Adventures In Solitude

Reading Dorian Gray

2010-07-07T09:11:00.000-07:00

Picutre of Dorian Gray,

I read a lot. But I tend not to give myself credit for it. I imagine that people who are dedicated to being writers, like I am (even going to school for it) make reading their priority form of entertainment—the most common way they spend extra time. But it’s not that with me, I read some, probably more than most, but I watch TV far more than I read, I play video games, and I read about sports far more than I read literature. But, keep in mind that I’ve so far avoided having a traditional job, so this gives me more time than most.

I have a friend who is a painter who keeps disciplined hours in a studio. His painting is his singular goal. Its not that way with me. I write and I translate. I travel with USANA, I’ve spent a week of June in Mexico city working with my USANA group there. One week in June I spent in San Diego fleshing out the outline of a financial book I am co-writing with my father. I’ve got my fingers in a lot of pies, and frankly its hard not to envy my friend and his singular focus. But rather than loathe my multi-tasking—the way ADD makes me wander, I’ve decided to try and embrace it, to see if I can transfer any of the “qualities of disjointed thinking” over to my writing.

On that note I’ve been reading many books at the same time, looking for convergences in the disparate things I am reading, and letting my attention span wander where it will. Currently I am reading 5 books:

Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde

North of Boston by Robert Frost (his second book of poems)

The Hour of the Star by Clarice Lispector

Fablehaven book V by Brandon Mull

And an indie guide book to New York called: Eat. Shop. NYC.

I just finished reading Chronicle of a Death Foretold my Marquez, so I guess you can add that to the mix as well.

Interesting things happen when you jump around in reading. Convergences. You read about the perfect, flawless youthful picture of Dorian Gray and then you put the book down and pick up the guide book to read about the hyperbolically described flawless charcuterie of an underground Brooklyn eatery and you realize that both, in reality, are ultimately unsustainable and tragically impossible ideals.

Or you find a quote like this in the INCREDIBLE author’s dedication from the Hour of The Star, talking about art: “and we must never forget that if the atom’s structure is invisible, it is none the less real. I am aware of the existence of many things I have never seen. And you too. One cannot prove the existence of what is most real but the essential thing is to believe. To weep and believe...amen for all of us.” And you contrast that with Wilde’s own introduction to Dorian Gray: “No artist desires to prove anything. Even things that are true can be proved. No artist has ethical sympathies. An ethical sympathy in an artist is an unpardonable mannerism of style....all art is quite useless.” Two different writers, expressing the polar opposite belief about art, yet ironically I find Wilde’s book to be the ethically sympathetic, from the gut, humanistic one, and Lispector’s to be the most “crafted” and “artistic”. But it just occurred to me that maybe Wilde was being ironic himself. He has a habit of swinging both ways....ZING!

Anyway, you find these sorts of things when you read concurrently. And I find them all to be beneficial for me as a human being. In fact, the more you read the more you realize that the experience of humanity is a shared one. There’s a Wilde like aphorism for you. I was in Mexico City last week, and like everyone should if/when they go, I went to the National Anthropological Museum, probably the finest museum in the world for Maya and Aztec (and Toltec and Olmec) artifacts. The wall you see as you leave the museum, huge and imposing, has a poem carved on it, whose basic message is “pay attention, you who leave here, for you are no different than them”. It is the same message as John Donne’s For Whom the Bell Tolls. I find it to be a very true message, and not in the nostalgic sense of mourning their lives as a way of fearing your own death, but in the sense that I can see their motives for action, or at least the best conjectures of their motives, and I can contrast that with my motives for action. Another convergence, and in this case, not a divergence. That gives me a great sense of community. And, if you have a belief system like mine that holds to an afterlife, a great hope at being able to realize that community one day.

But I have just finished Dorian Gray and I think it is one of the most amazing books I have ever read. I wanted to blog an exegesis on how I read a book like that, on what parts effect me as a human and then on what I take away as a writer, like a mechanic would if he were pulling apart an engine piece by piece to see exactly how it worked. But I’ve been long winded enough with this blog already. I’ll just say that Dorian Gray worked for me on all the levels. It made me want to be a better person, AND the quality of its technical craftsmanship, especially on the character development and allegory level, made my jaw drop in places as I read it as a writer. Everyone talks about Wilde’s wit and his dialogue, which is great, but I was amazed at the descriptive lyricism of his prose, of how he matches his metaphors with the scene to set the mood....but now I’m rambling and promised I would stop. Read it if you haven’t and notice how effortlessly he seems to set up the characters in the first 100 pages. When I realized the allegory I was amazed at how smoothly I had been brought there. I had to go back and read it again. And finally, I’ll say that critics are foolish, which Wilde often said. They absolutely panned this book, mostly for moralizing reasons, while anyone who reads this book with half a brain, even if they wholly disagree with its message, has to give credit to its technical ability. Bummer that it was his only novel.

Also, do you ever do this? but I love to match music to books. I was thinking that Dorian Gray would match perfectly with Rufus Wainwright, for his "baroqueness", but then I tried it and it didn't fit. What fit perfectly was Andrew Bird. So next time you read it try to have some Andrew Bird on in the background and see if it enhances your experience. It did for me.

Translation reading and blogging from a plane

2010-02-24T18:34:00.000-08:00

In the air on a plane from jfk to lax. On my iPhone. Pretty cool that I can blog from a plane. Eventually headed to Morelia Mexico. Also watching paranoid activity right now on the plane. Not a good idea. Just half saw the ending while trying to focus on this blog. Uhhhh. Bad idea.

Moving on: Ive been invited to read at an event for the Columbia Center for Literary Translation. I don't know if I've mentioned here that I've been in workshops and doing lots of translation from Spanish to English. So far I really enjoy translation. It absorbs my mind completely.

Apparently my teachers have taken notice of me and a few of my other classmates. They want me to read some translations and some original work and also to talk about how translation work informs creative work and vice versa.

I'll keep everyone posted on how it goes. I still have no idea what o read on both accounts.

But right now I think I'm gonna wake up the sleeping lady At the end of my aisle and make her talk to me so I forget about paranormal activity.

The Big Reading, and some Sloths.

2010-01-31T16:51:00.000-08:00

Hey Myself. (let's not kid each other here) :)

So the big reading at Columbia went down the other night. I was the last reader of the evening, which I want to think is an honor, but might just be because I told them I was going to be late. Whatever the reason, it worked out great. There's lots of free booze at Columbia, that's one of the things they do really well over there, so everyone was pretty loosey goosey by the time I read and I really think they enjoyed it. I got a lot of really serious compliments afterwards and I can't tell you how good that feels.

I was just talking with a friend today about how graduate writing programs are such dour affairs...We walk around all day talking about how much of a lottery it is to crack into the publishing world and "make it". It's really a downer to any kind of ambition. There's obviously a lot of reasons why it happens, among them pure capitalism and certainly a large measure of false modesty and self defeat. But it's pretty ridiculous when you think about it. My friend and I resolved to be more positive, to try and change the "suffering under the burden of our calling" mindset that roams the halls like a frikin ghost.

So, it was good to get some validation from my peers. Plus, I wasn't sure how the dialogue in the story would read out loud, and it went over really well. I read a slightly different version of Cameo, but before that I read a story called "Sloth" that I haven't posted up here because it's always been in a state of flux. But my workshop last semester loved it, and now that I read it again, it does a lot of things I really really like. I imagine I have to post it here now with the big buildup.

Note: No profanity! Yaay. it was beginning to feel like a shipyard in here.
Note #2: Lots of italicized dialogue that might not come through on this stupid platform. Should be pretty apparent though
Note #3: This story was taken from some interesting real life experiences,(namely being on a boat cruise in Brazil) and I used my name and the name of an old friend in it. I have this weird thing with authenticity, and even though none of the people in the story actually did anything near what happens in the story, when I just make up names it seems fake. Maybe I'm doomed to use the names of people I know and care about, even if the stories have nothing to do with them. Makes it easier to write for me somehow. Enough notes, enjoy.

Story #8

Sloth

In the morning a wooden dinghy pulled alongside with a sputtering motor. It was two kids with a three-toed sloth. The sloth was cinched around the girl like a baby, ear to ear with her. It was as big as her whole torso with its arms around her neck and the fur of it greenish with fungus and matted and dark down on it’s back.

Gershon came out to the back deck and spoke to the kids. His portugese sounded quick and it was early. But it was warm and I was watching the kids. They smiled and the girl shrugged the sloth towards Gershon. The boy held the dingy alongside against the pull of the river. I went down to the cabin to wake Joanna. The sloth looked like something worth being woken up for.

I had a romantic plan to kiss her til she woke, but she was up, sitting up in the bed curling loose hairs between her fingernails.

When we came back up Gershon had the sloth and the dinghy was tied to the yacht with both kids standing in it, steady on their feet. The girl looked so thin and frail without the sloth in her arms and the boy smiled up at us, probably because by now he knew the trip had been worth it. They were dark kids, and short, and the boy had missing teeth.

When Joanna saw the sloth in Gershon’s arms she sucked in her breath,
Oh, is that what I think it is? Oh, look at its little bum!
It was part of her charm to always seem surprised. I had told her already about the sloth, and about the way it looked in the arms of the girl.

Oh, Gershon, can I hold him, is it dangerous?

No, it is super safe.

He reached behind his head to loose the sloth’s claws, to peel it off of him. It moved slowly. Everything about it was languid, like it was trapped in solution. Gershon too moved slowly when he took its arms from around his neck. He went up to Joanna and stood by her side, shrugging the weight of the sloth off of him, towards her. She took it in the same way. They both took their time in the exchange, both infected by the languid care the sloth seemed to give to the world. It was amazing to watch. The river going by regular speed and the breeze, and their delicacy with the sloth in a bubble of slowness that seemed to cover only them, with the sloth reaching one arm up around Joanna’s neck, and then the other, cinching to her torso in the same way it had held Gershon and the girl.

When Joanna had it she tried to bounce it like a baby. You could see the sloth tighten on her with the bouncing.

It’s so warm and so strong. Aaron you’ve got to hold him. He’s squeezing me everywhere.
He probably thinks you’re a tree trunk.

No, he knows me. Then to the sloth, to the back of its head, You know me don’t you? You know just who I am.

I turned to Gershon,

Gershon, is it a boy or a girl? Will you ask them?

With certainty.

Then he turned to the kids, steady in the boat and spoke to them in portugese. The boy answered in Portugese and I could tell it was choppier for him, a second language. He made a gesture to the sloth and laughed and Gershon laughed too, then turned to us to translate.

It is a girl, he says. He says it is clearly a girl because it has no…you know…
Gershon looked sheepish and did not continue.

And where did they find it Gershon, will you ask them?

He answered me without asking them,

They live in the jungle all along the river, super high in the high jungle.

Oh, but will you ask them particularly where they found this one? This particular one?
With certainty.

Then he spoke again to the kids and the boy again answered in rutty portugese, making gestures high above his head and then pointing to the girl. Gershon turned again to translate,

In the trees near their home, he found it. It was very high and he thought it was a nest of bees on the tree trunk. He climbed up the tree and gave it to his sister. This is his sister.

I looked at the boy and the girl. The boy looked at me and was proud.

And Gershon, do they live here? Do they take the sloth out to visit all the charters?

Yes, they live on the river. They are from a village closer to Manaus, I believe. It seems that way from their speak, from the way they speak. To take the sloth out is a normal thing. Those that want to hold it give them a small money or pay them to take away the boat trash, the trash from the boat. But don’t worry, it is taken care of. Everyone is happy. Yes?

Joanna spoke,

I’m only happy if Aaron holds him. You hold him, hon.

Love, it’s a girl.

I know. Here, you take him.

It was also part of her charm to act contrary. To fight those little battles, and win them.

She came up to me with the sloth in her arms. She moved across the white deck surface of the yacht. She braced at my side in the same way Gershon had done with her. I could smell the sloth, mold like old pillows and the smell of the river and the tops of trees. It was the strangest thing when it touched me, the fur more coarse than I had imagined, and I felt a tinge of careful slowness in me in the immediate presence of it. Like a whim. Like the smell of the sloth brought from far away on a breeze.

Wait, Jo. I don’t think I want to. I know it won’t make sense but I think I’d just like to watch you hold her. I guess it almost seems sacred.

She stood to process this, the sloth still touching my side, the slowness of it all around us, like humidity. Joanna spoke down, to the sloth.

It’s because he knows we’ve got a good thing going, you and me. Don’t you think we got a good thing going?

The sloth didn’t answer. They stood there and I stepped away and Joanna moved across the white deck surface of the yacht to where the dinghy was tied. She moved like she knew I was watching her.

She made eye contact with the girl and the girl reached up for the sloth. The sloth, on its own, took her arms from around Joanna’s neck, one at a time, and reached for the girl. It must have known her by her smell. Joanna leaned down and bumped her hips outwards to give the sloth something to stand on as it reached. For a moment, with its arms around the neck of the girl and its feet on Joanna, braced, the sloth stretched between them like a conduit of slowness. Like a filament. Stretched between the two of them and in that moment, I swear it, a power was loosed, what I had seen with Gershon and Joanna, what I had felt when its coarse fur touched my skin. A languid bomb of slowness epicentered out from their connection to swamp that whole scene.

The river almost stopped moving, it slowly scraped its wide banks. The mud of it eternally churned the shallows brown in slow eddys. The million leaves of the jungle all along that corridor of water stopped oscillating in the breeze and instead moved like slow dancers, back and forth. A split tailed swallow hung in the air above the river.

You could hold this sloth and stop everything. You could hold this sloth and the world would stop. You could carry this sloth wrapped around your chest like a time machine, calming your blood, making your heart beat slow enough to live forever.

It was the most beautiful thing. The ageless kids in the dinghy smiling and braced imperceptibly against the not-pull of the stopped river. Gershon caught in a smile he couldn’t erase because it would take an eternity to do so. And Joanna, her wit and suppleness braced on the deck in all youth forever passing that kind talisman to the girl. And the smell of the river and the smell of the tops of the trees.

Manila, no envelopes

2010-01-15T10:46:00.000-08:00

Call it reverse jet lag, my body preparing to go back to east coast time after two weeks of Malaysia and Philippine time (my father and I building our USANA business).

I should be so exhausted. Up 24 hours now after a text from a NY friend (not knowing I was in Asia) woke me up at 3am yesterday. Functions all day today with the USANA people in Manila. Such wonderful people. Tonight Bob (the venerable daddy-o) and I gave a presentation to a group of 150 of our newest Philippine associates. Man these people love dinner parties, 5 hour dinner parties, and they love raffles. And they are such a humble and incredible people. All travel opens eyes, but travel to countries like Malaysia and the Philippines, where most of the people live below the poverty line, is especially humbling, eye opening. Not in the ways you'd expect either, Not because I see poverty, but because I see so many people overcoming it through hard work, a work ethic that makes Bob and I cringe when we compare it to the standard American Work ethic. I mean, i've never seen people as hungry for success as they are here and in Kuala Lumpur. It's really stunning.

Highlights:

Waking up in KL every morning at 6 when the Muslim call for prayers would come blaring across loudspeakers from the mosque at city center park. Something powerful and sacred about a call to prayer in a language you don't know, the singing and intonations fuzzed and partially muted through the walls and windows.

Sneaking a break with My dad during a seminar last monday in KL, in an abandoned conference room. Him passing out on the floor and me on a set of chairs, just totally worn out from work and from so many goodwill dinners and functions arranged by all our generous hosts. Then waking up with a perfect set of memories of a cameo factory I visited in June on a vacation. Like I had dreamt it. But I hadn't. I wrote it all down on my Iphone and then revised it a bit, took it away a bit from the direct personal level of experience and, tadaa, a short story. Timely too, cuz I have a huge reading for all the columbia writing students/faculty on the thursday I get back, and I was beginning to despair at having new stuff to read. We'll see if I like it after a full night's sleep. I'll post it here, Enjoy, -Aaron

Cameo

In the bus heavy with old people, with the potholes bumping us all along. And out the window where I was looking the light blue of the water and the breakers and the coral flashing by like an old filmstrip, broken by moments of thick banana leaves and the raised capillary roots of banyan trees.

We stopped in the gravel parking lot of a roadside cameo workshop. It was on the tour. The sound of gravel under the tires when we finally stopped. All of us getting gingerly off the air-conditioned bus and the blast of humidity. And most of us then shuffling into the cameo shop to be back in the AC again, but there was none and then men fanning themselves with their tourbooks and women taking off their straw hats with floral patterned bands and fanning them.

The owner was happy, he had a deal with the buses I guess. He met us in the lobby and directed us to a table in the corner with all the shells laid out on it. Conch, snail. In pinks and greens and indigos. Then standing behind the table with cursory waves of his hands over the shells, and the being in the family for generations, and the shells laid out in front of him in various stages of preparation, some full cameos, some with half formed women’s faces peeking out in profile from the smooth surfaces. And some of the women, the ones that lived wealthy lives, who had really traveled, peeling off from the margins of the crowd before he had finished.

Then with a sweep of his hand turning us to the showroom where what must have been his grandaughters were waiting behind the glass display tables. The air moving with hats and tourbooks and the spinning of an off balance acacia wood fan. And throughout that afternoon the glances of old women at mirrors to see themselves peeking out in profile.

When we came out the driver sitting on the concrete parking curb saying yes, yes ready to go? Yes. And putting out his cigarette on the concrete before he stood and looked us over to see who he could name. Mr Thompson. Miss Shirley.

Back to the air conditioning and the potholes, the gentle curve of the island road that, if you took it long enough, would eventually take you back to where you started. That was where the tour ended. But before that, the looking out the window at the banyan roots and the banana leaves and every once in a while peeking out, on cue, the indigo blue of the lagoon and the deeper blue beyond the breakers, and the women that bought cameos swearing they looked just like that when they were young.

Folk Bloggin' and Eubelio's Story.

2009-12-09T20:24:00.000-08:00

When I went to Guatemala as part of my MA Thesis research I spent a lot of time collecting stories from the muchachos, the local workers of the archaeological site I was at. They weren't just stories, they were myths and tales and aphorisms; they contained the combined wisdom of their lives I think. Very deep stuff shared in a simple format.

I tried to compile a few of them with my own poems and stories and that became my master's thesis. I just re-read it the other day for the first time really since I turned it in (Aug 08). Luckily it still was something I could be proud of. That's a good feeling.

The thing that was so weird about my experience in Guatemala was that, despite my most earnest attempts, there was no way I was ever going to be anything more than an outsider to those muchachos. Their stories weren't my stories, and never could be. So even though I recorded them, there was an inevitable distance in my retelling of them.

I'm almost finished with my first semester now in Columbia's MFA fiction program and one of my classes has focused on Faulkner and the Latin American writers (think Boom) that came after him and named him as a major influence. That class has proven to be an interesting synergy between the myths, tales, fables of Central and South America and the Americana myths and folk fables of which Faulkner is the master. It seems that one thing Marquez and Rulfo and Vargas Llosa (and others) really found liberating in Faulkner was the literary permission to dive into their cultural psyche, and to do so with a deep level of experimentation with technique.

And it's been a revelation for me too, my experiences with the stories I heard in Guatemala, and now with these novels I'm reading has opened up a serious creative can of worms for me. I find myself wanting to write about my myths, as a way of using a simple form to get to deeper things. Everybody has a lot of history, things in the cauldron that deserve a churning. Among other things I have my Mormonism, and though its a relatively young religion, it claims a restoration of some ancient cultural concepts. Plus, it already has it's exodus story.

But I'm also part of the deep but dying culture of Americana, and I'm finding myself drawn to explain that as well. For example: I found an online archive of Arkansas folk songs, most sung without accompaniment and all recorded in the 50's to early 60's. You can find it at http://www.lyon.edu/wolfcollection/songs/songs.html if you're interested. These songs are beautiful, most of them are lost. Everyone who sang them is dead. Most of them are expressions of faith, or admonitions on how to live. There's got to be at least 300 of them.

There's that part in Odysseus (another simple tale that touches on the deepest things) where he goes to Hades, and he meets Tiresias, and Ajax, and finally his mother comes to speak to him. They all admonish him and mourn with him. That was my favorite part of the epic. When I listened to a bunch of these folk songs I got the same feeling, eerily so as they are sung without accompaniment. I got the sense that I was being admonished, and pleaded with, but most important I felt like I was able to communicate, commiserate in the ephemeral nature of humanity. I think the best stories get to the heart of all those things.

So, I've been writing stories with those songs as a touchstone, and I'm really loving it. Hopefully it will coalesce into a project where I can use the songs, their tone and even meter to inform stories, and then I can build a connection/accretion of similar themes across stories in a collection with the songs. It's interesting. I'll post some soon. Right now, to end this Mammoth post, I'll paste a story from my MA thesis. It's the part I think held up the best. It's a verbatim story I heard from one of the muchachos, and I think it illustrates how strongly they believe in myth. I've come to really envy that conviction. Beware: Language.

Eubelio, tell me a story.

We are inside Pinturas, refilling a tunnel with stone and mortar. I need a running distraction. Eubelio has a body odor so horrible. Like every sin he ever committed was distilled into sweat and now leaks out his pores. He begins,

Here is a story. In a village there were two secret lovers. They met in town and the man said "meet me at the secret pool in the jungle at dusk." "But we must go separate to the pool" the woman said, "so the village doesn't notice. If you get there first, wait for me, and if I get there first I will wait for you."

When the man got to the secret pool he saw his lover from the back. She was bathing in the water. He moved close to her to heat her up, because you know, when you are with your lover you first have to heat her up. So he is heating her up and whispers "lets make love" and she says, "not here, not yet. lets move a little further into the brush" you see, she is not his lover. She is la Llorona, you know, the crying woman with long hair and the face of a horse. Maybe you do not know. He is in her spell and they move deep into the brush and he begins to make love to her. Suddenly he breaks from the spell and he realizes he is making love to a pile of cow shit. Thlop, thlop, thlop he is fucking this huge pile of cowshit. And that is how he died, with his dick in the cowshit.

Eubelio, what is the moral of that story?

It is not that kind of story. It is a true story.

Tell me another true story.

OK. When I am drunk I always end up at the cemetery. My woman is there, in the ground. When I am drunk I bring her candles and I lie on top of her grave. One time it was so dark and I got to the cemetery and death was there sitting in the branch of a tree. Death was hideous, with a black face, horrible to look at. You know how to save the life of a sick loved one? Remind them how ugly death is and they will be too scared to die. So I am drunk and even with death there I lie on top of the grave and I say to my woman, "woman, do you want me to spend the night here with you. do you want me to lie here with you". Suddenly I hear this moan "mmmmmmmmm" and I ask again, "woman, do you want me to spend the night here with you...." and again "mmmmmmmmm". One more time I ask, "woman do you want me to spend the night with you my love"....."mmmmmmm" and the sound was so close I got frightened and ran from the cemetery to my mothers house and cried when I told her what happened.

Story # 6

2009-08-12T09:41:00.001-07:00

I'm in Waterton and I'm loving it. I'm writing a lot and reading a lot. Since I've been up here I've read a lot of Brian Evenson, a lot of Ben Marcus. I've also read most of the old school paperbacks lying around the cabin, including Frank Herbert's Dune and an awesome old country paperback called "The Badge and Harry Cole". That one was my favorite. There's a lot of Brian Evenson in this story (think violence) and there is also profanity (warning for the weak-eared). I struggle with profanity. I don't swear a lot myself, and I don't swear much in omniscient 3rd person, but when I'm writing a story narrated by a crazy drifter I don't think I can censor his dialogue, because this dude would be swearing if he were real. Note, the formatting never comes out like I'd like it to, even after previewing. Dialogue is supposed to be italicized. If it doesn't come out then use your imagination.

Without Further ado:

Story #6: BUDDY

“Me and my buddy came apart in New Mexico. For my part I was all laid back in the passenger seat, looking out the back window where little raindrops were sliding across, lit up bright white from headlights behind like they were stars or something. A whole universe just sliding across the back window where sometimes a big drop would form with others, and then it was a huge asteroid sliding wild across that universe and taking galaxies with it off the edge of that black window. And I was all laid back watching it peaceful and sleepy when those white stars turned red and blue in a flashing way like the big bang end of the universe. But that turned out to be the cop car lights pulling us over.

My buddy said my name a few times to snap me up and I sat up and my seat up with me. He kept saying I wasn’t speeding, I wasn’t speeding and he said it with an edge to his voice like he was going to challenge the cop when he came up. He sure was on edge. End of a hard trip, I guess.

So the cop gets out of his car and pulls his hat down against the rain. It was just a drizzle, but I think he knew we were watching from the mirrors and it made him look more rugged I guess. Big dumb hat though, with a round brim all the way around like a park ranger hat and a brown cop shirt and olive pants coming at us in that cop waddle from being too overburdened with instruments. Big ol’ cop. He gets up to the window and my buddy reaches down with his left arm and rolls the window down. And the cop says something like I got you for speeding and my buddy says I wasn’t speeding. He says it real quick and just in the same way he’d said it to me. The cop doesn’t let it go. He says back 77 in a 75. That’s speeding, and my buddy looks at me and real loud says gimme a break! Just like how you’d point out an idiot to your friends.

This same trip we were around Memphis, just starting to head west, and we stopped at this bar right on the side of the highway, quaint little place that fancied itself a dance hall. Checkerboard floor and on the outside it had portraits of 50’s stars going all the way around the façade like some frieze on a temple. Buddy Holly and Elvis and Chubby Checker and the whole gaggle of them. Worn down though, so you couldn’t tell the Richie Valens from the Little Richard. So we go inside to sit down on something that isn’t moving and we sit off a ways from the dancefloor. And there’s this guy on the dancefloor moving like it’s still the 50’s. Just this middle aged guy out on the dance floor doing the twist. It must have been 3 pm in the afternoon. Nothing in that bar but this guy and us and that black white checkerboard floor. My buddy laughs right at him and turns to me and says the same thing he later said to the cop in New Mexico. Gimme a break he says to me, real loud and with a hard edge and in a way that made you believe he’d press the button to erase all the sad sacks in the world if you just put it in front of him.

We’ll this cop put it in front of him I guess, cause he got mad at my buddy for saying gimme a break and ordered him out of the car. So he gets out of the car, but not in a meek sorta way at all. He get’s out of that car like a shot and he slams the door and gets right up in that cop’s face. And that big old cop is bigger than he is, towering over my buddy with that park ranger hat brim keeping em both dry, so if you rolled up on the scene without knowing you mighta thought the cop invited my buddy close just to converse out of the rain. But you wouldn’t have thought that if you stayed. My buddy gets right up in the cop’s face, he’s bumping bellies with him, saying that 77 was bullshit and he wasn’t speeding. And this cop must have been from the old school cause he was bumping him back instead of going for his gun or pepper spray or whatever else was strapped around his waistband. Real man to man they were spitting it out right there on the shoulder, like baseball players sometimes argue. Then my buddy starts acting real crazy. He starts just screaming at the cop. Arms flapping and nonsense words and blowing out his tongue at the top of his lungs, with the spittle just flying into the cop's face. I think when the cop saw my buddy just go ape crazy is when he got a bit scared, cause that’s when he went for his gun.

Bout two weeks before this we were outside Corpus Christi, still heading west. We were in pretty bad shape. My veteran pay couldn’t find me on the road and my buddy’s disability is all used up. So he’s standing in front of the gas station asking for dollars so we can fill the car and keep going west. We’d been at it about an hour and I think we had something like 4 dollars. Anyway, this couple comes walking out of the station towards this astro van, and they’re dressed nice and they look nice. Husband has these lean glasses and dark hair, wife has big hair and big ol pads on her shoulders. I approach them solely so as not to intimidate them with the two men and I tell em what I tell em and they say, we’ll do you one better than a dollar, we’ll buy you dinner. And as they say it they look at each other and you can tell they’re some kinda Christian because they get that charity look on their face. Now my buddy and I ain’t no bums and we don’t usually take charity unless it’s the government’s and that's for services damn well rendered. We’re just looking for some gas, but we were hungry so we said yes, also partly because that couple looked so damn happy to be giving us their charity.

Off we go to a McDonalds and we’d just as soon taken it to go and went back to the gas station, but they insisted we sit down. I think their plan was to preach at us, and truth is I wouldn’t a minded it, but my buddy’s pretty far gone past Jesus and I could tell he was winding up to have none of it. The husband starts in about Jesus being the way and accepting him and the straight and narrow path. They’re good Christians and that wife sure looks handsome with that big hair and high shoulders, but my buddy’s had enough. He stops the guy when he’s talking about the 10 commandments and he says to him, I still remember it clear, he says, sirs, theirs only one commandment and I’m going to tell it to you once so you’d better listen the hell up. My buddy stands up from the table and he’s got a fry in his hand and he starts shaking it like a gavel for emphasis. Only one Goddamn commandment!, he says and he eats the fry and pauses and the couple looks pale beyond death and my buddy says real loud, I don’t care who you are, you’d better fucking run away from crazy people. People that bait a boobie trap with their kid. That’s fucking crazy and I’ve seen it. You can think your way out of all other jams on earth except when people get damn crazy and then thinking don’t work, just running the God Damn other way is the only thing that works. And if Jesus we’re here right now he’d say amen to that.

That’s what he said to the Christian couple, but I think what he really meant was that he could be or act crazy and get away with anything he wanted, cause people really do fear when someone just goes loony. I mean, he wanted to be out of that McDonalds, and he got it. He reached over and took that couples’ food as if it was his and marched right back to the station, me following him, and we left before anyone could blink an eye. Only had four dollars of gas though, and that ran out real fast. We had to hitchhike into McAllen, and I swear that Christian couple passed us hithcin in their big astro van and didn’t so much think about stopping. And that was just one time. I’ve been all across the countryside with that man and I never could figure out it he was crazy or if he was just playing crazy so that people gave him what he wanted.

Until New Mexico, that is. Then I guess he proved he was crazy. Cause when that cop reached for his gun my buddy went quick as a cat with an open fist and punched his palm right up into the bottom of that cop’s big round nose. He went from crazy spitting to some type of ninja, fast as you could blink an eye and the cop didn’t see it coming it all. I’d never seen my buddy use that move, but it sure did work cause that cop just went right down on his side and blood just started coming out of his nose like you’d turned on a hose. My buddy’s laughing and screaming and saying, Hit em right with the death punch. Right into the fucking brain. And he’s saying other things too that make less sense and I get out of that car quick and come around the front of it to hold my buddy back and somehow get us the hell out of there. And this whole time the cop is down on his side and he’s trying to reach for his gun but you can tell something is shit wrong with the guy cause he looks like a mouse with one half caught in a glue trap, legs trying to run away but doing nothing but spinning him around a bit on the pavement. And he’s making weird noises through the blood. My buddy says, let me help you with that officer, and reaches down and takes the cop's gun from its holster and fires two shots into the side of that cop’s face. When the cop stops moving for good my buddy pulls off that big rimmed hat and puts it on, with the hat all bloodied and the back of it covered with matter. Then he tells me to get in the car and I do and we head out down that road, still going the speed limit.

I wasn’t afraid. I’d seen dead men before and been responsible for it too, but I knew I wasn’t responsible for that big ol cop and within ten miles I told my buddy to stop that car and let me out. He looks at me like Gimme a break, and I can tell he’s on the verge of crazy again but I’d seen shit loads of crazy in my day and I wasn’t scared. Things kinda slowed down for me and my head started working. I said, this is where we come apart and I told him to shoot me in the leg to make me less of an accomplice. He looks at me again like Gimme a break and then he gets real quiet and then he starts to cry. I’ve been all around the countryside with that man and I’d never seen him cry. The car’s just stopped now and I say it again real slow to shoot me in the leg and drop me off and he looks at me with tearful eyes and says something about betrayal, but I don’t hear all but the end of it cause I’m getting out of the car. I say goodbye in a real solemn way then I scream again at him to fucking shoot me in the leg. So he shoots me and I think he shatters a bone in there and then he drives off.

I’m down on the ground putting pressure on it but knowing that it’s bad news if it nicked the big vein and the rain’s coming down good now and sooner or later I end up on my back. And there I am again laid back tracing stars except this time I can’t look at em good because the rain keeps coming into my eyes. I must have been there for an hour before I saw the first cop lights coming at me sideways, red and blue. I crawled halfway out onto the shoulder and that’s where they found me. Propped me up and asked me where the other guy was headed and I told em and they asked me his name and I told em and then I guess I kinda slipped off the edge there into unconsciousness. And when I woke up the doctors told me it was a week later and that I was lucky. Then the cops pushed past the doctors and started asking me more questions about my buddy. I guess in that whole time they hadn’t seen a hair of him or that car, which means I guess that he got to where he was going.

MJ, then story #5

2009-06-26T07:12:00.000-07:00

They say you never forget where you were when you first heard someone famous had died. With Princess Di I was camping with some friends in the mountains behind my house, and with MJ I was coming home from dinner on a cruise ship floating off the coast of France. My sister and I were both pretty shaken up. Some of my first memories are connected to his music. The first thing I ever wrote in school (1st grade) was a story about how MJ came down in a spaceship from visiting Mars and he had lots of new songs to sing.

Sad to see him go so relatively early. He was certainly a very very troubled soul, and might have done some horrible things (see "jesus juice"), but there was always the hope that he could turn it around and become something similar to how amazing/talented he was when he was younger. Very sad.

This story is about death. Written last week. Guess it kindof fits the MJ news, which feels weird.

Story #: It Wouldn't Work Unless She Was Perfectly Still

The young girl waited until her mother left for her second job, then she put on her black dress, wrapped her ponytail in a black silk tie and lay down on her bed, on top of the covers. She folder her arms across her chest and closed her eyes. She let slack the muscles in her face and neck and tried to breath gradually, horizontally, so that her stomach made no visible movement up and down. She thought herself perfectly straight and rigid. It took a while for the young girl to be satisfied of her stillness, and only when she was satisfied did she begin to pray.

“Hey big buddy. I’ve been missing you. What’s new with you over there?” She waited. Then she imagined she heard, or maybe she did hear, a response.

“It’s like being caught in a drying machine getting spun around and everytime you think you’ve figured out which way is up you get tossed again and can’t figure out how to steady yourself. It’s like that, except you don’t get sick or tired or need to breathe. You have endless energy and concentration to keep trying to stop the spinning, except it never seems to stop.”
His voice wavered and was dampened, like someone calling from inside the walls. She was calm and kind. She had to be for him. She prayed,

“Don’t worry booger, eventually it will stop. Nothing’s ever permanent. It’s probably just part of the process. The rules of the game, you know? I imagine it’s real tough on a soul to be free after so much time rooted in a body. Don’t worry. “

She put all of her calmness into that last “don’t worry”, as if sympathy and assurance were tangible, and could be floated out to her brother on the air of her voice. She heard or thought she heard,

“Have you ever been standing with your back to a wall, and you just knew the stones in the wall behind you were making faces or turning into gargoyles and stuff right behind you, but when you turned they were just stones again?

“Yeah. I know the feeling.” She thought hard for a way to describe it so that her brother knew she understood him. “Like someone is standing behind you ready to put their hand on your shoulder. ”

“Yeah, except I can’t turn around and check. I can’t turn around. So all the time it feels like someone or thing is just about ready to grab me from behind. It’s that feeling, or the drying machine feeling, or your voice. Sometimes all at once, sometimes everything is happening at once. How long has it been?”

She despaired a little to hear him sound so lost. She summoned more energy into her stillness and prayed again,

“It’s only been three weeks. Buddy, you should stop worrying about time and stuff like that. I don’t think it matters much now. All that matters now is getting you comfortable and figured out. Do you hear anyone else? I mean, someone that’s been through it maybe? Grandma maybe?”

“Once I heard mom praying for me. But she’s like you. There is a sound like combined voices, lots of them. They sound reassuring but I can’t make them out. They just combine and murmur in the background and it makes a constant noise. Sometimes I catch myself thinking it’s a heartbeat, then I remember. This place is weird. Even though it’s not a place at all. It’s hard not to feel scared. Oh, sister.

“I know, I know. Please be strong.” She wanted to cry out and hold him, but knew she couldn’t, so she kept talking. “The fear must be part of it. Maybe just the first part. Remember how scared you were to ride your bike at first? Maybe bud, the trick is to stop trying to make the fear go away, or make the drying machine stop, or pull yourself together. Maybe the trick is to let yourself come apart.” And she heard his voice in answer, she was sure of it this time,

“Thanks sis. Will you keep speaking to me? You make it easier. ”

“You know I will.” Then she paused and made a joke to keep from saying goodbye, “But you’d better find some heavenly way of returning the favor.”

“You bet”, he said, and then she heard her dead brother laugh.

Eventually she fell asleep and her breaths got deeper and vertical and moved her chest up and down in a steady rhythm. There were overripe lilies on her nightstand and she dreamt of rejoining cut stems with planted stalks and watching the flowers grow backwards to the buds and then down into the soil again. Her gardening hand fell away from her chest as she dreamt.

When her mother got home from work it was very late. She knocked softly, querying at the door to the bedroom, then opened it and stepped inside. She saw her young daughter lying there like some drugged Juliet on her bier, the nightstand light soft and angled on the black of her dress, with the lilies from the funeral drooping in the simple bedside vase, their overripe smell embalming the still room. The sight stopped her and she lost a breath to it. For a moment she felt as if in a holy presence, naked for her bare shoulders and ashamed for her work sneakers on the carpet. Instinctively she grasped for a rosary she hand’t held in her hand since she was a girl. Then she saw the steady rise of her daughter’s chest and knew her as a daughter and was filled with love for her, and mercy, and unimaginable pity. She moved to her and kneeled both knees at her bedside. She unfolded her daughter’s other arm and place it at her side. She took a spare blanket from the foot of the bed and laid it over her legs. The young girl did not wake or stir. The mother whispered, cooing, “it’ll be alright my bumblebee girl. It’ll be just fine. You just hang in there and one of these days you’ll wake up and it won’t hurt so bad. It’ll be better.”

She had said the same thing to herself too many times, and right then was the first time she believed it might be true.

Story 4, and an awesome story

2009-05-17T12:24:00.000-07:00

Been busy with travel and hanging out with old friends. Last night we were sitting around my parents house watching the padres game, which was tied in the bottom of the 13th inning. I turned to my friend Austin and said "I have a feeling this game is going long. Let's drive down to the stadium and I bet it'll still be going on." So four of us got in a car and made the hour long drive to the stadium, we sneak in, and run to seats on the third base line (it was the 16th inning, almost nobody left in the stadium). I rush to the front row, sit down, and then a split second later I stand up screaming in joy because Padres catcher, Nick Hundley, hits a towering fly ball. We hug and high five each other as the ball sails out for a walk off homerun. Padres win. We only saw one pitch but all agreed it was the best BB game we had ever been to.

Enjoy this story. It's one I've tried to revise so much that it's to the point that i have to post it now or I never will.

The narrator is a stylized version of myself I've been toying with using as the narrator for a series of interconnected short stories. The events are mostly fictional. To my knowledge there aren't underground fight clubs in Provo.

Story #4 Reasons for Leaving Utah.

My last winter in Utah, I rented out a small upstairs office in quaint downtown Provo with two tall windows. The windows looked east across University Avenue to the brown-yellow brick of a six-storey building. On top of the building a crumbly façade read “Knight Building, 1902”. Extended families of pigeons roosted there and instead of writing a master’s thesis, I spent my afternoons looking out those tall windows and watching the birds fly lazy ovals and then, in unison, settle again. I would watch them until the windows of the Knight Building sent back at me the fierce orange of a reflected sunset and it hurt my eyes to look. Then I would remember my deadlines and slog out some poem. I was 26. That last winter I wrote a lot of poems about pigeons.

The overhead lights in that office were harsh-bright and I never liked to stay long after the refracted sunset. I would get lonely and then chide myself for feeling so lonely when I had a wonderful girlfriend and three fun-as-hell roommates waiting for me at my apartment complex. Too blessed to feel lonely, I’d think to myself, and then I’d get in my car and make the short drive home.

One late weeknight that winter, thoughtful, having just come from poems about pigeons, I pulled into the underground parking structure of my Provo apartment complex. There was a loose circle of people blocking me, hoodies and fleeces and some wrapped in blankets congregated in the wide middle lane of that covered space. It was a concrete pad, one floor under the apartments, with parking spots on either side and ramps leading out to the north and south. On winter Sunday nights it was a place people in the complex often gathered to say a group prayer. This wasn’t a Sunday. Seeing me, the circle broke open to let me through and I parked in a stall beyond it and got out. My girlfriend walked to me from the loose circle and met me by the driver’s side door. She put her right hand on the side of my stomach and let her momentum carry her, hips first, into me. I was real heavy then and she liked to use her small body to test how hard it was to move me. She spoke into my eyes. She looked excited and flushed, like someone who has just come in from a long time in the cold.

“there’s going to be a fight”

“Like a fight, fight?”

This was BYU. We were religious kids or timid ones or both. We never fought. We used that concrete space for group prayer.

“I think it’s more like a boxing match. Jason set it up.”

“Who’s doing the fighting?”

“This kinda nerdy kid named Jon and that one kid you always call the German”

“OK? So what are they fighting over?”

“Me, silly. No, just kidding. I don’t really know. I don’t think it’s anything but friendly. They’ll have boxing gloves on. Is your camera still in the back? Jason asked me if I would take some photos.”

This whole time her hand was resting on the outside of my stomach and her hips were up against me. I opened the car door for her and she reached in and got my digital SLR from the backseat. Then she turned to me and curtsied.

“You’ll excuse me, sir, if I stand with my girls. They get lonesome for me.”

“No worries.”

She made me smile. She turned to leave. I touched her and she turned back. “Hey. You look beautiful. Like you’ve just come in from a long time in the cold.”

“Thanks baaaaaaby.” She said, then quick turned and catwalked away towards her roommates, exaggerating her hips for me and modeling the camera to them with a sweep of her hand over it. I couldn’t see her face but I knew she was smiling.

I walked over and stood in an empty spot of the thickening circle, near my roommates. Jason was already there, in the middle, with a microphone made out of tinfoil. He was introducing the fighters. I knew Jason. He was new to the apartments, but he was a legacy. His family owned one of the units and his older brothers, as they attended BYU, had lived there previously. He had just moved in for winter semester, fresh from being the most popular kid in high school. He played rugby now, and had a loud smile.

Jason introduced the kid I called the German. He called him the German too. The kid came down the stairs in a black tank top with wristbands on his biceps. He had red boxing gloves and he was holding the edges of a German flag draped around his shoulders. He was short, five foot something, with close cut dirty blonde hair and all his baby fat. I remember thinking how determined he looked to fight, like there was no fooling around in him. Usually he just walked around like a wannabe badass, ready to mad dog you in the hallway when you weren’t looking, but never to your face. He always wore fresh sneakers and low cut jeans and kept his hair buzzed and he talked way too much about who his parents knew and pranks he had supposedly orchestrated and hot tubs he had supposedly been in with girls. But the thing was he always told the same stories. Plus, he was always talking about his German heritage, not the Nazis overtly, but you could tell he admired their stereotyped coldness and stoicism. So I called him “the German” sarcastically, to mock just how far he was physically from the chiseled Aryan stereotype. As much as he acted proud of the nickname, I think a part of him knew it was mockery and that just made him angrier. It turned your insides a bit to think about it.

But now he just shuffled around the circle, trying to dance on his feet but he wasn’t nimble enough. So he went and carefully draped his flag over the windshield of his hatchback, then stood in a corner away against a concrete wall and stared at the ground, talking to himself and punching his fists together. Then when Jon started coming down the opposite stairs he turned and stared at him and moved out into the circle to meet him.

Jon came down the stairs in a blue t-shirt, black gloves, and a flag of Guatemala draped around his shoulders. He was dark skinned, and just as pudgy as the German, but taller. I barely knew him, because he was so shy. But I knew he wasn’t athletic, and I knew he played a ton of World of Warcraft and I knew that he was probably doing this just because Jason had befriended him and convinced him. Jason had that kind of charisma. I imagine Jon was lonely for the attention. You could tell he loved it as he hammed around the now crowded circle, smiling and growling at everyone through a cheap mouthpiece. If he any fear or any idea how seriously the German was taking this exhibition, he didn’t show it. I should have said something to him. The German was small but he had so much anger in him. Instead, I just smiled along with Jon and the rest in the circle and the air charged a bit because we knew now that the fight was going to happen.

The motive was apparently trumped up from nationalism. That was the hook Jason gave the crowd at least. Jason brought Jon to the center of the concrete circle where the German was waiting. The fighters touched gloves. Jon was still smiling. The German looked angry and proud and round without angles. We cheered. And then they fought.

The German’s style was to lean his head way back out of harm’s way and punch upward with his palms out. There was no weight behind his punches because he didn’t turn his hips and drive his body behind them. He just punched upward with his head back so it looked like he was trying to block a falling rock or plug a leak in a dam above his head. Jon liked to slap the German’s gloves out of the way, or punch at them in a palms out stalemate, and then rush grunting in and hug the German. At least he leaned into his body punches. But he didn’t know where to punch and soon the outsides of the German’s arms were red, but nothing else.
They moved and grunted and people smiled at them and my girlfriend was opposite the circle from me taking pictures and my roommates and I chuckled at their lack of coordination and Jason was rushing in constantly like a referee to unclench them and urge them to open up and it was a cold night and their faces were red from rubbing and their breath came up white and fogged above them in the air.

Once they separated and the German actually leaned into his leak-plug of a punch and it caught Jon in the throat. Jon took quick steps back and circled a bit stunned that he had been hurt and after that the German must have sensed blood because he started pressing. Jon kept clenching, but the air in that circle was charged again with danger.

Then the German paused for a second. Aware now of danger, Jon moved in to clench. The German wound up and threw a perfect right hook. It was a miracle coincidence of clumsy physics. His feet set squarely on the balls of his toes, he twisted and moved his weight flawlessly behind the punch. To see something so beautiful come from such a clumsy man was a shock. I was shocked by it, then horrified when it landed flush two finger widths to the right center of Jon’s chin.

Jon was close to me, very close but I was too stunned we all were to catch him as he fell, like fluid, with no attempt to brace himself. He fell on his right side and the outside of his right leg hit first, then his right shoulder then the wave force of his fall snapped his limp head into the concrete like a stretched rubber band released against skin. I was right there and the sound was horrible. Like coconuts. Everyone heard it.

I swore, then I knelt down and turned him on his back, supporting his neck. I looked up and saw the German standing there above us, gloating, with the light behind him, breathing hard face set hard in the horrible embodiment of his mock stereotype. I made eye contact and there was so much rage in me. Then his hardness was gone and he rushed to Jason, shouting at him to take the boxing gloves off but Jason wasn’t listening paralyzed mouth-open mouthing “o shit o shit” over and over again. And half the crowd seemed to melt backwards, the collective wish to get the hell out of there and the other half came forward in shocked concern making a new and tighter circle with Jon and I in the middle. Somebody asked me what to do. I dunno why they asked me. I must have been the oldest. I just said “911”. There was nothing I could do. Jon was paling there shallow breathing on the concrete with dots of blood cooling on the spot where his right ear had first made contact with the ground.

I stood up and a nursing student roommate of my girlfriend took my place beside Jon. When I stood up I could see some of the eyes in the circle looking at Jon but most of them looking at me. I looked away and saw the German alone near his car outside the circle, kicking the tires and swinging his arms around as if he could throw the boxing gloves off with the twirl-force. It would have been funny if it wasn’t so horrible. Then the German made a strange keening cry from deep inside and rushed up the concrete stairs crying, gloves still on. He left his flag limp and wrinkled on the windshield of his parked hatchback.

A night earlier that winter. Up the canyon with my girlfriend. Stopped at the parking lot by Nun’s park, near the river:

“Tell me a dream you had, any dream”.

Her voice is always deeper after we make out. My mouth is hot. The muscles in my face are loose from the kissing and I can feel a spot of pain on my lower lip where her canine caught me. I’m stretched out on my back across my reclined seat and angling into hers. My head is up against the outside of her left arm and the leather of her seat. She has my right hand palm up in her lap and she is absentmindedly massaging my forearm with both thumbs. There is the tinted moonroof above me, obscuring all but the brightest of stars. There is the smell of her arm and the yellow hue of her soft blouse. There is the dig of the gearshift as it presses my love-handle and with the nerves in my right elbow I can feel the delicate heat of her lap. Then there is her presence above me, the nebulous shape of her head and hair as she cranes into my vision to speak, moving like an unfocused eclipse in front of the moonroof.

“Go on,” she says, “any dream.”

“I can’t remember any dreams right now, silly.”

“Make one up then. But tell it like you really dreamt it”

“Yes Maam. Ok… I dreamed I was one of the pigeons that lives on top of the building across from my office.”

“Were you lord of the pigeons or just a worker pigeon?”

“I was the pigeon king.”

“Ooh I like this dream”

“Yeah, so let me tell it”

She scrunches up her nose at my mock impatience, a cute affectation.

“So I was this pigeon king and I was pure white and bigger than my fellow pigeons, and it was my Job to tell all the other pigeons when to take off from the roof and circle around, and then it was my job to tell them all when to fly back down again and sit on the roof.”

“And that’s it, you had no other responsibilities as the pigeon king?”

“Well the mating and such with eligible young pigeon damsels, but it wasn’t that kindof dream.”

“You mean a pigeon based wet dream?”

“Wow, you had to say it. Yeah. It wasn’t a pigeon based wet dream.”

“Ok, you may continue.”

She says that coyly and she looks at me lovingly, like a toy. Like her absolute favorite amusement.

“The thing was in this dream the pigeons weren’t even letting me do my kingly duty. They seemed to know when to go up and down before I did and everyone was just kindof in line with the program. I just sat on my royal perch, feathers all puffed out and watched while everybody did their thing. Left out mostly.”

“Did you have a pigeon queen?”

“Yeah, sure. But you weren’t listening to me either”

“Hah. My kind of dream”

There is a pause of two unhurried breaths, then a total eclipse as she cranes to kiss my eyebrow. Such a perfect child. Then she asks,

“How long had you been pigeon king?”

“I dunno. Long time. Since 1902 I think.”

There is another pause, and she tightens the grip of her thumbs on my forearm.

Patter, then Story # 3

2009-05-08T16:43:00.000-07:00

I'm halfway through 3 new stories (2 of which I'm very angry at right now) and nothing new is ready for today. So I will reach into my bag of tricks and pull out an old story (written 3 months ago) that I was saving for a slow week. I feel like I'm using a lifeline on a 200$ question, but I gotta keep the 20 story run going somehow.

In other news, I've abandoned TV. Said I was going out for a pack of cigarettes...which made the TV ask me if I was picking up smoking, which justified my saying back to the TV, "see, you don't know anything about me. You never listen to me. I don't know why I'm in this relationship in the first place". The TV apologized, but I was angry and it wasn't enough. I unplugged her and put her in the closet. Facing the wall because I can't stand the blank look of reproach on her face. And, it's been good, so far. Lots of Hulu. Lots of rediscovering my love of music through Pitchfork and Pandora. Lots of writing excercises. Lots of being sociable. Maybe I'll sell her on craigslist. Maybe I'll just keep her in the closet. Maybe I'll destroy her with my antique ball-pen hammer. If I destroy it, you can blame it on Robert Bly's "Iron John".

Story # 3

The Palest, Most Beautiful Boy in the World

I dreamt of a pair of riverside beggars, man and woman. Itinerant wanderers who had camped on the slow bend of an s-curve on some offshoot of the Mississippi. We were uneasy friends and sat on plastic milk crates and worn camp chairs around a fire. There were fireflies at the edges of the light, and mosquitoes.

Excitedly, over canned beans. In the late evening:

-“It was nothin’ but a glint under the water from the setting sun when my Charlie saw it. It’s just me and my Charlie here. He’s the first one ever to have seen it.”

Charlie nods his head in agreement. Then speaks.

- “’Bout two months ago. Out in the middle of our bend. It was the square outline of a sunken houseboat. The light has to be right or you won’t see it. And I swam out to it and I dove down.”

He flicks his wrist towards the river with the worn steak knife he used to open the can of beans.

-“And tell him, Charlie, what we found.”

-“Well, first thing I found is a houseboat, square and sound looking, just sittin’ there on the bottom as if it was made for it. No gash in it or nothing. So the door was open and I swam through it into the kitchen and found everything as it should be, as if it’d never sunk, as if it weren’t underwater. The trash bag waiting by the door as if ready to be taken out. Post-it notes still stuck to the side of a cabinet, waving all sleepy-like in the current. The fridge still working cooling away the water inside it…”

-“Even the toilets, my Charlie says, even the toilets flush, or try to flush. Make a swirl in the room like they trying to swallow the whole damn river. Whole houseboat is like that. Still working like the day it was made. Ain’t it nothing but magic?

She stares at me. I look down at my can of warm beans to avoid her stare. She presses,

-“You like them beans friend? Them beans is from the houseboat. Charlie found them just sittin’ in the cupboard yesterday.”

-“We figured they wouldn’t miss ‘em. I been taking things from that houseboat since I found her. It ain’t true looting. I’m sure the couple wouldn’t mind it. Lots of this camp come from that houseboat. Tarp and tent were in the hallway closet. Took a bunch of blankets that we dried out and are real warm. That grill was mounted on the front deck. We got so much of the houseboat up here now it’s like we’re rebuilding her right here on the shore.’”

-“A Couple?” I ask, confused.

He looks at me with surprise then regret on his face. He looks at his partner as if asking an apology and permission.

-“Charlie ain’t never told nobody about them but me. But seeing as he let it slip, we might as well tell you. Charlie say there’s a couple down there, in the living room”.

Charlie takes over, speaking slowly.

-“Yeah, Woman young and pretty, just a laid out on the couch as if she’s sleeping. Pale man sittin’ Indian style on the carpet at the foot of the couch, as if he’s giving her room to sleep. Both their hair all black and wavy in the water.”

-“And no decay, right Charlie? Dead two months sure, skin all cold but not a critter in sight. Eyes closed just like they was takin’ a nap. Like they got tired of watching the tube and just closed their eyes and took a nap. Nothin’ but magic. Charlie thinks it must have been a gas leak, don’t you Charlie?”

-“Yeah, no signs of struggle. Must have just passed out from the gas and floated down the river til some eddy took ‘em and twirled ‘em down into the middle of our bend. Done swam all around that boat though and can’t find a reason why she would have sunk. No gash in it or nothing.”

Charlie looks down into the small fire and moves a half burned mesquite branch with the toe of his boot. The woman looks at me as if waiting for me to speak.

-“It’s amazing,” I say. “I don’t know what else to say. Sounds amazing.”

-”It is. It’s nothin’ but magic.” She is eager. “I can’t swim down just yet. I’ve been sick, you know, on the inside.” She waves a hand below her belly. “Charlie’s been nursing me back to health. But I can sure see the glint of it in the water off the bend there.”

She is leaning forward in her camp chair, legs together. She looks well into middle age with a creased but clean face. Her clothes are dirty. I hadn’t noticed how thin she was. Charlie is still looking down at the hot base of the fire. It’s hard to look pale in the red-orange light of a fire, but the woman still looks pale.

“And there’s one more thing friend, secret and real special. Charlie ain’t even told me this ‘til bout a week ago. He says there’s kid toys all about the living room. You know, a real young boy’s toys. And he says there’s a door he hasn’t checked yet in the hallway cause it just don’t feel right to open it yet. Ain’t that the truth Charlie, that there’s another bedroom but it just don’t feel right to swim in there yet?”

-“That’s the truth, love.”

He glances over at the woman, then back down to the fire, then up at me. The woman speaks:

-“I tell you friend, that boat’s nothin’ but magic. I bet you…” Her voice lowers to a whisper “I bet you there’s a boy in that room, all cold and sleeping in a crib like his parents. Hair all wispy and wavy in the slow water. I bet he’s the palest most beautiful boy in the world. Don’t you think so Charlie? Don’t you bet he’s the palest most beautiful boy in the world?

Charlie looks down again at the fire.

-“I do, love.”

The woman’s voice lowers even further, takes on heavy intent. She is very eager, pressing words out with great effort.

-“And one of these nights friend, when Charlie feels right about it he says he’s going to swim into that room and find that boy and take him in his arms and bring him up here to the surface. And who knows with the magic in that boat if that boy won’t just take a deep breath when he hits the moonlight, like he’s been holding them breath them whole two months. And we’ll adopt him and keep him right here so he can grow up strong and be close to his other parents and dive down once in a while to see them all peaceful and sleeping, all young and in love like the day they was married. You think that’ll happen, don’t you Charlie? Like the day they was married.”

-“I do, love.”

She relaxes and sinks back into the camp chair, looking small and exhausted. Away from the direct firelight she looks ghostly white, whispish, like a moonbeam. Charlie stands up slowly from his milk crate, takes a small red blanket and tucks it around the woman’s shoulders. He comes back to the crate, sits down and begins to unlace his boots.

-“You close your eyes and sleep a bit now love, you’ve talked yourself out. Me and our friend here’s going to the river now and see about the houseboat. Would you like I bring you back one of the toys from the living room? I ‘magine I could do that for you.”

The woman answers weakly, as if from far away.

-“Oh thank you Charlie, thank you.” And to me: “He likes to go down in the moonlight, says there’s less chance of being seen that way. I like to sit by the fire and fall asleep to the sound of him diving down in the water.”

She closes her eyes and turns her head. Charlie and I walk towards the bend in the river. Charlie is barefoot and takes off his denim shirt as we are walking. His torso is hunched and hairy and covered in raised, pink mosquito bites.

-“You should take her to a hospital” I say as we reach the river.

-“I did. They did a bunch of tests then gave us pain pills and sent us back. Said it was bad. ‘Advanced’ they said. Said there was nothing for it. Been two months now.”

I pause, taken aback. Charlie pulls off his jeans and stands on the bank in worn white underwear, shoulders hunched against a cold I cannot feel. A half moon shines on the ripples of the river.

-“It’s a real nice thing that you’re doing for her, then” I say “with the houseboat and all…”

-“I don’t know what you’re talkin’ about friend”

Charlie’s words are measured. He looks through me. I lower my voice,

-“I mean, there’s really no magic houseboat down there is there?”

An uncertainty, which is hope, makes my voice tail off at the end of the question. Still, as soon as it’s out I regret speaking. Charlie looks at me and then back down at his feet standing in the mud of the riverbank. He looks very tired in the moonlight. He slaps his arm at a mosquito and waits a long time before speaking.

“Listen friend,” He says, seriously, “All of us, we all do the best we can.”

He swallows. Then he lurches into the river from the riverbank and swims clumsily crosscurrent towards the center of the bend.

Story #2: Telemachus. Telemachus!

2009-05-01T15:52:00.000-07:00

Telemachus. Telemachus!

So they finally came to Telemachus and said, “What should we do now?” You see, Ithaca was a small town, and people never stopped caring, because that’s what happens in a small town. They knew Odysseus was missing, that he should have been home by now. Everyone knew the war was over. Other soldiers from other boats had come home from Troy. From the few rumors they got of his whereabouts they knew it looked grim, but they never stopped hoping and they did all they could.

The first few years Ithaca kept watches so there would always be someone scanning the seas for the rocking prow of his galleon or the dip of a bow light if it was night. Later they had to stop the watches as the hopeful watchmen called out too many false alarms—Ringing the bells and running into the marketplace with huge, happy eyes only to have the boat be some messenger from Menelaus or worse, some trick of the eye in the twilight. The next few years all the denominations got together and held prayer vigils on the anniversaries of Odysseus’ departure for Troy. Priests mixed with pastors and preachers and they all held up white candles, translucent where the flame was, and they all said prayers and hugged each other and the women cried and some felt secretly jealous of all the warm sympathy Penelope was getting.

The High School football team, even wore yellow “O” decals on their helmets for a full season in his hopeful memory. The coach called the team together before the first game. They were dressed already in their pads and milling around the locker room flexing their young muscles. The coach had them all take a knee on the concrete around him in the chlorine smelling space outside the showers and then he told them they would be wearing a patch for Odysseus because, God Damn it, Ithaca was going to stick together and not lose hope. Then he handed them out and each kid sat on the wood bench outside his orange locker and, carefully because the shoulder pads made his arms clumsy, stuck the decal on the back center of the helmet, right where it should be. And none of them said anything when Telemachus stuck his decal right on the front of his helmet above and between the eyes. Wasn’t that his right? They thought. Star QB and Odysseus’ only son? Didn’t he need to not lose hope more than anyone? And the whole town cried, even the fans of the other team, when he went out that night and threw four TD passes and ran for two more in an emotional Ithaca win. The strong men wiped tears from the corners of their eyes at his filial loyalty. All the cheerleaders dreamed of easing his pain with their young bodies. Even the old mothers, wombs long dried and husbands dead, wished against wish that they could be young again just to marry a boy as loyal and as hopeful and as honorable as Telemachus.

In Ithaca, in those times when Odysseus was long overdue from Troy, that whole town coped with it’s sorrow like the passing of a collection plate, hand to hand and everyone puts a little bit in and no one takes any out until Odysseus comes home. Because that’s what happens in a small town. And as long as that plate keeps moving from hand to hand it’s kinda alright. So it’s not that they ran out of caring when they came to Telemachus and asked, “What should we do now?” Ithaca never stopped caring. It’s just that any town eventually needs closure from so constant a tragedy. They would have gone to Penelope and asked but she was so distraught, so caught up in her grief and stuck to her loom that the only one they could reason with was Telemachus. They said kindly:

“Son, it’s time. Let’s all collect our memories of him. The women will sow quilts and the men will record their stories of him. Then we’ll put it all in a coffin and have a symbolic burial. It’s what we should do. Look at your poor mother. We know you’ll never give up hope, and we won’t either, but you have to come to terms that there’s a time to move on, like the Bible says. A time for everything, including, hard as it is to hear it (trust us we know son), a time to move on.”

Telemachus thanked them for their care and went home to sleep on his decision. He tried to talk to his mom about it but she was far-gone in grief and doing all she could to avoid any men, even him. So he went for a drive up the canyon near his suburb and he played his favorite music and he thought about the few memories he had of his father—the scabs and wrinkles on his father’s knees. Once when his father had chased him, growling like a strange beast and how fast he had run with that sound at his back. And strongest of his memories, the farewell call and the pure copper glint of sunlight off of spears as the army had massed at the wharf to leave for Troy. He must have been six years old then.

When he went before the town the next day Telemachus said that he thought all night about what Odysseus would do in his place. He told the town that everything they said made sense but that he couldn’t let go of hope. He said, “My father would go looking for me. He would get a ship and he would go back to Troy. So, with or without your leave, I’m leaving.” And everyone tried to talk him out of it, that he’d never find a willing crew to go back to that hell, that they couldn’t stand to lose him, that it was time to move on. He listened to everything, he nodded respectfully, but said he was still going, even if he went alone. And the bitter old men thought Oh, he’ll go alone alright, nobody’s going to follow that fool-boy into death. And the strong men expressed their willingness to go with him but begged out because of their families (and they were grateful they had families). And the young men, his high school friends, well, they agreed to go with him. Because he was Telemachus. It was in his blood to lead. He was their Quarterback. He’d thrown for four touchdowns with his father’s image right between his eyes. And he’d never let them down before and he wouldn’t now. And everybody in that meetinghouse cried at the boys’ loyalty and their mothers cried doubly and placed huge new sums (all they had) in that small town’s rich collection plate of sorrow.

In a month Telemachus’ last memory of his father was now real and his own and he stood at the wharf with his spear and his friends (and his friends with their spears) all glinting in the sunlight of an early spring. The whole small town was there trying not to cry and then Penelope came sobbing, shuffling down the street with her black mourning clothes trailing in the road dust. She broke her silence and forbade him from leaving, said she would die if he left, or worse, she would be forced to marry one of the out-of-towners clamoring for her hand and wealth. She said his presence was the only thing that protected her and she begged the town to understand and the town understood because it was true. The elders ordered Telemachus from the ship but he refused and this made his mother collapse on the slat wood pier. Then Telemachus left the ship to go to her and then the ship left. He turned and ran back towards it but the town restrained him and his friends covered their boyhood with stoic voices and called to him from the distancing ship, each cry fainter than the last, “It’s what you would do in our place. We go by choice. We will return with your father. We swear an oath. We’ve named the ship in your honor.” The small town had to fight to keep Telemachus back. The fathers and mothers of the boys who were leaving were not among those who held him back.

So Telemachus did his duty to his mother and stayed at home. His mother went back to her loom and he entertained the out-of-towners and like a butler deflected their coarse advances. Imagine him, Telemachus, like a butler. He longed to, but he didn’t have the strength to throw them all out and this mixed with the shame of being left behind and he missed his prom because of the shame and because of it he didn’t walk at graduation. He spent a summer begging off the young women that came calling for him and the colleges that came with their scholarship offers and within a year the bitter old men and even some women in that small town couldn’t pity him any longer and started to whisper that he was secretly enjoying the company of the out-of-towners. That he was getting drunk and eating swine with them. That he had turned his back on the rest of Ithaca. That’s how rumors start in a small town. And when the mothers and fathers of the boys-who-had-left heard the rumors, they spread them.

It became that half the town pitied Telemachus because he was left behind to play butler and forced to atrophy all the best parts of himself, and the other half thought him a squanderer and hated him secretly because he was still with them, whereas their sons were not. But whatever way they thought about Telemachus, they all talked about him—in the marketplace and the bathhouses, over iced tea on the verandas. And if you’ve been in a small town you know that kind of rumor talk is the talk that hangs in the air like chemical smoke, and you can feel it in your lungs with each breath and if you take in too much it gets you get sick, fatally. By the time Odysseus came back that town was rumor sick, and weakening.

When Odysseus did come back, in disguise, and alone, he slaughtered all the out-of-towners, tousled his son’s hair, and went upstairs with Penelope. When he came down he tousled his son’s hair again and commended him on his loyalty, said he had claimed a Trojan spear for him but had lost it with the rest of his spoils. Then he stood in the warm hall, an orgy of out-of-towners dead on the floor, and he called for wine. He sat down in a great wooden chair and asked his son to bring the paper. He had a lot of catching up to do.

When the catching up was done they went hunting, father and son. They built a deer blind in an oak tree at the edge of a clearing and waited for a buck. Telemachus had huge eyes then for his father, and he asked a thousand questions of the war and his father’s adventures and he was in the middle of a question when a 6-point buck breached the clearing and then the buck heard him and bolted. And Odysseus was so mad he sent Telemachus home and two hours later came home himself with that same buck gutted and across his shoulders.

Other times in those first few days they talked, father and son, but Telemachus was all questions and Odysseus was used to giving orders, not answers. And Telemachus couldn’t understand why his father was so God favored, and his shame over his high school friends made him question why he should celebrate the return of one man when so many still missing left with him, or because of him. He even said it once, obliquely, to Odysseus. He showed his father the decaled football helmet and told him the story of that game and the story of those boys-who-had-left and Odysseus looked away out over the sea and paused, then said “Athena protect them, but if it be not so, they were a worthy sacrifice”. Odysseus said it in a way that you had to believe it; there was no option to disbelieve it. But, still, a part of Telemachus began to disbelieve it, and things were never the same after that between Odysseus and his only son.

When word spread among the town that Odysseus was back they all came to see him. He didn’t go to them. They all came to see him and the kind old ladies kidded Telemachus when he opened the door saying “You selfish and handsome young man, keeping your father all to yourself. Don’t you know he belongs to us just as much as you?” And that small town massed at the door to see him. Civilly at first and then jostling, like sick people in line for the fountain of youth. And Odysseus sat in that great wooden chair looking the same age as the day he left and he was so charming and noble and he had so many fascinating stories that he became the hero-salve that healed that sick small town. And a lot of the anger of those mothers whose sons were gone left when they focused on Odysseus’ easy strength. And the rest of the anger went straight to Telemachus because, they thought, look, here was Odysseus, returned on his own (with Athena’s help), our sons didn’t have to leave to suffer who knows what fate, and no matter what way you looked at it, it was Telemachus’ idea to go after Odysseus. He wasn’t content with prayer vigils or night watches or decals. No. He had to go and try to be a hero. As if he could upstage a Goddess with his planning.

All those thoughts became talk and that talk was chemical smoke and it got in Telemachus’ lungs. He had a father, but no father he could talk to, and a mother like a dog in heat and half a town that saw their (perhaps) dead children in the way he moved and the youth of his shoulders. He wasn’t blind to any of it and he felt that when he held out the collection plate of his sorrow no one was there to pass it to, and he was forced to just hold it there in his lap with all that rumor talk burning in his chest. Sometimes that’s what happens in a small town, after many other things happen. After about a year it proved too much for him and he made the great failure of forgetting his oblations to the Gods, which was his duty as the heir and Odysseus’ only son. And after that, the other half of the town lost pity for him and then he lost it for himself and then he slipped away in disguise. He left Ithaca. And the next place he went he told no one who he was.

That’s why they never wrote any grand epics about Telemachus. Maybe even when I first mentioned his name, when I said, “So they came to Telemachus”, maybe even you didn’t recognize his name. Maybe you thought I was talking about a digital phone service, or a city in Mexico. Maybe you turned to your lover (as you read at a desk in the bedroom) and asked, “Love what’s a Te-le-mac-hus?” And your lover, born and raised in a small town, said, “come to bed. It’s a long story and it’s late.” And you said, “no really, who, what or where is Te-le-mac-hus?” And your lover noticed the tone in your voice required an answer so your lover said, “My grandma used to tell me that story. If I tell it, will you come to bed?” And you said, “yes” and your lover said, “promise?” And you said “yes” and your lover said, “it’s the name of the deadbeat son of a hero. But more importantly, it’s the name of a ship lost at sea with all hands. Now come to bed.” And you said, “no fair. That was a statement not a story. And now you’ve ruined it.” And there was real indignation in your voice. But your lover just smiled with white teeth and moved a bit under the covers. And, in that, you forgave the small injustice and came to bed.

New Writing

2009-04-27T07:31:00.000-07:00

If I haven't already "happened to mention" it to you, I got accepted into Columbia University's MFA fiction writing program last month. I applied to a bunch of places, in a bunch of different emphases, and Columbia said yes and all the others said no. So, my choice was easy (don't tell Columbia). I'm excited to start school again (never thought I'd say that) but also a bit overwhelmed. Fact is, the stories I submitted for my writing sample were pretty much the only short stories I've written (again, don't tell Columbia). So, I've got a lot of catching up to do in the form. Now that the Jazz season is over and I'm no longer blogging for Jazzbots.com, I have more energy to devote to getting a bunch of stories written. I'll post them here, and my goal is to post a new story every Friday until school starts in September. That's 20 stories. A nice round number. Don't expect super high quality here, we're going for quantity. That said, here is #1 of the 20. Short, yes, but it's a monday. Expect a new one on Friday the 1st!

#1
Ice Man:

I remember the JV shot put circle was at the base of a grass slope and when the meets were done we would layback on that slope and relax, waiting for the JV discus to start. I remember one time we had all finished throwing and we were laying back on that slope in our short maroon shorts and loose jerseys and the rival coach approached our coach and starting talking to him in low tones, asking him a favor. You could tell he really wanted this favor, so our coach said OK. Our coach was a real nice guy. So the other coach goes over to their team area and huddles up with his team and talks to them and then they all start cheering and then out of that huddle comes this down syndrome kid in a singlet and he’s cut like an old school strongman but in miniature. He couldn’t have been more than four feet tall. And he comes charging out of that huddle like he’d been let off a leash and he comes straight at us, pumping his fists and bobbing on his toes in a circular dance, like a boxer would. He comes right at us and beats his chest and mad dogs us where we were sitting in the grass and then he screams “I’m Ice! I’m the Ice MAN!” and then he hits the ground and does a form-perfect pushup, but in miniature, and then he walks to the shot put circle. Before he throws he turns and mad dogs us again and then he yelps loud and angry and throws the shot-put about half as far as the crappiest guy on our team. But he thinks it’s great, and he does pushups between each of his three tosses, and he mad dogs us, even our nice coach, and tells everyone just who he is before every throw. And while all this is going on I don’t know what to think or if I should laugh so I look over at the rival coach and he is beaming and giving a grateful thumbs up to our coach and our coach looks back at him with this look on his face that I had never seen from him before, The look was cruel and filled with rage and this is what the look said: “You bastard. Just because everyone is in on it doesn’t mean its not a lie. What happens when the Ice Man gets it that the meet was over before he even started warming up. What happens when Ice realizes that none of this is real."

Fringe

2008-11-12T11:37:00.000-08:00

I've been super busy. I took the GRE subject test in English last week, finished up a UCB improv comedy class, dropped lil Winston off at the doggy hotel (that has to be a euphemism for something) and flew out to Utah for extended Thanksgiving/business. I've still been writing for Jazzbots.com, though its been a bit hectic. There is no posting schedule for us bloggers, so usually after a game or something interesting happens there is a cuddle-puddle full of blogs and the administrators stretch them out over 3-4 days.

In other news, how good is the TV show Fringe? very good, though I found the last episode kindof disturbing. One of the characters is named Joseph Smith, and in the episode (spoiler alert) he is surrounded in his house by an "angry mob" of swat-team FBI agents, jumps out a window, and then is shot in the head when he hits the ground. I'm Mormon, and anyone familiar with the history of the LDS church had to feel a little disturbed because that is pretty much exactly how Joseph Smith, LDS prophet, was murdered in 1844. I'm sure its just exec. producer JJ Abrahms trying to work his magic again and build up a quasi-mythology about his fictional TV series backstory, but one has to wonder if such a thinly veiled allusion is actually a anti-Mormon message. I mean, in the show Joseph Smith comes off as a very bad guy.

Now I said I was disturbed, not angry or self-righteous. I'm willing to see how it plays out, and maybe the martyrdom of the Prophet Joseph Smith has now reached the sort of cultural relevance that it is subject to parody. That can only be a good thing. When it comes to knowledge of his life's mission I firmly believe any publicity is good publicity.

What do you think? Should I be angry?

Second Jazz article up on Jazzbots, plus news.

2008-10-20T14:06:00.001-07:00

Second article is up and it is awesome. It's a little bit of TGIF, as I compare Balki and Cousin Larry from Perfect Strangers to two Jazz players. Why not, huh? check it out: www.Jazzbots.com

In other news, I just learned my cousin has a web hosting service. Yup, he's got servers and everthing. So I'll be moving over there soon with a blog name that doesn't contain .blogspot.com

The name is going to change, and I've got some good ideas for it. Stay tuned. Yaay WordPress.

-aaron

First Blog is up over on Jazzbots.com

2008-10-11T16:53:00.000-07:00

I'm officially blogging for Jazzbots.com. Hit the link to the left and take a gander. I am excited to be blogging, though I admit that it's a strange set up. All posts are reviewed, as it is an "official" Utah Jazz blog. Titles are changed and my intended formatting tends to end up skewed. But, chances are high they have more experience than I do, so I'm just going to roll with it.

My first article at Jazzbots is about how die hard fans (like myself) tend to focus on the speculative peripheries of our teams and therefore lose the immediate experience of basketball. Sounds cerebral, but I don't think the article comes across like that. Or maybe it does. Check it out and leave a comment.

I dont like Ike. At all.

2008-09-13T00:33:00.000-07:00

I cant sleep. It's like 330 saturday morning. I think the eye of Ike is passing over Galveston right about now, and I can't help but feel sick inside for the people who chose not to evacuate. I served my LDS mission in Houston, and spent a lot of time in Galveston itself, as it was part of my zone. I actually had knee surgery in Galveston while on my mission. I spent even more time (8 months) in smaller, lower-lying communities to the north and west of Galveston. Places like Port LaVaca and Palacios. Places right on the gulf, where people live in trailers. I truly fear for those places, especially because there are so many people still there who I love deeply. I feel so disconnected from them, and truly don't feel like there is anything I can do. I wish I was there to help them. In Clearlake, where NASA is, I hear the mayor is urging people even now to evacuate low lying areas. I know those areas. One apartment complex in clearlake called Harbor Tree used to flood with even the mildest of summer rainstorms. We would walk through it wet to our knees after a storm. Every stairway was rusted up to the third or fourth step. I feel sick for what they must be going through now.

For those of you who have never lived or seen that area of Texas, it is truly beautiful. Palacios is a tiny shrimping village, flat land, baptist churches, mostly gravel roads. The kind of place that hasn't changed in fifty years. Some of the happiest moments of my life were spent there teaching and serving people. We would drive our car out to the most remote of places, tiny colonies of trailers twenty miles away from anywhere, huddled around a small water tower. I remember one time we were on a drive like that, looking for a country road address and we came across a historical site/marker. It said that there had once been a city on that spot, settled before houston, that rivaled it in size and commerce, but that hurricanes had leveled it twice and the settlers had just given up. I stood at that marker and realized without nostalgia just how extreme Texas can be. I only pray now that destruction escapes most, but especially the ones I love and have left behind.

We beat all the families reunions (and their laptops)

2008-09-11T13:22:00.000-07:00

So I got the position as an official blogger for the Utah Jazz. Thanks for all of you who went and voted. You guys are off the hook.

I don't post about sports on this blog, but a few sports are a really interesting part of my life. Tivo makes watching sports easier on the schedule, and there are always fascinating/hilarious parallels to be drawn between athletic competition and life in general. Hopefully I can start sharing some of those parallels when the Basketball season starts up. Again, the website is Jazzbots.com. It is in its second year as the official community site affiliated with the Jazz. Lets see how this works.

Seminal Geography

2008-09-01T12:13:00.000-07:00

The major periods of my life have all been begun by a move eastward. Growth in High School was interrupted by a move east to Provo for College and eventually graduate school, then that period closed by a move east to New York City. In terms of personal development, I can trace myself maturing eastward across the continent. As I write this I am in San Diego, and I realized last night as I drove home from the wedding of a close high school friend, that my vacation this year has retraced the steps of my eastward migration, and in doing so helped me revisit lost versions of myself.

The funny thing about old friends is that they have a way of treating you as the person you once were, and this makes it easier to fall into the attitudes, even the mannerisms, that defined you in those times. When I went back to Provo this summer, I did so without a real purpose. It’s not the first time I’ve revisited Provo and it won’t be the last, but the days without a clear goal gave me time to reflect on the place. One day I was up on BYU campus doing some random errand and in Ten minutes I ran into four people who were relatively close friends around 2004 but who I haven’t kept in close contact with. I chatted with all of them and by the tenor of their questions I was able to see some of the ways I have changed from the person I was in 2004. That day put me in a reflective mood, and I spent the rest of my time in Provo noticing emotionally important places as I drove or walked past them. Apartments where I had lived, street corners where I had had meaningful discussions, places I had taken girls on dates, Streets I had run down in happiness, and others I had walked down in insecurity and pain. It seemed everything in that small town was a landmark and it especially struck me how certain landmarks from my earliest memories of Provo were right next to landmarks from my last few months there. There was an aspect to their closeness that reinforced the length and roundness of human experience, and the pattern that God forms out of every discordance. Above all I was filled with deep gratitude for the experiences and the people that helped shape me in Provo.
Then I drove west to San Diego, to attend the wedding of the friend who was most responsible for the first steps of my adult maturity. At the wedding I ran into another large group of old friends. It was amazing where their lives have taken them in 8 years. Some that I worried about are doing just fine, like stylist for a Conde Nast magazine fine, while others were still floating around the same bar scene and still others were absent, lost to drugs. The way they interacted with me, how they treated me with consistent goodwill, helped me remember the person I was in high school, and just how much I have changed. I’ll keep those personal observations to myself, which perhaps is the greatest indicator of how New York has changed me, but I again felt the deep gratitude of having a place to go back to, and having people in that place that treat you like not a day has passed.

Ron is "off the hook"

2008-08-30T14:25:00.000-07:00

His name was Ron. He was the assistant sales manager of a Utah Big and Tall men’s store. He was not big or tall. He wore oversized black pants with suspenders and a hunter green polo shirt. His face and neck seemed shrunken, tight , with a scraggly beard that clung to his bone structure so he looked like the pale animated corpse of some shallow-buried, perma-frosted 19th century polar explorer. He had thick black glasses and bad teeth and must have been in his early forties. The Big and Tall store was going out of business. I was picking over the remains of their liquidation sale.

He approached me, “Today our prices are off the hook”
“I can see that” I replied, smiling. The phrase seemed so common to him, and it was so incongruous with his nature that I laughed out loud. “Why are you going out of business?” I asked, trying to contain myself.
“Oh we got bought out by Casual Male. They’re going to close this store to consolidate”
“That’s too bad, where are all we big and tall people going to go to get our clothes?”
“Huh, huh. That’s off the Chain!” he evidently thought I had made a hilarious joke. I smiled again and asked if I could use the dressing room. He nodded and pointed it out, still laughing to himself, stuck in the internal reverie of the joke. He shuffled back to the counter, chuckling. I took my selection of 2XB polo shirts with me into the dressing room.

I made the command decision in the dressing room that I had never before heard someone utter a phrase so opposite their external appearance. I could not feel sorry for Ron, he seemed innocent and totally oblivious, but I felt a great deal of pity for the phrases “off the hook” and “off the chain”. Born in the rap nineties as succinct expressions of urban excitement and astonishment they had made, like twin salmons, the long journey up the stream of cultural consciousness only to die in the air outside a discount rack in a Utah big and tall store that was going out of business. The death of their last authenticity was the great tragedy out of which joy and comedy must inevitably spring. I mourned them while a smile.

When I came out of the dressing room Ron was on the phone:
“I tell you hon, it can get real frustrating. Our prices are already off the hook but people still ask me if I can take a bit more off. Don’t they realize its marked down 70 percent. I tell you hon, it makes we want to just fly off the chain. Huh, huh, how are the kids? Good. Good. Gotta go, talk to you later.” Apparently Ron had a wife and this is how he talked to her. He approached me again. “If you like those, you’re going to need some pants with them.”
“I imagine I am”, I replied, more intent now on observing Ron than shopping.
“Well, these flat fronts here are off the hook.” This time, for emphasis he made a circle with the thumb and middle finger of his right hand and brought the hand up then down past his face as he said the phrase. I looked at him in the face for a good two seconds, then picked out a pair in black and shuffled back to the dressing room.

In the dressing room I decided that the strangest thing about it was that “off the hook” and “off the chain” were the only two phrases Ron felt the need to martyr. The rest of his dialogue was culturally befitting a forty-something, perma-frosted, big and tall store assistant sales manager. No “homie” or “tight” or “Oh! Snap!” or other 90's phrases he could have killed if they haven’t been already (they have). No, Ron’s choice, the outlier on his cultural vocabulary curve, was confined wholly to “off the hook” and “off the chain”. I deduced, because of the lack of other phrases, that Ron was no secret BET watcher, but had instead picked his pet phrases seemingly from the ether. Did his press “Scan” on his car radio in 1999 and, in that tuner space between easy listening and classic rock, hear “off the hook” from a DJ? Did his twelve-year-old son return home one day from 6th grade spouting the tired urban phrase in the way that so many white twelve-year-olds are prone to do? Did he pick it up from a previously idolized assistant sales manager? Was it his attempt to win friends and influence people? Did he consider it cool and current? Did his wife find it edgy and sexual? Did it put her in the mood? I decided in the dressing room that I was fascinated by Ron, that he was an oblivious marvel, and I suddenly wanted to shake his hand. And, if I shook his hand, would he betray more outdated cultural influences by trying to give me a dap? I hoped not. Ron was perfect the way he was.

“I like the pants a lot, but they are a bit big” I said when I left the dressing room.
“No problem, the most off the hook thing about these pants is that they aren’t pre-shrunk, so they will tighten up just a bit” It was as if Ron structured all his sentences just to fit the phrases in.
“Great” I said, “looks like I’m good to go.” Ron rang me up and began to bag the polo shirt and black pants. I watched him closely the whole time. “Man, when you guys shut down where are all we big and tall people going to go to get our clothes?” I repeated the joke only because I knew it would make him smile.
“Huh. Huh. Off. The. Chain. Huh. Huh. Don’t worry, you’ll find another store.” He said as he handed me my receipt. I put the receipt in my pocket and reached out to shake his hand.
“Incidentally”, I said as I shook his hand, (no dap) “what’s going to happen to you? Are they transferring you to a different store? Maybe one in the area?

Marvin Gaye.

2008-08-25T22:12:00.000-07:00

So I read Esquire.com a lot and have a nerd crush on one of their book blogger. Super strange that she was in Waterton while I was there last week. Alas me and my travelin' crew didn't run into her. Here is a related blog, from esquire, of the 5 best performances of our National Anthem.

I must say Marvin Gaye takes the cake. I love that the entire crowd is clapping and just groovin' out by the end of it. So very sad that the man is no longer with us. Here is the link. Please enjoy.

http://www.esquire.com/blogs/lists/5-best-spar-spangled-banner?src=rss

My Grandpa and his traveling crew.

2008-08-21T09:49:00.000-07:00

So, I am up at a relatively remote cabin in Waterton, Alberta Canada. I've been coming up here my whole life, usually with my family, but for the last few years I've been flying solo. It's a great way to decompress and truly my favorite place on earth. I always invite people, but the relative remoteness makes casual visitors difficult. This year, however, I invited my WWII vet 86 year old grandfather, who is far too sick to still be kicking but far too stubborn to die. He has a live in nurse named Daniela who helps manage his diabetes and who increasingly has taken over his caretaking as his health has deteriorated. She is Philipino, sassy, and I love her.

They accepted my invitation and said they were driving up from Oakland. Grandpa said this land is "God's true country" and that he wanted to see it again before he died. Mostly I think he wanted to relive his spartan childhood on a ranch in Wyoming. I prepared myself mentally for my two visitors, a crowd considering how comfortable I have become with solitude.

Imagine my surprise when their called pulled up not with two people in it but six. Daniela brought her son and grandkids and also a random girfriend/neighbor. The cabin is pretty small and I was pretty surprised and even a bit put off that the whole traveling crew would show up without warning. It was definitely not my expectation. But, as a day has passed I have come to really really enjoy thier company (all of it). Daniela and her friend Rose are both nurses who chat in tagolog and hang their underwear from the shower rack to dry. They cook for all of us and pat me on the back when they pass by. And they love my dog Winston and take him on long walks without even asking me. Daniela's son is a mean chess player and his son is awed by my ability to lift heavy suitcases.

It's as if they brought instant "home" with them in a bustling and obtrusive package. I just love to watch it. It makes me happy. Most of all they treat my Grandfather with great respect and handle his (ahem) racial biases with patience and laughter. Now that I see their care for him I understand a bit better why he has lasted so long. Best of all, we are rained in, so it just heightens the craziness. I don't know if this is what he was expecting, but I certainly think my Grandfather is getting a good look at "God's country".

Canadians and the Olympics

2008-08-20T09:14:00.000-07:00

So, I’m in Canada, and Canadians are strange. Not in the stereotypical ways. There is one channel covering the Olympics here and here are some of the things they do that strike me as very very odd
.
-No objective coverage of the Games: Nope, its all Canadians all the time. They will show you the heats of an event, watch the Canadians finish 8th and not advance to the event finals, and then fail to show the event finals because they are busy showing more Canadians lose in preliminary heats of other events. Also, when they show results of events they will only list Canadian results, always failing to mention who won the event.

-Extreme competitive anxiety: Canada didn’t win a medal for the first 8 days, and all the coverage took on this anxious and vindictive tone towards the Government and their supposed lack of funding for Olympic sports. I mean, they gave low level protesters national airtime to whine about the lack of funding as the reason why Canada’s athletes were performing poorly. Ironically, this exact same process played out four years ago in Athens. Its always “our poor underfunded athletes doing their best”

-Exaggerated focus on “personal bests” and “Canadian national records”: I guess when your country sucks at most Olympic sports you have to find positive reinforcement wherever you can get it.

-Joyous complacency with silver and bronze: Not once in the endless interviews with the few Canadian medal winners has one come close to mentioning that they were disappointed their medal wasn’t gold. All of them, especially the announcers, seem overjoyed to lose to the Chinese as long as they get a bronze. Very much a lucky to be there mentality.

-Lack of commercial variation: There is a loop of about 10 commercials (NO JOKE) that runs during all Olympic coverage (basically all day). They must have sold all the airtime to the 5 companies and then the companies made two commercials each. The commercials have not changed the entire Olympics. I have now memorized all these commercials and made solemn promises to NEVER buy anything from any of these companies. The companies are McDonalds, Chevy, HBC bank, Bombadier Airlines (truly the creepiest commercials ever), and very corny Visa ads. Worst of all are the Chevy ads. Worst worst of all. Because at the same time they are running John “Cougar” Mellonncamp go America ads in the states they are running ads in Canada with the Maple leaf and “lets go canada” logo. Did you know Chevy is the official vehicle of the Canadian Olympic team? They’re just wrapping themselves in the flag of any nation that buys cars from them. It’s a strange mixture of marketing and political propaganda. They should rig their company cars with microphones and megaphones. They should have retinues of factory employees march in military parades. Their new motto should be “Chevy: trying to attract the lowest common denominator of all nations”

And Finally,

Extreme (hilarious) passive aggressive coverage of the U.S. and U.S. athletes:
I was talking to a distant uncle the other day, who was raised in the states but has lived his whole married life in Canada. And he said “the majority of Canadians express their nationalism through competition with the US.” This is so very true.
First off, when CBC condenses its coverage of a non-live event, it will only show the Canadians fail, then it will show the three medal winners. So as you watch it you can pretty much tell that every routine you see will either be a medal or a Canadian achieving some obscure personal best….UNLESS, and this is the one exception, a US athlete fails to achieve a medal. They will always show U.S. failures, especially if the athlete is a favorite. Then the commentators will gloat silently or in thinly veiled statements like “oh, that’s too bad” and “shocker there. She was hoping to do better”

Secondly, all the Canadian announcers are total homers for the American’s main rivals, especially China and Jamaica. They will always point out where China won against the US but never the other way around. But, never is this more apparent than in the Michael Phelps Vs. Usain Bolt debate for “hero of the games”. Yup, up here they actually think it’s a debate. Most announcers will list Usain Bolt, then the Russian Pole Vaulter/Actress, THEN Michael Phelps in a discussion of most heroic at the games. C'MON! Bolt could shatter 19.30 in the 200 and it still wouldn’t even be a close call. 8 gold medals. 7 world records. Their homerism against Phelps is just way beyond ridiculous. Their announcers were practically screaming with joy when it looked like Phelps would lose the 100m butterfly. As for the Jamaicans, you have to remember that Canadians get all excited about Jamaicans because their only Olympic sprint champion ever (Donovan Bailey) was born and raised (and trained) in Jamaica before becoming a Canadian. They’re like the sister–city pen pals that you would write letters to in 5th grade.
But I’ve ranted enough. I’m going to stop and see if I can watch some track and field finals…oh wait, they’re not showing that. Instead its another interview with the Canadian bronze medalist in women’s equestrian dressage.

Roadtrip Poetry

2008-08-16T15:47:00.000-07:00

I always tend to write out loud when I take solo road trips. I write and revise in my head until its too long to remember, then I pull over and write it down. I do that a lot, and somehow manage to leapfrog my way across the country. The first poem I ever had published was a roadtrip poem, as others have been. This one is a fiction, but was inspired by the trees of the canyons between Helena and Great Falls. So enjoy and forgive me if its a downer (it was a stormy day). And so help me Zeus if blogger messes up the spacing. -Aaron

I.
Hungry metaphors,
Asian bark beetles are killing the forests of
southern Alberta. The dead trees
are similes stripped of needles. On
any mountain you can see them blighted,
thin and grey, random against the evergreens,
stark victims of a ravenous chance.

II.
It was cancer that thinned her
thumb and forefinger
picked her from my side.
No salve for the sap of her body,
no graft for the blight in her limbs,
no cure for the beetles mating in her
breasts.

III.
Tragedies of chance.
An Asian beetle in Canada?
Why God do you misplace our maladies?

updates, contest. Van Blows UP.

2008-08-16T15:41:00.001-07:00

I'm back. let's get up to date. I am on vacation. The right ankle turned out to be just a bad sprain. It is healing. Life is good. Oh, and an Access-a-ride Handicapped Van blew up in front of my apartment building today in Brooklyn. Here is the link: http://www.brownstoner.com/brownstoner/archives/2008/08/accessaride_van.php

Awesome. Apparently my house is fine, which is nice because I am on vacation and it would have sucked to come home to a blown up apartment.

In other news, I recently made the final cuts to become an official blogger for the Utah Jazz basketball team. So if you like me go vote for my entry at Jazzbots.com. I'm entry #8.

In other news I have a poem to post but will post in a separate post.

best,

Aaron (currently very badly sunburned)

Somebody's trying to tell me something.

2008-07-11T06:53:00.000-07:00

Those that know me know I had arthroscopic ankle surgery on my left ankle two weeks ago. My recovery has been rapid and I'm amazed at how strong that ankle is already. It's strength will be needed sadly, as I stepped in a pothole yesterday and absolutely destroyed my right ankle. It was extremely painful, with all the requisite popping noises that I have become all too familiar with in my short lifetime. I feel like I should get a medal for making it home from Brooklyn Heights (on the F-train) while hopping on the recovering left ankle. Someone please give me a medal. Let's hope for some miracle that I didn't tear ligaments and that it's not going to require surgery. In the meantime I'm laid up again trying to sort it all out. Luckily, my current livelihood is of the desk job variety so I can still function in society, but being injured does tend to make you question your direction, and I did some soul searching and managed to put a positive spin on things already. I'm not one of the "why God, why me" types, though that's a tempting emotion to succumb to sometimes. I like G.M. Hopkins rejection of that pity from "carrion comfort" the best: "Not, I'll not, despair, not feast on thee;"

So no pity please, just a medal, and maybe some more Vicodin.

aa

Fourth of July!

2008-07-04T07:07:00.000-07:00

One of my friends approached me and said he liked this blog specifically for the absence of pictures. I realized I just spelled out "fourth" in this title. Probably a good indication of how verbose I can be. Moving on,

Happy 4th. Thanks people/person for your comments on the elizabeth story. and thanks for the cookies. I have rewritten the ending of the story and will repost it soon. I still feel kinda weird about the McCarthy passages.

Last fourth of July I wandered to Coney Island for the hot dog eating contest. I was a witness to the gastronomic ghastliness of Joey Chesnut setting the world record. Its a spectacle, but inside it make you feel a little bit like a spectator to the microcosm of American excess. Today is significant for me on a lot of levels though, as last Fourth of July is the first real event I associate with moving to Brooklyn. Somewhere last month I passed the year mark here, but this kind of symbolically marks that anniversary for me. and all the retrospection that goes with it. Its been a hard year in some areas and a great one in others. As a celebration of the holiday, here are some good bands I have been listening to over the last couple of weeks. when I learn how to embed mp3's I'll be really cool, but until then, look em up on myspace or something.

JaneVain and the Dark Matter
Oxford Collapse
The weight (kindof alt country. I really dig)
Jay Reatard
Death Vessel

-aa

Miss Elizabeth

2008-06-30T07:26:00.001-07:00

Here is a short story that I have been working on. I'll post it first then I'll write a little of my thoughts about it after. I don't want to influence or cloud your initial reading...though technically I think I just did. In an editors note, the formatting doesnt allow me to indent. This sucks. New speakers and qoutations are indicated with a -dash.

Miss Elizabeth

I read:
"When she reached him he held out his hand and she took it. She was so pale in the lake she seemed to be burning. Like foxfire in a darkened wood. That burned cold. Like the moon that burned cold. Her black hair floating on the water about her, falling and floating on the water. She put her other arm about his shoulder and looked toward the moon in the west…"
-What are you reading?
I looked up, startled.
-A book. I mean, its by McCarthy.
-That's nice. I used to read so many books.
-Yeah? I love books, just getting into this one though. Its beautiful.
-What's your name young man?
-John. My name is John. Whats your name?
-Excuse me?
-What's your name?
-Now why would you ask a thing like that first off?

She was white, purple blouse with white jeans and white hair that was once auburn and she had a long café cane with a blunt handle, stubby hammer of wood and we were the only two people sitting in the radiology waiting room. She was classy old. She looked away and I, unsure if the conversation had ended with double glance to her looking away went back to my book. I read:
"…do not speak to her do not call and then she turned her face up to him. Sweeter for the larceny of time and flesh, sweeter for the betrayal…"

-Young man? and the courteous wait for my reply.
-Yes?
-Have you seen my pocket book? I always tend to misplace it.Or maybe Elsa has it? Maybe I gave it to Elsa.

And into the room a Hispanic woman on cue,

-Miss Elizabeth, they need to know what year you born.
-You expect me to just blurt out my age right here in front of the whole world?

She looked at me. I smiled, put my hands over my ears and hummed some hymn.
When I took my hands away, Elsa was assuring the safety of the pocketbook and Elizabeth was smiling at me.

-You remind me of my grandson. Well, he's really my grand-nephew, but he is tall and he has this gorgeous red hair. Lives in Boston. My sister's hair. She was the only one to get it too, this gorgeous red hair, like the color of bricks. That red.
-I don't really have red hair.
-No. No it's brown. But not the hair, the smile. You remind me of my grandson, the whole world in front of him.

She moved her cane in her hands, brought the handle to her face, smelled it, touched it to her lips. The older the elderly the more easily they see potential, the more loosely they define youth. The more whismy nostalgia they ascribe to all ages under their own. Backseat love and moon reaching. I am in my thirties. This conversation takes place in a hospital.

-Young man
-Yes Miss Elizabeth
-That is my name. When I was a young girl my grandfather owned a bottle factory in Brooklyn, and we would bring free soda and tonic to all the kids in the neighborhood. We were very popular.
-Do you still live in Brooklyn? Have you been there all your life?
-All my life, with a few detours.

She caressed her café cane again. A minute passed.

-That's a thick book young man, you must enjoy reading.
-Very much so
-Who is it by? I used to read very much.
-Its actually three books bound in one hardcover, its by Cormack McCarthy.
-That's nice. By chance have you seen my pocketbook? I seem to be always losing it. Maybe I gave it to Elsa. Did you see me give it to Elsa?
-As a matter of fact I did.

I smiled again.

-You’re a very nice young man. I have this grandson with the world in front of him, and he has your smile. But he has this thick red hair. God its amazing. Red like a sunset. You could go a long way in this world with a head of hair like his. He moved to Boston last year.
-I've never been to Boston.
-It's lovely. My grandson lives there.

She looked across the room, empty but for chairs. She looked away from me and twisted the cane once around like a baton. She smelled the blunt worn wood handle. I looked at her until I knew her attention was gone. The elderly have a way of looking outward but traveling inside. They pull their fears back inside their memories. They turtle. As if by looking back they could make future time stop and past time begin again. I know the feeling. This conversation takes place in the Oncology ward of a Hosptial. I looked back down at my book. I read:

"Nesting cranes that stood singlefooted among the cane on the south shore had pulled their slender beaks from their wingpits to watch. Me quieres? She said. Yes, he said. He said her name. God yes, he said."

First off. I am toying around with this idea of using snippets, randomly pulled (though this example is not random)fragments of other peoples work placed newly in new creations. The idea is that the pulled pieces take on new and entirely different connotations in altered settings. Like found photography. Does it work here with the McCarthy pieces? Does it irk you as a reader that I do this? It kindof irks me.

Second. The ending. I wrote a few different ones. The one here where I just leave it at the beautiful McCarthy quote. One where I tell her I am God and that she should be at peace with her past. One where she just stares at me and then I walk away, and one where I see her later in the hospital hallway, half naked in a hospital gown and I greet her for to bypass the awkwardness of her nakedness and she wonders at me all down the hallway walking away. Does the current ending work. Is there any emotional payout?

Lemme know what you think. Especially lemme know what pieces were unclear. I tend to have experiences/pictures in my head when I write and sometimes I leave things unsaid.

-Aaron

hodgepodge-mishmash-brickabrack

2008-06-29T06:31:00.000-07:00

Some goings on on my goings on.

I had minor ankle surgery thursday and have been laid up in my fourth floor walk-up apartment since then. I am healing way too fast to continue to wallow sleepily in your sympathy. Darn. I haven't even been in enough pain to justify painkillers. Double darn. You'd think someone who claims to be a writer would revel in this type of enforced solitude, but its not that way. Without movement, the outside, people, this writer becomes more of a thinker, which always creates difficulty. You ever noticed how following any thought, no matter how worthy, down diligently into its rabbit hole always leads to problems? Thoughts on the past lead to what ifs, or regrets, or at best half sad half recollections of some sweet memory. Thoughts on the future, though they sometimes lead to awesome daydreams, usually just remind us of all the things we are told to worry about. And there are so many things to worry about for a young American these days. Generally, we have Global Warming, Taxes, the Economy, the War, Honeybees, the end of the American Century. Thank goodness for Obama. He'll fix everything.

Before I get too cynical let me stop myself. You see, this is what happens when I think too much. Its tough though, because to write you have to think deeply about things, look for new angles. This is true especially of poetry. So for me, I have to walk a fine line in my own mind.

in other news (this is a hodgepodge entry) I am reading books about professional blogging. That's right, I am really interested in doing this thing more seriously, so I bought some books on niche blogging and one on WordPress and I'm really getting into it. One thing I have loved is the breakdown of blogging "benefits" into indirect and direct categories. Let me explain: Direct benefits of professional blogging usually come in the form of income from ads on your blog, or affiliate links on your blog. Basically you write to attract a large, loyal readership and your main goal as a blogger is to provide them with information/entertainment so their continued presence on your site provides you with income. Indirect benefits of pro blogging include things like increasing your profile as an expert, or a writer, which hopefully leads to other, more lucrative opportunities, like writing jobs. I would have to say I'm definitely more interested in the indirect benefits of blogging, and I am excited to develop some new blogs with that in mind.

in other news, how great is the TV show 'the Soup'. Just painfully awesome.

And with that, I'll depart. Maybe go injure myself some more so I can justify these painkillers.

Omega Man

2008-06-03T07:47:00.000-07:00

On saturday last there was a series of really powerful rainstorms. A particularly strong one hit at about 11am and lasted for at least an hour. Hard sheets of warm rain. Winston (my small jack russel/poodle mix) gets intent when there is rain. He sits constantly at the window. I put on an old t-shirt, shorts and old shoes and we went off to prospect park in the last of the squall. By the time we got to the park the storm had passed in favor of muggy sunshine. The hard rain had scared away the normally thick weekend crowds. I took Winny off his leash, even though thats illegal where we were, and we ran around the long meadow. For half an hour I didn't see another soul. Just Winny and I jumping around like we were the last two gentlemen on earth. I don't think I've ever seen Winny happier. He likes to run around me in strange orbits, and at times he'll shoot off like a comet to investigate a group of orioles in a puddle or a particularly interesting stick. He does everything full speed. Later I slid down the wet hills like a slip and slide, with Winny speeding along next to me. It was quite the fun time. Then we saw a group of people and they gave us a nasty glance calculated to make us feel stupid. And I laughed in their general direction and slid down the hill again. It was a good day at the park.

Songs I am listening to lately:

M Ward: I'll be Yr Bird, Deep dark well
Modest Mouse: Gravity rides everything, The View
Coldplay: Viva La Vida, Violet Hill
Seawolf: Middle distance Runner
Asobi Seksu: Thursday
Frank Black: St. Francis Dam Disaster, Speedy Marie.

Also on first listen I am very disappointed in the new Death Cab for Cutie album. But stay tuned cause my opinions of albums usually change with time.

-aaron

dissection of a Day

2008-05-19T19:52:00.000-07:00

Activities I did today:
Stretched
Ate Breakfast
Drove to provo
Worked on Thesis layout at Provo City Library
Went to Lunch with Dan
Printed out two color copies of the Thesis at Kinkos
Went to Borders and bought "9 stories" by JD Salinger(sp).
Went to the canyon and shot shotguns with Joel
Went back to the library and wrote a poem about a deer, but really about patriarchy
Drove Back up Provo Canyon to midway.
Watched a Basketball game
wrote this Blog

Human Beings I talked to today:
Nathan
Joel
Dan
Telly
James
Overbearing waiter at lunch
My dad (his 60th birthday)
My mom
my brother
Internet lady at Provo Library
Kinkos lady
Katharine
Borders Sales Clerk
Random shopper in borders who wanted my advice.

Non-humans I talked with today:
Good sir Winston (my dog, interior monologue)

Music I listened to today:
Bon Iver (skinny love, flume, stacks)
Lonely, dear (I am john)
Clap Your Hands Say Yeah
Eckhart Tolle (background for my ride home)

Main themes of my thoughts today:
Thesis
Shotguns
Patriarchy
How much i miss certain parts of utah
what I've learned from NYC
continuing education/PHD programs
basketball
this blog
what the perfect day would be for me

Things I felt strongly about today:
shotgun safety procedures
gratitude for Dan and his kindness
working the system
How much I love the feel of a short lyric novel
one day having a home that is comfortable (a haven) in all the little ways
Deer
reciprocal kindness/love

One overarching message delivered to me by the day:
I am a good (kind) human.

Utah Poems Project

2008-05-14T20:46:00.000-07:00

Here is the intro to a chapbook of poems I am writing about Utah. The idea has been ruminating for a while but I started collecting/finishing pieces this week. I'm already well along and quite pleased.

"This small book about Utah was written the year after I left Utah for New York City (get the rope!). Most of the poems are drastic rewrites of material I first wrote during my seven years (one mission, two degrees) as a student at BYU. This book is, among other things, a love song, an indictment, and a valediction. Please enjoy"

One of the degrees I mention is obviously still pending, so we'll see. In the meantime, please enjoy this new poem I wrote today for the Utah project:

Hill Fire

We climbed out bedroom windows
to the roof slope of the Avenues
and watched the hill fire burn down Y mountain
alive with danger from both inclines.

Andrew was in town playing minor league baseball
with the Missoula Osprey
a water bird.
He sat on the roof crown and made jokes
about his root beer.
all the Dominicans were on steroids and the groupies
were loose.
my poor roommates, he was one hell of an ember.

The wind changed and took away one danger
my careful angled footsteps
hand on the roof at the level of my hip
carried me from another.
Andrew stayed up with his root beer alone.

That day's dual fear has seared the memory
whereas others have flown the field
like a water bird
rusted like aluminum, lonely
gone dark like the charred sage of a mountain.

Aaron Allen

Common Bloggin'

2008-05-14T09:27:00.000-07:00

Blogs are awesome and I have a lot of thoughts on them, here are some humorous thoughts on the blogs of twentysomething americans.

Top common indicators that the blog belongs to a twentysomething american. I am guilty of all of these.

-It will change its name almost more frequently than it changes posts.

-50% of all post titles will include random ellipses... (Oh the depth of our thoughts...)

-It's always a blogspot blog. Far be it from us to figure out how to use wordpress. We are too concerned with the drama behind...ellipses...

-The author will never identify him/herself but will come tantalizingly close. Ways to accomplish the cat and mouse game of identity revelation include: Close cropped photos of everything but the author's face. Links to friend's blogs where the author of the original blog is conspicuously revealed in posted photographs. Photos of yourself on your own blog that are so thumbnail small that sometimes gender isnt even determinable. and, my all time favorite, posted photos of direct family members (often holding babies). I just love how its so heartstoppingly important to protect blog author identity but we have no problem exposing the identities of our immediate family. Awesome.

-If it's a guys blog he will have a black (brooding) background and if its a ladies blog there will be much patterned wallpaper background. seems sexist but you'd be surprised how often this is true.

-they will link to their blog on their facebook page.

-the actual content arc of a twentysomething blog is also predictable. The very first post usually starts out with an incredibly ambitious description of the solar conditions on the day the blogger was born. the blogger then tries to tell a condensed life story to lead up to the day the blog was created, but runs out of steam and resorts to...ellipses...to fill in whole decades. Here's a condensed Example:

"It was a cold and lonely Wednesday in San Mateo CA when my mother's water broke...i arrived in a house already stocked with two older brothers...and now I'm Blogging!

The whole purpose of the initial blog post of a twentysomething blog is something I like to call "Puttin' the world on notice". Its one small step for a blogger and one giant step for the internet. Oh how I love the "puttin the world on notice post"

After the 'puttin the world on notice' post a twentysomething blog usually goes one of 3 directions...you ready for this?...

1) Blog as diet. The blogger posts a bunch at the beginning and then slowly peters out. the periodic blogs that do appear always have introductory sentences that reflect the guilt of the now absentee blogger: "Ok, Ok i know its time for me to write this" or "I've been so busy but its about time I got around to telling you about my Tomatoes!" The guilt in these blogs is made even more painful by the fact that the "blog as diet" is rarely ever a well read blog. this means that your statements of guilt are usually floating around cyberspace unanswered and uncared for. My favorite part of the Blog as Diet is that it will stop for months on end, no activity at all, followed by a post that is basically a rephrasing of the original "puttin the world on notice" post but with an added element of self doubt. Awesome! This cycle will repeat itself until the Blog morphs into one of the two other blog forms.

2) Blog as Therapy. Simply put, this is anyone who knows how to blog from their mobile device. The Blog as Diet becomes a Blog as addiction, and everything is blogged about. A new guilt emerges: The guilt about not blogging interesting things. Its like the author realizes the blog is a free form of therapy but is too hooked to stop. The first sentence of a blog post (in general) is always the key. Blog as therapy guilt posts also usually use parenthesis to slip their in their insecure statements. Heres an example of a first sentence: "(Note to the world) I'm losing that fingernail I slammed in the door (like you even care)." Awesome. These are my favorite kind of blogs.

3) Blog as Hopeful monoliths of validation. Check that, these are my favorite kind of blogs, probably cause I've been guilty of this so many times. What happens is that a blog as diet blogger realizes that no one is reading and stops writing... except for maybe once every couple of months when they will post some random and awkwardly personal creative poem or photo or story. They know no one is reading but harbor a secret hope that someone will read that particular piece and recognize their blogging genius. Often, after they write this blog they will drop strange cryptic hints to X-boyfriends and X-girlfriends along the line of "Hey, I finally blogged again..." or "Did you know I'm blogging again...you should check it out...same blogspot address..."
hints like this will use...ellipses...like its going out of style. The ENTIRE purpose of a Blog as hopeful monolith of validation is to recieve reader comments. Comments are the fuel that feeds the fire and they will often use pity laced guilt trips to solicit them, ending posts like "and thats what i have to say about that...what? does no one else disagree?" The final act of a Blog as HMOV blogger is to reveal his/her identity in a cathartic draw back of the cyber-curtain, then to start another anonymous blog. Ah the cirle of Blog. Awesome.

Please enjoy (if anyone cares) and look out for (if you want to) more blogs from me (wouldnt you like to know) in the future (if you're lucky).

Aaron Allen (real name)

Intro to Common Bloggin'

2008-05-14T08:07:00.000-07:00

So I just finished a pretty extensive draft of my MA thesis and its time to come up for air. Here is what my schedule has been over the last few months:

545AM: wake up (on weekdays) to teach an early morning seminary class for my church

730AM: come back and nap.

10AM: wake up (again) and take the subway or walk to one of 3 rotating libraries and write all day. the three libraries (in case you want to map it) are the Park slope branch of the NYPL, which is the closest and smallest--the main brooklyn branch of the NYPL, which is in walking distance but isnt very electronics friendly--and the 5th avenue (think ghostbusters) branch of the NYPL in Manhattan. I prefer the Manhattan one in every respect. The huge reading room in incredible, it allows me time to
marinate (get my thoughts ready for writing) on the F-train, it has plugs for my laptop, and it doesnt have wireless internet, which makes me 100% more efficient. I'm becoming a regular.

After the libraries close I usually come home and watch some tivoed sporting event from the day before or go to a movie or something with friends. I actually read a lot.
I have a bunch of friends in writing programs and I've realized that I am missing out on not being in direct contact with continuing education. I have to push myself a lot cause stasis is regression when it comes to my writing education...so I read a lot..mostly authors I admire or would like to emulate. books read in the last month include:

'the road' by Mcarthy
'some ether' poems by nick flynn
'halls of fame" essays by john D'gata (again)
'X' poems by James Galvin (again)
'Survivor" by chuck Palahaunik(sp)

Yes, I am painfully aware that they are all men. Other odds and ends include an amazing 80's instruction book called "PLAY SQUASH", which is all about playing squash. The book is so enthusiastic and so few people actually play squash...i love it. I've been reading Flannery O'connor (a woman!) and Sherwood anderson stories from anthologies. I also read from the LDS Journal of Discourses, mostly Brigham Young discourses (I've graduated from my Joseph Smith kick onto brother Brigham). Finally i read a TON of blogs through Google reader, mostly sports related
stuff, but also a lot of blogs of friends and former classmates.

Portrait of a Friend (name witheld/female) 3 Feb 2008

2008-02-25T12:58:00.000-08:00

(note, I cant get the spacing in the text to work the way I'd like.)

That white flutter chancing just above the roiling water is a Brazilian Swallow crossing the Rio Negro in a rainstorm.
Between each wing thrust the bird dips towards a wet oblivion;
Her hard grey tongue shape shouts her life forwards
into the
crosswind.

Hesitant, she is half-way across the wide channel.

Her tail, the most delicate thing, forks
and tapers to points like the Christmas time candy cane that you sharpened to a white spike between your teeth and the rolling lathe of your teenage tongue.

You held it there, suspended in your mouth
hesitant to try on your hands the sharp point
that your young tongue had fashioned
from such sweetness.

Aaron Allen

Self Portrait 23 Feb 2008

2008-02-25T12:53:00.000-08:00

We were waiting for the sharpened tramp
To rumble from the lumber camps
His purpose in his arm like a two sided axe.

Here, where there is timber, we have been expecting him
to come sing songing across a meadow or at night
like a specter to tap on our misted windows.

We even spotted a plume of white smoke
Twisting on the mountain side and rejoiced
There he must be, one last campfire on the long journey
From the east.

Jinney marked the trees, cleared the debris from the
Woodshed, said she’d made the perfect hat for him
White enough to keep him seen and tight enough not to
Spin with a swing or an impact.

We’d waited for the TIMBER shout, the winter’s warmth,
An icon man. When we’d waited far too long
The old men, creaky shouldered, did the job.

He hasn’t come.

Aaron Allen

Portrait Project

2008-02-25T12:40:00.001-08:00

I realize its easier for me to compartmentalize my writing into projects. Right now the Thesis project is dominating my writing time, but there are 4 or 5 other projects that really have me excited. One is a series of portraits of my friends/acquaintances here in Brooklyn. Not painted portraits but "word portraits" as a friend suggested I call them. The idea is to have the subject physically in front of me while I write, and for the genesis of the poem to come out of some insight into or energy recieved from the sitting subject. I'm shooting for minimal revision and a sense of "capturing" the moment of the sitting, the interplay of themes and psyches that would create the nexus for art in that moment. The sitter then gets a chance to interact with the poem in some way I havent thought up yet, maybe colors on a printed copy, or something of that nature. I am very enthused by it, and although i haven't had the chance to physically sit people down (thesis), i have completed some preliminaries, or "studies" of a few people (with their permission of course). I will post them here.

Love Poem

2007-10-23T11:19:00.001-07:00

Someone asked me this week if I still had it in me to write love poems. I'm not so sure, but here is something close.

October

I am in a room with October.
She is wearing a crimson sweater.
I lean back in my folding chair,
and ask her quietly
(so as not to interrupt the speaker)
where she will go when she leaves here.
She makes no reply but a shrug of her shoulders
as if to say “its better if we don’t think about it”.
I turn away in mute agreement.

In my mind, Winter, dark, long haired, waits
in the outside street with an unlit cigarette.

I am early September--Summer and Fall
at once--my gift, my curse.
I am laden fruit trees and their fallen uneaten fruit--
heat, sweat, youth, sugary popsicles.
People drive for miles to see me.
I pull the leaves from the trees.

I tell her all this, in a fierce whisper, leaning back.
“Then what do you need from me” she says after a pause,
“to stay close when my days are short.”
“my days are shorter”
“ok then, to come be September.”

She looks forward to the speaker at the front of the room
And says nothing.
I can tell she is very sad. I ask, “who is that guy anyway?”
“He is God. He makes the seasons.”
“Today, I hate him.”

Poem: Chevalier

2007-10-13T12:26:00.001-07:00

New Work before I jump into the can of worms. This is a piece unaffiliated with my MA. It is interesting to me to see how my style has changed in the 6 months since I have written anything non-thesis related. Still rough, feel free to comment.

Chevalier

I have a head cold, and it is early October outside my window.
This is the first poem I have ever written on the black
Ikea couch we bought on the extra day we had the Uhual.

Someone not you and not here asked me to describe here and I said
“cat shit and wine” and felt bad, cause I knew it meant
I was on my way to being local.
The right of passage being a head cold, and public animal feces,
and using the extra Uhaul day to go to an Ikea.

All the windowsill candles we brought from San Diego
have burned out in their cups or half out in their cups
and left the lids all black-ringed.
They match the couch and the couch I can say
matches the candles in the spots I spilled hot wax.

And then there is the coffee table,
and the laminate wood shelf underneath,
where you wanted to butterfly well written magazines.
The shelf has bowed from my half Indian style way of
resting my shins upon it.

Other things have been changed by my weight upon them:
the solid oak rocker has a jiggle, and every couple
of weeks I find a random Ikea wood peg,
fallen from one of our U-hualed treasures.
Things creak, the faucet is leaking, the corners of floors dip.

No, I haven’t been sitting on the faucet. Youre funny.
I could see you thinking it.
I can see you too on the fourth flight of stairs, crimson
holding up a black couch with your broken knuckled hand
while I fought with the door.
Oh my Pioneer, my Venus, my Brave One!
Oh my Chevalier!

I am sitting by the window with a head cold.
It is New York City in October. I sneeze.
Winny-puppy clips a guitar string.
Suddenly I can hear an uprising of sirens,
two bright ambulances, God’s skirmishers,
flash on the road to the hospital.

Dr. Zhivago part 1

2007-10-10T15:47:00.000-07:00

I have just finished reading Boris Pasternak’s “Dr.Zhivago”. I found the book enthralling on many levels and wanted to pass along some quotes with commentary. Enjoy

Nikolai Nikolaievich on Faith pg 10 “Now what is History? It is the centuries of systematic explorations of the riddle of death, with a view to overcoming death. That’s why people discover mathematical infinity and electromagnetic waves, that’s why they write symphonies. Now, you can’t advance in this direction without a certain faith. You can’t make such discoveries without spiritual equipment. And the basic elements of this equipment are in the Gospels. What are they? To begin with, love of one’s neighbor, which is the supreme form of vital energy. Once it fills the heart of man it has to overflow and spend itself. And then the two basic ideals of modern man—without them he is unthinkable—the idea of free personality and the idea of life as sacrifice.”

I don’t necessarily agree completely with the “idea of free personality” but the rest of what he says interests me greatly. 1) Humanity is driven to solve riddles, the central riddle being death, and most works of art/life are created (knowingly and otherwise) for this purpose. 2) Faith is the fuel of this process. 3) Love is the supreme motive, energizing force.

Yura’s description of the peace he felt as a child, before he lost his mother is stunning, though too long to quote. Its on pg. 87 of the 1958 Pantheon edition and begins “this inaccesably high…” Pasternak was a poet first and a Novelist second, and this passage makes it stunningly through the translation.

Yura’s epiphany after the death of his future mother-in-law: pg89 “In answer to the desolation brought by death to the people slowly pacing after him he was drawn, as irresistibly as water funneling downward, to dream, to think, to work out new forms, to create beauty. More vividly than ever before he realized that art has two constant, two unending concerns: it always meditates on death and thus always creates life.”

I think this quote is a great description of a state beyond grief. Or maybe it is a transmutation of grief energy into creative force…but either way Yura does not respond like the rest of the mourners. He is physically removed from their black lace and tears, though not any less of a mourner. I am not as interested in his two concepts of art, although they validate Nikolai’s quote, as I am the creative state he describes. I think the tragedy of the book is that he is not ever able/does not really justify the creative state with the requisite work.

Pg 107: “Antipov sat down on the overturned boat and looked at the stars. The thoughts to which he had become accustomed in the last few years assailed him with alarming strength. It seemed to him sooner or later that they would have to be thought out to the end, and that it might as well be done now”

I feel like I have been sitting on the overturned boat for the past 5 years, attempting to live an American life while also trying to think great sweet thoughts to their end. But finding no end to them, as through the process of postmodernism each believed end only becomes a new beginning, I am wondering now if the acceptance of the lack of an end is enough of an end. There will undoubtedly be more to come on this.

I think Pasternak is a great writer, if only because he allows Yura to speak freely through a precious set of journal entries 277-87. I don’t know if such a narrative form was common at the time, or if in 1958 it threw a lot of people off, but I am continually impressed by Pasternak’s sense of control over his book. He treats certain events with alarming specificity, excessively detailing minute conversations between old men. Other times he jumps whole years, whole journeys to and from Moscow by the principal characters without any explanation or remorse. The reader is being told things, the reader is DELIBERATELY not being told others. And then, in the middle, the reader is deliberately shown these journal entries, another window on the unrealized creative potential of Dr. Z. I am struck that, despite the sweeping tragedy and characters of the book, Pasternak the author remains the force behind it. It seems his deliberate decisions overshadow the tragedy of the narrative. I am impressed and intimidated by this.

281: Dr. Z continues to muse on art, repeating a concept I have often heard and sometimes subscribe to , that art is the core, the indefinite internal genius that gives merit to the work it blesses. "A literary creation can appeal to us in all sorts of ways—by its theme, subject, situations, characters. But above all it appeals to us by the presence in it of art.” 2 years ago I was very drawn to Althusser’s concept of the “genius” of art for the same reasons. Here was Althusser, a man so committed to showing the structure/motive/influence/hegemony behind any “universal” concept or “truth”, claiming that “Art” (in the same way that Dr. Z defines it)in the hands of “genius” is able to remain a sublime thing despite its army of motivators. I was enthralled originally by Althusser’s apparent capitulation, and remain intrigued by this concept of “art” as the impossible to define magic leaven of creation, though I would call the entire concept by a different name.

I will stop here for the day because I realize the next quote I want to cite is going to open up a whole new can of worms.

Much Love,

AA

Subway Wisdom #1

2007-10-04T16:33:00.000-07:00

Riding the subway always helps me realize my mortality...and produce aphorisms

The only thing I can claim is my mind. The process of owning it, mastering it, and day by day developing it is at the crux of human growth/happiness

Stasis is Regression

I have learned that you can blink and lose whole days/weeks

I think many in my generation are stuck in a malaise of overintelligence. Many of us have lost control of the tool that is the mind, and overanalyzation paralyzes our decision making. I like to call us the "getting lost" generation, because we so actively participate in the process of going nowhere.

-AA

Jump Right Into Some Philosophy: Academia

2007-10-01T14:40:00.000-07:00

My experiences and subsequent thoughts have been leading for quite a while to a more tempered view of most everything. Stick around long enough and I will explain. Tonite, though, I will just write here what I have been thinking about the business of Academia. As a master's student contemplating a PhD, this has been on my mind. Therefore the reaching of any semblance of consensus is a big deal to me and something worth sharing.

To "essay" in modern academic terms is to leave yourself open to certain reproof and rebuttal, often bordering on subtly disguised critical vehemenence. You carefully construct a theory, build it on meticulously researched historical foundations, flank it with corollaries, define its terms with appalling specificity, admit its limited scope and influence and still any theory is breakable, easy for the postmodern critic to dismantle. Build a fortress with a thought system and that fortess is always breachable. In fact, theories of deconstruction would attack the very words used to express the thought, in metaphorical effect pulling the fortress down brick by brick. I dont necessarily disagree with this reality. In fact I am inclined to mistrust the claims of any logical system that produces Truth (with a big "T"). But sadly, in my experience, the work of the critic is in effect a process of ego, fueled by a culture of Academia that rewards (perhaps solely) those able to vanquish, to void and destroy. I have long been troubled, (though previously undefined) that Greed seems to be the central motive behind continuous academic discourse. Greed, defense, protection of or propaganda for your strafied, specific academic niche, and therefore your livelihood.
It has become an example of how the human "need for security" enchanced by american consumer capitalism has infused waht many old men at Harvard still believe to be a noble aesthetic discourse. I will generalize and say that I think the rest of the world looks at academic professionals either as "overly romantic seekers of knowledge" or as "far too intelligent to be spending their lives fighting (literally) over whether or not a 200 year dead poet was bisexual". In a world that is increasingly moving towards the latter interpretation, the entire culture of Academia is at risk at collapsing into irrelevancy under the weight of its passionate defense of literary/theoretical curiosities. Disagree with me? Why do you disagree? Do you disagree with me because you are truly empassioned, i.e. your life has been enriched/enlightened by the debate over the aforementioned dead poet? If so, Then good for you, may you share that passion and communicate it well. Or do you disagree with me because you are the chair of a department, or a rising academic star, or need to have an article (any article!) published for your Cirriculum Vitae, or because you strive for personal validation? If so, I do not blame you, those are all common motives. But isn't it time to cut the BS in claiming that the motive of a "humble pursuit of knowledge" is what produces the majority of our academic discourse. The press of Capitalism and the machinery of Academia push responses, and accelerate a desire to leave no stone upon stone in the fortressses of our thought systems. Again, my frustration is not that stones are overturned, but that they are overturned in a supercilious quest for truth when in fact the motives are almost always supply, demand, surplus and survival.

More to come on this, as this is mostly a rant stemming from a larger theoretical discussion of Knowledge.

Thanks,
A. Allen

Introduction

2007-10-01T14:27:00.000-07:00

Hello,
I have just moved from Provo, Utah to Brooklyn, New York. Anyone familiar with both locales will understand the sea change. Leaving graduate school and coming here, now relatively jobless and structureless, has been a trying and amazing experience. On some levels I am able to document the changes in experience/philosophy/maturity that have happened to me since I made this leap to the big city. The purpose of this blog is to share some of those moments in the hope that they will be beneficial. Another purpose is to share cool stories of what it is like to live in the gentrified version of 21st century NYC.

Enjoy,

Aaron Allen