"Being drunk on their plan,
They lifted up the Sun.
A spoonful weighs a ton."
-- The Flaming Lips, "A Spoonful Weighs a Ton"
--
Geekin out right now. The Alan Parsons Project released an albumin 1976 devoted to Edgar Allan Poe. It's called (aptly), "Tales of Mystery and Imagination: Edgar Allan Poe." Orson Welles narrates on the opening track, and there's a five-movement symphony for "The Fall of the House of Usher."
Turns out, it was their debut album. Clever start.
--
Watched Up last night and experienced something new.
For a performer, silence after a winning moment can be a great compliment--some say, the greatest after a standing ovation. But a moment of complete, tense silence is rare in the theatre, let alone the movie theatre.
And even rarer if it occurs in the presence of children. Children make noise.
Yet last night, in a family filled with popcorn-chompers and their parents, there were several amazing moments of quiet, epochs of noiseless wonder as big-eyed kids froze in their squeaky seats. It happened at least three times. It was stunning.
--
Years later than everyone else (it seems), I've taken up with sudoku. Tried it on a whim when I saw it on the back of a newspaper in a hotel, and it had me going for a good half hour. I was dumb enough to use a pen: black splotches in tiny boxes, and somewhere in the blindness, numbers.
Bought my first book last night. Seven bucks for a hundred puzzles.
--
Got into my cubicle yesterday. It's bare and slightly stocked with leftovers from its prior tenant, so many plaster casts and ugly grooves roughed into the desk. Tinkered with the computer, slow going; I suspect it has gone un-defragged for years. It was on when I got to it, idling where it sat. And the phone was on a shelf.
My phone. I have my own office phone. That's a first.
For all the cons about the cube, there are of course plusses: It is the largest space in the Children's Theatre office. It used to be the workstation of the guy who made the puppets and plastic armor (hence the plaster casts on the top shelf, hence the grooves). He needed the space for his projects, and I need it for, I don't know, naps or something. Right beside the copy area and on the other side a wall, so it is secluded. No strange knockings on the fabric dividers, those gray hedges.
As of Monday, I can formally declare my new job titles: Tour Coordinator and Arts Integration Specialist for the touring division of the Children's Theatre.
--
And I have a car now. Drove to Indianapolis this morning to retrieve it from a transmission servicer's lot. Two hours both ways for the '03 Neon that I'm thinking about naming Stella.
It shakes a little when it idles, more so in reverse. But it rides, a powerful golden coaster in the early-morning sunshine, chasing eastward at its origin. And the stereo delivers. As I drove up my street to the city, it seemed a grand amber entrance, me beating every impending yellow for fifteen solid blocks, lights flicking to red as the car passed beneath, missing maledictions. This may sound silly, but it was a rush at thirty miles per hour.
I loved the smell of car in the morning. Smelled like...freedom.
5.30.2009
5.29.2009
Hooflet
"Our boots was cut to pieces. Clamberin over those old caved and rimpled plates you could see well enough how things had gone in that place, rocks melted and set up all wrinkled like a pudding, the earth stove through to the molten core of her. Where for aught any man knows lies the locality of hell. For the earth is a globe in the void and truth there's no up nor down to it and there's men in this company besides myself seen little cloven hoofprints in the stone clever as a little doe in her going but what litte doe ever trod melted rock? I'd not go behind scripture but it may be that there has been sinners so notorious evil that the fires coughed em up again and I could well see in the long ago how it was little devils with their pitchforks had traversed that fiery vomit for to salvage back those souls that had by misadventure been spewed up from their damnation onto the outer shelves of the world. Aye. It's a notion, no more. But someplace in the scheme of things this world must touch the other. And somethin put them little hooflet markings in the lava flow for I seen them there myself."
-- the expriest in Cormac McCarthy's Blood Meridian
--
The above passage met me today and knocked me over as I sat. Chapter ten of Blood Meridian might be the best thing I've read in months. Maybe years.
For those who have read it: Isn't that image of the judge doling out killing powder as the Indians ascend, and the caballeros/matadors lined up, "circlin past him like communicants," perfect? Just perfect. After he inverts the Inferno, McCarthy gives us a lapsed man of God who took gunpowder from a demonic white man--the antithesis of communion.
On the rim of seeming hell, no less. And after this littele ceremony, death to the red men. Brilliant.
--
Was supposed to be the last day of the tour today.
Supposedly.
-- the expriest in Cormac McCarthy's Blood Meridian
--
The above passage met me today and knocked me over as I sat. Chapter ten of Blood Meridian might be the best thing I've read in months. Maybe years.
For those who have read it: Isn't that image of the judge doling out killing powder as the Indians ascend, and the caballeros/matadors lined up, "circlin past him like communicants," perfect? Just perfect. After he inverts the Inferno, McCarthy gives us a lapsed man of God who took gunpowder from a demonic white man--the antithesis of communion.
On the rim of seeming hell, no less. And after this littele ceremony, death to the red men. Brilliant.
--
Was supposed to be the last day of the tour today.
Supposedly.
5.27.2009
Falls
“I was disappointed in Niagara--most people must be disappointed in Niagara. Every American bride is taken there, and the sight of the stupendous waterfall must be one of the earliest, if not the keenest, disappointments in American married life.”
-- Oscar Wilde
--
Was not disappointed in Niagara. Took a total of five photos for foreigners, all of them pointing excited at the picture-taking button. One man wanted it zoomed in and I cranked the nozzle of the lens (don't know the technical term) and retook it and he liked it and thanked me.
Took a total of 287 pictures for myself, and forty-two videos. Few of them contain people. Mostly it's the falls themselves, the water falling in unending rushes like heavy eternal curtains that rumble the earth rather than float in the breeze.
They say the falls recede a half-inch every year, and that 20,000 years ago it was several hundred feet downstream. In 1969 the US Army diverted the river to the Canadian side because the "racks" beneath the "wooter" were eroded and unstable. They literally dried up Niagara. I got the story from a man who has walked the park and loved the falls his whole life, a funny thin old man with a wispy white combover who was trying to explain to an Arabic family what a "refreshment shanty" was and why they would have built some on the cliff.
Another cool old guy from the trip: A crisply bearded sage stood beside me on the boat and wind blew our blue ponchos and he stared hard into the wind with squinted eyelids and looked like a fisherman brazen, defiant, against an ocean gale. He gripped the railing with hands that have known water. His hair blew back from his rough face, but it did not fly and his beard was like the crest of a wave frozen in time.
--
The first woman to go over the falls in a barrel did so for fame and fortune. She ended up fairly famous, but died poor: To avoid starving, she had to sell the barrel on the streets of New York. I don't remember her name. She was wickedly mad when they sawed her out of the wooden hovel, mumbling things and chattering with hypothermia, and she had a bruise on her forehead.
I'm sort of at a loss, too, after seeing this wonder of the world, but not for words. After all, I'm writing right now. I feel at a loss for something else. Romantic idyllic idealization, perhaps, or the greedy traveler's awe.
--
Two last things that struck me.
One: They have black squirrels in Niagara Falls, of the same ilk as southern Michigan. There was a wooden plaque that explained their color and intimidating demeanor.
Two: On one of the nature trails lining the river, I saw a three-foot-tall dandelion. The stem no thicker than a pencil, it had surpassed grass and an iron rail beside the path. Biggest fucking dandelion I've ever seen, man.
-- Oscar Wilde
--
Was not disappointed in Niagara. Took a total of five photos for foreigners, all of them pointing excited at the picture-taking button. One man wanted it zoomed in and I cranked the nozzle of the lens (don't know the technical term) and retook it and he liked it and thanked me.
Took a total of 287 pictures for myself, and forty-two videos. Few of them contain people. Mostly it's the falls themselves, the water falling in unending rushes like heavy eternal curtains that rumble the earth rather than float in the breeze.
They say the falls recede a half-inch every year, and that 20,000 years ago it was several hundred feet downstream. In 1969 the US Army diverted the river to the Canadian side because the "racks" beneath the "wooter" were eroded and unstable. They literally dried up Niagara. I got the story from a man who has walked the park and loved the falls his whole life, a funny thin old man with a wispy white combover who was trying to explain to an Arabic family what a "refreshment shanty" was and why they would have built some on the cliff.
Another cool old guy from the trip: A crisply bearded sage stood beside me on the boat and wind blew our blue ponchos and he stared hard into the wind with squinted eyelids and looked like a fisherman brazen, defiant, against an ocean gale. He gripped the railing with hands that have known water. His hair blew back from his rough face, but it did not fly and his beard was like the crest of a wave frozen in time.
--
The first woman to go over the falls in a barrel did so for fame and fortune. She ended up fairly famous, but died poor: To avoid starving, she had to sell the barrel on the streets of New York. I don't remember her name. She was wickedly mad when they sawed her out of the wooden hovel, mumbling things and chattering with hypothermia, and she had a bruise on her forehead.
I'm sort of at a loss, too, after seeing this wonder of the world, but not for words. After all, I'm writing right now. I feel at a loss for something else. Romantic idyllic idealization, perhaps, or the greedy traveler's awe.
--
Two last things that struck me.
One: They have black squirrels in Niagara Falls, of the same ilk as southern Michigan. There was a wooden plaque that explained their color and intimidating demeanor.
Two: On one of the nature trails lining the river, I saw a three-foot-tall dandelion. The stem no thicker than a pencil, it had surpassed grass and an iron rail beside the path. Biggest fucking dandelion I've ever seen, man.
5.26.2009
Niagara
"And yesterday I saw you standing by the river,
And weren't those tears that filled your eyes?
And all the fish that lay in dirty water dying,
Had they got you hypnotized?"
-- Led Zeppelin, "That's the Way"
--
In a Quality Inn near Niagara Falls. I've never been here before. As we crossed a bridge from one pod of New York vegetation to the next, a big blue spider spanning a big blue river, we could look to the west and see the spray above the trees.
Passed Buffalo, too, and guessed at stadium types before seeing the dead cavernous shell of a stadium in ruins, the antique pomp of Rome mixed with the industrial horror of Oklahoma City, a gaping monument apparently under destruction. I don't know what stadium it is. It looked like what might remain if someone set fire to the whole shebang, and the seats were still in rows up the one side still standing, a nonexistent audience watching cars drive by.
--
The area is strangely mute for New York. At least, compared to what I remember of the few times I've been to the state. Because I'm reading McCarthy, I want to imagine what it was and what it will be, after and before men and gods have ruled the tainted land, all in favor of desperation and violence; nevertheless, the hotels and shopping centers lie before me, telling stories of people who spend and are satisfied and nary a drop of anything is spilled. The grit described in the books turns to specks and clouds of dirt grinding up my gears, spoiling rugged joints and cranking shreds and etching jagged gashes onto my conical constructions, so many straightened steeples. The red sun overflows the horizon rim and spills over flooding the filled junkyard with hazards unimaginable, veined imps dying in the dawning revolution, with its students and conscientious favorers and indifferent spectators.
All this goes to say, I see what I don't. The leaps made in fiction are hard to refrain from in reality.
--
Drank a whole bottle of Chateau St. John, their 2007 Cabernet Sauvingnon. In the litany of clowns were Gaffigan, Martin, Cook, Hedberg, and some chick ranting about medi/pedis.
I long to return to the beat way of talk, the ancient beebop of speech. Two summers ago, while reading On the Road, it spat off like saliva forgotten in the dusty air, but now, it takes some conjuring. Even with a muse like the waterfall that splits the states from Canada.
--
Tomorrow, as I've said, is a blank slate borne from confusion, a world within a world of the same shade. I seek to fill it with the things I seek: with words and books and sleeping in parks.
And weren't those tears that filled your eyes?
And all the fish that lay in dirty water dying,
Had they got you hypnotized?"
-- Led Zeppelin, "That's the Way"
--
In a Quality Inn near Niagara Falls. I've never been here before. As we crossed a bridge from one pod of New York vegetation to the next, a big blue spider spanning a big blue river, we could look to the west and see the spray above the trees.
Passed Buffalo, too, and guessed at stadium types before seeing the dead cavernous shell of a stadium in ruins, the antique pomp of Rome mixed with the industrial horror of Oklahoma City, a gaping monument apparently under destruction. I don't know what stadium it is. It looked like what might remain if someone set fire to the whole shebang, and the seats were still in rows up the one side still standing, a nonexistent audience watching cars drive by.
--
The area is strangely mute for New York. At least, compared to what I remember of the few times I've been to the state. Because I'm reading McCarthy, I want to imagine what it was and what it will be, after and before men and gods have ruled the tainted land, all in favor of desperation and violence; nevertheless, the hotels and shopping centers lie before me, telling stories of people who spend and are satisfied and nary a drop of anything is spilled. The grit described in the books turns to specks and clouds of dirt grinding up my gears, spoiling rugged joints and cranking shreds and etching jagged gashes onto my conical constructions, so many straightened steeples. The red sun overflows the horizon rim and spills over flooding the filled junkyard with hazards unimaginable, veined imps dying in the dawning revolution, with its students and conscientious favorers and indifferent spectators.
All this goes to say, I see what I don't. The leaps made in fiction are hard to refrain from in reality.
--
Drank a whole bottle of Chateau St. John, their 2007 Cabernet Sauvingnon. In the litany of clowns were Gaffigan, Martin, Cook, Hedberg, and some chick ranting about medi/pedis.
I long to return to the beat way of talk, the ancient beebop of speech. Two summers ago, while reading On the Road, it spat off like saliva forgotten in the dusty air, but now, it takes some conjuring. Even with a muse like the waterfall that splits the states from Canada.
--
Tomorrow, as I've said, is a blank slate borne from confusion, a world within a world of the same shade. I seek to fill it with the things I seek: with words and books and sleeping in parks.
5.25.2009
Profess
"Your best
suggests
another kind of guest."
-- OK Go, "You're So Damn Hot"
--
Did some laundry in the empty afternoon. Washed a rug in the washer and that worked fine, but tried to dry it in the dryer and it came out damp. Twice. It's slung across two folding chairs in the kitchen.
Finally have chairs in the apartment now. That may sound basic, and it is. I have had a lounge chair, an armchair, and a Z-chair, but no everyday, I-just-need-t0-rest-my-ass chairs. Family brought them, I'm using them. Two in the kitchen, as I said, holding up the wet rug, and one at the makeshift desk in my bedroom. The desk is a folding table beside a ledge/shelf. Real classy. Real classic.
The family also left a towering bookshelf, which is stocked with the remainders. A brass-trimmed mirror leans against the wall beside my closet. My fridge is full for the first time with leftovers galore.
--
At a point right now when I believe I may not be completely happy until I am teaching theatre and literature courses at a college. All the rest is prologue.
In the same spirit I had convinced myself to march up to my boss next Monday and ask to direct a touring show next year. Also to ask to write a show. It makes me swell to think that I am qualified to do both, and then it makes me shrink to wonder why I haven't done either in a year. I guess we all have dues to pay and bills in between.
--
Blood Meridian is very good. The diction alone would kill you.
--
Tomorrow is the trip to New York. Niagara Falls within walking distance from the hotel--sort of the theatre's subtle thank-you to the two of us who have stuck with it for the last nine months. Five shows left. Friday afternoon is a scheduled release, a pop and sizzle and a bubbling over. I have an old bottle of champagne, still in its tissue wrapping, waiting for the occasion.
The tour has been tough. "Acting is hard," goes the joke, because it is true and false and neither all at the same time. I guess acting hasn't been the tough thing. It's been the tour, the climbing in and out of the same van, the careful hefting of the sound system speakers through gymnasium doors propped open with tipped traffic cones, the wrapping of condoms around mic packs, the sweating through Spandex, the seeing of children as they peek around the edge of the set and the magic is changed, the draining days and fast-food stops and gas stations like waiting rooms with overpriced candy instead of banal magazines, the rolling of eyes behind concerned glances of understanding reckoning unbelievable reconnaissance, the timing of a bunny hop and the freeze frame of a turtle walk, the canned answers in Q&A with repetitive gestures and my own voice sounding strained and boring. Acting is the least part; acting is hard to find.
And it all changes in four days, five shows. The next weekend brings with it mystery and excitement, and its name is office work. How bout that.
suggests
another kind of guest."
-- OK Go, "You're So Damn Hot"
--
Did some laundry in the empty afternoon. Washed a rug in the washer and that worked fine, but tried to dry it in the dryer and it came out damp. Twice. It's slung across two folding chairs in the kitchen.
Finally have chairs in the apartment now. That may sound basic, and it is. I have had a lounge chair, an armchair, and a Z-chair, but no everyday, I-just-need-t0-rest-my-ass chairs. Family brought them, I'm using them. Two in the kitchen, as I said, holding up the wet rug, and one at the makeshift desk in my bedroom. The desk is a folding table beside a ledge/shelf. Real classy. Real classic.
The family also left a towering bookshelf, which is stocked with the remainders. A brass-trimmed mirror leans against the wall beside my closet. My fridge is full for the first time with leftovers galore.
--
At a point right now when I believe I may not be completely happy until I am teaching theatre and literature courses at a college. All the rest is prologue.
In the same spirit I had convinced myself to march up to my boss next Monday and ask to direct a touring show next year. Also to ask to write a show. It makes me swell to think that I am qualified to do both, and then it makes me shrink to wonder why I haven't done either in a year. I guess we all have dues to pay and bills in between.
--
Blood Meridian is very good. The diction alone would kill you.
--
Tomorrow is the trip to New York. Niagara Falls within walking distance from the hotel--sort of the theatre's subtle thank-you to the two of us who have stuck with it for the last nine months. Five shows left. Friday afternoon is a scheduled release, a pop and sizzle and a bubbling over. I have an old bottle of champagne, still in its tissue wrapping, waiting for the occasion.
The tour has been tough. "Acting is hard," goes the joke, because it is true and false and neither all at the same time. I guess acting hasn't been the tough thing. It's been the tour, the climbing in and out of the same van, the careful hefting of the sound system speakers through gymnasium doors propped open with tipped traffic cones, the wrapping of condoms around mic packs, the sweating through Spandex, the seeing of children as they peek around the edge of the set and the magic is changed, the draining days and fast-food stops and gas stations like waiting rooms with overpriced candy instead of banal magazines, the rolling of eyes behind concerned glances of understanding reckoning unbelievable reconnaissance, the timing of a bunny hop and the freeze frame of a turtle walk, the canned answers in Q&A with repetitive gestures and my own voice sounding strained and boring. Acting is the least part; acting is hard to find.
And it all changes in four days, five shows. The next weekend brings with it mystery and excitement, and its name is office work. How bout that.
5.24.2009
Reversals
"The reverse side also has a reverse side."
-- the Japanese
--
Folks were in for the big weekend. A car's transmission blowing and shifty mechanics in southern Indiana deterred but did not prevent them. I tried to have a whole itinerary planned out, but the long and short of it is that there is little to do in Cincinnati in the line of "touristy" things. Unless you have a big budget.
"We want to do things we can only do in Cincinnati," my dad had told me.
Aside from Skyline's bizarre chili and Graeter's winning ice-cream concoctions, I drew a big blank.
But:
Walked in Eden Park. Hit Skyline and Graeter's. Shopped at Jungle Jim's and a skuzzy flea market under a tanner's sun. Put up curtains in my apartment and reassembled a trunk. Ate Filipino and girlfriend-made food. And did not drink alcohol in any form. Took the dog everywhere.
Also:
Found a few seconds to reconnect with sisters via music. Heart-to-hearted with Mom, also with Dad. Scruffed with Ajax on a hardwood floor. Even had a moment or two to stand on the edge of a hill and contemplate the bend in the Ohio River.
--
The nearest Dunkin' Donuts is seven miles south. We'll go there tomorrow. Say goodbyes over crullards and iced coffee.
My car-to-be sits, has sat, in a mechanic's garage in downtown Indianapolis. Untouched. Unfixed. Its transmission has lost its torque, and, like a writer without arms, needs a mindful, skilled, helping hand. Hopefully I can ride over and drive back in the next few days.
--
Been getting down on myself lately; don't mean that to sound like an invitation for Hallmark cards. But so. At the end of the day, though, I'm not the guy I saw at Panera today, trying to open a door and sip from a cup of coffee with the only arm he owns. One empty sleeveless shirt sleeve, like an appalled person's mouth, gaping.
Like Vonnegut, instead of writing the damn thing, I'll describe what someone might write.
A futuristic story about a man who awakes after surgery that removed his freakish but useful third arm. He still feels this third arm, which he had worked to a considerable size and toned to perfection: a Christmas goose for a bicep, a lean turkey leg for a forearm. It is now a nub, a freakish and useless sort of boob between his pecs, a nipple between nips. It hangs and sags like an old ugly dress in a thrift store. The healing wound is like Cyclops' eye in the center of his chest. And this man stares at the ceiling and contemplates suicide, because what is life with only two arms?
--
Five sirens along this street in two nights. One right now, haunting the night with its urgent mating call, an emergency vehicle desperately searching for an emergency to...well, emerge. A midnight loon, howling at the moon. The official soundtrack of Cincinnati, and a favorite track in cities everywhere.
Rounded this night out with a good game of Bolshevik, which is the PG-13 version of Bullshit. The card game. Then we played something that required us to clap at kings and flap at aces.
--
Cincinnati is not Omaha; Kentucky is not Nebraska. Thirteen hours of driving separates, a space so huge it deafens you, bludgeons you with size. And yet, girlfriend met mom, father saw apartment. Connections--kk, kk, kk, ka-boom!--like synapses snapping to logical order, the rank and file of sense and manner. Chess as life.
And I am not quite a son any more. You don't shed family like jobs or sheets. You wear them always in your travels, easy for reference, ripe for assistance. Yet you neglect them, taking them for granted, like a sticker on your jacket. Time rains on the sticker, unsticking it, peeling it, softening it. The process is as sure as it is sad. The sticker crumbles but the adhesive remains, evidence of something that faded and ruined. The only solution is to dry yourself off and restick the sticker, using that old adhesive as a better base, a truer tack. Otherwise, all the nametag says is, "HELLO, MY NAME IS," and the blank is the distance between your selves. The silence that deafens you.
--
MEMORIAL: noun, adjective
-- the Japanese
--
Folks were in for the big weekend. A car's transmission blowing and shifty mechanics in southern Indiana deterred but did not prevent them. I tried to have a whole itinerary planned out, but the long and short of it is that there is little to do in Cincinnati in the line of "touristy" things. Unless you have a big budget.
"We want to do things we can only do in Cincinnati," my dad had told me.
Aside from Skyline's bizarre chili and Graeter's winning ice-cream concoctions, I drew a big blank.
But:
Walked in Eden Park. Hit Skyline and Graeter's. Shopped at Jungle Jim's and a skuzzy flea market under a tanner's sun. Put up curtains in my apartment and reassembled a trunk. Ate Filipino and girlfriend-made food. And did not drink alcohol in any form. Took the dog everywhere.
Also:
Found a few seconds to reconnect with sisters via music. Heart-to-hearted with Mom, also with Dad. Scruffed with Ajax on a hardwood floor. Even had a moment or two to stand on the edge of a hill and contemplate the bend in the Ohio River.
--
The nearest Dunkin' Donuts is seven miles south. We'll go there tomorrow. Say goodbyes over crullards and iced coffee.
My car-to-be sits, has sat, in a mechanic's garage in downtown Indianapolis. Untouched. Unfixed. Its transmission has lost its torque, and, like a writer without arms, needs a mindful, skilled, helping hand. Hopefully I can ride over and drive back in the next few days.
--
Been getting down on myself lately; don't mean that to sound like an invitation for Hallmark cards. But so. At the end of the day, though, I'm not the guy I saw at Panera today, trying to open a door and sip from a cup of coffee with the only arm he owns. One empty sleeveless shirt sleeve, like an appalled person's mouth, gaping.
Like Vonnegut, instead of writing the damn thing, I'll describe what someone might write.
A futuristic story about a man who awakes after surgery that removed his freakish but useful third arm. He still feels this third arm, which he had worked to a considerable size and toned to perfection: a Christmas goose for a bicep, a lean turkey leg for a forearm. It is now a nub, a freakish and useless sort of boob between his pecs, a nipple between nips. It hangs and sags like an old ugly dress in a thrift store. The healing wound is like Cyclops' eye in the center of his chest. And this man stares at the ceiling and contemplates suicide, because what is life with only two arms?
--
Five sirens along this street in two nights. One right now, haunting the night with its urgent mating call, an emergency vehicle desperately searching for an emergency to...well, emerge. A midnight loon, howling at the moon. The official soundtrack of Cincinnati, and a favorite track in cities everywhere.
Rounded this night out with a good game of Bolshevik, which is the PG-13 version of Bullshit. The card game. Then we played something that required us to clap at kings and flap at aces.
--
Cincinnati is not Omaha; Kentucky is not Nebraska. Thirteen hours of driving separates, a space so huge it deafens you, bludgeons you with size. And yet, girlfriend met mom, father saw apartment. Connections--kk, kk, kk, ka-boom!--like synapses snapping to logical order, the rank and file of sense and manner. Chess as life.
And I am not quite a son any more. You don't shed family like jobs or sheets. You wear them always in your travels, easy for reference, ripe for assistance. Yet you neglect them, taking them for granted, like a sticker on your jacket. Time rains on the sticker, unsticking it, peeling it, softening it. The process is as sure as it is sad. The sticker crumbles but the adhesive remains, evidence of something that faded and ruined. The only solution is to dry yourself off and restick the sticker, using that old adhesive as a better base, a truer tack. Otherwise, all the nametag says is, "HELLO, MY NAME IS," and the blank is the distance between your selves. The silence that deafens you.
--
MEMORIAL: noun, adjective
–noun
–adjective | 1. | something designed to preserve the memory of a person, event, etc., as a monument or a holiday. |
| 2. | a written statement of facts presented to a sovereign, a legislative body, etc., as the ground of, or expressed in the form of, a petition or remonstrance. |
| 3. | preserving the memory of a person or thing; commemorative: memorial services. |
| 4. | of or pertaining to the memory. |
5.20.2009
Themes
"When I think back
On all the crap I learned in high school
It's a wonder
I can think at all."
-- Paul Simon, "Kodachrome," on There Goes Rhymin' Simon
--
Been thinking about a conversation I had on my last trip to Hillsdale.
Listen to the paraphrase:
--
"I hate the way I was taught to read in high school."
"Yeah."
"They would tell me to look for things like motifs and metaphors. Like figurative language. That was the buzz word. 'Always look for the figurative language. A simile is different from a metaphor because of the words "as" or "like," but both are examples of figurative language.' I hate that."
"I think theme was about the same way. 'A theme is what you think about when you read a book.' But what if a passage about Hester Prynne makes me think about my third-grade English teacher and how she looked really nice in knee-length skirts? Is the theme of The Scarlet Letter my pubescent crush on my third-grade teacher?"
"God, I hate that."
--
Fast-forward to today.
Again, I'm wading through McCarthy. And reading this dense--Sundahl would say "gritty"--material while riding in a van while Britney Spears' computerized voice sings on the radio; while the accelerator screeches up hills, and the brakes hiss and squeal down them; while someone says that reading is about quality, not quantity, and someone else replies (half-jokingly), "No, it's about quantity," and laughs; while school banners proclaim that "READING MAKES YOU A STAR;" and while people read Perez Hilton's celebrity-gossip blog aloud...
Trying to understand McCarthy in the midst of this is like trying to remember what my third-grade teacher looked like in skirts while I'm looking at a fat chick in running shorts. It's hard to do.
--
Anyways. One man's ceiling is another man's floor, right?
Today, while changing in a men's room whose flourescent light had burned down to a faint glow, I decided to crack the door open just a little so I could see my turtle suite better. I dropped trou. Within seconds, a woman-teacher from the school swung wide the door, took a look at my skivvies (and me stumbling around with half a leg in green spandex) and on her face was a look of existential horror. She apologized, I sighed and said okay, and I finished changing in the dark.
It was a day. I have exactly six more days of work like this before I make a gleeful return to an ugly cubicle. But the scratchmarks on the desk and the unsightly stains on the carpet are like golden trim and Persian rugs to me. I'll tire of the office life in a few weeks, I'm sure, on a day when the A/C is down and the phone hasn't rung in hours and I'm shuffling papers and making rubber-band trains and paper-clip chains to make it sound like work.
But I still can't wait.
On all the crap I learned in high school
It's a wonder
I can think at all."
-- Paul Simon, "Kodachrome," on There Goes Rhymin' Simon
--
Been thinking about a conversation I had on my last trip to Hillsdale.
Listen to the paraphrase:
--
"I hate the way I was taught to read in high school."
"Yeah."
"They would tell me to look for things like motifs and metaphors. Like figurative language. That was the buzz word. 'Always look for the figurative language. A simile is different from a metaphor because of the words "as" or "like," but both are examples of figurative language.' I hate that."
"I think theme was about the same way. 'A theme is what you think about when you read a book.' But what if a passage about Hester Prynne makes me think about my third-grade English teacher and how she looked really nice in knee-length skirts? Is the theme of The Scarlet Letter my pubescent crush on my third-grade teacher?"
"God, I hate that."
--
Fast-forward to today.
Again, I'm wading through McCarthy. And reading this dense--Sundahl would say "gritty"--material while riding in a van while Britney Spears' computerized voice sings on the radio; while the accelerator screeches up hills, and the brakes hiss and squeal down them; while someone says that reading is about quality, not quantity, and someone else replies (half-jokingly), "No, it's about quantity," and laughs; while school banners proclaim that "READING MAKES YOU A STAR;" and while people read Perez Hilton's celebrity-gossip blog aloud...
Trying to understand McCarthy in the midst of this is like trying to remember what my third-grade teacher looked like in skirts while I'm looking at a fat chick in running shorts. It's hard to do.
--
Anyways. One man's ceiling is another man's floor, right?
Today, while changing in a men's room whose flourescent light had burned down to a faint glow, I decided to crack the door open just a little so I could see my turtle suite better. I dropped trou. Within seconds, a woman-teacher from the school swung wide the door, took a look at my skivvies (and me stumbling around with half a leg in green spandex) and on her face was a look of existential horror. She apologized, I sighed and said okay, and I finished changing in the dark.
It was a day. I have exactly six more days of work like this before I make a gleeful return to an ugly cubicle. But the scratchmarks on the desk and the unsightly stains on the carpet are like golden trim and Persian rugs to me. I'll tire of the office life in a few weeks, I'm sure, on a day when the A/C is down and the phone hasn't rung in hours and I'm shuffling papers and making rubber-band trains and paper-clip chains to make it sound like work.
But I still can't wait.
5.19.2009
Crunk
"Get crunk, yeah!"
-- a famous walrus
--
This is the painting I inherited from my landlord when she moved out.
A coincidental tribute to Get-crunkers everywhere.
Possum
"A man's at odds to know his mind cause his mind is aught he has to know it with. He can know his heart, but he dont want to. Rightly so. Best not to look in there. It aint the heart of a creature that is bound in the way that God has set for it. You can find meanness in the least of creatures, but when God made man the devil was at his elbow. A creature that can do anything. Make a machine. And a machine to make the machine. And evil that can run itself a thousand years, no need to tend it. You believe that?
I dont know.
Believe that."
-- Blood Meridian, by Cormac McCarthy
--
My girlfriend is making us lasagna tonight. She is using her mother's recipe for "Microwaved Lasagna," which means that the actual baking takes place in the microwave. But before you nuke it, you have to prepare everything in various pots and pans on a stove.
Seems misleading.
--
On Friday, my folks come for a visit. The first time I've seen them in months. Since January, when I went home on an actor's furlough. I'll see my dog for the first time in months, too.
I can't wait to feel the little weights of his limbs as he greets me, paws padding against my femur, so frenzied because he can't figure out a way to climb up fast enough.
One of our first escapades--the family and me, not the dog and me--will be to Graeter's, the Cincinnati ice-cream chain. Their phosphates are the best. The rest of the weekend is up for grabs, with the Reds, the zoo, the metro amusement park, an art museum, a gigantic food store, and the local farmers' market, as the most likely grabbers. They want to do things that can only be done in Cincinnati.
I want to tell them, Well, then--just be in Cincinnati.
--
The school we played this morning is in a ritzy part of the 'burbs, Montgomery, OH, site of the famous barbecue restaurant, Montgomery Inn. Last time I was there, it was Valentine's Day, and I paid $100 for two people. It's that kind of neighborhood.
In the lobby of the elementary school is a sculpture of a large pig with tiny wings on its back. Similar to this bronze one. It's because Cincinnati originally was to be called Porkopolis, on account of the pig trade, which was big here.
It was named after a Roman general who was promoted to Emporer during a time of war and then gave up his power. For this act, he would later be mentioned in Western Heritage courses at Hillsdale College in Hillsdale, MI.
--
I have started to branch out in my musical extractions from libraries, having ripped most of what I want. Now my curiosity drives my expansion, as violence in the Wild West (indulge me, I'm reading McCarthy again).
Recent musical finds:
- "How it Ends" by DeVotchKa (was also in Little Miss Sunshine)
- Miles: Cool and Collected, a collection of Miles Davis essentials
- Ollabelle, an Appalachian group formed in New York, with a wondrous album called Riverside Battle Songs
- The Library of Congress' Negro Work Songs and Calls, part of their Archive of Folk Culture project; a collection of old recordings of slave songs and genuine river calls, including a track called "Possum Was an Evil Thing" and another that features riverboatsmen calling "mark twain"
--
Behind blinds, a cat sits on the window sill. I see its slitted silhouette. It reposes, slinks closer to the dusty corner.
From my perspective, blocking it: A bike, ill-used, at its station by the front window; a floor lamp, its frosted ceramic top exulting the ceiling; a red sofa covered in blankets and pillows; the corner of my laptop screen.
Sometimes you have to jump a scape to get to the land.
I can smell lasanga now.
I dont know.
Believe that."
-- Blood Meridian, by Cormac McCarthy
--
My girlfriend is making us lasagna tonight. She is using her mother's recipe for "Microwaved Lasagna," which means that the actual baking takes place in the microwave. But before you nuke it, you have to prepare everything in various pots and pans on a stove.
Seems misleading.
--
On Friday, my folks come for a visit. The first time I've seen them in months. Since January, when I went home on an actor's furlough. I'll see my dog for the first time in months, too.
I can't wait to feel the little weights of his limbs as he greets me, paws padding against my femur, so frenzied because he can't figure out a way to climb up fast enough.
One of our first escapades--the family and me, not the dog and me--will be to Graeter's, the Cincinnati ice-cream chain. Their phosphates are the best. The rest of the weekend is up for grabs, with the Reds, the zoo, the metro amusement park, an art museum, a gigantic food store, and the local farmers' market, as the most likely grabbers. They want to do things that can only be done in Cincinnati.
I want to tell them, Well, then--just be in Cincinnati.
--
The school we played this morning is in a ritzy part of the 'burbs, Montgomery, OH, site of the famous barbecue restaurant, Montgomery Inn. Last time I was there, it was Valentine's Day, and I paid $100 for two people. It's that kind of neighborhood.
In the lobby of the elementary school is a sculpture of a large pig with tiny wings on its back. Similar to this bronze one. It's because Cincinnati originally was to be called Porkopolis, on account of the pig trade, which was big here.
It was named after a Roman general who was promoted to Emporer during a time of war and then gave up his power. For this act, he would later be mentioned in Western Heritage courses at Hillsdale College in Hillsdale, MI.
--
I have started to branch out in my musical extractions from libraries, having ripped most of what I want. Now my curiosity drives my expansion, as violence in the Wild West (indulge me, I'm reading McCarthy again).
Recent musical finds:
- "How it Ends" by DeVotchKa (was also in Little Miss Sunshine)
- Miles: Cool and Collected, a collection of Miles Davis essentials
- Ollabelle, an Appalachian group formed in New York, with a wondrous album called Riverside Battle Songs
- The Library of Congress' Negro Work Songs and Calls, part of their Archive of Folk Culture project; a collection of old recordings of slave songs and genuine river calls, including a track called "Possum Was an Evil Thing" and another that features riverboatsmen calling "mark twain"
--
Behind blinds, a cat sits on the window sill. I see its slitted silhouette. It reposes, slinks closer to the dusty corner.
From my perspective, blocking it: A bike, ill-used, at its station by the front window; a floor lamp, its frosted ceramic top exulting the ceiling; a red sofa covered in blankets and pillows; the corner of my laptop screen.
Sometimes you have to jump a scape to get to the land.
I can smell lasanga now.
5.17.2009
Wildlife
"Gravity works."
-- Robin Williams, as Batty in Fern Gully
--
A gargoyle sits atop Margaret Thatcher's head. Dosteovsky is here, too, along with Langston and Mendela, who is oddly staring straight out from the mural, cheeks puffed alongside his grin. No apartheid here: Even if computers 23-27, in a row, are all occupied by blacks, while whites check emails on the other side of the kiosks, no one really notices. There are plenty of others whom I can't recognize: an old black man in a blue baseball cap, waving; a chubby white man with a receding hairline, smiling down at the rows of books; a girl holding a stuffed cat; someone who looks like Alec Baldwin in a bishop's tunic; a lady who might be Rosa Parks.
--
I now have a membership at four separate library systems, in four adjacent counties: Hamilton (Cincinnati), Campbell, Boone, and now, Kenton.
That's a personal record for me. Never before have I had memberships at so many libraries at once.
I walked here today and secured my card. It's only about ten blocks north from where I live now. The walk gave me the impression that I live on the edge of racial tension.
Black teens, smoking in packs on the corner. White families ignoring them, biking in a retinue of tassels and helmets. A trio of old folks walking north, dragging suitcases on wheels. Me, in flip-flops and a Canadadian T-shirt, avoiding clumps of clipped grass that mixed with mud and laid out too long on a sun-scorched sidewalk to become sort of green, leafy tortillas. An Arabic shop to my right advertised soda and gyros, with a faded white sign that said, "We accept WIC and foodstamps."
--
As I passed a charming apartment home with a black iron gate whose spiky bars only rose to my waist, a Jack Russel terrier emerged from the backyard, charged a few steps, stopped, sat, and waved--waved--a paw. Panted for a spell, grew bored, and ran back.
At another house, a husband and wife churned mulch in the front yard. Amateur landscapers, with too-new gardening shears and work gloves, shoveling and hoeing in their sweatpants. They're sweating because it's seventy degrees out.
A sign on the front yard says there's one bedroom in the building for rent.
--
Across the street, a large yellow-brick building sits, crosslegged among old trees, its vacant windows gazing sadly outwards like little girls gazing sadly out of windows in a doll house. The building is for lease. It used to be a convention center, a gathering-place. Before that, it was a historic school, famous because of segregation laws whose enforcement began with its construction. Behind the old school/center are the ancient twisted slides and monkey bars of a ruined and neglected metal playground, the kind worn by sun and rust. The fences are locked; no children play.
I pass another corner shop and six black children, none older than ten, struggle with a stroller, trying to pry it out a side door. An infant lies in the middle of the rumpus, worried, searching the sky for its mother. No parent anywhere. The pusher of the stroller is a solemn girl with braids and bands. Her hands on the handles are at eye-level.
She smiles at me as I pass by, and the other children look my way. I wave. They resume the battle with the stroller.
-- Robin Williams, as Batty in Fern Gully
--
A gargoyle sits atop Margaret Thatcher's head. Dosteovsky is here, too, along with Langston and Mendela, who is oddly staring straight out from the mural, cheeks puffed alongside his grin. No apartheid here: Even if computers 23-27, in a row, are all occupied by blacks, while whites check emails on the other side of the kiosks, no one really notices. There are plenty of others whom I can't recognize: an old black man in a blue baseball cap, waving; a chubby white man with a receding hairline, smiling down at the rows of books; a girl holding a stuffed cat; someone who looks like Alec Baldwin in a bishop's tunic; a lady who might be Rosa Parks.
--
I now have a membership at four separate library systems, in four adjacent counties: Hamilton (Cincinnati), Campbell, Boone, and now, Kenton.
That's a personal record for me. Never before have I had memberships at so many libraries at once.
I walked here today and secured my card. It's only about ten blocks north from where I live now. The walk gave me the impression that I live on the edge of racial tension.
Black teens, smoking in packs on the corner. White families ignoring them, biking in a retinue of tassels and helmets. A trio of old folks walking north, dragging suitcases on wheels. Me, in flip-flops and a Canadadian T-shirt, avoiding clumps of clipped grass that mixed with mud and laid out too long on a sun-scorched sidewalk to become sort of green, leafy tortillas. An Arabic shop to my right advertised soda and gyros, with a faded white sign that said, "We accept WIC and foodstamps."
--
As I passed a charming apartment home with a black iron gate whose spiky bars only rose to my waist, a Jack Russel terrier emerged from the backyard, charged a few steps, stopped, sat, and waved--waved--a paw. Panted for a spell, grew bored, and ran back.
At another house, a husband and wife churned mulch in the front yard. Amateur landscapers, with too-new gardening shears and work gloves, shoveling and hoeing in their sweatpants. They're sweating because it's seventy degrees out.
A sign on the front yard says there's one bedroom in the building for rent.
--
Across the street, a large yellow-brick building sits, crosslegged among old trees, its vacant windows gazing sadly outwards like little girls gazing sadly out of windows in a doll house. The building is for lease. It used to be a convention center, a gathering-place. Before that, it was a historic school, famous because of segregation laws whose enforcement began with its construction. Behind the old school/center are the ancient twisted slides and monkey bars of a ruined and neglected metal playground, the kind worn by sun and rust. The fences are locked; no children play.
I pass another corner shop and six black children, none older than ten, struggle with a stroller, trying to pry it out a side door. An infant lies in the middle of the rumpus, worried, searching the sky for its mother. No parent anywhere. The pusher of the stroller is a solemn girl with braids and bands. Her hands on the handles are at eye-level.
She smiles at me as I pass by, and the other children look my way. I wave. They resume the battle with the stroller.
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