Must See Youtube

If you have not been over to Youtube to see the work of a filmmaker named Rogier Wieland, then you are certainly missing brilliant short films that use stopmotion animation to create fascinating effects. To watch a Wieland short film is to get a real sense of an artist devoted to perfecting his craft. Wieland can turn the camera into a musical instrument; he can turn real people into dancing paper dolls. He can make a ballerina invisible. Watching his Youtube films will give the viewer a sense of charm only a true magician can convey. Wieland's work is remarkable for its ability to throw the old-fashioned Showgirl and Strong Man theater through the gears of the techno-cyber fun house. Please don't miss the work of this truly brilliant, and so far little known, artist.

A Disenchantment

The first time a worldly gentleman leaned in and kissed her, Jenny didn’t think she might be getting herself involved with an egoist, an influential man who sought a quick, midnight stroke with Vanity. Back then, fresh out of college with degrees in Poetry and Classics, Jenny desired romance, a literary romance; in her susceptible mind, she had thought up a whole exchange of passionate words. She thought of pages in envelopes like folded bed sheets; she thought words could age like wine; the mailbox, a cellar where words could keep in order to grow more palatable. Back then, Jenny dared ask of the world a Lover who would drop dark ink from a jeweled pen. To be more precise, she wanted words delicately formed with a writing instrument from the Montblanc Bohème Collection. Words slowly arranged with the sole intention of communicating tenderness.

Jenny is older now and times change and technology just keeps getting sexier.

So whenever some Wrong Number is in the mood, Jenny has phone sex on her Motorola Razor. Everyone admires how that phone has got as much edge as has Jenny. Sharpening her edge keeps her from slitting her wrists, which is what she might do if she thought too long and hard about her naivety of the past. Forget that. Now she hopes the Wire-tapper regime is squeezing in on her line so that more strangers might also be gaining something from her pleasure.

Jenny never speaks, much less writes; she only sighs and sometimes weeps. She hates words. They never really did much for her.

Gallery

Creation invites you to this art opening, this book signing, this cocktail party, this cosmic slam dance. You will not wonder why nobody at these crowded gatherings ever speaks. All remains silent. They say one military official dared visit here, made his crossing with Minako Yoshino’s artwork, and fell under a fierce and everlasting contemplation. They say he abandoned his life: quit his career, left his wife and children. His knees are turning blue now while he prays outside the gates of the Cloister of Humanity.

Book Review of The Bastard of Istanbul by Elif Shafak; Viking 2007; 357 pages

Photo by Mahua Guha Thakurta


Before I heard Elif Shafak speak at the very first PEN World Voices festival in New York City in April 2005, I had not been aware of this author’s work, nor of her courage.

That April in New York, Shafak spoke on two panels: one was entitled, “The Way We Live Now: Who Wrote the book of sex?” The other was “Crossover Artists: Writing in Another Language.” Shafak writes in Turkish and English. I was attracted to this discussion topic because I had just spent the previous summer teaching Chinese language at my alma mater, Beloit College, in the Midwest. The title of the second panel attracted me because while learning Chinese, I wrote short stories and short essays in Chinese. And while teaching Chinese, I wrote my own short, dramatic dialogues for the students because they had requested supplementary material for further practice. Writing creatively in an acquired language remains one of the most profound experiences of my life, yet I have had no serious opportunities to discuss and digest what this experience means for me. That’s why, at the World Voices festival, Shafak’s example as a threshold writer provided a much-needed sense of solidarity.

But it was Shafak’s candid discussion of sexuality in the Middle East that provoked my interest in reading her fiction. Her comments ranged from Ottoman Empire books on sexuality to the Sufi mystical tradition of Islam that is very much open to discussions of eroticism. Shafak said, “The interesting thing that happened in Turkey is that in the name of modernization, secularizing, and Westernizing ourselves, we cut our ties with the long tradition of eroticism, erotic literature, and especially homoeroticism.” This comment interested and excited me most because I had graduated from Columbia University in 2002 with a Masters in Chinese Literature, and throughout that program I was amazed at how much erotica we were reading in our Pre-modern fiction class, including titles such as The Plum in the Golden Vase, The Carnal Prayer Mat, and What The Master Didn’t Speak Of. Through study and discussion, it eventually occurred to me that a post post-modern consciousness, might at first assume that these days we are more progressive in our attitudes toward sexuality just because we live the outcomes of the Feminist Movement and the continuing struggles for Gay Rights. But if a reader digs deeper, she will discover cultural and literary traditions out there that could be informative on matters of sexuality in ways that post-modern minds may not have thought of. Shafak is very keen at pointing out the negative consequences of creating historical divisions.

Now I am recalling a discussion I’ve had with grad school friends of mine. On occasion we speculated about Bisexuality in the Chinese concubinage. Among our group were those who defined their sexual identity as anything ranging from Lesbian to Metro-sexual to Poly-amorous, even a Retro-sexual; we were friends who studied culture, literature, and language who dared to entertain the wildest hunches. For instance, in a wealthy Chinese household, the man typically chose one wife to sleep with for that evening, according to however his whims guided him. He would order a servant to go to that wife, prepare her with pampering and a foot massage. This wife would beam. In the traditional literature, drama erupts due to the rejected wives’ disappointments and jealousies. And in our little discussion group—these centuries later and miles away—we came up with this question: well, what if it wasn’t really like that? What if the wives who were not chosen to sleep with the husband for that evening did, in fact, sleep with one another? Wouldn’t that solve a whole lot of issues? Or would that just fan the dramatic fire?

It’s impossible to prove any such thing really happened, and we wade in the dangerous territory to impose certain assumptions on other times, places, cultures, etc. But the whole point is the fascinating dialogue that such speculation opens up, a dialogue between Now and Then—Mr. Past taunting Ms. Present, and Ms. Present teasing Mr. Past. All this helped us to conclude that celebrating erotic traditions helps us riff on the themes of sexuality in its colorful variations without feeling alienated from the past.

Elif Shafak’s fiction gives me strength and energy to write about this now. Colorful options that provide comfort are the kinds of considerations that Elif Shafak’s work invites. Because she is a woman from a threshold culture and because she embraces tradition and modernism with humor and grace, her fiction offers much food for thought to a cosmopolitan mind.

Recently, I finished reading her latest novel The Bastard of Istanbul. Now, not only do I appreciate a sense of solidarity with this author, but I am welcoming all her work into my life and cherishing all it can Teach.

Photo by Jakop Eskinazi

Now. What if we learn brutal truths about our families’ pasts? What if we learn about the atrocities from which we are all descended? Are we victims? Are we perpetrators? Aren’t we all suffering the consequences? Once we gain knowledge of the truth of our past, what should we do with that knowledge?

Shafak’s novel is a sweeping family saga that handles these tough questions.

The story revolves around the revelations of two young women: Asya Kazanci, who is fatherless and Turkish, and Armanoush Tchakhmakhchian, who feels exiled as an Armenian American, so she journeys to a foreign land. When Asya and Armanoush meet, their bond provides striking illustration of human connectedness. Transcending our hang-ups seems possible here. What hang-ups? Well: History. Identity. Community. Family. For starters…

The story begins with a nineteen-year-old Istanbulite woman, the seductive Zeliha, lying on an examining table about to have an abortion. She hears the call to prayer as the anesthesia starts working. When she comes to, she learns that the abortion could not be performed. She still has the fetus inside her because when the doctor tried to do his work, Zeliha shrieked with such horror that the doctors and nurses abandoned the procedure. Zeliha decides she will keep her baby girl, even though the city she lives in is hostile toward bastards.

If that opening isn’t absorbing enough, by the time readers get to page 53, Barsam Tchakhmakhchian, an Armenia exile, is asserting the taboo proclamation, “I am the grandchild of genocide survivors who lost all their relatives at the hands of Turkish butchers in 1915.” These words spoken by Barsam—and similar claims made by other characters—including the ravings of a bitter djinn who induces a memory trance in the thoroughly affecting “Pomegranate Seeds” chapter—got Elif Shafak into trouble with Turkish nationalists. Come on guys. Be real. Article 301 is for the birds!

But, back to the story.

The sensually-rich saga unfolds in chapters named after ingredients: Cinnamon, Garbanzo Beans, Sugar, Roasted Hazelnuts. Gathering around for mealtimes, one ingredient might trigger a memory or sensation, might open an opportunity to tell of something that once was or something that once wasn’t. But all the ingredients are vital for a sweet surprise later in the text. Shafak is a generous with her sensual writing; she hoards nothing and all are welcome to enjoy desserts prepared by Armenian and Turkish grandmothers alike. But beware of bitter and poison.

Some scenes take place in Istanbul while others take place in Arizona and San Francisco. Shafak handles the geographical shifts smoothly. Reading her work makes transition feel effortless.

A brother of five sisters leaves Istanbul to study in America. Mustafa meets Rose. She is a young, embittered divorcée, originally from Kentucky, who has a daughter by her ex-husband—Barsam—a member of a huge Armenian Catholic family. Of Rose, that family says,

“Rose had no multicultural background. The only child of a kind Southern couple operating the same hardware store forever, she lives a small-town life, and before she knows it, she finds herself amid this extended and tightly knit Armenian Catholic family in the Diaspora. A huge family with a very traumatic past! How can you expect her to cope with all this so easily?”

Shafak writes as gracefully about family discord as about family unity. An example of unity is the comfort prompted by the Armenian grandmother’s knitting.

“Grandma Shushan’s knitting affected the family like group therapy. The sure and even cadence of each stitch soothed everyone watching, making them feel that as long as Grandma Shushan kept knitting, there was nothing to fear and in the end, everything would be all right.”

This is a story of how the Armenian Diaspora survives through collective spirit, how the Turkish cope with learning the truth. To ease all distress, Shafak becomes like Barsam’s Uncle Dikran who eases his nephew’s distress by telling him a story—more like a long joke—about what happens when an Armenian visits a generous barber. In Shafak’s world, stories ease distress. Tell stories.

The crux of the narrative opens fully in the chapter entitled “Pine Nuts.” In this chapter, Asya translates Armanoush’s story for her four Turkish-speaking aunties. While the American girl is re-telling the story of Armenian genocide that has been erased from the women’s Turkified memories, the Turkish version of the television show The Apprentice is airing in the background. This scene reveals that the complexity of these characters’ situation extends to communities and cultures beyond the characters in the story. This chapter’s dialogue raises the question, “who all is responsible for erasing memory?” But Shafak gives the screw another turn by forcing us to ponder, “what does it mean to remember?” But in this scene we see a young woman traveled from the U.S. to Turkey in search of her Armenian identity telling a Turkish family a fact about their history; meanwhile, a purely American knock-off television show provides somewhat distracting and odd-ball background noise. These are the kinds of techniques Shafak employs to tell this edifying tale. Readers come away from The Bastard of Istanbul with admiration for this writer’s courage to confront atrocities of History and the hard questions we have been gifted. Though this novel forces readers to confront tough questions, it also offers most satisfying surprises that are as bitter as they are sweet.

There are so many sophisticated ideas packed in this novel. I hope that it sells as well, or better, here than in Turkey; I hope readers’ groups, book clubs, and classrooms welcome this important tale to their discussion tables. I hope families read it together and talk about it around the dessert table while eating ashure. As the celebrating Istanbulites would say, “S¸erefe!”

Tuesday Night Lecture

Last night I attended a lecture given by Jeff Sharlet, a contributing editor at Harper’s magazine. He discussed his career as a journalist who reports on religion in America. Some highlights of his talk included a significant and hilarious moment during a Pagan naked antler dance, his interviews with leaders of a Cowboy church, and his recent investigative project at the New Church in Colorado Springs.

A fascinating question that he wanted to ponder was this: why does religion, all strange varieties of religion, get so under-reported in the mainstream media when religion is so obviously a huge part of millions of Americans’ lives?

Journalists, according to Sharlet and his colleagues, tend to regard religion as too weird and too eccentric to take very seriously. Sharlet suggests, however, that journalists need to find ways to take these religious beliefs seriously if they are to provide accurate and thorough coverage of a story.

Many stories that involve the eccentric element of religion get killed too soon after they first appear in the public eye. Not enough follow-up reporting continues if a story involves secret prayer cells, shaking, and speaking in tongues. For instance, decades ago Playboy Magazine did a story about the prayer cell that hung around with Gerald Ford. More follow-ups could have provided further illumination on this prayer cell, but the story never continued. John Ashcroft is ardent about his prayer discipline and who knows what else? It never gets reported.

Sharlet closed by saying that journalists who report on religion need to learn the language of all these millions of people who speak these languages, For an investigative approach, he offered, “It’s almost as if you act like you believe and then go back to your own beliefs later.” He suggested that better reporting on religion in America would involve more narrative reporting, getting more different voices to speak.

I’ve been thinking about his talk and what it means for me. And I think I still embrace his early comments about how the press usually doesn’t deal with religion because we tend to see beliefs as an aspect of life that is protected by rights to privacy. A free press’s obligations and concerns probably fall more under the tenets similar to separation of church and state. For the most part, the press is most useful to focus on the issues of state. Personally, I think a story about someone falling down in the spirit is not all that newsworthy. However, tension does arise when an official like Hillary Clinton holds a meeting with the current leader of an underground Christ Fellowship Foundation prayer cell because she claims she has interest in making peace with the Christian Right. This made me think that it is true these stories shouldn’t get killed, buried, or go ignored by readers who take more liberal or secularist positions. We all need to be thoroughly informed about what motivates our nation’s leaders to make the choices and decisions they make. Who are they engaging? Who are they trying to please and why? I don’t know if a story needs to go so far as to probe a senator who says a prayer before casting a vote, flips a coin, or consults the tarot. But if these actions have real influence on decision-making, policy, and legislation then they are more newsworthy than the illusion that we are a rational, critical-thinking, and law-abiding nation.

Sharlet is correct in suggesting that being weirded out by people’s beliefs is keeping us misinformed. But how do we even begin an objective, analytical probe into others’ beliefs? It seems more complicated than thinking that so long as I remain respectful, I might be able to get at the truth about how these beliefs motivate action and whether or not there are consequences, and what kind of consequences, beliefs bring to public life.

Here are the links to Jeff Sharlet's blogs:

Killing The Buddha
the revealer

His talk gave me lots to ponder as I walked in the city under the falling snow. I love life.

Appreciating Grevel Lindop's poetry collection: Playing With Fire

This collection of poetry, published by Carcanet, hurls the reader into an intimacy and beauty that resonates mysterium and sensual delight. Here a father squeezes fresh lemon juice on a tuna salad; now a dancer slaps her palms onto the night stage; now brothers scatter ashes in a barley field; all action divulges this: We flame. Here’s one of my favorite poems from this collection.

Myth

So many things to make a galaxy:
the flutter of my tongue between your lips—
butterfly shivering a salted rockpool,
breaking the sea’s meniscus into tumult;
your hands, moulding me up like growing clay
your mouth tasting and ripening what you’d made;
you, turning over, pulling me on top;
the elements combining, heavens opening,
primeval floods.
Then how you sighed and stretched,
shook a night sky of hair back from your face
and, with the lazy splendour of a goddess,
strolled to the bathroom; leaving in your wake
that trail of white stars on the bedroom floor.

To read the whole collection over and over gives the reader a sense of the rhythm that echoes at The Core, the even beat at the center of the softest spot within the Queen of Intimacy’s rib cage.

If you are a reader, like me, who loves to read as much as you love to make love (and if you sometimes even mistake those two activities one for the other), you just must check out the poem “Ars Poetica.” Yes! We’ll meet in the nightclub of dreamworks!

The Logic Lounge

Photo of Almond Princess

Some claim they come to this croon room for the pleasure of the brain tease. Others argue that the women delight them more. The prices here are not reasonable, but all who are willing to spend a few minutes with the Queen of Desire are willing to empty their wallets into the lounge’s Bottomless Pool of Longings. Mister Nerve is an affluent tycoon. His assets exceed those of any real estate developer who owns property on Manhattan’s lower East side. His longings exceed those that crowd the pool at the Logic Lounge. Nonetheless, when Mister Nerve lays eyes on the Queen of Desire, all his bravado and cravings dissolve; all his assets turn liquid. Thus, the lounge’s Queen of Desire holds the secret. She does it with looks. To meet her eyes is to meet a challenge, an invitation, the torture, and the reward.

Which one of the following, if true, would most strengthen the argument?

a) The women in the Logic Lounge play mind games that give as much pleasure to the patrons as longings give them pain.

b) The Queen of Desire appeals to Mister Nerve because she knows how to convey whole galaxies through her seduction.

c) If Mister Nerve draws women to him it is often because of his assets, sometimes because of his longings, and rarely because of his courage.

d) When the Queen of Desire first started working at the Logic Lounge, she spoke little English but won over audiences with the way her painted lips curled around those charming chansons.

e) Every midnight there are more wishes for lust and music dropped into the lounge’s Bottomless Pool of Longings.

(If you post the correct answer in the comments, you are committing yourself to the status of Quintessential Logic Lounge Lizard. Wink.)

Logic at The Strangers' Gate

A security guard, disguised as a homeless man, sits on a bench outside the entrance to Central Park at 106th Street and Central Park West. This entrance to the park is known as The Strangers’ Gate. The security guard claims that 70 percent of the people who enter the park through this gate are strangers. Only if a person is wearing underwear and has an overbite does he qualify as a stranger. If a person qualifies as a stranger, he is not nearsighted or a terrorist. All people who wear disguises are not security guards, but security guards are required not to wear underwear if they want to avoid qualifying as strangers.

Each of the following can be inferred from the information in the passage EXCEPT:

a) Liza and Nick entered the park after dark, and only one of them was wearing underwear, yet the security guard admitted neither of them through the Strangers’ Gate; hence, one of them, who was not wearing underwear, did not have an overbite.

b) It is possible that most people who enter the park through the Strangers’ Gate sometimes place orders with the Victoria’s Secret catalogue.

c) A few people who have entered through the Strangers’ Gate have undergone reconstructive dental procedures to reduce their severe overbites to make them less severe.

d) Many people who wear disguises do not work as security guards at Central Park's Strangers’ Gate.

e) The more people the security guard refuses to admit through the Strangers’ Gate, the more likely it will be that some day The City will face lawsuits for discriminating against people who do not wear underwear and do not have overbites.

(If you provide the correct answer in the comments, you will be invited to play the role of Master of Disguises in the Funhouse of Logic and Reason.)

Logic & The State of the Union

Mister President: To win the war on terror, we must take the fight to the enemy. Because we have thwarted terror plots within the U.S. and have broken up a cell in Southeast Asia, we should continue supporting our brave troops who are fighting in Iraq.

Which of the following arguments contains an error of reasoning that is also contained in the argument above?

a) To win the war on drugs, we took the fight to the streets. Because we have convicted thousands of small-time dealers in urban areas, and we continue to ignore arguments made by those who think marijuana ought to be legalized, we have effectively stopped drug use on American soil. Drugs are no longer a threat to American democracy.

b) Small terror cells that carry out huge, horrific plots pose the same kind of threat to America as totalitarian regimes in the Middle East and all such threats can only be confronted by militaristic policy. Diplomacy and intelligence have no effect, so we need more troops. More troops! More troops! C’mon. You didn’t vote for failure.

c) Living without health insurance is a sure way to avoid getting ill.

d) To secure the border, we’re doubling the Border Patrol. We should establish a legal and orderly path for foreign workers to enter our country to work on a temporary basis. Consequently, migrants will stop sneaking across the border, and Border Patrol will be able to focus on catching terrorists, smugglers, and criminals.

e) To win the war on pollution, we must take the fight to our dependence on foreign oil. Because we will reform fuel economy through new technology that will assure the nation’s energy independence, we will be able to curtail global climate change.

(If you supply the correct answer in the comments, you will be invited to help form an Ideas Club called the Flash Fiction Think Tank.)

Grief & Logic: "We're all Hrant Dink."

Today, Turkish mourners crowd the streets of Istanbul. The goddess of free speech—resting on her leisure sofa in the sky—can hear the plangent sound of the Armenian duduk. The duduk is a clarinet-like instrument made of apricot wood that is known for having once brought tears to the eyes of Soviet composers. In Armenia there is a dance that only men are allowed to do, called the Dance of Tamir Agha. But today Riva Djinn is throwing caution to the wind. She is doing the Men-only dance by herself, in the privacy of her own home. She is wishing, hoping, yearning, and aching for peace to be with the soul of Hrant Dink who was taken too soon from his loved ones and from this world. What kind of nation sees a 17-year-old shoot down a respected journalist for telling it like it was, asserting that Turks did kill Armenians at the turn of the last century?

Riva overhears a conversation on Public Radio International. An interviewer is questioning a woman who translates the work of Turkish authors into English. Their conversation goes something like this: What do you make of this man’s killing? Heart-breaking. What do you make of the visible turnout to the funeral? Heartening. Will this event bring about change for the better? It’s possible.

Riva dances on while more sad news comes in. What else can an urban hermit do when she is over-educated, out of work, but trying to refine her joie de vivre in the City of Logic and Reason? (Not to mention she is still challenged by the fact that she is only nine inches tall!)

Which one of the following illustrates a principle most similar to that illustrated by the passage?

a) When mourning a public personality, some people feel sadness, at first, then outrage and then they want to seek justice; when justice doesn’t work, they seek revenge.

b) When James Brown died, Simona played his Sex Machine LP over and over as she cried and shook her tight booty. When she heard reports that thousands had gathered to mourn and dance, her broken heart flew straight to Harlem. And, yes, we all felt The Unity beat straight to our dance bones. We were all riding the music man’s wake, feeling that we too were, altogether, the Godfather of Soul.

c) The only way Turkey can dissolve its “Article 301” is if more people get bold about speaking out in favor of free speech.

d) The unity people feel while mourning the loss of a dear one always arises from the spirit conjured by music. They dance and march to show respect for the dead. The turn out at a funeral procession indicates the degree to which the event of that public figure’s death has brought, or will bring, social change.

e) Girls don’t cry. They dance.


(If you leave the correct answer in the comments, who knows? It may be like a kind of gesture of condolence. You ever wonder if The Dead and The Unborn can overhear all this chatter in the blogosphere?)

Good Parenting & Logic

A California assemblywoman is sponsoring a proposal to ban parents from spanking children ages three and younger. She responded to the overwhelming number of callers who voiced opposition to such a proposal by wondering why “We’re so addicted to violence.” One republican assemblyman regards the proposal as wrongheaded because disciplinary action is up to parents. He asserts, “California has garnered a reputation over the years of supporting extreme legislative measures.” One California resident, who has worked for thirty years as a childcare provider, thinks that these assembly members and those opposed to the proposal are all misguided. This childcare professional thinks that there should be some kind of legislation that requires people who want to become parents to pass a series of courses and standardized exams before they even bring children into this world. According to the childcare provider, “Discipline is something that one acquires through more and more education. Parenthood is itself a kind of discipline just like Mathematics, Physics, or History. People who want to become mothers or fathers should first be required to earn a degree in parenting from an accredited institution.”

Which one of the following can be properly inferred from the professional childcare giver’s argument?

a) The debate over this proposed legislation will have little impact on the overall psycho-social well-being of children ages three and under.

b) A parent who relies on spanking as a supposed “disciplinary” tool is analogous to someone who is unschooled in rudimentary reading and writing skills.

c) If the proposed legislation passes into a law, the entire nation risks following with similar legislation sooner or later. This whole spanking ban trend will then incite a fiasco similar to that started by the smoking ban. The extreme nature of California's legislative measures make that state a bad influence on the U.S.

d) Parents who spank their children have not earned advanced degrees in Mathematics, Physics, or History.

e) Any government that enforces laws dictating how parents ought to treat their own children risks turning into a government with totalitarian tendencies.

(If you supply the correct answer in the comments, you will be one step closer to earning a high mark in Good Parenting 101.)

Cabaret of Logic and Whim

A dancer winds her body around the chrome pole. Smoke lifts, curtains part, clothes fall away. Some people say the women never grow old in here, and they can slip in and out of tied-tight basques without using their fingers. On the contrary, the Experts of the Nightwatch claim that some cabaret girls are illusory freaks of nature. “Their hands fell off over a century ago!” The experts assure us. It follows then that some cabaret girls who can remove a corset without using hands must paint their faces using automated cosmetology systems.

The reasoning in the argument above is most vulnerable to criticism on the grounds that the argument

a) fails to consider that not having hands is a sign of eternal youth among these performers, a unique wonder over which this cabaret’s master of ceremonies loves to gloat.

b) presumes, without providing evidence, that slipping out of a corset constitutes a nighttime marvel worthy of puzzling the Experts of the Nightwatch.

c) confuses the terms basque and corset, thereby revealing that all stage performances induce raw pleasure.

d) ignores the floating sequins, the perfumed feathers, and the musicians who haven’t any lips.

e) takes for granted that if a dancer hasn’t any hands, she hasn’t any sex appeal.

(If you supply the correct answer in the comments, you will be welcomed to the Cabaret of Logic and Whims without ever being required to pay cover.)

Seaweed

Photo by Dusan Stojkovic




They hadn't seen each other in almost two years, and throughout the meal Sal never thought it necessary to bring up the fact that he'd gotten the tatoo removed. Dana held her tongue, too. About the boy. About her husband who had spent so much time in the service but was still convinced he was the father. Sal and Dana sipped cold sake flavored with floating cucumber slices. They talked about the delightful tastes. Reminded Dana of summer. Somewhere else. Ages ago. When Sal showed her photos of his adventures abroad, tears welled up in Dana's eyes. But they played it cool; who noticed? They changed the subject. The Itamae's skill? Impressive. The seaweed? Sweet. Dana said the word again: seaweed. She remembered pulling wet leaves from Sal's hair that one night they beached. Sal touched her on the wrist on their way out of the restaurant. He's fine. She said. Our boy, he is happy and well. Sal felt it was a shame that throughout the meal he never even thought to ask Dana for a table dance. Just for old time's sake.

Writers Block & Logic

MFA Candidate: It has been established that over 80 percent of writers who use amphetamine salts have a history of experiencing writers block at the peak of their careers. Such evidence would seem to prove that using amphetamine salts leads to writers block.

Professor: The phrase “Writer’s Block” would serve our purposes better if it carried a meaning more akin to “Butcher’s Block.” A Wrtier’s Block is such a slab upon which chopping and cutting of a text is performed. In other words, when a story, essay, or poem is on the “Writer’s Block,” it is going through the revision and editing stages of composition. Write on!

The Professor's reply to the student's argument relies on which one of the following argumentative strategies?

a) offering evidence suggesting that the statistics the student cites in support of his conclusion are inaccurate.

b) undermining the credibility of his conclusion by showing that it is a statement from which implausible consequences can be derived.

c) providing an example to show that not everything that induces writers block is counterproductive.

d) demonstrating that the student's line of reasoning is flawed because of the student's misguided use of the phrase Writer's Block.

e) calling into question the possibility of ever establishing causal connections between the statistics about amphetamine salt users and writers block.

(For those with superstitious dispositions, if you supply the correct answer in the comments, you are assured never to fall victim to the type of writers block the student discusses here; rather, you will always feel motivated to chop any unfinished piece of writing on The Writer's Block.)

Freedom of Expression & Logic

Elif Shafak writes novels in Turkish and English. When writing in Turkish, she rejects the rationalized, disenchanted, centralized, Turkified language put in front of her. Turkish language has endured changes due to modernization and ideologies of ultra-nationalism. Shafak maintains that words of Persian, Arabic, or Sufi origin have been purged from modern Turkish language in order to build a unified modern Turkey that disassociates itself from its Ottoman past. Shafak is a feminist who is attached to Islamic, Jewish, and Christian heterodox. Her writing voice has been described as acerbic. Her fictional characters say and do bold things that get them playing defense in Turkey’s criminal court. When writing in English, Shafak faces the harshest criticism from Turkish nationalists who regard Shafak’s language choice as “cultural betrayal.” Shafak writes about taboo subjects, such as the role of women and the history of Armenian minority in Turkey. An agent committed to literature in translation has said, “most writers that are any good would get into trouble with Turkish authorities.” Shafak’s new novel The Bastard of Istanbul will be released in the U.S. on January 18. That’s tomorrow. I’ve already ordered it.

The statements above, if true, support which one of the following inferences?

a) The Turkish nationalists earnestly embrace modernization and regard mystic traditions as backward and a barrier to progress.

b) To offend Turkishness, a writer’s voice must be acerbic.

c) The prosecution of writers under Turkey's Article 301 is being used more and more against critical minds precisely because things have been changing rapidly in Turkey.

d) When a novelist writes bilingually, she will confront complications that are not always linguistic in nature.

e) Purging Turkish of words that are of Persian, Arabic, or Sufi origin have successfully disassociated Turkey from its Ottoman past.

(If you know the answer and leave it in a comment, you will earn some browning points with the gods and goddesses of free expression!)

This is How My Friends Help Me Study for the LSAT

Have no fear; I rescued this book from recycling before it was taken away! Phew!

Erotic Logic

Daniel Chavarría is a Uruguayan writer whose passions are Classical literature and whores. Anne Carson is a Classics professor who has written extensively about the importance of bittersweet love in our lives. Carson writes, “in Greek lyric poetry, eros is an experience of melting. The god of desire himself is traditionally called ‘the melter of limbs.’” Alicia is a character in a Chavarría novel—a bicycle whore—who shuns a client when he starts reciting dithyrambs to her. Alicia tells him he’s crazy to be falling for her. She likes millionaires, and he hasn’t got a pot to piss in. Thus, Alicia’s client is experiencing the bittersweet eros that Anne Carson describes.

Which of the following is an assumption that would make the conclusion in the passage a logical one?

a) If you are a writer who takes the Classics, eros, or whores as the subjects of your writings, you must have been
spurned by a lover.
b) Eros is a dangerous topic to bring up with gold-digging whores.
c) The dithyrambs that the client recites to the whore conform to all the requirements of that poetic form sung by 7th
Centruy BC banqueters.
d) The dithyrambs that the client recites to the whore contain metaphors about melting limbs.
e) The client recites Greek lyric poetry, in the original, to all the women he sleeps with.

(You have the anwsewer? Please leave a comment and maybe you'll have more luck in love than I have.)

The Subtle Art of Logical Reasoning

If you are someone who likes to wrap your head around mind-teasers and puzzles, the story below offers you a game to play.


Please read this argument:


All Xylophones are not Ukuleles. Zorra plays a Ukulele. All women who do not answer to the name Zorra play Xylophones.


Which of the choices below provides the best conclusion for the argument?

a) Zorra is a woman; therefore, she plays a Xylophone.
b) Some Ukuleles are not Xylophones.
c) All women who answer to the name Zella play Xylophone.
d) If the woman plays a Xylophone, she answers to the name Zorra.
e) If the woman plays a Ukulele, she answers to some name other than Zorra.

If you post a comment supplying the correct answer to the Logical Reasoning question above, you will be admitted to the Scribble Bitch Book Club as a Genius Member.

And all the good-luck privileges that come with such status will roll your way! Easy!

Who's Afraid of the Big, Bad Stink?

This is a quote from a recent Times editorial:

"It is a frightening world, and New Yorkers now know to speak up if we see, hear, sense--or smell--something untoward."

On Monday, the whole city smelled like gas. Smell triggers memories. And this gas smell took our friend Riva Djinn back to the months in 1999 when she worked in an East Village real estate office. Tenants called her if they had problems. Back then she received so many phone calls from so many disgruntled tenants who were never afraid to speak out that all sorts of untoward things were going on, and why wasn't Mister Landlord doing something about it?

Ms. Djinn recalls one particular instance in which a building in Alphabet City was experiencing a gas leak, and the entire gas line throughout the building had to be replaced. The tenants called Ms. Djinn every single day. Ms. Djinn then called the plumber in charge of the project. The plumber complained that he couldn't do the job because Housing Authority wasn't issuing him the proper permit.

Well, Ms. Djinn got so fed up, she ordered the plumber to come pick her up in his red truck. "Take me downtown to the Housing Authority!" She screeched. "Boy, are they going to hear it from me!"

On the way downtown, the old plumber took a liking to our spirited Riva Djinn. And when older men take a liking to younger women, they always seem to love to give them good advice.

"Save money!" The plumber advised. "Invest in real estate." He went on. "You take your pay check, and I don't care if you're crying and screaming, you take that pay check to the bank. Save. Buy real estate."

Riva Djinn thanked him for his adviced while they waited at the Housing Authority office. She approached the haggard-looking bureaucrats and pleaded her case on behlaf of the unhappy tenants and busy landlord. They gave her the permit immediately. The plumber applauded Riva's aplomb.

On the ride back uptown, the plumber told Riva that she ought to bring a date to the Copacabana on 34th and 11th for a night of salsa. "The owner's an old buddy of mine." The plumber boasted. Riva nodded, "Sure." She didn't believe him.

"You don't believe me?" Riva tossed him a casual shrug. "Well, here." The plumber reached into his tool box and pulled out a fruit basket hair piece like the salsa queens wear. "My wife makes these and sells them at craft fairs. You can have this one for sweet talking the Housing Authority!"

"Wow, thanks." Riva smiled as she adjusted the hair piece on top of her head. The hair piece smelled of The Divine Fruit. "Smells good." Riva said to the plumber.

"Yeah. So, see you at the club?" Riva nodded. "Great. Now, I gotta be on my way to fix that stinking gas leak."

This is all to say that New Yorkers have always been able to open their mouths to complain about stench. That's nothing new. It has little to do with living in a "frightening world" as the Times editorial dictates. Really, who complains because they're afraid? Complaints are more often lodged because they can get a spirited city girl the free Goods!

But Riva doesn't pay much heed to editorials or old plumbers' advice. She still lives in that rundown tenemant and pays an exorbitant rent. But she loves the place. It's located above a lingerie boutique and soap shop. Her apartment always smells like lavender and nightlace.

Say No to Escalation

All ten million members of the Scribble Bitch Book Club support the idea of leaving President Bush to fight his Middle East war on his own. What are Americans doing in Iraq? It has never made sense, never will.

Have you seen the movie "The Good Shephard?" That movie contains a good illustration of what is going on. There is a moment in the film when a Russian captive is being interregated by CIA guys, and they make him drop acid so he'll talk. He says something along the lines, and I'm paraphrasing, Russian power is all a ruse. There is no real Russian threat. America needed the idea of a Russian threat in order to justify flexing its military muscle.

And last night I saw "Letters from Iwo Jima," and I am more convinced than ever that war is a waste of human life, resources, and money. The war in Iraq is a complete waste and failure! The more military force expended, the more America is like a madwoman who is pulling out her hair, beating her chest, and screaming "Worship The Destroyer!"

Will someone please step up, be bold, and put into motion some constructive action? The violence must end, now! Personally, I never agreed to send any soldier abroad to fight for my America, so don't ever expect me to be grateful to those who have served Bush. Come home, troops! Here are some orders for you: Brush your teeth; go to bed.

Unfortunately, a stay-at-home, childless woman has but a puppy blog say in these matters. So much for spreading democracy. What democracy?

By the way, please don't forget that exiled Western Europeans, the first Americans, developed their ideas about democracy after observing how Native Americans conducted their tribal meetings. So any smidge of justification for being in Iraq could immediately be dismissed as completely irrational because if democracy is meant to grow up in some part of the world, it will without the help of trigger-happy cowboys and down home Texas pride. I'm confident that Iraqis can do it themselves, and it's time wigged-out Americans start listening to them and believing in them. Military muscle does not effectively give confidence to Iraqis; it's a dumb crutch.

Bringing troops home and admitting the job was not worthwhile is also heroic if it saves lives. Who cares about "getting the job done" if it's a bad job?

Smart Blog

Beware of CEOs trying to sell you their macho man digital distractions. The only piece of impressive technology you ever need is this here Flash Fiction blog spot. It is the very first of what they're all calling a "Smart" Blog. That means this blog has got the processing horsepower that will let you do the things you want to do. Say you want to download Beauty. This blog uses patented technology called the glam-touch. Say you want to download Muscle. This blog automatically synchs your media with your flesh. Say you want to download Health. Your e-mail content and Web bookmarks can be streamlined to your vital organs. Say you wish to order a digital fish & chips. This gadget is designed to bridge the blogosphere and pub. This smart blog is not merely a multitasking genuis; it's a megatasker. Yes, it's THAT smart! Critics and phantoms are raving that it's even smarter than Apple's new iPhone!

The Cat & The Hidden Cabaret

“Poes” (pronounced poos) is the Dutch word for pussycat. Poes also happens to be the proper name of a silver European Burmese who lives on the City’s Upper Wild Side. Poes spent the holidays at the neighbors’ apartment while her master and mistress traveled to Europe to visit family. When no one was around, Poes jumped up to the loft and walked upon the Bose stereo. Though Poes wittingly takes exquisite steps, it so happens that her delicate paw was able to push the FM button on the stereo. She spends this evening listening to WQXR, the Classical music station of the New York Times. During The Blue Danube, Poes licks herself with such delicacy that she turns her silver coat to midnight blue, her more elegant nightdress.

During a violin concerto, she stretches, extending her limbs all the way back to the memory of the first of her nine lives. In the distant past, Poes had not been merely an abandoned stray left in a box in Brooklyn; no, she had been born into the royal family. She was the most favored pet to the Virgin Queen. That was the lap of luxury!

But now she's Feline Urbane. When a car passes by on the street below, lights crawl across the ceiling. Poes is convinced those lights must be rivals; perhaps they are those legendary Birds of the Blaze? She waves her paws in the air. She pounces. No! Strange motion can't tease this cat who had lived royalty in her former life! Obedient, the lights disappear.

Poes remains still until a pigeon flies out from the eaves and the sound of wings flapping excites her. Poes sniffs the air and can smell the world’s oldest grace—solar dust and winter fur.

When she meows, she is pronouncing to her ghost audience, “I am the goddess of Mischief!” When she purrs, she is giving her advice to The Unmoving and The Shadows: “Sneak about and be patient!”

During nocturns by Chopin, she jumps from sofa to chair to windowsill. The sill always takes her back to her Cabaret days, when she shared the stage with that chorus line of Siamese. Ah, the glamour! They constantly had old showtunes on their breath; they prowled in the most fragrant alleyways, and hunted only those rats who smelled of the underground movement. That was all before the musical Cats had run its course and the group encountered that monstrous light, then the tragic accident.

Now, Poes is an uptown house pet. She naps and breathes in concertos by Mendelessohn and suites by Prokofiev. Each night, before the neighbors return home from their office jobs, the cat composes entire symphonies of her own, performs them for The Unmoving and The Shadows. She calls her creations “Opus in My Own Skin #1,” “Opus in My Own Skin #2,” etc. Though she often tries to reveal her true talents to them, the neighbors never thoroughly appreciate the genius of Poes. They can’t see beyond this one life. They can’t comprehend the cat in her proper historical dimensions, all those cycles of cats’ lives, her simultaneous existence in both polyphony and solo. These humans see one perky cat who likes to lick her fur clean, but there is so much more than that going on all at once. Can they see that? That is the big question occupying Poes’s mind. Poes rubs the neighbors’ shins and purrs, does an old nightlife trick she learned from the Siamese in the hopes that it just might help to stretch their awareness just a little further into the darker cirlces of the Great Unknown Breadth.

***

See photographs of Poes in the blogosphere.

Winterotica

Riverica Kane writes erotic poetry.

She recently joined the Scribble Bitch book club. Stay tuned on this blog for more posts related to the topic of Eros because here are two titles that the Scribble Bitch book club will discuss:

Eros, the Bittersweet
A Plea for Eros

But to set a mood for our book talk, here is a poem Ms. Kane wrote to rub up a fire under our indoor moods.

Winter in the Public House

Disguised as a circumupolar bear, he invited me into his pleasure dome.

We went down
Ice Cave.

We heckled Poker Chiefs
who chewed the Cloth of Corruption.

Their teeth cracked. Everywhere
blood, peppermint, & artificial snow.

The Lady Spies curled their index fingers, daring us to
come taste a drink called

Sap of Whore, warmed. With Whores’ tears, brandied.

The Game Boss cracked a joke, a skull, and more teeth.

Professor Gumball opened a beer bottle while a group called Twisted Synapse

fondled the old Juke—

The man in the bear suit turned to me and said,
“You. Do the fire dance. Dance, Lady, dance!”

He licked the walls of the ice cave while I shuddered.

My thighs grow cold thinking about it now, thinking about how
we desired some
real winter chill in the air
like the old days.

These days I can wear point de gaze needle lace to the phony ice party.

I dance to
circumuvocal Voices in the Void chanting: “Cover me…please!”

Festival of Flash

Please visit the Authorstore site if you want to read a prize-winning piece of flash fiction by Rebecca Jane and other fine flash fiction writers.

Neglect

Due to a writing
deadline for the
printoshpere,
my puppy blog
suffers temporary absence
of its master and playmate.

Sorry.
Good blog!
Sit.
Stay!

Write Surprising Juxtapositions

Last Thursday, The Poetry Society of America hosted a reading for the 2006 National Chapbook Fellows and New York Chapbook Fellows.

Timothy Donnelly, an editor for the Boston Review, introduced Jessica Fjeld, author of On animate life: its profligacy, organ meats, etc. In his introduction, Donnelly mentioned a strategy Fjeld used in composing one of her poems. She chose random lines from the Patriot Act and from The Book of Mormon, played with the language there and voila!

In his introduction, Timothy Donnelly also read one of his own poems for which he used lines lifted from the 9/11 Comission Report.

When I first heard of this strategy for composing poems, I must admit my first thought was "What a cop out." Lifting lines from here and there is no way to compose, is no way to honor the mood swings of Our Lady of the Writing Craft. But then, I had a change of heart when I heard how queer and delightful their poems sounded when they read.

So, of course, being the easily engaged and inspired writer that I am, I had to try such a method for myself. Below you will find what came of that effort.

***

Reading The Analects of Confucius While Listening to 50 Cent

Boy my hoes are clean, just like my guns
And I keep them in three-year mourning, just like my funds
I keep all my big bills, give my Nine Thoughts the ones.

The Master schooled me: Gentlemen like virtue; little men like partiality.
Gentlemen like justice; little men likes mercy.
You got Pimp potential. Start selling leek in the yard.

They can snatch these braids out and put my hair in a sovereign state, word
Those who act with a view to their own personal advantage will bust
A u-turn going straight to the block.

In word, the gentleman thinks of being loyal leave with your blood
on my mink in the drop Six Guiliani and Pataki can’t stop
this since ’86 my whole clique withdrew and studied the rituals.

Confucius said, don’t burn bridges my friend
Imagine the G-Dub close and yo ass gotta swim
Phoenix does not come; River puts forth no sign of the new world order.

Gentlemen wait in line to hear the master spit
“If my virtue don’t sell, I’ma rob and steal.”
The Worthy are ‘bout to stick Slick Rick for all that old school shit.

A Novelist Puts the FUN in Fundamentalism

If Riva Djinn doesn't read Mohja Kahf's book immediately, her colleagues are going to force her to step down as the president and Lead Spokeswoman of the Scribble Bitch Book Club. She's trying to convince the group that she must read Adios Muchachos just one more time before she wraps up in her lavender head scarf and moves on with life. She's making everyone anxious with this Boudoir Noir kick she's on. Now, is that fair?

Does MFA v. JD Mean Literary v. Genre?

Last night, Time Warner, HBO, and Fordham Law School welcomed Scott Turow in conversation with public intellectual Thane Rosenbaum. Rosenbaum asked Turow why he hasn’t quit his day job now that he is a best-selling author. Rosenbaum’s question suggests this idea: if one is able to stay home, write, and live the isolated novelist’s life, why would such a person want to continue to practice law?

Turow’s answer was a simple: “If it aint broke…”

Turow has always been able to balance his dedication to law with his dedication to writing. In fact, a reason he went to law school in the first place was because he couldn’t turn off his imagination. His approach? Write anywhere. Keep an exacting schedule.

Turow’s optimism and faith in the rule of law set him apart from other authors who have written about lawyer characters or legal settings, among them Dickens, Kafka, and Dostoyevsky. Rosenbaum pointed out that unlike those authors who render more critical depictions of the legal profession, Turow regards the law as a noble institution. Turow added that the lawyers whom he knows to be happiest are the ones who stay in touch with a vision that the institution of law advances a more just society.

During the Q: & A: session afterward—“Q: and A:” is not quite the appropriate name for that portion of the program as audience members (similar to the ones who show up at PEN World Voices events) insist on making comments rather than asking questions—an admiring reader commented that Turow deserves a Nobel Prize for his sensitivity depicting the human drama. Turow was flattered and graciously turned the comment into a question (as a skilled trial lawyer can). He said, implicit in her comment was the question whether Turow feels comfortable being regarded as a genre writer rather than a literary writer. He responded to that issue saying that he is lucky to sell so many copies of his books and that in fact he has received respect from those writers regarded as more literary.

One issue raised during the conversation was Rosenbaum’s curiosity about how the toxic adversarial dimension of practicing law had not crushed Turow’s creative mind.

Well, we live in such adversarial times that the dimension of the legal profession that is adversarial does in fact reveal itself in the literary institution:

Literary Writer v. Genre Writer

If one is at that time in her life when she must face the choice MFA v. JD, she ought to embrace either path with enthusiasm and a clear understanding that there is no path devoid of adversarial toxins. The secret to avoiding those? Joie de vivre and singing in the shower.

Either way, it is a damn good thing Mister Turow never turned off his imagination.

Boudoir Noir

This is not your conventional book review. Here, you will find a book recommended within a piece of flash fiction. And here’s a disclaimer, no one has paid this author, or given this author any freebies. She’s just giving a good book a quirky plug.

This story is entitled “Bedtime Stories for Women Who Smoke Cigars”

This past weekend, Riva Djinn paid a visit to the Independent and Small Press Book Fair at 20 West 44th Street. She is quite familiar with this landmark building that houses the General Society of Mechanics and Tradesman. As a matter of fact, Riva Djinn used to teach English Composition for the K. Gibbs School in this very building. The school has long since moved to 40th Street, and Riva had to quit that job after a scandalous encounter of the stink-bomb ilk, not to mention the times she urged the students to petition for curriculum reform. Boy, is she glad those days are long enough over that she can smirk and shrug them off and deny she ever lived through them. Abandoning her participation in the socialist revolution is a bit harder to sweep under the rug, but that’s another story. Returning to the present, Riva spends an entire Saturday in this building’s charming library, wandering from this table to that, chatting, and picking up business cards, free buttons, magnets, catalogues, etc. Enough loot so that, later, in The Ladies, she has to ask the attendant, “Do I have too much propaganda on my puss?” No? So Riva picks up another button and another card, while all along she is vowing to herself not to pick up any men if she can’t pick up any women.

The only weakness Riva allows herself to give into is her habit to impulse-buy all books printed by independent and small presses. She can’t help herself. On principle: she just MUST buy books that have never been shoved down her throat by overbearing marketing schemes. But then what was with all the buttons and magnets, etc. at this event? She wondered.

By listening to her own Reader’s Intuition, Riva finds and buys a book entitled Adios Muchachos, written by Daniel Chavarría, translated by Carlos Lopez, and published by Akashic Books, 2001; 245 pages.

The cover features an image of Alicia—the daughter of a Cuban foreign-service man—on her bicycle. Alicia’s tennis shorts, unbuttoned! Alicia’s ass, un-retreating. Alicia’s lips & eyes, uncanny!

In her bedroom, Riva studies the cover art over and over until it urges her to light a cigar, get between the sheets and begin reading. Riva soon discovers that Alicia is as smart as she is sexy. Below are a couple sentences that entice Riva instantly:

“When Alicia decided to become a bicycle hooker, her mother agreed to sell a ring that had been in the family for five generations. She got $350 for it, and for $280 they bought an English mountain-bike, one with wide tires and lots of speeds, on which Alicia launched her hunt for moneyed foreigners.”

Adios Muchachos is set in Havana, Cuba during the Special Period. This picaresque novel is full of plenty of scenes featuring Alica’s ample ass up, up, up on that bicycle seat. But we also see Alicia excel at her studies with an Italian professor who is thrilled by Alicia’s quick fluency in Dante’s language. The narrative flows as smoothly as Alicia’s plans of seduction. We follow Alicia’s adventures; we receive salsa lessons that loosen the tightest of foreign butts. Meanwhile, Victor King, a European millionaire, promises to boost the Cuban nautical tourism industry by overseeing a project to root out buried treasure left by sunken Spanish galleons from the 16th Century. While Alicia plants patriotic kisses, sweetly commenting on the terrible effects of the U.S. embargo and the fall of the Soviet Union, King’s plans spawn an absorbing mystery that contain plenty of well-drawn sex and bloody murder scenes. This is noir extraordinaire! The narrative pace turns and picks up when Alicia breaks one of her cardinal rules: never sleep away from home.

Riva was told that Chavarría’s novel won the prestigious Edward Award. Riva thinks, awe hell, it should have also won the Pulitzer, the Nobel, and the Man Booker. Then she thinks, hey do they give a prize called the Man Hooker; if so, this novel certainly sweeps that honor.

If Riva Djinn ever puts down this book, it will be between her thighs.

When Riva reads to the end, she fires up another cigar, turns back to the first page, and starts reading all over again. Adios Muchachos is a great way for Riva to pass her time before the messenger boy arrives again to replenish her supply of the smuggled goods.

Peggy

Riva Djinn exited the 2 train,
swinging her messenger sack,
whistling an old Tom Waits tune.

She climbed the stairs,
chose not to pull her usual ankle twist hoax,
and made her way toward the turnstile just beneath 42nd Street.

For whatever reason, it so happened, there were crowds
gathered at every possible exit,
except for the one turnstile to the far right.

Riva decided to make her way through there,
but was stopped by a frazzled lady who was about to swipe
her metro card to enter.

Lady: I was here first. I'm coming through. Back off!
Riva: But the proper etiquette is to let a person OUT first.
Lady: I already let a bunch of people out. Move!
Riva: Be fair, then. You let all them go. Why not me?
Lady: Move!
Riva: (laughing) Oh, come on. Ha! That's the way we do it around here:
we let people OUT first.
You're reminding me of that old song
Queen sang with that hostage-situation dialogue:
"Let him go!...We will not!...Let him go!...We will not!" You remember that ditty?

The lady didn't laugh or move or sing along with Riva. She just locked her jaw and decided to show how stubborn she was going to be about this. She decided to lean over and block the exit.

Rive: My name's Riva.
Lady: I'm Peggy. Let me through.
Riva: Nice to meet you, Peggy.

Riva keeps singing and laughing, but Peggy is not interested in making friends.

Peggy: Really, back off.

Now she was getting sincerely mean.

Riva: Oh, all right. If you insist.

Riva backs out, ever-so-slowly.

Peggy: Sigh. (Rolls her eyes.)

Riva: Next time we meet, Peggy. You let me through first. Okay. Next time!

Strawberry Fields for Sean Bell

You were sitting in Strawberry Fields last weekend when you read
the New York Times article about the tragic shooting of Sean Bell.

Have you forgotten the massive amount of damage one bullet does,
let alone 50?

And it's not just one life that is destroyed.

Bullets take out entire families, communities,
artists, friends, lovers, ideals, hopes, possibilities.

Please
take an eternal moment, next time you feel like pulling any trigger--
think of all the damage that bullet will do.

It's not powerful or strong to use a gun.
Guns are cop outs, tools for fools and cowards.
How can any sane citizen feel she is protected by a police force full of cowards?

Wouldn't it be nice to exercise some real democratic pull
and see if you could actually get that Second Amendment
repealed; and while you're at it,
reform that military police force?

You bow your head for Sean Bell,
for John Lennon,
for Amadou Bailo Diallo,
and for all the kids in Iraq.

...for liberty and justice
for all.

So, history repeats itself, does it?
Does it do any good to remember, memorialize,
build shrines like Strawberry Fields?
You wish to start talking about some real action
that would stop all this forever before another 9/11
and Iraq war roll around. Stop this forever.

Forever?
Forever.
Strawberry Fields...

Can you

IMAGINE?

Real Men,
the ones with the
biggest Cocks,
You can quiet the Energy
that pulls
any trigger.
Or else
Such Men can find
a more graceful
Way
to kill each other
because the Gun
is not worthy of
human dignity.

Riddling and Fiddling With "You"

You are a long caress.

You are the smartest member of The Committee.

You are the Tao.

Some nineteenth century editor once said--some guy by the name Bergk--he said "...the history of a text is like a long caress..."

He's right. You outdo the history of the text.

You haven't been here long. You haven't finished your cigarette nor that bowl of warm milk and honey. Don't go.

Last night, you dreamt, again, of Tom Robbins. You woke with this flash essay drafted in your mind:

Flash essay title: "On Using the Pronoun 'You'"

"You," in these blog entries, sometimes refers to the writer herself, sometimes refers to others. Sometimes "you" is one particular other; sometimes "you" is a whole collection of people dead or alive, present or absent, dirty or clean. Sometimes "you" is used because it is the Blog posting its own post and having its own say. Whom "you" is referring to will always depend on the context, will always be hinted at, will never be overtly stated. In formal writing, one is never encouraged to use "you," but you started writing in the second person and realized how "you" satisfies you. You distrust the first person. You distrust the "I" narrative, the myth of the individual. You argue that the first person singular amounts to a fraudulant way to write, a misrepresentation of The Voice and The Voices. You seek; you experiment; you write in ways that properly communicate your plurality. Sometimes "You" is your consciousness, a voice once, twice, or thrice removed; this voice comments on all things and all people living for today. Hey! You! Hey! You! Yeah! You!

You rock! You blog. You rock!

You always hear Creative Writing teachers talking about writers finding their voices; well, search no further: if you have a blog, and you remain committed to posting on it every day, your blog will start to talk back to you. Voila! You are a writer who no longer needs to "find" a voice. With a blog, The Voice/The Voices find the Writer.

Now you know your neighbor downstairs writes for the New York Times book review. And when he hears rumors that you've been keeping a blog, he stomps up the stairs to come knocking and complaining that your blogging activity is getting on his nerves. Here's a clip from that exchange:

Dead-Tree Media Man:
Why do you blog? Print media is more professional, more credible, more worthy. Don't you have anything better to do with your time? Get a life!

You:
Get a Voice.

You wave your fist in his face and think to yourself, "You are a long caress..!" The Dead-Tree Media Man, embarrassed, kisses your flying fist and backs off so you don't really have to hit him.

Blog on!

Q: and A: With Phantom Lennon

Q:
1955 Skiffle
washboards
ging ging-e-ging, ging ging-a-ging
wah shoo booo roaaahh rarrdes?

A:
scroll thumb Skiffle
scroll the thumb Skiff-riff-a-swiffle
thing-a-thing
“Oh, no! Yo! No!”
echo
washboard
Sgt. Pepper &
swashbuckler.

Q:
Pepper
Sweater in the
shredder
The Metaphysics of Sneezing?
“Ha Choooo?”

A:
“Bless you
for the rest of the year.
Bless you.”

Q:
The Ghost sang these lyrics,
“Bless you for the rest of the year?”

A:
Below
Below
Be low
Tune
Boy low
Tune slow
72nd Street Slow Station

Q:
subway club rub track
grub scrub trap
your lap your lap
clap clap
The Rat sat your hat flat?

A:
Your own interview with Mister Phantom, $3.50.

Q: Really? Turn on? Tune in? Drop out?

A: Yes. Yes. Oh, & piss off, piss on, and kiss on the Saints!

Q:
And the backup?

A:
Three thousand Voices
chant.
command.

“Piss off the Saints! Piss on the Saints! Kiss. Kiss. Kiss on the Saints!”

You Wanna Hold His Hang at the Thanksgiving Day Parade

You are safe.

Today, the wind gusts decide to cooperate with Macy’s helium balloons.

But the parade route makes your routine visit to Strawberry Fields impossible; besides, it’s raining.

You shrug and grin at the crowds and think:

You are family.

You see a little girl dancing, splashing in a puddle. She gets you a little wet, and you laugh. She looks at you: shy then friendly then embarrassed then uncertain. The child turns away from you.

You go to the Utopia diner on Broadway for coffee. You sit next to another solitary diner at the counter. He invites you to read over his shoulder the NYT Metro pages.

You read an article about the sophisticated operations that the emergency management officials employ in order to monitor the balloon behavior at the parade. The article characterizes these endeavors as “preparations worthy of a large-scale military operation.”

You think about that for a minute.

Your mind wanders to your grandmother, a woman who was your age around the years 1938, 1939, 1940, the golden era of American big band music, the era when people actually dressed in their finest clothes to go to baseball games. An era that is long gone. And over the past years you have spent hours researching that era in the NY Public Library for the Performing Arts. You also researched the generation before, yearning to conjure the ghosts of old Broadway, the vaudevillians, and even before that, the travelers of the ancient Mohican trail… You went way far back in history as a student of the storytelling tradition should do.

Meanwhile, you wrote, turned your research into a novel, a mediocre literary endeavor, an attempt. Now it sits on the shelf, aging. But now you actually admit you feel a bit of envy for those days when this nation was so much less…what?

Less arrogant.

You recall a greeting card your grandmother sent you while you were living abroad. The card featured Snoopy with a “Missing you…” phrase on the cover. Inside, she wrote, “We look forward to when you come home to the good ol’ U.S. of A!”

You read the simple message and could hear her voice saying it. You instantly felt the yawn, the immense chasm between the “good ol’ U.S. of A.” that your grandmother felt proudly connected to and the distant nation that you felt increasingly ambivalent about. These are more than “generation” gaps you feel amongst yourselves, your seniors, and your juniors. These are zeitgeist gaps. You aren’t merely separated by years, dance steps, and fashion trends. What about the wildly different spirits of these ages?

Regarding your grandmother’s era, you didn’t feel this sense of “Those were the good old days.” But more of a feeling that her generation’s elation was somehow connected to and responsible for your generation’s disappointments. And in your mind, these generations seem so utterly self-contained, so packaged, managed, purchased. What's on your t-shirt? Homage to Beatlemania or the hip Jersey garage band. Are the two properly acknowledging one another? Is this a sensible question?

Today, you remember your paternal grandmother. The Thanksgiving holiday conjures her ghost. The last time you saw her, ailing yet conscious, was Thanksgiving 2001. You brought her fruit (she couldn’t stomach much else) and a balloon shaped like a turkey. The balloon conked her on the head when you entered her room at the nursing home. That made her laugh. You ate fruit with her. You massaged her shoulders and neck and said something that made her laugh.

Your father called a few weeks later. He cried to you over the phone (something you’d never heard, ever, in your life). She had suffered a stroke and was in a coma. The next day you flew from NYC to Chicago. You knew she didn't want to pass on like her sister-in-law had, with no one there in the room.

You made it to the hospital in Hoffman Estates a few hours before. She passed very peacefully, the whole family circled around her, your father repeated the simple, “Now I lay me down to sleep…” prayer. You all saw her let go her last breath.

She passed away on December 8, 2001. That was the 21st anniversary of John Lennon’s death (the year the ghost of the ol’ singer/songwriter reached the legal drinking age, assuming they have such rites of passage in The Hereafter…).

Now you are thinking of your grandmother, Alma Johnson, because she used to watch the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day parade on television, faithfully. After seeing Santa Claus wave from that last sleigh-ride float, ringing in the more fun holiday, Alma would wait—quiet, patient, with her hair and makeup done—for your father to come pick her up from her condo in Palatine to bring her to your home in Arlington Heights for the big feast. Your mother never got along well with this sweet, old woman. That’s a deep sore spot for you. Isn’t it? But Time—with his work cut out for him—is working in you. Healing the wounds. Yes, even that wound.

Your grandmother’s name? Alma. Alma. The word “alma” is Spanish. Means soul. The woman had Soul, a whole lot of intensely quiet Soul. If she ever spoke, it was to make a remark, a wisecrack, something to try to get a laugh out of you. She never failed on that score.

You could use a dose of her old-timer brand of humor while you sit in this diner among strangers on another rainy day in New York City. You miss her.

Now you live on 73rd Street in Manhattan, blocks away from where they blow up those gigantic helium balloons for the traditional Macy’s Thanksgiving Day parade. Alma Johnson might have been elated to go see such a sight.

You didn’t bother.

You had observed the crowds: family, friends, and children walking uptown to secure a spot to watch this ritual of blowing up the balloons on Wednesday evening around the Museum of Natural History.

You didn’t go because you were heading downtown, had to go to class. You wouldn’t have gone to the balloons anyway because you don’t have children. And these things just aren’t that much fun without children around.

Anyway, getting back to the title of this post “You Wanna Hold His Hang at the Thanksgiving Day Parade.”

Why does this post have this title? You were trying to tie the story of your grandmother into the theme you’ve been exploring lately, these sojourns to Strawberry Fields to read poetry.

You didn’t work in a visit to Strawberry Fields on Thanksgiving Day because the crowds standing under umbrellas and that enormous obstruction, that grandest of American holiday traditions: The Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade.

So you indulge in a bit of a longing kind of mood; you remember your grandmother; and you might as well work in a little memory of John Lennon while you’re at it because it’s impossible to live in this neighborhood and not think about him.

And you know from what you’re reading about him that Mister Lennon had an absurdist’s sense of humor, and he liked wordplay.

Could twisting “I Wanna Hold Your Hand” into “You Wanna Hold His Hang” give a dead man a little amusement?

Well…admit it, already…you do wonder what that ghost would think of you wanting to hold his hang.

Ha!

One thing is certain: such a thought would have made sweet Alma Johnson blush.

Reading Yusef Komunyakaa in Strawberry Fields

You are worldly.

You are wise.

You have overcome your food-drug-sex-rock-music-politics addiction.

You are the quintessential park bench recluse.

You live by the Art of Solitude.

You memorize this poem

Nude Study by Yusef Komunyakaa

Someone lightly brushed the penis
alive. Belief is almost
flesh. Wings beat,

dust trying to breathe, as if the figure
migiht rise from the oils
& flee the dead

atirst's studio. For years
this piece of work was there
like a golden struggle

shadowing Thomas McKeller, a black
elevator operator at the Boston
Copley Plaza Hotel, a friend

of John Singer Sargent--hidden
among sketches & drawings, a model
for Apollo & a bas-relief

of Arion. So much taken
for granted & denied, only
grace & mutability

can complete this face belonging
to Greek bodies castrated
with a veil of dust.

*****

Yusef! Yusef! Yusef! Mister Komunyakaa!

*****

Two traveling companions paying homage to the

IMAGINE

mosaic ask you to help them shoot a photograph. Having just read an excellent poem, praising anatomy,
you shout to the toursits, "Wait!" I have an even better idea. Why don't I slide this stone slab over here.
You step off to the side and grab a stone slab that just happens to appear because you

IMAGINE

it appears.

You encourage the companions to transform into a Nude state.
(They are reluctant, at first, but then you recite them Mister Komunyakaa's poem).
They disrobe and pose with their muscles flexed for the next few hours while you chisel, carve, etch, sculpt, and sweat.

Only when you've finished the bas-relief that immitates the Tomas McKeller and the ancient Greeks, do you
and these good folks from Ohio
realize that they will have a hell of a time getting that souvenir into their suitcase.

Once More to Strawberry Fields

You are larger than life.

Your friends adore the way you can be, at once, irreverent toward authority and amazed by the divine. But your friends aren't with you today; they all work on Monday, and you will never tell them about your sojourns in Strawberry Fields. You itch at the thought that they might comment, "Don't you have anything better to do with your time."

But today you will sit on a bench and read Kamir's and Mirabai's ecstatic poems and forget you even have friends.

You were reluctant to leave your apartment today, not just because the weather has turned since yesterday and is now offering the cold gusts that roll off the plains of the Midwest, but because yesterday's venture to Strawberry Fields ended in such a random act of strangeness. (You can’t get that super model, with her tattooed thigh and suicide-victim grandma, off your mind). You hope such an encounter doesn’t happen again, but things like that happen to you all the time, even in your own home.

Oddly, no one is here at this hour, not a truant, homeless, or ascetic in sight. You are alone. No tourists are arranging roses over the mosaic. Not a soul shooting photographs.

But one unexpected object is hanging around here, dangling at the edge of the sacred circle: one shoe—a black, Adidas street sneaker. The laces are missing and the shoe is stretched in sad shape, as if the foot that once wore it was much too wide and tried, with more desperation than Cinderella’s ugly stepsisters, to force a too-big foot to fit.

One shoe. Abandoned. Without companion. One shoe next to that one word

IMAGINE

The sight now makes the word more than just the word. Now you see a command. Imagine where that shoe has been. Imagine its owner who must now be hobbling along with only one shoe. Imagine where that person is now and how chilly the shoeless foot must feel.

No. You want to rebel. You want to resist the temptation to imagine. You don’t want to imagine just because the mosaic icon, the memorial to John Lennon, is insisting that you imagine…imagine…imagine. As if now, just because so many travelers come to pay their respects, this word, attractor of flowers and devotional objects, has somehow taken on authority of its own. You’ve been searching for an opportunity to rebel against your inclination to imagine (as some friends have characterized your imagination as, let’s just say, categorically overactive). Well, here is your opportunity to revolt.

Do not imagine where that shoe has been, though your mind may have already conceived the novel, the screenplay, the Broadway musical adaptation, the HBO special series: The Strawberry Fields Mysteries.

No. No. Leave that story untold.

You have been there before, to that taboo realm that urges you to imagine. What visited you in that realm delighted you as much as it broke your heart. But remark, carefully, what it would mean for you to ignore the command to

IMAGINE.

Sit. You are ready to wait. Now you are preparing for the Visitor, the Guest, the Secret One, the one coming to deliver the Gift. Believe it or not, sometimes the Guest even wishes that the word said

QUIET.

Rather, you read poems and rub your eyes, and it is still there:

IMAGINE.

The Guest is on the way. The Guest will arrive in Strawberry Fields, maybe this December. Maybe next. Maybe decades hence. If you wish to receive your secret visitor, stay quiet and keep reading, and (here's a hint)

"Imagine all the people sharing all the world."

Maybe, you start to imagine, that shoe was left here by the Guest?

No.

You have been told, and you have a feeling, the Guest will bring the Voices.

Strawberry Fields Stunt Reading

You are brilliant. You sit here in Strawberry Fields, again, reading the hours away. You also half observe the Japanese tourists indulging in more Earth Woman Celebrity Word worship. They have arranged rose petals of every color around the word

IMAGINE

And the super model flips her hair away from her neck, licks her lips, and winks at the camera.

You are reading H.D.'s lyric entitled "Sea Poppies". You re-read.

Ah hah!

You decipher its message, using Paul Muldoon-like stunts.

When that hidden meaning of H.D.'s words hit you between the eyes with their lewd message, you smirk or snort or make some kind of indescribable noise. Somehow you attract the attention of the Japanese model who has been lying on the ground, shifting from this leisurely pose to that more leisurely pose while she was being photographed over the mosaic. The model looks your way, stands, brushes herself off, and approaches you. To you, she is a tsunami. You don't know what to say when she starts to lift her skirt, ever so slowly, to reveal her tattoo, one word on her inner thigh.

SUPERSTITION

She smoothes her skirt and sits next to you, as if you two are not complete strangers. You don't expect her to start crying and revealing to you that her grandmother just committed suicide. She only received the news from Kyoto this morning.

You give a second thought to returning here in the future to read poetry. You think this worship of words may be sending cryptocurrents through your reality. Be alert.

A Poet Practices Her Scales

Odessa lives alone in an unfurnished triple loft, nine bedroom apartment on Central Park West. It is a baffling living space with frescoed celings and spiraling staircases that lead to nowhere. She inherited the apartment from her father who was Attorney General turned celebrity politician. No way could she ever afford this place on a poet's incomelessness. (Please note, dear reader, this makes our Odessa ten times more fortunate than those Paul Auster characters who happen to find loads of money where they would least expect it. These days, nine chances out of ten, ask a New Yorker if he'd rather inherit cold cash or a rent-free living quarters forever and you can bet he'll chose the latter...)

So Odessa is, hands down, one of the lucky ones. She inherited the empty apartment--sleeps on a cushion of years-old copies of the New York Times--and works tirelessly on her laptop, pounding out words she regards as The Classics.

Her neighbor is a universally renown concert pianist named MorZat (a character who is kind of a combination of Mozart and Borat). Anyway, this chacracter practices the piano CONSTANTLY. Odessa often wonders if he doesn't have more than ten fingers on each hand; he can play so many notes in one instant. Perhaps he's even using his toes as well. (Cheater--Odessa might be thinking.)

Odessa would be lying if she said that his beautiful music didn't influence her writing. In fact, his Broadwood "Bareless" Upright piano is pushed up against the opposite side of the wall where Odessa works on a folding card table, opening her Mac OS X PowerPC G4 Version 10.3.9 lap top to the wall that trembles with MorZat's renditions of compositions by Hadyn, Dussek, Beethoven, Chopin, and Liszt. Atmosphere influences Odessa's own compositions while she practices writing.

This morning MorZat was playing scales, and here is what Odessa wrote:

In the Key of F

Frail nations
Go to war
Abraod
B (flat)
Cold
Dead
Enemy
Funny men are extinct.

Odessa feels mortified if MorZat should ever overhear her striking a wrong note. Once, when he told her that she was out of tune, she just said, "Well, I'm not ready for Carnegie Hall yet." She turned up her pretty nose and walked away. So there.

Strawberry Fields: Imagine the Free Giveaway

After almost a week hiding behind a velvet gray curtain, the sun finally decides to show himself. Nice weather sends you straight to Strawberry Fields to read Half Asleep in Frog Pajamas.

On a park bench, you're reading, minding your own business when you're blessed with an intrusion.

A guy who'd just lost his job with Sony volunteers some words of advice:

"Life's a drag. Play video games!"

Without warning, he places a brand new Play Station 3 in your lap. You'd heard that the Play Station 3 is one item that people are lining up outside the stores to purchase. One guy in Connecticut was held up while waiting outside to purchase his Play Station 3. He refused to give the robbers his cash, and he was shot.

Now you and your new friend, the former Sony employee, both recognize the benefits of being on the margins of city life, spending weekday mornings in the park. The two of you walk arm-in-arm up to the the ghost of the Iraqi boy who is sitting like a laughing Buddha on top of the word

IMAGINE

You abandon the Play Station 3 to the ghost boy and in unison, pass on some words of advice: "Life's a drag. Play video games!"

Highest Standards of Health Care For All

My friend Deo, a medical student who recently founded his own organization, held a fundraising event in NYC. Here's the link to Village Health Works. If you are seeking a place to make a charitable donation, you might consider Village Health Works.

Reading Poems in Strawberry Fields

Ritual is important.

Chum.

Once a day, visit Strawberry Fields.
Read poems.
Write grocery list.
Remember John Lennon.
Remember to pick up dry cleaning.

Remember that old poetic form in the Irish tradition called the dinnseanchas or "lore of place" poem?

Strawberry Fields. Mosaic lore. Mosaic place. Mosaic sacred site, of sorts.
This place in the park is bathetic and so full of
All-Souls
spirit.

straw and berry and spirits

(may I pour you another, chum?)

Is there a term in the World language for mosaic-lore-flash-photography-tourism poem?

Strawberry Fields

Welcomes flash travelers.
Welcomes flash photography.
Welcomes flash fiction.

Today

Three hippies sit on a bench singing the "Casper the Friendly Ghost" theme song, way out of tune.

Over there, an aspiring musician lowers to his knees next to that word:

IMAGINE

Another friend snaps another shot snaps. Flash. Flash. Snaps. Snaps.

Kneel.

(you and I might come here to "pray" more than a thousand times a day, chum.)

"Have you ever seen a rock and roll man looking so contemplative?" Asks hippie #1.
"Would you give me a dollar for each story they'll tell their friends back home?" Asks hippie #2.
"Don't you think something ought to be done about Darfur?" Asks hippie #3.

The birds whistle the Casper ghost tune.

A lone woman with wild hair, face covered in pigeon poop, moves in sneaky ways,
hopes these strangers will unintentionally photograph her.

She's scaring up
anonymous celebrity.

(would you ever date her?

Chum?)

Anne Carson's fictional essay in 29 tangos

At Westsider Rare & Used Books on Broadway, I picked up a copy of The Beauty of the Husband. (The only book left in the store.)

Remarkabe read! Please recommend it to your Mysteries.

November in Strawberry Fields. The gold leaves applaud.

The Jealousies have cell phone lip and forget to kiss.

***

The last line, she writes, "Watch me fold this page now so you think it is you."

Welcome Anne Carson's spell on me.

Dearest, I am listening.

Reading Jane Hirschfield

Lately, I have been trying to write poetry. Verse. I’m not used to the practice and have avoided any serious efforts at poetry because I always felt that people who could write poetry were somehow able to write it even before their parents were born—raw talent, of which I have little. The craft, to me, seems to call those to it whose existence itself contains some sort of secret muscle that is already wholly poetic. Poetry, I always supposed, asked a writer to embrace a kind of intensity, a kind of immersion into all things mystical, conscientiousness, and tender. These past years I have felt too impudent to be called to a poetic project. Unworthy.

But when a book I recently read disclosed to me that writing poetry sometimes involves being a trickster, I changed my mind. Hmm? Maybe I can make a new attempt.

I recently moved into a new apartment. The previous tenant abandoned a book, still in tact, in the cold fireplace; I rescued this collection of essays by Jane Hirshfield called Nine Gates: Entering the Mind of Poetry and made its pages my pet. I have enjoyed this book and was entirely regretful when it came to an end after 228 pages (oh...it’s published by HarperPerennial). This is the first book I have read that has given me a clearer perspective on the delight of reading and writing poetry.

There are three main ideas that I found particularly helpful from Hirshfield’s book: 1) concentration—how to invoke the poet’s attentive mind, 2) how to face the lion and what it means to confront frightening insight, and 3) working in a threshold realm as a writer, navigating the abysmal crack between the pillow and the dreamer’s cheek.

Now I might take risks and compose something I never dared. Refreshing. And I am approaching my new project with a very different attitude than I approached the novel or flash fiction. This feels much calmer, more mature. I love growing older.

Until a few days ago, I have never felt comfortable writing poetry. The problem, I learned, was that my mind had never rested in the proper attentive pose. Attentiveness. I am working on making myself more attentive (whatever that means), and during these few days of watching and listening while honoring, I have been gifted with some surprising revelations, both pleasant and frightening.

Like in my previous home, I am still not sleeping so well, but I guess the insomnia can’t be attributed to over indulgence in prose. Even when my mind, these days, turns to poetry, I can’t seem to enjoy deep slumber at night. The ancients could hire me to keep watch on the moon deck. I hear they pay a decent wage.

Walk-up Building Haiku; Written November 5, 2006

Cabbie blue-fists horn
Moving truck rolls five flights skirts
Marathon runners