a leader loses distinction between movie and living room and computer screen and dream.

Clouds hover under the ceiling, the good kind, and grandma returns home on a fluffy white dog.

Sunshine in October says a lot. It says: "warming" and "warning" and "I like your purple shirt, doctor." Yes,

each diagnosis must be made individually. There is no mechanical numerical cut-off. Unfortunately, they are raising robots in some of those medical camps.

The wet pony convulses at such foreboding, such blind. Closes his eye, where dream is located.

I love you, I’m afraid not

2006-09-13T17:43:00.000-04:00

Earlier I was in the hospital’s gift shop looking for a card that wasn’t cliché. I found one that I could idiosyncrasize and brought it up to the counter, just as a man shopping for the perfect balloon distracted the lone cashier, ADD’ing him away from asking me to pay for my card.

Do you have "Get Well Soon"? he asked the cashier.

Yes, he replied.

How ‘bout "I Love You"?

No, we don't have "I Love You."

So you have "Get Well Soon" but not "I Love You." The balloon shopper wasn’t the brightest bulb.

Right. "Get Well Soon," yes. "I Love You," I’m afraid not.

I contorted my mouth to stifle laughter. I just witnessed a rejection.

I love you, I’m afraid not.

What if love were as frankly mechanical as the balloon trade.

plants of various sorts

2006-09-08T13:19:00.000-04:00

NEGLECT.

Forgive me, Fire in the Hole. This is why I don’t have children yet. My two plants remind me of this when they aren’t hidden by the curtain.

* * * *

Last night, driving home from work, I called my mom. We traveled through the Holland Tunnel together, where she told me she got claustrophobically sick when she was a little girl on vacation with my grandparents. Her spot has been marked by irises and the skeleton of a man who never made it out. My mom is famous.

Once I came out of the tunnel I got off the phone so I could be legal and pay attention to driving. My mind wandered anyway. I left into space, wondering if I might be a bad person, how I might be a better person, as I rolled up to a stop sign on a small unbusy street. A man who looked like he might have been homeless was walking in the street outside my window and caught my eye. As I looked out, he looked in, eyes to eyes. Am I a bad person? "Don’t give up," he said to me. And walked on.

This reminded me of a time when I was in college. I was walking toward the bridge back to my dorm. These were the especially depressed and disgruntled days. Nick Cave was playing in my walkman. He had just growled about a devil on his floor when a fellow I didn’t know approached me. Mind you, this was why I wore the walkman (outside simply enjoying the music)—so that people would leave me the heck alone. He handed me a pamphlet: How Can You Be Saved? From the devil on the floor?

This is why I sometimes think I have my own Truman Show. Laughter is the answer.

drowse pokes its head out of unvowed silence

2006-08-08T16:50:00.000-04:00

Little has seemed worth bothering to write about, went the introductory words of a man at the edge of the roof of a skyscraper, who grew excited by the peanut butter stuck to the roof of his mouth. And then threw a tomato at himself. There was no audience. Evolution had done away with ears.

What? said Jenny to Bobby, who, groggy-eyed, was scratching himself.

Head-cold potential is present, but it is pretty out there where the sun is. Nevertheless, a curiously apathetic sari hangs over pasty skin.

Lately I’ve been learning: it’s easier to construct a bicycle if you are a bicycle mechanic than if you are not. There is microphotography, and there is photomicrography—not to be confused. Furthermore, you do not want to choose a dry title, and particularly not a cluttered title, if you are a complex creature. There is a burden of normality once your symptoms of chronic somnolence are cleared up like pimples. You have to complete transactions at the bank and generate pick-up lines to accommodate your newfound vitality.

It depends on context whether your predictability is boon or downfall.

A person who drinks coffee every day should continue to drink coffee every day or at least seclude himself from the public during abstinence.

This is an interlude. And so is this. Until I get a handle on these histamines and their lousy output of musical content.

peeking in for a spot of chocolate

2006-07-25T12:23:00.000-04:00

I’ve been brain-stuffed and with not enough sleep spindles in my pillow, spelling memory loss and lanky long-term, erratic centerfoldings. Chemistry varies from foot to foot. There must some meaning in this vase.

I'm not thinking about it too much because it’s only confusing to think about it. I am weary of hearing musicians say this when an interviewer asks what their reaction is to all the excitement over their new album. It isn’t the fault of the musician, though. It’s a reasonable, stable way to respond. (Damn right my album shatters planets! I’ve stopped writing. This is as good as it gets.)

I understand why an interviewer would ask the question, particularly when some sort of success comes abundantly and out of nowhere, but the answer almost always tells me nothing about the musician or the music. By now the musician should know that the above response is a reasonable one and self-consciously say it whether genuinely or not. Or maybe the musician will answer that he’s slathering himself in the erotic chocolate of his new fame.

Whatever the answer, and whether it’s delivered honestly or self-consciously, it’s psychologically shaded and weighted and, thus, of little use. I suppose it’s a way for the interviewer to acknowledge and congratulate the musician on his or her favorable reception. In that case, though, the interviewer could just do that frankly and then break out knife and fork to get into the meat of things.

Dinner bell, dinner bell, ring.

Next time: tawdry tales of eight-legged bicycles excommunicating widows from their places of worship.

hot bird tea

2006-07-17T15:48:00.000-04:00

Weekend was delightful. Using that word makes me feel like a 19th-century British school teacher. Just delightful. Tea? Erect pinky and sip.

Tea is recurrent. I read the first page of two novels last week to see which one I wanted to read. Tea was in the first page of each. Saturday I happened upon Alice in Wonderland and carved into a plate in front of her was a line about tea. Tea?

The weekend was delightful because it involved a series of unplanned events. My plans to explore Central Park after work were knotted into nothingness by traffic and demon heat. By the time I reached the place I was half-naked at dusk, and my friend who lives nearby was absent from the planet.

Before I headed home, travel fervor unrequited, A called and asked me to visit DJs on the Hudson River with her. Eating alfalfa sprouts and avocado all the way, I met her riverside. We drank circus beer and dallied with dancers. Her friend J appeared.

A little tipsy with newness and beer I effervesced about poetry and The Little Prince, demanding that both A and J read it, and lamented my failed exploration of Central Park. We left and I met K and cohorts at a bar that served 32 oz beers and rum-n-cokes to go. There was pool and a beard and a girl who didn’t want a beard.

Saturday was hot. After visiting the Whitney Museum upon the kind push of T, I returned to Central Park, where Alice in Wonderland appeared before me. If ever I have kids I will read the Alice books to them early on, womb-time and after.

Walking on, a man on a bicycle begged me to buy poems. I kept my sunglasses intact and thanked him no. Twice. I happened upon Belvedere Castle, then the Shakespeare garden, where quotes from the plays sit in the foliage. I sat on a bench outside the Swedish cottage and began a book of tea.

Then to Strawberry Fields. Guitar and dollars and flowers in my eyes and noggin, I turned around and there was J, A’s friend whom I had met the night before.

Coincidence and Kunderan birds. Used to, I put much into the collisions and intersections. Now not so much. Either I’ve lost magic and romantic whimsy or I've gained discretion in interpreting subtlety in sign and symbol. Or, as always, something in between.

Whatever the case, the case now is sound, i.e., less bloated: always there is sign and symbol in recurrence, but not every red bird means gold-pot paradise; nor black bird, death.

fire in the goal, regurgitant match-box

2006-07-06T15:16:00.000-04:00

For some reason, for the past two weeks I’ve been listening to music I listened to a decade ago, Nick Cave (newer Nick Cave albeit, but he doesn’t get into my ears often anymore), Ride, Catherine Wheel, Swervedriver, Cranes, Psychedelic Furs.

Either I’m having early-onset mid-life crisis or the new music of today is driving me back there. Or I’ve made another giant leap onto and across the luna and have no idea what year it is or what year anything belongs to or what my attic attaches to each year. July 5 was no easeful solace.

Landing strip tells, when a memory presents itself on your lips, speak it lest you vomit it up the next day with a slice of pizza or eggs on a street in Philadelphia. Powers to the peoples! Except for the people who walk slowly in the dead center of hallways. They are bad blind buddha-mites of the highest degree, and you, lurking behind them, are the backseat asshole.

Too much fun induces reflection and potentially self-loathing, which inspires a vigorous jog through thick humidity and demon heat. For some people.

Here’s to multi-faceted, multi-lingual cursing! Diamond exclamation! Now let’s light a sandcastle on fire in the air. That way we will still be able to see when the sky turns dark with wisdom.

I have said veritably nothing here. What’s new. Tomorrow I make my virgin trip to Virginia where there will be ship and family and a pond with ducks.

what happened when the nipples opened

2006-07-03T15:52:00.000-04:00

There are pina coladas to be drunk and bikes to be ridden, asses to be sculpted and restless legs to be settled. Drums to be pounded. Backhanded compliments to be driven back over nets, bugs to be eaten out of those nets, and clarity to be achieved.

Sing it, Yoda, yes we must let go of what we fear losing. Bars are closing and the sewage is rising. A man still can be upstanding.

I used to think I could know everything some day—still with some buried knowing that I could never know absolutely everything, but with enough fancy that I could at least learn all that’s contained in the foundation of the coliseum.

Earthquakes happen and things shift, even things rooted deep and never can everything be known, not when so much more keeps happening.

This stunned my brain a few years ago and turned it into dirty hermetic whybotherness. What a field of pansyhood and resignation. Where to begin and how to keep going and why bother writing another stupid poem that at root is merely a reconfiguration of another. Why bother researching the origin of language and all its dendritic needling outward and forward and so on.

Somebody has to or that pond is gonna get grimy. Even this woe-is-me/I is old news, I know. Sometimes I just need a dumber but that much more rigorous motor. Where is the clarity, Auntie?

This is my happening and it's freaking me out. And then all the animals turned into strawberries ticking their lives away.

What are my coordinates now? Still caught in the potholder, I think; i.e., bad flowers still emit odor, but there is visible pensee happening in loud music boiling up in the planet’s ring.

the forest in the city

2006-06-26T13:23:00.000-04:00

Yesterday I met two people who knew my hometown. To be fair, more people than I would expect have heard of my hometown, and—I say it without comic intention—I’ve met a lot of people whose cars have broken down in attempt to drive through to somewhere else. But more often people say, Where?, and have a little laugh at Effingham, Illinois. Say it out loud in all its obscene fervor.

On the agenda was a long wandering trek around Manhattan and back across the Williamsburg Bridge to Brooklyn. Some day I will walk the whole earth.

On my way out, a clown said hello to me. On my way in three young women wearing large rain hats and old-lady dresses, speed-walking across the bridge to Manhattan, passed me blindly and briskly. I have no idea what time period they fell in from.

But first—a trip to Najeeb’s. (This is all I can find online for now.) Najeeb’s is in the Williamsburg neighborhood of Brooklyn, on Graham Ave between Skillman and Consylea. (Note: I may have the cross streets wrong, but it’s around there.) Anybody in the area must visit this restaurant.

Several times I walked passed this place and wondered about it. Finally, one day when I was bored with my other options, I stopped in. Nobody was there but Najeeb, another man, and several stringed instruments hanging on the wall. I ordered a falafel sandwich with hummus. In the words of Agent Cooper, it was a damn fine sandwich.

Yesterday I stopped in and when Najeeb saw me he gave me a big wave of the hand, oddly similar to the way I wave at people and have on occasion received ridicule for. I waved back and walked up to the counter. Najeeb looked at my neck where an ivory-colored elephant was hanging from a brown strap. Looking me in the eyes he inquired what he already seemed to know, "Do you have a collection of elephants at home?"

I felt like I’d dropped into that magical place, a mix of Wonderland, Oz, and all enchanted forests combined that I’d always wanted to find—where things are known and normal boundaries do not exist.

"I do," I told him. "How many?" he asked. I really had no idea. "Not many—10, 12." He told me, "I have a friend in San Francisco who has a collection of over 500 elephants in her apartment."

He asked if the elephant on my neck was a stone. I didn’t know, so I let him touch it. He said he thought it was bone and pulled a small box off a shelf behind the counter. He said he used bone to make some of his instruments and placed a few pieces on the glass. After comparing weight and feel, we decided my elephant was made of bone.

He went to make my sandwich and I sat down. When he brought it out I told him this was my new favorite place to eat. "This is the best place to eat," he said with a bold smile, "because I care." Perhaps it is. Because he certainly does.

After I finished and went up to the counter to pay, Najeeb asked me where I was from. Turns out he’d played music at a festival that took place, oddly, in a museum in the middle of a forest somewhere between Effingham, St. Louis and Carbondale (where I went to college; the three towns form a nearly equilateral triangle).

As we were talking, a guy came in and mentioned he had just come back from visiting family in Indiana. My ears perked up and I told him I was from Illinois. Turns out his best friend had married someone from Effingham. There you have it.

The bedrooms highlighted on bad reality TV aren't where the magic happens. Magic happens at Najeeb’s. Intersecting geography and elephants made of bones.

swirly-eyed in the oven over the soccer field

2006-06-20T12:21:00.000-04:00

Last night I sleep-walked into the kitchen, turned on the oven and climbed in ‘til morning. It was hot and humid in the upstairs, fan blowing warm air that the lungs refused. Summer’s on and my bedroom’s containing more than its fair portion of it, contributing to today’s stupor. That and computer-eye syndrome.

Soccer has always fascinated me--the non-stop running motion of it, the footwork--but I’ve never followed it. However, the World Cup game between the US and Italy got me riled up and a little obsessed. The past two days at work I’ve been multi-taskingly keeping watch on all the games by liveblog (after GameCast glitched out on me and MatchCast wouldn’t load). Fiendish, I tell you. I may destroy my vision this way.

Meanwhile: corner, apnea, goal, rapid eye, yellow card, k-complex, elbow, patients, statistics.

I called my mom during a thick-traffic drive home last night and told her about my newfound soccer-fervor. Then I exposed my profound fascination with traffic flow. What began as a sort of confession escalated into a somewhat lengthy and impassioned monologue.

She suggested I seek a job studying traffic flow—because who could be as passionate as that about cars moving on the road. Brilliant woman. Why didn't I think of it before? Since before I could drive I've thought about the most efficient way to get cars moving when a light turns from red to green.

Some of the jams elude me. Why, for example, would there be a multi-block back-up of cars waiting to get into the Holland Tunnel, when once you get into the tunnel—where as many as three lanes have merged into one (on the right-hand side of the tunnel)—cars begin to move freely? (Not every time, but I’ve witnessed it.)

Why do the cars crawl over Staten Island from the Goethals Bridge only to exit 11 or 12? Sure, I see some cars exit off in the meantime but not enough to explain why suddenly I can increase my speed from 20 to 55 or 60 mph. Where did the cars go? And if suddenly they could disappear, why weren’t we going faster all along? Ghost cars? Planted by whom?

Like my mom said, I need a helicopter.

Meanwhile, I’ve found this web site to get me started toward my new career in the study of traffic flow theory. I’ll need to brush up on some mathematics. And buy new eyeballs. There is much to read today.

mad swan disease

2006-06-14T16:41:00.000-04:00

"Jesus God!" as the old-lady laundry attendant used to holler when people soiled their sheets. Could you blame her?

A busy two weeks, editing all day, restless legs after restless legs and now alcoholic insomniacs. Refer the man to the elephant polo team if he presents with an abundance of nocturnal arousals; refer him to a keen producer if he presents with an abundance of nocturnal emissions.

For skies of weeks a song laces through my head: "Swans (Life After Death)," the first track on the Islands’ Return to the Sea. Goes like this: the song plays, I enjoy it, all nearly 8 minutes of it, then patches of the song recur in my noggin for the next five-plus days. I listen again. This album has me happy-eared.

A couple days ago, ’mid stalled traffic, I was caught ’mid song and dance to "Don’t Call Me Whitney, Bobby." Milk and bones, a bouncy melody, the "total void tells me stories"—one can hardly help but skip through the skeletal daisies with it.

One of my favorite things about being alive is witnessing people in their car, singing and dancing, totally unaware anyone is watching. What bliss those people must be in the midst of. I suck it up, o-mouthed and wide-eyed.

I hope that two days ago I caused at least one car-voyeur to bounce and bliss.

More later once all alcoholics are cured of insomnia and cows come to their home built up with skyscrapers. Or once day breaks.

when the ale tasted worse than the lager i threw it further

2006-06-01T15:06:00.000-04:00

The gods shone down in my little office—and then they flipped a little tongue and strode off. The past two and a half days I grappled with a rough-terrain manuscript, trying to tie together grammatical veer-offs and chunked cliffsides. I thought I had an easy one to follow, but alas there are chicken-pocked references to piece out. About as fun as filling out tax forms, it put my brain here to a quick Hawaii.

Remember “worsen”? That weakling verb that pinches my nerves. There’s another. Last night while I was watching a show on the history of brewing on the History Channel, a—

Did you know there are beer anthropologists? How badass that is. And I don’t mean that as in Dude I’m a beer anthropologist. I can totally booze up every day and get paid for it. I mean what an interesting job. Better than sitting in an office all day, breathing stale air and destroying my eyeballs while tapping on plastic and destroying my wrist functionality (even if I do have the world’s best boss)—

beer anthropologist used the word “furthering.” “Furthering” is weak and wanting for meaning in a way similar to "worsening." It is first an adjective or an adverb, the comparative of “far.” Indeed it is listed in the American Heritage 3rd edition pocket dictionary, as the third meaning: to advance the progress of. Like “worsen,” “further” is lazy. Instead of thinking of a more specifically active verb to elucidate the idea and action of moving something further forward, you can just stretch out the shirt that “further” wears.

Poor thing—its shirt has holes in the shoulders and pit stains. It's over-worn, spread thin, torn.

Prescription: Slide a beer across the bar to “further” and spend a second extra locating a more contextually meaningful verb. You can find it, this verb, along with the others uncalled on for their duties, slack-assing over mojitos in a posh city loft.

nighttime hopscotch

2006-05-26T16:23:00.000-04:00

Celebratory dreams persisted both before and during my trip to Illinois to visit family and mythological actors.

The night before I boarded the tiny plane I dreamed I was in Iraq. There was sand and buildings made out of sand, adobe-like. With family members I clambered around, up and down stairs, trying to sneak out of the nearly emptied building. —And then people dressed in robes and turbans entered. They were after us and we were scared, but the house was not fit for running. Finally we met them. They removed their turbans and false facial hair. Alas, they were of us, having knocked out and dressed as the enemy to sneak us away. We had won.

The night after the tiny plane landed and sent me on my way I dreamed I was hanging out with Jude Law. We were frolicking about in a slew of big cities both American and European. I held off for a while, but finally I told him one of my best friends looks like him. At first I thought it would be silly to share it with him, but I thought I probably wouldn’t be hanging out with Jude Law again any time soon. (One of my best friends really does look like him. But I knew I was hanging out with Jude Law and not my friend.)

CUT!—

Same night, after a brief interlude, I was in board-game-like territory but on true landscape sectioned off into separate themes and purposes. I began in the center in a concrete forum pronged with spare broken pillars. My aunt was nearby. She had told me about the library. Ghosts from the Civil War appeared and disappeared from there, checkerboard floor. (I as the dreamer knew I had been there before in another dream, which, as the dreamer, I did not consider a different dream but rather a different trip.) My aunt had also mentioned the land south of the library. Immediately there was thick dirty forest and broken-down carnival gear—tents, wheels, rings, shoes. All richly gritty. Irish carnies puddled there, midgets with dirty faces and pudge-noses, worn brown hats. That’s where I wanted to go. I just had to get through the library first. I didn’t mind the library, but I’d been there and the idea of dodging angry ghosts again bored me.

Shortly afterward I woke in the dark, scared there were ghosts in the basement with me. The one with the dark mustache, pale skin and beady eyes was angry and relentless.

two dreams

2006-05-17T12:22:00.000-04:00

Last night I dreamed I attended an informal reunion for the National Academy of something-or-other (i.e., for people who get good grades). I was in the National Academy of Something-Or-Other’s souvenir store, where the clothing was red, white, and blue, stars and stripes. An outfit much like a drum major wears—short skirt, shirt, vest, funny hat in these colors and shapes—hung on the wall. "I’m glad my mom never bought that for me," I said. "I’d have had to kill her."

I chatted with the guy who seemed to have been a leader of the group, with whom I didn’t interact back in the day—he was up the hierarchy from me. His name may have been Tim or Andrew. His hair was light brown and sort of feathered, and he wore a light-colored long-sleeved button-down shirt. He made a cup of hot tea for me, making extra effort to be friendly with me, almost courting-like, which surprised me.

A couple people frolicked in the back yard. Red and orange leaves the size of baseball gloves and bigger were in piles across the whole yard, which appeared to be my grandma’s waking-life back yard. The leaves were impossibly beautiful.

As I pulled the tea-cup away from my mouth I felt a hair in my mouth, and another, which, when I held them out, looked like pubic hair. I wasn’t as grossed out in the dream as I was as the dreamer (or now as I write). I spoke to TimAndrew about a friend who had been in the Academy, who had become stagnant in recent years, negligent, mopily self-centered. I’d begun to lose my patience with said friend.

I woke and visited the bathroom. Upon return, I dreamed I was in a passenger rocketship.

Rocketships were becoming the new airplanes, and I was rushing to catch my flight. Obstacles diverted me, but finally I sat. Seating was much like that in a movie theater, many rows and in the red-dark. I may have begun having a dream within a dream, recalling to someone either inside or outside this dream how the last time I was on a rocketship, Juliette Binoche was found masturbating, crouched in a corner of the laundry room. What bright white walls. She was wearing a tiny white shirt with tiny yellow flowers and green stretch pants (pulled down a bit for action). Two girls wearing long blonde ponytails and no regard for pleasure found and mocked her. I felt alien on this ship. People were impersonal, concerned with their own business, and acted like a ride on a rocketship was commonplace. It felt like quick bustle on a city sidewalk.

I woke to jazz music on the radio, and sunshine.

the ole supernatural factory's bicycle

2006-05-16T17:59:00.000-04:00

Ripe craving for a ripe red tomato just hit me. Out of nowhere I could taste it but only long enough to stir desire without closure.

This morning was clunkered cars causing traffic to back up for miles, in the midst of which was me and other people like me with the same headache. Just past the accident was rain so heavy only the car in front of me was visible. Yet they were still superheroes who thought they didn't need headlights.

Supposedly exploding head syndrome is a disorder of the sleep. I have no time to research right now, but I'd like to propose a disorder of the wake to take on the name, because the day has brought it on.

Friday I head to Illinois to attend a retirement party for my college Greek professor, who was also my mentor and friend and who encouraged me to be a janitor after graduate school because it would fill me with experience and details to spit out in poems. My parents have agreed to attend the party with me. Essentially I'm introducing them to a deity in my personal mythology, so I'm pretty excited.

O and the days off from work.

Each time I have plans to visit my family, things of the exploding-head sort pop up in the few days beforehand, making the pre-trip days an ordeal and hardly zen-lipped, which is a sort of comical thing worthy of a tomato in the face.

There. Full red circle. Now I can drive home and launder what needs to be laundered.

slicing up eyeballs again

2006-05-10T17:24:00.000-04:00

Slow universe in the hump of week and I got all excited but to find I’d twisted titles in my head. Somewhere in web world I found that the American edition of Simon Reynold’s Rip It Up and Start Again is out now (March 2006). I wrote about him a while back here: once in a used bookstore in Minneapolis I found a book he wrote which included a chapter on Throwing Muses (Kristin Hersh’s first band, Kristin Hersh my hero). I was pretty excited. The thing was only 8 bucks but I literally had no money to spend—end of the month, et cetera. I figured I’d get it another time. I researched during the past couple years and the book is out of print. Unable to remember the title, I thought this was it. Nope. The one I want is called Blissed Out, and the cheapest I found it was $45 for a used copy at Amazon. Some day my prince will come. In the meantime, I’ve added Simon Reynolds’ blog to the tuliped sidewalk over on the right.

The tale I related earlier was about having read his Generation Ecstasy. While I was reading it someone I knew but not well saw me reading it out in public and said, "Are you actually reading that?" (That’s like when I told one of the secretaries where I work that I had moved to Brooklyn and she responded, "Who would want to move to Brooklyn? What a crummy place. I dated someone who lived there. What a crummy place. Just crummy." Don’t bother with the impertinent drivel, please.) Yes, I was actually reading it and, being interested but not fiendishly interested, I was fully impressed by how he told the history and development of dance music and its correlate drugs. It did what a history should do: it transcended the history of its specific topic and shed light on humanity. Unless he’s got a fanged snake in his back pocket, I’ll read whatever he writes, particularly if it’s about Throwing Muses.

Speaking of slicing up eyeballs, I was geeking out a few weekends ago when I got an unexpected alien signal for internet access at home, mazing from link to link and found demos for the first Breeders album, Pod, which Tanya Donelly of my beloved Throwing Muses appears on. There was a story about some wild marijuana and how some of the songs for the first Belly album were originally intended to be on the second Breeders album, before Tanya Donelly left and formed Belly. Anyway, one of the demos was "Silver," which eventually made it to the Pixies' album Doolittle (presently decorating the air in my office). "Silver" is one of my favorite Pixies songs, and both Doolittle and Pod hold elite coves in my ears, so I ate this story up like slice of pizza.

Now, let us all join in a sundance so that I might jog among the Polish when I get home.

the return of peter stuyvesant and the acidipholus without a proper plan

2006-05-08T14:54:00.000-04:00

During the weekend there was sunshine and waving temperatures. There was whiskey and rice and beans. There was Australian acupuncture hungover in the shower for hours. An Escher-street neighborhood tangling with big eyes and armor. A crackhead begging, slinging racism. Jogging. There was so much pollen that heads exploded, littered streets. There was a vandal marking ugly black letters on a pretty blue car. There was code. There was Dutch history. There was fabricated thumb-wrestling victory. There was second-hand book-shopping and imaginary marriage in a tree farm. There were sad people and happy people. Scared people and blind people. Pizza for breakfast and strong bumpers during collisions. In the end, chopsticks were resilient and yellow cartoon-people were arrested.

Over at Pitchfork there is an interview with Doug Martsch and one with Leslie Feist. This pleases me. However, both end as if the interviewer were suddenly kidnapped by aliens.

You are in reverse and I am on roller skates. I’ve decided I very much like the new Built to Spill album and I’d like to invite Doug Martsch over for stew and sake. We could enjoy a little basketball on the television and make the rest up as we go.

I wanna pay your to-o-o-o-oll

2006-05-05T14:30:00.000-04:00

Now that I drive through toll booths every day I’m getting to know the toll-takers. Exiting from the turnpike in the morning I see this guy: stereotypical hairy, friendly Jersey guy. He wears sunglasses that reflect vast concrete lands and sky and a gold chain. When I drive up, I say Good morning. He says, How you doin,’ hon? When his line is long I go to the right of him where an oversized oompah loompah greets me and wishes me a good day.

Yesterday I spaced out and I missed my turnoff for the turnpike south. Exiting the turnpike too early, I went through a different passage entirely, eluding both my men, and asked for directions. The toll-taker was a woman. She directed me back to the turnpike south, after asking me where I was headed to see if there was a quicker way. Friendly, helpful, human. We bonded in the way that non-girly girls bond.

I was glad for this because I’d begun to wonder if I was just a flirt who had a way with oldish men I had no intentions with, charming them with sweet banter from a little girl who is not a little girl. Harmless, fortunately, with the booth-car barrier and the quick driving away. We part with a smile and subsist.

Conclusion: I'm not a malicious siren after all but rather a space cadet capable of golden social prowess when snack-sized social requirements are the fare.

A 40-something guy sits at a booth off the turnpike on my way home. He’s skinny and weathered and wears three silver rings in his left ear. His eyes sparkle light blue for infinite distance. I’m pretty sure he’s tapped in, turned on, however you want to put it. Yesterday when I drove through, he gave me a warm Hey of recognition, knowing eye contact and well wishes for a good night. I did the same.

It occurred to me as I was driving away that soon this would end. I’ve scheduled a day off work to register my car in New York, get a new license and such, after which I’m going to get the EZ-Pass.

All toll-taker communications will end then. There will be only driving fast past toll booths. No faces, no greetings, nothing. It made me long.

having memories like babies through a highly lubed tube

2006-04-28T11:00:00.000-04:00

The morning though a touch chilly is beautiful and it reminds me of a spring morning when I lived in Iowa City. After a coffin of a winter, a spring day warmed in. The sun was out, the air was crisp and warm but with a cool breeze almost not there. I zipped out of all my winter coats and put on a tank top. Walking toward the downtown I had a smile on my face like I’d just smoked something fancy. My body was fizzing with springtime carbonation. A turquoise car drove by. I turned to look. The guy driving was listening to a disco song turned up loud—he slowed down, stretched his torso out the window, and reaching his arm toward me he sang with passion for a quick second before driving on. He was fizzing too, and for a few moments I loved being alive so much I couldn’t stand.

Equipoise on the teeter-totter is excellent climax before the story falls down.

Room-temp clear carbonated beverage eases an uneasy belly.

disco in Latin means "I learn."

What’ll we do with the guillotine?

What’ll we do with the guillotine?

We’ll decide after we do brie and tea.

chronicle of street rats and the crumbs they leave

2006-04-27T16:09:00.000-04:00

...Worsen...

This word bugs me. And I mean "bug" in the annoying gnat way, swarm-wise. This is a verb for the lazy man, a catch-all that refuses to specifically get at the motion of a thing. As some of you may know, my job requires me to edit scientific research articles and studies that will appear in our (purposely unnamed) journal. This verb gets the trophy for most frequent use.

Finally, with some experience, I understand some of the subject matter enough to replace the weakling verb with one more specific to the case. Other times context eludes me and I must leave it and cringe. I don’t know the etymology of this verb or the history of its associates. It seems to have developed, lazily, from its adjective "worse," the comparative form of "bad."

(I just did some quick research on "worsen," and on how "bad" becomes "worse," but turned up nothing. I do have work to do—in fact, I'm editing a paper written in English by people whose first (or even second or third, etc.) language is not English (I highly commend the endeavor, but it's hurting my head) that relies very heavily on "worsen".)

This is not to say that I am against sculpting language into new and more malleable toys, bending parts of speech, but when doing so weakens rather than enhances meaning, a wrong turn has been made in the maze. Turn back and try again for something I can bite into and understand. Don't do it simply out of laziness.

I suppose the word bugs me yet more because there continue to be cases when my brain can’t seem to clear a path for an appropriate replacement to appear, and I feel inadequate.

Rats pass phonemes like batons in the laboratory and a new umbrella opens.

Which reminds me, I think there is a book relay going on in Brooklyn (roughly where Lorimer St and Driggs Ave intersect). As I was crossing the street, a man wearing blue jeans and a nice jacket sprinted by with a book in hand. A few minutes later, a girl came sprinting down the sidewalk from the other direction, wearing street clothes (i.e., not jogging gear), also carrying a book. Come to think of it, while I was driving home from work last week, I saw two young girls also wearing street clothes, also carrying books, sprinting across the street.

If anyone has any information, whether you’ve witnessed it yourself or whether you happen to know a thing or two about this book relay—perhaps it takes place elsewhere—send word. This must be understood or I'm not made of rat spittle.

emerald fingers finger the smog

2006-04-26T10:06:00.000-04:00

There are times when being a radio is difficult because people keep so many bricks and throw so many chips from them. Those bricks are heavy (never mind the unintended L7 reference), and the air feels tight like a square sealed for a no-happen future opening.

I used to be scared of driving at all. I used to be scared of driving in small towns, then on highways, then in big cities, Manhattan excluded and elevated to its own category. Now, as of this week, I drive through Manhattan to get to my job in New Jersey. Another fear down the drain, and this morning I feel sad.

I don’t like a thing to end because then there is vertigo and scarecrow-like lack of direction. By thing I mean book, movie, music, a project, a fear, in which case a sense of completion or simply enjoyment is satisfying and so, for those same reasons, I do like a thing to end. Now I need a new jersey to tackle.

This week I’m highly empathetic and my sense of smell is so sharp it might cusp into hallucination. Driving over the Goethals Bridge each night there is first a distinct smell of chlorine accompanied by memory of swimming in public pools, and then, halfway over, there is the smell of poop, a conglomerate of all animals’ feces. People sweat. The bathroom at work smells like Play-Doh. The hallway has eggs and whiskey. Olfactory voices in the head, essentially.

Yesterday I did confrontation like a good debbie in Texas. I don’t do confrontation well, but a duck needed to be squared and lit lest my psyche crumble under the heavy weight of doormat. Another fear down.

Each time I finger-flick a fear away, I think, "That wasn’t bad at all. No reason to be scared of anything really." Then vertigo with a long, stagnant-pond future threatens. And so I opt to cultivate and whip-crack fear, cycle through the thing, even though the fear, the conquering, and the next, all are apparently arbitrarily bound and found. At least then there are stones to step on.

big ears on the streets

2006-04-20T12:18:00.000-04:00

"It’s very nice to see some of you people here tonight." pause "It’s horrific to see some of you other people," said Langhorne Slim. "Just kidding. It’s very nice to see all of you." Horrific.

* * *

"Hi. How’s your boyfriend?"
"Good. How’s your husband?"
"Good."

Small-talk degenerates. I overheard this conversation while I was in a bathroom stall at work. Beyond the small-talk cloud-filler of mindlessly asking each other "how are ya/how you been/what’s up/how’s it going/et cetera," these two women asked each other about the well-being of people whom neither of them have ever met.

Hi. How’s Napoleon?
Good. How’s T-Rex?
Good.

* * *

"If you read your paperwork…If you read your paperwork…If you read your paperwork…" Overheard from the office next door after I complained to my co-worker about doctors not following directions (which means I must follow tediously behind them with a pooper-scooper). Apparently nobody reads or follows directions. There is no rule or order.

* * *

"I think he beats his wife." Overheard from the office next door, two hours after I had a conversation about wife-beaters, as in the attire, with my co-worker. Must be ribbed.

* * *

Dear Athena, I love coconut. Please let that be the bellum-winner’s prize.

Dear Coconut, Every time you call my name I heat up like a burnin’ flame. Abra-abra-cadabra. I wanna reach out and grab ya.

Dear Flame, I think this inner-bellum needs a fire lit under its ass.

salmagundi

2006-04-13T10:55:00.000-04:00

This salad plate has bloody eyes and wields a wild needle and thread. Remember that.

My mom and I play Scrabble when I go home, where we enjoy some wine and delight in mispronouncing words in unison. Empty bottle, she interrogates me and I tell all of Laura Palmer’s secrets...

"Scrabble, originally called Criss Cross, was developed by Alfred M. Butts, an out-of-work architect, in 1931. It was redesigned, renamed as Scrabble, and marketed by James Brunot in 1948. A Macy's executive saw the game being played at a resort in 1952 and the store (the world's largest at that time) began carrying it. Manufacturing of the game was turned over to Selchow & Righter. Scrabble has 225 squares on a board and 100 letter tiles, each imprinted with a point value for different letters, approximately corresponding to the frequency of occurrence of the letter in English words. More than 100 million sets have been sold, in 24 languages. It is considered the world's most popular word game." (via Reference.com)

In elephant news…
On this day in 1796, the first elephant was brought to the United States. (via Reference.com)

Overzealous Sri Lankans participating in Buddhist new year celebrations damaged an elephant with desserts.

And in science news…
Get wasted without a hangover; drink sythehol, little Trekkie.

Global warming beats igloos with a stick!

Our bodies and minds are infected with parasites.

More on the thin thin line between creativity and insanity.

let us eat flowers and tell tales of pillage

2006-04-12T14:32:00.000-04:00

A few unusual slow days at work bewitch me. I've acquired a severe attention deficit, all at once amidst several loose ends: trying to open eps files on my incapable computer, sending elicit photos to a friend, inquiring about the price of another friend's paintings for aforementioned friend, reading Pitchfork interview with Neko Case, collecting color data, mapping road and train routes for co-worker, selecting a poem to go in the next issue of our journal, finishing a Hershey bar, selecting a CD to listen to, responding to work e-mails. Pieces of each of these things sit sprawled out on my desk and computer. I had forgotten I had started any of them until I stopped to look around. And so I ask...

"Which flowers are edible? Among the most common edible flowers are peonies, pansies, carnations, chamomile, chrysanthemums, dandelions, daylilies, gardenias, geraniums, gladioli, lavender, lilies, nasturtiums, primroses, roses, squash blossoms, sweet violets, pot marigolds, and yucca blossoms." (via Reference.com)

In Norway, around Easter time--fuck the bunnies and lavender eggs. Norwegians tell tales of crime, listen to radio shows about crime, watch television programs about crime. It’s a tradition perhaps rooted in Viking behavior: "On their return [from raiding trips] the Vikings would settle down with flasks of mead, an alcoholic drink made from honey, and recount tales of murder and pillage to their women and children."

That’s all I’ve got today, outside my new coat tree. I’m glad I have friends who paint me red.

Outside the written word and on a yellow horse

2006-04-11T14:33:00.000-04:00

The weekend had me social in Greece, Poland, the Netherlands. The Polish ones charmed me into the kitchen and made me drink rum & coke, play pick-up sticks, eat poppy bread, walnuts dipped in honey, raisins, a partial bagel. I did not fight them off. The walls were bright orange and yellow. Greece was a sturdy hula hoop. The bald pierced one thinks he can no longer be a child. Horse hoof! Fleeting painter, I got called beautiful. Sleep deprivation shades perspective. In a bistro, the Netherlands poured down my throat Heineken, Stella Artois, and fine red wine, insisted my belly have in it lentil soup, grilled tuna and vegetables, coconut ice cream. Dutch history turned into tales of Bangkok and back to Mexico and disparate trips in life jackets backward down canals. In one creation myth gods pierce their penises. Blood spills and something is born. Guitar sounds roll in circles before the polka is loud and the au pair dances. The sun rises and some people still haven’t slept. Fortuity escalates in this very air.

Yesterday I threw green paper down on a counter and got these in return: Neko Case—Fox Confessor Brings the Flood, which particularly pleases me, and Built to Spill—You in Reverse. Doug Martsch will always please me, sometimes more than others.

Right now I could go for a pineapple. And an elephant ride, a sabbath, and a loom.

copulative structure in song titles and broken days

2006-04-05T10:40:00.000-04:00

I’m having a crappy day and a half. I won’t bother you with details, but it’s the "fuck everything" sort of stretch that makes you want to uproot what stable things are left.

Yesterday as I drove home from work I made a connection between Kristin Hersh and Pat Benatar. I took note because this is the second time. As you may know, Kristin Hersh is my hero.

The wise man over at God Has Wheels put together some 80s music mixes, which the wise man over at Hall of the Monkey King put onto CD for me. Some are the "that was my favorite song when I was little" sort; others are the "I can’t believe someone actually had that idea and acted on it" sort; some are just funny.

Pat Benatar’s "Love Is a Battlefield" played in my car as I drove home (after the first series of events during which the gods turned against me). At the beginning of the song, the primary vocal is Pat speaking the words and in the background you hear her singing. On Kristin Hersh’s "Listerine," the last track on Sunny Border Blue, she speaks the words (I believe) underneath her singing them. The first time I heard this song I thought it an unusually dramatic trope for her to throw in. Perhaps it’s all Pat.

The first time I made a connection between Pat Benatar and Kristin Hersh I was listening to "Bea," the second track on Throwing Muses’ Hunkpapa. At the end of the song, before the final hypnotic pound of drum and guitar to the end, as she’s singing, "Nothing makes me live my life but you/And that mark on your back making babies/In the field," it occurred to me she sounded like Pat Benatar—from the period of "Love Is a Battlefield," which I know because my mom played those songs—"We Belong," "Hell Is for Children," "Heartbreaker"—when I was growing up. The video during which Pat and the other girls are dressed in rags and marching forward in the dark fascinated me.

What does this connection mean--for me or for life itself? I’m not sure, but probably there is a Greek tragedy buried in it, ready to elucidate lessons about fate and family and who one considers one's gods—and in that tune how you should let the gods have their way with you now and again. It ain’t all milk and cookies, and how boring if it were I s'pose.

shiva bleeds through my icons

2006-04-03T16:24:00.000-04:00

Icon #1: the elephant.
Icon #2: the crane (the machinery, not the bird; see below).

Saturday one of my new roommates was watching a National Geographic show on elephants. No, it was not glowing show about how sweet my trunkified friends are. It was more gruesome: When elephants attack.

This afternoon I got a phone message from my mom: Hi honey. I just wanted to tell you I just heard on the news that in Boston a crane collapsed and already two people are dead. Well, I just wanted to let you know since you like cranes so much. Love you.

Yeah, I know how to pick ’em, icons that do both some creatin' and destroyin'.

Brings me a feeling similar to what I felt the first day I drove to work after I moved to Brooklyn a few weeks ago. I turned on the radio to catch some news. The first two pieces: 1. New York is the US state with the worst air, which causes higher rates of cancer (not that I was much better off before—Jersey was listed as #5); 2. there is a coyote loose in Central Park.

If the cancer won’t get me, an anomalous wild animal will.

Or an elephant or a crane.

not the birds but the machinery

2006-03-31T13:59:00.000-05:00

Today I turn 30. They call me a child, but the wise one said I got younger again.

Today began with surprise messages from people who didn’t even know it was my birthday and twice live singing over the phone. Yesterday, tiramisu.

My mom sent this:

Dad and I wish we could spend your 30th birthday with you. We looked very hard for a crane of some kind to send you. Dad even looked for an erector set and wanted to build you one. Kids toys aren’t what they used to be. We looked for weeks until we took ill and then well you know the rest!! You do so deserve a crane, a Big beautiful crane and one day it will be yours!!

Priceless. I told her I wanted a crane for my 30th birthday. Cranes awe me. Not the birds but the machinery.

The morning included promises of health and stout elixir drunk by squirrels in my honor, cranberry, a chat with a sleep fellow.

We encouraged passersby to eat free cookies. Flowers arrived. And candy. I ate leftover tofu.

The sun is out and the air is warm.

flashdance

2006-03-24T15:46:00.000-05:00

Somebody make me drunk. The week has had a mouthful of sharp teeth clamping clamping into my flesh—while it beat my brain side to side between its behemoth paws.

Ignore the initial command (maybe). Anyone who knows me knows I don’t plan drunkenness. Instead get me a masseuse with hearty, able hands.

The good doctor has given me official permission to wash my hands of all work related to Journal #2, the first issue of which I have been flurrily finalizing this week. One of my poems will appear in mix with a flush of articles on brain maladies. I love that.

The hypothesis has not been confirmed but I am throwing it out there: since Target installed the machines that take your card while the cashier is ringing up your items, the cashiers have become less friendly. Most do not acknowledge you’re there. They just run the faceless products across the scanner, toss them in the bag, and move to the products the next customer has placed on the belt. I'm not asking for annoying conversation about the weather or your crappy love life, but a hello and a thank you would be nice.

Who are you and where did you leave your forearm?

If anyone has documentation of episodes of sleep-writing, let me know immediately. The cruise ship will be embarking on the tour very soon.

An hour ago I was certifiably Sara Crankybutt. Then I became Sara Maniac-On-The-Floor. Now I am Sara Happy-To-Be-Going-Home-Very-Shortly.

musing between tasking: a glass with a stem

2006-03-22T16:34:00.000-05:00

Let’s hear another holy shit from the crowd. What a busy past few days. Work, work. I shouldn’t be breaking now, but bah.

Happy birthday to both Ovid and Fred Rogers today. I hope you both are having good dead lives.

Yesterday I heard on the radio, following a speech by Dick Cheney, a reporter ask a woman what she thought of what he said. Her response:

I don’t even know what he said. It was just good to hear him speak. It made me feel like a true American.

So being a true American is not giving a fuck what the politicians say because it’s just good they’re speaking and we can be sure they'll do the right thing. Blind faith in empty word-boxes. Please tell me this is not the majority. I know, I know.

Avert gaze in hallway.

This is a damn fine cup of coffee. A girl can fantasize.

If I were an elephant I would enjoy my trunk.

Hey! I am an elephant, and I can touch clouds with this trunk.

Digging my paws into the sand, standing my beach, speech-ballooning the stuff of grapes.

frogs and valley-wide upheaval

2006-03-15T15:17:00.000-05:00

Holy shit, I’ve been working without breath or break for 6 hours straight. Somebody kiss me and slather me with massage. Another one bites the dust like old memory. Rapport with doctors escalates and waves while I edit their ideas. I’m no longer drowning but my neck is stiff and tiger-balmed. Peripheral vision has been eliminated. A beer would be good.

Last night I dreamed the hip doctor met me after a class I was teaching and asked me to lunch. He showed me a harpsichord in the center of the restaurant. Its belly was full with jambalaya. We peered in, he with fork. A piece of sausage pushed up to the top. It tastes like water, he told me. Anyone could eat from the harpsichord dish. I woke.

After this blink, there will be a hiatus in transmissions. During the next few days I will be relocating my earthly things from one cave to another, shortly after which I will move into a new decade of my life. I feel tripped out by full-fledged anythings but not yet by the aging of stars.

Happy Ides of March. Goodbye, Julius Caesar.

According to one web site, March is Colorectal Cancer Awareness Month. I had no idea.

Learn about rare ultrasonic frogs in China.

Do you want to make DNA origami together this weekend?

dates and hitched figs

2006-03-14T13:50:00.000-05:00

Today is Albert Einstein’s birthday (1879), and on this day in 1794 Eli Whitney received his patent for the cotton gin. Yes, I read this somewhere, but, for some reason, the fact that Eli Whitney invented the cotton gin is one of the facts I remember best from long-ago history class.

Scent of tiger balm and hard-boiled eggs make the day I take in the unergonomic desk-chair. The egg is good for your eyes; the computer is not. The egg contains all 9 essential amino acids; the mouse does not. The eggs are in my belly.

When a person gets married and pregnant, is it part of the package for that person to become an emptily outspoken bitch? I’ve noticed a distinct change in the newly married pregnant women in my workplace. (The events seem to go hand in hand around here.) Attitude shifts ugly and they march as an army in the hallway.

That said, I know some married pregnant people outside the workplace who do not behave this way.

Dear Ganesh and your mouse-car, please if I wed and swell in the belly area, keep me strong against repugnant-bitch tendencies that might afflict me.

A few new words I learned (from Wired):

Olfrygt: how the Danish describe the nagging fear of being unable to find a beer while out of town

Iktsuarpok: the Inuit way of describing the act of repeatedly going outside to check if someone is coming

Dozvonit’sya: the Russian expression for ringing a doorbell or calling a phone number over and over until you get an answer

kubla khan yawned and people saw clearly again

2006-03-13T10:06:00.000-05:00

It’s confirmed. I’m becoming my grandma. I woke up at 4:13 am and did not fall back to sleep. No cookies got baked and no shirts got ironed, but eventually I got up, made coffee, and went to work too early. What I learned: it doesn’t matter how early you leave the house; traffic in New Jersey is always abominable and the drivers always drive with little logic or awareness.

Edward O. Wilson, Intelligent Design, and a Darwin exhibit I want to see: "[Wilson] edited, annotated, and wrote introductory essays for an anthology of Darwin's writings, From So Simple a Beginning: Darwin's Four Great Books, published last fall. The timing of the show and Wilson's book were not intended to counter the rise of the intelligent-design movement, but the author is enjoying the coincidence. ‘I'm delighted - and so is my publisher,’ Wilson laughs. In September, he will address the neo-creationists directly in a book aimed at a hypothetical Southern Baptist pastor. Evolution will prevail, Wilson predicts: "As someone said recently, 'We've got the fossils. We win.'"

And just when a little stirring up of the still-life was needed, beer flowed like water in Norway.

This is all my head can make today. Neurons dare to nap on gray knolls.

the sun went out and left behind dysphonic spittle

2006-03-10T16:17:00.000-05:00

Springdom temperatures, skirt-snatching winds. It’s apocalyptically nice here today and I am punchy. By punchy I mean that you should maintain a two-foot distance from my black-tower boots and aletheia-eyes and speak judiciously lest you incur the wrath of the Hera in my bosom.

My grandma uses that word, bosom; I watched Bosom Buddies regularly when I was younger. The word kind of makes me blush. For some reason when I hear it I think of large flesh-glands undulating too close to my face. With magic and honeydew wherewithal, I will transform this association. Dirty-stripper-breasts be gone! Bosom is a nice word.

And then the sun went out. And the sun went out again.

In a total eclipse of their psyches, the sun having been blocked once caused riots in northern Borno. Hopefully this time around, March 29, things will run more smoothly. The Information Minister says, "Some people even felt some evil people in their communities were responsible for the eclipse….The eclipse is not expected to have any real damaging effect, only social and psychological discomforts are envisaged." What might these discomforts be? Suicidal fear of apocalypse? Insecurity about facial acne? Chimney envy? Bathrobe depression?

I got the fear and a package of dynamite in the glove box.

* * * *

And then the sun came back, looking like a mouse on laughing gas.

A party ensued and all discomfort was pleasured into extinction.

words exposed during a defiant last night

2006-03-08T09:05:00.000-05:00

When you are creating a table of contents for a manuscript with many pieces, be sure you locate the longest title before you begin tabbing over for the page numbers, lest you repeat the tabbing mechanism like dumb again and again and again until everything is in line. Carpal tunnel, you know. Damn poems. Damn sick babies.

I’m going to go ahead, be narcissistic and quote my own poem: What, again, are we in training for? I don’t fucking know sometimes (frequently). Sometimes things seem heavy and then they lighten up like whipped cream. A little pumpkin pie with adornment and the air is different and easier to deal with.

Am I moody, or merely human?

Just because doctors have special degrees doesn’t mean they can talk down to people without those particular special degrees. Just because they wear fancy clothes doesn’t change anything. No, this is not personal. Yes it is.

I hate money.

I never use the term hate carelessly. I rarely use the term hate.

I disregard money. Or I try my darnedest to.

In some countries people still use stones as currency, the islanders of the Micronesian state of Yap, for example.

Call me a baby, but I don’t want to go to sleep just because I have to get up way too early to go to work tomorrow. Oh, what a big-baby feature of Generation Extreme. When I have pull, when I have shot many a clay pigeon, I will write a book on Generation Extreme.

Marianne Moore made me wonder once. Hero. Who are my heroes? I keep it personal for the most part. My mom, dad, grandma, grandpa, Kristin Hersh.

(Note: Kristin Hersh is the only hero mentioned who is not a family member. Some day I hope to achieve the sublimity, the raw and true, that she achieves in her music, in my living. Would that then make me my own hero? Is that possible? Is that foul? What a brick conundrum.)

Sometimes I want to be thoroughly connected to other people; sometimes I want no connection at all. Give me hermit or give me death. On the other hand, live free or die. Yay, New Hampshire.

Politics is a disgusting influence and guide. Cleanse me.

I don’t want my heroes to grow old and incapable. I don’t want to grow old and incapable.

I look forward to growing old. What would the sun say to all of this if it could speak? It would sound like Barry White with a little wine in him. Or like a Sara under the influence of Barry White who is under the influence of a little wine.

Please, when I put out my single, "Can’t Get Enough Of Your Love, Babe," buy it. Please, please, please, please.

No, I’m not on crack. Just pensive. And terribly flattered that Samuel Taylor Coleridge thought to write a poem about me long before I was born. I still don’t want to go to sleep (which means I may feel like shit tomorrow—so it goes, Mr Vonnegut).

p.s. I’m glad I don’t smoke anymore. I don’t like smelling like cigarette smoke.

sara does world news like debbie does dallas

2006-03-01T14:34:00.000-05:00

What fell out of today's ear:

onset carpal tunnel, heatless haunted house, chummy doctors, cantankerous sandwich-maker, Agent Cooper, fingerpicking in the dark, animated Hindu god, naval secrecy, transcendentalism, latinate states of being, and a declaration of hazelnut fiction after lunch.

Thank goodness for bottled water.

A spatter of newsbits:

Only ten years ago did divorce become legal in Ireland, and my Irish source tells me that in his country of 4 million people about 5,000 people a year apply for divorce. Naturally, I came across this fact and thought to ask him about it as he wrote saying he was getting married in the spring.

If you’ve been spitting or blowing your nose onto the sidewalks of Beijing, cut it out or you’ll be fined. Because the Chinese have foresight, however, people wearing bright orange coats will be on the street, handing out bags marked by the symbol for "mucus," I guess to ease into the new regime. This is not one of my wild head-ventures.

Apparently, in Iceland, today is Beer Day, in celebration of the lifting of prohibition. Pehaps you want to try some Egils, or some Thule, or some Viking.

Today is also Whuppity Scoorie in Scotland. "[Children] gather before 6 pm, assembling at St Nicholas church, then as the wee bell rings run round it waving balls of paper around their heads. It is no longer a race, for safety reasons…."

And in America, another kind of spitting goes on, the kind that happens after a man bites a chunk of flesh out of his girlfriend’s cheek. Maybe I’ve told poor-me stories about bad-boyfriend events, but I was just being a pussy.

While researching some terminology used in a manuscript I was editing, I found early death records of the First Presbyterian Church of Goshen. Among reasons cited for causes of death are black vomit, old age, blister, drunkenness, and lunacy.

bananas rich in association

2006-02-27T16:38:00.000-05:00

Lately I’ve been eating a lot of bananas.

My grandma sent me e-mail containing a list of nutritional facts about the banana. I seem to have deleted the message by mistake or I would include it here. At any rate, the banana seems to be good for just about everything. What I remember: regulating mood (here, here! let’s hope so!), sharpening brain function (hot damn!), and tempering a hangover (bring it on!), a lot of vitamins B.

I eat the bananas at my desk at work. People look into my office as they walk by and suddenly I feel like a dirty girl exposed, like I’m sitting there, boobs falling out the top of my shirt (if I had the kind of boobs that do this) and thighs exposed, making gestures with my tongue, when really I’m just trying to enjoy my healthy banana.

The banana lends itself to easy metaphor and innuendo as it is, but I wonder if it might be an earlier association twined up in my inflated image. Once upon a time, while trying to open a banana, I said to the guy I was dating, "I am not very good at peeling bananas." He offered to teach me how to handle the banana.

Is that why I see speech balloons above the heads of passersby (Cock! Cock! And look what she’s doing with it!)? Maybe.

Two other objects are all twined up in personal association in my mind, each based on utterance from someone else.

The Sharpie. Someone once told me he had fantasies about poking Sharpies into his butt. Since then, I can not hear Sharpie without imagining it as a butt-toy.

Batteries. Once I said to my friend, "I need to get batteries." He prodded, "For a vibrator?" This same friend made the same connection with regard to another girl at a different time. Since then, when I hear batteries, the first image in my head is a vibrator.

I suppose we are all formed by associations, some of which are easily trackable and some of which are not. What a rich package of bold loops and color-code we all must be.

crito crinkled the memo cacophonously

2006-02-21T15:04:00.000-05:00

The difference between word and deed is mammoth.

I hope I have not been behaving like those people I complain about.

As far as I know, human language did not originate in frogs, despite a theory erected by one French swimmer and thinker. coac coac.

Dart injuries are on the rise. Don’t try this at home. Or, try this more frequently at home in order to improve performance to your liking.

Healthy candy bars, CocoaVia bars. Duh, in moderation, like with everything else.

Ricky Gervais podcast goes commercial. That is, Ricky Gervais of The Office brilliance.

Thank you, Axl. The name of my first book will be T.W.A.T. I’ll change what it stands for, of course (perhaps Tiny Wankers Are Telepathic, Then Wonka Ate Tofu, Tipsy Waitresses Align Tires).

It’s the headline that attracted me: "Surviving Bee Gees Reunite for Charity." It essentially says, "Those Bee Gees Who Aren’t Dead…". Maybe better to kill the "surviving" part and address it in the article. But I’m no expert in journalism.

BATHROBE

2006-02-16T10:31:00.000-05:00

Recently bathrobe discussions have been lacing the airways. What the hell good is a robe? Why does someone need a robe? Who wears robes?

My mom bought me a robe this past Christmas and I wondered these things, which again arose during a brief K-S conference in the haunted mansion. My mom had bought me a robe years earlier and I had to struggle to use it. I had to plan to use that big green thing just wanting to serve purpose in the world. And I was failing.

My grandma always wore a robe after her bath at night. She had all sorts of robes: silky ones, thick cotton ones, terry cloth. I remember bright red.

I shower, I get dressed, I get on with my day or night. There isn’t time or purpose for a robe.

This equation, however, seems too simply exclusive. There must be a stress-free way to include the robe in my lifestyle.

I have visions of fanfare and decadence associated with the robe. The robe fascinates me, so I did some research.

First, a definition: A loose-fitting robe worn before and after bathing and for lounging. Included in this definition is timeframe and purpose.

Learn by example. Here are recorded instances of people wearing bathrobes:

Robert Moses: "He'd phone ahead, throw a bathrobe over his swim trunks, hop into his big black chauffeured limousine with the ‘NY 2000’ plate, and be delivered within five minutes to the waterfront home of old friends Rogers and Mary Howell, who lived on the same creek but a half-mile away, where the water was cleaner."

Thomas Clarence Larson: "A bathrobe presented him by Frank Gotch, onetime wrestling champion of the world, is a prized possession of T. C. Larson, 1913 South College street."

Archimedes: "The word ‘eureka,’ which means ‘I have found it!,’ was allegedly first uttered by the philosopher and mathematician Archimedes, who figured out the solution to a vexing scientific problem while in the bath and was so thrilled that he ran into the street shouting about it, sans bathrobe."

J. Anthony Lukas: "He returned in the afternoon to his Upper West Side apartment and hanged himself with a bathrobe sash."

Art: "The Oberlin work is an early example of Dine's use of the bathrobe (always empty, volumetric, with hands on hips) as a ‘friendly signifier’ of common, vernacular use and personal possession." Dine stated, "I probably visualized the axe, the log, and the bathrobe as an extension of myself--a self portrait."

Archaeology: "Bathrobe and shower clogs , Small mirror, Cloth line and clothespins…Liquid detergent in a plastic bottle, Flashlight, Small canteen: We provide water in the field, but you might find a small canteen useful, especially on weekends." These things are listed as needed for an excavation expedition.

What can be deduced about the robe from these instances?

-The robe is an acceptable cover if you need to cross town for a swim, so that you might transport yourself to the swimming venue, already dressed in your swimming gear. No need to change clothes. The robe is efficient.

-The robe is not a practical piece but a souvenir, a memento.

-The robe represents grounded presence of mind—too grounded, in that a mind concerned about such banalities as putting on the robe to cover oneself might not be loose enough to happen upon a great discovery. Sometimes we must make choices.

-If we suffer from crippling depression, we might want to remove the sash immediately from the robe and burn it. Then, however, the robe will hang open, defying its purpose, in which case we might not be a good candidate for a robe.

-The robe can be used to make artistic statement. Get in touch with yourself; draw a robe and flank it with pieces of your psyche.

-Apparently, if you are an archaeologist, either amateur or professional, a bathrobe is a necessity. You could throw on a pair of shorts and/or a big t-shirt, but that would not be the same. The robe must somehow prepare the digger for what is about to be dug.

Duly noted, in my quick research I found many more instances of men wearing robes than women. Furthermore, the first site I found containing information about a woman in a robe mentioned pubes. For reasons cited as 'obscenity' I was not allowed access to this site.

I have been unable to find a solid history of the robe—I work, after all. However, Wikipedia confirms that the bathrobe is worn in instances where one does not need or want to dress immediately and can remain in the nude yet keep warm during this time. In this respect, the robe is sexy.

Comedian Jim Gaffigan adroitly points out that when we see people wearing bathrobes outdoors we think they are crazy. They stumble outside in the early morn, fumble round for the newspaper. They look displaced yet cushioned in both mind and body.

The robe: decadence indoors, lunacy outdoors. When I make use of the bathrobe, I will have made inner peace.

slivers

2006-02-14T17:38:00.000-05:00

Happy slappy day of felt-tipped hearts and chalk candy.

Chirp chirp chirp goes the hallway.

A long silver day.

Photos of volcanoes excite me. Really excite me.

So do photos of tornados.

Science shows it true: North Americans, in general, have no rhythm. Apparently it is, all puns intended, beaten out of us.

No, no chip, passive or otherwise, will be implanted in my body, for work purposes or otherwise.

This morning NPR told me about designer dogs and why, scientifically, we are attracted to them. I cannot access NPR at work, so here. Puggle, Labradoodle, Cockapoo.

And then Frankensteinapoo saw light and gnawed off the woman's limbs like newspaper rolls.

tuna-head on the house and other tales of freedom during a snowstorm

2006-02-13T14:32:00.000-05:00

This weekend was temperature nosedive and multi-inches of snow. A mighty wind blew and the brain was discovered.

Friday night was a surreal dinner at a Korean restaurant. "Happy birthday (pause), my friend…" cycled and cycled through the loop of electro-pop versions of both electro-pop songs and otherwise. There was a dire communication barrier between seven of us and the wait staff, which was not simply a language barrier but rather some amorphism of sound occurring between mouths and ears.

E.g., I ordered the one spicy dish listed under the barbecue section of the menu so I could try out the grill planted into the center of the table. A waiter came out with a large bowl. None of us owned up to having ordered it. The waiter left and returned seconds later with a menu in hand, pointing. "Numba 9. Who ohdahed numba 9?"

Well, I had ordered number 9; however, number 9, I attest, was not a bowl full of noodles, various meats and sea creatures. Such a concoction cannot be barbecued. I took it anyway. A surprise party for my taste buds and digestive system.

The highlight of mishaps was the egg roll. B ordered a sushi roll for an appetizer. She also ordered a couple of egg rolls. A small tray arrived, holding one tasty-looking roll and two bizarre looking rolls, seaweed and rice enclosing something yellow. Ba-dum-bum. Egg rolls.

Then the wait staff came one after another and many at a time, bringing bowl after bowl, until we had approximately 30 bowls and plates of stuff before us. The final non-entrée dish: head of tuna. One for each side of the table. "On the house," said the waitress. Tuna-head on the house.

As we drove away from the Korean restaurant, B, M, and I whim-stopped at the sex shop down the street, where the frumpy male employee who looked like he had enjoyed a lot of lonesome sci-fi features (not that that’s bad) approached as we made our way down the first wall of dildos. What complicated contraptions some of them are.

In response neither to our interest nor our asking, the guy was eager to explain the history of The Rabbit and how it works. He explained the difference between the plastic and metal beads that gyrate. He brought his hand forward from behind his back. "I happen to have one with me right here." How about that.

Afterward we drove to a bar and talked developmental idiosyncrasy and neuropsychology over some whiskey & diets in front of the dart board. Throw caution to the wind.

Saturday night I watched Eraserhead for the first time. What I learned: in heaven, everything’s all right. Even if your cheeks have acquired spongy growths. Possibly there will be worms or mutant babies that the doctors aren’t even sure are babies there. Good god, Grandma could toss a salad. Despite her stupor. Grind my gears, man.

Then snow feet snew.

still there is no paper in the god-machine

2006-02-10T11:34:00.000-05:00

The fax machine in my office ate itself this morning and the hospital has cut the midget budget. It’s that sort of day.

The machine claims, "Paper Jam". Says, "Open Cover, Remove Paper."

I open the cover, find no paper.

The machine commands, "Close Cover." I do.

The sequence repeats.

I have acquired Exploding Head Syndrome* of a new color, Incredible Hulk-like strength in riling ire.

*Check out the Kundalini side effect mentioned in the Wikipedia article. Bizarre.

I think all of this is quite funny.

Meanwhile, some music news excites me:

Sing-Sing, comprised of one of the members of Lush, Emma Anderson, has a second album that will be available in the US this Valentine's Day. I like Sing-Sing songs ok, but never paraded around naked singing along; however, because of Emma Anderson's facial expressions and fascinating demeanor I am faithful.

Built to Spill will finally be releasing another album and beginning a tour. Some day Doug Martsch and I will eat pizza together.

His Name Is Alive has a new album out that apparently is the best ever.

The Fiery Furnaces delight me and they will continue to delight me, or my name just isn't.

Meanwhile, other news excites me too:

Headless Sphinx unearthed.

The Odyssey is over.

Greek shipwreck from 350 BC revealed.

The World’s First Laptop.

There is an academic journal on cereal science.*

*A sample title and abstract:
"Analysis of heat-damage indices in breakfast cereals: Influence of composition"
Cereal-derived breakfast products are increasingly consumed because they are an important source of energy both for adults and children. Although the earliest breakfast cereal manufacture was based on boiling then drying, extrusion has become a well-established industrial technology with beneficial effects on the nutritional properties and texture of the final product (xxxxxx, 2004). The pleasant flavours and colours of breakfast cereals are produced in the drying and toasting steps (xxxxxx, 1998). The chemical reactions involved in their generation are essentially the Maillard and caramelisation reactions, both depend on the type of substrate, temperature, water activity and pH.

that silver thing lives in a tree

2006-02-07T09:17:00.000-05:00

Driving to work from Brooklyn, a little sleepy but chipper enough, I was glad there was little traffic. My last few trips from Brooklyn to Edison in the early Monday morn put me to work late due either to construction or highway accidents or both.

A green Neon, a young brown-haired girl as driver, was two lanes to my right. When it drove ahead of me, I saw its poor damaged back end. Total accordion concentrate. I wondered how long it had been like that and why the girl hadn’t gotten it fixed.

Eyes back to the road I noticed all the cars with dings, scratches, dents and paint-smears. I was glad I didn’t have any of those. Seems to be a given in this part of the country. But my bumpers were clean and I aimed to keep them that way anyway.

As I neared the split for the Goethals Bridge and the Outerbridge Crossing, traffic got thick. Usually it’s thick way back, but not here. Still, it was moving. The sun shone bright from behind me.

The silver Mercedes in front of me came to a quick stop. I stopped and then we all crawled.

The silver Mercedes in front of me appeared to be moving very slowly.

The silver Mercedes actually had come to a stop. Bright sun on silver simulates motion, I guess.

I hit the breaks as fast and hard as I could. Grace’s middle arched up as she tried to stop. Ouch head to concrete. We hit.

The silver Mercedes and I pulled over, we exchanged information. The kids were young, late high school age Jewish kids living on Staten Island. They’d never been in an accident before. We fumbled our way through.

I looked at Grace--Fuck!--got mad and freaked out.

The back bumper of the Mercedes was smeared with Grace’s blue saliva. I squatted in front of Grace. Her mouth was bent, the top of the license plate torn upward, and the front part of her hood v’d in. Violence. I don’t like to see her hurt.

A sort of "lucid freaking out," like lucid dreaming. That is, I only began to freak out, I think, because I thought I should. Also, the situation sucked. Then it occurred to me that everything is highly in flux, and this instance was insignificant in the big frame and bound to happen, statistically, when one drives and particularly in this part of the country. I was not hurt. The kids were not hurt. It was just a morning disrupted by something unexpected, after which I would have the opportunity to deviate from the cardboard path. Freaking out was unnecessary; I decided to be calm.

The police didn’t take long to appear. Two young guys in uniform, probably my age or a little younger, stepped out of the car and walked over. I was prepared for an impersonal encounter during which I would be made to feel lowly. At least that’s what most every other encounter I’ve had with a cop has been like, even when nothing wrong has gone on.

The blond who wore dark sunglasses looked me right in the face. "Are you ok?" And when I mumbled uh-huh somewhat dismissively, he asked again. "Are you sure?" And then the other one asked the same—of all three of us involved. Warm.

We walked to the cars. The blond cop said to me, "It’ll be ok." Was I being set up? No cop had ever shown real live human warmth. Saying that required intuition, insight and compassion. He looked at my car.

"Do you think that’s going to be expensive to fix?" I asked him.

He looked at me sympathetically. "This happened to me, too, and my car looked about like this. It wasn’t as much as I expected."

The cops looked over the cars, took our information, and returned to their car, lights flashing above it, to write the report. When the blond came back to my car, he apologized for taking so long, handed me my license, insurance, and registration cards. Told me I would need to visit the precinct the next morning to get the accident report for my insurance company. He handed me a little piece of paper having been ripped out of a small notebook, where he had written the phone number and address of the precinct.

Then he asked me again if I was ok.

As I was driving away I realized he hadn’t given me a ticket. I thought rear-enders got a ticket about 99% of the time.

Yesterday morning I rear-ended a car for the first time.

Expectation erased, the thing is alive.

* * * *

Are bottled-water drinkers being duped? I have wondered why people drink bottled water at home. Makes more sense out and about, but that too could go.

Obstructive potatoes, loose kebabs. What will your car insurance company believe?

For the football family's sake, the Rolling Stones agreed to be censored. But since when is the cock too explicit for the family? When I was a kid, my family used to gather at the fireplace and pretend we were like the Smurfs, only we would replace key words with "cock" instead of "smurf."

New species found in Papua. Tree kangaroos, and egg-laying mammals and smurfs, o my. And there are many species there yet to be identified.

the pads and dregs of 'pure thought'

2006-02-01T11:24:00.000-05:00

Last night I dreamed I was playing hockey on a football field. Teams were guys against girls, and then I was the only girl on a team of guys against guys. Passing and strategic maneuvering were not my forte; however, when I received the puck I shot it clean in.

Some doctors address their colleagues as "Dude" because they think it makes them seem young and hip. Those same doctors listen to the most recent Green Day album loudly in their offices for the same reason. Those same doctors also make crass jokes and draw sexual innuendo into hallway conversation to show that they are risky, which they feel also demonstrates youth and hipness.

I am speaking of one doctor in particular.

Dr. B, do you have more prescription pads for the front desk?

It occurred to me this morning that until I worked in a hospital I didn’t think doctors were real people. But first there were mud puddles, acne, college, then med school, then residency, or some similar order of events. At some point these real people were given prescription pads and (hopefully) looked their patient in the face, after scribbling on the pad, and said, "Take one of these twice a day for ten days." That’s a heap of responsibility.

I don’t know if I could be a doctor. I might constantly be too aware that I was just a real person and that the science was not exact and that possibly my patient was not afflicted with what I thought and that those pills were prescribed erroneously, or possibly the patient had some unique allergy to said pills and as a result of taking them turned into a gila monster or died.

I’d be in a constant state of wonder-worry. My cape would jitter nanotatively.

Or I’d decide it wasn’t worth all the worry, play the role, and prescribe with a caricature-smile and confident toss of the arm. Until the malpractice allegations poured in.

Then I would retire and play hockey professionally. On a football field simultaneously surfaced with ice and grass.

My head is full of snot. It’s difficult not to say this when people in the office ask me how I’m doing. My response instead, as I pass a doctor with my tea on his way to retrieve coffee is that of a southern-accented deaf girl turned through a bent mirror: The City of the Lost Children of Georgia.

My range of hearing is this bubble. Here’s some news:

Meditate your gamma waves high; teach yourself the skill of being happy. It’s all part of the future because the Dalai Lama and neuroscientist/friend of Ram Dass, Richard Davidson have been exploring the neuroscience of meditation.

"In the end, Einstein felt that in his own field he had, like Mozart, succeeded in unraveling the complexity of the universe."

Soon you can get your ass both heated and sprayed down after it spews. A nice picture of a clothed woman seated on a toilet demonstrates.

Have a look over at Whateverland (via Benjamin).

If I were a dog in the mid-17th century...

2006-01-26T15:38:00.000-05:00

What demon elixir, what cheer. Before bed I swallowed "nite time" cold medicine because it was the closest thing I had to sinus meds to tame racing sinus fluids. Also, I wanted to be knocked out. At 3:30 pm the next day I continue to experience sleep inertia* and fuzz-brain. Who is the alchemist who conjured this poison?

Christopher Wren, who is remembered today as a great architect, was known in the mid-1600s as an astronomer who could remove the spleen from a dog. His next experiment: inject poison into the dog’s bloodstream to understand circulation.**

This morning I woke up one minute before the alarm sounded, a Tom Waits song (from Real Gone, paraphrasing "Everybody wants to know the same thing, how’s it going to end…") swaggering a loop in my head. The air was red and dry and fuzz-muted like a photograph.

A footnote must sound like something, a map, a chart in sonic motion. Here (via Bookslut) is what David Foster Wallace has to say about recording the audio version of Consider the Lobster, muted footnotes and all:

"Most poetry is written to ride on the breath, and getting to hear the poet read it is kind of a revelation and makes the poetry more alive. But with certain literary narrative writers like me, we want the writing to sound like a brain voice, like the sound of the voice inside of the head, and the brain voice is faster, is absent any breath, and it holds together grammatically rather than sonically."

*(words in blood are mine) Sleep inertia is the feeling of grogginess after awakening and temporarily reduces your ability to perform even simple tasks. (like a double back-flip with a twist)

Sleep inertia can last from 1 minute to 4 hours, but typically lasts 15-30 minutes. (or 6 hours, 33 minutes, and 10 seconds)

The severity of sleep inertia is dependent on how long you have been asleep and the stage of sleep at awakening.3 Effects can be severe if a person is very sleep deprived or has been woken from a deep sleep stage. However, sleep inertia can usually be reversed within 15 minutes by activity and noise. (such as being pinned to the ground by an army of clowns bearing bells on their limbs at sunrise)

Sleep inertia can cause impairment of motor and cognitive functions and can affect a person's ability to drive safely. Sleep inertia can be very dangerous for people who drive in the early morning hours and shortly after waking up from a sleep. (Christopher Wren's belly was a map of a dog's innard island chain in a room where the lava lamp was too dim and the tires on the car too wide to make turns.)

**I’m reading Soul Made Flesh by Carl Zimmer. See inside.

Freedom of jaw movement: allow the monkey to sleep

2006-01-25T11:32:00.000-05:00

Is it possible that consumption of soy causes the cessation of the development of male sexual organs? Is it possible that early consumption of soy cause bush and breast on girls before the age of three?

Earlier I was researching soy as I ate soy yogurt, realizing I wasn’t as informed as I could be. There are as many web sites on the dangers as on the benefits. I never know what to believe about nutrition-related (or government-related or physics-related or train-related or germ-related or handshake-related…you see) news. Egg yolk is good, egg yolk is bad. In theory, I say eat everything in moderation, though I rarely deviate from a stock of salad, soup, pizza, burrito, ice cream though less often in recent days, meat on scant occasion, probably more alcohol than required.

I aim to think critically, synthesize intelligently, from the gamut of given information, but infinituedes of information both arrive and change quickly with little time for source-verification before a new baby is born. Presentation—of web site, of spoken delivery—is a start but still potentially represents the dubious. It isn’t difficult to concoct slick, and I can’t help but allow for the possibility that each nugget is power-/money-driven. (I haven’t read extensively yet. I only began and then leapt here.)

Without full knowledge of this New Zealand source, say, I don’t know how funny it is to include this quote on the opening page of their site "elucidating" the dangers of soy: "...If you only knew the power of the dark side" -Darth Vader. Who would quote Darth Vader on a web site intending to inform the public of serious matters? Or maybe that’s a way of extending a sense of common understanding. A terrible line of poetry works quite well given a uniquely proper context.

A little self-critique: Get a grip, Sara. You have to assess and decide, There is nothing else, It’s part of being human. Living is a constant act of exploration because nobody knows anything for certain, and to move forward we have to lean at least a little on what has gained acceptance as knowledge or as at least being so. Still, look at all the people who saw enough merit to vote for Bush. (I am not as politically informed as I could be either, but I pay attention to course and effect.)

This lack of verifiable foundation drives me as mad as when I think about everything in and around me being composed of atoms (if those even exist). There is always a foot out the door in case the world is shapeless, in case all my friends are actually stick figures drawn on the wall. How lunately fragile.

I think of a recent transience post: fuck "less"—I want my stuff. Maybe I want less. Maybe not. Maybe a glass of wine. By less and the implied more I transfer the meaning to more and less information/detail/confounding factors/evidence. Of course, in this sense, I always want as much as possible. How lunately* masochistic.

I bank on experience when I can, but it could be decades before I know that high or even moderate soy consumption has caused my body to fill with worms. I bank on my gut, rest on its headless command. Shake my hand. I’m germ-free. Loose the preventative tension, please.

(whine, whine, whine, whine, whine)

* I made this word up out of necessity and long-during desire, which, yes, is another confounding factor, compounding both masochism and lunacy.

- - - - -

I wish I didn’t have amnesia or compartmental memory drivers or whatever it is that gets me excited about doing or learning something only to abandon it without recall shortly after beginning it.

Wishes are fruitless. More later once William Carlos Williams finishes snaking into my ear.

red wine with moog backlight: a gymnastic transmission

2006-01-20T11:49:00.000-05:00

Wine rides a bicycle named arbitrarily, whine on a bicycle broken.

In the arboretum, dine a tricycle crazy.

Refine tricyclen, pattern-sensitive chicken, with wine.

This week is chocolate and afternoon,
wine on a red wagon once having been a bicycle.

A bicycle can either read or be read
with pedals like Braille fingers before pedals turn brown and fall.

Poulet, chocolate smear on wine-dyed lips is a putrid shade.

Thank god for oak trees who do not care to weep.

February is upon us and it, monsieur, is the cruelest month.

The volume rose and bulbs poked through the screen:

There is only one way to skin a rabbit, one way to make chili, one way to get from NY to CA, one way to let a person know what you think of them. Nothing in this article feels like a cane-handle.

The Octagon on Roosevelt Island—lunatic asylums fascinate me, particularly those which are old and abandoned. This one’s being revamped as a housing complex.

Thank you, Google, for keeping the cameras out of my bathroom—so far.

So it’s true. College degrees are handed out like department store fliers, and our future looks bleak. Uh, begin the War on Stupid.

Indiana, poor ninny-timed Indiana.

ooby dooby and the early car that drives the worm

2006-01-18T13:03:00.000-05:00

Today my favorite sound is Roy Orbison singin’ "Zig Zag" to me. Boy does it please me. Let’s hear it again. Again. Let’s drown in its dancing catch the woman next door to me who continues to complain in her loud Jersey voice day after fucking day. Heck, let’s just drown the woman next door.*

Let the fractaled brain muse:

There just isn’t time or belly enough to drink orange juice and soy milk on nights when the contract with the wine god is active.

Today I gave the doctor a poem and gained 20 years on my life. He exists independent of time.

Secretaries don’t have time to be nice to patients on the phone.

If weeks expanded within themselves infinitesimally, then piles of papers would become house plants.

In the end, time-dependent association between indices of iron store and mortality in hemodialysis patients is really what gets my reels to reeling.

Some people never get around to it.

In the words of my roommate, One can always use a handjob.

Everything will be all right. (People repeatedly need to hear this.)

Let’s go places:

Make time this Saturday, Jan 21, for The Teenage Prayers at The Knitting Factory.

The Supreme Court leaves it up to state to decide whether to allow assisted suicide.

Get a grip, Mr Cruise.

Farmer’s wife breaks husband’s penis. She was that hot.

Man mistakenly declared dead loses job. An old article, but still—What’s up with people mistakenly being declared dead? Trust nothing.

*I didn’t mean that.

belly candor and the walking dead

2006-01-17T12:46:00.000-05:00

This morning my friend B stopped by my office. While she was there, K, a young pregnant girl who works in billing walked by, stopped inside the door and said, "I’m just stopping by because I saw B in here." Oh, welcome then. That’s why I’m here. To help other people connect.

Conversation ensued. K showed us her swollen pregnant belly, then told us her nipples were turning black. Her husband likes them, though, so it’s ok. "He really liked them last night," she told us. "But that’s it for the dirty talk, though."

Then she looked at me with big eyes, then back at B. "Poor Sara. She’s not used to talk like that." Oh right. I’m a 29-year-old puritanical virgin. I forget sometimes.

K left and I said to B, "Why is it universal that people think I’m pure and innocent? People act surprised when I say ‘fuck’."

She shut the door. "That’s why I like you," she said. "It’s your face, young and sweet. That’s why people think that."

"Hm," I said. I s'posed so. "That makes it easy to surprise people." Baby games really.

I forget sometimes, being rather inverted and introverted. The picture I have of myself is rather dark and profane. I forget what people on the outside see.

Later a bathroom epiphany showed me I probably perpetuate the lie. Because I know myself not to be a puritanical virgin (PV) but rather a person who pretty frequently has crass and grimy thoughts, it’s funny to me to respond like a PV in conversation. But I forget that that’s what many people actually expect from me, so that it isn’t funny at all, except maybe in that, to them, it’s true.

Months ago I attended my first post-work bar gathering in honor of someone I liked who was leaving for another job. I was very tired and had only a couple of beers (also, I suppose I get a kick out of upholding a certain distant identity in the workplace). The others had many beers, shots of whiskey and tequila, and various fruity alcoholic beverages. The following Monday several people gave me shame-filled looks, apologized for my having had to have seen them "like that" and hoped I didn’t think poorly of them.

Eyebrows furrow in perplexity.

Tomorrow we will fucking talk about pierced rosy nipples, why some vibrators are shaped like elephants, and whether or not Jesus was well hung.

* * * * *

This (from Mr Anigans) reminds me of when I called maintenance to hang a picture on my wall. They insisted they had paperwork to prove it had been done. I told them I had a picture on the floor to prove it had not. Who’s correct? Is the man dead or alive?

"Can you smoke in a cubicle in a sex shop? Or in a room in a brothel? Or in a morgue? Can you light up a joint of grass in a place where tobacco is forbidden? The answers, respectively, appear to be: no, yes, no and probably not a good idea." How will Spaniards handle this cultural blow?

Exercise might help delay dementia. Tomorrow will it induce dementia?

conducting the racist-hospital chronicles: The Musical

2006-01-16T13:32:00.000-05:00

LET ME CONTROL THIS MACHINE, YOU TYRANTS!

Fuck me and this loud music in my head. I went into the bathroom earlier and came out with Whitney Houston singing about the greatest love of all—in my noggin. There wasn’t music playing in the bathroom, so evidently the song freely generated itself in the dungeon in my head.

During the weekend, I noticed that football on the tv seems to put the needle on the Christmas records in my head. "Winter Wonderland" was a regular, with "Jingle Bells" following close behind.

The Fiery Furnaces is the only reprieve. Recently I bought Rehearsing My Choir and since then have been listening much to Blueberry Boat and Gallowsbird’s Bark too. (Now that I’ve got them sorted out--I was a victim of superenthusiasm after having bought a laptop and importing CDs from friends before I had internet access, thus leaving me with many unidentified sounds. I was a kid rolling naked in a chocolatier’s display window. What a mess.) Pieces of all three albums interrupt and spot my thoughts.

TAKE IT EASY, KEMOSABE!

The guy who delivers mail within the hospital, who says, There she is (w/optional Miss America!)!, to nearly every woman he sees said to me, Is it cold enough for you? I told him, "No. It isn’t cold enough. I’d like it ten degrees cooler." Was the laughter real or fear-driven? This is the same guy who claims he used to be a college-level English teacher but for some reason now, as I said, delivers mail within the hospital and also claims to have done outlandish things like invent staples and host beauty pageants.

I HAVE LOCATED THE PEANUT BUTTER!

Once again my fashion sense gets kicked:
a) Last Friday one of my favorite doctors (He asked me if I thought The Good Doctor was a madman. Most definitely, I told him. How so?, he asked. It is so rare that anyone here asks me a thought-provoking question and, to top it off, wants to hear the answer, that he became one of my favorite people here. Plus, his odd fashion sense is second next to that of The Good Doctor who can often be seen wearing a mix of plaid, paisley, stripes and solids in a variety of sometimes intersecting shades) was wearing a purple and white small-checkered shirt—with a bright yellow bow-tie. I told him, You’re wearing my favorite shirt. He thanked me and said that earlier his wife had called him color-blind and one of his patients had told him he looked like the Easter Bunny.

b) About an hour later, a woman from the front desk came over wearing a badass cardigan. It was bright fuschia and cobalt and looked like a shag rug with arms. I told her I liked it. She thanked me and said, 12 dollars at Marshalls. The Comedian said, You paid 12 dollars for that? The woman walked around the corner and asked her friend if she liked her new cardigan. The voice rang out, laughless, an affirmative No.

HOORAY FOR DARK CHOCOLATE!

An Italian sexologists studies TV in the bedroom--bad news.

Medicine in South Korea these days--iffy at best: wrong surgery, wrong body; the researcher who "fixed" data for personal gain...alack and alas.

Parrot helps capture a burglar. What does this mean? It means Twin Peaks is the new bible; what happened in the series will happen to us. That gum you like is going to come back into style and midgets will whisper disturbing things in your ears. There is always music in the air.

propietorship and the rug

2006-01-12T08:45:00.000-05:00

Liza Minnelli tried to steal my truck.

I don’t remember what had been going on before this scene at lakeside. It had something to do with new albums I was giving first listen and opinion to. Lighting was tawny, albums were suspended at abstract angles in tawny air. Then I was sitting in my new Ford SUV in a parking lot behind the beach at a pretty blue lake.

Apparently my parents had just bought me this truck (Note: if anyone has information that this gift is to be given, please encourage them to keep their money). It was long, brown and dark blue. Looked as though I was moving or at least relocating a sizeable chunk of my belongings. Bags and boxes were in the front and back seats. Magazines and posters were in the very back.

Liza Minnelli pulled up next to my driver’s side in a shiny white car. She wore a frightening smile. I smiled back and loaded more items into the truck. I have no idea where these items were coming from, since I was at lakeside. The tangible place from where I was retrieving things is unknown to me. Some invisible storage bin.

Liza asked if I wanted any help. "No thanks," I said. "I only have a couple more things to load." She smiled another frighteningly lip-sticked smile. I smiled back and hopped in the truck to drive away. The truck had reversed directions to be parked back-end out.

I started the truck and rolled forward a few feet, when I glanced in the rearview and saw that the back hatch was open. The magazines and posters would fly out.

Liza was standing behind the truck, smiling in the sunshine. She’d asked if she could help, and I was already belted in, so I leaned out and asked her if she’d close the hatch. She smiled, nodded agreeably and said sunnily, "No."

Oh. Well, ok. I threw the truck in park and got out. The truck was long. As I walked toward its back end, Liza began walking, with a smiley bounce, toward the passenger’s side, her hand reaching for the door. It wasn’t locked.

She was going to steal my truck.

A horrific pit formed in my belly and I forced myself awake, scared paralyzed by the impending theft.

* * * *

cookies:

Cyclops, the one-eyed cat How ecstatically, sadly Homeric.

Americans drinkin’ on the job Yeah, I'll "spice" my coffee.

US-Mexico tunnel Tunnels excite me.

The difference between fact and fiction is a candy bar. This guy’s not on trial. Frey knowingly exaggerated events. I don’t see the point of investigating the truth of these events, particularly not after the book has been printed, and particularly because he isn’t reporting on, say, a war. I guess people feel deceived.

This morning I heard on the radio about a recent finding that plants emit methane gas, a greenhouse gas, which throws a wrench into plans to curb global warming, given one idea is to plant trees to absorb carbon dioxide. Having trouble locating a link for it in a quick few minutes before doing work at work. This post is from yesterday, which work at work kept me from posting. I believe this is still being investigated. At first, scientists reviewing the article on it thought it was ridiculous (flat-earth syndrome?).

evident distrust of bone and flesh

2006-01-10T09:58:00.000-05:00

A salt bagel is a foul creation. I’m glad I’m not a celebrity marrying and divorcing as frequently as day turns to night and especially not under a spotlight. My lips are numb.

Until I’m no longer a busy motherfucker at work, here’s bits and pieces:

Woman mummifies, having died and upon her wishes been left in front of her TV—for 2 and a half years.

Update on the fraudulent stem-cell researcher from South Korea. Apparently he verifiably cloned a dog but nevertheless lied and inked mal-data. Apparently he also made use of the eggs of one of his research assistants. Even accompanied her to the hospital for the procurement. He stands by his findings. This story fascinates me.

So whose skull is it, and what’s it matter? Further confirmation that rugs will always be slipped out from under the house’s foundation. And that it doesn't matter really. I don’t believe anything, except that salt bagels are foul.

Go here to see a stunning photograph.

* * * *

God Has Wheels prompted the following (I love lists):

Four jobs I've had in my past:
1. English teacher at community college
2. backroom monkey at Borders bookstore
3. reader for potential question theft in LSAT prep books
4. air conditioner factory worker

Four things I want to do before 2006 is over:
1. move from Belle Mead to Brooklyn
2. put together a book’s worth of poems
3. gain back sureness with one of the foreign languages I learned and have been losing
4. learn more about the way the brain functions

Four things I say a lot:
1. Wow. (to my chagrin)
2. That’s a bunch of baloney. (I enjoy its cartoonishness)
3. It’s weird. (also to my chagrin, so be it)
4. Evidently, ____. (or so I’m told)

Four things I don't trust:
1. Language (as much as I love it, I don’t trust it written or spoken; always something is hiding behind it)
2. Salespeople of any kind (their agendas by nature are ill-focused)
3. People who smile all the time (obviously it isn’t possible to do so sincerely)
4. Zealots

(Government is sort of a given I figure, like r s t l n e in the final puzzle on Wheel of Fortune.)

(In one way or another, all of these come down to sales of some kind and the language that is used in the act of it.)

Four things I do trust:
1. My intuition
2. Eyes
3. My closest friends and some family members
4. Memories from my sandbox

Four people from history I'd like to meet:
1. Charlie Chaplin: Thanks for making me laugh and think, when those activities seem otherwise impossible.
2. William Faulkner: How in the hell did you write The Sound and the Fury?
3. Galen: Weren’t you tempted to cut open a human body just once--cross the prohibitions of religion just once--to see how the thing worked? I must know.
4. Sophocles: Read aloud to me your Theban cycle while I lie here on the couch; afterward we will have a discussion morality and the viable coexistence of perfectly conflicting ideologies.

Four best movies of 2005:
1. Broken Flowers
2. A Very Long Engagement (in the common 2004, but in my 2005)
3. Sideways
4. The Constant Gardner

(As stated in a previous post, I have a horrible memory regarding the timeframe of a year; the last five years seem like last year.)

Four best books I read in 2005:
1. Infinite Jest
2. The Magus
3. Incompleteness: The Proof and Paradox of Kurt Gödel
4. Mind Wide Open: Your Brain and the Neuroscience of Everyday Life

preliminary notes in the new year; or, sometimes a bird shits pretty

2006-01-03T16:28:00.000-05:00

The door was open and early Michael Jackson played loudly in the office, remixed by Mixmaster Shitty Printer and Fax. What a weird scene in the hospital. I forgot where I was for a moment and had to tame the volume. She’s a very kicky girl and she just loves performing outdoor activities (performing?), particularly when everybody is kung fu fighting. A whistle blows and a train whizzes past. But enough about me.

Today I woke up with Extreme Bedhead which I made no effort to tame. When I arrived at work, the first words spoken to me were these: Your hair looks really good today. Did you blow dry? Similarly, when I haven’t done laundry in a while and am forced to awkwardly concoct an ensemble, somebody tells me my outfit looks great. Therefore, I conclude I have no taste. Just expert timing like a funky Chinaman.

Popcorn burning in a microwave assaults the hallway. Then urine. Sexy things pass out right and left. They’d rather be performing outdoor activities so that they might be chosen to live in the apartment with Larry the fit guy. Even doctors read Cliff notes to study up on statistics. I am neither here nor there. At least nobody smells like patchouli or paint today. Touch of vomit, however, inside the yellow walls.

The surrogate faxer looks pretty in yellow and apparently crime is down in New York, at least murders. With eight million people around, murder is inevitable. And brick house ideology. And mighty mighty mice. Rats rather. Rats like fat midgets. It’s ok to plant a garden in January if you live in a biblical inn or at least fancy the sauce, the infinite mystery and its opposite.

This is what the new year has hauled in headfirst: the sound of a gritty factory winding equally in hover and spin with mary poppins, a whistle that settles into a chalk drawing. I’d like to be more clear about the future of the universe but until I make the revamp list my medulla is a supernatural thing and Iceland sounds like diamonds dropping.

Tell me anything. My heart is not heavy because it is growing.

olfactories and nufactories

2005-12-29T15:30:00.000-05:00

Paint fumes and the chirping of female complaint psychedelicize the hallway sickeningly still. This morning I bought an air freshener on my way to work. Rushing to snag a decent parking spot at work, I grabbed quick from limited selection. Lavender and chamomile like the most fertile poppy field. Made from chemicals. I am a red-eye flight. A puff-faced woodland creature. A woman passed me in the hallway and left patchouli in my nose. Patchouli in a hospital! The audacity, the inconsideration, the gall! A trip down, hell and the women chirp. Coffee tastes painted, milk chocolate chemicality. A large red apple shiny and crisp by sight sits on the brink of rot on the file cabinet, days in and only looked at. I fear putting it in my mouth—it must be stuck with paint particles. Chirp, chirp. Chirp. Thank you, intelligent designer, for not making me a woman like those women chirping. Dramadalama. Noted: many of these women chirping about the paint wear perfume daily which makes my eyes tear when they pass my office. Some people pick and choose foes by flimsy currency.

A graveyard upside-down is a xanadu in dancing boots. Tomorrow I’m driving my crane to work to begin upheaval. The dead will live.

(That’s from a post that never got posted. Who was I that day? I do not know. Will repeat it until it makes sense. Or until it rhymes.)

Now for the news…

Moving towns like legos. I hate to sound like a writing teacher, but there are some delicious concrete details in this article. Not as tasty as Hopkins’s "The Windhover" but darn near.

Here’s to curing cancer, the anomalous genetic disease? Maybe.

Even out your breasts or lose your job (via Mr Anigans).

I’d rather read about this fine couple than "Bradgelina" or "TomKat". (I can’t believe I just typed that.) "Owen may have been attracted by Mzee's round shape and gray color that are somewhat similar to that of an adult hippopotamus." Plans to bring in another hippo are under way. I dare say I smell a sultry three-way. It smells like peach and warm chilies.

the fuzz of rectitude

2005-12-28T09:55:00.000-05:00

Illinois was good to me for Christmas. The office where I work, however, conspires to quash the lingering warmth with paint fumes. Is there no law against painting the workplace while people are present during work hours with all doors and windows closed?

Yesterday painters painted my office at 10am. I worked until 5pm. People who fill personal emptiness by criticizing the workplace regardless of reason annoy me, so I gave it a good think why painters might be painting during this unfortunate period of time, and I see no reason for it.

People put in the hardwood floor last week outside work hours. Already again my brain is crawling with chemical mites and my belly is nauseous. I reiterate: I work in a hospital. A fire alarm went off yesterday and nobody knew what to do. Safety first.

Apparently if employees leave while the alarm is sounding and the fire isn’t in their part of the building, they will not be allowed back in. Apparently some people feel threatened enough by this to remain in a hallway full of smoke.

Somewhere over the rainbow people are smart. Because their brain cells haven’t been swallowed by paint fumes.

The news the news tells us:

Congratulations, meatloaf. You’re movin’ on up. Meatloaf has graduated from diner food to restaurant food.

It is a fuzzy line that moles between bone loss and bone promotion: three drink, four drink, five drink, six?

Scientific study proves newlyweds who are nice to each other stay together longer. Given the complex and often backward nature of human interaction, regular beatings, insults, and negligence could work, but not absolutely. Now we know.

Kato's Conjecture solved at last!

Letterman speaks in code. You know, the way he looked at me through the tv screen one night, I kind of thought he wanted me to tickle his feet while co-hosting the show. Bastard.

What else can we pull the rug out from under? Scientist turned hack magician falls from heroism to empty impitude. What’s the point of being a scientist if you’re going to sculpt the data?

As per Doug Martsch, make it up as you go.

nocturnal voids

2005-12-20T14:50:00.000-05:00

A term I came across while proofing a proof for an article discussing nocturia (=nocturnal urination). But I’d rather have it out with nostalgia, the definition of.

Honing closely in on a word’s meaning kickstarts in me a case of scatter-and-slip. Look closer, closer—meaning buckles under observation.

The dictionary offers this: a bittersweet longing for the past, rooted in the Greek word nostos (=a return home), which is a word repeated multiply in The Odyssey, a book I truly always return to. My perspective on the use of nostos is gridlike.

When in college I translated a few books of The Odyssey from the Greek. Most of the words I needed to look up, which made for very slow reading; however, nostos was a posit of safety, a word I knew well because it recurred so frequently, spots of light in the grid.

A tidy definition still is made of words--semblances of solid lines, each composed of many separate points of meaning, pointillistically unstable close up, thereby defying definition. I hope some day this drives me truly mad.

Nostalgia slings arousing balance between dichotomous times and their emotions. Urn material of the Keatsian Grecian sort. Some days I want to dive into my photo album like Mary Poppins dove into chalk drawings on the sidewalk. Poof--unmoving semblance alive!

I know I can’t, for physics’ sake (though I hold onto a pea of hope). The stably unstable tension is magically, perversely invigorating.

Face a fever and eyes glass, tomorrow I embark on a five-day trip home. Tonight I will sleep with sirens and hydra in a bed of lotus.

* * * *

End-of-year lists begin and I am a sucker for them:

music
books

End-of-year lists remind me each year that I have no common sense of time. Ask me the best or worst this or that for a given year. I can name a couple before I start naming representatives from two or three or more years earlier. Lunatic amnesiac or sailor of cyclical time? I arbitrarily and affirmatively confirm the latter.

in the cabin time is an inanimate object

2005-12-13T11:09:00.000-05:00

Stodgy inspectors are at the hospital this week and everybody is frenzied. Everybody’s collectively inhaling, inhaling, inhaling—there is no exhaling. Stiff. To prepare, like when the parents are about to come home from vacation and you’ve been partying the house to rags, I, as per instruction, have put the antenna on my CD player down. Everything must be at least 18 inches below the ceiling. I heaved up a box containing medical equipment that belongs to The Good Doctor and set it on my table already holding a shoddy printer, an ambitious little fax machine, a stack of books, papers, and manuscripts, and speakers. It looks like a storage basement. Boxes are not allowed on floors, I suppose so not to impede escape in case of fire or spontaneous nudity. I have memorized where the nearest fire extinguisher and pull box are. Should a fire occur, I will RACE.

Wear your name tag and do not prop open your door, they have ordered. Wearing the name tag in a closed private office, especially when a person (e.g. Sara) has little need to leave the office, except to visit the printer a few yards away or the bathroom just a few yards further, is asinine. I know who I am. Or do I? Am I even here? Hark, the hospital’s taken on existentialism. The philosophic mania! Doubt all and then doubt again, I think. Know thyself by isolation and stagnant air. I have removed the name tag, except for previously mentioned excursions into the hallway. I expect The Shining to occur by mid-afternoon—creepy twin girls appear on the file cabinet, illusory whiskey warms my body at the illusory bar in the company of people long dead, I chase my wife around with an ax and show my teeth. Like clockwork I race to the end of light.

Before I had status and before I had a pager…news from the tribe:

These hybrids ain’t cars: Mice with human brains. One scientist assures: "You will never ever have a little human trapped inside a mouse or monkey's body."

What’s the genetic makeup of cancer? Answer to come.

The ongoing misguidance of the government and its pussy marijuana challenged by a University of Massachusetts professor.

prophecy & spa

2005-12-08T14:39:00.000-05:00

"The world wavered and quivered and threatened to burst into flames."
--Virginia Woolf, Mrs. Dalloway, p. 15

Tonight will be a bath of cab-sav and utter lack of human contact as the pulp thickens. Tomorrow the EEG will be clean and delphiniums will fill the hallway. The jester will take the podium.

elusive ninjas split cities into dreams

2005-12-07T15:25:00.000-05:00

Nocturnal alphabet:

The past two nights I’ve dreamed thick and lively. My consciousness inside the dreams and my consciousness as the dreamer were simultaneously unified and distinct.

In sketchy detail…two nights ago, Dream Q: I walked out into a large grey-blue parking lot. My car was not on the other side of the semi, around which I peeked my head. Bright blue Gracie had been stolen. At my mom I began screaming about money I’d spent on it, money I’d saved for school (I’m curious about these plans for school—could the answer for what to do with my life lie therein?). My outside consciousness felt ashamed for screaming but my inside consciousness couldn’t stop. I was upset.

Dream M: Outside a house across the street from my parents’ house I encountered a homeless couple of early twenty-somethings, dirty-faced and ragged. I offered to let them sleep and eat at my parents’ house. Within minutes three large hippy buses showed up, and dirty (this is not an assessment of hippies in general but rather an accurate description of the people in my dream) hippies spilled out and began to "party." I stood in the garage talking with them, when it hit me I'd seen some go inside. I woke up and thought it all a scam to steal my parents’ belongings. I wished I’d been more keen.

Last night, Dream F: At my parents’ house. My brother, a 20-year-old Navy boy, was there. We just got news he was being sent to war. My cousin, 20 years old and not in the Navy, was also being sent to war. He ran up to the neighbors’ porch, big smile on his face, dropped to his knees and hugged them. "They were always like parents to him," my mom said to me. My brother was being sent to war. I woke up upset.

Dream X: Somewhere springy and New Englandish, bright green grass and dark wooden swings and sheds, clear day but not sunny. I'd been asked to give a poetry reading. Fortunately I’d just written some new poems, and it hit me about an hour before the reading: I’d stumbled upon a whole new way of writing. I began frantically refining what I’d written. Pencil didn't work, time-consuming and wrinkled with scribble. Needed a computer, but none were available or worked. Back to pencil. Cowboys and cowboy belongings ran thematic in the poems. Final plan for the reading: first half read old-style poems, second half read the new style. Despite the rushing I didn't feel anxious but rather sure things would be fine. I woke up in darkness, half an hour late.

In the world I’ve seen today (a tad delayed):

* The urbanization of India.

* A poll—Arab nations deeply suspicious of US motives [via Mr Anigans]

Shoelaces loop and loop until the goods surface:

* I didn’t realize Beta Band broke up, but frontman Steve Mason as King Biscuit Time is supposed to have an album out in February. This pleases me.

* A new Mojave 3 album, Puzzles, is supposed to be out in March. This also pleases me.

* Apparently my ass is bugged by Pixel guy. I say it almost every day: today feels bizarre for some reason. And this. Another day eluding ninjas is a successful day.

news from the misprioritized illuminatus of rivington

2005-12-06T09:51:00.000-05:00

In lighter condom news, bas-relief gets the shaft

And consumers are going to love it! Yesterday one Mr Anigans and I began an e-mail dialogue in which he asked me about “some pre-tax thing” regarding “medical business” which covered…

Mr Anigans: …alternative therapy is ok as long as it's legal. condoms are covered too.
Sara: condoms too. that's great. even the fancy ones?
Mr. Anigans: define ‘fancy one.’
Sara: ribbed, flavored, jeweled, gilded, spatter-painted, bas-reliefed.

Hot damn, it hit me: Bas-relief condoms! I can quit my job and live deific like the Gatekeeper of Rivington should. This is my special purpose. Mr Anigans is already working on slogans:

"BAS RELIEF FOR HER PLEASURE."
"WHEN RIBBING JUST ISN'T ENOUGH."
"NOT JUST PROTECTION—ART!"
"NOW IT WILL BE NICE TO LOOK AT TOO"
"THE ART OF MAKING LOVE"
"HEY BABY, LOOK IT'S MATISSE!"
"A LITTLE GREEK RELIEF WITHOUT THE DISCOMFORT"

Bas-relief condoms will be marketed with a lewd product already in the works which can not be disclosed at this time. But sit tight—soon every day will be like Christmas with your pants down, without the bad attitudes and lousy driving in parking lots.
* * *

In darker condom news, in India “men will pay more for unprotected sex”

“Here, the danger of a culture that is simultaneously licentious and conservative, of seasoned husbands and sheltered wives, becomes clear.”

“In almost every doorway in the red-light district of Chilakaluripet, in Andhra Pradesh, women drape, wearing bright clothes, garish makeup and come-hither expressions that have served to lure both men and disease.”

“In a dusty parking lot at this truck trans-shipment point, an AIDS educator wielded a black dildo and a condom, encircled by truckers who stifled mirth and curiosity.”
* * *

In parenting news, learn to spot the signs

If you find your Caucasian daughter interested in literature, then alcohol, then drugs and motorcycles, then married to a Turkish man for citizenship purposes, watch out—soon she could reject all and show up wearing a head scarf and long robe with her long-bearded husband. A suicide bomb mission is the final foray into exoticism and experimentation.
* * *

Is this news? You decide

Some believe Bush may go down as the worst President—ever, replacing James Buchanan.

i am the dragon

2005-12-05T10:18:00.000-05:00

Travels on lightfoot land colorfully, and I assume a new title. Saturday I snaked through Chinatown to purchase some fine red gifts for a family member et al. And then I skipped out and was crowned Gatekeeper of Rivington, much like a hobbit or elf only more human and less ornate but just as magical.

I have flip-flop directional syndrome (FFDS): I know intellectually the direction I need to head in but just as I do, left and right, north and south, up and down, reverse in my head. Which is hallucinogenic at best. Bears come out of bedroom closets and the sky slides down the glass globe.

The air was bite-cold and as I consulted the map to combat FFDS, a dark-haired fellow about my age approached me. "Excuse me, do you know where Rivington is?" In fact I’d just located it on the map. When I pointed it out I saw I needed to go in the same direction.

We walked like Dorothy and the Scarecrow Rivingtonward, he an amiable photographer from San Francisco, who was not accustomed to the cold, and I a budding go-to who was. We had a discussion subliminally about photogenia but really about the weather and the center of the world. We parted ways at Rivington.

After locating my destination, I deviated toward pizza. On the way back, a long-haired lady stopped me: "Do you know where Rivington is?" Certainly and directed her. Back at my destination I stood outside in the cold, finishing my slice of pizza. A blend-in girl wearing too much makeup and not enough clothing by standards of either taste or air temperature put her face in front of mine. "Do you know where Rivington is?"

By this time Rivington was like my belt. Mouth full of cheese and peppers, I pointed. At this point, I decided Jesus, Ganesh, and John Lennon must have been slated for an appearance together on this street of Rivington. And I was the illuminatus offering passage. I suppose there are other illuminati designated for other streets.

Everywhere I go people ask me for directions and rarely do I have a solid idea of where I am or where I am going. Looks can be deceiving. Or not. Somehow we get to where we’re going. Or, we get to where we’re going inevitably because wherever we end up is some configuration of where we intend, or need, to be at the time, receiving images and transforming impulses, camera-eyed and fiery.

heritage, merci oui

2005-11-30T18:31:00.000-05:00

This week I am a PowerPoint presentation factory. Yesterday I did a valium-dance to no avail. Today give me liquor in bottomless flask, please. Where is that zen I conjured? Probably in a pocket of the coat I took off after being barreled by a list of tasks Monday morning before I even reached my office door.

The Good Doctor is about to leave the country for three weeks, and I am the creative, organizing, problem-solving, peace-keeping workhorse. So here I am finally killing my wrist with the mechanical mouse. Let us give thanks for job security and turkeys.

Back from making thankful noise in the Midwest, I am a criminal. I owe Pennsylvania $159 for driving 22 mph over the speed limit. I’d planned on demanding a nice sushi dinner from the bald trooper in exchange for my $159, but I hear that compared to what the ticket would cost in Jersey, I got a bargain. I send submissive thanks to the arbitrary authority-monster for stopping me in his state.

Still a frothing canine bite in my wallet. I believe the law should be amended to accommodate travelers who have been driving for over 10 hours. I was at about the 13-hour mark when the lights flashed behind me, initiating a budding animosity between me and the man.

Predating my life of crime, Thanksgiving in Illinois bore various sides of family, a many-sided gem which sometimes gets lost in the couch and oscillates in value depending on who’s holding and reflecting. Later, a family tipsy happened at The Bar: I had my first Jaeger bomb with my mom and my little brother who is just shy of legal drinking age, after which my dad and I kicked some ass at the pool table.

At a pre-Thanksgiving lunch with some members of my dad’s side of the family whom I barely know, one of them asked my dad: Been deer huntin’? My dad said (paraphrasing): Not lately. The last time I went, I asked myself, "Why am I in this tree?" I could be doing other things. I firmly believe everybody should ask themselves every day, "Why am I in this tree?" Wisdom in a hat.

Accompanying me on the drive was the HWJ Supa Funk 5-disc collection gifted to me by one of my roommates. One of my greatest pleasures is witnessing someone enjoying himself or herself singing and dancing while driving--how infectious! My hope is that I so pleasured many a fellow driver, dancing, pointing, and belting with all the soul I could muster as I sped by.

I don’t know karate, but I know ca-razy, you sexy thing-superfreak-brick house-macho man, I’m bad. I’m bad. Really, really bad. I am infected with these phrases and more. Billie Jean is not my lover, you see, but your love is a supernatural thing working at the car wash. Get up, get down. Anything goes here.

I got caught chair-dancing while editing a manuscript yesterday. The face of neuroscience will never lose its new red flush. Voulez-vous give thanks avec moi for this stunning opportunity?

PAPA

2005-11-21T20:18:00.000-05:00

An experiment while I try to keep my eyes open and focused on what’s physically before me dans l’hopitale—I am a moody writer, not very disciplined. It’s rooted in fear.

The experiment is to try to return from a mood done gone to a drumbeat that loosed a full-body sob wet with tears. At the time of the single drumbeat last week I was raw and receptive thoroughly to whatever might have hit.

Driving home from work a Tanya Donelly CD which I rarely listen to was playing in my car. The song was sparse and into it a drumbeat dropped right core, perfectly placed. I hadn’t noticed it before. An exquisite trigger.

I tried to remember whether Dave Narcizo, the Throwing Muses drummer who is a favorite drummer of mine, played on this album. Then my mind wandered through my drumscape. My grandpa used to play drums in jazz clubs. Until he was dealt a brain aneurysm.

When the aneurysm happened I was about five years old. I was sitting in the living room at my grandparents’ house, probably watching cartoons from a precarious city of cards I’d built for me and some imaginary Smurfs. I thought I heard my grandpa call my name.

I went to the sound and found him lying on his bed, his hand on his head. He’d been calling for Sally, not Sara. He told me he had a headache and to get my grandma. She was outside. I remember wondering why he couldn't take care of it himself if it was just a headache.

After my grandma came in things shifted course. The hospital in our little town was too lo-tech for what had afflicted my grandpa. We went back and forth to the hospital in Springfield for months while doctors doctored.

The aneurysm paralyzed the right side of my grandpa. His two drum sets in the basement occasionally got pounded on by my younger cousins. Years ago I wrote a poem about this and gave it to my grandpa in a frame for Christmas. It may be the only poem I’ve ever written with such direct, disciplined intent.

Hearing the kids pound innocently but recklessly on those drums directly below him while he could no longer play struck me deeply. It was a cruelly physical manifestation of emotional frustration I imagined he might be experiencing. What terrible tantalization.

Driving home last week, I began thinking about the moment, if there was a single moment, when my grandpa realized what had happened to him and what that meant. If it were me, I might have clawed like an animal at the air around me—to rip and roar my way out of that wrong place I’d come to. What an alone and frighteningly stripped moment, when the passion that drives and dresses your identity is suddenly sliced.

Positioned in my own version of that moment—desperately wanting him to know right then that I was trying to connect and understand, feverishly wanting him to not feel alone or sad, neither then or now—tears streamed many and rapidly from my eyes and shook my shoulders. Uncontrollably.

This outpouring baffled me. I didn’t know it was in there, and it put me in a floorless nexus between the now and then. There is a stark moment, that stills and dizzies in the heat of the script forming, which is infinite and tuneless.

The changing of the season into cold compounds things: it's when I worry I haven't done a good enough job letting the people I love know how much I love them, or that I'll never be able to do so satisfactorily for either me or them.

There is tragedy in the aloneness involved both in my grandpa’s position, inexpressible at core, and in my unlightable quest to reach him as profoundly with an all-better-now as I’d like to. Tragedy, though, like everything else has at least one flipside—insight by catharsis for present and future reference.

Surely I'm missing some key clarifying component--it was the storm of unexpected tears that initially took me. Tomorrow I embark on a 13-hour drive to where my family and I will make thankful noise at a table stacked with turkey and stuffing, a wash of orange, brown, and red, wine-tipped.

the prism in the bird pattern

2005-11-17T10:15:00.000-05:00

My office door is shut and Momus is cranked. It is optimal that I isolate in here, cackling maniacally until the bugs (aphids!) work themselves out. Rarely do I jack up the volume while Momus is playing, but once upon a time, just after I bought Forbidden Software Timemachine, I played it in my car and took to pulsing the freeway. Soon I pulled into a gas station, pulled up right next to an African-American gentleman—of the gangsta sort. His car too was throbbing, but with bass and bitches. I bobbed my head, he thrust his hands emphatically at the steering wheel. The effeminate voice fluttering about homosexuality and quoting Keats over a delicate guitar in my car, juxtaposed with attitudinous rhymes, beats, and bling in his car, struck me with seizure trying so hard to compose and withhold. Lesson: lose composure, little one. Go ahead and laugh, even if it means sanitarium or subsequent gang war (e.g., Crossbones Split Rainbows Behind Belle Mead High School—Fierce Prism Ensues!).

In other rivalries, the circadian cycle is barreling across the plains in a direct path toward the Theban cycle. Expect more tornadoes and possibly the first on-land hurricane, in the eye of which a blind king will be exiled to a tower in the desert where the sky rains oil. His hair will grow long into a braid. This is the new tarot and milkmaid prophecy, purchased to replace aberrant augury.

Last night my roommate asked me if there were chemicals in the water. I stood on my head and then wrote a short novel called November 16, 2005. A top spins perpetually in that kitchen.

Eventual peace between historic enemies

2005-11-15T13:10:00.000-05:00

It is now 9:56am. I probably won’t post this until much later, but I was just hit with the fact of the hurricanic wash of multi-tasking and communications that goes on, even within an hour’s time. I woke up at 7am and saw no person for the first hour. Since then, after having listened to news on NPR while driving to work, I have engaged in a text message conversation with my roommate, a text message conversation with another friend, checked all four of my e-mail accounts, glanced quickly at internet news, sent my phone number to a workmate in Ireland who will be in the area soon, sent a fax about an international conference listing to a different workmate in Amsterdam, sent e-mail to an author in Germany, sent e-mail to my favorite card trickster about the kickass Silver Jews CD Tanglewood Numbers, conversed with a girl at work about having the same shirt but in a different color scheme, conversed with a different co-worker about air-guitaring the shit out of the place later on, begun an e-mail dialogue with the aforementioned roommate, read or commented on five blogs including my own, ordered three Christmas gifts online, edited a manuscript in response to which I now have to e-mail the author with a question about an MRI reference which eludes me. I’m certainly missing more, and my boss isn’t even here to speak with. So much happens and so much slips by.

Last night I finished reading A Brief History of the Mind. Near the end, Calvin writes about speed of things happening these days, and about our capacity to react, the gap in between. It isn’t the speed of things that matters so much, but the relative speed, the speed of things occurring relative to our reaction time. The gap if not reconciled could cause doomful collapse, as in "the bigger they are, the harder they fall."

I am attentive to details—actually, sometimes the sort of focus and weight I put on the tiniest of things—involuntarily I consider a brief small-talk chat in passing an event—hinders me. That is, the smallest things, being events, require so much energy that just a couple of conversations in passing, deciding whether or not to have a cup of coffee, opening the door, retrieving the coffee, quickly come to seem like a month's worth of material.

Many quickly passing thoughts are packed into each event. There is a word for this, maybe, neurosis. For people without this "condition," much goes on unnoticed. So-called crazy people aren’t laughing at or talking to nothing; there’s just a lot going on within each nanosecond that needs responding to. Even things that are not really going on under the surface are relegated to under the surface, because not everything can be sanely handled by physical hand and eye.

Soul be made flesh, now I will uncover how the discovery of the brain changed the world.

Other vines twine as follows:
The price of stamps will increase.

Beer is healthy. "Hops used to brew beer may have some health benefits but researchers warn against expecting any significant effect by drinking a few cold ones." That means you must drink steadily until your health improves.

Intersex animals invade the planet! "Scientists have discovered sexually altered fish off the Southern California coast, raising concerns that treated sewage discharged into the ocean contains chemicals that can affect an animal's reproductive system." Fellas, you too could develop ovary tissue in your testes if you continue to play in sewage.

And a headline I can’t keep to myself: Catholic Bishops Turn to Lay Ministers...and ask, How do you like it?

something dead

2005-11-14T14:45:00.000-05:00

—personal luna causes unusual emphasis on insignificant tics—

Eating salad with a spoon is difficult. The food was free, though, so I managed—but not without a co-worker drawing attention—again—to the fact that I was eating a salad instead of pounds of heavy pasta. Next time the lucky commenter will be told I have irritable bowel syndrome and salad is the only thing my bowels can handle lest explosions occur. I just like veggies, man. Concern yourself instead with world peace, curing cancer, your rocky marriage.

—sadness heavy like a planet perpetuates coffee not sweet and light enough—

Last week I bought Max Richter’s The Blue Notebooks and Boards of Canada’s The Campfire Headphase, both perfect in their simultaneity for the mood that had befallen me: in combination peace wound with sublimely sad fluid flare, or vice versa. I’m an eternal child. While I accept occasional sadness and grump in trigonometric waves of mood and humanness, I don’t see why so many people can’t chip through their thick-muck walls of insecurity and misery enough to realize their similar human root plights, instead giving foreground to generally mean demeanors and sandpaper quips. (Yes, this is another way of saying, Can't we all just get along (even if we don't like each other?)

—phrenic porch makes a place for confetti to land when the parade ends—

Meanwhile, the thing having crossed my path four times in two weeks, I checked out of the library and fell in love with Ravel’s "Boléro"—a whole-body fall. A dark walk in the park and arboretum, "Boléro" becoming louder all the way, had me skipping and waving my arms along the winding quiet paths despite the threat of being scolded out after "closing," raped by randy deer, or tormented by colonial ghosts. This will hereafter be my retreat from occasional uglies.

Finally, a quote from my grandma: …he smells terrible this morning - must have rolled in something dead.

back-porch synthesis: the news

2005-11-09T13:23:00.000-05:00

Still percolating like a fish-flavored coffee, stewing between distant peaks, coagulating the finest primordial chili powders in the valley of my abdomen—In the meantime, some news:

New Jersey politics/theater: "Corzine and Forrester, both multimillionaires, spent upward of $70 million to succeed Codey, who assumed the office last year when Democratic incumbent Jim McGreevey resigned over a homosexual affair." For the past four years, I have lived in New Jersey, a balloonish melodrama. That one sentence is at brim with possiblities for general mockery and distasteful television movie plots.

The Great Pharmacist Shortage: Sounds to me like it’s out of hand. Apparently people are "requiring" more drugs these days, whether to manage their heart and/or their mood, and pharmacists are being pressured to help the growing number of prescribed pill-poppers to manage their candies. On one hand, this makes sense; on the other, shouldn’t the doctors prescribing the stuff examine what other drugs their patients are taking? This, of course, could dredge into a shouting about the shrinking presence of doctors seen at "doctor" appointments. On the third hand, should patients be trusted—or be burdened—all doped up, to keep track of their complicated chemical concoctions? There are gaps in this jenga. Meanwhile, budding pharmacists can make $80,000 right out of college, and employees are fighting over them before that time comes.

I’ve begun reading a book called The Brief History of the Mind by William H. Calvin, subtitled "From Apes to Intellect and Beyond." In reference to the mental capacity of early hominids, Calvin writes (paraphrasing since I can’t find the exact quote this minute), "Certain aspects of intelligence don’t have much effect unless you have the attention span to go with them." Attention span, my dwindling one, distracts me, without pun. Have we modern media hounds regressed into the cave, to before anyone had the attention span or planning capacity to think to peer out and see the things creating the shadows on the wall? I hope not. Here is what Flak Magazine has to say about stories in the news.

Several months ago at a rummage sale I stumbled upon a used copy of John Fowles’ The Magus: "…a part-autobiographical account of an Oxford graduate who moves to a Greek island and becomes drawn into a psychological 'godgame'. Complex and disturbing, it became a cult best-seller in the US." I had no idea it was a "cult best-seller" in the States. I have no idea what prompted me to pick it up, but I started reading it right then and there and could hardly stop until I finished. It kicked the wily ass of an apathy toward reading that had grossly infected me. John Fowles died two days ago.

So what do we have here? A homosexual multimillionaire politician doped up on cholesterol meds, Prozac, Viagra, and Valium, flipping channels and laughing inappropriately when he doesn't understand the jokes on every other channel jab at his pomposity and incompetence, while another engaging writer dies. On that note, I have manuscripts to edit.

This just in, from Pitchfork: possible hope for saving our attention spans! The rock opera, the novelistic album. How do I know? My own attention defecit caused me to stray from an editing task to an e-mail message to a totally other editing task and back to this article which I'd started reading earlier but forgot about.

pink hearts, yellow moons, white powder and pep

2005-11-08T15:17:00.000-05:00

While my brain bakes its own bread and stews on the island dotted with fluorescent cocktail umbrellas, here is what my magnifying glass found today:

It was all my e-mail spam come to life in an internet news article—after having come to life in a real live bathroom stall. Cheerleader lesbians. Soon to be in select theaters near you. While I could certainly think of cleaner and more comfortable places to do it—I’m usually too involved in the acrobatics of trying to relieve myself without touching the toilet seat or any of the urine having spattered on it, the floor, or the walls, which means squatting and hovering while keeping my pants and coat and sometimes bag at a safe distance from anything that isn’t me and yanking toilet paper all at the same time to consider it—it’s hot the pert and peppy twentysomethings were so impassioned they had to go pleasure each other right there and then. They certainly braved the Transgress Express. And then topped it off when the gruff one on her way out punched the girl who was waiting to pee.

A city snorting so much cocaine its remnants are in the river, after having passed through bodies and sewer—sounds like a set for Willy Wonka having passed from psychedelia into a speedier 80s binge. Kate Moss gets a mention in this short article for her "enjoyment" of some lines earlier this year, causing her to lose modeling contracts and general oompah respect.

Imagine if Kate Moss were photographed snorting cocaine while having sex with a cheerleader in a bathroom stall. O what we would have to talk about over tea when we should instead consider more serious topics like "intellidating."

the black mint parade: anise reigns

2005-11-04T12:11:00.000-05:00

Rarely do I buy Altoids, but if I do I buy wintergreen, the green pack. Before wintergreen arrived I prayed for it. I prefer it for making my breath kinder, though the red pack is fine by me if for no other reason than that it is the original. There is also the goldish pack. Ginger. Different, but interesting. I haven’t bought any but I support it. Then came the black pack and I shuddered a full-body shudder. With the same furrowed eyebrows with which I question black licorice gum I questioned this black licorice "mint". Who eats these foul nuggets?

Last night I spoke with such a person, and my search for what I thought could only be a mythical creature ended. There is someone out there to hold this position. It’s reassuring and I commend both his bravery and capacity for the dark side.

Coincidentally, because that’s the way the train treks around the galaxy’s big black hole, I’d had an e-mail dialogue about anise earlier in the day. I have uncleverly dubbed the coffee where I work "the worst coffee." Because it is. It is, however, free, so sometimes I compromise. Last week I compromised on a day when my olfactory sense had assumed supernatural prowess. I smelled watermelon on the way to work, I smelled food grease in the journals. I smelled and tasted black licorice in the worst coffee, nullifying the previous version, because this was the worst coffee.

There is a taut rope tugging and warring between me and this black flavor. I like to think I’m a superhero and that I can conquer anything. A little veni, vidi, vici in one swift bang. So it bothers me that this flavor could hold me down like some malicious Jupiter, causing my body to pucker and punch at just a sniff.

When I was in high school, my best friend and I regularly went driving on the backroads. We each bought gargantuan fountain sodas and a bag of candy. Usually jelly beans for me. I was careful not to eat the black ones, but because it was dark I occasionally overlooked one. Purple is close to black in the dark. I tossed many a black jelly bean, some partially chewed, out the window. Finally, it occurred to me that I hadn’t even tried to like them. Periodically for the next several years I tried to eat the black jelly bean. Every time: full-body shudder.

When I was in college: ouzo. I had decided to go for a run for the second time in six years. About half a mile in I thought I might collapse with a sharp pain in my side. By the time I got home I could barely stand upright. The boyfriend I was living with had bought some ouzo and rented Philosophy in the Bedroom, based on Marquis de Sade’s writing. Holding the bottle he said, It’s Greek. You’ll like it. I was a classics major and had just begun learning ancient Greek. He pressed play.

Then he opened the bottle and a cloud of full-body shudder came out. I did my damnedest, sipping it though I still felt beaten by the run. I wanted to conquer and drink like a Greek. Romantics, ideals. However, the scent made the whole room throb (which persisted for the next few days, after which I forbade ouzo to ever enter the apartment again). My body a lost-sea boat, I fell into hallucinatory fever. Turned out I had a kidney infection and was subsequently very ill for the next week—all twined up in a Marquis de Sade attempt to get exercise and master anise. Black memory path.

The flavor still beats me. Anise and I have an ongoing air hockey tournament where I continue to allow the final disc in the door instead of bolting upright like a Hercules. I don’t expect to enjoy the black jelly bean, the ouzo, the secret anise, but I’d like not to fall to its sword every time. I know. I'm mixing metaphors in the dark.

People ask me why the self-torture. Someone suggested that the body naturally rejects things that will not be good for it. This makes sense. Were I to enjoy a basket of black jelly beans with a bottle of ouzo possibly my insides would turn to tar and death. My body indeed has warned me and I do not listen. It must be absolute masochism, some purely human drive. It’s why I’m not a god or superhero.

I think I have written about part of this before. Lunacy sets in. Forgive me.

Find out more about potential black death by foul spice:

Licorice International
Organic black licorice
A short outline and history from the encyclopedia of spices
Botanical, folk-lore and herbal information
FDA advisory on star anise teas
Altoids Curiosity Shoppe

Take thine enemy's name and conquer!

Best regards,
Anise Tachibana
Northern Front Licorice Pirate

Black sites in the invisible universe of tortured torturers

2005-11-02T09:16:00.000-05:00

The words "secret prison" caught my eye. Much as "hidden tunnel" or "enchanted forest" might.

"Host countries have signed the U.N. Convention Against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment, as has the United States. Yet CIA interrogators in the overseas sites are permitted to use the CIA's approved 'Enhanced Interrogation Techniques,' some of which are prohibited by the U.N. convention and by U.S. military law. They include tactics such as 'waterboarding,' in which a prisoner is made to believe he or she is drowning."

Sounds like a terrible blockbuster movie that Generation Extreme and the aging lazy might slather their faces in popcorn butter to, may you pardon my biting morning judgment. Only it’s real. When something that seems like movie material presents itself as real, I generally have a swollen moment of disbelief—head bobbling, eyes lose focus and drool spills down my chin, followed by a uniquely child-like excitement.

As I giddily read the paragraph above, I glanced directly to the right of it to find a list of most popular articles at the moment:

CIA holds terror suspects in secret prisons
Harry Reid sparks a dramatic Senate standoff
Pentagon: Top al-Qaida operative escaped
Will Holmes make Cruise sign a prenup?
Bandleader Skitch Henderson dies at 87

She damn well better. What with the lunacy exhibited in his recent basely pedantic monologues on scientology and the administration of pharmaceuticals to people in the grips of psychological challenge. Loose cannon. Risky business. (Forgive me my pun. May I wedge my nose in the corner and dance like a Munchkin.) It’s nice to see such diversity of interests among internet travelers. Yeah.

Here’s a quickie from Wikipedia on waterboarding.

Apparently the CIA felt they should keep terrorists alive for interrogation rather than assassinate, as the CIA’s Counterterrorist Center suggested. "Some [CIA] officers worried that the CIA would not be very adept at assassination. ‘We'd probably shoot ourselves,’ another former senior CIA official said."

I thought it was only ok for low-profile people to loose-lip such faithlessness. Isn’t that the stock predictable talk of workplace-damners? "You can always count on This Place to screw up even a cup of coffee." Or: "We’d probably shoot ourselves." Here the castle crumbles and Jill climbs the mountain on her own. "Could the Zambians be trusted with such a secret?" I ask myself this at every crossroads—particularly at a trivia, where small-talk feeds the great protective phallus.*

*I tried to find a nice link explaining the way that stone phalli were erected (why not ride out syndrome: pun?) at crossroads in ancients cities to ward off evil; however, searching phallus at work proves difficult. Risky business. The trade-off: I learned the root of "trivia".

I love you—What’s your name?

2005-10-31T15:12:00.000-05:00

Yeah, I’m having another epiphanic moment about a band adore: Sonic Youth. Listening to Dirty right now, the first CD of the Deluxe 2-disc edition, wishing I’d brought the second disc for the rehearsal recording of "Wish Fulfillment". The irony.

A while back, I warbled on about the ecstatic degree to which all sounds Kristin Hersh affect me from the inside through to the outside. Sonic Youth is different. The twine is less emotional and seems to access a part of me I'm tuned more distantly to. Dirty was the first album I bought. Then I pedaled backward to buy the earlies and then forward to march in time to new releases as they came.

A high school boyfriend, the bad-boy skater that my whole family took grim issue with (so he was socially awkward, deviant and loved Nazi décor…) introduced me to Sonic Youth, and his older brother borrowed my tape so he could hear them before seeing them in Champaign, IL. I’m not sure why I didn’t go to that show too, since I provided the tunes. Perhaps I was broke or working hard at the salt mines that night.

Which reminds me of seeing a show with this older brother when I was dating a different skater—antithetically, a true and congenial person—who happened to be his friend. They drove down to where I was going to college—he, the congenial skater boyfriend and a small crew of people I knew on the outskirts of some loose-knit high school dress. Turned out he’d been very sick the week before, and that very day had gone to the doctor to get himself checked out. When the doctor said, we need to do a spinal tap, he told the doctor he had plans that night and then drove, high with fever.

When he and the gang picked me up, one of my favorite albums of all time was playing in the car: Kristin Hersh’s Hips and Makers. We were going to see Tori Amos. For the record, I like her second and third albums ok; after that, ehh, and I’m not one of those people who only likes early stuff. As a person, she just annoys the piss out of me—we had a falling out and will no longer be doing each other’s laundry or sharing Chapstick—which trickles thickly, and her later music simply does not appeal to me. Perhaps it was I who changed.

So, Sonic Youth. This band doesn’t affect me from the inside out on a personal level like Kristin Hersh does, but there’s something in their noises that reverberates keenly with something in my brain. Even when it’s purely dissonance. Plus, Kim Gordon’s voice is sexy even when she’s hollering. Which apparently is conducive to pounding a paper out of my head. And the lyrics, even when I think I haven’t discerned them (my hearing is quirky), stick to my brain.

I haven’t put much effort into connecting myself to Sonic Youth, not as with Kristin Hersh—play her music daily, have put one of her songs on about every mix I’ve ever made, go to as many of her shows as possible. While I’ve bought a fair number of Sonic Youth albums—Evol, Sister, Daydream Nation, Goo, Dirty I know the best (I'm missing a couple of early earlies) but even the newer ones which I haven’t listened to as much stick, I’ve only seen them once and only listen to them here and there. Each time I hear any of it, though, it casts a spell: I seep into a zone and truck on, bound in stellar vigorous focus.

Sonic Youth, my own neurofeedback machine.

While I wrote papers during college, I listened to Sonic Youth albums on repeat. It didn’t matter which one. Sometimes I filled my 5-disc changer and let them all play through. The music somehow geared my brain perfectly for the sort of intellectual mapping and creative upheaval it took for me to construct a paper. Memories of pages of drafts fanning across my bedroom, behind my computer chair (old-ass kitchen chair), hang strong with a soundtrack in the attic.

(Seven) I hear this in my sleep. One little word uttered between songs.

I love you I love you I love you What’s your name? I bet this happens a lot to people who lose focus on the heart of things displaced by a shiny surface.

harvest a living, clean an attic

2005-10-26T11:08:00.000-04:00

A whole corpse—and I hate to put it so flatly, he said—goes for about $100,000. Fingers go for about $15 each, sexual organs about $125 each. This, upon starting my car to drive to work this morning. Turns out—I just caught the end of it—a group of businessmen based in Brooklyn were arrested for selling body parts in the New York area. One of the deft crew is an ex-dental surgeon having given up his license after being arrested for using cocaine and other narcotics. Another "has interests in real estate, poultry, corpse transportation, and funeral homes." Beware: this one may be in on the spread of the bird flu. Why else dabble in both corpses and poultry?

The radio then offered update on the kids selling candy on New York subway cars. In yesteryore, the youth claimed to be selling M&Ms to fund their obviously phony basketball team. Now they hinge on honesty: they sell candy to keep themselves out of trouble. As one young vendor put it, it just became unbelievable that there were that many basketball teams needing help getting uniforms year-round. Furthermore, the reason you hear the same script from most is that some veterans have other kids selling for them. (This is also why those assholes at Borders ask you if you want to join their mailing list every time you make a purchase.) One boy has been peddling empty calories for nine years. He began when he was 12; do the math. He makes enough money--and has been making enough money--to pay rent for his own New York apartment.

Does anybody have access to a neurofeedback machine? I’ve been doing some research and I’d like to learn to lower my theta waves to temper me out like a good valium would. However, a good valium apparently caused rapper DMX to impersonate a federal agent and crash through a parking gate at JFK International Airport. Probably just idiosyncratic, but one must be careful popping pills and tampering with brain waves.

Very busy today. Before this began, though--and before I got in the car and learned the price of dead body parts--I walked out my back door (we use the back door as the door at my house) and saw a sky like a sky I’d never seen before. Despite having in the past stayed up all night and seen the sun rise, I don’t recall ever having walked out under a sky at this particular juncture between night and day. Dark purple clouds were pulling slowly back showing a light yellow sky, and a shade stilled over the cars and grass with the highest definition clarity, an open fulcrum moment out of which anything could turn in any way. For a minute I stood in it.

all that and a snapdragon scaled the wall

2005-10-21T14:12:00.000-04:00

Berlin has returned me to New Jersey a changed woman: Sara Einsteinuberguten is full of yua (see below) and utter respect for the public transportation system in this fine city. The U-Bahn is clean and efficient. Electronic signs indicate which train is coming and how many minutes before it arrives. Same with buses, only, better yet, the electronic sign indicates the next five buses that will arrive and how many minutes until arrival. What a boon.

Next, I fell face-first in love with the little men on the stoplights: Ampelmann.

Neither sausages nor saurkraut found hearth in my belly. Rather in the same day I ate Italian food twice. It’s rare that I order Italian food out at all. Frankly, I don't know what got into me. Sara da Vinci Rossellini perhaps. At a fancy place with fancy courses I ordered an "in-between" meal of spinach-smoked cheese-various pepper lasagna that was quite keen. Apparently I transgressed by ordering an "in-between" as my meal. Pardon me. I’m freaky. You should see what I do with dessert wine.

Some of you may know of my rich affection for cranes, as in the machinery. Cranes in Berlin were at every turn of the eye. I was in regal phallic-machine heaven. It took gritted teeth and much might to not take a picture of every one of the handsome stretches. I knew there was more to Berlin than cranes. I extended myself and explored.

Perhaps more later on my visit to the fine city. In the meantime, is everything alive and your thumb aching making you want to bling disrespect in the face of your co-workers? Tinctures appear in the following yips:

Do you have BlackBerry Thumb? Earlier this year, the American Society of Hand Therapists issued a consumer alert, warning users of small electronic gadgets that heavy thumb use could lead to painful swelling of the sheath around the tendons in the thumb. Did anybody read or see Even Cowgirls Get the Blues? Thumbs up.

From Rob Brezny: Yua is a term the Yupiit people of Alaska use for the spirit that inhabits all things, both animate and inanimate. A rock, for instance, has as much yua as a caribou, spruce tree, or human being, and therefore merits the same measure of compassion. If a Yupiit goes out for a hike and spies a chunk of wood lying on a frozen river bank, she might pick it up and put it in a new position, allowing its previously hidden side to get fresh air and sun. In this way, she would bestow a blessing on the wood's yua. (Source: Earl Shorris, "The Last Word," *Harper's,* August 2000) I am full of yua. You are full of yua. Beloved Ampelmann is full of yua. Let's have Hefeweizen and frolic.

Now for some imperatives:

Put on your thinking cap and reconcile the following headline and final sentence of its article. Headline: Dead man gets parking ticket. Final sentence: It is simply a case of the parking officer not noticing. Simply, I suppose. Like mom always told me, Shit happens.

Fuck business casual. While baseball bobbles an issue as critical as the health of its players and the game's image, pro basketball is focused on the players' off-the-court attire....NBA Commissioner David Stern issued a memo Monday banning retro jerseys, any headgear and ‘bling,’ the players' slang term for the gaudy chains, pendants and medallions favored by some. 'Business casual' will be required when players appear in public as a representative of the sport.

Note the concise definition of "bling". From here on out I'm wearing bling (e.g., gaudy as I can manage and medallions that only some basketball players favor) both outside and during basketball games, white and open-toed shoes past Labor Day, and I'm going to form cleavage in the office with my denim bustier. One who refuses to be a sheep must take a stand.

That said, I've developed orange rapport with Berlin. We will hang together again.

canals in position

2005-10-13T14:32:00.000-04:00

The gods are drooling like mad upon this land. The canal has risen and mudded.

Chewbacca is about to become an American citizen. He has this to say about his new coat: "I am feeling very happy about it....Whatever people say about America, it is still one of the most wonderful countries in the world, despite the politics, religion and everything else that goes on."

And everything else that goes on.

The flu is one of the most wonderful conditions in the world despite the fever, chills, achiness, and everything else that goes on.

Did you hear about the potential mercy killings in a New Orleans hospital (German: Krankenhaus) three days after Katrina hit our country's mouth? It's difficult to offer an opinion without more information on hospital capacity, condition of the patients, contacts with relatives, et cetera, and without having been there myself. I'm curious what will come of this.

Last Saturday night I helped Melissa celebrate her birthday. Here are pictures to prove it. The gods were drooling all over the land then too. Like the carefree child (some might translate: dumbass) I can be, I ran without looking through the swamped up yard, saturating my shoes, socks, and the lower half of my corduroys. Melissa caught me on film, wearing her socks, her boyfriend's Garfield slippers, pants rolled up, and eating ice cream cake, with my new plastic ninja knife sitting at my side. By the way, Melissa is the maker of the HANDJOB t-shirt referenced in a previous post.

Finally. Saturday afternoon I ship out for my first work-related international voyage: Berlin. I won't be there long enough to do much sightseeing, but if anyone out there knows of anything I must see, do tell. Lonely Planet tells me: The East German government built the Berlin Wall to try and stop its citizens escaping into West Berlin. In the time it was up (1961-1989) over 5000 people tried to climb over it; 3200 were captured, 191 were killed. I wonder why this "factoid", over all others, was selected to be on the opening page. I am left with the words "captured" and "killed". Welcome and happy travels.

gezundheit: a fairy tale's trail of vomit

2005-10-12T14:33:00.000-04:00

Today I am crotchety and people disgust me. I assume that like gas this too will pass. I am generally a very tolerant person.

Quite contrary, Mary broke her lamb in two. Then she had two broken lambs. The day went on.

Four pieces of chocolate cause buzzing in distended heads. There is no doorbell.

Idiots continue to complain while coffee cake rises in the streets. A scarf is heard from somewhere.

My bloody valentine induces appropriate narcosis to coat a day’s bleak jewelry. Save the stomach lining.

If you were a never-nude, what would you wear?

Free from the shackles of a report written in twisted English and statistical code, the girl asked to be hosed down with champagne.

And thus the midget suns were saved once again from war.

grab the brownish area by its points

2005-10-11T10:00:00.000-04:00

Merging wasn’t the right word for it. More like seeping into highway traffic. So I idled up the merge lane and finally put my left signal on, where a van gave me no opening. Ok, I sped up to the end of the merge lane. Enough space to edge my nose in. Just when a car’s length opened, the van’s driver—instead of letting me in as the merge lane ended—stepped on her accelerator. I threw the steering wheel right and drove into shoulder. Saved from untimely death.

"Fucker," I pronounced. Then I got behind her and did what I rarely do. I honked. She needed scolding.

Within seconds I moved left into the fast lane, bearing angry and sad thoughts about humankind, wondering why they continue to be assholes, wondering if generally the asshole bar had been raised or if I have lived in Jersey long enough to have melded into a brasher and more assholing culture than I was born into.

A cop was in my rearview. I wondered what he knew. Lights flashed in my rearview. Fuck. Naturally I was being pulled over for having angry thoughts. Rarely do I act out angrily. Almost every time, though, something nasty happens in return. Karma’s way of telling me to calm the fuck down, that nothing matters. Finding a spot to stop took a stretch. Siren went whoop-whoop. Cop ran me off the left side of the road and drove on.

And then I went to work where a pile of dirty-stimulant tasks buzzed on my desk. Black coffee.

Last night I watched the first four episodes of Arrested Development with my roommates. After the third episode I took off my sweatshirt, then looked down and saw I was wearing my kelly green t-shirt with "HANDJOB" spelled out in white letters across the front. Further down I remembered I was wearing white socks with "I (heart symbol) BOYS" spelled out in red glitter around the ankle. My roommates are male and the most convenient set-up for DVD-viewing in the house is on the one roommate's bed. The way things come together is by some black comic magic corn.

Until last Friday evening I had thought I was composed of Swiss, German, and Native American blood. Last Friday my mom told me I have a great-great-great-great grandmother who shares my first and middle names (though she’s a Sara with an ‘h’). She wore long blazing red hair and was Irish as can be.

My mom also informed me that it’s possible we’ve also got black blood in our lines. Apparently she’s got keloid scars, which is most common to people with dark skin. Her doctor had asked her about our roots. As yet, this is inconclusive.

I have pale skin, dark brown hair, and dark brown eyes, relatively high cheek bones, moderately slim and long nose, and somewhat thin lips (unless I’ve just eaten Chinese food containing a large dose of the devil nectar*). I’m about the whitest person I know. Hear me say, Word. It’s as stiff as the stuffy doctor’s collar. Ax my friends.

The Irish could explain my affinity for Guinness and more Guinness, and why I keep dying my hair red. The latter could explain my affinity for James Brown, my pulsing inner desire to be a funky black man. I have long had a dream of making an instructional video: How-to-write-your-own-James-Brown-song.

Sometimes you have to grab the brownish area by its points and run with it. That’s why, for writing purposes, I’m changing my name to Handjob Whiskey Jackson. Find my books in your local corporate bookstore, either in African-American lit. or gender studies. Find my videos, of course, in foreign self-help films. There is space enough to edge in anywhere.

*devil nectar: really fucking hot sauce at New Kahala in Carbondale, Illinois; trying to impress my dad once I dumped a few heaping tablespoons on my already spicy garlic chicken, my lips swelled up for four hours.

Please notice when you are happy

2005-10-07T12:28:00.000-04:00

It’s more difficult than it seems like it would be. But try it on and love the way it makes your ass look anyway.

Go here to read an article on Kurt Vonnegut, from which the title for this post comes. Difficult to choose, for he is a quotable man who by the way grew up in my very own Midwestern United States. He also thinks our president is a "twit" and that people in general are "too cheap and lazy".

While I’m promoting deserving figures, go here. First, if you haven’t done so yet, play around in the web site, drool a little because you’re so enchanted, put the good music in your ears, and then, because your senses are at brim with pleasure, purchase the brand new Ten Songs by the Teenage Prayers so that this goodness will never end. I’m not kidding. I don’t know how to.

Are you happy now? I am happy. Darn sleepy today, but happy, perhaps more with knowledge from the future than with the present circumscription, but happy nonetheless, for I have been visited by swift and knowing aphids donning neon visors and trenchcoats.

the kidney that came out accidentally, wearing a tutu

2005-10-05T15:01:00.000-04:00

In body he is here.

It came out accidentally. The good doctor has been busy. It was my way of saying, he’s in that office but don’t bother him. But it could have sounded like I was hinting he had dropped off the deep end, neurons askew in some red-soup cyclone. Or it could have sounded like I myself had gone off that very deep end. Like I’d seen the good doctor’s spirit wrangle out of his tiny henna body. There are many ways to say the same thing and many things can be said in the same way. Gödel, dear, it is a wonder we ever understand each other.

Please find below today’s minutes astutely recorded by Aphrodite, the brazen secretary for this organization of atoms into the sara that be:

There is much bustle and bump in the office here on hump day, residents being interviewed, doctors selling Girl Scout cookies, jerks with jerk agendas, and a whole lot of Roy Orbison going down in my office.

Give me coffee or give me death. Give me elephants on parade. They don’t know how dirty my hair is. They don’t care. There is a grammatical term for this groundhog oscillation. We are dancing, yes we are.

There was zero visibility on my way to work. An angel is in my cleavage (if I lean forward and squeeze). Wine-dark muse, bring on the pastries. Bill Murray is my brother.

Go here to see the best damn photo of a cabbage I never expected to see. I thought it was a fish. It might be a fish. There might be a fish on my shoulder. I’m too busy to look.

For some real fish, wriggle your fins over here.

Yesterday, after the library chased me out of the building by hurling papayas and charcoal at my head, I purchased Everything Is Illuminated so that I can read it before I see it. I don’t want to know anything about either the book or the movie, mind you. Why is everyone so freaked out by Elijah Wood’s eyes? Maybe I get off on feeling threatened. Maybe I like peanut butter on my thigh.

Last night, because the Chinese restaurant screwed us out of some rice, I played Operation with my roommates: I lay down on the kitchen table and let them slice into me with cleavers. When they touched on an organ I wanted to keep I buzzed sternly, like a rooster at the crack of sun.

Let it be known that Bill Murray is not really my brother; however, I would like to somersault down a steep verdant hill on a brisk day tipping into autumn with him. I would admit to him then that I do in fact think he is my father. In mind but not in body.

meet my pet skate, my tidy pharaoh

2005-09-30T14:17:00.000-04:00

Yesterday I scavenged Patti Smith files and crammed her into my ears and head. That was before and during work. After work, I crammed her into my ears some more on the drive to get my hair cut and dyed. An hour later, freshly dark dark brown, my hair went under the choppers. In the end, the magician said, I’ve given you Patti Smith hair. Do be careful what you listen to. It will become you. This morning The Good Doctor walked into my office and told me I now look like Cleopatra. A short evening in a hair salon turned me into the visual progeny of Cleopatra and Patti Smith. Do you see the asp at my breast as I belt poetically into the microphone? Now this is my generation. Mark Antony—more grapes! And, no, you won’t be going back to Rome. Instead we both will live infinitely shrouded in pop culture mystery and embellishment.

Today is busy with sleep and headache. Not mine but rather that of foreign tongue and medical expertise up for battle with my red pen. I continue to be thankful I have not caught exploding head syndrome. Sometimes a pair of roller skates would come in handy.

simultaneity in occasional torn flavor

2005-09-29T14:47:00.000-04:00

This morning Patti Smith tagged my ears. I’d listened to her only on the skirts and had never researched. She joined me on my drive to work and it did us both well I think.

Timing is off but oh well. Gumption of some off-key kind is in the air. Chill is in the air. And rain, from what I hear, but that just happens sometimes, despite the attitude of many weathercasters and the general populous who act like rain means another day ruined. "Just our luck," they chant in unison. That is why I lock myself in my office with James Brown some days. Please, folks, don’t be so arrogant to think that rain means yet another bad day for you you you. It’s natural and quite good for rain to fall from the sky. And don’t complain when the sun is too bright either. Instead sit and spin in the cycle of all cycles, life itself. Why when people don’t know how else to respond do they fall to complaining about whatever’s happening in the immediate? That ease into laze makes me want to drink cocktails with umbrellas and juggle jelly beans with my tongue.

With some time on my hands I did some research. Here is one biography on Patti Smith, and here is another from the same web site. Apparently she simultaneously grew up in two different New Jersey towns after having been born in Chicago.

And speaking of Illinois, a while back there was talk of school mascots of mal flavor. Today I came across an article at Flak Magazine about mascot battles, the vie for some kind of correctness in, upon some standard, respecting Native Americans. Pay close attention to the dates: The school's [Lemont’s] teams, since 1969, have been called the Injuns. It was a name change from the Indians, made, with little fanfare, to separate Lemont from all the other Indian-nicknamed teams in Chicagoland. (Injuns actually was not the most vile nickname in Illinois school history. It took Pekin High until 1981 to get rid of its nickname Chinks.) 1981, my mouth is agape. It took that long. Illinois is my home state; however, many people assume I am European. Please forgive me. In the end, we all live in a yellow submarine. The final paragraph is a chuckle.

Furthermore, read this article on appropriate music for the bank atmosphere and this article as per Slate on comically (sort of) poor musical choices for commercials.

Finally, make sure the trunk of your elephant faces the light. A guru in a white blouse just passed by my office door and told me that was good luck. If that doesn’t work, though, learn to balance an umbrella on your head and you should be set for life. Whether the sky is raining, the sun shining, or you’re getting pulled over by a cop wearing a middle-age mustache.

any garden is possible

2005-09-27T09:45:00.000-04:00

Anything is possible, he said.

And the Dalai Lama picked at his ear.

It’s encouraging to know that two habits of mine are put in action by two wise men.

This morning The Good Doctor returned after a few days away. I arrived as he was about to disappear into the restroom. He looked weary and gave me a brief rundown of a frantic past evening and more frantic morning, which was about to plunge him anchorless into a long conference call.

Given the latter, I needed to ask right then. "Would it be possible for me to work half a day tomorrow?" Not the best timing, I know, but it looked like he might be occupied for the rest of the day and I had a situation. At the climax of Murphy’s law, he said, "Anything is possible." And disappeared.

Sunday one friend invited me to see the Dalai Lama in the morning; another friend invited me to a sex toy party in the afternoon. Back to back.

The Dalai Lama gave a lecture at Rutgers football stadium. An honorary doctorate degree in human letters was conferred upon him, and he spoke about peace, war, and reconciliation. Monks chanted and a flute and percussion concerto followed. The stadium was packed. In red robes he arrived on stage, put his hands together and bowed. Then he waved everyone to sit down, which he then did stage-front.

Tibetan syllables resounded from the microphone, and is-it-all-going-to-be-in-Tibetan flushed across the faces in the stadium. The translator translated, then the Dalai Lama continued mostly in English. When he didn’t know a word or a phrase he shifted between the two languages and the translator translated.

He spoke about the negativity of anger and jealousy and the way those emotions cause people to act in ways they themselves don’t want to. He said that he too experiences anger and jealousy. For example, he said, I feel jealous about the beautiful English this man is able to speak. A smile came and his robed shoulders jiggled with laughter.

Early in the lecture he said he hoped that what he had to say would not be boring. At least, he said, the weather was nice—not too hot, not too cold. This was true. Later he apologized if anybody was offended by his informal manner of speaking to us, but it was the way he preferred, as if we were all old friends. He acknowledged that most of us were not as old of friends as others. His shoulders jiggled some more.

Let’s celebrate that. Formality is a language I don’t understand very well. I understand being polite and showing respect, but I don’t understand why it is ever preferable to cause uncomfortable distance in a situation for the sake of some supposed superhierarchical formality. As far as I can tell, it’s averse to living.

Because the event was in a football stadium, the Dalai Lama was barely visible on the stage to people not sitting directly in front, so he was projected onto a big screen. At one point during his talk, he put his finger in his ear, in one of the top folds, and began digging. Then he looked at his finger, speaking on.

I do this very thing, the ear. I don’t know why. It’s a habit like other people twirl their hair or pick their fingernails. People on the bleachers noticed him doing it, but he didn’t notice. Or he didn’t care. I felt deep partnership in the deep quest.

By visiting the link above, you can see a video of the lecture. I haven’t yet, so I don’t know if the whole thing is there or not, but because it may be I’ll leave the talk of peace, war, compassion, reconciliation, and the need for large-scale lifestyle changes to him.

As I drove away from New Brunswick, I called my mom. I had forgotten to tell her I was going to see the Dalai Lama and a spread of sex toys. "I’ve got you on speaker phone," she said. "Your dad is here, too." Ok. I told them both.

I had woken up at 7am. It was then nearly 2pm, and I hadn’t yet eaten. I was well on my way to enlightenment. My vision was transcendent and I couldn’t feel the difference between my hands, the steering wheel, or the air coming in through the moon roof.

At the party, wine and good snack was consumed and sex toys were sold like Tupperware. Vibrator technology has come much further than I knew. A few were shaped like elephants. I am fond of elephants. So fond that a sleep doctor and I are going to start an elephant polo team. As soon as our WEPA membership goes through.

Never before had my tongue tasted so many ointments to be rubbed on the body. By the end of the party my mouth was wine-dark, lips tingling with banana-flavored nipple sensitizer, and I smelled like a pheromonic garden of infinite delight.

Listen to music, cover your wang

2005-09-19T14:12:00.000-04:00

Right here, Kristin Hersh sheds light on corporate monkeys and makes a lucid analogy in support of spreading music to ears. I haven’t yet read the NPR article she links because, for reasons unknown to me, I am not allowed to access NPR at work. National Porn Radio? I don’t know. I can access all sorts of blogs referencing all manner of crass, but a web site offering me world and national news and culture is off limits.

Later on I found this comic at Flak Magazine (linked at side). Finally I beat myself silly. There is much work to do and I was taking every spare second going back to these comics. It would be an unfortunate instance were slippage to occur. Dear Dr., Please revise your above-titled article on the relationship between hypersomnolence and your astronaut sex-ninja wife. This is the one that tipped me over. Read this if you’re feeling dirty, which apparently I was. Read this if you’re a twisted motherfucker, which apparently I am, though I shan’t boast. Join the fun. Eat thousand-year-old black eggs that smell like concentrated cat urine and taste like nothing comparable to anything. Transcend this world.

During the weekend, my roommate and I drove to get bagels with lox and cream cheese. For a third time, I was allowed into the bagel place at closing time, after all bagels had been put away. I don’t know why this is; I didn’t even get pushy or pull out my pistol. Afterward—I the driver and he the passenger—headed toward K-Mart for panties and wrapping paper. Part-way there—at 40 mph—my roommate, having decided he wasn’t interested in either panties or paper, opened the door and dropped out. In the rearview mirror I watched him bounce head over ass down the road. Turns out he’s made of rubber.

experiment boomerang

2005-09-16T16:46:00.000-04:00

Perusing a feature article at Pitchfork yesterday I came across the name Simon Reynolds, which a) I’d been sporadically trying to remember and b) reminds me of a tale from Iowa City.

I’d been compulsively reading Reynolds’ book Generation Ecstasy: Into the World of Techno and Rave Culture in America. One day I was reading it at a coffeehouse. A fiction writer from my grad department saw me and said with nostrils flared, "You’re actually reading that?"

Yes, I was actually reading it and it’s fucking brilliant. The book contains a great passage on the developmental history of electronic music and culture, which you could lay over just about any history or relationship and it would apply, the way a new thing comes to be, escalates, explodes, degenerates from what it was and finally transforms into something else and/or dies, or doesn't. Which is why I want the book back. Here is how it left me:

I had stepped outside my apartment, a converted garage tacked onto the back of a house where four failed frat boys lived—the front of my home was a paint-chipping garage door, for a cigarette. From the side of the house that I couldn’t see I heard a child crying, a painfully sad sound at any time. Within seconds two young guys, one of them pushing a stroller, emerged from around the side of the house. The little girl had to use the bathroom and it was breaking my heart. I toyed with the idea of letting strangers into my home.

The guy pushing the stroller, who turned out to be the girl’s father, was quasi-hippie, with shortish but straggly blond hair, loose unkempt clothing, my age or younger. The other guy was full-on hippie, or something, infinite layers of brown and pilgrim-pattern clothing, long nature-brown hair, au naturale shoes, au naturale scent. As the girl cried more, they glanced in my direction.

"She can use my bathroom," I said to them.

They walked toward the door as I put my cigarette out on my square-foot-sized "patio" and we went inside. My garage-home was set up like this: living room-kitchen downstairs, bedroom-bathroom upstairs. The fact that there is an upstairs and downstairs is deceptive. Each section was the size of a walk-in closet.

I sent the father and girl upstairs to the bathroom. I stayed downstairs with the full-on hippie. Unable to be in both places at once, I became a touch worried about my belongings. What if this was one of those scams? There was the right number of people to pull off the distraction scheme—and with the little girl. Some people are not beyond using children for devious means. I engaged in conversation with…I’ll call him Jesus from here on out.

He asked me about my spiritual orientation, which I tried to describe without betraying anything sacred with a total stranger. He quickly told me he’d achieved enlightenment by reading the Holy Bible. He took his bible out of his bag to use as a visual aid and carried on. The conversation shifted from a philosophical discussion about belief to a zealot monologue aiming to convert me to Jesus-hood.

I began to become confrontational. I am truly tolerant—I like to learn what people think and why, but such blind absolutist pushiness lights a relentless fire in my belly.

About this time, I heard the shaggy father upstairs. At first I thought he was talking to his daughter, and then I recognized the words he spoke. They were from a poem I’d just been working on. I raced upstairs to find him holding the stack of poems I'd left on my bed. "That’s my poem," I said. "I hope you don’t mind," he said, "I like it." What does it matter, I thought. "It’s ok," I told him. "Thanks."

"What’s this?" he asked. The guy was hyperactive--"what's that?", a little twitchy, and a little more interested in my things and my life than I preferred. I wondered what Jesus was doing downstairs. "That’s a book on the development of electronic music," I answered. "I just finished it. It’s good."

He expressed interest in it and then his little girl finished her business. I led them downstairs. Who knew what Jesus was doing with his bible and bag. We stood there talking while the little girl fidgeted. I had a thought.

I tend to become what I believe to be too attached to material things; i.e., I am a packrat. To see if I could, I offered the book to the hippie dad. After all, it had been given to me by someone else. How romantic to pass it on into the world. I doubted he could afford much and probably would appreciate it. He thanked me and they left, Jesus, dad, the girl, and the book.

I never saw Jesus again, but I did see Hippie dad a couple of times around town with his daughter. And once he stopped back by my apartment. He brought with him a few books on poetry and language that he’d gotten from some used-book sale. He'd brought them to give to me. I was touched and flattered and I felt a little ugly for being so suspicious of him. I hope he and his daughter are doing well.

Where I began: Simon Reynolds. I read part of another book of his while standing in a used bookstore in Minneapolis, Blissed Out: The Raptures of Rock, but I had no money to buy it. (I still don't. Checking on Amazon, even a used copy is $49.50). I’d like this one too—he referenced Throwing Muses, alongside the Pixies, as an influential rock band, a reference I don't see often enough. Here is his web site, centered around his most recent book. Here is his blog.

When orangoutangs explode into sunlight…*

2005-09-15T11:51:00.000-04:00

some things that make sense to me on one level or another follow:

An interview between a geologist and a musician, discovered and read at eleven on the dot. Animal Collective "like liquidy sounds". I do too. Furthermore under the canopy, "If you are just trying to do something to be different, but feel no personal attachment to what you are creating, then that’s a shame. If it’s not something you would respond to on a deeper level, why would anyone else respond to it?"

On the decline of Playboy magazine; or, looking back to a time before "hookers" supplanted "Botticelli’s goddesses"... In golden days, before culture scattered and thinned, women baring their parts in this magazine once had PhDs and read books. Once I forgot where I was, tried to link a reference to Playboy on this blog while at work, and was confronted with an alarming screen prohibiting my entrance to the site. Afterward I became paranoid I would be fired for being a pervert. This has not yet happened.

Relatively speaking, what is culture here and there and who's going at what speed to and from where? Who knows, but you may as well go and try to figure it out. The sun is hot and I’m done wasting time burning my ass on a hot rock. There are and there is Nine Planets Without Intelligent Life.

*via The Good Doctor I learned this alternative spelling today, alternative to what I had known at least: orangutan. As he said, there's always something new to learn.

rabbits go to new places

2005-09-14T08:28:00.000-04:00

By way of dishpantheism, I’ve lit upon some smart comics on-line made by smart people. At least that’s my immediate turn.

(I just had memory of a last night's dream about a friend from junior high school. Many of them actually. We weren’t playing volleyball but rather having a party. I was filling one in on my present life. A behemoth wave tore in through the basement window. It was uncertain whether the party would be held there at my house or at another friend’s as originally planned. A woman from work, one I like, had parked her van, colored a beautiful nauseous green and decked out on the inside with couches and a dining room table, in the street, ready to unload food for the party.)

I’ve never been a comic-reader, except when people on sporadic occasion have thrown a comic my way. First, go here (added to sidebar). Then, hop about in the links. I’m not saying I just spent the first hour of work doing this. I’m just recommending a visit.

sensory fibers exposed

2005-09-13T16:35:00.000-04:00

"Once we expose the vagal nerve, we’ll call you," said the doctor to the nurse.

This came out of the hallway earlier, in response to the nurse saying, "I want to be there, but it’s always so long until you get to that part. I have other places to be."

Work busies my head and hands today. This drop from the eaves is the fruit of such a day—outside force field, the speed of light, and a couple of space cadets each in motion with respect to one another—when I have been congenially irritable. I can’t explain the paradox; call it green tea. Call it the body purging itself of trash.

Next time you and I are making plans together, I will say this: Once I expose the vagal nerve, I’ll call you. In the meantime I may be eating dinner, petting the neighbor’s cat, showering, digging a grave, tending buttons, who knows. But once the vagal nerve is exposed, I’ll call you.