Saturday, December 30, 2006
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.
Tuesday, December 19, 2006
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!
deadline for the
printoshpere,
my puppy blog
suffers temporary absence
of its master and playmate.
Sorry.
Good blog!
Sit.
Stay!
Sunday, December 10, 2006
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.
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.
Thursday, December 07, 2006
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?
Wednesday, December 06, 2006
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.
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.
Monday, December 04, 2006
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 ChavarrÃa, 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 ChavarrÃa’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.
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 ChavarrÃa, 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 ChavarrÃa’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.
Saturday, December 02, 2006
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!
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!
Friday, December 01, 2006
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.
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.
Tuesday, November 28, 2006
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!
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!
Saturday, November 25, 2006
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!”
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!”
Thursday, November 23, 2006
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.
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.
Tuesday, November 21, 2006
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.
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.
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.
Sunday, November 19, 2006
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.
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.
Saturday, November 18, 2006
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.
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.
Friday, November 17, 2006
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!"
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!"
Thursday, November 16, 2006
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?)
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?)
Wednesday, November 15, 2006
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.
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.
Monday, November 13, 2006
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.
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.
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