Time For a New Post

Look at this picture. It's frightening, is it not? Just in time for Halloween, too. I have a small pile of books to get rid of. Among them is Descartes, a text called Teaching Grammar in Context, and A Teacher's Guide to African American English.

Now that I have finished the Comps, I actually want to read more poetry. The flow has resumed. Studying is one of the most loathesome and malignant activities one can undertake. I rank studying just below washing dishes and just above cleaning the litterbox.

I am . . .

I am a professional monkey-juggler.
I am a sideways boxer.
I am a pathetic excuse for a hairpiece.
I am turning around.
I am a spanking machine.
I am bound by a code of honor.
I am a king cobra.
I am a little man atop a rook on a chessboard.
I am a queen. A queen!
I am a broken link.
I am Ron Hansen.
I am a silverback gorilla.
I am disproportionately authentic.
I am a malingerer.
I am a six-armed potato-person.

Bands, Boobs, Bushy Beards

We went to a concert last night, the first we’ve been to in a long time. We saw Black Label Society, Static-X, Mudvayne, Suicide Silence, Bury Your Dead, and an accompanying freakshow called Hellzapoppin (a midget with hands for arms; an Australian crystal ball manipulator; an old fellow called the Torture King, who ran wire through his arms and other muscular tissue; and Betty Bloomers, a striptease sword swallower whose nipples were taped over).

I know that many people dislike heavy metal music. Dislike may be too mild a word for some. Regardless, one must love heavy metal in some capacity in order to tolerate it. There are those who simply enjoy pumping the devil horns in the air, slam-dancing, screaming obscene slogans, and jerking their head back and forth or in a violent circle. Then there are those who have grown past all that and just love the music. And of course, there are those who are insane enough to try to make a living as heavy metal musicians. The latter category loves heavy metal more than any of the others. To be a heavy metal musician is like being a poet: you will not make any money doing something you love to do. Yet they do it anyway.

I fall into the middle category. Moshpit days are well behind me. I don’t want to be slammed to a concrete floor by a dozen or more hairless three-hundred pound gorillas swimming in circles through the sweat haze. I just want to enjoy the music the way it’s meant to be enjoyed. The epileptic strobelights. The dull cigarette fog over everything. The air thick with the taste of beer. The bass pummeling through the core of your body. Such volume as one would find on a runway at O’Hare. The great buildup of energy that binds a group of four or five musicians to hundreds of drunk and sweaty young people for thirty minutes, goading one another on, feeding off the ruckus.

The concert was great. Zakk Wylde can play a guitar with all the effort involved in picking one’s teeth. The bass player of Suicide Silence resembled Clisbee in some of his more pained expressions, though I have a hard time picturing Clisbee bent-and-squat with an electric bass, swinging his hair and his entire head in great revolutions at 245 bpm. The singer of Mudvayne performed several songs whilst encased in a furry bear suit which I imagine was an entirely unpleasant experience. At least one member of each band had a beard of considerable bushiness.

I didn’t much like the Alltel Center though. Everything seemed choreographed to begin and to end at an early, reasonable, respectable Mankato hour (eleven p.m.).

So that’s part of how I spent my summer.

Someone Always Has it Rougher Than You

Until tonight there was a robins' nest high in the bushes in back of the house. But not high enough. At about 11:00 p.m. we heard chicks crying out. You never hear songbirds' nestlings at night unless something is trying to eat them. I went out with the flashlight. The oppossum was fully involved in the nest and not in the slightest intimidated by me. It ate two-and-a-half chicks and left one-and-a-half for me to find. I'm glad I'm not a bird. I'd hate to have to fuck around with hungry predators like oppossums, skunks, racoons, etc.

In the aftermath I took some pictures, like a forensics analyst at the scene of a crime. I won't post them here. Nobody wants to look at that.

Prophesy, Writing on the Wall, Permission Granted, Egg Sac

It's coming . . .

Sidewalk chalk has a remarkable lifespan.

This, however, did not survive.

She's hanging out in my office. That is an egg sac. Doesn't "egg sac" sound kind of gross? Icky? Egg sac.

Happy Boom Day

My daughter is making the transition from toddler-Legos ("Duplo" blocks; or, oversized blocks) to the tiny, miniscule, easily lost, cat-attracting Lego blocks which we all know and love. She has two sets: The Krusty Krab (featuring Spongebob, Mr. Krabs, and Patrick Star Legomen) and a dump truck set (an oversized ore-hauler truck with two Lego boulders and a driver Legoman). She is playing with them in the den as I write. The cats are congregating therein.

The temptation to purchase more of these Lego sets tickles my pleasure center every day. (She just brought me the Krusty Krab to reassemble after the roof broke off somehow.) You should see some of the Lego sets available nowadays! One can purchase, for example, the Millenium Falcon Lego set, which has over 5,000 pieces (including Chewbacca!), for $500.00. Who would buy this toy which is obviously not meant to be played with? Also available is the Death Star (yes, Death Star) set, not quite as grandiose as the Millenium Falcon, but costing about $350.00 nonetheless.

No. For my daughter I’m thinking much smaller-scale in terms of cost and number of tiny pieces. I’ll admit this as well: I want to play with them too. I love Legos. I’ve never been able to build anything except with Legos or words. I am inept when it comes to construction, carpentry, putting together, taking apart anything generally. No good at it. Easily frustrated. Annoyed!

At the website you can order entire sets. Also you can order individual pieces, "bricks", as every piece apparently is called: "Beard for Mini Figure", "Bat", "Brick 1x6", "Brick 2x2", "Brick 2x2 White Dec.Eyes", "Brick W. Shaft 1X8x1", "Camera", "Cherry", "Circular Saw", "Corrugated Pipe 16Mm, Black", "Croissant", "Crossbow" [21 cents!], "Dragon’s Fire", "Dustbin", "Flat Tile 2x2", "Flower Transparent", "Flying Goggles", "Head for Skeleton" [24 cents], "Left Roof Tile 2x3", "Left Shell 2x6 W. Bow Angle", "Life Jacket", "Megaphone", "Metal Detector" [24 cents], "Mini Body Lower Part" [in black, white, blue, red, or green; blue and red cost 35 cents while the other colors cost 31 cents, for some reason], "Mini Cape", "Mini Head" [14 varieties, including a transparent Head, ranging in price from 8 cents to 24 cents], "Mini Upper Parts", "Mini Wig Man", "Parabola 6x6", "Plate 1x10", "Plate 2x10", "Plate 2X4x18°", "Plate 8x8", "Pneumatic Hammer", "Princess Hair", "Quiver", "Rim Narrow W. Hole Ø8", "Rim Wide W.Cross 30/20", "Rocket Step 4X4x2", "Roof Tile 1X1x2/3, Abs", "Roof Tile 1X2x3/73°", "Round Brick 1x1", "Round Plate 1x1", "Skater Helmet", "Skeleton Body W. Shaft 3.2", "Snowy Owl", "Space Skeleton Arm", "Spear", "Spider", "Swim Fins", "Technic Brick 1x8", "Tyre Low Wide Ø37 X 22", "Undercarriage 2X2x2", "Wall Corner 1X1x1", "Whip", "Wig Boy", "Wig, Ponytail", "Windscreen 2X4x2", and others among a total of 1,491 individual bricks. One can purchase accessories for cars; hardware; lumber; corpses, skulls, and body parts; deadly weapons; tools; food; animals; fire; rocket components; new identities; and a whole host of amenities. From nowhere else can you find and purchase such a broad range of things, legal or otherwise.

So anyway, I’m tempted to buy another set for my daughter. By which I mean: for my daughter and myself...I would like to buy skeleton heads, Mini Upper Parts, Mini Wigs, Mini Body Lower Parts, various Mini Helmets, tools, swim fins, spears, Princess Hair, and the like...Maybe I should just stick to a set.

Boo.

Turkey Crossing

This week my daughter began going to a summer school program for three hours in the morning, Monday through Thursday, at the edge of civilization in North Mankato. After I dropped her off this morning I was heading home, careening down Lookout Drive, when a large bird moseyed out from the foliage and into the road. At first I thought the bird was a peacock. But when I slowed and finally stopped, the dangling wattle clearly spelled out turkey. Okay. I waited for the turkey to wander out of the road. Another van was approaching, actually hauling ass uphill in the other lane. Not slowing down. Then a gaggle of chicks (if I had to guess, I’d say there were twenty of them) burped up from the grass and scattered aimlessly into the road. I had stopped; the oncoming van had not. The mother turkey seemed confused. The chicks seemed confused. I could hear them peeping. At what appeared to be the last moment, the oncoming driver braked. No birds were squashed. The man rolled down his window and ogled the turkeys, shaking his head as if they were trying to wash his windshield. By now the hen had returned to the brush from whence she came, but three or four chicks continued to run in circles. They peeped. They stood as tall as they could and looked around. They peeped some more. At last the chicks retreated in the proper direction, and joined their mother in the bushes.

Eine Schlange ist durch den Holzhaufen geschlängelt

"A snake slithered through the woodpile."

Today. A few hours ago. From the bathroom window I saw a snake, about the length of my forearm, slither into view from under the porch. It crept along, over the dwindling woodpile. I got my daughter and we watched the snake from the back door, until it disappeared. The snake was black, with yellow racing stripes along the length of its body. Beautiful.

The Latest Fashion for a Night on the Town:

This understated lacing of the neck bespeaks a gentle coyness of spirit, does it not? It says, I am willing not only to lace up my bootstraps but also my neck, I am willing to do whatever it takes to get the job done. I will stretch my neck out to please.

In St. Paul, and other Niceties

We visited the Science Museum in St. Paul yesterday and looked at dinosaur fossils, the Quackery Museum display, the Visible Woman, and so forth.

Who wasn't fascinated with dinosaurs in childhood?

She has excellent bone structure.

This device was purported to aid in curing indigestion or somesuch ailment, among others. It's a chair in a box. I do not understand the purpose of the window. There is also a vibrating chair, and some kind of plug that is inserted rectally and connected by a wire to a blue light bulb. I would almost say "You can't make this stuff up" but someone already has and tried to profit from it at the expense of a gullible public. Thus, some things just don't change.

So long, house & a Catnip Orgy

Controlled Burn at the corner of Fairfield & James.

. . . as seen through the trees.

CATNIP ORGY!

. . . Resting after the seizure by Dionysus.

Goddamn Jackrabbits

This semester I teach four stories: Joy Williams’ Taking Care; Mark Richard’s Strays; Sherman Alexie’s This Is What It Means to Say Phoenix, Arizona; and Denis Johnson’s Emergency.

What do these stories have in common (aside from how much I love them)?

Except for Strays, there is a scene in each story, in which two characters are riding together in a car and either witness or cause the death of a rabbit. (In Strays, there is "an exploded chicken in the grill of Uncle Trash’s car." Similar, yet so very different.)

How does the same fundamental scene appear in three different stories? In Taking Care, Jones is driving along with his granddaughter strapped into her carseat next to him. He sees a hare running through the snow. The next thing that happens, a hunter shoots the hare, which tumbles to a dead flop in the road. In Phoenix, Arizona, Thomas Builds-the-Fire takes over driving from Victor in the middle of the Nevada desert. Immediately, a long-eared jackrabbit dashes out in front of the pickup, and Thomas runs over it. The rabbit is "first living thing" they see in all of Nevada, and Thomas kills it. They are quick to tell each other that the jackrabbit’s death must have been suicide. In Emergency, Georgie the Orderly is driving along with the narrator, Fuckhead, sitting beside him. Georgie hit a rabbit. They didn’t notice right away. Georgie stopped, then "threw the truck in reverse" and "zigzagged back to rabbit, almost running over the poor animal a second time." We all know what Georgie did to the rabbit next.

So, what’s with the common scene? Why does it repeat itself in three different stories? Taking Care was published first, in the 1970s. Emergency second, though much later, in 1992. This Is What it Means to Say Phoenix, Arizona third, in 1993. This is a baffling sort of mystery, the running over of rabbits with vehicles in contemporary fiction. I have no explanation for this phenomenon. But I am curious to find other examples of the same scene.

VERBS

You who have read my stories know how much I love verbs. Verbs make a story go. The right verb at the right moment is like a small magical explosion, or a glamer of gnomic wizardry, or a burst of forbidden fruit on your tongue.

There are two stories in particular (neither of which are mine) that make especial use of verbs: Steve Almond’s My Life in Heavy Metal (sensory verbs) and Leonard Michaels’ The Deal (action verbs). I’ll start with Mr. Almond.

wag (pp. 1): to walk suggestively; said of the narrator’s fiancé
punch (2): the effect of a powerful odor; in this case, lard used in Mexican cooking
glow (2): said of lighted swimming pools; "glowed like sapphires"
bang out (3): to type against a deadline
blossom (4): said of the effect when the Mexican lifeguard switches from English to her native tongue, Spanish
dance (4): said of the tongue moving against teeth (linked to the example of ‘blossom’)
vault (7): the motion of a woman’s pelvis moving suddenly upward at orgasm
beard (23): wrapped, or enveloped, in an odor; "bearded in the smell of Claudia"

More examples lie scattered throughout the story, but I find these in particular impressive. Almond’s use of verbs in this manner gets me thinking about how I use verbs. How might I describe, say, the feel and taste of capsaicin on a character’s tongue? Rather than saying something like "The hot pepper set his tongue on fire" or "...burned his tongue" or "tingled intolerably" (geez, that last one), I would try to find a sensory verb that does the job in an unexpected-yet-fitting way....Of course nothing comes to mind immediately. It’s hard to do. I’ll figure it out.

Now on to Mr. Michaels (I didn’t keep track of page numbers):

Jammed. Poked. Tucked. Cut. Rode. Slipped. Cracked. Plucked. Looped. Tipped. Nudged. Tilted. Swelled. Yowled. Swivelled. Snapped. Hooked. Cackled. Swept. Steeped. Trotted. Sprayed. Banged.

The verbs in this story wield hard edges. Hard edges and small motions, almost twitch-like in their animation. Which works, because the antagonist(s) is "a raggedy monster of boys", twenty boys total, "jammed together on the stoop." Yowled? That’s the verb used to describe a truck’s gears shifting. Steeped? "The sun was low above the river and the street three quarters steeped in shade." Lovely. After being drenched in summer sun all day, the street is almost relieved to be soaked in shade, itself like water. The angle of light is steeper than the angle of the street, and the shade is now thick, as if one could walk up the incline. Beautiful!

If we haven’t read The Deal, ask me for a copy and I will supply one. (Mr. Camel Cricket has read it. He knows what I’m talking about.)

Process...VII?

[A pair of mannequin legs floated by on the current, sticking straight up. A second pair followed the first, and a third in an upside-down kneel.]
*
What sort of character would concoct homemade napalm for use in booby traps?
*
Have you ever lived near an oxbow lake? An engine bloc depository? A rake forest? A place you could swim naked without fear of being seen?
*
Flute music will come through the wall from the neighbor's apartment. Someone above will be running a blender. You will be chopping a pineapple on the counter with too small a knife. You will not realize your sweater is backward. Later, your date will wonder where all these fleas came from, and you will hope the fleas have gone unnoticed.
*
[A writing challenge: "One character has an unexpected scar."]
*
If you take offense to Kong in Trowbridge's Complete Book of Kong, you're probably the kind of person Kong would squeeze too hard.
*
-spect-
spectate - respect - introspection - inspect -
spectral - specter - disrespect -
circumspect - [prespect] - underinspect -
overinspect - overcircumspection - subspect
*
It isn't that difficult. Do you understand it? Yes or No? Then, Why? and How? (yes or no . . .)
Small, local context? or Universal context?
-Does it matter?
-Don't do this, Don't do that, Avoid all advice good and bad.
Unless the advice works, or doesn't work.
*
Looking forward to going to bed.
*
I am fond of the word "malingerer". Self-abuse. Smacking.
*
"What's the limit on skulls this year?"
"Scram, you assholes."
"Blunt yourselves."
"PILED FOR QUALITY!"
"They hosted parasites."
"Do pugs bay?"
"The mayor's noose-"
"What about the mayor's noose?"
"Paw, as in 'grope.'"
*
Wooden Eyes.
*

The Uncrossable Boundaries: Revolting Spectacles

When in the course of life I come upon certain spectacles I feel no compulsion whatsoever to cross them. They are boundaries. The uncrossable. That which is too much for me. I have one example:

Eyeball tattoos. The very thought of someone else having the whites of their eyes tattooed in a different color is enough to make me turn away in disgust...which is silly because I’m thinking about it, and turning away doesn’t help. But we get the point. Eyeball tattooing is far worse and more disgusting than Mr. Dave’s enthralling exposition on zits (which, I have to say, is rather funny). Why would anyone tattoo an eyeball? It seems like a torture you might see in an exploitation film with Nazi characters. Can anyone fathom eyeball tattooing? Am I alone in my disgust? Is anyone listening?

Tongue splitting! Not as disgusting as eyeball tattooing, tongue splitting is nonetheless rather silly. Would you like to walk around with a forked reptilian tongue?

That’s all I have. Eyes and Tongues. Lenguas! Augen!

Flow-stoppage

A guiding idea: BOUNDARIES, LIMITS, RESTRAINTS.
Brick wall Pine thicket Body of water Canyon, gorge Security door A young child An heirloom Tracking bracelet or anklet A blizzard Flames, an inferno Exhaustion, lack of sleep, physical overexertion, worked too hard Dehydration A reef A cliff Banishment, expulsion (from a place, a town, an organization, a peer group) Lack of money Rules of a game Another person’s point of view Disguise, costume The dark Solitude Aloneness Fear Unwillingness Refusal (to do something) Hospitalization Out of contact, unreachable A magic circle Locks, deadbolts Race, ethnicity, culture, language A thing unknown to you Handcuffs, shackles, restraining bar, leg irons, gibbet, iron maiden Skin Smoke Highway traffic A moving train Held hostage Forgetfulness Allergic reaction Senility Phobias Deep embarrassment Paralysis Chronic pain Fasting Conditions applied to a contract Contractual obligations Duties, honor, codes of conduct Razor wire An electrified fence Family pressure (to take an action / not take an action) Height, weight, sex, body shape, body image, eye color, hair color A shield wall Phalanx A vast desert An incurable disease or degeneration Lack of faith Skepticism Armor Kevlar Gravity
[dirty chocolate snow]

[Last Post Tonight, Guaranteed] Something Guided Me Toward Random Images

(From a file in which I jot things in order to clear the hot, wet stew out of my head.)

Who are these Chinese people I’ve stumbled across? Why are two of them girls who are kissing? Not "why", as in, "This is morally wrong, I demand an explanation"; but "why", as in, "Why am I seeing this of all things?"

Photos of babies on a train, with Santa Claus, then a white woman.

Last: a series of ethnically diverse cheerleaders.

It means nothing to me. More bizarre images are there to be had, certainly. But it's not the superlative that reigns here. Not even the comparative has much say or sway. That image which appears before you, and holds you captivated regardless of how you feel about it or what you think of it, is the image that reigns.