what was the point
anyway?
to prove
you could break
me down like every
other man
unlucky
enough to love you?
20090331
.head.full.of.cursive.
I was still young when my grandmother got cancer. Too young, even, to really grasp the concept of cancer to a certain degree. Everyone talked sedately about a body turning on itself, but I as a pre-teen going on to teenage girl, my body was already betraying me in every way imaginable. Bodies are slippery things.
When I first discovered the clumps of hair all over the shower, I thought it was my own. I asked over dinner that night if it were possible for someone my age, hypothetically, to get grey hairs. My mother looked at my grandmother briefly and dismissed it awkwardly.
My grandmother sighed and admitted it was her hair, and that she had been losing it due to the chemotherapy. I told her she should be more careful about not leaving her hair everywhere in the shower, since it was pretty gross, and I certainly didn't want to have to be the person to clean it up. She laughed and said she'd try harder.
It wasn't much use, I guess, because the hair didn't really go away so much as accumulate in greater quantities on the walls, in the drain, on the curtain, behind the conditioner bottles. I had given up on the bar of soap for liquid soap.
It finally got to be too much for me and I confronted her again about it, and after a moment, she confessed to me that she was actually remembering things with each hair that fell out, plastering it to the curtains and walls like unwound cursive narratives.
Bullshit, grandma.
You don't believe me. The far wall is dedicated to faces I've remembered.
That's still gross.
But I looked the next time I took a shower, and strangely enough, I thought I did see something or a second on the wall, scrawled in hair. I couldn't make anything of it, but there looked like a certain order to it.
Unnerved, I splashed it off the wall with some water.
Over the next few days, weeks, months, I started to see letters, then words and finally, faces. I started to think that I had gone crazy myself, and that my eyes had started to betray me like my thighs.
I kept it to myself.
And then one day, I swore I saw my own face on the far wall, and couldn't help but ask my grandmother about it.
It's the day you were born, honey.
But I didn't look like that when I was born!
People aren't always born on their birthdays. I remember when you swam into the deep end of the rec center pool for the first time. You were born as a new person the second you pulled yourself out of the water that day.
Whatever grandma.
When she died a few months afterwards, it hit me harder than I had thought it would. I skipped school for a week and a half.
I finally shaved my head in solidarity and went back to class to take a math quiz I had missed. It was last period, and I went home again right afterwards.
You would think that the whole experience would have made me better about my own self-diagnosis, but I never adhered to much my entire life: diets, going to the gym, learning the guitar. The body is a slippery thing.
Cancer set up camp in my left breast last month sometime, and I'm not really sure what's going to happen from here on out. Maybe they'll have to carve out a piece of my body, like a sacrifice to itself. I'm supposed to start chemo next week, though.
I started thinking about my grandmother again, and her hair all over the shower. Who knows if she really wrote stories on the walls, or if she was just leaning her head against it in exhaustion and resignation. She certainly made no show of it, and convinced me until the end that she was going to make it, that she was going to finally write down all those stories she had been pasting onto the shower walls.
I thought about my own $140 haircut, and the tales it would unwind into, as I started losing my own hair. I hoped they'd be as strong as whatever stories my grandmother was writing in her head at the time.
Instead, I bought a razor and shaved my head that night, shearing the Gorgonic snakes from my scalp, and any petrifying power they still had over me.
When I first discovered the clumps of hair all over the shower, I thought it was my own. I asked over dinner that night if it were possible for someone my age, hypothetically, to get grey hairs. My mother looked at my grandmother briefly and dismissed it awkwardly.
My grandmother sighed and admitted it was her hair, and that she had been losing it due to the chemotherapy. I told her she should be more careful about not leaving her hair everywhere in the shower, since it was pretty gross, and I certainly didn't want to have to be the person to clean it up. She laughed and said she'd try harder.
It wasn't much use, I guess, because the hair didn't really go away so much as accumulate in greater quantities on the walls, in the drain, on the curtain, behind the conditioner bottles. I had given up on the bar of soap for liquid soap.
It finally got to be too much for me and I confronted her again about it, and after a moment, she confessed to me that she was actually remembering things with each hair that fell out, plastering it to the curtains and walls like unwound cursive narratives.
Bullshit, grandma.
You don't believe me. The far wall is dedicated to faces I've remembered.
That's still gross.
But I looked the next time I took a shower, and strangely enough, I thought I did see something or a second on the wall, scrawled in hair. I couldn't make anything of it, but there looked like a certain order to it.
Unnerved, I splashed it off the wall with some water.
Over the next few days, weeks, months, I started to see letters, then words and finally, faces. I started to think that I had gone crazy myself, and that my eyes had started to betray me like my thighs.
I kept it to myself.
And then one day, I swore I saw my own face on the far wall, and couldn't help but ask my grandmother about it.
It's the day you were born, honey.
But I didn't look like that when I was born!
People aren't always born on their birthdays. I remember when you swam into the deep end of the rec center pool for the first time. You were born as a new person the second you pulled yourself out of the water that day.
Whatever grandma.
When she died a few months afterwards, it hit me harder than I had thought it would. I skipped school for a week and a half.
I finally shaved my head in solidarity and went back to class to take a math quiz I had missed. It was last period, and I went home again right afterwards.
You would think that the whole experience would have made me better about my own self-diagnosis, but I never adhered to much my entire life: diets, going to the gym, learning the guitar. The body is a slippery thing.
Cancer set up camp in my left breast last month sometime, and I'm not really sure what's going to happen from here on out. Maybe they'll have to carve out a piece of my body, like a sacrifice to itself. I'm supposed to start chemo next week, though.
I started thinking about my grandmother again, and her hair all over the shower. Who knows if she really wrote stories on the walls, or if she was just leaning her head against it in exhaustion and resignation. She certainly made no show of it, and convinced me until the end that she was going to make it, that she was going to finally write down all those stories she had been pasting onto the shower walls.
I thought about my own $140 haircut, and the tales it would unwind into, as I started losing my own hair. I hoped they'd be as strong as whatever stories my grandmother was writing in her head at the time.
Instead, I bought a razor and shaved my head that night, shearing the Gorgonic snakes from my scalp, and any petrifying power they still had over me.
20090330
.gateway.sex.
I realized I'm dating you because you're bisexual, and that's as close to dating a lesbian I will ever get.
momento
one night
i'll come home and see
how empty
the house can be
when you're around,
your bad juju in the air
like burnt coffee.
you will shave your hair
in the kitchen, each chunk
for the time you've wasted here,
you'll say, with me.
i'll come home and see
how empty
the house can be
when you're around,
your bad juju in the air
like burnt coffee.
you will shave your hair
in the kitchen, each chunk
for the time you've wasted here,
you'll say, with me.
20090329
.the.year.after.
My first real weekend starts tomorrow. That is to say, it's hard to have a weekend without a week to end, and it's hard to have a week at all when I'm coasting through the days on my bum.
But now that I've been granted the structure of employment, that has yet to become droll, I suppose my days are starting to snap back into their subdivisions.
And as I wait to hear back from U of Toronto, I'm trying to do likewise with my mind: pick up the garbage, separate the recycling, sweep the dust out the door, and get tidy up for the year after.
It's nice to think we have plans.
But now that I've been granted the structure of employment, that has yet to become droll, I suppose my days are starting to snap back into their subdivisions.
And as I wait to hear back from U of Toronto, I'm trying to do likewise with my mind: pick up the garbage, separate the recycling, sweep the dust out the door, and get tidy up for the year after.
It's nice to think we have plans.
20090328
.remember.me.
One of these days, clicking "Remember me" on these websites will mean something. Like a pet, perhaps, running to the door, wagging its tail, swishing its whiskers. Excitment is an intangible odor in the air, settling on your hairs like dew.
Maybe it's just hungry. Feed me a password! it says.
And so you do.
But maybe one day beyond that day, it will remember you, and the torrent of memories washing up in your wake. It will be filled with excitement and relief, anticipation and nostalgia.
Remember me. Just as I remember you, something more than an automaton. Something less than love.
Maybe it's just hungry. Feed me a password! it says.
And so you do.
But maybe one day beyond that day, it will remember you, and the torrent of memories washing up in your wake. It will be filled with excitement and relief, anticipation and nostalgia.
Remember me. Just as I remember you, something more than an automaton. Something less than love.
20090327
.sleeper.law.
Have you heard of the new law to be implemented? Call it censorship if you will, but the legislatives maintain that it is merely a formality for dealing with criticism. Pardon if I forget the wording, but it goes something along the lines of
"
So and so mandates that should this or that person should criticize this law, aforementioned this or that person shall be in some manner repulsive to humanity be put to death.
"
As far as odd laws go, this one will most likely take the cake. It acts brutally only upon those that criticize its very barbaric nature, but leaves all else alone.
Perhaps we are being taught a lesson to sit down and shut up, accepting laws as they come by.
After all, if you don't acknowledge the brutality of the new law, it can't possibly harm you. Rather, we must tiptoe around the one gruesome law in this civil society, like a sleeping bear in the living room.
It's nothing more than a coffee table, but you musn't wake it.
"
So and so mandates that should this or that person should criticize this law, aforementioned this or that person shall be in some manner repulsive to humanity be put to death.
"
As far as odd laws go, this one will most likely take the cake. It acts brutally only upon those that criticize its very barbaric nature, but leaves all else alone.
Perhaps we are being taught a lesson to sit down and shut up, accepting laws as they come by.
After all, if you don't acknowledge the brutality of the new law, it can't possibly harm you. Rather, we must tiptoe around the one gruesome law in this civil society, like a sleeping bear in the living room.
It's nothing more than a coffee table, but you musn't wake it.
20090326
on giving up
grandpa died yesterday at five o'clock. mom thinks he wanted to die, has wanted to die for years now. he held grandma's hand until the end of it.
we learned words like multi-system organ failure, co-morbidities, terminal wean, agonal breathing. strange, how precise the language of death. how one can single out the nanosecond when the body transforms from living to dead.
but they didn't have to turn off the vent. he waited until his family surrounded him like a makeshift womb, and only then did he let his heart stop.
we learned words like multi-system organ failure, co-morbidities, terminal wean, agonal breathing. strange, how precise the language of death. how one can single out the nanosecond when the body transforms from living to dead.
but they didn't have to turn off the vent. he waited until his family surrounded him like a makeshift womb, and only then did he let his heart stop.
.shower.and.be.showered.
I remember when rain first fell in the deserts. I was there. We were nothing more than wanderers at that point, shuffling across the sands, not entirely certain what we were looking for. The desert is so vast that we couldn't really imagine an end to the arid expanse. We were trapped between the ennui of sitting stoicly in place, or the fruitlessness of travelling aimlessly through the uniform land.
So we walked.
And as you can imagine, water was always difficult to come upon. We ripped up cactuses, carried what we could from any oases we found, and even resorted to licking the sweat off our brow. As much as our travelling lacked any goal, we were always on the search for more water. We sucked on stones to keep the spit in our mouths, and would compare with each other to see whose stone whittled away faster.
And when the rain first fell, there was certainly a moment of confusion. Here all at once was a blessing of water from the sky of all places (for, really, how did it all get up there in the first place?), and yet it was splattering down all about, rather than any cohesive trickle that we could capture. It was miracle and mockery.
And nonetheless, we all looked upwards as it fell down on us. Those of us caught by ourselves peeled off the sticky fabric that clung to our skin and learned what it was to shower and be showered.
We closed our eyes and caught what we could in our mouths.
So we walked.
And as you can imagine, water was always difficult to come upon. We ripped up cactuses, carried what we could from any oases we found, and even resorted to licking the sweat off our brow. As much as our travelling lacked any goal, we were always on the search for more water. We sucked on stones to keep the spit in our mouths, and would compare with each other to see whose stone whittled away faster.
And when the rain first fell, there was certainly a moment of confusion. Here all at once was a blessing of water from the sky of all places (for, really, how did it all get up there in the first place?), and yet it was splattering down all about, rather than any cohesive trickle that we could capture. It was miracle and mockery.
And nonetheless, we all looked upwards as it fell down on us. Those of us caught by ourselves peeled off the sticky fabric that clung to our skin and learned what it was to shower and be showered.
We closed our eyes and caught what we could in our mouths.
20090325
Tennessee
rain fell, staccato-drops against the deck.
what you made me feel at that moment, i'm not sure--
i wanted to be alone
but wanted you around--does it matter
anyway? i needed
the rain for another hour, falling
from the bright southern sky, out of place
and unsure of itself, what purpose
and right it had to be here.
what you made me feel at that moment, i'm not sure--
i wanted to be alone
but wanted you around--does it matter
anyway? i needed
the rain for another hour, falling
from the bright southern sky, out of place
and unsure of itself, what purpose
and right it had to be here.
.notch.by.notch.
Button one way, button another. Mens and women's clothing seem to mirror each other.
As I've heard it, the chiral nature of clothing was supposed to make it easier for servants to dress their masters, and women being dressed more often than men, everything was flipped on women's clothing to make it easier.
But that seems to make little difference in belt directions, which are apparently flipped as well, though who's to say, since you could very well go whichever direction you fancy with belts:
clockwise
counterclockwise.
And what does that say about men, women, people around us? Are they trying to turn back the clock of their waistlines, tightening themselves into the posture of their primes? Are they trying to zip ahead, squeezing themselves into aged obscurity?
Because it seems either way, we are all slowly tautening the nooses around our bodies
notch by notch,
carving away at our silhouettes until we are finally content.
Until we've whittled away at that round block enough to wedge it through the square hole in our self-appreciation.
All in good time.
Notch by notch.
As I've heard it, the chiral nature of clothing was supposed to make it easier for servants to dress their masters, and women being dressed more often than men, everything was flipped on women's clothing to make it easier.
But that seems to make little difference in belt directions, which are apparently flipped as well, though who's to say, since you could very well go whichever direction you fancy with belts:
clockwise
counterclockwise.
And what does that say about men, women, people around us? Are they trying to turn back the clock of their waistlines, tightening themselves into the posture of their primes? Are they trying to zip ahead, squeezing themselves into aged obscurity?
Because it seems either way, we are all slowly tautening the nooses around our bodies
notch by notch,
carving away at our silhouettes until we are finally content.
Until we've whittled away at that round block enough to wedge it through the square hole in our self-appreciation.
All in good time.
Notch by notch.
20090323
.leitmotif.
I wish I had a theme song, a leitmotif. It would be quite the entrance, everywhere I go.
Although, I always wondered, that if someone were to have a constant theme song, wouldn't it just be a soundtrack? When is someone exiting one place and entering another?
Where are the doorways?
the borders?
On the other hand, the pyrotechnic accompaniment might make it all worth the while.
Maybe even bar me from returning to the United States.
Although, I always wondered, that if someone were to have a constant theme song, wouldn't it just be a soundtrack? When is someone exiting one place and entering another?
Where are the doorways?
the borders?
On the other hand, the pyrotechnic accompaniment might make it all worth the while.
Maybe even bar me from returning to the United States.
absinthe
and no green faeries. turns out the dose of wormwood you need for hallucinations
is a lethal one$.
is a lethal one$.
20090322
.gainful.employment.
It would seem that I am once again gainfully employed!
Building bikes, cashing checks, turning tricks.
Maybe I can afford a new deck soon.
or rent.
Building bikes, cashing checks, turning tricks.
Maybe I can afford a new deck soon.
or rent.
on the way home
i tried to keep my eyes open while
overpass signs blurred by.
tell me where to go and
i won't ask how.
trees with broken
backs hunch and lurch
for the road--
miserable.
like anything
could save us now
overpass signs blurred by.
tell me where to go and
i won't ask how.
trees with broken
backs hunch and lurch
for the road--
miserable.
like anything
could save us now
20090321
.happy.chickens.
Tomorrow, I will see what a happy chicken farm looks like, not that I doubt that my vegan ethos will waver, but I imagine that it will instill me with some hope.
Veggie burger/hot dog grill-out as well, and we'll find out if that corn on the cob that's been in their freezer since at least New Year's is any good.
Just don't rat me out to the customs officials that I've been near livestock and foreign soil.
On the other hand, it can't be as sketchy as the fellow on the bus coming up here that replied to "Are you bringing in any weapons?"
with "Uhhhhhh...."
Veggie burger/hot dog grill-out as well, and we'll find out if that corn on the cob that's been in their freezer since at least New Year's is any good.
Just don't rat me out to the customs officials that I've been near livestock and foreign soil.
On the other hand, it can't be as sketchy as the fellow on the bus coming up here that replied to "Are you bringing in any weapons?"
with "Uhhhhhh...."
20090320
all creatures
i was alone and dreaming
of you and now my life
without you
how will i know you
after all
if i can't keep
myself together
all creatures
look up at heaven, their mouths
dry, no words, nothing to name it
and so i looked to you--
fill me with what
i cannot say
of you and now my life
without you
how will i know you
after all
if i can't keep
myself together
all creatures
look up at heaven, their mouths
dry, no words, nothing to name it
and so i looked to you--
fill me with what
i cannot say
.low.tide.
Every time I skip a day, whether by accident or not, I feel like I have unknowingly observed a secret leap year that only I am privy to. And as the rest of the world charges on I'm constantly behind, clamoring quietly in the cracks between days.
The footsteps overhead are visible as they dislodge the dust from the wooden planks, drawn like venetian blinds on my window to world.
As I lie beneath like a benevolent troll, I allow them to cross, collecting my toll: little snippets from their everyday tête-à-tête.
The footsteps overhead are visible as they dislodge the dust from the wooden planks, drawn like venetian blinds on my window to world.
As I lie beneath like a benevolent troll, I allow them to cross, collecting my toll: little snippets from their everyday tête-à-tête.
20090318
daffodils
growing wild in the field
behind your house, like a small
fire. a hundred yellow mouths
turn skyward, waiting
for rain.
the wind moves through them,
cold as a passerby, rattling
stem to root.
behind your house, like a small
fire. a hundred yellow mouths
turn skyward, waiting
for rain.
the wind moves through them,
cold as a passerby, rattling
stem to root.
.smear.the.queers.
On Tuesday, I overheard a lady in the bus station reading the Holy Bible to herself, when a man sitting across from her interrupted her politely and started conversation. He asked what book she was reading and she replied.
"The thing I never understood about the Bible, is in that Chapter you're reading, Genesis [it was Numbers], it says that Cain and Able moved around and married other people. But if Adam and Eve were the only two people that God made, and they were their only kids, then who did they marry?"
She didn't have an answer, but appreciated the question.
On Wednesday, I was co-hosting a radio show at the University of Western Ontario, and as my friend and I were walking out of the studio, and out of the building, we were stopped by a girl with a Japanese name who asked if she could take a picture of us for her fashion blog. We shrugged and said why not, even though Lulu hadn't showered in days, and I happened to look like a monochrome menace. We did a Crystal Castles pose, and she asked us before we left if we were related. Cousins? Brother and sister?
On Thursday, I wondered who was really related to who, and as familial social order collapsed around me, I saw only sacks of flesh walking down the street, pulpy fruits of family trees smashed into the pavement like a grotesque painting.
We are artists.
"The thing I never understood about the Bible, is in that Chapter you're reading, Genesis [it was Numbers], it says that Cain and Able moved around and married other people. But if Adam and Eve were the only two people that God made, and they were their only kids, then who did they marry?"
She didn't have an answer, but appreciated the question.
On Wednesday, I was co-hosting a radio show at the University of Western Ontario, and as my friend and I were walking out of the studio, and out of the building, we were stopped by a girl with a Japanese name who asked if she could take a picture of us for her fashion blog. We shrugged and said why not, even though Lulu hadn't showered in days, and I happened to look like a monochrome menace. We did a Crystal Castles pose, and she asked us before we left if we were related. Cousins? Brother and sister?
On Thursday, I wondered who was really related to who, and as familial social order collapsed around me, I saw only sacks of flesh walking down the street, pulpy fruits of family trees smashed into the pavement like a grotesque painting.
We are artists.
20090317
.electric.shuffle.
If Chris buys the Alex P. Keaton, I might as well move into the lounge upstairs, settle into the Forest City.
Then I could co-host the Electric Shuffle more often than just tomorrow from 13.30 - 15.30.
Then I could co-host the Electric Shuffle more often than just tomorrow from 13.30 - 15.30.
march
it all begins outside: the way you
shimmied up my porch steps to greet me
the sound of church bells rolling through
the night, parting the air with each new note--
i felt the turbulence in my chest.
here's another way: i can hear the train
howling like a wounded dog, slinking
through dark.
i sleep with the windows open
just to listen. all of it meaningful
if i can put it together right.
and then you, your mouth's full
of words when you sleep, always talking
like i can pull you from
wherever you've gone.
shimmied up my porch steps to greet me
the sound of church bells rolling through
the night, parting the air with each new note--
i felt the turbulence in my chest.
here's another way: i can hear the train
howling like a wounded dog, slinking
through dark.
i sleep with the windows open
just to listen. all of it meaningful
if i can put it together right.
and then you, your mouth's full
of words when you sleep, always talking
like i can pull you from
wherever you've gone.
20090316
.onwards.on.to.ontario.
Last time I was on a bus ride with my partner, we were fooling around in the back, and I ended up walking around the NYC Greyhound station with blue balls for an eternity. I even had to meet her father, who showed up drunk on wine at midday and insisted he knew the way to her gate. She was going back to Tennessee. We broke up not too long after that, and the next time I saw her was when I went down to Chattanooga with high hopes involving her roommate. That didn't pan out either.
Tomorrow, at the least, I'll be in Canada, so there's no way I can lose.
And anyway, we have sandwiches and steamed buns for the ride.
Tomorrow, at the least, I'll be in Canada, so there's no way I can lose.
And anyway, we have sandwiches and steamed buns for the ride.
best
in the August heat, you pulled
the covers to your chin, the hot air
lulling you like a lover's hand.
i loved you best then
huddled in my bed
sleeping
like morning would never come
again.
the covers to your chin, the hot air
lulling you like a lover's hand.
i loved you best then
huddled in my bed
sleeping
like morning would never come
again.
20090315
.unlocal.growths.
But what do the trees think of it all? or plants of any sort, for that matter. It stands to reason that most people don't enjoy being moved around that often (enter the Trail of Tears, Warsaw Ghetto, Palestinian diaspora, and so on), so what is a plant supposed to think of the matter?
Oh, it's just like being in a military family, being slung around the globe in your childhood years, like a stone into political Goliaths. Just think of all the countries that those children get to see and be exposed to from such a young age.
Well, no kid I have ever known enjoys sitting in place for half a day, whether its at sea level, or cruising altitude. But maybe the whole military family thing can be retained: your local gardener razing the dirt of any weeds, because heaven knows they spread faster than AIDS in a vampire community. It's backyard imperialism! Exterminate and repopulate!
Maybe that's a little much. Let's take a more individualistic point of view. Wouldn't you like to go into outer space? among the stars? Or even better! How about back in time! or forwards? One must imagine the existential moment in which one realizes that one is being dragged through the world along the dimensional tracks of someone else's universe.
Which, really, sounds a little traumatizing. And when was the last time anyone enjoyed an existentialist moment?
Well, in any case, it seems like a once in a lifetime opportunity for most plants, something they can partake in as a sprout or sapling. Good luck moving that oak tree down the street.
No doubt if the idea weren't so appalling to begin with, a committee of trees would snuff out the entire practice of whisking rooted individuals all over the place. We have our own methods of dispersion thank you very much. If God had wanted men to fly, he would have given them metal detectors.
Sure, maybe a few of those sprouts enjoy the whole experience, but in the end, I suspect that they're happy to be back in their element.
"Excuse me while I kiss the sky, and curl my toes in the dirt.
If I can just live long enough to bear some fruit, maybe they'll leave me alone."
Oh, it's just like being in a military family, being slung around the globe in your childhood years, like a stone into political Goliaths. Just think of all the countries that those children get to see and be exposed to from such a young age.
Well, no kid I have ever known enjoys sitting in place for half a day, whether its at sea level, or cruising altitude. But maybe the whole military family thing can be retained: your local gardener razing the dirt of any weeds, because heaven knows they spread faster than AIDS in a vampire community. It's backyard imperialism! Exterminate and repopulate!
Maybe that's a little much. Let's take a more individualistic point of view. Wouldn't you like to go into outer space? among the stars? Or even better! How about back in time! or forwards? One must imagine the existential moment in which one realizes that one is being dragged through the world along the dimensional tracks of someone else's universe.
Which, really, sounds a little traumatizing. And when was the last time anyone enjoyed an existentialist moment?
Well, in any case, it seems like a once in a lifetime opportunity for most plants, something they can partake in as a sprout or sapling. Good luck moving that oak tree down the street.
No doubt if the idea weren't so appalling to begin with, a committee of trees would snuff out the entire practice of whisking rooted individuals all over the place. We have our own methods of dispersion thank you very much. If God had wanted men to fly, he would have given them metal detectors.
Sure, maybe a few of those sprouts enjoy the whole experience, but in the end, I suspect that they're happy to be back in their element.
"Excuse me while I kiss the sky, and curl my toes in the dirt.
If I can just live long enough to bear some fruit, maybe they'll leave me alone."
20090314
giving up was something to consider, to roll over my thoughts like a mint on my tongue. maybe it was the eerie quiet when i got home that got me thinking that way. no dogs barking, chairs strewn around the table like invisible people could still be sitting there. what was there to say? only silence pervaded. what was left to do?
i told you my unhappiness was not something you had to bear. i could let it consume you or let you go.
i told you my unhappiness was not something you had to bear. i could let it consume you or let you go.
20090313
.MAPHematics.
How does one get rejected and accepted all at once?
For 45 grand, I could be one of those Asian model citizens that populate graduate program brochures, keeping up the good work, but staying well below their department's radar.
I might as well buy a money clip to hold my diploma.
For 45 grand, I could be one of those Asian model citizens that populate graduate program brochures, keeping up the good work, but staying well below their department's radar.
I might as well buy a money clip to hold my diploma.
20090312
.cheers.
He bought all my poems
read all the stories
clapped at every reading
choked down leftover coffee an
hour before bedtime
He would sing them all
back to me while
he took a whiz after sex
I was glad it wasn't
going anywhere wasn't
working out
The bed would be returned
to me like the vast
western expanse
tired of catching tears
and sweat. The
continental divide
sewn back together along
the seams of rivers
Who feeds a tree its
own apples anyway?
read all the stories
clapped at every reading
choked down leftover coffee an
hour before bedtime
He would sing them all
back to me while
he took a whiz after sex
I was glad it wasn't
going anywhere wasn't
working out
The bed would be returned
to me like the vast
western expanse
tired of catching tears
and sweat. The
continental divide
sewn back together along
the seams of rivers
Who feeds a tree its
own apples anyway?
honey bee
your love is perfunctory, a chore:
suck from the core, another
petaled mouth for your kiss.
and when you're done, go
home, empty nectar-pockets
for your queen. honey cell.
but don't think of me in a field
of moonlight, my ear to the earth,
listening for you
should you come back.
suck from the core, another
petaled mouth for your kiss.
and when you're done, go
home, empty nectar-pockets
for your queen. honey cell.
but don't think of me in a field
of moonlight, my ear to the earth,
listening for you
should you come back.
20090311
.circles.and.crescents.
It started with a cross-country trip in high school, the first time I had ever left my hometown. My teammates and I were slightly jittery, them with the anxiety of competition, me with the restlessness of escape. I was the only day student on the cross-country team, and it made me feel like less of a guide, and more of an outcast; I couldn't be a condescending outsider. I couldn't scoff at the small shops of the town, the crazy old man who spewed forth TS Eliot on the street corner from memory, and had lent me a dollar and five cents for bus fare once when I was nine. I showed them my favourite pancake house one time, but the fried eggs couldn't compare to the street corner fare of whatever cities they hailed from. But I knew all the paths through the woods, so they followed me during practices, and I led them through some of my favourite places in the woods sometimes, looking for the small tree trunk that I had cut my ankle on once. The others kicked up a storm of autumn leaves and talked about whether or not Lindsey Cohen had gotten a boob job, despite being a freshman.
As the bus rolled out of the town, I strained my neck to take it all in, forcing myself to remember as much as possible, convincing myself that I was in a new world, that I had exploded out from behind the curtains, and was faced with centre stage, full of faces and talent scouts. A few birds flapped overhead, and a tree in the distance looked as if it might be waving back at me.
"Hey Cooper, when you gonna get a car?"
"Uh. I dunno. My parents might get me one for college."
"Whaaaa... what the heck ya supposta do til then?"
The team had realized, after the last race, that the local college frats were having parties just down the street from our school, but that they had no way of getting to them. And being that they weren't allowed to own cars, had been trying to devise all manners of ways to sneak off from under the housemasters' noses and make their entrances unfashionably early into college house parties.
"Doesn't your brother have a car?"
"Yeah, doesn't he go there too?"
"What the hell, Cooper, you never told us you knew someone on the inside."
My brother lived at home and was too busy, from what I gathered, trying to keep up with his molecular biology class to really go to any parties. Dad had told him that if he didn't get into the med school program, Mom and him couldn't afford to keep paying for him. When my brother wasn't at home, he worked at the grocery store down the street sweeping leaves out the door, trying to compromise his hatred for customers with the Hippocratic Oath. Part of him wondered, he had mused to me once, what he would do if some old lady had a heart attack in the aisles. I told him it would probably depend which aisle she was in, and we laughed until Mom told us to shut up so she could watch TV, or fall asleep, maybe both.
For good luck, since the race today was at our rival school's track, we had all decided to shave our legs, except for Tommy Lin, who hadn't even begin sprouting above his upper lip yet, much less anywhere else on his body. We also decided in an act of fraternal solidarity to write our names onto each other's shoes, squeezing them in between leather swooshes and suede stripes, testing out signatures with little consistency. We told Tommy Lin he should colour himself a moustache.
The bus rumbled into the campus of our rival school, Kensington Prep, and I thought about how much it looked like our campus, and how all the guys looked like the guys that went to my school. All the girls were decidedly better looking. There was a momentary lapse in the conversation as the others came to the same conclusion. I tried to focus on the buildings, as I was already prone to getting involuntary erections in moving vehicles anyway, and I certainly didn't need any more motivation while wearing running shorts.
The bus came to a jolt and coach ordered us off, with our senior captain Hayden Hamilson strutting his stuff, trying to get us motivated, and fluffing his black scruffy hair in the way he only did when we ran past the girls field hockey team during practices. Word was that he expected to get into Harvard next year, on account of his family legacy there. He got a lot of crap from the other guys on the team, but I figured it was mostly because he had gotten caught with his hands up Ali Diller's shirt last month, and had almost gotten kicked out for breaking parietals if his parents hadn't donated a new wing to the library. Point is, everyone wanted their hands up Ali Diller's shirt, and Hayden was not in the least disconcerted about having been caught. Rather, it seemed as if he had only gotten more notoriety because of it, and Ali Diller herself had simultaneously achieved a certain social standing with the other girls in her dorm, while earning the derision and title of slut from the girls of Grinmore House, but that was just because nobody ever asked Grinmore girls out anyway. They were all damned good at field hockey and chemistry, but were generally agreed to be busted. Either way, Ali Diller had earned a reputation for being easy, and now that the boys knew she put out, there was a line to her bedroom door and window.
As races go, the one at Kensington Prep that day was rather lackluster, marked only by a moment when Roberto Downing had screamed at the top of his lungs as we ran by some couple making out on the far end of the campus pond. As they had scrambled to cover themselves and discern the direction of the yell, the girl had tripped over the flares of her jeans and fallen right into the pond, which I later found out was manmade anyway. We all laughed about how that guy was ever going to make it up to that girl, and what if it were their first date, and was she wearing a white shirt? Did anyone see?
We won the race easily. There really wasn't much competition with Kensington Prep in that regard, and we figured they kept up the rivalry mostly for posterity's sake, so they could coax more money out of the alumni that came back to visit in the spring, who wanted to relive their high school glory, which in reality, probably comprised less of track team victories and more of having their hands up Ali Diller's shirt. But whatever keeps the school rolling in it, man. Nobody could argue with Hayden Hamilson still being around even after he had been caught last year selling pot to some freshmen from Taiwan.
Nevertheless, it was my first victory away from home, and I felt a bit like I imagined Alexander the Great must have felt, riding a horse through ancient Mesopotamia.
I slept most of the bus trip back, waking up only briefly whenever my head bounced off the glass pane when the bus hit a pothole. The others were mostly quiet too, most likely exhausted. A few guys in the back made small talk about some class they were taking, and what teacher they thought used to be a spy for the government.
As I got back to campus, I remembered I had promised my brother to go over to my aunt's house that evening. She was lonely these days, after she had separated from her husband, or ex-husband, I guess, and whenever he had the kids, she mostly moped around the house, trying not to think about what to do with the temporarily empty room upstairs. Was it a guest room? Was it still the twins' room? Were they now guests in the house? She couldn't figure it out, and to help her get her mind off things, Mom sent Tony, my older brother, and me over once a week with some kind of dessert and movie to keep her busy. I think what she was really sending over was us. Sometimes it was just my brother, when I didn't feel like going, or when I was genuinely busy with a paper, but most of the time he practically begged me to go with him, since he never knew what to say to my aunt. We usually joked about the implausability of scenes from whatever movie Mom had picked out for Aunt Sharon and always managed to get through the evening more easily than we figured it would go. Aunt Sharon always stared speechlessly, but we doubt she ever watched anything.
When I came home that night after Aunt Sharon's, though, I was confronted with a thumping noise coming from the laundry room, and I thought at first that someone was washing towels and blankets again, and that the load was spinning lopsided inside the machine, throwing its weight around like coal miners in a bar brawl. But this time the thumping was less damp and thudding, and I realized it was coming from the dryer and not the washing machine. It never occurred to me what was inside.
I opened the door and saw my running shoes tumbling around inside, bright as the day they had been bought, but with a sad worn look about them that one sees in hospital patients trying their best to perk up for their family members stopping in (my only memory of my grandfather, actually). When it finally hit me what had happened, I started yelling uncontrollably at my mother upstairs, knowing full well she was on her way to television-induced slumber.
"What are you yelling about at this hour!"
"You washed my shoes? Who does that! What were you thinking, Mom!"
"What did you say? I'm trying to sleep up here!"
I stormed upstairs and demanded an answer out of her. When she realized what all the commotion was about she snapped at me to leave it be and go to sleep for godssake and when I bought my own shoes to run through the mud with, I could track my grimy soles around anywhere I damned well please, and would I now just shut up and for chrissakes just go to sleep. She threw a slipper at me, aiming more for the door than my head, and I realized I had no more say in the matter.
I went back downstairs and stared at my shoes, deciding that I was going to do my own damned laundry from now on and who the hell did she think she was anyway, doing everyone favours. She could rot in front of that television set for all I cared, because that cathode tube radiation couldn't turn her into any more of a bitch.
Sure enough, all the names had rubbed off, except for the "ksh" in Christian Yorkshire's name.
I definitely was going to do my own laundry from now on, I decided.
And I'm in college now, having little choice but to do my own laundry. These days I don't really have time to give a rat's ass about separating my whites from my colors, or my underwear my overwear like Jenny Lang used to do in high school. All the girls used to bitch about her taking up the washing machines in the dorm basement all afternoon as she managed to separate one basket of clothes into 4 or 5 separate loads. That's what I heard anyway.
No, Mom and Dad have threatened me now that they'd cut my funding if I didn't get into a good graduate law program, so I've been working my ass off studying for the LSAT in a few months. I stopped by one of those frat parties once, and I swore I saw Lindsey Cohen there, with her rack looking better than ever, being the life of the party.
These days, all I really want from my laundry is that I can take care of it all at once. There's not much more that bothers me than running out of clean socks and having enough shirts to last me til the end of the week. I try keep a rough inventory in my head to know what to ask Mom for when I go to the store with her on school breaks. I'm pretty close at this point, having a few extra boxer briefs throwing off the equation, but that's actually a rather good thing, because it gives me something to wear when I'm actually doing laundry. God knows there's no better feeling than slipping into some hot clothes straight from the dryer, trying not to burn yourself on any metallic zippers or buttons.
I threw those old shoes away a few months after they were washed.
As the bus rolled out of the town, I strained my neck to take it all in, forcing myself to remember as much as possible, convincing myself that I was in a new world, that I had exploded out from behind the curtains, and was faced with centre stage, full of faces and talent scouts. A few birds flapped overhead, and a tree in the distance looked as if it might be waving back at me.
"Hey Cooper, when you gonna get a car?"
"Uh. I dunno. My parents might get me one for college."
"Whaaaa... what the heck ya supposta do til then?"
The team had realized, after the last race, that the local college frats were having parties just down the street from our school, but that they had no way of getting to them. And being that they weren't allowed to own cars, had been trying to devise all manners of ways to sneak off from under the housemasters' noses and make their entrances unfashionably early into college house parties.
"Doesn't your brother have a car?"
"Yeah, doesn't he go there too?"
"What the hell, Cooper, you never told us you knew someone on the inside."
My brother lived at home and was too busy, from what I gathered, trying to keep up with his molecular biology class to really go to any parties. Dad had told him that if he didn't get into the med school program, Mom and him couldn't afford to keep paying for him. When my brother wasn't at home, he worked at the grocery store down the street sweeping leaves out the door, trying to compromise his hatred for customers with the Hippocratic Oath. Part of him wondered, he had mused to me once, what he would do if some old lady had a heart attack in the aisles. I told him it would probably depend which aisle she was in, and we laughed until Mom told us to shut up so she could watch TV, or fall asleep, maybe both.
For good luck, since the race today was at our rival school's track, we had all decided to shave our legs, except for Tommy Lin, who hadn't even begin sprouting above his upper lip yet, much less anywhere else on his body. We also decided in an act of fraternal solidarity to write our names onto each other's shoes, squeezing them in between leather swooshes and suede stripes, testing out signatures with little consistency. We told Tommy Lin he should colour himself a moustache.
The bus rumbled into the campus of our rival school, Kensington Prep, and I thought about how much it looked like our campus, and how all the guys looked like the guys that went to my school. All the girls were decidedly better looking. There was a momentary lapse in the conversation as the others came to the same conclusion. I tried to focus on the buildings, as I was already prone to getting involuntary erections in moving vehicles anyway, and I certainly didn't need any more motivation while wearing running shorts.
The bus came to a jolt and coach ordered us off, with our senior captain Hayden Hamilson strutting his stuff, trying to get us motivated, and fluffing his black scruffy hair in the way he only did when we ran past the girls field hockey team during practices. Word was that he expected to get into Harvard next year, on account of his family legacy there. He got a lot of crap from the other guys on the team, but I figured it was mostly because he had gotten caught with his hands up Ali Diller's shirt last month, and had almost gotten kicked out for breaking parietals if his parents hadn't donated a new wing to the library. Point is, everyone wanted their hands up Ali Diller's shirt, and Hayden was not in the least disconcerted about having been caught. Rather, it seemed as if he had only gotten more notoriety because of it, and Ali Diller herself had simultaneously achieved a certain social standing with the other girls in her dorm, while earning the derision and title of slut from the girls of Grinmore House, but that was just because nobody ever asked Grinmore girls out anyway. They were all damned good at field hockey and chemistry, but were generally agreed to be busted. Either way, Ali Diller had earned a reputation for being easy, and now that the boys knew she put out, there was a line to her bedroom door and window.
As races go, the one at Kensington Prep that day was rather lackluster, marked only by a moment when Roberto Downing had screamed at the top of his lungs as we ran by some couple making out on the far end of the campus pond. As they had scrambled to cover themselves and discern the direction of the yell, the girl had tripped over the flares of her jeans and fallen right into the pond, which I later found out was manmade anyway. We all laughed about how that guy was ever going to make it up to that girl, and what if it were their first date, and was she wearing a white shirt? Did anyone see?
We won the race easily. There really wasn't much competition with Kensington Prep in that regard, and we figured they kept up the rivalry mostly for posterity's sake, so they could coax more money out of the alumni that came back to visit in the spring, who wanted to relive their high school glory, which in reality, probably comprised less of track team victories and more of having their hands up Ali Diller's shirt. But whatever keeps the school rolling in it, man. Nobody could argue with Hayden Hamilson still being around even after he had been caught last year selling pot to some freshmen from Taiwan.
Nevertheless, it was my first victory away from home, and I felt a bit like I imagined Alexander the Great must have felt, riding a horse through ancient Mesopotamia.
I slept most of the bus trip back, waking up only briefly whenever my head bounced off the glass pane when the bus hit a pothole. The others were mostly quiet too, most likely exhausted. A few guys in the back made small talk about some class they were taking, and what teacher they thought used to be a spy for the government.
As I got back to campus, I remembered I had promised my brother to go over to my aunt's house that evening. She was lonely these days, after she had separated from her husband, or ex-husband, I guess, and whenever he had the kids, she mostly moped around the house, trying not to think about what to do with the temporarily empty room upstairs. Was it a guest room? Was it still the twins' room? Were they now guests in the house? She couldn't figure it out, and to help her get her mind off things, Mom sent Tony, my older brother, and me over once a week with some kind of dessert and movie to keep her busy. I think what she was really sending over was us. Sometimes it was just my brother, when I didn't feel like going, or when I was genuinely busy with a paper, but most of the time he practically begged me to go with him, since he never knew what to say to my aunt. We usually joked about the implausability of scenes from whatever movie Mom had picked out for Aunt Sharon and always managed to get through the evening more easily than we figured it would go. Aunt Sharon always stared speechlessly, but we doubt she ever watched anything.
When I came home that night after Aunt Sharon's, though, I was confronted with a thumping noise coming from the laundry room, and I thought at first that someone was washing towels and blankets again, and that the load was spinning lopsided inside the machine, throwing its weight around like coal miners in a bar brawl. But this time the thumping was less damp and thudding, and I realized it was coming from the dryer and not the washing machine. It never occurred to me what was inside.
I opened the door and saw my running shoes tumbling around inside, bright as the day they had been bought, but with a sad worn look about them that one sees in hospital patients trying their best to perk up for their family members stopping in (my only memory of my grandfather, actually). When it finally hit me what had happened, I started yelling uncontrollably at my mother upstairs, knowing full well she was on her way to television-induced slumber.
"What are you yelling about at this hour!"
"You washed my shoes? Who does that! What were you thinking, Mom!"
"What did you say? I'm trying to sleep up here!"
I stormed upstairs and demanded an answer out of her. When she realized what all the commotion was about she snapped at me to leave it be and go to sleep for godssake and when I bought my own shoes to run through the mud with, I could track my grimy soles around anywhere I damned well please, and would I now just shut up and for chrissakes just go to sleep. She threw a slipper at me, aiming more for the door than my head, and I realized I had no more say in the matter.
I went back downstairs and stared at my shoes, deciding that I was going to do my own damned laundry from now on and who the hell did she think she was anyway, doing everyone favours. She could rot in front of that television set for all I cared, because that cathode tube radiation couldn't turn her into any more of a bitch.
Sure enough, all the names had rubbed off, except for the "ksh" in Christian Yorkshire's name.
I definitely was going to do my own laundry from now on, I decided.
And I'm in college now, having little choice but to do my own laundry. These days I don't really have time to give a rat's ass about separating my whites from my colors, or my underwear my overwear like Jenny Lang used to do in high school. All the girls used to bitch about her taking up the washing machines in the dorm basement all afternoon as she managed to separate one basket of clothes into 4 or 5 separate loads. That's what I heard anyway.
No, Mom and Dad have threatened me now that they'd cut my funding if I didn't get into a good graduate law program, so I've been working my ass off studying for the LSAT in a few months. I stopped by one of those frat parties once, and I swore I saw Lindsey Cohen there, with her rack looking better than ever, being the life of the party.
These days, all I really want from my laundry is that I can take care of it all at once. There's not much more that bothers me than running out of clean socks and having enough shirts to last me til the end of the week. I try keep a rough inventory in my head to know what to ask Mom for when I go to the store with her on school breaks. I'm pretty close at this point, having a few extra boxer briefs throwing off the equation, but that's actually a rather good thing, because it gives me something to wear when I'm actually doing laundry. God knows there's no better feeling than slipping into some hot clothes straight from the dryer, trying not to burn yourself on any metallic zippers or buttons.
I threw those old shoes away a few months after they were washed.
Hail the Fire in the Lotus
and let it
burn you through,
right in your chest.
let it
open you
like a wound, each bloom
of red cell and red swell.
unfold
your flanks, peel you
back from yourself & you'd just be
meat,
meat and some
loose bones.
burn you through,
right in your chest.
let it
open you
like a wound, each bloom
of red cell and red swell.
unfold
your flanks, peel you
back from yourself & you'd just be
meat,
meat and some
loose bones.
20090310
edge
the sky was on the edge of storming: wind
pushed through the trees and clouds stood over me
like my father in a rage.
the first time i met you
i cut my hand on an exposed nail
under my desk. a thin red stream rushed
to the cuticle. i pulled my sleeve down,
afraid of your concern.
maybe
it's all the wine i drank that makes me feel
like the world could break me.
one push in any direction
and i'd be another leaf
cowering across your path.
pushed through the trees and clouds stood over me
like my father in a rage.
the first time i met you
i cut my hand on an exposed nail
under my desk. a thin red stream rushed
to the cuticle. i pulled my sleeve down,
afraid of your concern.
maybe
it's all the wine i drank that makes me feel
like the world could break me.
one push in any direction
and i'd be another leaf
cowering across your path.
.you.are.what.you.land.
Usually when I collide with the gravel, my first concern is not my general well-being, but rather whether or not my clothes are intact. This isn't really from a fashion perspective, I suppose, as much as an economical one, since I would really prefer not to have to buy new clothes all the time when they become smeared with blood and grated.
Nowadays, I tend to be more concerned that my tattoo artist will kill me if I get too many chunks of broken glass lodged into my arm, her handiwork.
But despite it all, the fs feeble stall and the fs fastplant on the bank was worth the holes in my shirts, shoes and palms. And the pothole in my pride is patched up, after having been impaled on the merciless barbs of the 8 year olds at the skatepark.
Nowadays, I tend to be more concerned that my tattoo artist will kill me if I get too many chunks of broken glass lodged into my arm, her handiwork.
But despite it all, the fs feeble stall and the fs fastplant on the bank was worth the holes in my shirts, shoes and palms. And the pothole in my pride is patched up, after having been impaled on the merciless barbs of the 8 year olds at the skatepark.
20090309
god shaped hole
would it be something clouds could form?
swirls of fog and grief, weightless and fleeting
as soon as i put my hand through it.
my sister saw the Lord in cotton domes
overhead. no one believed her but still
with the sun in our eyes
we wanted to see.
You'd more likely be
a diamond-spot with a bullet punched through.
every pulse would mean a little less
of You.
i wanted You close, but how
could i bear it? Your love that feels
like two hands turned up, asking for more.
swirls of fog and grief, weightless and fleeting
as soon as i put my hand through it.
my sister saw the Lord in cotton domes
overhead. no one believed her but still
with the sun in our eyes
we wanted to see.
You'd more likely be
a diamond-spot with a bullet punched through.
every pulse would mean a little less
of You.
i wanted You close, but how
could i bear it? Your love that feels
like two hands turned up, asking for more.
.teen.spirits.
It's somewhat depressing, sure, but in retrospect, living wasn't unlike high school. All of the awkwardness, the drama, the immature yelling, coming to a close at the end of the day with my eyes closed, laying my head down next to the few songs that bring me any consolation.
And we all talk about it as if it were the greatest years to ever squeak by on gymnasium sneakers, and maybe it was to some extent; you haven't done much since then other than sit in a revolving chair, swivelling from one day to the next.
But in all likelihood, it was as terrible for you as it was for me. The constant jeering, the pointlessness of standardized tests and the endless race to finally just be done with it all, to be able to climb out of your molting, pimply skin like a snake, so that you could continue slithering onwards towards a hole in the ground.
And every so often, just to give those paranormal kooks something to talk about, we show back up for a 5, 10, 100 year reunion, trying to discern which one of us has made something of herself as we waft through walls towards the punch bowl.
And we all talk about it as if it were the greatest years to ever squeak by on gymnasium sneakers, and maybe it was to some extent; you haven't done much since then other than sit in a revolving chair, swivelling from one day to the next.
But in all likelihood, it was as terrible for you as it was for me. The constant jeering, the pointlessness of standardized tests and the endless race to finally just be done with it all, to be able to climb out of your molting, pimply skin like a snake, so that you could continue slithering onwards towards a hole in the ground.
And every so often, just to give those paranormal kooks something to talk about, we show back up for a 5, 10, 100 year reunion, trying to discern which one of us has made something of herself as we waft through walls towards the punch bowl.
20090308
January
From the passenger seat, I watched
an unlit cigarette dangle from your lips.
You said, January makes me feel new.
But it only made me feel cold.
You struck a match and let your cigarette kiss
its flame, and I remembered thinking
I was too young to be parked outside
that hotel steaming with city rot, the rat-a-tat
of a grumbling furnace. My father thought
I was at school.
an unlit cigarette dangle from your lips.
You said, January makes me feel new.
But it only made me feel cold.
You struck a match and let your cigarette kiss
its flame, and I remembered thinking
I was too young to be parked outside
that hotel steaming with city rot, the rat-a-tat
of a grumbling furnace. My father thought
I was at school.
.you.don't.say.
One of my fondest memories, but not one without its own nostaligic laments, occurred not too long ago, nor too recently. I happened to be on a trans-oceanic flight, and to keep myself occupied as we raced the Sun to the horizon I had brought some research material for a book I was working on at the time. Foremost among them was a vintage book by a noteworthy deconstructionist, who does not need mentioning.
My reading was droll and I looked out the window to break up the dense prose. As I turned back around, I was surprised to see that my neighbour had picked up my book from the seat pocket, and was flipping through it rather flippantly. And not only that, but it was none other than the intellectual that had penned the work in the first place!
What a lot of malarkey this is, wouldn't you say?-
Excuse me, sir?-
I'm not entirely sure I wrote this in the first place.-
Ah. Well, it is a seminal piece nevertheless, I suppose.-
He sighed.
My thesis was hardly airtight, and the whole text fails to really stand up to careful, or careless even, scrutiny.-
True of most vehicles of thought, though, isn't it?-
I hoped my joke would be successful, not too obscure, not too pretentious. But as if on cue, the plane lurched, and the pilot announced amidst the flickering lights that we had lost an engine. A second.
As I regained consciousness, being deprived of any memory of adventure in my own story, I realized that I was lying on the shore of what appeared to be a small island, as much a desert as it was deserted. It seemed that my mentor (well, at least as far as my research goes, and if only unrequited) had also washed up as I had. He was tearing pages out of his/my book to start a fire.
As he told me later, I had passed out as the plane plummeted, whether from fear or nausea or lack of oxygen was anyone's guess, and in retrospect, it was probably my having been completely limp that had spared my life upon impact with the water. He told me that he had managed to slip a life vest onto me and dragged me out of the sinking plane, watching as panicky survivors hastily inflated their life jackets prematurely, before realizing that they were now trapped in the chest-high water of the fuselage.
The two of us managed to leave the wreckage, me mostly having been dragged out of the body before my lifejacket was inflated. As it happened, my mentor (it still sounds lofty to refer to him as such; I shall proceed with the tentative word "friend" from here on out) happened to have a carabiner keychain that he clipped us together with, before swimming towards the island on the distant horizon. At some point, he had passed out with exhaustion as well, and when he woke, we were ashore where we were.
You saved the book?-
He admitted to having been in the military as a youth, and thought that the pages might come in handy for starting a fire. He had tried his best to seal it up in one of the barfbags, but it seemed that the pages were still rather waterlogged.
I thanked him several times for having saved my life, and as we watched the sun beat us to the horizon, we had the type of unadulterated confessional conversation that occurs between mutual survivors. We gave our respective biographies, recalled our favourite foods, and discussed with sweeping generalizations about our current research.
We had a good laugh at the irony of being washed up on an island with no name, a signified with no signifier.
We scavenged the island for food, and found ourselves able to locate some fruits here and there, resembling the supermarket produce we were familiar with only superficially. We eventually managed to get the fire started. I thought about the certain degree of romanticism that sprouts from catastrophe, like a clover from cow droppings.
As we dug around for rocks to surround our bonfire, my friend happened to strike upon something that was more metallic than stone, and we discovered, to our surprise, a lamp of indiscernible origins. By the looks of it, it was from some type of whaling vessel, the faint smell of burnt whale blubber still lingering as we removed a seal that kept the inside airtight. And just for the record, the smell was indeed familiar to me based upon my childhood residence in Norway, where I encountered whale meat more than a few times.
With the seal removed, we tried to buff up the glass a little bit, to see if it was indeed still useable, and to our great surprise, a smoky-eyed genie emerged from the lamp, confounding both of our logical intuitions. The genie yawned and appeased us more quickly than I would have thought was possible for such a supernatural phenomenon. In retrospect, I suspect that his nebulous trails, which smelled strongly of incense, might have been some kind of narcotic.
I thought your type only lived in Arabian lamps.-
And rather than the Robin Williams, Disney variety of genie, we had a bored and apologetic genie, not cracking a joke, only stating simply that one lived where one could these days.
I suppose maybe if that's your type of humour.
So as you can imagine, we had the expected set-up, or rather, we were granted wishes, but due to the collapsing economy of the wish market, we were only getting one each. No wishing for more wishes; no wishing for the power to grant wishes. All the usual fine print, that I couldn't help but wonder if genies came with End User License Agreements these days.
In any case, age before beauty, I joked, and offered my friend his turn first. He gave me a slightly dejected look, and I asked him how he could be so crestfallen when we were being presented with such a boon. He reminded me of all the "beware of what you wish for" stories, and how his entire life's work has been founded upon that very idea of language betraying us, of language as being self-defeating. And now we were standing at the one-way gate where we our undecidable language was being granted a certain degree of omnipotence.
Furthermore, we realized, with only one wish apiece, and the restrictions of the lengthy Genie EULA that was read off to us, there was no way for one of us to test the loyalty of our language to our wishes and report back to the other, and still get both of us off the island (trust me: the Genie EULA was complex and convoluted and we could not work out a way to resolve the problem).
As my friend thought it over, I could only think of an undergraduate paper I had written on the works of Søren Kierkegaard - most specifically on Fear and Trembling - and however patchy and amatuerish it may have been, I remembered the basic thesis I had tried to argue.
I shook hands with my friend and mentor, if only for a formality. I told the genie my wish, and like a terrible Disney movie (I have taken my daughter to several over the years), I woke up in my university library, my partner shaking me awake and joking that I hadn't pulled an all-nighter since my undergrad years.
Over the next few weeks, I tried to look up my friend's phone number or email, but only found a university address where he used to teach. I wrote a few successive letters, first joking, then musing, and finally murmuring.
I never heard back from him.
My reading was droll and I looked out the window to break up the dense prose. As I turned back around, I was surprised to see that my neighbour had picked up my book from the seat pocket, and was flipping through it rather flippantly. And not only that, but it was none other than the intellectual that had penned the work in the first place!
What a lot of malarkey this is, wouldn't you say?-
Excuse me, sir?-
I'm not entirely sure I wrote this in the first place.-
Ah. Well, it is a seminal piece nevertheless, I suppose.-
He sighed.
My thesis was hardly airtight, and the whole text fails to really stand up to careful, or careless even, scrutiny.-
True of most vehicles of thought, though, isn't it?-
I hoped my joke would be successful, not too obscure, not too pretentious. But as if on cue, the plane lurched, and the pilot announced amidst the flickering lights that we had lost an engine. A second.
As I regained consciousness, being deprived of any memory of adventure in my own story, I realized that I was lying on the shore of what appeared to be a small island, as much a desert as it was deserted. It seemed that my mentor (well, at least as far as my research goes, and if only unrequited) had also washed up as I had. He was tearing pages out of his/my book to start a fire.
As he told me later, I had passed out as the plane plummeted, whether from fear or nausea or lack of oxygen was anyone's guess, and in retrospect, it was probably my having been completely limp that had spared my life upon impact with the water. He told me that he had managed to slip a life vest onto me and dragged me out of the sinking plane, watching as panicky survivors hastily inflated their life jackets prematurely, before realizing that they were now trapped in the chest-high water of the fuselage.
The two of us managed to leave the wreckage, me mostly having been dragged out of the body before my lifejacket was inflated. As it happened, my mentor (it still sounds lofty to refer to him as such; I shall proceed with the tentative word "friend" from here on out) happened to have a carabiner keychain that he clipped us together with, before swimming towards the island on the distant horizon. At some point, he had passed out with exhaustion as well, and when he woke, we were ashore where we were.
You saved the book?-
He admitted to having been in the military as a youth, and thought that the pages might come in handy for starting a fire. He had tried his best to seal it up in one of the barfbags, but it seemed that the pages were still rather waterlogged.
I thanked him several times for having saved my life, and as we watched the sun beat us to the horizon, we had the type of unadulterated confessional conversation that occurs between mutual survivors. We gave our respective biographies, recalled our favourite foods, and discussed with sweeping generalizations about our current research.
We had a good laugh at the irony of being washed up on an island with no name, a signified with no signifier.
We scavenged the island for food, and found ourselves able to locate some fruits here and there, resembling the supermarket produce we were familiar with only superficially. We eventually managed to get the fire started. I thought about the certain degree of romanticism that sprouts from catastrophe, like a clover from cow droppings.
As we dug around for rocks to surround our bonfire, my friend happened to strike upon something that was more metallic than stone, and we discovered, to our surprise, a lamp of indiscernible origins. By the looks of it, it was from some type of whaling vessel, the faint smell of burnt whale blubber still lingering as we removed a seal that kept the inside airtight. And just for the record, the smell was indeed familiar to me based upon my childhood residence in Norway, where I encountered whale meat more than a few times.
With the seal removed, we tried to buff up the glass a little bit, to see if it was indeed still useable, and to our great surprise, a smoky-eyed genie emerged from the lamp, confounding both of our logical intuitions. The genie yawned and appeased us more quickly than I would have thought was possible for such a supernatural phenomenon. In retrospect, I suspect that his nebulous trails, which smelled strongly of incense, might have been some kind of narcotic.
I thought your type only lived in Arabian lamps.-
And rather than the Robin Williams, Disney variety of genie, we had a bored and apologetic genie, not cracking a joke, only stating simply that one lived where one could these days.
I suppose maybe if that's your type of humour.
So as you can imagine, we had the expected set-up, or rather, we were granted wishes, but due to the collapsing economy of the wish market, we were only getting one each. No wishing for more wishes; no wishing for the power to grant wishes. All the usual fine print, that I couldn't help but wonder if genies came with End User License Agreements these days.
In any case, age before beauty, I joked, and offered my friend his turn first. He gave me a slightly dejected look, and I asked him how he could be so crestfallen when we were being presented with such a boon. He reminded me of all the "beware of what you wish for" stories, and how his entire life's work has been founded upon that very idea of language betraying us, of language as being self-defeating. And now we were standing at the one-way gate where we our undecidable language was being granted a certain degree of omnipotence.
Furthermore, we realized, with only one wish apiece, and the restrictions of the lengthy Genie EULA that was read off to us, there was no way for one of us to test the loyalty of our language to our wishes and report back to the other, and still get both of us off the island (trust me: the Genie EULA was complex and convoluted and we could not work out a way to resolve the problem).
As my friend thought it over, I could only think of an undergraduate paper I had written on the works of Søren Kierkegaard - most specifically on Fear and Trembling - and however patchy and amatuerish it may have been, I remembered the basic thesis I had tried to argue.
I shook hands with my friend and mentor, if only for a formality. I told the genie my wish, and like a terrible Disney movie (I have taken my daughter to several over the years), I woke up in my university library, my partner shaking me awake and joking that I hadn't pulled an all-nighter since my undergrad years.
Over the next few weeks, I tried to look up my friend's phone number or email, but only found a university address where he used to teach. I wrote a few successive letters, first joking, then musing, and finally murmuring.
I never heard back from him.
20090307
.dear.jabba.
Dear Jabba,
For a cat who is constantly trying to slip out the door as people come and go, you turned out to be quite the pussy when you actually made it to the outside world.
I know. It scares me too.
But we can't hide under porches forever.
There are birds to catch, small rodents to kill.
Take a deep breath,
and dinner will still be in your bowl in the kitchen when you come home.
For a cat who is constantly trying to slip out the door as people come and go, you turned out to be quite the pussy when you actually made it to the outside world.
I know. It scares me too.
But we can't hide under porches forever.
There are birds to catch, small rodents to kill.
Take a deep breath,
and dinner will still be in your bowl in the kitchen when you come home.
20090306
.seeding.succeeding.
There are all manners of gardens, and all manners of reasons to grow them. Personally, it may come down to simple economics (despite economics being anthing but simple); wouldn't it be so much more affordable to grow what you eat? And maybe that's your reason: an idealistic, even pastoral, dream of self-sustainability, because, after all, we live in a time and place inseperably bound by one's increasing self-attendance in light of the ever-inflating population on the planet. It's as if humanity saw its numerical presence and magnitude as a raging hard-on, stroking itself larger and harder so that we can scream with as little irony as possible into the empty universe, "fuck you, man!"
We envision some vine plants growing on the fence, in the shade of the house. Not all plants need that much light, you know. Broccoli, lettuce, maybe peas. We'll need an herb plot, of course, but that shouldn't take up too much room. Zucchini is quite easy to grow, even if deceptively tricky to spell. Whereupon we can imagine the small urban farmer standing in her garden, holding up her crop label to the light, hoping that recasting some shadows might illuminate some truth on the paper.
My grandfather grew a sizable garden for most of my childhood, not really giving it up until he had a quadruple bypass. He had been a heavy smoker in his teenage years, and I feel that as a result, he has always been intent on maintaining a healthy lifestyle ever since he gave it up. My family has hounded me since I was young to swim as much as possible, since, after all, it is the best form of exercise. Trips to the local rec center came as regularly as meals and showers.
My grandparents' backyard, as I mentioned, was quite sizable, and I have no idea what my grandfather grew exactly, but he was always outside, pulling this, moving that, watering where water was needed. The cloud of insects surrounding him swirled and dissolved into the Tennessee air like sugar into lemonade. My grandfather didn't even notice them I think, even though we did, as we slapped our arms and necks anytime we had to venture out of the air conditioning during a commercial break in order to relay some half-decoded Vietnamese message from my grandmother.
And when, on those occasions, we did enter the garden, the line of foot stones wove an intricate path between rows and cages and even a latticed archway. There was a mystery in the pathways that seemed only evident to my grandfather, as if the Cretians had abandoned their labyrinth, and left the minotaur to his own devices to grow his sustenance.
We sometimes watched my grandfather from inside, through the sliding glass door on the side of the house. It was as if we were being presented with two screens with entirely incompatible programming. We were back in the land of free choices for the summer, and the only ones that mattered to us were which movie we'd get to watch at the movie theatre that summer, and when we'd get to go to our cousins' house, where the Nintendo was. I remember relearning Chinese chess every summer from my cousin, and then proceeding to beat him and forget how to play all over again a few weeks later.
When my grandfather had the heart attack that led to his bypass surgery, we had stopped visiting as frequently, as much due to our tight summer family schedules as due to our indignation at being held hostage for weeks in sleepy Oak Ridge, TN, home of the first atom bomb. After the operation it was deemed too hazardous to allow my grandparents to continue living on their own, and they eventually ended up moving out of that house, moving in with relatives here and there, where their failing eyes, hearts and bones could be closely watched over for further defects. The garden had long since become overrun with undergrowth and weeds. And with the minotaur gone, the labyrinth now led nowhere but empty circles.
Our compost heap is almost ready, just needing a few good stirrings now that the weather has warmed up. We're also thinking of starting some potato barrels in addition to the garden, where we'll definitely be growing hot peppers. Everyone has agreed on the necessity of tomatoes, and our one roommate will probably have his own personal plot for his own personal tomatoes. He even wants to purchase some cages for them, which seems like quite the investment, all things considered. And as I wait to hear back from graduate schools to figure out where I'm moving next after the summer, I wonder what will continue to grow here when I'm gone.
We envision some vine plants growing on the fence, in the shade of the house. Not all plants need that much light, you know. Broccoli, lettuce, maybe peas. We'll need an herb plot, of course, but that shouldn't take up too much room. Zucchini is quite easy to grow, even if deceptively tricky to spell. Whereupon we can imagine the small urban farmer standing in her garden, holding up her crop label to the light, hoping that recasting some shadows might illuminate some truth on the paper.
My grandfather grew a sizable garden for most of my childhood, not really giving it up until he had a quadruple bypass. He had been a heavy smoker in his teenage years, and I feel that as a result, he has always been intent on maintaining a healthy lifestyle ever since he gave it up. My family has hounded me since I was young to swim as much as possible, since, after all, it is the best form of exercise. Trips to the local rec center came as regularly as meals and showers.
My grandparents' backyard, as I mentioned, was quite sizable, and I have no idea what my grandfather grew exactly, but he was always outside, pulling this, moving that, watering where water was needed. The cloud of insects surrounding him swirled and dissolved into the Tennessee air like sugar into lemonade. My grandfather didn't even notice them I think, even though we did, as we slapped our arms and necks anytime we had to venture out of the air conditioning during a commercial break in order to relay some half-decoded Vietnamese message from my grandmother.
And when, on those occasions, we did enter the garden, the line of foot stones wove an intricate path between rows and cages and even a latticed archway. There was a mystery in the pathways that seemed only evident to my grandfather, as if the Cretians had abandoned their labyrinth, and left the minotaur to his own devices to grow his sustenance.
We sometimes watched my grandfather from inside, through the sliding glass door on the side of the house. It was as if we were being presented with two screens with entirely incompatible programming. We were back in the land of free choices for the summer, and the only ones that mattered to us were which movie we'd get to watch at the movie theatre that summer, and when we'd get to go to our cousins' house, where the Nintendo was. I remember relearning Chinese chess every summer from my cousin, and then proceeding to beat him and forget how to play all over again a few weeks later.
When my grandfather had the heart attack that led to his bypass surgery, we had stopped visiting as frequently, as much due to our tight summer family schedules as due to our indignation at being held hostage for weeks in sleepy Oak Ridge, TN, home of the first atom bomb. After the operation it was deemed too hazardous to allow my grandparents to continue living on their own, and they eventually ended up moving out of that house, moving in with relatives here and there, where their failing eyes, hearts and bones could be closely watched over for further defects. The garden had long since become overrun with undergrowth and weeds. And with the minotaur gone, the labyrinth now led nowhere but empty circles.
Our compost heap is almost ready, just needing a few good stirrings now that the weather has warmed up. We're also thinking of starting some potato barrels in addition to the garden, where we'll definitely be growing hot peppers. Everyone has agreed on the necessity of tomatoes, and our one roommate will probably have his own personal plot for his own personal tomatoes. He even wants to purchase some cages for them, which seems like quite the investment, all things considered. And as I wait to hear back from graduate schools to figure out where I'm moving next after the summer, I wonder what will continue to grow here when I'm gone.
when it rains
the cows lie in the pasture before
the rain comes. what makes them bend toward
to the earth that way? that slow bow
then the knees sink into soft dirt.
they lift their mouths to the gray-stained sky
but nothing could heal
that thirst.
the rain comes. what makes them bend toward
to the earth that way? that slow bow
then the knees sink into soft dirt.
they lift their mouths to the gray-stained sky
but nothing could heal
that thirst.
20090305
.multiple.choice.quiz.
She thinks I'm hot? (!)
Choose the one that does not apply:
tall (a)
indie (b)
big penis (c)
unemployed (d)
Choose the one that does not apply:
tall (a)
indie (b)
big penis (c)
unemployed (d)
better off
all i know is
he paced around the room the way he does
when fighting with his mom on the phone,
pendulum-like, steady as a good heartbeat,
when i told him. i, at once, wanted him
near me and wanted him away.
the church bell tolled like God's wagging
finger. every agony, every note of it
hung in the air, a reminder of our failings.
he paced around the room the way he does
when fighting with his mom on the phone,
pendulum-like, steady as a good heartbeat,
when i told him. i, at once, wanted him
near me and wanted him away.
the church bell tolled like God's wagging
finger. every agony, every note of it
hung in the air, a reminder of our failings.
20090304
.ballistic.stretching.
My former Wing Chun instructor had only done ballistic stretching in his legs for most of his training. As a result, he could easily kick at eye-level, holding his leg up at chest level to underscore the effort.
He, however, could not bend over and touch his toes. I don't think he was exactly embarrassed about it, but he certainly acknowledged the inconsistency of his flexibility.
And in the kitchen tonight, while making steamed buns again, I stood in my pyjamas, having been too lazy to change back into the jeans that run a size or two too small (furthermore, why would I at 10:30 in the evening? Where could I possibly be going at this hour) after letting a friend I had only met a day or two before take naked pictures of me. That is, reshooting, as our first meeting had been under similar circumstances, in a different locale.
In any case, and more to the point, I was waiting for the buns to steam, and saw the dangling cords for the ceiling fan and light, and felt not unlike a cat at that moment. And, channelling the memory of my former instructor, kicked my foot upwards and reaffirmed what I had also hoped was true, and managed to send the cord flying upwards into the fortunately turned-off fan blade.
And in that moment before my leg came back down, surely looking ridiculous to any neighbours peering through the alley into my kitchen, I felt as if my leg would remain pointing towards the moon, and the rest of my body would pulled around like a midnight high tide, and I would be drawn upwards forever, walking on the belly of the starry dome.
He, however, could not bend over and touch his toes. I don't think he was exactly embarrassed about it, but he certainly acknowledged the inconsistency of his flexibility.
And in the kitchen tonight, while making steamed buns again, I stood in my pyjamas, having been too lazy to change back into the jeans that run a size or two too small (furthermore, why would I at 10:30 in the evening? Where could I possibly be going at this hour) after letting a friend I had only met a day or two before take naked pictures of me. That is, reshooting, as our first meeting had been under similar circumstances, in a different locale.
In any case, and more to the point, I was waiting for the buns to steam, and saw the dangling cords for the ceiling fan and light, and felt not unlike a cat at that moment. And, channelling the memory of my former instructor, kicked my foot upwards and reaffirmed what I had also hoped was true, and managed to send the cord flying upwards into the fortunately turned-off fan blade.
And in that moment before my leg came back down, surely looking ridiculous to any neighbours peering through the alley into my kitchen, I felt as if my leg would remain pointing towards the moon, and the rest of my body would pulled around like a midnight high tide, and I would be drawn upwards forever, walking on the belly of the starry dome.
20090303
mouth
today my heart was cold. you asked
do i love you? and after two years, not
today. your face seemed suddenly
unfamiliar. your half-moon smile,
your lips curling
like petals to keep or reveal
your pollen, your love. your
wrong everyword.
do i love you? and after two years, not
today. your face seemed suddenly
unfamiliar. your half-moon smile,
your lips curling
like petals to keep or reveal
your pollen, your love. your
wrong everyword.
.inner.compositions.
"
The folding-up of a protein occurs at more than one level. [...] Quaternary structure can be directly compared with the building of a musical piece out of independent movements, for it involves the assembly of several distinct polypeptides, already in their full-blown tertiary beauty, into a larger structure. The binding of these independent chains is usually accomplished by hydrogen bonds, rather than covalent bonds; this is of course just as with pieces of music composed of several movements, which are far less tightly bound to each other than they are internally, but which nevertheless form a tight "organic" whole.
"
{Hofstadter, Douglas R.>> Gödel, Escher, Bach: an Eternal Golden Braid >> pg 525}
So it would seem that the hipster gene is encoded in us!
And perhaps, even more importantly, all of us!
I speak of nothing more than the forces behind a mixtape, recorded and labelled, being an aspect of our cells, permeating like a young music note, lost from the herd, into the forests of ribosomes and rivers of cytoplasm.
Furthermore, it works to resonate with us that we are the manifest vibrations of high and low polypeptides, and their lapping waves, wetting our appetites under a lunar strobe light blinking at something close to the tempo of a lover's footsteps crossing a dancefloor.
It sheds new perspective on the mixtape soundtrack of our lives:
for all the time we spend seeking out songs,
we are comprised of the very greatest hits collection that we are seaching for.
The folding-up of a protein occurs at more than one level. [...] Quaternary structure can be directly compared with the building of a musical piece out of independent movements, for it involves the assembly of several distinct polypeptides, already in their full-blown tertiary beauty, into a larger structure. The binding of these independent chains is usually accomplished by hydrogen bonds, rather than covalent bonds; this is of course just as with pieces of music composed of several movements, which are far less tightly bound to each other than they are internally, but which nevertheless form a tight "organic" whole.
"
{Hofstadter, Douglas R.>> Gödel, Escher, Bach: an Eternal Golden Braid >> pg 525}
So it would seem that the hipster gene is encoded in us!
And perhaps, even more importantly, all of us!
I speak of nothing more than the forces behind a mixtape, recorded and labelled, being an aspect of our cells, permeating like a young music note, lost from the herd, into the forests of ribosomes and rivers of cytoplasm.
Furthermore, it works to resonate with us that we are the manifest vibrations of high and low polypeptides, and their lapping waves, wetting our appetites under a lunar strobe light blinking at something close to the tempo of a lover's footsteps crossing a dancefloor.
It sheds new perspective on the mixtape soundtrack of our lives:
for all the time we spend seeking out songs,
we are comprised of the very greatest hits collection that we are seaching for.
20090302
love poem for a dog
mornings i watch you chase rabbits
in your dreams. feet twitch, mouth chomps.
all day howl.
you greet me, your tail
a-going like a metronome.
how can i not be moved by you?
in your dreams. feet twitch, mouth chomps.
all day howl.
you greet me, your tail
a-going like a metronome.
how can i not be moved by you?
.uphill.muscles.
Presumably, you ride a bike.
I hope so.
And if you do, you may have observed a hitherto unnamed phenomena of the natural world, in which no matter which direction you are riding, and with utter disregard to the exhaustive dance of the weather(wo)man on the television, the wind is always directly in your face.
I guess in retrospect, it's nothing incredibly insightful, nothing profound. I will try not to dwell on the subject matter for too long.
Rather, we can maybe skip over any attempt to metaphornicate the situation into symbolic progeny of constant opposition, and invisible forces resisting your best attempts at propelling yourself down the road with your own weak legs.
They never seem strong enough.
"Which muscles do you need to get up hills?"
"The quads," I said, slapping the front of my thighs,
having no idea if that is indeed the name for those Sisyphusian muscles.
No, let's not whine. Too much of that already.
Let's look forward. Upwind even.
Let's think about about a Jesus bike, resurrected from a basement, pushing aside a boulder of dryer lint and cardboard boxes. It skims over water like a stone skipping over the surface like a schoolboy trying not to step on sidewalk cracks.
We'll put a sail on the Jesus bike, like a flapping robe trying desperately to hide our quads.
We'll point our handlebars at the Holy Land,
and sing a shanty as the winds carry us further into our unapologetic depravations.
I hope so.
And if you do, you may have observed a hitherto unnamed phenomena of the natural world, in which no matter which direction you are riding, and with utter disregard to the exhaustive dance of the weather(wo)man on the television, the wind is always directly in your face.
I guess in retrospect, it's nothing incredibly insightful, nothing profound. I will try not to dwell on the subject matter for too long.
Rather, we can maybe skip over any attempt to metaphornicate the situation into symbolic progeny of constant opposition, and invisible forces resisting your best attempts at propelling yourself down the road with your own weak legs.
They never seem strong enough.
"Which muscles do you need to get up hills?"
"The quads," I said, slapping the front of my thighs,
having no idea if that is indeed the name for those Sisyphusian muscles.
No, let's not whine. Too much of that already.
Let's look forward. Upwind even.
Let's think about about a Jesus bike, resurrected from a basement, pushing aside a boulder of dryer lint and cardboard boxes. It skims over water like a stone skipping over the surface like a schoolboy trying not to step on sidewalk cracks.
We'll put a sail on the Jesus bike, like a flapping robe trying desperately to hide our quads.
We'll point our handlebars at the Holy Land,
and sing a shanty as the winds carry us further into our unapologetic depravations.
20090301
portrait of my father
first, grief. then
the eyes, the weight
beneath them, beyond them.
the shoulders slouch
as though the earth wants to reclaim
them, pull them closer to its lips.
slow heart beat.
when i was young, i stood on his feet
to dance a slow circle
through the kitchen.
the hands, bearlike, in mine.
the eyes, the weight
beneath them, beyond them.
the shoulders slouch
as though the earth wants to reclaim
them, pull them closer to its lips.
slow heart beat.
when i was young, i stood on his feet
to dance a slow circle
through the kitchen.
the hands, bearlike, in mine.
.paper.island.
Have you ever noticed a cat's tendency to locate the one patch of texture on the ground that differs from its surroundings, and inevitably lay on it? Sometimes a jacket, sometimes a bag. Those would make some degree of sense, the sake of comfort being considered. I would probably want to lie down on a big parka myself, given the choice between that and concrete.
But I have seen cats snoozing on nothing more than a sheet of paper, as if they wanted their dreams to be burned into narrative.
Perhaps it is as simple as every cat fancying itself a sleek predator, master of its own island.
No flashing mirrors.
No bonfires.
No inanimate sidekicks.
Just claws and hair, and the knowledge that in the figure and ground, one needs a bit of water to make an island.
But I have seen cats snoozing on nothing more than a sheet of paper, as if they wanted their dreams to be burned into narrative.
Perhaps it is as simple as every cat fancying itself a sleek predator, master of its own island.
No flashing mirrors.
No bonfires.
No inanimate sidekicks.
Just claws and hair, and the knowledge that in the figure and ground, one needs a bit of water to make an island.
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