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authorCase Duckworth2015-02-09 12:04:05 -0700
committerCase Duckworth2015-02-09 12:04:05 -0700
commit96ab7a3ce522f38a768e67c73021bf1071832a37 (patch)
tree1d04af8a849055fdec68cbebf538b6c86424f414
parentFinish linking Elegy, Hezekiah; Rename files (diff)
downloadautocento-96ab7a3ce522f38a768e67c73021bf1071832a37.tar.gz
autocento-96ab7a3ce522f38a768e67c73021bf1071832a37.zip
Add Paul; move source files to src/
-rw-r--r--TODO.html38
-rw-r--r--_template.html21
-rw-r--r--and.html45
-rw-r--r--angeltoabraham.html38
-rw-r--r--apollo11.html40
-rw-r--r--arspoetica.html38
-rw-r--r--art.html39
-rw-r--r--axe.html40
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-rw-r--r--leg.html47
-rw-r--r--likingthings.html37
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-rw-r--r--paul.html59
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-rw-r--r--serengeti.html35
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-rw-r--r--snow.html41
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-rw-r--r--src/TODO.txt7
-rw-r--r--src/and.txt46
-rw-r--r--src/angeltoabraham.txt39
-rw-r--r--src/apollo11.txt44
-rw-r--r--src/arspoetica.txt52
-rw-r--r--src/art.txt30
-rw-r--r--src/axe.txt37
-rw-r--r--src/boar.txt39
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-rw-r--r--src/epigraph.txt34
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-rw-r--r--src/feedingtheraven.txt49
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-rw-r--r--src/mountain.txt40
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-rw-r--r--src/notes.txt44
-rw-r--r--src/onformalpoetry.txt36
-rw-r--r--src/options.txt43
-rw-r--r--src/paul.txt54
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-rw-r--r--src/prelude.txt17
-rw-r--r--src/problems.txt72
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-rw-r--r--src/purpose-dogs.txt42
-rw-r--r--src/question.txt43
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-rw-r--r--src/ronaldmcdonald.txt49
-rw-r--r--src/roughgloves.txt34
-rw-r--r--src/sapling.txt43
-rw-r--r--src/serengeti.txt33
-rw-r--r--src/shed.txt35
-rw-r--r--src/shipwright.txt37
-rw-r--r--src/snow.txt43
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-rw-r--r--src/stagnant.txt39
-rw-r--r--src/statements-frag.txt72
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-rw-r--r--src/telemarketer.txt87
-rw-r--r--src/theoceanoverflowswithcamels.txt40
-rw-r--r--src/todaniel.txt36
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-rw-r--r--stagnant.html39
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158 files changed, 6568 insertions, 13 deletions
diff --git a/TODO.html b/TODO.html new file mode 100644 index 0000000..17daf65 --- /dev/null +++ b/TODO.html
@@ -0,0 +1,38 @@
1<!DOCTYPE html>
2<!-- Template for compiled 'Autocento' documents -->
3<html>
4<head>
5 <meta charset="utf-8">
6 <meta name="generator" content="pandoc">
7 <meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1.0, user-scalable=yes">
8 <meta name="author" content="Case Duckworth">
9 <!-- more meta tags here -->
10 <title> | Autocento of the breakfast table</title>
11 <link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="_common.css">
12 <!--[if lt IE 9]>
13 <script src="http://html5shim.googlecode.com/svn/trunk/html5.js"> </script>
14 <![endif]-->
15 </head>
16<body>
17
18
19 <header>
20 <!-- title -->
21
22
23 </header>
24
25 <section class="">
26 <h2 id="todo">TODO:</h2>
27 <ul>
28 <li>add in prose stuff from Elegies</li>
29 <li>remove numbers from filenames &amp; links</li>
30 <li>add genre to YAML metadata blocks</li>
31 </ul>
32 </section>
33
34 <nav>
35 </nav>
36
37</body>
38</html>
diff --git a/_template.html b/_template.html index fef7b40..6d2893f 100644 --- a/_template.html +++ b/_template.html
@@ -33,25 +33,30 @@ $for(include-before)$ $include-before$ $endfor$
33 <!-- epigraph --> 33 <!-- epigraph -->
34 <p class="epigraph"> 34 <p class="epigraph">
35 $epigraph.content$ 35 $epigraph.content$
36 $if(epigraph.link)$<a href="$epigraph.link$">&gt;</a>$endif$
37 </p> 36 </p>
38 $if(epigraph.attrib)$ 37 $if(epigraph.attrib)$
39 <p class="epigraph-attrib">&mdash; $epigraph.attrib$</p> 38 <p class="epigraph-attrib">
39 $if(epigraph.link)$
40 <a href="$epigraph.link$">&mdash; $epigraph.attrib$</a>
41 $else$
42 &mdash; $epigraph.attrib$
43 $endif$
44 </p>
40 $endif$ 45 $endif$
41 $endif$ 46 $endif$
42 </header> 47 </header>
43 48
49 <section class="$genre$">
44 $body$ 50 $body$
51 </section>
45 52
46 <nav> 53 <nav>
47 $if(project.prev.title)$ 54 $for(project.prev)$
48 <!--previous -->
49 <a href="$project.prev.link$.html">&lt; $project.prev.title$</a> 55 <a href="$project.prev.link$.html">&lt; $project.prev.title$</a>
50 $endif$ 56 $endfor$
51 $if(project.next.title)$ 57 $for(project.next)$
52 <!-- next -->
53 <a href="$project.next.link$.html">$project.next.title$ &gt;</a> 58 <a href="$project.next.link$.html">$project.next.title$ &gt;</a>
54 $endif$ 59 $endfor$
55 </nav> 60 </nav>
56 61
57$for(include-after)$ 62$for(include-after)$
diff --git a/and.html b/and.html new file mode 100644 index 0000000..6636d8f --- /dev/null +++ b/and.html
@@ -0,0 +1,45 @@
1<!DOCTYPE html>
2<!-- Template for compiled 'Autocento' documents -->
3<html>
4<head>
5 <meta charset="utf-8">
6 <meta name="generator" content="pandoc">
7 <meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1.0, user-scalable=yes">
8 <meta name="author" content="Case Duckworth">
9 <!-- more meta tags here -->
10 <title>And | Autocento of the breakfast table</title>
11 <link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="_common.css">
12 <link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="_verse.css">
13 <link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="_elegies.css">
14 <!--[if lt IE 9]>
15 <script src="http://html5shim.googlecode.com/svn/trunk/html5.js"> </script>
16 <![endif]-->
17 </head>
18<body>
19
20
21 <header>
22 <!-- title -->
23 <h1 class="title">And</h1>
24
25 <!-- epigraph -->
26 <p class="epigraph">
27 <p>“What is your favorite word?” “And. It is so hopeful.”</p>
28 </p>
29 <p class="epigraph-attrib">
30 <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2011/oct/28/margaret-atwood-q-a">&mdash; Margaret Atwood</a>
31 </p>
32 </header>
33
34 <section class="verse">
35 <p>And you were there in the start of it all<br />and you folded your hands like little doves<br />that would fly away like an afterthought<br />and you turned to me the window light on your face<br />and you asked me something that I did not recognize<br />like a great throng of people who are not you<br />and I asked are we in a <a href="boar.html">church</a><br />and you answered with the look on your face<br />of someone <a href="roughgloves.html">grieving something gone</a> for years<br /> but that they had been reminded of<br />by a catch in the light or in someone’s voice<br />and I think maybe it could have been mine<br />and I looked away thickly my head was in jelly<br />and I didn’t get an answer from you but I got one</p>
36 <p>I looked at the man in front of us with glasses<br />he was speaking and holding a book<br />and I didn’t understand him he was far away<br />and I could tell I was missing something important<br />and you nodded to yourself at something he said</p>
37 </section>
38
39 <nav>
40 <a href="howtoread.html">&lt; How to read this</a>
41 <a href="words-meaning.html">Words and meaning &gt;</a>
42 </nav>
43
44</body>
45</html>
diff --git a/angeltoabraham.html b/angeltoabraham.html new file mode 100644 index 0000000..b0cf0e9 --- /dev/null +++ b/angeltoabraham.html
@@ -0,0 +1,38 @@
1<!DOCTYPE html>
2<!-- Template for compiled 'Autocento' documents -->
3<html>
4<head>
5 <meta charset="utf-8">
6 <meta name="generator" content="pandoc">
7 <meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1.0, user-scalable=yes">
8 <meta name="author" content="Case Duckworth">
9 <!-- more meta tags here -->
10 <title>The angel to Abraham | Autocento of the breakfast table</title>
11 <link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="_common.css">
12 <link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="_verse.css">
13 <link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="_elegies.css">
14 <!--[if lt IE 9]>
15 <script src="http://html5shim.googlecode.com/svn/trunk/html5.js"> </script>
16 <![endif]-->
17 </head>
18<body>
19
20
21 <header>
22 <!-- title -->
23 <h1 class="title">The angel to Abraham</h1>
24
25 </header>
26
27 <section class="verse">
28 <p>Abraham, Abraham, you are old and cannot hear:<br />what if you miss my small voice amongst the creaking<br />of your own grief, kill your son unknowing<br />of what he will be, and commit Israel to nothing?</p>
29 <p>Abraham, you must know or hope that <a href="boar.html">God</a><br />will not allow your son to die; you must know<br />that this is a test, but then why<br />are you so bent on Isaac’s destruction?<br />Look at your eyes; there is more than fear<br />there. I see in your eyes desperation,<br />a manic passion to do right by your God<br />whom you are not able to see or know.</p>
30 <p>Am I too late? I <a href="i-am.html">will try</a> to stay<br />your old hands, the knife clenched<br />within them, intent on ending life.</p>
31 <p>Will you hear my small voice amongst the creaking,<br />or will it be the chance bleating of a passing ram?</p>
32 </section>
33
34 <nav>
35 </nav>
36
37</body>
38</html>
diff --git a/apollo11.html b/apollo11.html new file mode 100644 index 0000000..01e1195 --- /dev/null +++ b/apollo11.html
@@ -0,0 +1,40 @@
1<!DOCTYPE html>
2<!-- Template for compiled 'Autocento' documents -->
3<html>
4<head>
5 <meta charset="utf-8">
6 <meta name="generator" content="pandoc">
7 <meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1.0, user-scalable=yes">
8 <meta name="author" content="Case Duckworth">
9 <!-- more meta tags here -->
10 <title>On seeing the panorama of the Apollo 11 landing site | Autocento of the breakfast table</title>
11 <link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="_common.css">
12 <link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="_verse.css">
13 <link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="_elegies.css">
14 <!--[if lt IE 9]>
15 <script src="http://html5shim.googlecode.com/svn/trunk/html5.js"> </script>
16 <![endif]-->
17 </head>
18<body>
19
20
21 <header>
22 <!-- title -->
23 <h1 class="title">On seeing the panorama of the Apollo 11 landing site</h1>
24
25 </header>
26
27 <section class="verse">
28 <p>So it’s the <a href="deathstrumpet.html">fucking moon</a>. Big deal. As if<br />you haven’t seen it before, hanging in the sky<br />like a piece of <a href="roughgloves.html">rotten meat</a> nailed to the wall,</p>
29 <p>a maudlin love letter (the i’s dotted with <a href="proverbs.html">hearts</a>)<br />tacked to the sky’s door like ninety-eight theses.<br />Don’t stare at it like it means anything.</p>
30 <p>Don’t give it the chance to collect meaning<br />from your hand like an old pigeon. Don’t dare ascribe<br />it a will, or call it fickle, or think it has any say</p>
31 <p>in your affairs. It’s separated from your life<br />by three hundred eighty-four thousand miles of space,<br />the same distance you stepped away from time that night</p>
32 <p>you said your love was broken, a crippled gyroscope<br />knocking in the dark. It was then that time fell apart,<br />had a nervous breakdown and started following you</p>
33 <p>everywhere, moonfaced, always asking where you’re going.<br />You keep trying to get away from it but it nuzzles closer<br />and sings you songs that sound like the cooing of a dove<br />that will only escape again into an empty sky at dawn.</p>
34 </section>
35
36 <nav>
37 </nav>
38
39</body>
40</html>
diff --git a/arspoetica.html b/arspoetica.html new file mode 100644 index 0000000..57c6745 --- /dev/null +++ b/arspoetica.html
@@ -0,0 +1,38 @@
1<!DOCTYPE html>
2<!-- Template for compiled 'Autocento' documents -->
3<html>
4<head>
5 <meta charset="utf-8">
6 <meta name="generator" content="pandoc">
7 <meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1.0, user-scalable=yes">
8 <meta name="author" content="Case Duckworth">
9 <!-- more meta tags here -->
10 <title>Ars poetica | Autocento of the breakfast table</title>
11 <link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="_common.css">
12 <link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="_verse.css">
13 <link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="_elegies.css">
14 <!--[if lt IE 9]>
15 <script src="http://html5shim.googlecode.com/svn/trunk/html5.js"> </script>
16 <![endif]-->
17 </head>
18<body>
19
20
21 <header>
22 <!-- title -->
23 <h1 class="title">Ars poetica</h1>
24
25 </header>
26
27 <section class="verse">
28 <p>What is poetry? <a href="words-meaning.html">Poetry is.</a> Inasmuch as life is, so is poetry. Here is the problem: life is very big and complex. Human beings are neither. We are small, simple beings that don’t want to know all of the myriad interactions happening all around us, within us, as a part of us, all the hours of every day. We much prefer knowing only that which is just in front of our faces, staring us back with a look of utter contempt. This is why many people are depressed.</p>
29 <p>Poetry is an attempt made by some to open up our field of view, to maybe check on something else that isn’t staring us in the face so contemptibly. Maybe something else is smiling at us, we think. So we write poetry to force ourselves to look away from the <a href="moongone.html">mirror</a> of our existence to see something else.</p>
30 <p>This is generally painful. To make it less painful, poetry compresses reality a lot to make it more consumable. It takes life, that seawater, and boils it down and boils it down until only the salt remains, the important parts that we can focus on and make some sense of the senselessness of life. Poetry is life bouillon, and to thoroughly enjoy a poem we must put that bouillon back into the seawater of life and make a delicious soup out of it. To make this soup, to decompress the poem into an emotion or life, requires a lot of brainpower. A good reader will have this brainpower. A good poem will not require it.</p>
31 <p>What this means is: a poem should be self-extracting. It should be a rare vanilla in the bottle, waiting only for someone to open it and sniff it and suddenly there they are, in the orchid that vanilla came from, in the tropical land where it grew next to its brothers and sister vanilla plants. They feel the pain of having their children taken from them. A good poem leaves a feeling of loss and of intense beauty. The reader does nothing to achieve this—they are merely the receptacle of the feeling that the poem forces onto them. In a way, poetry is a crime. But it is the most beautiful crime on this crime-ridden earth.</p>
32 </section>
33
34 <nav>
35 </nav>
36
37</body>
38</html>
diff --git a/art.html b/art.html new file mode 100644 index 0000000..b3b7360 --- /dev/null +++ b/art.html
@@ -0,0 +1,39 @@
1<!DOCTYPE html>
2<!-- Template for compiled 'Autocento' documents -->
3<html>
4<head>
5 <meta charset="utf-8">
6 <meta name="generator" content="pandoc">
7 <meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1.0, user-scalable=yes">
8 <meta name="author" content="Case Duckworth">
9 <!-- more meta tags here -->
10 <title>Art | Autocento of the breakfast table</title>
11 <link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="_common.css">
12 <link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="_prose.css">
13 <link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="_paul.css">
14 <!--[if lt IE 9]>
15 <script src="http://html5shim.googlecode.com/svn/trunk/html5.js"> </script>
16 <![endif]-->
17 </head>
18<body>
19
20
21 <header>
22 <!-- title -->
23 <h1 class="title">Art</h1>
24
25 </header>
26
27 <section class="prose">
28 <p>Paul was writing in his diary about art.</p>
29 <p><em>This is my brain</em> he wrote. <em>This is my brain and all it contains. ‘I contain multitudes’ said Legion. I think it was Legion.</em> The big heading he had written at the top of the page (<em>ART</em> it read, but only when looking at it from his point of view) sat cold and alone, neglected in the white space surrounding it. He noticed this presently (but not after he had written a little more about multitudes), paused, frowned, and began to write again.</p>
30 <p><em>ART stands alone at the top of a blank page</em> he wrote. <em>It follows <del>itself in circles</del> its own footprints in a circle around its own name. It leads nowhere but is present everywhere. <del>It contains</del> It contains multitudes. Every painting ever made is a painting of every other painting. Every song is a remix, a cover version.</em> He crossed out the part about songs for getting off topic. He made a note to himself in the margin—<em>Music is not ART.</em></p>
31 </section>
32
33 <nav>
34 <a href="hymnal.html">Hymnal &gt;</a>
35 <a href="axe.html">Axe &gt;</a>
36 </nav>
37
38</body>
39</html>
diff --git a/axe.html b/axe.html new file mode 100644 index 0000000..d96285c --- /dev/null +++ b/axe.html
@@ -0,0 +1,40 @@
1<!DOCTYPE html>
2<!-- Template for compiled 'Autocento' documents -->
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6 <meta name="generator" content="pandoc">
7 <meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1.0, user-scalable=yes">
8 <meta name="author" content="Case Duckworth">
9 <!-- more meta tags here -->
10 <title>Axe | Autocento of the breakfast table</title>
11 <link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="_common.css">
12 <link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="_prose.css">
13 <link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="_paul.css">
14 <!--[if lt IE 9]>
15 <script src="http://html5shim.googlecode.com/svn/trunk/html5.js"> </script>
16 <![endif]-->
17 </head>
18<body>
19
20
21 <header>
22 <!-- title -->
23 <h1 class="title">Axe</h1>
24
25 </header>
26
27 <section class="prose">
28 <p>Paul took his axe and went out into the woods to chop trees. Or rather he went into the trees to chop wood. He wasn’t sure. Either way it helped him think. Last time he’d gone out, he’d had an idea for a shoe-insert company he could start called “Paul’s Bunyons.” He chuckled to himself as he shouldered his axe and went into the forest.</p>
29 <p>Deep into the woods he admired the organization of the trees. “They grow wherever they fall” he said “but still none is too close to another.” He sounded like Solomon to himself. He imagined he had a beard.</p>
30 <p>He walked for a long time in the shadows of the forest, in its coolness. It sounded like snow had fallen but it was still October. The first time the trees seemed to radiate out from him in straight lines he stopped and turned around four times. After he walked on he noticed it happened fairly often.</p>
31 <p>Still, after he felled his first tree that day he realized they grew from the epicenter of his axe. He paused in the small dark sound of the forest quiet.</p>
32 </section>
33
34 <nav>
35 <a href="leaf.html">Leaf &gt;</a>
36 <a href="building.html">Building &gt;</a>
37 </nav>
38
39</body>
40</html>
diff --git a/boar.html b/boar.html new file mode 100644 index 0000000..bea3f65 --- /dev/null +++ b/boar.html
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1<!DOCTYPE html>
2<!-- Template for compiled 'Autocento' documents -->
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5 <meta charset="utf-8">
6 <meta name="generator" content="pandoc">
7 <meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1.0, user-scalable=yes">
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9 <!-- more meta tags here -->
10 <title>The boar | Autocento of the breakfast table</title>
11 <link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="_common.css">
12 <link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="_verse.css">
13 <link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="_elegies.css">
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15 <script src="http://html5shim.googlecode.com/svn/trunk/html5.js"> </script>
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20
21 <header>
22 <!-- title -->
23 <h1 class="title">The boar</h1>
24
25 </header>
26
27 <section class="verse">
28 <p>Now the ticking clocks scare me.<br />The <a href="mountain.html">empty</a> rooms, clock towers, belfries;<br />I am terrified by them all.</p>
29 <p>I really used to enjoy going to church,<br />singing in the choir, listening to the sermon.<br />Now the chairs squeal like dying pigs—</p>
30 <p>It was the boar that did it.<br /><a href="telemarketer.html">Fifteen feet</a> from me that night<br />in the grass, rooting for God<br />knows what, finding me instead.</p>
31 <p>I ran, not knowing where or how,<br />not looking for his pursuit of me.<br />I ran to God’s front door, found<br />it locked, found the <a href="i-am.html">house</a> empty</p>
32 <p>with a note saying, “Condemned.”</p>
33 </section>
34
35 <nav>
36 </nav>
37
38</body>
39</html>
diff --git a/building.html b/building.html new file mode 100644 index 0000000..0e79966 --- /dev/null +++ b/building.html
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1<!DOCTYPE html>
2<!-- Template for compiled 'Autocento' documents -->
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5 <meta charset="utf-8">
6 <meta name="generator" content="pandoc">
7 <meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1.0, user-scalable=yes">
8 <meta name="author" content="Case Duckworth">
9 <!-- more meta tags here -->
10 <title>Building | Autocento of the breakfast table</title>
11 <link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="_common.css">
12 <link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="_prose.css">
13 <link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="_paul.css">
14 <!--[if lt IE 9]>
15 <script src="http://html5shim.googlecode.com/svn/trunk/html5.js"> </script>
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17 </head>
18<body>
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20
21 <header>
22 <!-- title -->
23 <h1 class="title">Building</h1>
24
25 </header>
26
27 <section class="prose">
28 <p><em>ART and CRAFT are only the inside and outside of the same building. The ceiling is</em>—here he put his eraser to his bottom lip, thinking. He crossed out <em><del>The ceiling is.</del></em> <em>The floor is reality and the ceiling is <del>aspiration</del> <del>desire</del> that which is desired. CRAFT is building a chair from wood. ART is using the wood as a substrate for an emotional message to a future person, the READER / VIEWER.</em></p>
29 <p><em>The important thing is they are both made of wood. The important thing is they were both, at one point, alive natural things that grew and changed and pushed their way out of the dirt into the air. They formed buildings out of the air. They didn’t even try.</em></p>
30 <p><em>What separates us from them, the trees? We have to try. We must labor to create our ART, our buildings of air. We lay them out brick by brick, we build them up by disintegrating trees and forming them again into what they were before. Why must we do this? are there any advantages to this human method?</em></p>
31 <p><em>Our advantage is memory. Our advantage is the reaching-out over space and time to others with our words, our ART. Our buildings last for generations, and after they are demolished they are written about, photographs are taken, we <strong>remember</strong>. The act of memory is our only ART.</em></p>
32 </section>
33
34 <nav>
35 <a href="yellow.html">Yellow &gt;</a>
36 <a href="cereal.html">Cereal &gt;</a>
37 </nav>
38
39</body>
40</html>
diff --git a/cereal.html b/cereal.html new file mode 100644 index 0000000..aa8147d --- /dev/null +++ b/cereal.html
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1<!DOCTYPE html>
2<!-- Template for compiled 'Autocento' documents -->
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5 <meta charset="utf-8">
6 <meta name="generator" content="pandoc">
7 <meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1.0, user-scalable=yes">
8 <meta name="author" content="Case Duckworth">
9 <!-- more meta tags here -->
10 <title>Cereal | Autocento of the breakfast table</title>
11 <link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="_common.css">
12 <link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="_prose.css">
13 <link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="_paul.css">
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22 <!-- title -->
23 <h1 class="title">Cereal</h1>
24
25 </header>
26
27 <section class="prose">
28 <p>He woke up after eleven and didn’t go outside all day, not even to his Writing Shack. What did he do?</p>
29 <p>He watched late morning cartoons meant for children too young to go to school. He ate bowls of cereal. He watched his mother play dominoes. He played dominoes with her for a little while until she was winning by such a margin it wasn’t fun for either of them. He went down to the basement to do his laundry. He pulled the chain for the light and it turned on like magic. “Electricity is like magic” he said to himself. He thought he would like to write that down but his Implements were in the Shack. He’d already built up so much momentum inside.</p>
30 <p>Inertia? he thought. “What’s the difference between inertia and momentum” he asked himself as he hefted dirty clothes into the washer. “Maybe inertia is the momentum of not moving” he thought as he measured and poured the blue detergent into the drum. “Momentum is the inertia of moving forward through time” as he selected WARM-COLD on the dial and pulled it out to start the machine. “What do you think is the difference between inertia and momentum” he asked his mother when he opened the door at the top of the stairs.</p>
31 <p>“When you switch over your laundry could you bring up my underwear from the dryer” she asked not looking up from her dominoes. A thread of smoke curled from her cigarette and spread out on the ceiling.</p>
32 </section>
33
34 <nav>
35 <a href="man.html">Man &gt;</a>
36 <a href="dream.html">Dream &gt;</a>
37 </nav>
38
39</body>
40</html>
diff --git a/compile.sh b/compile.sh index 3877be0..228af38 100644 --- a/compile.sh +++ b/compile.sh
@@ -1,10 +1,15 @@
1# for windows only right now 1# for windows only right now
2 2
3for file in *.txt; do # TODO: change this to work with globs & args & stuff 3for file in src/*.txt; do # TODO: change this to work with globs & args & stuff
4 pandoc -f markdown \ # all files are in pandoc's markdown 4 echo -n "Compiling $file ..."
5 -t html5 \ # they're being outputted to html5 5 pandoc -f markdown \
6 --template=_template.html \ # use this file as a template 6 -t html5 \
7 --smart \ # smart quotes, etc. 7 --template=_template.html \
8 --smart \
8 $file \ 9 $file \
9 -o "${file%.txt}.html" 10 -o "${file%.txt}.html"
11 echo " Done."
10done 12done
13
14echo "Moving files to build directory ..."
15mv src/*.html ./
diff --git a/deadman.html b/deadman.html new file mode 100644 index 0000000..94bf5f5 --- /dev/null +++ b/deadman.html
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1<!DOCTYPE html>
2<!-- Template for compiled 'Autocento' documents -->
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5 <meta charset="utf-8">
6 <meta name="generator" content="pandoc">
7 <meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1.0, user-scalable=yes">
8 <meta name="author" content="Case Duckworth">
9 <!-- more meta tags here -->
10 <title>Dead man | Autocento of the breakfast table</title>
11 <link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="_common.css">
12 <link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="_verse.css">
13 <link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="_elegies.css">
14 <!--[if lt IE 9]>
15 <script src="http://html5shim.googlecode.com/svn/trunk/html5.js"> </script>
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18<body>
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20
21 <header>
22 <!-- title -->
23 <h1 class="title">Dead man</h1>
24
25 </header>
26
27 <section class="verse">
28 <p>A dead man finds his way into our <a href="words-meaning.html">hearts</a><br />simply by opening the door and walking in.<br />He pours himself a drink, speaks aimlessly<br />about hunting or some bats he saw<br />on the way over, wheeling around each other.<br />Look how <a href="moongone.html">they spin</a>, he says, it’s like the<br />ripples atoms make as they hurl past each other<br />in the space between their bodies.<br />We mention the eels at the aquarium, how<br />their bodies <a href="spittle.html">knot while mating</a>. The dead man<br />was a boyscout once, and tied a lot of knots.<br />His favorite was the one with the rabbit<br />and the hole, and the rabbit going in and out<br />and around the tree. The dead man liked it<br />because he liked to pretend that the rabbit<br />was running from a fox, and the rabbit<br />always ended up safe, back in his hole.</p>
29 </section>
30
31 <nav>
32 </nav>
33
34</body>
35</html>
diff --git a/deathstrumpet.html b/deathstrumpet.html new file mode 100644 index 0000000..a85882f --- /dev/null +++ b/deathstrumpet.html
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1<!DOCTYPE html>
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6 <meta name="generator" content="pandoc">
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10 <title>Death’s trumpet | Autocento of the breakfast table</title>
11 <link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="_common.css">
12 <link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="_verse.css">
13 <link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="_elegies.css">
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20
21 <header>
22 <!-- title -->
23 <h1 class="title">Death’s trumpet</h1>
24
25 <!-- epigraph -->
26 <p class="epigraph">
27 <p>So Death plays his little <a href="apollo11.html">fucking</a> trumpet. So what, says the boy.</p>
28 </p>
29 <p class="epigraph-attrib">
30 &mdash; Larry Levis
31 </p>
32 </header>
33
34 <section class="verse">
35 <p>He didn’t have any polish so he spit-shined the whole thing,<br />top to bottom. It gleamed like maybe a tomato on the vine<br />begging to be picked and thrown on some caprese. Death loved caprese.</p>
36 <p>He stood up and put the horn to his lips, imagining<br />it was a woman he loved. He blushed as he realized<br />it was a terrible metaphor.<br />He practiced for six hours a day—what else to do?</p>
37 <p>Death looks at <a href="moongone.html">himself in the mirror</a> as he plays.<br />The trumpet is suspended in midair. Damn vampire rules.<br />Death is always worried he might have missed a spot shaving<br />but he’ll never know unless a stranger is polite enough.<br />Not that he ever goes out or meets anyone.</p>
38 <p>He wakes up late these days. Stays in bed later.<br />He thinks he might be depressed. The caprese has gotten soggy<br />since he made it, maybe three days ago or maybe just two.<br />The sun streams through his kitchen blinds like smoke.<br />He decides to go to the arcade. When he gets there,</p>
39 <p>there’s only a <a href="angeltoabraham.html">little boy</a> with dead eyes. So far so good.<br />He’s playing a first-person shooter. Death walks past him<br />and watches out of the corner of his eye. The kid’s good.<br />Death wants to congratulate him. His trumpet is in his hand.</p>
40 </section>
41
42 <nav>
43 </nav>
44
45</body>
46</html>
diff --git a/dream.html b/dream.html new file mode 100644 index 0000000..9e78319 --- /dev/null +++ b/dream.html
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1<!DOCTYPE html>
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6 <meta name="generator" content="pandoc">
7 <meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1.0, user-scalable=yes">
8 <meta name="author" content="Case Duckworth">
9 <!-- more meta tags here -->
10 <title>Dream | Autocento of the breakfast table</title>
11 <link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="_common.css">
12 <link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="_prose.css">
13 <link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="_paul.css">
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22 <!-- title -->
23 <h1 class="title">Dream</h1>
24
25 </header>
26
27 <section class="prose">
28 <p>It had gotten cold. He went to lay down in bed with a pad and paper. He began to write. Although he hadn’t tried it much in bed before, he liked it mostly. His arm got tired journeying across the page like a series of switchbacks down the wall of the Grand Canyon. He wrote this down in the margin, for later:</p>
29 <pre class="hand"><code>Arm journeying across \
30 the pg. like a \
31 series of switch-
32 backs down the wall \
33 of the Grand Canyon \</code></pre>
34 <p>His arm began to pain him. He adjusted his position in the bed. It didn’t help much with the pain. It still hurt as he wrote. He began to be distracted by his mother’s music playing in the next room.</p>
35 <p>“Could you turn that down please” he hollered across the wall to his mother. She made no reply (music too loud). He gave his arm a break to look at what he’d written. He couldn’t make heads or tails of it. It looked like Arabic.</p>
36 <p>He woke up gasping in a sweat.</p>
37 </section>
38
39 <nav>
40 <a href="axe.html">Axe &gt;</a>
41 <a href="early.html">Early &gt;</a>
42 </nav>
43
44</body>
45</html>
diff --git a/early.html b/early.html new file mode 100644 index 0000000..3fcd96f --- /dev/null +++ b/early.html
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1<!DOCTYPE html>
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6 <meta name="generator" content="pandoc">
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9 <!-- more meta tags here -->
10 <title>Early | Autocento of the breakfast table</title>
11 <link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="_common.css">
12 <link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="_prose.css">
13 <link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="_paul.css">
14 <!--[if lt IE 9]>
15 <script src="http://html5shim.googlecode.com/svn/trunk/html5.js"> </script>
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17 </head>
18<body>
19
20
21 <header>
22 <!-- title -->
23 <h1 class="title">Early</h1>
24
25 </header>
26
27 <section class="prose">
28 <p><em>YOU CANNOT DISCOVER ART ART MUST BE CREATED</em> he sat on the couch at home while his mother watched TV and smoked. Dinner had been chicken and peas with milk and afterward Paul and his mother sat on opposite ends of the couch. At intervals she would look sideways at Paul writing. He pretended not to notice.</p>
29 <p><em>ART = ARTIFICE</em> he wrote. <em>ARTIFICE MEANS UNNATURAL. ARTIFICE MEANS BUILT. TO BUILD MEANS TO FIND A PATTERN &amp; FIND A PATTERN IS WHAT WE ARE GOOD AT.</em> He thought about this while someone else won a car.</p>
30 <p>“Do you think humans are good at finding patterns because we are hunters” he asked his mother. She looked sideways at him and said “Sure Paul.” “Early on in our evolution we were hunters right? And to hunt we had to see the patterns in seemingly random events, like where the gazelle went each year” “Paul I’m trying to watch TV. If you’re going to write this stuff go do it in your room you’re distracting.” Paul got up and went to his room and lay down on his bed.</p>
31 <p>“If the gazelle went to the same place every year” he thought “did they know the pattern too? Or was it random for them, did they think each year ‘This seems like a good spot let’s graze here’ without knowing?”</p>
32 <p>He wrote <em>PATTERN = MEMORY</em> in his notebook.</p>
33 </section>
34
35 <nav>
36 <a href="toothpaste.html">Toothpaste &gt;</a>
37 <a href="father.html">Father &gt;</a>
38 </nav>
39
40</body>
41</html>
diff --git a/elegyforanalternateself.html b/elegyforanalternateself.html new file mode 100644 index 0000000..b0fe1a6 --- /dev/null +++ b/elegyforanalternateself.html
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9 <!-- more meta tags here -->
10 <title>Elegy for an alternate self | Autocento of the breakfast table</title>
11 <link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="_common.css">
12 <link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="_verse.css">
13 <link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="_autocento.css">
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22 <!-- title -->
23 <h1 class="title">Elegy for an alternate self</h1>
24
25 </header>
26
27 <section class="verse">
28 <p>Say there are no words. Say that we are conjoined<br />from birth, or better still, say we are myself.<br />—But I still talk to myself, I build my world<br />through language, so if we say there are no words<br />this is not enough. Say we are instead some animal,<br />or better yet, a plant, or a flagellum motoring<br />aimlessly around. (Say that humans are the only things<br />that reason. Say that we’re the only things that worry.)</p>
29 <p>Say that I am separate. To say there’s everything else<br />and then there’s me is wrong. Each thing is separate:<br />there is no whole in the world. Say this is both good<br />and bad, or rather, say there is no good or bad but only<br />being, more and more of it always added, none taken out<br />though it can be forgotten. Say that forgetting<br />is a function of our remembering. (Say that humans only<br />worry about separation. Say that only humans feel it.)</p>
30 </section>
31
32 <nav>
33 </nav>
34
35</body>
36</html>
diff --git a/epigraph.html b/epigraph.html new file mode 100644 index 0000000..10c2799 --- /dev/null +++ b/epigraph.html
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1<!DOCTYPE html>
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10 <title>epigraph | Autocento of the breakfast table</title>
11 <link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="_common.css">
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20
21 <header>
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23 <h1 class="title">epigraph</h1>
24 <h1 class="subtitle">An epigraph</h1>
25 </header>
26
27 <section class="prose">
28 <p>I saw my life branching out before me like the green fig tree in the story. From the tip of every branch, like a fat purple fig, a wonderful future beckoned and winked. One fig was a husband and a happy home and children, and another fig was a famous poet and another fig was a brilliant professor, and another fig was Ee Gee, the amazing editor, and another fig was Europe and Africa and South America, and another fig was Constantin and Socrates and Attila and a pack of <a href="spittle.html">other lovers</a> and queer names and offbeat professions, and another fig was an Olympic lady crew champion, and beyond and above these figs were many more figs I couldn’t quite make out. I saw myself sitting in the crotch of this fig tree, starving to <a href="deathstrumpet.html">death</a>, just because I couldn’t make up my mind which of the figs I would choose. I wanted each and every one of them, but choosing one meant losing all the rest, and, as I sat there, unable to decide, the figs began to wrinkle and go black, and, one by one, they plopped to the ground at my feet.</p>
29 </section>
30
31 <nav>
32 </nav>
33
34</body>
35</html>
diff --git a/father.html b/father.html new file mode 100644 index 0000000..3570783 --- /dev/null +++ b/father.html
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1<!DOCTYPE html>
2<!-- Template for compiled 'Autocento' documents -->
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6 <meta name="generator" content="pandoc">
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10 <title>Father | Autocento of the breakfast table</title>
11 <link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="_common.css">
12 <link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="_prose.css">
13 <link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="_paul.css">
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23 <h1 class="title">Father</h1>
24
25 </header>
26
27 <section class="prose">
28 <p>“Is man the natural thing that makes unnatural things” he thought to himself as he looked out the kitchen window at the shed. He wondered who built the shed for the first time since he’d been going out there. “Mom who built the shed out back” he asked. “That was your father” she said.</p>
29 <p>His father. Paul had never met him. His mother had said when he was a kid that his father was caught by a riptide while swimming in the ocean. He hadn’t noticed what was happening until the land was a thin line on the horizon. He became exhausted swimming back and drowned. His body was found a week later by the coroner’s estimate. Paul never really believed this story because his mother’s face was sad in the wrong way when she told it.</p>
30 <p>She said he looked like his father but she also said all men look alike. Paul realized he’d been standing at the kitchen window for a long time looking out at the shed without realizing it. He went out to take an inventory of everything inside.</p>
31 <p>“Where you going” asked his mother. “To the shed. I’ll be back in a bit” he said.</p>
32 </section>
33
34 <nav>
35 <a href="paul.html">Paul &gt;</a>
36 <a href="fire.html">Fire &gt;</a>
37 </nav>
38
39</body>
40</html>
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27 <section class="prose">
28 <p>You never can tell just when Charlie Sheen will enter your life. For me, it was last Thursday. I was reading some translation of a Japanese translation of “The Raven” in which the Poe and the raven become friends. At one point the raven gets very sick and Poe feeds him at his bedside and nurses him back to health. The story was very heartwarming and sad at the same time and my tears were welling up when suddenly I heard a knock on my door.</p>
29 <p>I shuffled over, sniffling but managing to keep my cheeks dry to open it. Of course Charlie was beaming on the other side, with a bag of flowers and a grin like a <a href="purpose-dogs.html">dog</a>’s. He bounded in the room without saying hello and threw the flowers in the sink, opened the refrigerator and started poking around. I said “It’s nice to see you too” and went to my room to get a camera, as well as a notebook for him to sign.</p>
30 <p>When I came back he was on the floor, hunched and groaning. I looked on the table to see a month-old half-gallon of milk—now cottage cheese—half-empty and dripping. The remnants were on his mouth, and at once I saw my chance to become Poe in this <a href="todaniel.html">translation of a translation</a> of a translation. I knelt next to Charlie, cradled his head in my lap. He looked up at me with a stare full of terror. I returned it levelly, making cooing noises at him until he calmed down.</p>
31 <p>When he was calm he excused himself to be sick on my toilet. He wouldn’t let me follow but said he would sign whatever I liked when he got back. After half an hour passed and all I’d had for company was the ticking of the <a href="boar.html">clock</a>, I went to the bathroom door. I knocked carefully—once, then twice—to no beaming face, no flowers. I opened the door. There was shit on the floor and the window was open. There was a breeze blowing.</p>
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28 <p>His mother ran out of the house in her nightgown. “What the hell do you think you’re doing” she hollered as Paul watched the shed. “I’m burning the shed down” he said smiling “isn’t it warm?” “It’s warm enough out here without that burning down” she said “go get the hose and put this thing out.” “But Mom” “Do it” she said in the tone of voice that meant Do it now. He went around the side of the house screwed the nozzle on grabbed the end of the hose pulled it around the house and waited for water to come out the end. When it did it was not in a very strong stream. “I don’t think this is going to work” Paul said to his mother. “God damn it I have to call the Fire Department” she said and went inside the house. The shed continued in its burning.</p>
29 <p>After the Fire Department put out the fire one of the men said “Your mother says you set this building on fire. You know Arson is a major offense.” “I set it on fire” Paul said. “Why?” “Because ART wants to be random, it wants to be natural, but it isn’t. Humans create ART because we can’t help but see patterns in randomness. But we feel guilty about it.” The man nodded to another man in a blue uniform. “We want the ART to feel natural, to feel random, but we can’t stop seeing the patterns” as the man in blue walked over and put a hand on Paul’s shoulder “ART is unnatural by its very nature. I took my ART and gave it back to nature” as the man led him over to a black and white car and put him inside. He was saying something about Paul’s right. “No it’s my left that was hurt” said Paul “but it’s all better now.”</p>
30 </section>
31
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33 <a href="hands.html">Hands &gt;</a>
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28 <p>He looked down at his hands idly while he was typing. They were dry and cracked in places. He thought he might start bleeding so he went inside for some lotion.</p>
29 <p>“Do we have any lotion” he asked his mother. “In the medicine cabinet” she said without looking up from the TV. He walked into the bathroom and looked at himself in the mirror. “I look strange” he said to himself “I look like a teenager.” He stared into his right eye, then his left. He saw nothing but his own reflection fish-eyed in his pupils. He opened the medicine cabinet.</p>
30 <p>Back in his Writing Shack, he started to type.</p>
31 <pre class="type"><code>What is it about hands that gives
32 them such power? It is that their
33 power is hidden in the arm. Push
34 on the inside of the wrist--the
35 hand closes. Reach under the skin
36 and pull on the outside tendons--
37 the hand opens again. Hands are
38 only machines for grasping,
39 controlled by the arm, not the
40 mind.</code></pre>
41 </section>
42
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44 <a href="toilet.html">Toilet &gt;</a>
45 <a href="hardware.html">Hardware &gt;</a>
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28 <p>His mother drove him to the Hardware Store on a Tuesday. “I’m glad to see you’ve taken my advice for once” she said. “What do you mean.” “Applying to work at the Hardware Store. I’m proud of you Paul.”</p>
29 <p>“Oh right. Sure thing.” They pulled into the parking lot. “Just be a minute” he said as he opened the car door.</p>
30 <p>He walked under the door resplendent in its King William orange and white. He saw the towering rows of shelves like mountain ridges in Hell. He strolled among the fixtures, pipes, planks, sheets, plants (Why plants? he thought), switches. He realized he didn’t know the first thing about building furniture. “I don’t know the first thing” he muttered to himself “about building furniture. I know the last thing would be a couch or chair or stool but the first thing is a mystery.” He turned around and walked straight out of the store and to his mother’s car without looking up.</p>
31 <p>“How’d it go” she asked starting the car. “Great” he said.</p>
32 </section>
33
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28 <p>I was away on vacation when I heard—<br />someone sat at my desk while I was away.<br />They took my pen, while I was taking<br />surf lessons, and wrote the sun into the sky.<br />They pre-approved the earth and the waters,<br />and all of the living things, without even<br />having the decency to text me. It was not I<br />who was behind the phrase “creeping things.”<br />When I got back, of course I was pissed,<br />but it was <a href="shipwright.html">already written</a> into the policy.<br />I’m just saying: don’t blame me for Cain<br />killing Abel. That was a murder. I’m not a cop.<br />The Tower of Babel fell on its own. The ark<br />never saw a single drop of rain. I’m <a href="problems.html">the drunk</a><br />sitting on the curb who just pissed his pants,<br />holding up a sign asking where I am.</p>
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28 <p>This book is an exploration of life, of all possible lives that could be lived. Each of the poems contained herein have been written by a different person, with his own history, culture, and emotions. True, they are all related, but no more than any of us is related through our genetics, our shared planet, or our yearnings.</p>
29 <p>Fernando Pessoa wrote poems under four different identities—he called them <em>heteronyms</em>—that were known during his lifetime, though after his death over sixty have been found and catalogued. He called them heteronyms as opposed to pseudonyms because they were much more than names he wrote under. They were truly different writing selves, concerned with different ideas and writing with different styles: Alberto Caeiro wrote pastorals; Ricardo Reis wrote more formal odes; Álvaro de Campos wrote these long, Whitman-esque pieces (one to Whitman himself); and Pessoa’s own name was used for poems that are kind of similar to all the others. It seems as though Pessoa found it inefficient to try and write everything he wanted only in his own self; rather he parceled out the different pieces and developed them into full identities, at the cost of his own: “I subsist as a kind of medium of myself, but I’m less real than the others, less substantial, less personal, and easily influenced by them all.” de Campos said of him at one point, “<a href="philosophy.html">Fernando Pessoa, strictly speaking, doesn’t exist.</a>”</p>
30 <p>It’s not just Pessoa—I, strictly speaking, don’t exist, both as the specific me that writes this now and as the concept of selfhood, the ego. Heraclitus famously said that we can’t step into the <a href="mountain.html">same river</a> twice, and the fact of the matter is that we can’t occupy the same self twice. It’s constantly changing and adapting to new stimuli from the environment, from other selves, from inside itself, and each time it forms anew into something that’s never existed before. The person I am beginning a poem is a separate being than the one I am finishing a poem, and part of it is the poem I’ve written has brought forth some other dish onto the great table that is myself.</p>
31 <p>In the same way, with each poem you read of this, you too could become a different person. Depending on which order you read them in, you could be any number of possible people. If you follow the threads I’ve laid out for you, there are so many possible selves; if you disregard those and go a different way there are quite a few more. However, at the end of the journey there is only one self that you will occupy, the others disappearing from this universe and going maybe somewhere else, maybe nowhere at all.</p>
32 <p>There is a scene in <em>The Neverending Story</em> where Bastian is trying to find his way out of the desert. He opens a door and finds himself in the Temple of a Thousand Doors, which is never seen from the outside but only once someone enters it. It is a series of rooms with six sides each and three doors: one from the room before and two choices. In life, each of these rooms is a moment, but where Bastian can choose which of only two doors to enter each time, in life there can be any number of doors and we don’t always choose which to go through—in fact, I would argue that most of the time we aren’t allowed the luxury.</p>
33 <p>What happens to those other doors, those other possibilities? Is there some other version of the self that for whatever complexities of circumstance and will chose a different door at an earlier moment? The answer to this, of course, is that we can never know for sure, though this doesn’t keep us from trying through the process of regret. We go back and try that other door in our mind, extrapolating a possible present from our own past. This is ultimately unsatisfying, not only because whatever world is imagined is not the one currently lived, but because it becomes obvious that the alternate model of reality is not complete: we can only extrapolate from the original room, absolutely without knowledge of any subsequent possible choices. This causes a deep disappointment, a frustration with the inability to know all possible timelines (coupled with the insecurity that this may not be the best of all possible worlds) that we feel as regret.</p>
34 <p>In this way, every moment we live is an <a href="words-meaning.html">elegy</a> to every possible future that might have stemmed from it. Annie Dillard states this in a biological manner when she says in <em>Pilgrim at Tinker Creek</em>, “Every glistening egg is a memento mori.” Nature is inefficient—it spends a hundred lifetimes to get one that barely works. The fossil record is littered with the failed experiments of evolution, many of which failed due only to blind chance: an asteroid, a shift in weather patterns, an inefficient copulation method. Each living person today has twenty dead standing behind him, and that only counts the people that actually lived. How many missed opportunities stand behind any of us?</p>
35 <p>The real problem with all of this is that time is only additive. There’s no way to dial it back and start over, with new choices or new environments. Even when given the chance to do something again, we do it <em>again</em>, with the reality given by our previous action. Thus we are constantly creating and being created by the world. The self is never the same from one moment to the next.</p>
36 <p>A poem is like a snapshot of a self. If it’s any good, it captures the emotional core of the self at the time of writing for communication with future selves, either within the same person or outside of it. Thus revision is possible, and the new poem created will be yet another snapshot of the future self as changed by the original poem. The page becomes a window into the past, a particular past as experienced by one self. The poem is a remembering of a self that no longer exists, in other words, an elegy.</p>
37 <p>A snapshot doesn’t capture the entire subject, however. It leaves out the background as it’s obscured by foreground objects; it fails to include anything that isn’t contained in its finite frame. In order to build a working definition of identity, we must include all possible selves over all possible timelines, combined into one person: identity is the combined effect of all possible selves over time. A poem leaves much of this out: it is the one person standing in front of twenty ghosts.</p>
38 <p>A poem is the place where the selves of the reader and the speaker meet, in their respective times and places. In this way a poem is outside of time or place, because it changes its location each time it’s read. Each time it’s two different people meeting. The problem with a poem is that it’s such a small window—if we met in real life the way we met in poems, we would see nothing of anyone else but a square the size of a postage stamp. It has been argued this is the way we see time and ourselves in it, as well: Vonnegut uses the metaphor of a subject strapped to a railroad car moving at a set pace, with a six-foot-long metal tube placed in front of the subject’s eye; the landscape in the distance is time, and what we see is the only way in which we interact with it. It’s the same with a poem and the self: we can only see and interact with a small kernel. This is why it’s possible to write more than one poem.</p>
39 <p>Due to this kernel nature of poetry, a good poem should focus itself to extract as much meaning as possible from that one kernel of identity to which it has access. It should be an atom of selfhood, irreducible and resistant to paraphrase, because it tries to somehow echo the large unsayable part of identity outside the frame of the self. It is the <a href="arspoetica.html">kernel</a> that contains a universe, or that speaks around one that’s hidden; if it’s a successful poem then it makes the smallest circuit possible. This is why the commentary on poems is so voluminous: a poem is tightly packed meaning that commentators try to unpack to get at that universality inside it. A fortress of dialectic is constructed that ultimately obstructs the meaning behind the poem; it becomes the foreground in the photograph that disallows us to view the horizon beyond it.</p>
40 <p>With this in mind, I collect these poems that were written over a period of four years into this book. Where I can, I insert cross-references (like the one above, in the margin) to other pieces in the text where I think the two resonate in some way. You can read this book in any way you’d like: you can go front-to-back, or back-to-front, or you can follow the arrows around, or you can work out a complex mathematical formula with Merseinne primes and logarithms and the 2000 Census information, or you can go completely randomly through like a magazine, or at least the way I flip through magazines. I think writing is a communication of the self, and I think this is the best way to communicate mine in all its multiversity.</p>
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28 <p><em>It’s all jokes</em> Paul wrote in what he was now calling his Hymnal. He had been writing non-stop all day, because he didn’t count pee- or cigarette- breaks. <em>All art is an inside joke. The symbology involved must be</em>—and here he put down his pen and held his head in his hands. He could never think of the word—he said often that he had no words. He opened to a new page in his Hymnal. On the top of it was written in bold script <em><strong>HYMN 386: JOKES</strong></em>.</p>
29 <p>Paul scowled. Who had written in his Hymnal? he wondered. He said it out loud a moment after: “Who has written in my Hymnal?” He realized he was alone in his Writing Shack, which was really a shed in the back of his mother’s garden. He wondered why he had to say his thoughts before they became real to him (if this was a habit or an inborn trait). He realized simultaneously that</p>
30 <ol type="a">
31 <li>he could ask someone and</li>
32 <li>that this was something he wondered every time he spoke his thoughts out loud.</li>
33 </ol>
34 <p>He resolved to put the issue to rest by asking someone.</p>
35 </section>
36
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28 <p>I am a great pillar of <a href="deathstrumpet.html">white smoke</a>.<br />I am Lot’s nameless wife encased in salt.<br />I am the wound on Christ’s back as he moans<br />with the pounding of a hammer on his wrist.<br />I am the nail that holds my house together.<br />It is a strong house, built on a good foundation.<br />In the winter, it is warm and crawling things<br />cannot get in. This house will never burn down.<br />It is the house that I built, with my body<br />and with my strength. I am the only one who lives<br />here. I am both father and mother to a race<br />of dust motes that worship me as a god. I have<br />monuments built daily in my honor in dark<br />corners around the house. I destroy all of them<br />before I go to bed, but in the morning<br />there are still more. I don’t think I know<br />where all of them are. I <a href="howithappened.html">don’t think</a> I can get<br />to all of them anymore. There are too many.</p>
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28 <p>He wrote <em><strong>JOKES</strong></em> on the top of a page in his notebook. He had run out of notecards and hadn’t been able to convince his mother to go to the Office Supply Store for him. He left a space underneath it and wrote.</p>
29 <p><em>“Tell us a joke” the listeners say to the clown. They have gather together in the clearing because they have heard he would be there, and they have heard he knew very funny jokes that were also true. “Tell us a joke that is true” they say.</em></p>
30 <p><em>The clown does not move from the stump. He doesn’t move at all. The listeners watch, gap-mouthed, as a butterfly lands on his hat. A breeze ruffles his coat and the butterfly flies away. Hours pass. The listeners grow impatient. Some begin yelling insults at the clown. Eventually, they begin to walk away into the woods.</em></p>
31 <p><em>The moon rises on the clearing. The only people left are the clown and a listener, the last listener. She has been waiting for the joke a long time. The clown opens his mouth and she leans in closer to hear. He closes it as a tear falls onto his coat, then another. He opens his mouth again in a sob. The listener walks over to him and puts a hand on his shoulder.</em></p>
32 <p><em>“I’m sorry” says the clown. “Sorry for what” she asks. “I don’t know. I don’t know any jokes.” He disappears. The last listener sits on the log and looks at the sky. There are no stars.</em></p>
33 </section>
34
35 <nav>
36 <a href="stump.html">Stump &gt;</a>
37 <a href="leaf.html">Leaf &gt;</a>
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39
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28 <p>He shrugged the wood off his shoulder, letting it fall with a clog onto the earth floor of his Writing Shack. He exhaled looking out of the window. He hoped to see a bird fly by, maybe a blue jay or raven. No bird did. He inhaled. He exhaled again in a way that could only be classified as a sigh. He sat down at his writing desk. He began shuffling through what he’d written, trying to find some sort of pattern.</p>
29 <p>“<em>Each piece of paper—each leaf—</em>” at this he smiled— “<em>is like a tree in the forest.</em>” He was writing as he thought aloud. “<em>I, as the artist, as the <strong>writer</strong>, must select which to use, chop down those trees, bring them back to my shed and</em>—and—” he frowned as he realized the only end to this metaphor was fire. He ran his fingers through his hair in a self-soothing gesture.</p>
30 <p>“I need to build some furniture” he thought.</p>
31 </section>
32
33 <nav>
34 <a href="writing.html">Writing &gt;</a>
35 <a href="leg.html">Leg &gt;</a>
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37
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23 <h1 class="title">Leg</h1>
24
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26
27 <section class="prose">
28 <p>His first chair was a stool. It was an uneven wobbly stool that would not support even forty pounds. “So my first chair is a broken stool” he said after nearly breaking his tailbone on the dirt floor. “Maybe I should start again but this time only with legs.” He began again but this time only with legs. He built one leg, which means he cut a straight piece of wood down to four feet in length, whittled the bark off, and sanded it down smooth in what he was now calling his Woodworking Shack. He typed up a note on how to make chair legs.</p>
29 <pre class="type"><code>MAKING CHAIR LEGS
30
31 1. get longish piece of wood
32 2. cut it to length (4 feet I&#39;d
33 recommend)
34 3. whittle off bark
35 4. sand smooth the leg</code></pre>
36 <p>After he tried remembered tried standing the leg up, failing, and after much thought realizing that the ends needed to be flat, he typed one more line on his notecard:</p>
37 <pre><code>5. make ends flat</code></pre>
38 <p>He had no tools with which to flatten the ends of his leg.</p>
39 </section>
40
41 <nav>
42 <a href="planks.html">Planks &gt;</a>
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diff --git a/likingthings.html b/likingthings.html new file mode 100644 index 0000000..a5aa61c --- /dev/null +++ b/likingthings.html
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23 <h1 class="title">Liking Things</h1>
24
25 </header>
26
27 <section class="prose">
28 <p>The definition of happiness is <em>doing stuff that you really like</em>. That stuff can be eating soup, going to the bathroom, walking the dog, playing Dungeons and Dragons; whatever keeps your mind off the fact that you’re so goddamn unhappy all the time. That, incidentally, is the definition of like: <em>that feeling you get when you forget how miserable you are for just a little bit</em>. Thus people like doing stuff they like all the time, as often as possible; because if they remember how horrible they really feel at not having a background to put themselves against, they will want to hurt themselves and those around them.</p>
29 <p>The funny thing is that something we people really like to do is hurt ourselves and those around us. We do this by thinking other people are more unhappy than we are. We convince themselves that we are truly happy, ecstatic even, while they merely plod around life half-heartedly, or, if they’re lucky, incorrectly. We take it upon ourselves (seeing as we are so happy, and can spare a little bit of happiness) to help them become happy as well. We fail to realize that the people will probably not appreciate our thinking that we’re better than they are somehow, for that is what we do even if we don’t mean it. We forget that we are also unhappy, and that we are just doing things we like in order to cheer ourselves up a little bit, which really means that this cheering is working; but there is such a thing as working too well. So in a sense what I’m doing here is cheering myself up by reminding you that you are unhappy; I’m trying to keep you honest in your unhappiness; and I admit this is usually called a dick move.</p>
30 <p>In fact, the best way to overcome happy-hungering (this is the term as I dub it) is commit as many dick moves as possible, to keep people remembering that unhappiness abounds. If you see someone smiling like a little dog who knows it’s about to get pet or get a treat or go to the vet to donate doggy sperm, smile back. Grin toothily (a little too toothily for a little too long). Their smile will start to fade if you’re doing it right. Saunter to them, slide as if you’re an Olympic quality ice-skater, as if you’re a really good bowler who knows he’s playing against twelve year olds and’ll win by a hundred. Get really close. Far too close for what most people would call comfort. And remind them of how awful life can be: “I really like your <a href="theoceanoverflowswithcamels.html">shirt</a>—really only children chained to looms can get that tight of a weave,” you can say, or “You’re not really going to recycle that coffee cup, are you?” They will probably get angry, but that’s what’s supposed to happen. By making dick moves, you can overcome what may be the biggest evil on this earth: Happy-Hungering.</p>
31 </section>
32
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diff --git a/lovesong.html b/lovesong.html new file mode 100644 index 0000000..1c62bd2 --- /dev/null +++ b/lovesong.html
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27 <section class="prose">
28 <p>Walking along in the dark is a good way to begin a song. Walking home in the dark after a long day chasing criminals is another. Running away from an imagined evil is no way to begin a story.</p>
29 <p>I am telling you this because you wanted to know what it’s like to tell something so beautiful everyone will cry. I am telling you because I want you to know what it is to keep everything inside of you. I am telling you.</p>
30 <p>Can you see? Can you see into me and reach in your hand and pull me inside out, like an <a href="ronaldmcdonald.html">old shirt</a>? Will you wear me until I unravel on your shoulders, will you cut me apart and use my skin to clean up the cola you spill on the floor when you’re drunk?</p>
31 <p>I want you to know that I want you to know. Do you want me? To know is to know. I, you want we. We want. That is why we’re here. To want is to be is to want and I want you. Do you also? Check yes or no.</p>
32 <p>There is a way to end every story, <a href="swansong.html">every song</a>. Every criminal must be caught. Even those who cry dry their tears. I cannot tell you all I want because I want to tell you everything. There is no art because there is no mirror big enough. We wake up every day. Sometimes we sleep.</p>
33 </section>
34
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27 <section class="prose">
28 <p><em>THIS MAN REFUSED TO OPEN HIS EYES</em></p>
29 <p>Paul read this on an old mugshot in the library. He had taken the bus into town to check out a few books on woodworking and got distracted by the True Crime section. He found this mugshot in a book titled <em>Crooks like Us</em> that was published in Sydney. He liked how cities were named after women, or how women were named after cities, whichever was true.</p>
30 <p>The man in the picture’s eyes were tightly shut, as though he’d just come into the brightness of day after being dark inside for a long time. His head was tilted up and slightly to the right. He was wearing a short light tie with hash marks, and a pinstripe suit. Paul wished the photograph was in color. He was standing in front of a plain brown wall covered in fabric.</p>
31 <p>The man’s eyes were not so tightly shut as Paul first thought. His eyebrows lifted away from the eyes, giving the man a bemused look. His mouth was slightly opened in what seemed to Paul like a grin. This was accentuated by the man’s ears, which were large. Paul wasn’t sure why the ears made the man look happier. He wondered what crime he had committed.</p>
32 <p>Above the man’s head was written <em>T. BEDE.22.11.28 / 203 A</em>. <em>THIS MAN REFUSED TO OPEN HIS EYES</em> was written over his suit, directly below his ribcage.</p>
33 </section>
34
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36 <a href="snow.html">Snow &gt;</a>
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diff --git a/moongone.html b/moongone.html new file mode 100644 index 0000000..19efb16 --- /dev/null +++ b/moongone.html
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28 <p>The moon is gone and in its place a mirror. Looking at the night sky now yields nothing but the viewer’s own face as viewed from a million miles, surrounded by the landscape he is only vaguely aware of being surrounded by. He believes that he is <a href="apollo11.html">alone</a>, surrounded by desert and mountain, but behind him—he now sees it—someone is sneaking up on him. He spins around fast, but no one is there on <a href="serengeti.html">Earth</a>. He looks back up and they are yet closer in the night sky. Again he looks over his shoulder but there is nothing, not even a desert mouse. As he looks up again he realizes it’s a cloud above him, which due to optics has looked like someone else. The cloud blocks out the moon which is now a mirror, and the viewer is completely alone.</p>
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23 <h1 class="title">The mountain</h1>
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27 <section class="verse">
28 <p>The other side of this mountain<br />is not the mountain. This side<br />is honey-golden, sticky-sweet,<br />full of phone conversations with mother.<br />The other side is a bell,<br />ringing in the church-steeple<br />the day mother died.</p>
29 <p>The other side of the mountain<br /><a href="apollo11.html">is not a mountain. It is a dark</a><br />valley crossed by a river.<br />There is a ferry at the bottom.</p>
30 <p>This mountain is not a mountain.<br />I walked to the top, but it turned<br />and was only a shelf halfway up.<br />I felt like an unused Bible<br />sitting on a <a href="and.html">dusty pew</a>.</p>
31 <p>A hawk soars over the mountain.<br />She is looking for home.</p>
32 </section>
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diff --git a/movingsideways.html b/movingsideways.html new file mode 100644 index 0000000..9df007f --- /dev/null +++ b/movingsideways.html
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23 <h1 class="title">Moving Sideways</h1>
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25 </header>
26
27 <section class="prose">
28 <p>A dog moving sideways is sick; a man moving sideways is drunk. Thus if you want to be mindful of the movings of the universe sideways, become either drunk or sick. By doing this you remove yourself from the equation, and are able to observe, without being observed, the universe as it dances sideways drunkenly.</p>
29 <p>Shit wait. The problem is not that by observing you are observed (although quantum mechanics may disagree<a href="#fn1" class="footnoteRef" id="fnref1"><sup>1</sup></a>), because obviously dogs don’t know we’re observing them when we watch them through cameras in their little yard while they play and eat and poop—who poops knowingly on camera? The problem is <em>the actual act of observing that distorts the world into what we want it to be</em>.</p>
30 <p>What I want to know is this: Why is this necessarily a problem? The dog is made, by mankind, to frolic and poop and sniff and growl and dig. Why cannot the man be made to observe the world incorrectly around him, and worry about it? Men have always wandered about the earth; does it not make sense that also they should wonder in their minds what makes it all work?<a href="#fn2" class="footnoteRef" id="fnref2"><sup>2</sup></a> In fact this is the very center of the creative being: the ability to move sideways, to dance with reality and judge it as it judges you, much like teenagers at the junior prom.</p>
31 <p>Of course, reality doesn’t judge us back. But that doesn’t mean that it doesn’t! If you think it’s judging you, then <em>observe in your surroundings your own insecurities</em>. It is obvious that this way of doing things is far from vogue; usually projecting <a href="telemarketer.html">inner pain</a> onto the outer world is classified as pathology. However, this is because it is assumed that the outer world is <em>on its own terms</em>, which it obviously isn’t, as far as we know. It follows that as <a href="philosophy.html">there is no backdrop</a> against which to judge our quirks, the quirks must not exist. Thus all is right with the world.</p>
32 <section class="footnotes">
33 <hr />
34 <ol>
35 <li id="fn1"><p>Quantum mechanics, as is well known, are the most hornery and least agreeable of all mechanics. The cost to get one quantum serviced is usually at least eight times more expensive than the cost of an average automobile tune-up, for reasons not clearly known. The quantum mechanics themselves claim it’s the smallness of their work that justifies the price, but it doesn’t really look like they’re doing anything, and besides, my quantum always seems to break again within six months—maybe I’m just driving it too hard.<a href="#fnref1">↩</a></p></li>
36 <li id="fn2"><p>I attempted to strike this terrible pun from the account, but Hezekiah demanded I keep it if he were to continue the relation of his prophecy-slash-advice column<a href="#fnref2">↩</a></p></li>
37 </ol>
38 </section>
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40
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28 <p>Paul began typing on notecards. Somehow this felt right to his sensibilities. It was difficult to get the little cards into the typewriter. It was a pain to readjust the typewriter for regular paper when he wasn’t writing. He started typing everything on those little notecards: grocery lists, letters to his grandmother, even reports for work (which is what got him in trouble).</p>
29 <p>But this was all later. For now he was writing his ideas, “notes” he now called them, something for him to combine later into something. He didn’t like to think about it. On this particular cold winter morning, he wrote</p>
30 <pre class="type"><code>Woke up from a dream I was famous.
31 One of the more famous people in
32 fact. I had written something
33 everyone could relate to and at
34 the same time proved my parents
35 wrong. Because I made a lot of
36 money. Or not a lot, but enough
37 and more than they thought I
38 would. It was a good day.
39 Woke up this morning and I was
40 still cold. Still Paul. Still not
41 good at furniture.</code></pre>
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26
27 <section class="verse">
28 <p>I think that I could write formal poems<br />exclusively, or at least inclusive<br />with all the other stuff I write<br />I guess. Of course, I’ve already written<br />a few, this one included, though “formal”<br />is maybe a stretch. Is blank verse a form?<br />What is form anyway? I picture old<br />women counting <a href="roughgloves.html">stitches on their knitting</a>,<br />keeping iambs next to iambs in lines<br />as straight and sure as arrows. But my sock<br />is lumpy, poorly made: it’s beginning<br />to unravel. Stresses don’t line up. Syl-<br />lables forced to fit like <a href="ronaldmcdonald.html">McNugget</a> molds.<br />That cliché on the arrow? I’m aware.<br />My prepositions too—God, where’s it stop?<br />The answer: never. I will never stop<br />writing poems, or hating what I write.</p>
29 </section>
30
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26
27 <section class="prose">
28 <p>What did he do when he was in the woods? Where did he go? Was there always one spot, one clearing deep within the heart of them, that he would visit? Did he talk to the trees or only to himself? When he chopped down trees, did he leave them there to rot in the quiet or did he drag them out of the woods, behind his Shack, and dismember them? Did he use any for firewood, or did the pieces rot behind his Shack, forgotten? When was the last time he built any furniture? Did he get any better at building it or did he just quit at some point, let the desire to create fall behind him like a forgotten felled tree?</p>
29 <p>A tree fell in the forest: did it make a noise? Paul typed his thoughts on cards, or wrote them in a book: did anyone read it? If anyone did, was his life changed? For the better or the worse? Did he glance at the mess in the top drawer of his Writing Desk as he cleaned the Shack out long after Paul had quit using it? Did he put tools in there or leave it empty? What did he do with the desk? Did he add it to the pile of rotting wood out back, or did he chop it up for a bonfire with friends, or a cozy fire with his wife and children, or did he take it to the dump three miles away to rot there? Are these all the options?</p>
30 <p>Did Paul ever think about any of this? Walking in the woods one afternoon after becoming frustrated with his writing, did he sit on a stump and cry? Did he wonder whether he should have made other choices? Did he consider quitting smoking?</p>
31 </section>
32
33 <nav>
34 <a href="stagnant.html">Stagnant &gt;</a>
35 <a href="paul.html">Paul &gt;</a>
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37
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23 <h1 class="title">Paul</h1>
24
25 </header>
26
27 <section class="prose">
28 <pre class="type"><code>CONTENTS OF THE SHED
29
30 - typewriter
31 - writing desk
32 - notecards (top drawer of desk)
33 - pen (fountain)
34 - inkpot (empty)
35 - wood (a lot, more out back)
36 - bare lightbulb
37 - candle
38 - wooden shelf with tools:
39 - claw hammer
40 - screwdriver
41 - prybar
42 - 2x wrench (different
43 kinds)
44 - tiller machine
45 - push lawnmower
46 - hatchet
47 - axe</code></pre>
48 <p>He typed the list in the typewriter and looked around some more. He wanted to make sure he didn’t miss anything. Finally it hit him and he smiled. He typed one more line, stood up, and went out of the shed.</p>
49 <pre class="type"><code>- Paul Bunyon</code></pre>
50 <p>He got some kerosene from under the house, poured it around the base of the shed, lit a cigarette. He smoked half of it and threw it down to start the fire.</p>
51 </section>
52
53 <nav>
54 <a href="fire.html">Fire &gt;</a>
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diff --git a/philosophy.html b/philosophy.html new file mode 100644 index 0000000..a5c9f9b --- /dev/null +++ b/philosophy.html
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23 <h1 class="title">Philosophy</h1>
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26
27 <section class="prose">
28 <p>Importance is important. But meaning is meaningful. Here we are at the crux of the matter, for both meaning and importance are also human-formed. So it would seem that nothing is important or meaningful, if importance and meaning are of themselves only products of the fallible human intellect. But here is the great secret: <em>so is the fallibility of the human intellect a mere product of the fallible human intellect.</em> The question here arises: Is anything real, and not a mere invention of a mistaken human mind? By real of course I mean “that which is <em>on its own terms</em>,” that is, without any <a href="i-am.html">modification</a> on the part of mankind by observing it. But such a thing is impossible to be known, for if it be known it has certainly been observed by someone, and so it is not on its own terms but on the terms of the observer. So it cannot be known if anything exists on its own terms, for it exists on its own terms we certainly will not know anything about it.</p>
29 <p>By this it is possible to see that nothing is knowable without the mediating factor of our mind fucking up the “<a href="spittle.html">raw</a>,” the “real” world. But by this time it would seem that this chapter is far far too philosophical, not to mention pretentious, so I must try again.</p>
30 </section>
31
32 <nav>
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diff --git a/phone.html b/phone.html new file mode 100644 index 0000000..739b51f --- /dev/null +++ b/phone.html
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23 <h1 class="title">Phone</h1>
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26
27 <section class="prose">
28 <p>“Hello Paul this is Jill Jill Noe remember me” the voice on the phone was a woman’s. He nodded into the receiver. “Hello” Jill asked again “hello?” Paul remembered that phones work by talking and said “Hello Jill.”</p>
29 <p>“Do you remember me” she asked “we were in school together? How have you been?” “Pretty well” said Paul “I’ve been writing and making furniture.” “Oh that’s nice” said the woman’s voice tinny in the phone “Listen I ran into your mother at the Supermarket the other day and she said you need a job. You still need one?” Paul had to tell the truth. His mother was watching him out of the corner of her eye as she was playing dominoes at the kitchen table. “Yes” he said sighing “Although woodworking takes up much of my time.”</p>
30 <p>“OK” she laughed uncomortably “I actually have something you could do for me if you think you can get away from woodworking a bit. It’s just data entry really basic stuff entry-level.” “What’s it pay” he asked. “Minimum but there is room for movement.” “OK” he said. “Start on Monday okay?” “Sure” he said “bye” and the tin voice in the phone said “Goodbye Paul see you” by the time he put it back on the hook.</p>
31 <p>“Who was that” asked his mother. “Jill Noe” he said. “Oh her was she calling about a job for you?” “Yes starts Monday” he said. She smiled behind her glasses reflecting dominoes.</p>
32 </section>
33
34 <nav>
35 <a href="tapestry.html">Tapestry &gt;</a>
36 <a href="planks.html">Planks &gt;</a>
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diff --git a/planks.html b/planks.html new file mode 100644 index 0000000..5dad9a2 --- /dev/null +++ b/planks.html
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23 <h1 class="title">Planks</h1>
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25 </header>
26
27 <section class="prose">
28 <pre class="type"><code>EVERYTHING CHANGES OR EVERYTHING
29 STAYS THE SAME</code></pre>
30 <p>This sat alone on a blank notecard in Paul’s typewriter. He stared at it, sipping at his too-hot coffee. This made sense to him.</p>
31 <p>He looked at the spot on the wall where he wanted a window to be, at the rough planks above his desk as they were lit by the bare hanging lightbulb. He sipped his coffee again. It was still too hot. His Woodworking Shack was becoming full of wood that was not furniture. He feared it would never become so.</p>
32 <p>He threw open the door to the snow and the ground below it. He reached for his axe on the wall. He reconsidered. He took a few tentative steps onto the blankness on his own. He wasn’t cold, not yet. He walked into the forest. The snow crunched under his feet and did not echo.</p>
33 </section>
34
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diff --git a/prelude.html b/prelude.html new file mode 100644 index 0000000..0f12e89 --- /dev/null +++ b/prelude.html
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23 <h1 class="title">Prelude</h1>
24
25 </header>
26
27 <section class="prose">
28 <p>Of course, there is a God. Of course, there is no God. Of course, what’s really important is that these aren’t important. No, they are; but not really important. All that’s important is the relative importance of non-important things. Shit. Never mind; let’s start over.</p>
29 </section>
30
31 <nav>
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27 <section class="prose">
28 <p>The problem with people is this: we cannot be happy. No matter how hard or easy we try, it is not to be. It seems sometimes that, just as the dog was made for jumping in mud and sniffing out foxholes and having a good time all around, man was made for sadness, loneliness and heartache.</p>
29 <p>Being the observant and judgmental people they are, people have for a long time tried to figure out why they aren’t happy. Some say it’s because we’re obviously doing something wrong. Some say it’s because we think too much. Some insist that it’s because other people have more stuff than we do. These people don’t have a clue any more than any of the rest of us. At least I don’t think they do, and that’s good enough for me.<a href="#fn1" class="footnoteRef" id="fnref1"><sup>1</sup></a> I think that the reason why people are unhappy (and this is a personal opinion) is that they realize on some level (for some it’s a pretty shallow level, others it’s way down there next to their love for women’s stockings<a href="#fn2" class="footnoteRef" id="fnref2"><sup>2</sup></a>) that there is no background to put themselves against, no “<a href="ronaldmcdonald.html">big picture</a>” to get painted into. This makes sense, because on one level, the level of everyday life, the level of <em>observation</em>, there is always a background—look in a pair of binoculars sometime. But on another level, that of … shit, wait. There are no other levels.<a href="#fn3" class="footnoteRef" id="fnref3"><sup>3</sup></a></p>
30 <p>What’s more, people try to explain how to get happy again (although it’s doubtful they were ever happy in the first place—people are very good at fooling). Some say standing or [sitting in a building][] with a lot of other unhappy people helps. Some say that you can’t stop there; you also need to sing with those other unhappy people about how unhappy you are, and how you wish someone would come along and help you out, I guess by giving you money or something. I say all you really need to be happy is a good stiff drink.<a href="#fn4" class="footnoteRef" id="fnref4"><sup>4</sup></a></p>
31 <p>In any case, people have for some reason or another, and to some end or another, always been unhappy. And people have always tried to figure out ways to be less unhappy—one of the most important things to people everywhere is called “the pursuit of happiness.” I think that calling it a pursuit makes people feel more like dogs, who are the most happy beings most people can think of. By pursuing happiness, they’re like a dog pursuing a possum or a bone on a fishing rod: two activities that sound like a lot of fun to most people. I think most people wish they were dogs.</p>
32 <section class="footnotes">
33 <hr />
34 <ol>
35 <li id="fn1"><p>This seems to be an attempt on Hezzy’s part to set an example for mankind. It should be noted that he is an alcoholic, and not in any shape to be an example to anyone.<a href="#fnref1">↩</a></p></li>
36 <li id="fn2"><p>It is thought that only the leg coverings of the female sex are here referenced<a href="#fnref2">↩</a></p></li>
37 <li id="fn3"><p>You have hereby found the super special secret cheat code room. Yes, this is just like Super Mario Brothers—you can skip right to the end. Go and face the final boss already!<a href="#fnref3">↩</a></p></li>
38 <li id="fn4"><p>See footnote, above<a href="#fnref4">↩</a></p></li>
39 </ol>
40 </section>
41 </section>
42
43 <nav>
44 </nav>
45
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47</html>
diff --git a/proverbs.html b/proverbs.html new file mode 100644 index 0000000..f3692aa --- /dev/null +++ b/proverbs.html
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26
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28 <p><a href="words-meaning.html">Nothing matters; everything is sacred. Everything matters; nothing is sacred</a>.<a href="#fn1" class="footnoteRef" id="fnref1"><sup>1</sup></a> This is the only way we can move forward: by moving sideways. Life is a great big rugby game, and the entire field has to be run for a goal. The fact that the beginning two verses of this chapter have the same number of characters proves that they are a tautological pair, that is, they <em>complete each other</em>. Sometimes life seems like a dog wagging its tail, smiling up at you and wanting you to love it, just wanting that, simple simple love, oblivious to the fact that it just ran through your immaculately groomed flower garden and tracked all the mud in onto your freshly steamed carpet. Life is not life in a suburb. <a href="lovesong.html">There are no rosebushes, groomed never. There is no carpet, steamed at any time.</a> The dog looks at you wanting you to love it. It wants to know that you know that it’s there. <em>It wants to be observed</em>.[^2]</p>
29 <section class="footnotes">
30 <hr />
31 <ol>
32 <li id="fn1"><p>Thank you Tom Stoppard. Ha ha ho ho and hee hee.<a href="#fnref1">↩</a></p></li>
33 </ol>
34 </section>
35 </section>
36
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28 <p>When he finally got back to work he was surprised they threw him a party. <em><strong>WELCOME BACK PAUL!</strong></em> was written on a big banner across the back wall. Someone had ordered a confectioner’s-sugar cake with frosting flowers on the corners. It said the same thing as the banner. “Welcome back, Paul” said Jill as he was at the punch bowl. The cup was on the table as he ladled punch in with his right hand. His left was wrapped in gauze.</p>
29 <p>“Let me help you with that” said Jill. Paul had a strange feeling this had happened before. She took the ladle and their hands touched. She picked the cup up in her right hand and used her left to lift the spoon. “You know” she said “we were worried about you. When Jerry heard about your hand he said ‘There goes one of our best data entry men.’” “I still can’t really move my left hand” said Paul. “That’s alright you can take your time with the entry.” “I’m sorry.”</p>
30 <p>“Sorry for what” she looked at his eyes. He imagined her seeing fisheye versions of herself in them. “I don’t know” he said because it was true. “It’s alright anyway” she said and placed the full punch cup in his right hand.</p>
31 </section>
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28 <p>Okay, so as we said in <a href="prelude.html">the Prelude</a>, there either is or isn’t a God. This has been one of the main past times of humanity, ever since … since the first man (or woman) climbed out of whatever slime or swamp he thumbed his way out of. What humanity has failed to realize is that an incredibly plausible third, and heretofore unknown, hypothesis also exists: There is a dog.</p>
29 <p>In fact, there are many dogs, and not only that. There are also many types of dogs; these are called breeds, and each breed was created by man in order to fulfill some use that man thought he needed. Some dogs are for chasing birds, and some are for chasing badgers. Some are for laying in your lap and being petted all day. Some dogs don’t seem to be really for anything, besides being fucking stupid and chewing up your one-of-a-kind collectible individually-numbered King Kong figurine from the Peter Jackson film. But the important thing is, (and here we go with important things again) all dogs have been bred by people for performing some certain function that we think is important.</p>
30 <p>Note: <em>Just because we think it’s important doesn’t mean it is important.</em> But it might as well be, because what we as humans think is important is important. But be careful! just because something’s important doesn’t mean it means anything, or that it actually makes anything happen. Even though just because something makes something else happen doesn’t mean it’s important. <a href="feedingtheraven.html">Shit</a>. Let me start again.</p>
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28 <p>“Do you have to say your thoughts out loud for them to mean anything” Paul asked Jill on his first coffee break at work. It was in the city and his mother told him she wouldn’t drive him so he’d had to take the bus. Number 3 he thought it was – he couldn’t quite remember. Jill said “Sorry what?” Paul realized that she hadn’t really noticed him there in the break room as he was hunched behind the refrigerator a little and she was busy pouring coffee and exactly two tablespoons of both milk and sugar into her mug before she put the coffee in. He decided to repeat the question.</p>
29 <p>“How do you think” he asked. “Like everyone else I guess” she said “I have a thought and if it’s important I write it down.” “Do you have to say them out loud for them to make sense?” “Are you asking if I talk to myself?” A pause. “I guess so” he said looking down. He had a feeling this was a bad thing. “Sometimes” she said and walked out of the break room. She didn’t understand the importance of his question. She popped her head back in a moment later and his heart leaped in his chest.</p>
30 <p>“How’s your first day going so far” she asked. “Can you understand everything okay?” “Yes” he said “you were right it’s pretty basic.” “Good” she said. “Paul?” “Yes.” “Do you have to say all of your thoughts out loud to remember them?” He shook his head.</p>
31 <p>Only all of the time, Paul thought to himself but didn’t speak.</p>
32 </section>
33
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36 <a href="reports.html">Reports &gt;</a>
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28 <p>“Paul, you can’t turn in your reports on four-by-six notecards” Jill told him after he handed her his reports, typed carefully on twelve four-by-six notecards. He had spent the weekend</p>
29 <ol type="1">
30 <li>going to the Office Supply Store to buy notecards and typewriter ribbon (he found it surprisingly easily) after his first payday</li>
31 <li>replacing the ribbon in his typewriter (this took approximately half an hour, because he had to figure it all out on his own)</li>
32 <li>opening the package of notecards (this took approximately four seconds, although he still had to figure out how to do it on his own. It was just easier)</li>
33 <li>carefully typing the reports he’d handwritten on letter paper onto the notecards (he made many mistakes and threw away many notecards, though later he used them for kindling)</li>
34 </ol>
35 <p>so understandably he was upset. He told Jill all the work he’d gone to to type those notecard reports for her, for the company. She shook her head. “Paul, you don’t have to do all that work at home. Just type it up on the computers here, that’s all you need to do. Thanks for the work though.” He nodded as she threw the notecards into the trashcan and left his cubicle.</p>
36 </section>
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diff --git a/ronaldmcdonald.html b/ronaldmcdonald.html new file mode 100644 index 0000000..549f662 --- /dev/null +++ b/ronaldmcdonald.html
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27 <section class="verse">
28 <p>When Ronald McDonald takes off his <a href="theoceanoverflowswithcamels.html">striped shirt</a>,<br />his coveralls, his painted face: when he no longer looks<br />like anyone or anything special, sitting next to women</p>
29 <p>in bars or standing in the aisle at the grocery,<br />is he no longer Ronald? Is he no longer happy to kick<br />a soccer ball around with the kids in the park,</p>
30 <p>is he suddenly unable to enjoy the french fries<br />he gets for his fifty percent off? I’d like to think<br />that he takes Ronald off like a shirt, hangs him</p>
31 <p>in a closet where he breathes darkly in the musk.<br />I’d like to believe that we are able to slough off selves<br />like old skin and still retain some base self.</p>
32 <p>Of course we all know this is not what happens.<br />The Ronald leering at women drunkenly is the same who<br />the next day kicks at a ball the size of a head.</p>
33 <p>He is the same that hugs his children at night,<br />who has sex with his wife on the weekends when they’re<br />not so tired to make it work, who smiles holding</p>
34 <p>a basket of fries in front of a field. He cannot<br />take off the facepaint or the <a href="roughgloves.html">yellow gloves</a>. They are<br />stuck to him like so many feathers with the tar</p>
35 <p>of his everyday associations. His plight is that<br />of everyone’s—we are what we do who we are.</p>
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28 <p>I lost my hands &amp; knit replacement ones<br />from spiders’ threads, stronger than steel but soft<br />as lambs’ wool. Catching as they do on nails<br />&amp; your collarbone, you don’t seem to like<br />their rough warm presence on your <a href="feedingtheraven.html">cheek or thigh</a>.<br />I’ve asked you if you minded, you’ve said no<br />(your face a table laid with burnt meat, bread<br />so stale it could <a href="weplayedthosegamestoo.html">break a hand</a>). Remember<br />your senile mother’s face above that table?<br />I’d say she got the meaning of that look.<br />You’d rather not be touched by these rough gloves,<br />the only way I have to knit a love<br />against whatever winters we may enter<br />like a silkworm in a spider’s blackened <a href="serengeti.html">maw</a>.</p>
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28 <p>He chopped down a sapling pine tree and looked at his watch. From first chop to fall it had taken him eight minutes and something like twenty seconds. Maybe a little change. He leaned against another tree and fished in his pocket for a cigarette. He lifted it out of its box and fished in his other pocket for his lighter, failing to find it. He searched his other pockets. He came to the realization that he had forgotten it in his Shack (in confusion over his True Vocation, he’d resorted to calling it simply the Shack until he could figure it out). He sighed and put his hands in his pockets.</p>
29 <p>“I wonder if trees are protective of their young” he said to himself, then wondered if why he had to think his thoughts out loud, then remembered he always did this, then remembered his conversation with Jill. He hoped she didn’t. He hoped that conversation was like the tree that fell in the forest with no one around. “I wonder if a thought said out loud isn’t heard by anyone, if it was made. I think maybe this is what Literature (big L) is all about, if it’s trying to make a connection because no idea matters unless it’s connected to something else, or to someone else. Maybe no wood matters unless it’s bound to another by upholstery nails. If ‘the devil is in the details,’ as they say (who are ‘they’ anyway?), the details are the connections? That doesn’t make sense. Details are details. Connections are connections.</p>
30 <p>“Still, a neuron by itself means nothing. Put them all together though and connect them. You’ve got a brain.”</p>
31 </section>
32
33 <nav>
34 <a href="cereal.html">Cereal &gt;</a>
35 <a href="shed.html">Shed &gt;</a>
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28 <p>The self is a serengeti<br />a wide grassland with baobab trees<br />reaching their roots deep into earth<br />like a child into a clay pot<br />A wind blows there or seems to blow<br />if he holds it up to his ear the air shifts<br />like stones in a stream uncovering a crawfish<br />it finds another hiding place watching you<br />Its eyes are blacker than wind<br />on the serengeti they are the <a href="onformalpoetry.html">eyes of a predator</a><br />they are coming toward you or receding<br />a storm cloud builds on the horizon<br />Are you <a href="squirrel.html">running</a> toward the rain or away from it<br />Do you stand still and crouch hoping for silence</p>
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28 <p>“What do you do all day in that shed out back” his mother asked one night while they ate dinner in front of the TV. “Write” he answered. “Write what” she asked in that way that means he’d better not say I don’t know. “I don’t know” he said.</p>
29 <p>“Goddammit Paul” his mother said. “You’re wasting your life out in that shed. You need to go out and get—” “I chop down trees too” he said. “I make furniture out of them.” His mother’s face did a Hitchcock zoom as she considered this new information. “Is it any good” she asked, eyes narrowed.</p>
30 <p>“It’s getting there” he answered. “I’m getting better every day.” “When is it going to be there” she asked. “When are you going to sell this furniture of yours?” “It’ll be a while” he answered.</p>
31 <p>“Then you’d better get a job until then” she said.</p>
32 </section>
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28 <p>He builds a ship as if it were the last thing<br />holding him together, as if, when he stops,<br />his body will fall onto the plate-glass water<br />and shatter into sand. To keep his morale up<br />he whistles and sings, but the wind whistles <a href="apollo11.html">louder</a><br />and taunts him: Your ship will build itself<br />if you throw yourself into the sea; time<br />has a way of growing your beard for you.<br />Soon, you’ll find yourself on a rocking chair<br />on some porch made from your ship’s timbers.<br />The window behind you is made from a sail, thick<br />canvas, and no one inside will hear your calling<br />for milk or a chamberpot. Your children<br />will have all sailed to the New World and left you.<br />But he tries not to listen, continues to hammer<br />nail after nail into timber after timber,<br />but the wind <a href="theoceanoverflowswithcamels.html">finally blows</a> him into the growling ocean<br />and the ship falls apart on its own.</p>
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28 <p><em>I don’t care if they burn</em> he wrote on his last blank notecard. He’d have to go to the Office Supply Store tomorrow after work.</p>
29 <p>He looked at what he’d written. He’d been thinking about this for a while, felt the frustration build slowly like a thundercloud in the back of his mind. He thought he should write something else on the card, but everything he thought of seemed too confessional or too real compromising. He didn’t want anyone, not even the notecards, to know what he was thinking. He decided to try for more of an interview with the paper.</p>
30 <p><em>Why?</em> asked the notecard. <em>Because there is nothing important on any of them</em> he wrote back. <em>What do you mean? You have some good stuff in that top drawer there.</em> He looked in the top drawer. It was stuffed full of notecards in no organization. He could see bits and pieces of thoughts like leaves crunched underfoot in autumn. <em>It will take so much organization</em> he wrote.</p>
31 <p><em>Why is organization important? Remember the trees, how they formed rows without trying. No matter how the ideas fall, they make something. The snow does that too</em> he wrote. <em>It doesn’t try to make anything but it does.</em></p>
32 <p><em>No the snow is different</em> the notecard was annoyed. <em>The snow is a blank canvas that humans build into shapes or doppelgangers. It makes nothing on its own.</em></p>
33 </section>
34
35 <nav>
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28 <p>My body is attached to your body by a thin spittle of thought.<br />When you turn away from me, my thought is broken<br />and forms anew with something else. Ideas are drool.<br />Beauty has been slobbered over far too long. <a href="howithappened.html">God</a><br />is a tidal wave of bodily fluid. Even the flea has some<br />vestigial wetness. We live in a world fleshy and dark,<br />and moist as a nostril. Is conciousness only a watery-eyed<br />romantic, crying softly into his <a href="lovesong.html">shirt-sleeve</a>? Is not reason<br />a square-jawed businessman with a briefcase full of memory?<br />I want to kiss the world to make it mine. I want to become<br />a Judas to reality, betray it with the wetness of emotion.</p>
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26
27 <section class="verse">
28 <p>He is so full in himself:<br />how far down the branch to run,<br />how long to jump, when to grab the air<br />and catch in it and turn, and land on branch<br />so gracefully it’s like dying, alone<br />and warm in a bed next to a summer window<br />and the <a href="mountain.html">birds singing</a>. And on that branch there<br />is the squirrel dancing among the branches<br />and you think <em>What if he fell?</em> but he won’t<br />because he’s a squirrel and that’s what<br />they do, <a href="movingsideways.html">dance</a> and never fall. It was erased<br />long ago from the squirrel, even<br />the possibility of falling was erased<br />from his being by the slow inexorable evolution<br />of squirrels, that is why all squirrels<br />are so full in themselves, full in who they are.</p>
29 </section>
30
31 <nav>
32 </nav>
33
34</body>
35</html>
diff --git a/src/TODO.txt b/src/TODO.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..0030650 --- /dev/null +++ b/src/TODO.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,7 @@
1TODO:
2-----
3
4* add in prose stuff from Elegies
5* remove numbers from filenames & links
6* add genre to YAML metadata blocks
7
diff --git a/src/and.txt b/src/and.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..645f0c2 --- /dev/null +++ b/src/and.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,46 @@
1---
2title: And
3genre: verse
4
5epigraph:
6 content: |
7 "What is your favorite word?"
8 "And. It is so hopeful."
9 attrib: Margaret Atwood
10 link: 'http://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2011/oct/28/margaret-atwood-q-a'
11
12project:
13 title: Elegies for alternate selves
14 css: elegies
15 order: 3
16 next:
17 - title: Words and meaning
18 link: words-meaning
19 prev:
20 - title: How to read this
21 link: howtoread
22...
23
24And you were there in the start of it all \
25and you folded your hands like little doves \
26that would fly away like an afterthought \
27and you turned to me the window light on your face \
28and you asked me something that I did not recognize \
29like a great throng of people who are not you \
30and I asked are we in a [church][] \
31and you answered with the look on your face \
32of someone [grieving something gone][] for years \
33 but that they had been reminded of \
34by a catch in the light or in someone's voice \
35and I think maybe it could have been mine \
36and I looked away thickly my head was in jelly \
37and I didn't get an answer from you but I got one
38
39I looked at the man in front of us with glasses \
40he was speaking and holding a book \
41and I didn't understand him he was far away \
42and I could tell I was missing something important \
43and you nodded to yourself at something he said
44
45[church]: boar.html
46[grieving something gone]: roughgloves.html
diff --git a/src/angeltoabraham.txt b/src/angeltoabraham.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..5fd7ad1 --- /dev/null +++ b/src/angeltoabraham.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,39 @@
1---
2title: The angel to Abraham
3genre: verse
4
5project:
6 title: Elegies for alternate selves
7 css: elegies
8 order: 10
9 prev:
10 title: Dead man
11 link: deadman
12 next:
13 title: Feeding the raven
14 link: feedingtheraven
15...
16
17Abraham, Abraham, you are old and cannot hear: \
18what if you miss my small voice amongst the creaking \
19of your own grief, kill your son unknowing \
20of what he will be, and commit Israel to nothing?
21
22Abraham, you must know or hope that [God][] \
23will not allow your son to die; you must know \
24that this is a test, but then why \
25are you so bent on Isaac's destruction? \
26Look at your eyes; there is more than fear \
27there. I see in your eyes desperation, \
28a manic passion to do right by your God \
29whom you are not able to see or know.
30
31Am I too late? I [will try][] to stay \
32your old hands, the knife clenched \
33within them, intent on ending life.
34
35Will you hear my small voice amongst the creaking, \
36or will it be the chance bleating of a passing ram?
37
38[God]: boar.html
39[will try]: i-am.html
diff --git a/src/apollo11.txt b/src/apollo11.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..a72aaab --- /dev/null +++ b/src/apollo11.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,44 @@
1---
2title: On seeing the panorama of the Apollo 11 landing site
3genre: verse
4
5project:
6 title: Elegies for alternate selves
7 css: elegies
8 order: 5
9 next:
10 title: Ars poetica
11 link: arspoetica
12 prev:
13 title: And
14 link: and
15...
16
17So it's the [fucking moon][]. Big deal. As if \
18you haven't seen it before, hanging in the sky \
19like a piece of [rotten meat][] nailed to the wall,
20
21a maudlin love letter (the i's dotted with [hearts][]) \
22tacked to the sky's door like ninety-eight theses. \
23Don't stare at it like it means anything.
24
25Don't give it the chance to collect meaning \
26from your hand like an old pigeon. Don't dare ascribe \
27it a will, or call it fickle, or think it has any say
28
29in your affairs. It's separated from your life \
30by three hundred eighty-four thousand miles of space, \
31the same distance you stepped away from time that night
32
33you said your love was broken, a crippled gyroscope \
34knocking in the dark. It was then that time fell apart, \
35had a nervous breakdown and started following you
36
37everywhere, moonfaced, always asking where you're going. \
38You keep trying to get away from it but it nuzzles closer \
39and sings you songs that sound like the cooing of a dove \
40that will only escape again into an empty sky at dawn.
41
42[fucking moon]: deathstrumpet.html
43[rotten meat]: roughgloves.html
44[hearts]: proverbs.html
diff --git a/src/arspoetica.txt b/src/arspoetica.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..3014498 --- /dev/null +++ b/src/arspoetica.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,52 @@
1---
2title: Ars poetica
3genre: verse
4
5project:
6 title: Elegies for alternate selves
7 css: elegies
8 order: 6
9 prev:
10 title: On seeing the panorama of the Apollo 11 landing site
11 link: apollo11
12 next:
13 title: The ocean overflows with camels
14 link: theoceanoverflowswithcamels
15...
16
17What is poetry? [Poetry is.][is] Inasmuch as life is, so is poetry. Here is
18the problem: life is very big and complex. Human beings are neither. We
19are small, simple beings that don’t want to know all of the myriad
20interactions happening all around us, within us, as a part of us, all
21the hours of every day. We much prefer knowing only that which is just
22in front of our faces, staring us back with a look of utter contempt.
23This is why many people are depressed.
24
25Poetry is an attempt made by some to open up our field of view, to maybe
26check on something else that isn’t staring us in the face so
27contemptibly. Maybe something else is smiling at us, we think. So we
28write poetry to force ourselves to look away from the [mirror][] of our
29existence to see something else.
30
31This is generally painful. To make it less painful, poetry compresses
32reality a lot to make it more consumable. It takes life, that seawater,
33and boils it down and boils it down until only the salt remains, the
34important parts that we can focus on and make some sense of the
35senselessness of life. Poetry is life bouillon, and to thoroughly enjoy
36a poem we must put that bouillon back into the seawater of life and make
37a delicious soup out of it. To make this soup, to decompress the poem
38into an emotion or life, requires a lot of brainpower. A good reader
39will have this brainpower. A good poem will not require it.
40
41What this means is: a poem should be self-extracting. It should be a
42rare vanilla in the bottle, waiting only for someone to open it and
43sniff it and suddenly there they are, in the orchid that vanilla came
44from, in the tropical land where it grew next to its brothers and sister
45vanilla plants. They feel the pain of having their children taken from
46them. A good poem leaves a feeling of loss and of intense beauty. The
47reader does nothing to achieve this—they are merely the receptacle of
48the feeling that the poem forces onto them. In a way, poetry is a crime.
49But it is the most beautiful crime on this crime-ridden earth.
50
51[is]: words-meaning.html
52[mirror]: moongone.html
diff --git a/src/art.txt b/src/art.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..c439598 --- /dev/null +++ b/src/art.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,30 @@
1---
2title: Art
3genre: prose
4
5project:
6 title: "Buildings out of air: Paul in the Woods"
7 css: paul
8 order: 1
9 next:
10 - title: Hymnal
11 link: hymnal
12 - title: Axe
13 link: axe
14...
15
16Paul was writing in his diary about art.
17
18_This is my brain_ he wrote. _This is my brain and all it contains. 'I
19contain multitudes' said Legion. I think it was Legion._ The big heading he
20had written at the top of the page (_ART_ it read, but only when looking at it
21from his point of view) sat cold and alone, neglected in the white space
22surrounding it. He noticed this presently (but not after he had written a
23little more about multitudes), paused, frowned, and began to write again.
24
25_ART stands alone at the top of a blank page_ he wrote. _It follows ~~itself
26in circles~~ its own footprints in a circle around its own name. It leads
27nowhere but is present everywhere. ~~It contains~~ It contains multitudes.
28Every painting ever made is a painting of every other painting. Every song is
29a remix, a cover version._ He crossed out the part about songs for getting
30off topic. He made a note to himself in the margin---_Music is not ART._
diff --git a/src/axe.txt b/src/axe.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..2c7454b --- /dev/null +++ b/src/axe.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,37 @@
1---
2title: Axe
3genre: prose
4
5project:
6 title: "Buildings out of air: Paul in the Woods"
7 css: paul
8 order: 5
9 next:
10 - title: Leaf
11 link: leaf
12 - title: Building
13 link: building
14 previous:
15 - title: Dream
16 link: dream
17 - title: Art
18 link: art
19...
20
21Paul took his axe and went out into the woods to chop trees. Or rather he
22went into the trees to chop wood. He wasn't sure. Either way it helped him
23think. Last time he'd gone out, he'd had an idea for a shoe-insert company he
24could start called "Paul's Bunyons." He chuckled to himself as he shouldered
25his axe and went into the forest.
26
27Deep into the woods he admired the organization of the trees. "They grow
28wherever they fall" he said "but still none is too close to another." He
29sounded like Solomon to himself. He imagined he had a beard.
30
31He walked for a long time in the shadows of the forest, in its coolness. It
32sounded like snow had fallen but it was still October. The first time the
33trees seemed to radiate out from him in straight lines he stopped and turned
34around four times. After he walked on he noticed it happened fairly often.
35
36Still, after he felled his first tree that day he realized they grew from the
37epicenter of his axe. He paused in the small dark sound of the forest quiet.
diff --git a/src/boar.txt b/src/boar.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..049e0ff --- /dev/null +++ b/src/boar.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,39 @@
1---
2title: The boar
3genre: verse
4
5project:
6 title: Elegies for alternate selves
7 css: elegies
8 order: 8
9 prev:
10 title: The ocean overflows with camels
11 link: theoceanoverflowswithcamels
12 next:
13 title: Dead man
14 link: deadman
15...
16
17Now the ticking clocks scare me. \
18The [empty][] rooms, clock towers, belfries; \
19I am terrified by them all.
20
21I really used to enjoy going to church, \
22singing in the choir, listening to the sermon. \
23Now the chairs squeal like dying pigs---
24
25It was the boar that did it. \
26[Fifteen feet][] from me that night \
27in the grass, rooting for God \
28knows what, finding me instead.
29
30I ran, not knowing where or how, \
31not looking for his pursuit of me. \
32I ran to God's front door, found \
33it locked, found the [house][] empty
34
35with a note saying, "Condemned."
36
37[empty]: mountain.html
38[Fifteen feet]: telemarketer.html
39[house]: i-am.html
diff --git a/src/building.txt b/src/building.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..4ceb244 --- /dev/null +++ b/src/building.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,42 @@
1---
2title: Building
3genre: prose
4
5project:
6 title: "Buildings out of air: Paul in the Woods"
7 css: paul
8 order: 28
9 next:
10 - title: Yellow
11 link: yellow
12 - title: Cereal
13 link: cereal
14 previous:
15 - title: Stagnant
16 link: stagnant
17 - title: Axe
18 link: axe
19...
20
21_ART and CRAFT are only the inside and outside of the same building. The
22ceiling is_---here he put his eraser to his bottom lip, thinking. He crossed
23out _~~The ceiling is.~~_ _The floor is reality and the ceiling is
24~~aspiration~~ ~~desire~~ that which is desired. CRAFT is building a chair
25from wood. ART is using the wood as a substrate for an emotional message to a
26future person, the READER / VIEWER._
27
28_The important thing is they are both made of wood. The important thing is
29they were both, at one point, alive natural things that grew and changed and
30pushed their way out of the dirt into the air. They formed buildings out of
31the air. They didn't even try._
32
33_What separates us from them, the trees? We have to try. We must labor to
34create our ART, our buildings of air. We lay them out brick by brick, we
35build them up by disintegrating trees and forming them again into what they
36were before. Why must we do this? are there any advantages to this human
37method?_
38
39_Our advantage is memory. Our advantage is the reaching-out over space and
40time to others with our words, our ART. Our buildings last for generations,
41and after they are demolished they are written about, photographs are taken,
42we **remember**. The act of memory is our only ART._
diff --git a/src/cereal.txt b/src/cereal.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..8a2ba8e --- /dev/null +++ b/src/cereal.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,43 @@
1---
2title: Cereal
3genre: prose
4
5project:
6 title: "Buildings out of air: Paul in the Woods"
7 css: paul
8 order: 21
9 next:
10 - title: Man
11 link: man
12 - title: Dream
13 link: dream
14 previous:
15 - title: Sapling
16 link: sapling
17 - title: Building
18 link: building
19...
20
21He woke up after eleven and didn't go outside all day, not even to his Writing
22Shack. What did he do?
23
24He watched late morning cartoons meant for children too young to go to school.
25He ate bowls of cereal. He watched his mother play dominoes. He played
26dominoes with her for a little while until she was winning by such a margin it
27wasn't fun for either of them. He went down to the basement to do his
28laundry. He pulled the chain for the light and it turned on like magic.
29"Electricity is like magic" he said to himself. He thought he would like to
30write that down but his Implements were in the Shack. He'd already built up
31so much momentum inside.
32
33Inertia? he thought. "What's the difference between inertia and momentum" he
34asked himself as he hefted dirty clothes into the washer. "Maybe inertia is
35the momentum of not moving" he thought as he measured and poured the blue
36detergent into the drum. "Momentum is the inertia of moving forward through
37time" as he selected WARM-COLD on the dial and pulled it out to start the
38machine. "What do you think is the difference between inertia and momentum"
39he asked his mother when he opened the door at the top of the stairs.
40
41"When you switch over your laundry could you bring up my underwear from the
42dryer" she asked not looking up from her dominoes. A thread of smoke curled
43from her cigarette and spread out on the ceiling.
diff --git a/src/deadman.txt b/src/deadman.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..6ef673e --- /dev/null +++ b/src/deadman.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,37 @@
1---
2title: Dead man
3genre: verse
4
5project:
6 title: Elegies for alternate selves
7 css: elegies
8 order: 9
9 prev:
10 title: The boar
11 link: boar
12 next:
13 title: The angel to Abraham
14 link: angeltoabraham
15...
16
17A dead man finds his way into our [hearts][] \
18simply by opening the door and walking in. \
19He pours himself a drink, speaks aimlessly \
20about hunting or some bats he saw \
21on the way over, wheeling around each other. \
22Look how [they spin][], he says, it's like the \
23ripples atoms make as they hurl past each other \
24in the space between their bodies. \
25We mention the eels at the aquarium, how \
26their bodies [knot while mating][]. The dead man \
27was a boyscout once, and tied a lot of knots. \
28His favorite was the one with the rabbit \
29and the hole, and the rabbit going in and out \
30and around the tree. The dead man liked it \
31because he liked to pretend that the rabbit \
32was running from a fox, and the rabbit \
33always ended up safe, back in his hole.
34
35[hearts]: words-meaning.html
36[they spin]: moongone.html
37[knot while mating]: spittle.html
diff --git a/src/deathstrumpet.txt b/src/deathstrumpet.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..f5ad1ed --- /dev/null +++ b/src/deathstrumpet.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,47 @@
1---
2title: "Death's trumpet"
3genre: verse
4
5project:
6 title: Elegies for alternate selves
7 css: elegies
8 order: 28
9 prev:
10 title: 'To Daniel: an elaboration'
11 link: todaniel
12
13epigraph:
14 content: |
15 So Death plays his little [fucking](apollo11.html) trumpet.
16 So what, says the boy.
17 attrib: Larry Levis
18...
19
20He didn't have any polish so he spit-shined the whole thing, \
21top to bottom. It gleamed like maybe a tomato on the vine \
22begging to be picked and thrown on some caprese. Death loved caprese.
23
24He stood up and put the horn to his lips, imagining \
25it was a woman he loved. He blushed as he realized \
26it was a terrible metaphor. \
27He practiced for six hours a day---what else to do?
28
29Death looks at [himself in the mirror][moongone] as he plays. \
30The trumpet is suspended in midair. Damn vampire rules. \
31Death is always worried he might have missed a spot shaving \
32but he'll never know unless a stranger is polite enough. \
33Not that he ever goes out or meets anyone.
34
35He wakes up late these days. Stays in bed later. \
36He thinks he might be depressed. The caprese has gotten soggy \
37since he made it, maybe three days ago or maybe just two. \
38The sun streams through his kitchen blinds like smoke. \
39He decides to go to the arcade. When he gets there,
40
41there's only a [little boy][] with dead eyes. So far so good. \
42He's playing a first-person shooter. Death walks past him \
43and watches out of the corner of his eye. The kid's good. \
44Death wants to congratulate him. His trumpet is in his hand.
45
46[moongone]: moongone.html
47[little boy]: angeltoabraham.html
diff --git a/src/dream.txt b/src/dream.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..b933977 --- /dev/null +++ b/src/dream.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,43 @@
1---
2title: Dream
3genre: prose
4
5project:
6 title: "Buildings out of air: Paul in the Woods"
7 css: paul
8 order: 4
9 next:
10 - title: Axe
11 link: axe
12 - title: Early
13 link: early
14 previous:
15 - title: Underwear
16 link: underwear
17 - title: Cereal
18 link: cereal
19...
20
21It had gotten cold. He went to lay down in bed with a pad and paper. He
22began to write. Although he hadn't tried it much in bed before, he liked it
23mostly. His arm got tired journeying across the page like a series of
24switchbacks down the wall of the Grand Canyon. He wrote this down in the
25margin, for later:
26
27```hand
28Arm journeying across \
29the pg. like a \
30series of switch-
31backs down the wall \
32of the Grand Canyon \
33```
34
35His arm began to pain him. He adjusted his position in the bed. It didn't
36help much with the pain. It still hurt as he wrote. He began to be
37distracted by his mother's music playing in the next room.
38
39"Could you turn that down please" he hollered across the wall to his mother.
40She made no reply (music too loud). He gave his arm a break to look at what
41he'd written. He couldn't make heads or tails of it. It looked like Arabic.
42
43He woke up gasping in a sweat.
diff --git a/src/early.txt b/src/early.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..04ab997 --- /dev/null +++ b/src/early.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,42 @@
1---
2title: Early
3genre: prose
4
5project:
6 title: "Buildings out of air: Paul in the Woods"
7 css: paul
8 order: 35
9 next:
10 - title: Toothpaste
11 link: toothpaste
12 - title: Father
13 link: father
14 previous:
15 - title: Stump
16 link: stump
17 - title: Dream
18 link: dream
19...
20
21_YOU CANNOT DISCOVER ART ART MUST BE CREATED_ he sat on the couch at home
22while his mother watched TV and smoked. Dinner had been chicken and peas with
23milk and afterward Paul and his mother sat on opposite ends of the couch. At
24intervals she would look sideways at Paul writing. He pretended not to notice.
25
26_ART = ARTIFICE_ he wrote. _ARTIFICE MEANS UNNATURAL. ARTIFICE MEANS BUILT.
27TO BUILD MEANS TO FIND A PATTERN & FIND A PATTERN IS WHAT WE ARE GOOD AT._ He
28thought about this while someone else won a car.
29
30"Do you think humans are good at finding patterns because we are hunters" he
31asked his mother. She looked sideways at him and said "Sure Paul." "Early on
32in our evolution we were hunters right? And to hunt we had to see the
33patterns in seemingly random events, like where the gazelle went each year"
34"Paul I'm trying to watch TV. If you're going to write this stuff go do it in
35your room you're distracting." Paul got up and went to his room and lay down
36on his bed.
37
38"If the gazelle went to the same place every year" he thought "did they know
39the pattern too? Or was it random for them, did they think each year 'This
40seems like a good spot let's graze here' without knowing?"
41
42He wrote _PATTERN = MEMORY_ in his notebook.
diff --git a/src/elegyforanalternateself.txt b/src/elegyforanalternateself.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..b52c2c4 --- /dev/null +++ b/src/elegyforanalternateself.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,26 @@
1---
2title: Elegy for an alternate self
3genre: verse
4
5project:
6 title: Autocento of the breakfast table
7 css: autocento
8...
9
10Say there are no words. Say that we are conjoined \
11from birth, or better still, say we are myself. \
12---But I still talk to myself, I build my world \
13through language, so if we say there are no words \
14this is not enough. Say we are instead some animal, \
15or better yet, a plant, or a flagellum motoring \
16aimlessly around. (Say that humans are the only things \
17that reason. Say that we're the only things that worry.)
18
19Say that I am separate. To say there's everything else \
20and then there's me is wrong. Each thing is separate: \
21there is no whole in the world. Say this is both good \
22and bad, or rather, say there is no good or bad but only \
23being, more and more of it always added, none taken out \
24though it can be forgotten. Say that forgetting \
25is a function of our remembering. (Say that humans only \
26worry about separation. Say that only humans feel it.)
diff --git a/src/epigraph.txt b/src/epigraph.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..1adac49 --- /dev/null +++ b/src/epigraph.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,34 @@
1---
2title: epigraph
3subtitle: An epigraph
4genre: prose
5
6project:
7 title: Elegies for alternate selves
8 css: elegies
9 order: 1
10 next:
11 title: How to read this
12 link: howtoreadthis
13 prev:
14 title: Death's Trumpet
15 link: deathstrumpet
16...
17
18I saw my life branching out before me like the green fig tree in the story.
19From the tip of every branch, like a fat purple fig, a wonderful future
20beckoned and winked. One fig was a husband and a happy home and children, and
21another fig was a famous poet and another fig was a brilliant professor, and
22another fig was Ee Gee, the amazing editor, and another fig was Europe and
23Africa and South America, and another fig was Constantin and Socrates and
24Attila and a pack of [other lovers][] and queer names and offbeat professions,
25and another fig was an Olympic lady crew champion, and beyond and above these
26figs were many more figs I couldn't quite make out. I saw myself sitting in
27the crotch of this fig tree, starving to [death][], just because I couldn't
28make up my mind which of the figs I would choose. I wanted each and every one
29of them, but choosing one meant losing all the rest, and, as I sat there,
30unable to decide, the figs began to wrinkle and go black, and, one by one,
31they plopped to the ground at my feet.
32
33[other lovers]: spittle.html
34[death]: deathstrumpet.html
diff --git a/src/father.txt b/src/father.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..693a61f --- /dev/null +++ b/src/father.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,39 @@
1---
2title: Father
3genre: prose
4
5project:
6 title: "Buildings out of air: Paul in the Woods"
7 css: paul
8 order: 37
9 next:
10 - title: Paul
11 link: paul
12 - title: Fire
13 link: fire
14 previous:
15 - title: Toothpaste
16 link: toothpaste
17 - title: Early
18 link: early
19...
20
21"Is man the natural thing that makes unnatural things" he thought to himself
22as he looked out the kitchen window at the shed. He wondered who built the
23shed for the first time since he'd been going out there. "Mom who built the
24shed out back" he asked. "That was your father" she said.
25
26His father. Paul had never met him. His mother had said when he was a kid
27that his father was caught by a riptide while swimming in the ocean. He
28hadn't noticed what was happening until the land was a thin line on the
29horizon. He became exhausted swimming back and drowned. His body was found a
30week later by the coroner's estimate. Paul never really believed this story
31because his mother's face was sad in the wrong way when she told it.
32
33She said he looked like his father but she also said all men look alike. Paul
34realized he'd been standing at the kitchen window for a long time looking out
35at the shed without realizing it. He went out to take an inventory of
36everything inside.
37
38"Where you going" asked his mother. "To the shed. I'll be back in a bit" he
39said.
diff --git a/src/feedingtheraven.txt b/src/feedingtheraven.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..ec47846 --- /dev/null +++ b/src/feedingtheraven.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,49 @@
1---
2title: Feeding the raven
3genre: prose
4
5project:
6 title: Elegies for alternate selves
7 css: elegies
8 order: 11
9 prev:
10 title: The angel to Abraham
11 link: angeltoabraham
12 next:
13 title: On formal poetry
14 link: onformalpoetry
15...
16
17You never can tell just when Charlie Sheen will enter your life. For me,
18it was last Thursday. I was reading some translation of a Japanese
19translation of "The Raven" in which the Poe and the raven become
20friends. At one point the raven gets very sick and Poe feeds him at his
21bedside and nurses him back to health. The story was very heartwarming
22and sad at the same time and my tears were welling up when suddenly I
23heard a knock on my door.
24
25I shuffled over, sniffling but managing to keep my cheeks dry to open
26it. Of course Charlie was beaming on the other side, with a bag of
27flowers and a grin like a [dog][]'s. He bounded in the room without saying
28hello and threw the flowers in the sink, opened the refrigerator and
29started poking around. I said "It's nice to see you too" and went to my
30room to get a camera, as well as a notebook for him to sign.
31
32When I came back he was on the floor, hunched and groaning. I looked on
33the table to see a month-old half-gallon of milk---now cottage
34cheese---half-empty and dripping. The remnants were on his mouth, and at
35once I saw my chance to become Poe in this [translation of a translation][]
36of a translation. I knelt next to Charlie, cradled his head in my lap.
37He looked up at me with a stare full of terror. I returned it levelly,
38making cooing noises at him until he calmed down.
39
40When he was calm he excused himself to be sick on my toilet. He wouldn't
41let me follow but said he would sign whatever I liked when he got back.
42After half an hour passed and all I'd had for company was the ticking of
43the [clock][], I went to the bathroom door. I knocked carefully---once, then
44twice---to no beaming face, no flowers. I opened the door. There was shit
45on the floor and the window was open. There was a breeze blowing.
46
47[dog]: purpose-dogs.html
48[translation of a translation]: todaniel.html
49[clock]: boar.html
diff --git a/src/fire.txt b/src/fire.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..4ca2ce7 --- /dev/null +++ b/src/fire.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,40 @@
1---
2title: Fire
3genre: prose
4
5project:
6 title: "Buildings out of air: Paul in the Woods"
7 css: paul
8 order: 39
9 next:
10 - title: Hands
11 link: hands
12 previous:
13 - title: Paul
14 link: paul
15 - title: Father
16 link: father
17...
18
19His mother ran out of the house in her nightgown. "What the hell do you think
20you're doing" she hollered as Paul watched the shed. "I'm burning the shed
21down" he said smiling "isn't it warm?" "It's warm enough out here without
22that burning down" she said "go get the hose and put this thing out." "But
23Mom" "Do it" she said in the tone of voice that meant Do it now. He went
24around the side of the house screwed the nozzle on grabbed the end of the hose
25pulled it around the house and waited for water to come out the end. When it
26did it was not in a very strong stream. "I don't think this is going to work"
27Paul said to his mother. "God damn it I have to call the Fire Department" she
28said and went inside the house. The shed continued in its burning.
29
30After the Fire Department put out the fire one of the men said "Your mother
31says you set this building on fire. You know Arson is a major offense." "I
32set it on fire" Paul said. "Why?" "Because ART wants to be random, it wants
33to be natural, but it isn't. Humans create ART because we can't help but see
34patterns in randomness. But we feel guilty about it." The man nodded to
35another man in a blue uniform. "We want the ART to feel natural, to feel
36random, but we can't stop seeing the patterns" as the man in blue walked over
37and put a hand on Paul's shoulder "ART is unnatural by its very nature. I
38took my ART and gave it back to nature" as the man led him over to a black and
39white car and put him inside. He was saying something about Paul's right.
40"No it's my left that was hurt" said Paul "but it's all better now."
diff --git a/src/hands.txt b/src/hands.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..3d65193 --- /dev/null +++ b/src/hands.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,44 @@
1---
2title: Hands
3genre: prose
4
5project:
6 title: "Buildings out of air: Paul in the Woods"
7 css: paul
8 order: 10
9 next:
10 - title: Toilet
11 link: toilet
12 - title: Hardware
13 link: hardware
14 previous:
15 - title: Shed
16 link: shed
17 - title: Fire
18 link: fire
19...
20
21He looked down at his hands idly while he was typing. They were dry and
22cracked in places. He thought he might start bleeding so he went inside for
23some lotion.
24
25"Do we have any lotion" he asked his mother. "In the medicine cabinet" she
26said without looking up from the TV. He walked into the bathroom and looked
27at himself in the mirror. "I look strange" he said to himself "I look like a
28teenager." He stared into his right eye, then his left. He saw nothing but
29his own reflection fish-eyed in his pupils. He opened the medicine cabinet.
30
31Back in his Writing Shack, he started to type.
32
33```type
34What is it about hands that gives
35them such power? It is that their
36power is hidden in the arm. Push
37on the inside of the wrist--the
38hand closes. Reach under the skin
39and pull on the outside tendons--
40the hand opens again. Hands are
41only machines for grasping,
42controlled by the arm, not the
43mind.
44```
diff --git a/src/hardware.txt b/src/hardware.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..3ff1ddc --- /dev/null +++ b/src/hardware.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,37 @@
1---
2title: Hardware
3genre: prose
4
5project:
6 title: "Buildings out of air: Paul in the Woods"
7 css: paul
8 order: 14
9 next:
10 - title: Treatise
11 link: treatise
12 - title: Hymnal
13 link: hymnal
14 previous:
15 - title: Planks
16 link: planks
17 - title: Hands
18 link: hands
19...
20
21His mother drove him to the Hardware Store on a Tuesday. "I'm glad to see
22you've taken my advice for once" she said. "What do you mean." "Applying to
23work at the Hardware Store. I'm proud of you Paul."
24
25"Oh right. Sure thing." They pulled into the parking lot. "Just be a
26minute" he said as he opened the car door.
27
28He walked under the door resplendent in its King William orange and white. He
29saw the towering rows of shelves like mountain ridges in Hell. He strolled
30among the fixtures, pipes, planks, sheets, plants (Why plants? he thought),
31switches. He realized he didn't know the first thing about building
32furniture. "I don't know the first thing" he muttered to himself "about
33building furniture. I know the last thing would be a couch or chair or stool
34but the first thing is a mystery." He turned around and walked straight out
35of the store and to his mother's car without looking up.
36
37"How'd it go" she asked starting the car. "Great" he said.
diff --git a/src/howithappened.txt b/src/howithappened.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..f058c74 --- /dev/null +++ b/src/howithappened.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,35 @@
1---
2title: How it happened
3genre: 'verse'
4
5project:
6 title: Elegies for alternate selves
7 css: elegies
8 order: 14
9 prev:
10 title: I am
11 link: i-am
12 next:
13 title: Love Song
14 link: lovesong
15...
16
17I was away on vacation when I heard--- \
18someone sat at my desk while I was away. \
19They took my pen, while I was taking \
20surf lessons, and wrote the sun into the sky. \
21They pre-approved the earth and the waters, \
22and all of the living things, without even \
23having the decency to text me. It was not I \
24who was behind the phrase "creeping things." \
25When I got back, of course I was pissed, \
26but it was [already written][] into the policy. \
27I'm just saying: don't blame me for Cain \
28killing Abel. That was a murder. I'm not a cop. \
29The Tower of Babel fell on its own. The ark \
30never saw a single drop of rain. I'm [the drunk][] \
31sitting on the curb who just pissed his pants, \
32holding up a sign asking where I am.
33
34[already written]: shipwright.html
35[the drunk]: problems.html
diff --git a/src/howtoread.txt b/src/howtoread.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..2fed4be --- /dev/null +++ b/src/howtoread.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,156 @@
1---
2title: How to read this
3genre: prose
4
5project:
6 title: Elegies for alternate selves
7 css: elegies
8 order: 2
9 next:
10 title: And
11 link: and
12 prev:
13 title: epigraph
14 link: epigraph
15...
16
17This book is an exploration of life, of all possible lives that could be
18lived. Each of the poems contained herein have been written by a different
19person, with his own history, culture, and emotions. True, they are all
20related, but no more than any of us is related through our genetics, our
21shared planet, or our yearnings.
22
23Fernando Pessoa wrote poems under four different identities---he called
24them *heteronyms*---that were known during his lifetime, though after his
25death over sixty have been found and catalogued. He called them heteronyms as
26opposed to pseudonyms because they were much more than names he wrote under.
27They were truly different writing selves, concerned with different ideas and
28writing with different styles: Alberto Caeiro wrote pastorals; Ricardo Reis
29wrote more formal odes; Álvaro de Campos wrote these long, Whitman-esque
30pieces (one to Whitman himself); and Pessoa's own name was used for poems that
31are kind of similar to all the others. It seems as though Pessoa found it
32inefficient to try and write everything he wanted only in his own self; rather
33he parceled out the different pieces and developed them into full identities,
34at the cost of his own: "I subsist as a kind of medium of myself, but I'm less
35real than the others, less substantial, less personal, and easily influenced
36by them all." de Campos said of him at one point, "[Fernando Pessoa, strictly
37speaking, doesn't exist.][pessoa-exist]"
38
39It's not just Pessoa---I, strictly speaking, don't exist, both as the
40specific me that writes this now and as the concept of selfhood, the ego.
41Heraclitus famously said that we can't step into the [same river][] twice, and
42the fact of the matter is that we can't occupy the same self twice. It's
43constantly changing and adapting to new stimuli from the environment, from
44other selves, from inside itself, and each time it forms anew into something
45that's never existed before. The person I am beginning a poem is a separate
46being than the one I am finishing a poem, and part of it is the poem I've
47written has brought forth some other dish onto the great table that is myself.
48
49In the same way, with each poem you read of this, you too could become a
50different person. Depending on which order you read them in, you could be any
51number of possible people. If you follow the threads I've laid out for you,
52there are so many possible selves; if you disregard those and go a different
53way there are quite a few more. However, at the end of the journey there is
54only one self that you will occupy, the others disappearing from this universe
55and going maybe somewhere else, maybe nowhere at all.
56
57There is a scene in *The Neverending Story* where Bastian is trying to find
58his way out of the desert. He opens a door and finds himself in the Temple of
59a Thousand Doors, which is never seen from the outside but only once someone
60enters it. It is a series of rooms with six sides each and three doors: one
61from the room before and two choices. In life, each of these rooms is a
62moment, but where Bastian can choose which of only two doors to enter each
63time, in life there can be any number of doors and we don't always choose
64which to go through---in fact, I would argue that most of the time we aren't
65allowed the luxury.
66
67What happens to those other doors, those other possibilities? Is there some
68other version of the self that for whatever complexities of circumstance and
69will chose a different door at an earlier moment? The answer to this, of
70course, is that we can never know for sure, though this doesn't keep us from
71trying through the process of regret. We go back and try that other door in
72our mind, extrapolating a possible present from our own past. This is
73ultimately unsatisfying, not only because whatever world is imagined is not
74the one currently lived, but because it becomes obvious that the alternate
75model of reality is not complete: we can only extrapolate from the original
76room, absolutely without knowledge of any subsequent possible choices. This
77causes a deep disappointment, a frustration with the inability to know all
78possible timelines (coupled with the insecurity that this may not be the best
79of all possible worlds) that we feel as regret.
80
81In this way, every moment we live is an [elegy][] to every possible future
82that might have stemmed from it. Annie Dillard states this in a biological
83manner when she says in *Pilgrim at Tinker Creek*, "Every glistening egg is a
84memento mori." Nature is inefficient---it spends a hundred lifetimes to get
85one that barely works. The fossil record is littered with the failed
86experiments of evolution, many of which failed due only to blind chance: an
87asteroid, a shift in weather patterns, an inefficient copulation method. Each
88living person today has twenty dead standing behind him, and that only counts
89the people that actually lived. How many missed opportunities stand behind
90any of us?
91
92The real problem with all of this is that time is only additive. There's no
93way to dial it back and start over, with new choices or new environments. Even
94when given the chance to do something again, we do it *again*, with the
95reality given by our previous action. Thus we are constantly creating and
96being created by the world. The self is never the same from one moment to the
97next.
98
99A poem is like a snapshot of a self. If it's any good, it captures the
100emotional core of the self at the time of writing for communication with
101future selves, either within the same person or outside of it. Thus revision
102is possible, and the new poem created will be yet another snapshot of the
103future self as changed by the original poem. The page becomes a window into
104the past, a particular past as experienced by one self. The poem is a
105remembering of a self that no longer exists, in other words, an elegy.
106
107A snapshot doesn't capture the entire subject, however. It leaves out the
108background as it's obscured by foreground objects; it fails to include
109anything that isn't contained in its finite frame. In order to build a
110working definition of identity, we must include all possible selves over all
111possible timelines, combined into one person: identity is the combined effect
112of all possible selves over time. A poem leaves much of this out: it is the
113one person standing in front of twenty ghosts.
114
115A poem is the place where the selves of the reader and the speaker meet, in
116their respective times and places. In this way a poem is outside of time or
117place, because it changes its location each time it's read. Each time it's
118two different people meeting. The problem with a poem is that it's such a
119small window---if we met in real life the way we met in poems, we would see
120nothing of anyone else but a square the size of a postage stamp. It has been
121argued this is the way we see time and ourselves in it, as well: Vonnegut uses
122the metaphor of a subject strapped to a railroad car moving at a set pace,
123with a six-foot-long metal tube placed in front of the subject's eye; the
124landscape in the distance is time, and what we see is the only way in which we
125interact with it. It's the same with a poem and the self: we can only see and
126interact with a small kernel. This is why it's possible to write more than
127one poem.
128
129Due to this kernel nature of poetry, a good poem should focus itself to
130extract as much meaning as possible from that one kernel of identity to which
131it has access. It should be an atom of selfhood, irreducible and resistant to
132paraphrase, because it tries to somehow echo the large unsayable part of
133identity outside the frame of the self. It is the [kernel][] that contains a
134universe, or that speaks around one that's hidden; if it's a successful poem
135then it makes the smallest circuit possible. This is why the commentary on
136poems is so voluminous: a poem is tightly packed meaning that commentators try
137to unpack to get at that universality inside it. A fortress of dialectic is
138constructed that ultimately obstructs the meaning behind the poem; it becomes
139the foreground in the photograph that disallows us to view the horizon beyond
140it.
141
142With this in mind, I collect these poems that were written over a period of
143four years into this book. Where I can, I insert cross-references (like the
144one above, in the margin) to other pieces in the text where I think the two
145resonate in some way. You can read this book in any way you'd like: you can
146go front-to-back, or back-to-front, or you can follow the arrows around, or
147you can work out a complex mathematical formula with Merseinne primes and
148logarithms and the 2000 Census information, or you can go completely randomly
149through like a magazine, or at least the way I flip through magazines. I
150think writing is a communication of the self, and I think this is the best way
151to communicate mine in all its multiversity.
152
153[pessoa-exist]: philosophy.html
154[same river]: mountain.html
155[elegy]: words-meaning.html
156[kernel]: arspoetica.html
diff --git a/src/hymnal.txt b/src/hymnal.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..199746d --- /dev/null +++ b/src/hymnal.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,38 @@
1---
2title: Hymnal
3genre: prose
4
5project:
6 title: "Buildings out of air: Paul in the Woods"
7 css: paul
8 order: 2
9 next:
10 - title: Underwear
11 link: underwear
12 - title: Joke
13 link: joke
14 previous:
15 - title: Art
16 link: art
17 - title: Hardware
18 link: hardware
19...
20
21_It's all jokes_ Paul wrote in what he was now calling his Hymnal. He had
22been writing non-stop all day, because he didn't count pee- or cigarette-
23breaks. _All art is an inside joke. The symbology involved must be_---and here
24he put down his pen and held his head in his hands. He could never think of
25the word---he said often that he had no words. He opened to a new page in his
26Hymnal. On the top of it was written in bold script _**HYMN 386: JOKES**_.
27
28Paul scowled. Who had written in his Hymnal? he wondered. He said it out
29loud a moment after: "Who has written in my Hymnal?" He realized he was alone
30in his Writing Shack, which was really a shed in the back of his mother's
31garden. He wondered why he had to say his thoughts before they became real to
32him (if this was a habit or an inborn trait). He realized simultaneously that
33
34(a) he could ask someone and
35(b) that this was something he wondered every time he spoke his thoughts out
36 loud.
37
38He resolved to put the issue to rest by asking someone.
diff --git a/src/i-am.txt b/src/i-am.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..f890283 --- /dev/null +++ b/src/i-am.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,37 @@
1---
2title: I am
3genre: verse
4
5project:
6 title: Elegies for alternate selves
7 css: elegies
8 order: 13
9 prev:
10 title: On formal poetry
11 link: onformalpoetry
12 next:
13 title: How it happened
14 link: howithappened
15...
16
17I am a great pillar of [white smoke][]. \
18I am Lot's nameless wife encased in salt. \
19I am the wound on Christ's back as he moans \
20with the pounding of a hammer on his wrist. \
21I am the nail that holds my house together. \
22It is a strong house, built on a good foundation. \
23In the winter, it is warm and crawling things \
24cannot get in. This house will never burn down. \
25It is the house that I built, with my body \
26and with my strength. I am the only one who lives \
27here. I am both father and mother to a race \
28of dust motes that worship me as a god. I have \
29monuments built daily in my honor in dark \
30corners around the house. I destroy all of them \
31before I go to bed, but in the morning \
32there are still more. I don't think I know \
33where all of them are. I [don't think][not think] I can get \
34to all of them anymore. There are too many.
35
36[white smoke]: deathstrumpet.html
37[not think]: howithappened.html
diff --git a/src/joke.txt b/src/joke.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..00053bd --- /dev/null +++ b/src/joke.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,44 @@
1---
2title: Joke
3genre: prose
4
5project:
6 title: "Buildings out of air: Paul in the Woods"
7 css: paul
8 order: 33
9 next:
10 - title: Stump
11 link: stump
12 - title: Leaf
13 link: leaf
14 previous:
15 - title: Punch
16 link: punch
17 - title: Hymnal
18 link: hymnal
19...
20
21He wrote _**JOKES**_ on the top of a page in his notebook. He had run out of
22notecards and hadn't been able to convince his mother to go to the Office
23Supply Store for him. He left a space underneath it and wrote.
24
25_"Tell us a joke" the listeners say to the clown. They have gather together
26in the clearing because they have heard he would be there, and they have heard
27he knew very funny jokes that were also true. "Tell us a joke that is true"
28they say._
29
30_The clown does not move from the stump. He doesn't move at all. The
31listeners watch, gap-mouthed, as a butterfly lands on his hat. A breeze
32ruffles his coat and the butterfly flies away. Hours pass. The listeners
33grow impatient. Some begin yelling insults at the clown. Eventually, they
34begin to walk away into the woods._
35
36_The moon rises on the clearing. The only people left are the clown and a
37listener, the last listener. She has been waiting for the joke a long time.
38The clown opens his mouth and she leans in closer to hear. He closes it as a
39tear falls onto his coat, then another. He opens his mouth again in a sob.
40The listener walks over to him and puts a hand on his shoulder._
41
42_"I'm sorry" says the clown. "Sorry for what" she asks. "I don't know. I
43don't know any jokes." He disappears. The last listener sits on the log and
44looks at the sky. There are no stars._
diff --git a/src/leaf.txt b/src/leaf.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..dec253c --- /dev/null +++ b/src/leaf.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,35 @@
1---
2title: Leaf
3genre: prose
4
5project:
6 title: "Buildings out of air: Paul in the Woods"
7 css: paul
8 order: 3
9 next:
10 - title: Writing
11 link: writing
12 - title: Leg
13 link: leg
14 previous:
15 - title: Axe
16 link: axe
17 - title: Joke
18 link: joke
19...
20
21He shrugged the wood off his shoulder, letting it fall with a clog onto the
22earth floor of his Writing Shack. He exhaled looking out of the window. He
23hoped to see a bird fly by, maybe a blue jay or raven. No bird did. He
24inhaled. He exhaled again in a way that could only be classified as a sigh.
25He sat down at his writing desk. He began shuffling through what he'd
26written, trying to find some sort of pattern.
27
28"*Each piece of paper---each leaf---*" at this he smiled--- "*is like a tree
29in the forest.*" He was writing as he thought aloud. "*I, as the artist, as
30the **writer**, must select which to use, chop down those trees, bring them
31back to my shed and*---and---" he frowned as he realized the only end to this
32metaphor was fire. He ran his fingers through his hair in a self-soothing
33gesture.
34
35"I need to build some furniture" he thought.
diff --git a/src/leg.txt b/src/leg.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..ec09227 --- /dev/null +++ b/src/leg.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,48 @@
1---
2title: Leg
3genre: prose
4
5project:
6 title: "Buildings out of air: Paul in the Woods"
7 css: paul
8 order: 12
9 next:
10 - title: Planks
11 link: planks
12 - title: Man
13 link: man
14 previous:
15 - title: Toilet
16 link: toilet
17 - title: Leaf
18 link: leaf
19...
20
21His first chair was a stool. It was an uneven wobbly stool that would not
22support even forty pounds. "So my first chair is a broken stool" he said
23after nearly breaking his tailbone on the dirt floor. "Maybe I should start
24again but this time only with legs." He began again but this time only with
25legs. He built one leg, which means he cut a straight piece of wood down to
26four feet in length, whittled the bark off, and sanded it down smooth in what
27he was now calling his Woodworking Shack. He typed up a note on how to make
28chair legs.
29
30```type
31MAKING CHAIR LEGS
32
331. get longish piece of wood
342. cut it to length (4 feet I'd
35 recommend)
363. whittle off bark
374. sand smooth the leg
38```
39
40After he tried remembered tried standing the leg up, failing, and after much
41thought realizing that the ends needed to be flat, he typed one more line on
42his notecard:
43
44```
455. make ends flat
46```
47
48He had no tools with which to flatten the ends of his leg.
diff --git a/src/likingthings.txt b/src/likingthings.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..1c9c15a --- /dev/null +++ b/src/likingthings.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,57 @@
1---
2title: Liking Things
3genre: prose
4
5project:
6 title: Book of Hezekiah
7 css: hezekiah
8 order: 7
9 prev:
10 title: Problems
11 link: problems
12...
13
14The definition of happiness is *doing stuff that you really like*. That
15stuff can be eating soup, going to the bathroom, walking the dog,
16playing Dungeons and Dragons; whatever keeps your mind off the fact that
17you're so goddamn unhappy all the time. That, incidentally, is the
18definition of like: *that feeling you get when you forget how miserable
19you are for just a little bit*. Thus people like doing stuff they like
20all the time, as often as possible; because if they remember how
21horrible they really feel at not having a background to put themselves
22against, they will want to hurt themselves and those around them.
23
24The funny thing is that something we people really like to do is hurt
25ourselves and those around us. We do this by thinking other people are
26more unhappy than we are. We convince themselves that we are truly
27happy, ecstatic even, while they merely plod around life half-heartedly,
28or, if they're lucky, incorrectly. We take it upon ourselves (seeing as
29we are so happy, and can spare a little bit of happiness) to help them
30become happy as well. We fail to realize that the people will probably
31not appreciate our thinking that we're better than they are somehow, for
32that is what we do even if we don't mean it. We forget that we are also
33unhappy, and that we are just doing things we like in order to cheer
34ourselves up a little bit, which really means that this cheering is
35working; but there is such a thing as working too well. So in a sense
36what I'm doing here is cheering myself up by reminding you that you are
37unhappy; I'm trying to keep you honest in your unhappiness; and I admit
38this is usually called a dick move.
39
40In fact, the best way to overcome happy-hungering (this is the term as I
41dub it) is commit as many dick moves as possible, to keep people
42remembering that unhappiness abounds. If you see someone smiling like a
43little dog who knows it's about to get pet or get a treat or go to the
44vet to donate doggy sperm, smile back. Grin toothily (a little too
45toothily for a little too long). Their smile will start to fade if
46you're doing it right. Saunter to them, slide as if you're an Olympic
47quality ice-skater, as if you're a really good bowler who knows he's
48playing against twelve year olds and'll win by a hundred. Get really
49close. Far too close for what most people would call comfort. And remind
50them of how awful life can be: "I really like your [shirt][]---really only
51children chained to looms can get that tight of a weave," you can say,
52or "You're not really going to recycle that coffee cup, are you?" They
53will probably get angry, but that's what's supposed to happen. By making
54dick moves, you can overcome what may be the biggest evil on this earth:
55Happy-Hungering.
56
57[shirt]: theoceanoverflowswithcamels.html
diff --git a/src/lovesong.txt b/src/lovesong.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..e504e14 --- /dev/null +++ b/src/lovesong.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,41 @@
1---
2title: Love Song
3genre: prose
4
5project:
6 title: Elegies for alternate selves
7 css: elegies
8 order: 15
9 prev:
10 title: How it happened
11 link: howithappened
12 next:
13 title: Rough gloves
14 link: roughgloves
15...
16
17Walking along in the dark is a good way to begin a song. Walking home in
18the dark after a long day chasing criminals is another. Running away
19from an imagined evil is no way to begin a story.
20
21I am telling you this because you wanted to know what it's like to tell
22something so beautiful everyone will cry. I am telling you because I
23want you to know what it is to keep everything inside of you. I am
24telling you.
25
26Can you see? Can you see into me and reach in your hand and pull me
27inside out, like an [old shirt][]? Will you wear me until I unravel on your
28shoulders, will you cut me apart and use my skin to clean up the cola
29you spill on the floor when you're drunk?
30
31I want you to know that I want you to know. Do you want me? To know is
32to know. I, you want we. We want. That is why we're here. To want is to
33be is to want and I want you. Do you also? Check yes or no.
34
35There is a way to end every story, [every song][]. Every criminal must be
36caught. Even those who cry dry their tears. I cannot tell you all I want
37because I want to tell you everything. There is no art because there is
38no mirror big enough. We wake up every day. Sometimes we sleep.
39
40[old shirt]: ronaldmcdonald.html
41[every song]: swansong.html
diff --git a/src/man.txt b/src/man.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..686411f --- /dev/null +++ b/src/man.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,43 @@
1---
2title: Man
3genre: prose
4
5project:
6 title: "Buildings out of air: Paul in the Woods"
7 css: paul
8 order: 22
9 next:
10 - title: Snow
11 link: snow
12 - title: Notes
13 link: notes
14 previous:
15 - title: Cereal
16 link: cereal
17 - title: Leg
18 link: leg
19...
20
21_THIS MAN REFUSED TO OPEN HIS EYES_
22
23Paul read this on an old mugshot in the library. He had taken the bus into
24town to check out a few books on woodworking and got distracted by the True
25Crime section. He found this mugshot in a book titled _Crooks like Us_ that
26was published in Sydney. He liked how cities were named after women, or how
27women were named after cities, whichever was true.
28
29The man in the picture's eyes were tightly shut, as though he'd just come into
30the brightness of day after being dark inside for a long time. His head was
31tilted up and slightly to the right. He was wearing a short light tie with
32hash marks, and a pinstripe suit. Paul wished the photograph was in color.
33He was standing in front of a plain brown wall covered in fabric.
34
35The man's eyes were not so tightly shut as Paul first thought. His eyebrows
36lifted away from the eyes, giving the man a bemused look. His mouth was
37slightly opened in what seemed to Paul like a grin. This was accentuated by
38the man's ears, which were large. Paul wasn't sure why the ears made the man
39look happier. He wondered what crime he had committed.
40
41Above the man's head was written _T. BEDE.22.11.28 / 203 A_. _THIS MAN
42REFUSED TO OPEN HIS EYES_ was written over his suit, directly below his
43ribcage.
diff --git a/src/moongone.txt b/src/moongone.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..ad9135b --- /dev/null +++ b/src/moongone.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,30 @@
1---
2title: The moon is gone and in its place a mirror
3genre: prose
4
5project:
6 title: Elegies for alternate selves
7 css: elegies
8 order: 18
9 prev:
10 title: Ronald McDonald
11 link: ronaldmcdonald
12 next:
13 title: The mountain
14 link: mountain
15...
16
17The moon is gone and in its place a mirror. Looking at the night sky now
18yields nothing but the viewer's own face as viewed from a million miles,
19surrounded by the landscape he is only vaguely aware of being surrounded
20by. He believes that he is [alone][], surrounded by desert and mountain, but
21behind him---he now sees it---someone is sneaking up on him. He spins around
22fast, but no one is there on [Earth][]. He looks back up and they are yet
23closer in the night sky. Again he looks over his shoulder but there is
24nothing, not even a desert mouse. As he looks up again he realizes it's
25a cloud above him, which due to optics has looked like someone else. The
26cloud blocks out the moon which is now a mirror, and the viewer is
27completely alone.
28
29[alone]: apollo11.html
30[Earth]: serengeti.html
diff --git a/src/mountain.txt b/src/mountain.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..c1666e4 --- /dev/null +++ b/src/mountain.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,40 @@
1---
2title: The mountain
3genre: verse
4
5project:
6 title: Elegies for alternate selves
7 css: elegies
8 order: 19
9 prev:
10 title: The moon is gone and in its place a mirror
11 link: moonegone
12 next:
13 title: Serengeti
14 link: serengeti
15...
16
17The other side of this mountain \
18is not the mountain. This side \
19is honey-golden, sticky-sweet, \
20full of phone conversations with mother. \
21The other side is a bell, \
22ringing in the church-steeple \
23the day mother died.
24
25The other side of the mountain \
26[is not a mountain. It is a dark][apollo] \
27valley crossed by a river. \
28There is a ferry at the bottom.
29
30This mountain is not a mountain. \
31I walked to the top, but it turned \
32and was only a shelf halfway up. \
33I felt like an unused Bible \
34sitting on a [dusty pew][].
35
36A hawk soars over the mountain. \
37She is looking for home.
38
39[apollo]: apollo11.html
40[dusty pew]: and.html
diff --git a/src/movingsideways.txt b/src/movingsideways.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..bc373e2 --- /dev/null +++ b/src/movingsideways.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,63 @@
1---
2title: Moving Sideways
3genre: prose
4
5project:
6 title: Book of Hezekiah
7 css: hezekiah
8 order: 5
9 next:
10 title: Problems
11 link: problems
12 prev:
13 title: Proverbs
14 link: proverbs
15...
16
17A dog moving sideways is sick; a man moving sideways is drunk. Thus if
18you want to be mindful of the movings of the universe sideways, become
19either drunk or sick. By doing this you remove yourself from the
20equation, and are able to observe, without being observed, the universe
21as it dances sideways drunkenly.
22
23Shit wait. The problem is not that by observing you are observed
24(although quantum mechanics may disagree[^1]), because obviously dogs
25don't know we're observing them when we watch them through cameras in
26their little yard while they play and eat and poop---who poops knowingly
27on camera? The problem is *the actual act of observing that distorts the
28world into what we want it to be*.
29
30What I want to know is this: Why is this necessarily a problem? The dog
31is made, by mankind, to frolic and poop and sniff and growl and dig. Why
32cannot the man be made to observe the world incorrectly around him, and
33worry about it? Men have always wandered about the earth; does it not
34make sense that also they should wonder in their minds what makes it all
35work?[^2] In fact this is the very center of the creative being: the
36ability to move sideways, to dance with reality and judge it as it
37judges you, much like teenagers at the junior prom.
38
39Of course, reality doesn't judge us back. But that doesn't mean that it
40doesn't! If you think it's judging you, then *observe in your
41surroundings your own insecurities*. It is obvious that this way of
42doing things is far from vogue; usually projecting [inner pain][] onto the
43outer world is classified as pathology. However, this is because it is
44assumed that the outer world is *on its own terms*, which it obviously
45isn't, as far as we know. It follows that as [there is no backdrop][backdrop]
46against which to judge our quirks, the quirks must not exist. Thus all
47is right with the world.
48
49[inner pain]: telemarketer.html
50[backdrop]: philosophy.html
51
52[^1]: Quantum mechanics, as is well known, are the most hornery and
53 least agreeable of all mechanics. The cost to get one quantum
54 serviced is usually at least eight times more expensive than the
55 cost of an average automobile tune-up, for reasons not clearly
56 known. The quantum mechanics themselves claim it's the smallness of
57 their work that justifies the price, but it doesn't really look like
58 they're doing anything, and besides, my quantum always seems to
59 break again within six months---maybe I'm just driving it too hard.
60
61[^2]: I attempted to strike this terrible pun from the account, but
62 Hezekiah demanded I keep it if he were to continue the relation of
63 his prophecy-slash-advice column
diff --git a/src/notes.txt b/src/notes.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..024d18b --- /dev/null +++ b/src/notes.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,44 @@
1---
2title: Notes
3genre: prose
4
5project:
6 title: "Buildings out of air: Paul in the Woods"
7 css: paul
8 order: 8
9 next:
10 - title: Shed
11 link: shed
12 - title: Options
13 link: options
14 previous:
15 - title: Writing
16 link: writing
17 - title: Man
18 link: man
19...
20
21Paul began typing on notecards. Somehow this felt right to his sensibilities.
22It was difficult to get the little cards into the typewriter. It was a pain
23to readjust the typewriter for regular paper when he wasn't writing. He
24started typing everything on those little notecards: grocery lists, letters to
25his grandmother, even reports for work (which is what got him in trouble).
26
27But this was all later. For now he was writing his ideas, "notes" he now
28called them, something for him to combine later into something. He didn't
29like to think about it. On this particular cold winter morning, he wrote
30
31```type
32Woke up from a dream I was famous.
33One of the more famous people in
34fact. I had written something
35everyone could relate to and at
36the same time proved my parents
37wrong. Because I made a lot of
38money. Or not a lot, but enough
39and more than they thought I
40would. It was a good day.
41Woke up this morning and I was
42still cold. Still Paul. Still not
43good at furniture.
44```
diff --git a/src/onformalpoetry.txt b/src/onformalpoetry.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..7e654b4 --- /dev/null +++ b/src/onformalpoetry.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,36 @@
1---
2title: On formal poetry
3genre: verse
4
5project:
6 title: Elegies for alternate selves
7 css: elegies
8 order: 12
9 prev:
10 title: Feeding the raven
11 link: feedingtheraven
12 next:
13 title: I am
14 link: i-am
15...
16
17I think that I could write formal poems \
18exclusively, or at least inclusive \
19with all the other stuff I write \
20I guess. Of course, I've already written \
21a few, this one included, though "formal" \
22is maybe a stretch. Is blank verse a form? \
23What is form anyway? I picture old \
24women counting [stitches on their knitting][knitting], \
25keeping iambs next to iambs in lines \
26as straight and sure as arrows. But my sock \
27is lumpy, poorly made: it's beginning \
28to unravel. Stresses don't line up. Syl- \
29lables forced to fit like [McNugget][] molds. \
30That cliché on the arrow? I'm aware. \
31My prepositions too---God, where's it stop? \
32The answer: never. I will never stop \
33writing poems, or hating what I write.
34
35[knitting]: roughgloves.html
36[McNugget]: ronaldmcdonald.html
diff --git a/src/options.txt b/src/options.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..59f2c93 --- /dev/null +++ b/src/options.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,43 @@
1---
2title: Options
3genre: prose
4
5project:
6 title: "Buildings out of air: Paul in the Woods"
7 css: paul
8 order: 26
9 next:
10 - title: Stagnant
11 link: stagnant
12 - title: Paul
13 link: paul
14 previous:
15 - title: Swear
16 link: swear
17 - title: Notes
18 link: notes
19...
20
21What did he do when he was in the woods? Where did he go? Was there always
22one spot, one clearing deep within the heart of them, that he would visit?
23Did he talk to the trees or only to himself? When he chopped down trees, did
24he leave them there to rot in the quiet or did he drag them out of the woods,
25behind his Shack, and dismember them? Did he use any for firewood, or did the
26pieces rot behind his Shack, forgotten? When was the last time he built any
27furniture? Did he get any better at building it or did he just quit at some
28point, let the desire to create fall behind him like a forgotten felled tree?
29
30A tree fell in the forest: did it make a noise? Paul typed his thoughts on
31cards, or wrote them in a book: did anyone read it? If anyone did, was his
32life changed? For the better or the worse? Did he glance at the mess in the
33top drawer of his Writing Desk as he cleaned the Shack out long after Paul had
34quit using it? Did he put tools in there or leave it empty? What did he do
35with the desk? Did he add it to the pile of rotting wood out back, or did he
36chop it up for a bonfire with friends, or a cozy fire with his wife and
37children, or did he take it to the dump three miles away to rot there? Are
38these all the options?
39
40Did Paul ever think about any of this? Walking in the woods one afternoon
41after becoming frustrated with his writing, did he sit on a stump and cry?
42Did he wonder whether he should have made other choices? Did he consider
43quitting smoking?
diff --git a/src/paul.txt b/src/paul.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..e95776b --- /dev/null +++ b/src/paul.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,54 @@
1---
2title: Paul
3genre: prose
4
5project:
6 title: "Buildings out of air: Paul in the Woods"
7 css: paul
8 order: 38
9 next:
10 - title: Fire
11 link: fire
12 - title: Phone
13 link: phone
14 previous:
15 - title: Father
16 link: father
17 - title: Options
18 link: options
19...
20
21```type
22CONTENTS OF THE SHED
23
24- typewriter
25- writing desk
26- notecards (top drawer of desk)
27- pen (fountain)
28- inkpot (empty)
29- wood (a lot, more out back)
30- bare lightbulb
31- candle
32- wooden shelf with tools:
33 - claw hammer
34 - screwdriver
35 - prybar
36 - 2x wrench (different
37 kinds)
38- tiller machine
39- push lawnmower
40- hatchet
41- axe
42```
43
44He typed the list in the typewriter and looked around some more. He wanted to
45make sure he didn't miss anything. Finally it hit him and he smiled. He
46typed one more line, stood up, and went out of the shed.
47
48```type
49- Paul Bunyon
50```
51
52He got some kerosene from under the house, poured it around the base of the
53shed, lit a cigarette. He smoked half of it and threw it down to start the
54fire.
diff --git a/src/philosophy.txt b/src/philosophy.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..0ac114f --- /dev/null +++ b/src/philosophy.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,38 @@
1---
2title: Philosophy
3genre: prose
4
5project:
6 title: Book of Hezekiah
7 css: hezekiah
8 order: 3
9 next:
10 title: Proverbs
11 link: proverbs
12 prev:
13 title: The purpose of dogs
14 link: purpose-dogs
15...
16
17Importance is important. But meaning is meaningful. Here we are at the
18crux of the matter, for both meaning and importance are also
19human-formed. So it would seem that nothing is important or meaningful,
20if importance and meaning are of themselves only products of the
21fallible human intellect. But here is the great secret: *so is the
22fallibility of the human intellect a mere product of the fallible human
23intellect.* The question here arises: Is anything real, and not a mere
24invention of a mistaken human mind? By real of course I mean
25"that which is *on its own terms*," that is, without any [modification][] on
26the part of mankind by observing it. But such a thing is impossible to
27be known, for if it be known it has certainly been observed by someone,
28and so it is not on its own terms but on the terms of the observer. So
29it cannot be known if anything exists on its own terms, for it exists on
30its own terms we certainly will not know anything about it.
31
32By this it is possible to see that nothing is knowable without the
33mediating factor of our mind fucking up the "[raw][]," the "real" world. But
34by this time it would seem that this chapter is far far too
35philosophical, not to mention pretentious, so I must try again.
36
37[modification]: i-am.html
38[raw]: spittle.html
diff --git a/src/phone.txt b/src/phone.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..1460180 --- /dev/null +++ b/src/phone.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,42 @@
1---
2title: Phone
3genre: prose
4
5project:
6 title: "Buildings out of air: Paul in the Woods"
7 css: paul
8 order: 16
9 next:
10 - title: Tapestry
11 link: tapestry
12 - title: Planks
13 link: planks
14 previous:
15 - title: Treatise
16 link: treatise
17 - title: Paul
18 link: paul
19...
20
21"Hello Paul this is Jill Jill Noe remember me" the voice on the phone was a
22woman's. He nodded into the receiver. "Hello" Jill asked again "hello?"
23Paul remembered that phones work by talking and said "Hello Jill."
24
25"Do you remember me" she asked "we were in school together? How have you
26been?" "Pretty well" said Paul "I've been writing and making furniture." "Oh
27that's nice" said the woman's voice tinny in the phone "Listen I ran into your
28mother at the Supermarket the other day and she said you need a job. You
29still need one?" Paul had to tell the truth. His mother was watching him out
30of the corner of her eye as she was playing dominoes at the kitchen table.
31"Yes" he said sighing "Although woodworking takes up much of my time."
32
33"OK" she laughed uncomortably "I actually have something you could do for me
34if you think you can get away from woodworking a bit. It's just data entry
35really basic stuff entry-level." "What's it pay" he asked. "Minimum but
36there is room for movement." "OK" he said. "Start on Monday okay?" "Sure"
37he said "bye" and the tin voice in the phone said "Goodbye Paul see you" by
38the time he put it back on the hook.
39
40"Who was that" asked his mother. "Jill Noe" he said. "Oh her was she calling
41about a job for you?" "Yes starts Monday" he said. She smiled behind her
42glasses reflecting dominoes.
diff --git a/src/planks.txt b/src/planks.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..698f982 --- /dev/null +++ b/src/planks.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,38 @@
1---
2title: Planks
3genre: prose
4
5project:
6 title: "Buildings out of air: Paul in the Woods"
7 css: paul
8 order: 13
9 next:
10 - title: Hardware
11 link: hardware
12 - title: Punch
13 link: punch
14 previous:
15 - title: Leg
16 link: leg
17 - title: Phone
18 link: phone
19...
20
21```type
22EVERYTHING CHANGES OR EVERYTHING
23STAYS THE SAME
24```
25
26This sat alone on a blank notecard in Paul's typewriter. He stared at it,
27sipping at his too-hot coffee. This made sense to him.
28
29He looked at the spot on the wall where he wanted a window to be, at the rough
30planks above his desk as they were lit by the bare hanging lightbulb. He
31sipped his coffee again. It was still too hot. His Woodworking Shack was
32becoming full of wood that was not furniture. He feared it would never become
33so.
34
35He threw open the door to the snow and the ground below it. He reached for
36his axe on the wall. He reconsidered. He took a few tentative steps onto the
37blankness on his own. He wasn't cold, not yet. He walked into the forest.
38The snow crunched under his feet and did not echo.
diff --git a/src/prelude.txt b/src/prelude.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..91d4541 --- /dev/null +++ b/src/prelude.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,17 @@
1---
2title: Prelude
3genre: prose
4
5project:
6 title: Book of Hezekiah
7 css: hezekiah
8 order: 1
9 next:
10 title: The purpose of dogs
11 link: purpose-dogs
12...
13
14Of course, there is a God. Of course, there is no God. Of course, what's
15really important is that these aren't important. No, they are; but not
16really important. All that's important is the relative importance of
17non-important things. Shit. Never mind; let's start over.
diff --git a/src/problems.txt b/src/problems.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..c5de325 --- /dev/null +++ b/src/problems.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,72 @@
1---
2title: Problems
3genre: prose
4
5project:
6 title: Book of Hezekiah
7 css: hezekiah
8 order: 6
9 next:
10 title: Liking things
11 link: likingthings
12 prev:
13 title: Moving sideways
14 link: movingsideways
15...
16
17The problem with people is this: we cannot be happy. No matter how hard
18or easy we try, it is not to be. It seems sometimes that, just as the
19dog was made for jumping in mud and sniffing out foxholes and having a
20good time all around, man was made for sadness, loneliness and
21heartache.
22
23Being the observant and judgmental people they are, people have for a
24long time tried to figure out why they aren't happy. Some say it's
25because we're obviously doing something wrong. Some say it's because we
26think too much. Some insist that it's because other people have more
27stuff than we do. These people don't have a clue any more than any of
28the rest of us. At least I don't think they do, and that's good enough
29for me.[^1] I think that the reason why people are unhappy (and this is
30a personal opinion) is that they realize on some level (for some it's a
31pretty shallow level, others it's way down there next to their love for
32women's stockings[^2]) that there is no background to put themselves
33against, no "[big picture][]" to get painted into. This makes sense, because
34on one level, the level of everyday life, the level of *observation*,
35there is always a background---look in a pair of binoculars sometime. But
36on another level, that of ... shit, wait. There are no other levels.[^3]
37
38What's more, people try to explain how to get happy again (although it's
39doubtful they were ever happy in the first place---people are very good at
40fooling). Some say standing or [sitting in a building][] with a lot of other
41unhappy people helps. Some say that you can't stop there; you also need
42to sing with those other unhappy people about how unhappy you are, and
43how you wish someone would come along and help you out, I guess by
44giving you money or something. I say all you really need to be happy is
45a good stiff drink.[^4]
46
47In any case, people have for some reason or another, and to some end or
48another, always been unhappy. And people have always tried to figure out
49ways to be less unhappy---one of the most important things to people
50everywhere is called "the pursuit of happiness." I think that calling it
51a pursuit makes people feel more like dogs, who are the most happy
52beings most people can think of. By pursuing happiness, they're like a
53dog pursuing a possum or a bone on a fishing rod: two activities that
54sound like a lot of fun to most people. I think most people wish they
55were dogs.
56
57[big picture]: ronaldmcdonald.html
58[sitting in a buiding]: feedingtheraven.html
59
60
61[^1]: This seems to be an attempt on Hezzy's part to set an example for
62 mankind. It should be noted that he is an alcoholic, and not in any
63 shape to be an example to anyone.
64
65[^2]: It is thought that only the leg coverings of the female sex are
66 here referenced
67
68[^3]: You have hereby found the super special secret cheat code room.
69 Yes, this is just like Super Mario Brothers---you can skip right to
70 the end. Go and face the final boss already!
71
72[^4]: See footnote, above
diff --git a/src/proverbs.txt b/src/proverbs.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..d0ae38f --- /dev/null +++ b/src/proverbs.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,47 @@
1---
2title: Proverbs
3genre: prose
4
5project:
6 title: Book of Hezekiah
7 css: hezekiah
8 order: 4
9 next:
10 title: Moving sideways
11 link: movingsideways
12 prev:
13 title: Philosophy
14 link: philosophy
15...
16
17[Nothing matters; everything is sacred. Everything matters; nothing is
18sacred][sacred].[^1] This is the only way we can move forward: by moving
19sideways. Life is a great big rugby game, and the entire field has to be run
20for a goal. The fact that the beginning two verses of this chapter have the
21same number of characters proves that they are a tautological pair, that is,
22they *complete each other*. Sometimes life seems like a dog wagging its tail,
23smiling up at you and wanting you to love it, just wanting that, simple simple
24love, oblivious to the fact that it just ran through your immaculately groomed
25flower garden and tracked all the mud in onto your freshly steamed carpet.
26Life is not life in a suburb. [There are no rosebushes, groomed never. There
27is no carpet, steamed at any time.][rosebush] The dog looks at you wanting you
28to love it. It wants to know that you know that it's there. *It wants to be
29observed*.[\^2]
30
31[sacred]: words-meaning.html
32[rosebush]: lovesong.html
33
34[^1]: Thank you Tom Stoppard. Ha ha ho ho and hee hee.
35
36[^2]: Ah ha! I knew this was going to happen at some point. Now things
37 are going to get more interesting because the dog wants what we
38 thought was a bad thing, right? Right? Didn't we go through that
39 part about how observing made it impossible to really know anything,
40 and I had to start over because it's really hard to figure out what
41 you're talking about when reality slips out of your hands like a
42 fish, but you're not a cat with claws so it just flops right outta
43 your hand back into the lake. (By the way, Nirvana is thought to be
44 what a drop of water feels upon flopping into a lake---doesn't that
45 seem important? Doesn't it seem like a fish and a drop of water here
46 are connected? It helps, of course, that the fish represents Reality
47 here.)
diff --git a/src/punch.txt b/src/punch.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..9509143 --- /dev/null +++ b/src/punch.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,39 @@
1---
2title: Punch
3genre: prose
4
5project:
6 title: "Buildings out of air: Paul in the Woods"
7 css: paul
8 order: 32
9 next:
10 - title: Joke
11 link: joke
12 - title: Question
13 link: question
14 previous:
15 - title: Wallpaper
16 link: wallpaper
17 - title: Planks
18 link: planks
19...
20
21When he finally got back to work he was surprised they threw him a party.
22_**WELCOME BACK PAUL!**_ was written on a big banner across the back wall.
23Someone had ordered a confectioner's-sugar cake with frosting flowers on the
24corners. It said the same thing as the banner. "Welcome back, Paul" said
25Jill as he was at the punch bowl. The cup was on the table as he ladled punch
26in with his right hand. His left was wrapped in gauze.
27
28"Let me help you with that" said Jill. Paul had a strange feeling this had
29happened before. She took the ladle and their hands touched. She picked the
30cup up in her right hand and used her left to lift the spoon. "You know" she
31said "we were worried about you. When Jerry heard about your hand he said
32'There goes one of our best data entry men.'" "I still can't really move my
33left hand" said Paul. "That's alright you can take your time with the entry."
34"I'm sorry."
35
36"Sorry for what" she looked at his eyes. He imagined her seeing fisheye
37versions of herself in them. "I don't know" he said because it was true.
38"It's alright anyway" she said and placed the full punch cup in his right
39hand.
diff --git a/src/purpose-dogs.txt b/src/purpose-dogs.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..052b656 --- /dev/null +++ b/src/purpose-dogs.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,42 @@
1---
2title: The purpose of dogs
3genre: prose
4
5project:
6 title: Book of Hezekiah
7 css: hezekiah
8 order: 2
9 next:
10 title: Philosophy
11 link: philosophy
12 prev:
13 title: Prelude
14 link: prelude
15...
16
17Okay, so as we said in [the Prelude][], there either is or isn't a God. This
18has been one of the main past times of humanity, ever since ... since the
19first man (or woman) climbed out of whatever slime or swamp he thumbed his way
20out of. What humanity has failed to realize is that an incredibly plausible
21third, and heretofore unknown, hypothesis also exists: There is a dog.
22
23In fact, there are many dogs, and not only that. There are also many types of
24dogs; these are called breeds, and each breed was created by man in order to
25fulfill some use that man thought he needed. Some dogs are for chasing birds,
26and some are for chasing badgers. Some are for laying in your lap and being
27petted all day. Some dogs don't seem to be really for anything, besides being
28fucking stupid and chewing up your one-of-a-kind collectible
29individually-numbered King Kong figurine from the Peter Jackson film. But the
30important thing is, (and here we go with important things again) all dogs have
31been bred by people for performing some certain function that we think is
32important.
33
34Note: *Just because we think it's important doesn't mean it is
35important.* But it might as well be, because what we as humans think is
36important is important. But be careful! just because something's important
37doesn't mean it means anything, or that it actually makes anything happen.
38Even though just because something makes something else happen doesn't mean
39it's important. [Shit][]. Let me start again.
40
41[the Prelude]: prelude.html
42[Shit]: feedingtheraven.html
diff --git a/src/question.txt b/src/question.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..edaea2f --- /dev/null +++ b/src/question.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,43 @@
1---
2title: Question
3genre: prose
4
5project:
6 title: "Buildings out of air: Paul in the Woods"
7 css: paul
8 order: 19
9 next:
10 - title: Sapling
11 link: sapling
12 - title: Reports
13 link: reports
14 previous:
15 - title: Window
16 link: window
17 - title: Punch
18 link: punch
19...
20
21"Do you have to say your thoughts out loud for them to mean anything" Paul
22asked Jill on his first coffee break at work. It was in the city and his
23mother told him she wouldn't drive him so he'd had to take the bus. Number 3
24he thought it was – he couldn't quite remember. Jill said "Sorry what?" Paul
25realized that she hadn't really noticed him there in the break room as he was
26hunched behind the refrigerator a little and she was busy pouring coffee and
27exactly two tablespoons of both milk and sugar into her mug before she put the
28coffee in. He decided to repeat the question.
29
30"How do you think" he asked. "Like everyone else I guess" she said "I have a
31thought and if it's important I write it down." "Do you have to say them out
32loud for them to make sense?" "Are you asking if I talk to myself?" A pause.
33"I guess so" he said looking down. He had a feeling this was a bad thing.
34"Sometimes" she said and walked out of the break room. She didn't understand
35the importance of his question. She popped her head back in a moment later and
36his heart leaped in his chest.
37
38"How's your first day going so far" she asked. "Can you understand everything
39okay?" "Yes" he said "you were right it's pretty basic." "Good" she said.
40"Paul?" "Yes." "Do you have to say all of your thoughts out loud to remember
41them?" He shook his head.
42
43Only all of the time, Paul thought to himself but didn't speak.
diff --git a/src/reports.txt b/src/reports.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..61f7e12 --- /dev/null +++ b/src/reports.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,40 @@
1---
2title: Reports
3genre: prose
4
5project:
6 title: "Buildings out of air: Paul in the Woods"
7 css: paul
8 order: 24
9 next:
10 - title: Swear
11 link: swear
12 - title: Sapling
13 link: sapling
14 previous:
15 - title: Snow
16 link: snow
17 - title: Question
18 link: question
19...
20
21"Paul, you can't turn in your reports on four-by-six notecards" Jill told him
22after he handed her his reports, typed carefully on twelve four-by-six
23notecards. He had spent the weekend
24
251. going to the Office Supply Store to buy notecards and typewriter ribbon (he
26 found it surprisingly easily) after his first payday
272. replacing the ribbon in his typewriter (this took approximately half an
28 hour, because he had to figure it all out on his own)
293. opening the package of notecards (this took approximately four seconds,
30 although he still had to figure out how to do it on his own. It was just
31 easier)
324. carefully typing the reports he'd handwritten on letter paper onto the
33 notecards (he made many mistakes and threw away many notecards, though
34 later he used them for kindling)
35
36so understandably he was upset. He told Jill all the work he'd gone to to
37type those notecard reports for her, for the company. She shook her head.
38"Paul, you don't have to do all that work at home. Just type it up on the
39computers here, that's all you need to do. Thanks for the work though." He
40nodded as she threw the notecards into the trashcan and left his cubicle.
diff --git a/src/ronaldmcdonald.txt b/src/ronaldmcdonald.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..a719ef8 --- /dev/null +++ b/src/ronaldmcdonald.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,49 @@
1---
2title: Ronald McDonald
3genre: verse
4
5project:
6 title: Elegies for alternate selves
7 css: elegies
8 order: 17
9 prev:
10 title: Rough gloves
11 link: roughgloves
12 next:
13 title: The moon is gone and in its place a mirror
14 link: moongone
15...
16
17When Ronald McDonald takes off his [striped shirt][], \
18his coveralls, his painted face: when he no longer looks \
19like anyone or anything special, sitting next to women
20
21in bars or standing in the aisle at the grocery, \
22is he no longer Ronald? Is he no longer happy to kick \
23a soccer ball around with the kids in the park,
24
25is he suddenly unable to enjoy the french fries \
26he gets for his fifty percent off? I'd like to think \
27that he takes Ronald off like a shirt, hangs him
28
29in a closet where he breathes darkly in the musk. \
30I'd like to believe that we are able to slough off selves \
31like old skin and still retain some base self.
32
33Of course we all know this is not what happens. \
34The Ronald leering at women drunkenly is the same who \
35the next day kicks at a ball the size of a head.
36
37He is the same that hugs his children at night, \
38who has sex with his wife on the weekends when they're \
39not so tired to make it work, who smiles holding
40
41a basket of fries in front of a field. He cannot \
42take off the facepaint or the [yellow gloves][]. They are \
43stuck to him like so many feathers with the tar
44
45of his everyday associations. His plight is that \
46of everyone's---we are what we do who we are.
47
48[striped shirt]: theoceanoverflowswithcamels.html
49[yellow gloves]: roughgloves.html
diff --git a/src/roughgloves.txt b/src/roughgloves.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..6ef77f6 --- /dev/null +++ b/src/roughgloves.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,34 @@
1---
2title: Rough gloves
3genre: verse
4
5project:
6 title: Elegies for alternate selves
7 css: elegies
8 order: 16
9 prev:
10 title: Love Song
11 link: lovesong
12 next:
13 title: Ronald McDonald
14 link: ronaldmcdonald
15...
16
17I lost my hands & knit replacement ones \
18from spiders' threads, stronger than steel but soft \
19as lambs' wool. Catching as they do on nails \
20& your collarbone, you don't seem to like \
21their rough warm presence on your [cheek or thigh][]. \
22I've asked you if you minded, you've said no \
23(your face a table laid with burnt meat, bread \
24so stale it could [break a hand][]). Remember \
25your senile mother's face above that table? \
26I'd say she got the meaning of that look. \
27You'd rather not be touched by these rough gloves, \
28the only way I have to knit a love \
29against whatever winters we may enter \
30like a silkworm in a spider's blackened [maw][].
31
32[cheek or thigh]: feedingtheraven.html
33[break a hand]: weplayedthosegamestoo.html
34[maw]: serengeti.html
diff --git a/src/sapling.txt b/src/sapling.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..e61d3ea --- /dev/null +++ b/src/sapling.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,43 @@
1---
2title: Sapling
3genre: prose
4
5project:
6 title: "Buildings out of air: Paul in the Woods"
7 css: paul
8 order: 20
9 next:
10 - title: Cereal
11 link: cereal
12 - title: Shed
13 link: shed
14 previous:
15 - title: Question
16 link: question
17 - title: Reports
18 link: reports
19...
20
21He chopped down a sapling pine tree and looked at his watch. From first chop
22to fall it had taken him eight minutes and something like twenty seconds.
23Maybe a little change. He leaned against another tree and fished in his
24pocket for a cigarette. He lifted it out of its box and fished in his other
25pocket for his lighter, failing to find it. He searched his other pockets.
26He came to the realization that he had forgotten it in his Shack (in confusion
27over his True Vocation, he'd resorted to calling it simply the Shack until he
28could figure it out). He sighed and put his hands in his pockets.
29
30"I wonder if trees are protective of their young" he said to himself, then
31wondered if why he had to think his thoughts out loud, then remembered he
32always did this, then remembered his conversation with Jill. He hoped she
33didn't. He hoped that conversation was like the tree that fell in the forest
34with no one around. "I wonder if a thought said out loud isn't heard by
35anyone, if it was made. I think maybe this is what Literature (big L) is all
36about, if it's trying to make a connection because no idea matters unless it's
37connected to something else, or to someone else. Maybe no wood matters unless
38it's bound to another by upholstery nails. If 'the devil is in the details,'
39as they say (who are 'they' anyway?), the details are the connections? That
40doesn't make sense. Details are details. Connections are connections.
41
42"Still, a neuron by itself means nothing. Put them all together though and
43connect them. You've got a brain."
diff --git a/src/serengeti.txt b/src/serengeti.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..cbac12a --- /dev/null +++ b/src/serengeti.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,33 @@
1---
2title: Serengeti
3genre: verse
4
5project:
6 title: Elegies for alternate selves
7 css: elegies
8 order: 20
9 prev:
10 title: The mountain
11 link: mountain
12 next:
13 title: The shipwright
14 link: shipwright
15...
16
17The self is a serengeti \
18a wide grassland with baobab trees \
19reaching their roots deep into earth \
20like a child into a clay pot \
21A wind blows there or seems to blow \
22if he holds it up to his ear the air shifts \
23like stones in a stream uncovering a crawfish \
24it finds another hiding place watching you \
25Its eyes are blacker than wind \
26on the serengeti they are the [eyes of a predator][formal] \
27they are coming toward you or receding \
28a storm cloud builds on the horizon \
29Are you [running][] toward the rain or away from it \
30Do you stand still and crouch hoping for silence
31
32[formal]: onformalpoetry.html
33[running]: squirrel.html
diff --git a/src/shed.txt b/src/shed.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..f312cd4 --- /dev/null +++ b/src/shed.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,35 @@
1---
2title: Shed
3genre: prose
4
5project:
6 title: "Buildings out of air: Paul in the Woods"
7 css: paul
8 order: 9
9 next:
10 - title: Hands
11 link: hands
12 - title: Snow
13 link: snow
14 previous:
15 - title: Notes
16 link: notes
17 - title: Sapling
18 link: sapling
19...
20
21"What do you do all day in that shed out back" his mother asked one night
22while they ate dinner in front of the TV. "Write" he answered. "Write what"
23she asked in that way that means he'd better not say I don't know. "I don't
24know" he said.
25
26"Goddammit Paul" his mother said. "You're wasting your life out in that shed.
27You need to go out and get---" "I chop down trees too" he said. "I make
28furniture out of them." His mother's face did a Hitchcock zoom as she
29considered this new information. "Is it any good" she asked, eyes narrowed.
30
31"It's getting there" he answered. "I'm getting better every day." "When is
32it going to be there" she asked. "When are you going to sell this furniture
33of yours?" "It'll be a while" he answered.
34
35"Then you'd better get a job until then" she said.
diff --git a/src/shipwright.txt b/src/shipwright.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..4de8e1d --- /dev/null +++ b/src/shipwright.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,37 @@
1---
2title: The shipwright
3genre: verse
4
5project:
6 title: Elegies for alternate selves
7 css: elegies
8 order: 21
9 prev:
10 title: Serengeti
11 link: serengeti
12 next:
13 title: Spittle
14 link: spittle
15...
16
17He builds a ship as if it were the last thing \
18holding him together, as if, when he stops, \
19his body will fall onto the plate-glass water \
20and shatter into sand. To keep his morale up \
21he whistles and sings, but the wind whistles [louder][] \
22and taunts him: Your ship will build itself \
23if you throw yourself into the sea; time \
24has a way of growing your beard for you. \
25Soon, you'll find yourself on a rocking chair \
26on some porch made from your ship's timbers. \
27The window behind you is made from a sail, thick \
28canvas, and no one inside will hear your calling \
29for milk or a chamberpot. Your children \
30will have all sailed to the New World and left you. \
31But he tries not to listen, continues to hammer \
32nail after nail into timber after timber, \
33but the wind [finally blows][] him into the growling ocean \
34and the ship falls apart on its own.
35
36[louder]: apollo11.html
37[finally blows]: theoceanoverflowswithcamels.html
diff --git a/src/snow.txt b/src/snow.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..3bb250a --- /dev/null +++ b/src/snow.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,43 @@
1---
2title: Snow
3genre: prose
4
5project:
6 title: "Buildings out of air: Paul in the Woods"
7 css: paul
8 order: 23
9 next:
10 - title: Reports
11 link: reports
12 - title: Stagnant
13 link: stagnant
14 previous:
15 - title: Man
16 link: man
17 - title: Shed
18 link: shed
19...
20
21_I don't care if they burn_ he wrote on his last blank notecard. He'd have to
22go to the Office Supply Store tomorrow after work.
23
24He looked at what he'd written. He'd been thinking about this for a while,
25felt the frustration build slowly like a thundercloud in the back of his mind.
26He thought he should write something else on the card, but everything he
27thought of seemed too confessional or too real compromising. He didn't want
28anyone, not even the notecards, to know what he was thinking. He decided to
29try for more of an interview with the paper.
30
31_Why?_ asked the notecard. _Because there is nothing important on any of
32them_ he wrote back. _What do you mean? You have some good stuff in that top
33drawer there._ He looked in the top drawer. It was stuffed full of notecards
34in no organization. He could see bits and pieces of thoughts like leaves
35crunched underfoot in autumn. _It will take so much organization_ he wrote.
36
37_Why is organization important? Remember the trees, how they formed rows
38without trying. No matter how the ideas fall, they make something. The snow
39does that too_ he wrote. _It doesn't try to make anything but it does._
40
41_No the snow is different_ the notecard was annoyed. _The snow is a blank
42canvas that humans build into shapes or doppelgangers. It makes nothing on
43its own._
diff --git a/src/spittle.txt b/src/spittle.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..e1a72e6 --- /dev/null +++ b/src/spittle.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,30 @@
1---
2title: Spittle
3genre: verse
4
5project:
6 title: Elegies for alternate selves
7 css: elegies
8 order: 22
9 prev:
10 title: The shipwright
11 link: shipwright
12 next:
13 title: The squirrel
14 link: squirrel
15...
16
17My body is attached to your body by a thin spittle of thought. \
18When you turn away from me, my thought is broken \
19and forms anew with something else. Ideas are drool. \
20Beauty has been slobbered over far too long. [God][] \
21is a tidal wave of bodily fluid. Even the flea has some \
22vestigial wetness. We live in a world fleshy and dark, \
23and moist as a nostril. Is conciousness only a watery-eyed \
24romantic, crying softly into his [shirt-sleeve][]? Is not reason \
25a square-jawed businessman with a briefcase full of memory? \
26I want to kiss the world to make it mine. I want to become \
27a Judas to reality, betray it with the wetness of emotion.
28
29[God]: howithappened.html
30[shirt-sleeve]: lovesong.html
diff --git a/src/squirrel.txt b/src/squirrel.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..68936f9 --- /dev/null +++ b/src/squirrel.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,35 @@
1---
2title: The squirrel
3genre: verse
4
5project:
6 title: Elegies for alternate selves
7 css: elegies
8 order: 23
9 prev:
10 title: Spittle
11 link: spittle
12 next:
13 title: Swan song
14 link: swansong
15...
16
17He is so full in himself: \
18how far down the branch to run, \
19how long to jump, when to grab the air \
20and catch in it and turn, and land on branch \
21so gracefully it's like dying, alone \
22and warm in a bed next to a summer window \
23and the [birds singing][]. And on that branch there \
24is the squirrel dancing among the branches \
25and you think *What if he fell?* but he won't \
26because he's a squirrel and that's what \
27they do, [dance][] and never fall. It was erased \
28long ago from the squirrel, even \
29the possibility of falling was erased \
30from his being by the slow inexorable evolution \
31of squirrels, that is why all squirrels \
32are so full in themselves, full in who they are.
33
34[birds singing]: mountain.html
35[dance]: movingsideways.html
diff --git a/src/stagnant.txt b/src/stagnant.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..6de7875 --- /dev/null +++ b/src/stagnant.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,39 @@
1---
2title: Stagnant
3genre: prose
4
5project:
6 title: "Buildings out of air: Paul in the Woods"
7 css: paul
8 order: 27
9 next:
10 - title: Building
11 link: building
12 - title: Stump
13 link: stump
14 previous:
15 - title: Options
16 link: options
17 - title: Snow
18 link: snow
19...
20
21"Riding the bus to work is a good way to think or to read" Paul thought to
22himself on the bus ride to work. His thoughts couldn't become real to him
23because he didn't want to look insane to everyone else on the bus. His
24thoughts came to him like someone yelling over a hard wind. He was trying to
25write them on his memory but the act of writing was easier and more immediate
26than that of listening. He was afraid that when he looked at his memory later
27he wouldn't be able to read what was written.
28
29"Thoughts are like the wind outside a moving bus" he thought "or rather the
30bus is a brain slamming into columns of stagnant air causing them to whistle
31past in a confusion of something." He could barely hear the voice yelling to
32him over the wind. "Speak up" he thought to the voice, then remembered it was
33his own. He wished he'd remembered a book to read.
34
35He looked at his hands to pass the time. They were dry in the winter air that
36had seeped its way into the bus. He tried to figure out how many hours they
37would make it before cracking and bleeding. "Maybe three or four" he thought
38accidentally out loud. He looked around expecting stares from everyone on the
39seat. He was surprised that he was the only one on the bus.
diff --git a/src/statements-frag.txt b/src/statements-frag.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..a3c40a1 --- /dev/null +++ b/src/statements-frag.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,72 @@
1---
2title: Statements
3subtitle: a fragment
4genre: mixed
5
6project:
7 title: Autocento of the breakfast table
8 css: autocento
9...
10
11I. Eli {#i.-eli .unnumbered}
12------
13
14"Can one truly describe an emotion?" Eli asked me over the
15walkie-talkie. He was in the bathroom, & had taken the walkie-talkie in
16with him absent-mindedly. I could hear sounds of his piss hitting the
17toilet water.
18
19"I can hear you peeing," I said. He didn't answer so I said in apology,
20"It's okay. Humans are sexually dimorphic." I was sitting on my blue
21baby blanket texting Jon, who was funny and amicable over the phone. He
22made a three-message joke about greedy lawyers and I would have been
23laughing if not for my embarrassment toward Eli. He finally came out of
24the bathroom and kept his eyes straight ahead, toward the wall calendar
25and not at me, as he passed through the family room into his bedroom,
26were he shut the door quietly. Presently I heard some muffled noise as
27he turned on his iPod. I guessed he didn't feel like talking so I stayed
28on my blanket watching the Price is Right and texting Jon.
29
30Drew Carrey was doing his wrap-up speech on TV when Eli finally came out
31of his room, red puffy streaks covering his face. His eyes and nose were
32red too, which was almost festive against the pale green and white of
33the wallpaper. I had been laughing at the goofy costumes on the Price is
34Right and the jokes Jon was texting me, but when Eli came out of the
35room I stopped and just looked at him as well as I could. He was staring
36at my right shoulder as he said, "Go home now."
37
38"What?"
39
40"I said go home now. I don't want you here anymore, because I just
41remembered I have someone coming over and I have to clean."
42
43"Look, Eli, I'm sorry---"
44
45"It doesn't have anything to do with you, I swear. Just go, okay? Go
46home now."
47
48I got up and tried to give him a hug but he withdrew from me sharply. So
49I walked around the coffee table as he sat down, not looking at me
50anymore, and stared at the blank TV. The blanket I had been sitting in
51was crumpled next to him like a dead bird. I opened my mouth but thought
52better of talking, and closed the door behind me slowly.
53
54II. Dimorphic {#ii.-dimorphic .unnumbered}
55-------------
56
57Oranges. Poison. A compromise
58between Mary & Judas. Blue
59baby blankets swaddling greedy lawyers.
60
61Can one truly describe an emotion?
62I cut my ankle with a razor blade.
63I can only go one at a time. Humanity
64has a seething mass of eels
65for a brain, mating in the water so forcefully
66that it could drown you under the moon.
67
68III. Declaration of Poetry {#iii.-declaration-of-poetry .unnumbered}
69--------------------------
70
71You have to go one line at a time, and you have to start on the first or
72second line.
diff --git a/src/stump.txt b/src/stump.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..aae6084 --- /dev/null +++ b/src/stump.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,41 @@
1---
2title: Stump
3genre: prose
4
5project:
6 title: "Buildings out of air: Paul in the Woods"
7 css: paul
8 order: 34
9 next:
10 - title: Early
11 link: early
12 - title: Swear
13 link: swear
14 previous:
15 - title: Joke
16 link: joke
17 - title: Stagnant
18 link: stagnant
19...
20
21He walked into the woods for the first time in months. It was a bright summer
22day but under the canopy of leaves it was cool and quiet and twilight. There
23was no sound but his footsteps, his breathing. Instead of an axe, his right
24hand clutched his notebook. His left was in his pocket. A pencil perched
25behind his ear.
26
27He walked aimlessly until coming over a short rise he saw a stump. He
28recognized his handiwork in the way the stump made a kind of chair back---flat
29until the axe had gone through far enough, then a frayed edge like a torn
30page. Paul walked over to the stump and sat down.
31
32He looked up and tried to find a pattern in the placement of the trees. There
33was none. They grew randomly, beginning nowhere and ending in the same place.
34A squirrel ran down one and up another for no reason. He opened his notebook
35and took his pencil from his ear but could think of nothing to write.
36
37A crow called hoarsely to another, something important. Paul looked up but
38could not see the black bird in the leaves of the trees. He looked back down
39to the cream-colored pages of his notebook.
40
41He was surprised that he'd written _YOU CANNOT DISCOVER ART_.
diff --git a/src/swansong-alt.txt b/src/swansong-alt.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..e9a9eba --- /dev/null +++ b/src/swansong-alt.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,31 @@
1---
2title: Swansong
3subtitle: alternate version
4genre: verse
5
6project:
7 title: Autocento of the breakfast table
8 css: autocento
9...
10
11This poem is dry like chapped lips. \
12It is hard as teeth---hear the tapping? \
13It is the swan song of beauty, as all \
14swan songs are. Reading it, you are \
15puzzled, perhaps a little repulsed. \
16Swans do not have teeth, nor do they sing. \
17A honking over the cliff is all \
18they can do, and that they do \
19badly. You don't know where I'm going. \
20You want to tell me, You are not you. \
21You are the air the swan walks on. \
22You are the fringe of the curtain \
23that separates me from you. I say \
24that you are no longer the temple, \
25that you have been through fire \
26and are now less than ash. You are \
27the subtraction of yourself from \
28the world, the air without a swan. \
29Together, we are each other. You \
30and I have both nothing and everything \
31at once, we own the world and nothing in it.
diff --git a/src/swansong.txt b/src/swansong.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..80417f9 --- /dev/null +++ b/src/swansong.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,35 @@
1---
2title: Swan song
3genre: verse
4
5project:
6 title: Elegies for alternate selves
7 css: elegies
8 order: 24
9 prev:
10 title: The squirrel
11 link: squirrel
12 next:
13 title: Telemarketer
14 link: telemarketer
15...
16
17Swans fly overhead singing goodbye \
18to we [walkers of the earth][ithappened]. You point \
19to them in formation, you tell me \
20you are not you. You are the air the swans \
21walk on as they journey like pilgrims \
22to a temple in the south. A curtain \
23there separates me from you, swans \
24from the air they fly through. I say \
25that you are no longer the temple, \
26that you have been through fire \
27and are now less than ash. You are \
28a [mirror][] of me, the [air without a swan][trumpet]. \
29Together, we are each other. You \
30and I have both nothing and everything \
31at once. We own the world and nothing in it.
32
33[ithappened]: howithappened.html
34[mirror]: moongone.html
35[trumpet]: deathstrumpet.html
diff --git a/src/swear.txt b/src/swear.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..3dc80d7 --- /dev/null +++ b/src/swear.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,58 @@
1---
2title: Swear
3genre: prose
4
5project:
6 title: "Buildings out of air: Paul in the Woods"
7 css: paul
8 order: 25
9 next:
10 - title: Options
11 link: options
12 - title: Tapestry
13 link: tapestry
14 previous:
15 - title: Reports
16 link: reports
17 - title: Stump
18 link: stump
19...
20
21```type
22EVERYTHING CHANGES OR EVERYTHING
23STAYS THE SAME
24
25First, a history: I was writing my
26thoughts in a book. I got a typewriter
27and typing things in a book
28became impossible. I began typing
29on 4x6 notecards. I ran out of
30ribbon in my typewriter. I wrote
31on the 4x6 notecards. I bought a
32new ribbon and new notecards. Now
33again I am typing on notecards.
34 What have I been typing?
35Thoughts, impressions maybe, a log
36of changes to my mental state. I
37waited long enough and I began
38recording them in the same way. If
39I wait longer the ribbon will run
40out again and I'll write again, on
41notecards or in my book. The same
42thoughts in different bodies.
43 That's what it means, "Every
44thing changes or everything stays
45the same." It might as well be
46"and." Local differences add up to
47global identities. It's a hoop,
48right? And we keep going around
49and we think it's flat but it's
50round like the Earth.
51```
52
53Paul pushed his chair away from the Writing Desk and stared at the notecard.
54He stood up, knocked his head on the lightbulb, swore. He pulled the notecard
55from his typewriter and crumpled it up with his left hand. With his right hand
56he reached in his pocket and pulled out his cigarettes. He put one in his
57mouth, threw the paper in the corner, grabbed his axe, went out into the
58woods.
diff --git a/src/tapestry.txt b/src/tapestry.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..ab87e19 --- /dev/null +++ b/src/tapestry.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,42 @@
1---
2title: Tapestry
3genre: prose
4
5project:
6 title: "Buildings out of air: Paul in the Woods"
7 css: paul
8 order: 17
9 next:
10 - title: Window
11 link: window
12 - title: Toilet
13 link: toilet
14 previous:
15 - title: Phone
16 link: phone
17 - title: Swear
18 link: swear
19...
20
21_Apparently typewriters need ribbon. Apparently ribbon is incredibly hard to
22find anymore because no one uses typewriters. Apparently I am writing my
23hymns from now on._ So he was back to calling his notes "hymns." He looked
24up "hymns" in the dictionary. It said that a hymn was "an ode or song of
25praise or adoration." Praise or adoration to what? he asked himself. He
26thought maybe furniture. There was still a lot of notfurniture in what he was
27again calling his Writing Shack.
28
29The dictionary also had this to say about "hymn": that it was possibly related
30to the old Greek word for "weave." "Weave what" Paul wondered to himself. He
31wrote this down on a new notecard. _Apparently "hymn" means weave somehow.
32Or it used to. Or its cousin did. What is it weaving? Who is it weaving for?
33I remember in school we talked about Odysseus and his wife Penelope, who wove
34a tapestry every day just to take it apart at night. I forget why._
35
36_Maybe she wove the tapestry for Odysseus. Maybe she wove it for herself.
37What did she weave it of? Memory, maybe? Or dream? I think these words make
38a kind of tapestry, or at least the thread it will be made of. I will weave a
39hymn to the gods of Literature, out of fiction. My furniture was a try at
40weaving, but I am shit at furniture. So writing it is again._
41
42He wrote _**NOTES FOR A HYMN**_ at the top of this notecard.
diff --git a/src/telemarketer.txt b/src/telemarketer.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..e43b87c --- /dev/null +++ b/src/telemarketer.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,87 @@
1---
2title: Telemarketer
3genre: prose
4
5project:
6 title: Elegies for alternate selves
7 css: elegies
8 order: 25
9 prev:
10 title: Swan song
11 link: swansong
12 next:
13 title: We played those games too
14 link: weplayedthosegamestoo
15...
16
17It was one of those nameless gray buildings that could be seen from the
18street only if Larry craned his neck to almost vertical. He never had,
19of course, having heard when he first arrived in the city that only
20tourists unaccustomed to tall buildings did so. He'd never thought about
21it until he'd heard the social injunction against such a thing; it was
22now one of the things he thought about almost every day as he rode to
23and from work in gritty blue buses.
24
25Inside the building, the constant sound of recirculating dry air made
26Larry feel as though he were at some beach in hell, listening to the
27[ocean][], or more accurately at a gift shop in a landlocked state in hell
28listening to the ocean as represented by the sound a conch shell makes
29when he holds it up to his ear. The buzz of the fluorescent bulbs
30overhead sounded like the hot sun bearing down all day in this metaphor,
31a favorite of Larry's.
32
33His cubicle was made of that cheap, grayish-blue plywood that cubicles
34are made of; inside it, his computer sat on his desk as Larry liked to
35think an [eagle perched][] on a mountainous crag much like the crag that was
36his desktop wallpaper. The walls were unadorned except for a few
37tacked-up papers in report covers explaining his script. When Larry made
38a call to a potential customer it always went the same way:
39
40"Hi, Mr/Mrs (customer's name). My name is Larry and I'm with (client's
41name), and was just wondering if I could have a minute of your time?"
42
43"Oh, no, sir; I don't want whatever it is you're selling." (customer
44terminates call).
45
46Larry had only ever read the first line of the script on the wall.
47Sometimes he had an urge to read more of it, to be ready when a customer
48expressed interest in whatever it was Larry was selling, but something
49in him---he liked to think it was an actor's intuition that told him it
50was best to improvise, though he worried it was the futility of it---kept
51him from reading further into the script. So when Jane said, "Sure, I
52have nothing better to do," he was thrown completely off guard.
53
54"Um, alright Mrs ... Mrs. Loring, I was wondering---"
55
56"It's Ms, not Mrs. Em ess. Miz. No ‘r,' Larry." She sounded patient, as
57if she were used to correcting people about the particulars of her
58title. But how often can that happen? Larry thought, and he was suddenly
59deeply confused.
60
61"Oh, sorry, ma'am, uh, Miz Loring, but I wanted to know whether you'd like to,
62ah, buy some..." Larry put his head in his hand and started twirling his hair
63in his finger, a nervous habit he'd had since childhood, and closed his eyes
64tightly. "Why don't you have anything better to do?"
65
66Immediately he knew it was the wrong question. Even before the silence
67on the other end moved past impatience and into stunned, Larry had a
68mini-drama written and staged within his mind: she would call customer
69service and complain loudly into the representative's ear. The rep would
70send a memo to the head of telemarketing requesting disciplinary action,
71and the head would delegate the action to Larry's immediate supervisor,
72David. David would saunter over to Larry's cubicle sometime within the
73next week, depending on when he got the memo and when he felt like
74crossing fifty feet of office space, and have one of what David liked to
75call "chats" but what Larry knew were lectures. After about half an hour
76of "chatting" David would give Larry a warning and ask him to come in
77for overtime to make up for the discretion, and walk back slowly to his
78office, making small talk with the cubicled workers on the way. The
79world suddenly felt too small for Larry, or he too big for it.
80
81Quietly, with the same patience but with a [bigger pain][], Jane said, "My
82husband just left me and I thought you could take my mind off of him for
83just a minute," and hung up.
84
85[ocean]: theoceanoverflowswithcamels.html
86[eagle perched]: mountain.html
87[bigger pain]: arspoetica.html
diff --git a/src/theoceanoverflowswithcamels.txt b/src/theoceanoverflowswithcamels.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..94ba2a0 --- /dev/null +++ b/src/theoceanoverflowswithcamels.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,40 @@
1---
2title: The ocean overflows with camels
3genre: verse
4
5project:
6 title: Elegies for alternate selves
7 css: elegies
8 order: 7
9 prev:
10 title: Ars poetica
11 link: arspoetica
12 next:
13 title: The boar
14 link: boar
15...
16
17We found your [shirt][] deep in the dark water, \
18caught on the clothesline of sleeping pills. \
19Your head on the shore was streaming tears \
20like sleeves or the coronas of saints saved \
21from fire. The burning bush began crying \
22like a child who misses his mother. Traffic \
23slammed shut like an eye. God's mean [left hook][] \
24knocked us out, and we began swimming. \
25Bruises bloomed like algae on a lake. \
26Your [father][] beat your chest and screamed \
27for someone to open a window. The air \
28stopped breathing. Fish clogged its gills. \
29Birds sang too loudly, trying to drown out \
30your father's cries, but all their sweetness \
31was not enough. No polite noises will be made \
32anymore, he told us, clawing your breastbone. \
33He opened your heart to air again. Camels \
34flowed from you both like water from the rock. \
35God spoke up, but nobody listened to him. \
36We hung you up on the line to dry.
37
38[shirt]: lovesong.html
39[left hook]: roughgloves.html
40[father]: angeltoabraham.html
diff --git a/src/todaniel.txt b/src/todaniel.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..6e39f78 --- /dev/null +++ b/src/todaniel.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,36 @@
1---
2title: To Daniel
3subtitle: an elaboration of a previous comment
4genre: verse
5
6project:
7 title: Elegies for alternate selves
8 css: elegies
9 order: 27
10 prev:
11 title: We played those games too
12 link: weplayedthosegamestoo
13 next:
14 title: "Death's trumpet"
15 link: deathstrumpet
16...
17
18There are more modern ideals of beauty \
19than yours, young padowan. Jessica has \
20some assets, that I'll give you easily, \
21but in my women I prefer pizzazz.
22
23I don't want to bring you down, or make you think \
24[that your perfected woman isn't so][trumpet]. \
25It's just that, like Adam said, 2006 \
26has come and gone. What did she do
27
28in that year anyway? IMDB \
29has, surprisingly, none, though in '05 \
30she's in four titles. Sin City \
31I've never seen, although from many I've
32
33heard it's good. But it's still irrelevant--- \
34no matter how comely, she lacks talent.
35
36[trumpet]: deathstrumpet.html
diff --git a/src/toilet.txt b/src/toilet.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..90ae836 --- /dev/null +++ b/src/toilet.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,36 @@
1---
2title: Toilet
3genre: prose
4
5project:
6 title: "Buildings out of air: Paul in the Woods"
7 css: paul
8 order: 11
9 next:
10 - title: Leg
11 link: leg
12 - title: Toothpaste
13 link: toothpaste
14 previous:
15 - title: Hands
16 link: hands
17 - title: Tapestry
18 link: tapestry
19...
20
21Paul only did his reading on the toilet.
22
23He read in a magazine that the universe as we know it is actually a hologram,
24a three-dimensional projection of a lower, two-dimensional, "realer" reality.
25The article said that this model explains things like quantum entanglement,
26what it called "spooky action at a distance."
27
28After he finished, he ran back out to his Writing Shack and hammered out a
29Treatise on Literature as Spooky Action. His mind was reeling. He typed out
30an entire notecard on the subject.
31
32He stopped to catch his breath. Reading it over, he realized he was
33completely wrong. "Paper is made from trees" he thought "and so is
34furniture." He had thought that ART and CRAFT were two separate enterprises
35but he realized in a flash that they were two sides of the same building.
36Were there other walls?
diff --git a/src/toothpaste.txt b/src/toothpaste.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..f8cd231 --- /dev/null +++ b/src/toothpaste.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,40 @@
1---
2title: Toothpaste
3genre: prose
4
5project:
6 title: "Buildings out of air: Paul in the Woods"
7 css: paul
8 order: 36
9 next:
10 - title: Father
11 link: father
12 - title: Treatise
13 link: treatise
14 previous:
15 - title: Early
16 link: early
17 - title: Toilet
18 link: toilet
19...
20
21He couldn't find a shirt to go to work in. They all had stains on them
22somewhere. He pulled out a vest to put on over the stains but somehow all of
23them were still visible. Most of them were unidentifiable but one he thought
24could have come from that peach he ate two weeks before. Another looked like
25toothpaste but he was paranoid it was something else.
26
27When he took the bus into work he couldn't relax. He was paranoid everyone
28was staring at his stain and kept looking out the corners of his eyes to make
29sure they weren't. They didn't seem to be but they could also be looking away
30just as he looked at them. "The Observation Paradox" he muttered to himself.
31
32Jill was the only one to notice the stain at work. She came around to his
33cubicle during a break because he dared not show his stain in the break room.
34"You have a stain on your shoulder" she said "it looks like toothpaste." "Do
35I" he feigned ignorance but went red at the same time "I didn't see that there
36this morning." "How do you get toothpaste on your shoulder?" "I don't know
37skills I guess" he said and she grinned. "You know vinegar will take that
38out" she said "although I think I like it. You should start a museum of shirt
39stains!" "I don't have that many shirts with stains" he said frowning. "Yes
40you do" she said.
diff --git a/src/treatise.txt b/src/treatise.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..8312be4 --- /dev/null +++ b/src/treatise.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,62 @@
1---
2title: Treatise
3genre: prose
4
5project:
6 title: "Buildings out of air: Paul in the Woods"
7 css: paul
8 order: 15
9 next:
10 - title: Phone
11 link: phone
12 - title: Underwear
13 link: underwear
14 previous:
15 - title: Hardware
16 link: hardware
17 - title: Toothpaste
18 link: toothpaste
19...
20
21```type
22TREATISE ON LITERATURE AS "SPOOKY
23ACTION FROM A DISTANCE"
24
25There is this thing called "spooky
26action at a distance." Einstein
27mentioned it first I believe. It
28is about how two electrons can act
29like they are right next to each
30other although they are very far
31away (lightyears even). For a long
32time this puzzled scientists until
33someone (not Einstein) figured out
34that maybe the universe is a
35hologram or projection. So what
36appears to be very far apart in
37the hologram might actually be
38very close in the substrate
39reality.
40 I want to talk about this
41effect in literature. In literature
42the writer writes words on a
43substrate (paper) and later the
44reader reads the same words off
45the substrate. Although the writer
46and reader might be very far apart
47from each other in time and space,
48they experience the same effect
49from reading the words. Even the
50writer reading his own words after
51he has written them becomes a
52reader and feels who he was at
53that time, like a ghost.
54
55PROBLEMS:
56 Maybe the substrate isn't
57paper it's what the writing is
58about. Where is the hologram? Are
59physics and literature comparable?
60What if the universe isn't a
61hologram what then?
62```
diff --git a/src/underwear.txt b/src/underwear.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..7caedd9 --- /dev/null +++ b/src/underwear.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,40 @@
1---
2title: Underwear
3genre: prose
4
5project:
6 title: "Buildings out of air: Paul in the Woods"
7 css: paul
8 order: 3
9 next:
10 - title: Dream
11 link: dream
12 - title: Wallpaper
13 link: wallpaper
14 previous:
15 - title: Hymnal
16 link: hymnal
17 - title: Treatise
18 link: treatise
19...
20
21He dropped the penny in the dryer, turned it on, and turned around. "What" he
22called upstairs, pretending not to hear his mother's question over the noise
23of the dryer. He had heard her ask "Could you bring up my underwear from the
24dryer" but didn't want to touch her underwear any more than he had to. "I
25don't want to bring up your underwear" he said to himself, and walked back
26upstairs as his mother was calling down again for her underwear.
27
28"Did you get them" she asked when he opened the basement door to the kitchen.
29She was sitting at the table playing dominoes. "Get what" he asked. She
30peered at him and said "my underwear."
31
32"Oh I didn't see them" he answered. He reflexively opened the refrigerator,
33reflexively bent down, reflexively tried to feign non-disappointment
34(appointment? he thought) at seeing the same disappointing empty pickle jar,
35old head of lettuce, crusty mayonnaise he'd seen already on the way down to
36switch his laundry over. "Paul" she said in that way that means Look at me.
37Paul looked at her.
38
39"You had to get them out of the dryer to put your clothes in. Where did you
40put them?"
diff --git a/src/wallpaper.txt b/src/wallpaper.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..45de63c --- /dev/null +++ b/src/wallpaper.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,40 @@
1---
2title: Wallpaper
3genre: prose
4
5project:
6 title: "Buildings out of air: Paul in the Woods"
7 css: paul
8 order: 31
9 next:
10 - title: Punch
11 link: punch
12 - title: Window
13 link: window
14 previous:
15 - title: X-ray
16 link: x-ray
17 - title: Underwear
18 link: underwear
19...
20
21
22He didn't go back into the shed for a long time. His hatchet was in there,
23and his axe. He didn't want to face them. His papers, he decided, could wait
24in the top drawer for a while before being looked at again. The pain
25medication made him loopy. He couldn't think as well as he was used to, which
26wasn't well to begin with. Even saying his thoughts out loud, it was as
27though they were on the TV in the next room. Someone was cheering. They had
28just won a car.
29
30His mother came in with lunch on a tray. It was hot tomato soup and a grilled
31cheese sandwich. "What have you been doing all day" she asked "you haven't
32just been staring at the wall have you?" He had been staring at the wall most
33of the day. The wall without the window on it, with the woodgrain wallpaper.
34"No" he said. "What have you been doing then" she asked setting the tray down
35on his lap. He sat up and almost upset it, but she caught it before it
36spilled anything. "Composing in my head" he lied. "A novel of my
37experience."
38
39"Do you really think anyone will want to read about you" she asked and walked
40out of the room.
diff --git a/src/weplayedthosegamestoo.txt b/src/weplayedthosegamestoo.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..e73dc75 --- /dev/null +++ b/src/weplayedthosegamestoo.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,40 @@
1---
2title: We played those games too
3genre: verse
4
5project:
6 title: Elegies for alternate selves
7 css: elegies
8 order: 25
9 prev:
10 title: Telemarketer
11 link: telemarketer
12 next:
13 title: 'To Daniel: an elaboration'
14 link: todaniel
15...
16
17I saw two Eskimo girls playing a game \
18blowing on each other's' vocal chords to make music \
19on the tundra. I thought about how \
20once we played the same game \
21and the sounds blowing over the chords of our throats \
22was the same as a wind over frozen prairie. \
23We are the Eskimo girls who played \
24the game that night to keep ourselves warm. \
25I run my hands over [my daughter][]'s \
26voicebox as she hums a song \
27about a seal and about killing the seal and about \
28skinning it and rendering the blubber \
29into clear oil to light lamps. \
30I remember you are my lamp. She remembers \
31you although you left before she arrived. \
32I can never tell her about you. \
33I will never be able to express that taste of your oil \
34as we [pushed our throats together][spittle]. \
35I will never be able to say how \
36we share this blemish like conjoined twins. \
37I will fail you always to remember you.
38
39[my daughter]: and.html
40[spittle]: spittle.html
diff --git a/src/window.txt b/src/window.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..5df7dc5 --- /dev/null +++ b/src/window.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,42 @@
1---
2title: Window
3genre: prose
4
5project:
6 title: "Buildings out of air: Paul in the Woods"
7 css: paul
8 order: 18
9 next:
10 - title: Question
11 link: question
12 - title: Writing
13 link: writing
14 previous:
15 - title: Tapestry
16 link: tapestry
17 - title: Wallpaper
18 link: wallpaper
19...
20
21_**HYMN 386: JOKES**_
22
23_"Tell us a joke" everyone asks of the clown. He sits on a log and begins to
24think. Everyone waits gap-mouthed in anticipation. A slight breeze ruffles
25the clown's coat, his pompom buttons, his bright red hair. His nose becomes
26redder in the cold. Hours pass. All but the most dedicated of joke listeners
27leave him to rot ~~for all they may care~~._
28
29_The clown opens his mouth to speak but no words come out. A tear falls down
30his cheek, and another. He begins to sob. The last joke listener comes over
31to comfort him. She puts a hand on his shoulder. He looks up at her, red
32face, red nose, white lips, and says ~~"Thank you."~~ He vanishes from the
33clearing. The last joke listener sits on the log and looks up at the sky.
34The moon is full. The world creaks on its axis._
35
36Paul looked up to the space on the wall where a window should be. The shadow
37of his face wavered in the candle light. He looked back down at the card he'd
38been writing on. He read the card. He crossed out the _for all they may
39care_ in the first paragraph, and _"Thank you"_ from the second one. "What
40could he say" he thought to himself. "What could he possibly say to her." He
41went outside to clear his head with a cigarette. He took his axe with him
42this time.
diff --git a/src/words-meaning.txt b/src/words-meaning.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..ee87ad0 --- /dev/null +++ b/src/words-meaning.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,60 @@
1---
2title: Words and meaning
3genre: prose
4
5project:
6 title: Elegies for alternate selves
7 css: elegies
8 order: 4
9 prev:
10 title: And
11 link: and
12 next:
13 title: On seeing the panorama of the Apollo 11 landing site
14 link: apollo11
15...
16
17"How astonishing it is that language can almost mean, / and frightening
18that it does not quite," Jack Gilbert opens his poem "The Forgotten
19Dialect of the Heart." In a similar vein, Hass's "Meditation at
20Legunitas" states, "A word is elegy to what it signifies." These poems
21get to the heart of language, and express the old duality of thought: by
22giving a word to an entity, it is both tethered and made meaningful.
23
24Words are the inevitable byproduct of an analytic mind. Humans are
25constantly classifying and reclassifying ideas, objects, animals,
26people, into ten thousand arbitrary categories. A favorite saying of
27mine is that "Everything is everything," a tautology that I like,
28because it gets to the core of the human linguistic machine, and because
29every time I say it people think I'm being [disingenuous][]. But what I mean
30by "everything is everything" is that there is a continuity to existence
31that works beyond, or rather underneath, our capacity to understand it
32through language. Language by definition compartmentalizes reality, sets
33this bit apart from that bit, sets up boundaries as to what is and is
34not a stone, a leaf, a door. Most of the time I think of language as
35limiting, as defining a thing as the [inverse of everything][] is not.
36
37In this way, "everything is everything" becomes "everything is nothing,"
38which is another thing I like to say and something that pisses people
39off. To me, infinity and zero are the same, two ways of looking at the
40same point on the circle–of numbers, of the universe, whatever. Maybe
41it's because I wear an analogue watch, and so my view of time is
42cyclical, or maybe it's some brain trauma I had in vitro, but whatever it
43is that's how I see the world, because I'm working against the
44limitations that language sets upon us. I think that's the role of the
45poet, or of any artist: to take the over-expansive experience of
46existing and to boil it down, boil and boil away until there is the
47ultimate concentrate at the center that is what the poem talks around,
48at, etc., but never of, because it is ultimately made of language and
49cannot get to it. A poem is getting as close as possible to the speed of
50light, to absolute zero, to God, while knowing that it can't get all the
51way there, and never will. A poem is doing this and coming back and
52showing what happened as it happened. Exegesis is hard because a really
53good poem will be just that, it will be the most basic and best way to
54say what it's saying, so attempts to say the same thing differently will
55fail. A poem is a kernel of existence. It is a description of the
56kernel. [It is][].
57
58[disingenuous]: likingthings.html
59[inverse of everything]: i-am.html
60[It is]: arspoetica.html
diff --git a/src/writing.txt b/src/writing.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..4be9d0b --- /dev/null +++ b/src/writing.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,35 @@
1---
2title: Writing
3genre: prose
4
5project:
6 title: "Buildings out of air: Paul in the Woods"
7 css: paul
8 order: 7
9 next:
10 - title: Notes
11 link: notes
12 - title: X-ray
13 link: x-ray
14 previous:
15 - title: Leaf
16 link: leaf
17 - title: Window
18 link: window
19...
20
21He sat down at his writing desk and removed his new pen from its plastic
22wrapping. He remembered how to fill it from _The View from Saturday_, which
23he'd read as a kid. It had been one of his favorite books. He remembered the
24heart puzzle they completed, the origin of the word "posh," and most of all
25his fourth-grade teacher Ms. (Mrs? He could never remember) Samovar. He
26smiled as he opened the lid on the ink well he'd just bought.
27
28He dipped his pen in the inkwell, screwed the converter piston up, and watched
29as nothing entered the chamber. He screwed it back down and up again, while
30dipping the nib more deeply into the ink well. He watched as again nothing
31filled the capsule. He screwed it down a third time. His thumb knocked the
32inkwell over somehow by accident.
33
34As he swore, stood up and away from the table, and went into the house proper
35for paper towels, he resolved to buy a typewriter.
diff --git a/src/x-ray.txt b/src/x-ray.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..19c03e0 --- /dev/null +++ b/src/x-ray.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,44 @@
1---
2title: X-ray
3genre: prose
4
5project:
6 title: "Buildings out of air: Paul in the Woods"
7 css: paul
8 order: 30
9 next:
10 - title: Wallpaper
11 link: wallpaper
12 - title: Yellow
13 link: yellow
14 previous:
15 - title: Yellow
16 link: yellow
17 - title: Writing
18 link: writing
19...
20
21While chopping a tree in the woods with his hatchet (a Christmas gift from his
22mother) a bird he'd never heard before cried out. He jerked his head up and
23to the right as the hatchet fell down and to the left. It cut deep into the
24back of his left hand. A low thud didn't echo in the forest because all the
25needles and snow absorbed ~~sound well~~ the sound.
26
27When he got back to the house his hand wrapped in the end of his shirt he
28still felt no pain. He called for his mother and found her watching TV in the
29main room. He stayed in the kitchen not wanting to get blood on the carpet.
30She turned around cigarette dangling from her open mouth said "Oh god what
31happened."
32
33She drove him to the hospital in the car. The radio stayed off the entire
34way. Paul wanted to turn it on but ~~he didn't want~~ the desire not to annoy
35his mother was stronger. They drove in silence.
36
37At the hospital after the X-rays and stitching and pain medication
38prescription the doctor said "You got lucky, son. If that axe had hit a
39half-inch lower you'd have lost your hand. You won't get full mobility back
40because we had to tie the tendons, but with therapy you should be able to work
41it pretty well."
42
43On the drive back home all he could think was that he was glad he didn't hit
44his writing hand.
diff --git a/src/yellow.txt b/src/yellow.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..693e76f --- /dev/null +++ b/src/yellow.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,40 @@
1---
2title: Yellow
3genre: prose
4
5project:
6 title: "Buildings out of air: Paul in the Woods"
7 css: paul
8 order: 29
9 next:
10 - title: X-ray
11 link: x-ray
12 previous:
13 - title: Building
14 link: building
15 - title: X-ray
16 link: x-ray
17...
18
19He would enter data at work for fifty minutes and then go on break. He would
20walk down the hallway to the breakroom, which had a white refrigerator, a
21black microwave on a brown plyboard cart stocked with powdered creamer, sugar,
22and swizzle sticks, a dark red coffee maker, and yellow paint on the wall.
23He'd remember that somewhere he'd read an article about yellow walls being
24calming. "They use yellow in asylums" he'd say to himself.
25
26He would sit down at the round table covered in newspapers that took up the
27half of the room not occupied by the refrigerator, microwave, or counter with
28coffee pot and sink. He didn't drink coffee but he would think about
29starting. He would shuffle the newspapers around on the table and see they
30were all the same ones as an hour ago. "Or technically fifty minutes ago" he
31would say to himself. Sometimes Jill would come in for a cup of coffee. She
32would always check that her lunch, which she brought each morning in a
33Tupperware container with a blue lid with her name written on it in black
34sharpie, was still there. Once he asked her why she checked.
35
36"Why do you always check if your lunch is in the fridge" he asked. "I don't"
37she said. "Oh I thought you did." "I don't think so." "Why do you check at
38all?" "Once it was stolen out of the fridge and returned empty before I had a
39chance to eat my lunch" she said. "So you make sure it won't happen again."
40"No I'm waiting for the day that it does."
diff --git a/stagnant.html b/stagnant.html new file mode 100644 index 0000000..1836434 --- /dev/null +++ b/stagnant.html
@@ -0,0 +1,39 @@
1<!DOCTYPE html>
2<!-- Template for compiled 'Autocento' documents -->
3<html>
4<head>
5 <meta charset="utf-8">
6 <meta name="generator" content="pandoc">
7 <meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1.0, user-scalable=yes">
8 <meta name="author" content="Case Duckworth">
9 <!-- more meta tags here -->
10 <title>Stagnant | Autocento of the breakfast table</title>
11 <link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="_common.css">
12 <link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="_prose.css">
13 <link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="_paul.css">
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16 <![endif]-->
17 </head>
18<body>
19
20
21 <header>
22 <!-- title -->
23 <h1 class="title">Stagnant</h1>
24
25 </header>
26
27 <section class="prose">
28 <p>“Riding the bus to work is a good way to think or to read” Paul thought to himself on the bus ride to work. His thoughts couldn’t become real to him because he didn’t want to look insane to everyone else on the bus. His thoughts came to him like someone yelling over a hard wind. He was trying to write them on his memory but the act of writing was easier and more immediate than that of listening. He was afraid that when he looked at his memory later he wouldn’t be able to read what was written.</p>
29 <p>“Thoughts are like the wind outside a moving bus” he thought “or rather the bus is a brain slamming into columns of stagnant air causing them to whistle past in a confusion of something.” He could barely hear the voice yelling to him over the wind. “Speak up” he thought to the voice, then remembered it was his own. He wished he’d remembered a book to read.</p>
30 <p>He looked at his hands to pass the time. They were dry in the winter air that had seeped its way into the bus. He tried to figure out how many hours they would make it before cracking and bleeding. “Maybe three or four” he thought accidentally out loud. He looked around expecting stares from everyone on the seat. He was surprised that he was the only one on the bus.</p>
31 </section>
32
33 <nav>
34 <a href="building.html">Building &gt;</a>
35 <a href="stump.html">Stump &gt;</a>
36 </nav>
37
38</body>
39</html>
diff --git a/statements-frag.html b/statements-frag.html new file mode 100644 index 0000000..490562b --- /dev/null +++ b/statements-frag.html
@@ -0,0 +1,48 @@
1<!DOCTYPE html>
2<!-- Template for compiled 'Autocento' documents -->
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4<head>
5 <meta charset="utf-8">
6 <meta name="generator" content="pandoc">
7 <meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1.0, user-scalable=yes">
8 <meta name="author" content="Case Duckworth">
9 <!-- more meta tags here -->
10 <title>Statements | Autocento of the breakfast table</title>
11 <link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="_common.css">
12 <link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="_mixed.css">
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18<body>
19
20
21 <header>
22 <!-- title -->
23 <h1 class="title">Statements</h1>
24 <h1 class="subtitle">a fragment</h1>
25 </header>
26
27 <section class="mixed">
28 <h2 id="i.-eli" class="unnumbered">I. Eli</h2>
29 <p>“Can one truly describe an emotion?” Eli asked me over the walkie-talkie. He was in the bathroom, &amp; had taken the walkie-talkie in with him absent-mindedly. I could hear sounds of his piss hitting the toilet water.</p>
30 <p>“I can hear you peeing,” I said. He didn’t answer so I said in apology, “It’s okay. Humans are sexually dimorphic.” I was sitting on my blue baby blanket texting Jon, who was funny and amicable over the phone. He made a three-message joke about greedy lawyers and I would have been laughing if not for my embarrassment toward Eli. He finally came out of the bathroom and kept his eyes straight ahead, toward the wall calendar and not at me, as he passed through the family room into his bedroom, were he shut the door quietly. Presently I heard some muffled noise as he turned on his iPod. I guessed he didn’t feel like talking so I stayed on my blanket watching the Price is Right and texting Jon.</p>
31 <p>Drew Carrey was doing his wrap-up speech on TV when Eli finally came out of his room, red puffy streaks covering his face. His eyes and nose were red too, which was almost festive against the pale green and white of the wallpaper. I had been laughing at the goofy costumes on the Price is Right and the jokes Jon was texting me, but when Eli came out of the room I stopped and just looked at him as well as I could. He was staring at my right shoulder as he said, “Go home now.”</p>
32 <p>“What?”</p>
33 <p>“I said go home now. I don’t want you here anymore, because I just remembered I have someone coming over and I have to clean.”</p>
34 <p>“Look, Eli, I’m sorry—”</p>
35 <p>“It doesn’t have anything to do with you, I swear. Just go, okay? Go home now.”</p>
36 <p>I got up and tried to give him a hug but he withdrew from me sharply. So I walked around the coffee table as he sat down, not looking at me anymore, and stared at the blank TV. The blanket I had been sitting in was crumpled next to him like a dead bird. I opened my mouth but thought better of talking, and closed the door behind me slowly.</p>
37 <h2 id="ii.-dimorphic" class="unnumbered">II. Dimorphic</h2>
38 <p>Oranges. Poison. A compromise between Mary &amp; Judas. Blue baby blankets swaddling greedy lawyers.</p>
39 <p>Can one truly describe an emotion? I cut my ankle with a razor blade. I can only go one at a time. Humanity has a seething mass of eels for a brain, mating in the water so forcefully that it could drown you under the moon.</p>
40 <h2 id="iii.-declaration-of-poetry" class="unnumbered">III. Declaration of Poetry</h2>
41 <p>You have to go one line at a time, and you have to start on the first or second line.</p>
42 </section>
43
44 <nav>
45 </nav>
46
47</body>
48</html>
diff --git a/stump.html b/stump.html new file mode 100644 index 0000000..f219612 --- /dev/null +++ b/stump.html
@@ -0,0 +1,41 @@
1<!DOCTYPE html>
2<!-- Template for compiled 'Autocento' documents -->
3<html>
4<head>
5 <meta charset="utf-8">
6 <meta name="generator" content="pandoc">
7 <meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1.0, user-scalable=yes">
8 <meta name="author" content="Case Duckworth">
9 <!-- more meta tags here -->
10 <title>Stump | Autocento of the breakfast table</title>
11 <link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="_common.css">
12 <link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="_prose.css">
13 <link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="_paul.css">
14 <!--[if lt IE 9]>
15 <script src="http://html5shim.googlecode.com/svn/trunk/html5.js"> </script>
16 <![endif]-->
17 </head>
18<body>
19
20
21 <header>
22 <!-- title -->
23 <h1 class="title">Stump</h1>
24
25 </header>
26
27 <section class="prose">
28 <p>He walked into the woods for the first time in months. It was a bright summer day but under the canopy of leaves it was cool and quiet and twilight. There was no sound but his footsteps, his breathing. Instead of an axe, his right hand clutched his notebook. His left was in his pocket. A pencil perched behind his ear.</p>
29 <p>He walked aimlessly until coming over a short rise he saw a stump. He recognized his handiwork in the way the stump made a kind of chair back—flat until the axe had gone through far enough, then a frayed edge like a torn page. Paul walked over to the stump and sat down.</p>
30 <p>He looked up and tried to find a pattern in the placement of the trees. There was none. They grew randomly, beginning nowhere and ending in the same place. A squirrel ran down one and up another for no reason. He opened his notebook and took his pencil from his ear but could think of nothing to write.</p>
31 <p>A crow called hoarsely to another, something important. Paul looked up but could not see the black bird in the leaves of the trees. He looked back down to the cream-colored pages of his notebook.</p>
32 <p>He was surprised that he’d written <em>YOU CANNOT DISCOVER ART</em>.</p>
33 </section>
34
35 <nav>
36 <a href="early.html">Early &gt;</a>
37 <a href="swear.html">Swear &gt;</a>
38 </nav>
39
40</body>
41</html>
diff --git a/swansong-alt.html b/swansong-alt.html new file mode 100644 index 0000000..3eed6a7 --- /dev/null +++ b/swansong-alt.html
@@ -0,0 +1,35 @@
1<!DOCTYPE html>
2<!-- Template for compiled 'Autocento' documents -->
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4<head>
5 <meta charset="utf-8">
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8 <meta name="author" content="Case Duckworth">
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10 <title>Swansong | Autocento of the breakfast table</title>
11 <link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="_common.css">
12 <link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="_verse.css">
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17 </head>
18<body>
19
20
21 <header>
22 <!-- title -->
23 <h1 class="title">Swansong</h1>
24 <h1 class="subtitle">alternate version</h1>
25 </header>
26
27 <section class="verse">
28 <p>This poem is dry like chapped lips.<br />It is hard as teeth—hear the tapping?<br />It is the swan song of beauty, as all<br />swan songs are. Reading it, you are<br />puzzled, perhaps a little repulsed.<br />Swans do not have teeth, nor do they sing.<br />A honking over the cliff is all<br />they can do, and that they do<br />badly. You don’t know where I’m going.<br />You want to tell me, You are not you.<br />You are the air the swan walks on.<br />You are the fringe of the curtain<br />that separates me from you. I say<br />that you are no longer the temple,<br />that you have been through fire<br />and are now less than ash. You are<br />the subtraction of yourself from<br />the world, the air without a swan.<br />Together, we are each other. You<br />and I have both nothing and everything<br />at once, we own the world and nothing in it.</p>
29 </section>
30
31 <nav>
32 </nav>
33
34</body>
35</html>
diff --git a/swansong.html b/swansong.html new file mode 100644 index 0000000..d29ae85 --- /dev/null +++ b/swansong.html
@@ -0,0 +1,35 @@
1<!DOCTYPE html>
2<!-- Template for compiled 'Autocento' documents -->
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10 <title>Swan song | Autocento of the breakfast table</title>
11 <link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="_common.css">
12 <link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="_verse.css">
13 <link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="_elegies.css">
14 <!--[if lt IE 9]>
15 <script src="http://html5shim.googlecode.com/svn/trunk/html5.js"> </script>
16 <![endif]-->
17 </head>
18<body>
19
20
21 <header>
22 <!-- title -->
23 <h1 class="title">Swan song</h1>
24
25 </header>
26
27 <section class="verse">
28 <p>Swans fly overhead singing goodbye<br />to we <a href="howithappened.html">walkers of the earth</a>. You point<br />to them in formation, you tell me<br />you are not you. You are the air the swans<br />walk on as they journey like pilgrims<br />to a temple in the south. A curtain<br />there separates me from you, swans<br />from the air they fly through. I say<br />that you are no longer the temple,<br />that you have been through fire<br />and are now less than ash. You are<br />a <a href="moongone.html">mirror</a> of me, the <a href="deathstrumpet.html">air without a swan</a>.<br />Together, we are each other. You<br />and I have both nothing and everything<br />at once. We own the world and nothing in it.</p>
29 </section>
30
31 <nav>
32 </nav>
33
34</body>
35</html>
diff --git a/swear.html b/swear.html new file mode 100644 index 0000000..c36c0a7 --- /dev/null +++ b/swear.html
@@ -0,0 +1,66 @@
1<!DOCTYPE html>
2<!-- Template for compiled 'Autocento' documents -->
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10 <title>Swear | Autocento of the breakfast table</title>
11 <link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="_common.css">
12 <link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="_prose.css">
13 <link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="_paul.css">
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17 </head>
18<body>
19
20
21 <header>
22 <!-- title -->
23 <h1 class="title">Swear</h1>
24
25 </header>
26
27 <section class="prose">
28 <pre class="type"><code>EVERYTHING CHANGES OR EVERYTHING
29 STAYS THE SAME
30
31 First, a history: I was writing my
32 thoughts in a book. I got a typewriter
33 and typing things in a book
34 became impossible. I began typing
35 on 4x6 notecards. I ran out of
36 ribbon in my typewriter. I wrote
37 on the 4x6 notecards. I bought a
38 new ribbon and new notecards. Now
39 again I am typing on notecards.
40 What have I been typing?
41 Thoughts, impressions maybe, a log
42 of changes to my mental state. I
43 waited long enough and I began
44 recording them in the same way. If
45 I wait longer the ribbon will run
46 out again and I&#39;ll write again, on
47 notecards or in my book. The same
48 thoughts in different bodies.
49 That&#39;s what it means, &quot;Every
50 thing changes or everything stays
51 the same.&quot; It might as well be
52 &quot;and.&quot; Local differences add up to
53 global identities. It&#39;s a hoop,
54 right? And we keep going around
55 and we think it&#39;s flat but it&#39;s
56 round like the Earth.</code></pre>
57 <p>Paul pushed his chair away from the Writing Desk and stared at the notecard. He stood up, knocked his head on the lightbulb, swore. He pulled the notecard from his typewriter and crumpled it up with his left hand. With his right hand he reached in his pocket and pulled out his cigarettes. He put one in his mouth, threw the paper in the corner, grabbed his axe, went out into the woods.</p>
58 </section>
59
60 <nav>
61 <a href="options.html">Options &gt;</a>
62 <a href="tapestry.html">Tapestry &gt;</a>
63 </nav>
64
65</body>
66</html>
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23 <h1 class="title">Tapestry</h1>
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26
27 <section class="prose">
28 <p><em>Apparently typewriters need ribbon. Apparently ribbon is incredibly hard to find anymore because no one uses typewriters. Apparently I am writing my hymns from now on.</em> So he was back to calling his notes “hymns.” He looked up “hymns” in the dictionary. It said that a hymn was “an ode or song of praise or adoration.” Praise or adoration to what? he asked himself. He thought maybe furniture. There was still a lot of notfurniture in what he was again calling his Writing Shack.</p>
29 <p>The dictionary also had this to say about “hymn”: that it was possibly related to the old Greek word for “weave.” “Weave what” Paul wondered to himself. He wrote this down on a new notecard. <em>Apparently “hymn” means weave somehow. Or it used to. Or its cousin did. What is it weaving? Who is it weaving for? I remember in school we talked about Odysseus and his wife Penelope, who wove a tapestry every day just to take it apart at night. I forget why.</em></p>
30 <p><em>Maybe she wove the tapestry for Odysseus. Maybe she wove it for herself. What did she weave it of? Memory, maybe? Or dream? I think these words make a kind of tapestry, or at least the thread it will be made of. I will weave a hymn to the gods of Literature, out of fiction. My furniture was a try at weaving, but I am shit at furniture. So writing it is again.</em></p>
31 <p>He wrote <em><strong>NOTES FOR A HYMN</strong></em> at the top of this notecard.</p>
32 </section>
33
34 <nav>
35 <a href="window.html">Window &gt;</a>
36 <a href="toilet.html">Toilet &gt;</a>
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23 <h1 class="title">Telemarketer</h1>
24
25 </header>
26
27 <section class="prose">
28 <p>It was one of those nameless gray buildings that could be seen from the street only if Larry craned his neck to almost vertical. He never had, of course, having heard when he first arrived in the city that only tourists unaccustomed to tall buildings did so. He’d never thought about it until he’d heard the social injunction against such a thing; it was now one of the things he thought about almost every day as he rode to and from work in gritty blue buses.</p>
29 <p>Inside the building, the constant sound of recirculating dry air made Larry feel as though he were at some beach in hell, listening to the <a href="theoceanoverflowswithcamels.html">ocean</a>, or more accurately at a gift shop in a landlocked state in hell listening to the ocean as represented by the sound a conch shell makes when he holds it up to his ear. The buzz of the fluorescent bulbs overhead sounded like the hot sun bearing down all day in this metaphor, a favorite of Larry’s.</p>
30 <p>His cubicle was made of that cheap, grayish-blue plywood that cubicles are made of; inside it, his computer sat on his desk as Larry liked to think an <a href="mountain.html">eagle perched</a> on a mountainous crag much like the crag that was his desktop wallpaper. The walls were unadorned except for a few tacked-up papers in report covers explaining his script. When Larry made a call to a potential customer it always went the same way:</p>
31 <p>“Hi, Mr/Mrs (customer’s name). My name is Larry and I’m with (client’s name), and was just wondering if I could have a minute of your time?”</p>
32 <p>“Oh, no, sir; I don’t want whatever it is you’re selling.” (customer terminates call).</p>
33 <p>Larry had only ever read the first line of the script on the wall. Sometimes he had an urge to read more of it, to be ready when a customer expressed interest in whatever it was Larry was selling, but something in him—he liked to think it was an actor’s intuition that told him it was best to improvise, though he worried it was the futility of it—kept him from reading further into the script. So when Jane said, “Sure, I have nothing better to do,” he was thrown completely off guard.</p>
34 <p>“Um, alright Mrs … Mrs. Loring, I was wondering—”</p>
35 <p>“It’s Ms, not Mrs. Em ess. Miz. No ‘r,’ Larry.” She sounded patient, as if she were used to correcting people about the particulars of her title. But how often can that happen? Larry thought, and he was suddenly deeply confused.</p>
36 <p>“Oh, sorry, ma’am, uh, Miz Loring, but I wanted to know whether you’d like to, ah, buy some…” Larry put his head in his hand and started twirling his hair in his finger, a nervous habit he’d had since childhood, and closed his eyes tightly. “Why don’t you have anything better to do?”</p>
37 <p>Immediately he knew it was the wrong question. Even before the silence on the other end moved past impatience and into stunned, Larry had a mini-drama written and staged within his mind: she would call customer service and complain loudly into the representative’s ear. The rep would send a memo to the head of telemarketing requesting disciplinary action, and the head would delegate the action to Larry’s immediate supervisor, David. David would saunter over to Larry’s cubicle sometime within the next week, depending on when he got the memo and when he felt like crossing fifty feet of office space, and have one of what David liked to call “chats” but what Larry knew were lectures. After about half an hour of “chatting” David would give Larry a warning and ask him to come in for overtime to make up for the discretion, and walk back slowly to his office, making small talk with the cubicled workers on the way. The world suddenly felt too small for Larry, or he too big for it.</p>
38 <p>Quietly, with the same patience but with a <a href="arspoetica.html">bigger pain</a>, Jane said, “My husband just left me and I thought you could take my mind off of him for just a minute,” and hung up.</p>
39 </section>
40
41 <nav>
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diff --git a/theoceanoverflowswithcamels.html b/theoceanoverflowswithcamels.html new file mode 100644 index 0000000..a20dad7 --- /dev/null +++ b/theoceanoverflowswithcamels.html
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23 <h1 class="title">The ocean overflows with camels</h1>
24
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26
27 <section class="verse">
28 <p>We found your <a href="lovesong.html">shirt</a> deep in the dark water,<br />caught on the clothesline of sleeping pills.<br />Your head on the shore was streaming tears<br />like sleeves or the coronas of saints saved<br />from fire. The burning bush began crying<br />like a child who misses his mother. Traffic<br />slammed shut like an eye. God’s mean <a href="roughgloves.html">left hook</a><br />knocked us out, and we began swimming.<br />Bruises bloomed like algae on a lake.<br />Your <a href="angeltoabraham.html">father</a> beat your chest and screamed<br />for someone to open a window. The air<br />stopped breathing. Fish clogged its gills.<br />Birds sang too loudly, trying to drown out<br />your father’s cries, but all their sweetness<br />was not enough. No polite noises will be made<br />anymore, he told us, clawing your breastbone.<br />He opened your heart to air again. Camels<br />flowed from you both like water from the rock.<br />God spoke up, but nobody listened to him.<br />We hung you up on the line to dry.</p>
29 </section>
30
31 <nav>
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33
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35</html>
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23 <h1 class="title">To Daniel</h1>
24 <h1 class="subtitle">an elaboration of a previous comment</h1>
25 </header>
26
27 <section class="verse">
28 <p>There are more modern ideals of beauty<br />than yours, young padowan. Jessica has<br />some assets, that I’ll give you easily,<br />but in my women I prefer pizzazz.</p>
29 <p>I don’t want to bring you down, or make you think<br /><a href="deathstrumpet.html">that your perfected woman isn’t so</a>.<br />It’s just that, like Adam said, 2006<br />has come and gone. What did she do</p>
30 <p>in that year anyway? IMDB<br />has, surprisingly, none, though in ’05<br />she’s in four titles. Sin City<br />I’ve never seen, although from many I’ve</p>
31 <p>heard it’s good. But it’s still irrelevant—<br />no matter how comely, she lacks talent.</p>
32 </section>
33
34 <nav>
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27 <section class="prose">
28 <p>Paul only did his reading on the toilet.</p>
29 <p>He read in a magazine that the universe as we know it is actually a hologram, a three-dimensional projection of a lower, two-dimensional, “realer” reality. The article said that this model explains things like quantum entanglement, what it called “spooky action at a distance.”</p>
30 <p>After he finished, he ran back out to his Writing Shack and hammered out a Treatise on Literature as Spooky Action. His mind was reeling. He typed out an entire notecard on the subject.</p>
31 <p>He stopped to catch his breath. Reading it over, he realized he was completely wrong. “Paper is made from trees” he thought “and so is furniture.” He had thought that ART and CRAFT were two separate enterprises but he realized in a flash that they were two sides of the same building. Were there other walls?</p>
32 </section>
33
34 <nav>
35 <a href="leg.html">Leg &gt;</a>
36 <a href="toothpaste.html">Toothpaste &gt;</a>
37 </nav>
38
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40</html>
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24
25 </header>
26
27 <section class="prose">
28 <p>He couldn’t find a shirt to go to work in. They all had stains on them somewhere. He pulled out a vest to put on over the stains but somehow all of them were still visible. Most of them were unidentifiable but one he thought could have come from that peach he ate two weeks before. Another looked like toothpaste but he was paranoid it was something else.</p>
29 <p>When he took the bus into work he couldn’t relax. He was paranoid everyone was staring at his stain and kept looking out the corners of his eyes to make sure they weren’t. They didn’t seem to be but they could also be looking away just as he looked at them. “The Observation Paradox” he muttered to himself.</p>
30 <p>Jill was the only one to notice the stain at work. She came around to his cubicle during a break because he dared not show his stain in the break room. “You have a stain on your shoulder” she said “it looks like toothpaste.” “Do I” he feigned ignorance but went red at the same time “I didn’t see that there this morning.” “How do you get toothpaste on your shoulder?” “I don’t know skills I guess” he said and she grinned. “You know vinegar will take that out” she said “although I think I like it. You should start a museum of shirt stains!” “I don’t have that many shirts with stains” he said frowning. “Yes you do” she said.</p>
31 </section>
32
33 <nav>
34 <a href="father.html">Father &gt;</a>
35 <a href="treatise.html">Treatise &gt;</a>
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24
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26
27 <section class="prose">
28 <pre class="type"><code>TREATISE ON LITERATURE AS &quot;SPOOKY
29 ACTION FROM A DISTANCE&quot;
30
31 There is this thing called &quot;spooky
32 action at a distance.&quot; Einstein
33 mentioned it first I believe. It
34 is about how two electrons can act
35 like they are right next to each
36 other although they are very far
37 away (lightyears even). For a long
38 time this puzzled scientists until
39 someone (not Einstein) figured out
40 that maybe the universe is a
41 hologram or projection. So what
42 appears to be very far apart in
43 the hologram might actually be
44 very close in the substrate
45 reality.
46 I want to talk about this
47 effect in literature. In literature
48 the writer writes words on a
49 substrate (paper) and later the
50 reader reads the same words off
51 the substrate. Although the writer
52 and reader might be very far apart
53 from each other in time and space,
54 they experience the same effect
55 from reading the words. Even the
56 writer reading his own words after
57 he has written them becomes a
58 reader and feels who he was at
59 that time, like a ghost.
60
61 PROBLEMS:
62 Maybe the substrate isn&#39;t
63 paper it&#39;s what the writing is
64 about. Where is the hologram? Are
65 physics and literature comparable?
66 What if the universe isn&#39;t a
67 hologram what then?</code></pre>
68 </section>
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28 <p>He dropped the penny in the dryer, turned it on, and turned around. “What” he called upstairs, pretending not to hear his mother’s question over the noise of the dryer. He had heard her ask “Could you bring up my underwear from the dryer” but didn’t want to touch her underwear any more than he had to. “I don’t want to bring up your underwear” he said to himself, and walked back upstairs as his mother was calling down again for her underwear.</p>
29 <p>“Did you get them” she asked when he opened the basement door to the kitchen. She was sitting at the table playing dominoes. “Get what” he asked. She peered at him and said “my underwear.”</p>
30 <p>“Oh I didn’t see them” he answered. He reflexively opened the refrigerator, reflexively bent down, reflexively tried to feign non-disappointment (appointment? he thought) at seeing the same disappointing empty pickle jar, old head of lettuce, crusty mayonnaise he’d seen already on the way down to switch his laundry over. “Paul” she said in that way that means Look at me. Paul looked at her.</p>
31 <p>“You had to get them out of the dryer to put your clothes in. Where did you put them?”</p>
32 </section>
33
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27 <section class="prose">
28 <p>He didn’t go back into the shed for a long time. His hatchet was in there, and his axe. He didn’t want to face them. His papers, he decided, could wait in the top drawer for a while before being looked at again. The pain medication made him loopy. He couldn’t think as well as he was used to, which wasn’t well to begin with. Even saying his thoughts out loud, it was as though they were on the TV in the next room. Someone was cheering. They had just won a car.</p>
29 <p>His mother came in with lunch on a tray. It was hot tomato soup and a grilled cheese sandwich. “What have you been doing all day” she asked “you haven’t just been staring at the wall have you?” He had been staring at the wall most of the day. The wall without the window on it, with the woodgrain wallpaper. “No” he said. “What have you been doing then” she asked setting the tray down on his lap. He sat up and almost upset it, but she caught it before it spilled anything. “Composing in my head” he lied. “A novel of my experience.”</p>
30 <p>“Do you really think anyone will want to read about you” she asked and walked out of the room.</p>
31 </section>
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28 <p>I saw two Eskimo girls playing a game<br />blowing on each other’s’ vocal chords to make music<br />on the tundra. I thought about how<br />once we played the same game<br />and the sounds blowing over the chords of our throats<br />was the same as a wind over frozen prairie.<br />We are the Eskimo girls who played<br />the game that night to keep ourselves warm.<br />I run my hands over <a href="and.html">my daughter</a>’s<br />voicebox as she hums a song<br />about a seal and about killing the seal and about<br />skinning it and rendering the blubber<br />into clear oil to light lamps.<br />I remember you are my lamp. She remembers<br />you although you left before she arrived.<br />I can never tell her about you.<br />I will never be able to express that taste of your oil<br />as we <a href="spittle.html">pushed our throats together</a>.<br />I will never be able to say how<br />we share this blemish like conjoined twins.<br />I will fail you always to remember you.</p>
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28 <p><em><strong>HYMN 386: JOKES</strong></em></p>
29 <p><em>“Tell us a joke” everyone asks of the clown. He sits on a log and begins to think. Everyone waits gap-mouthed in anticipation. A slight breeze ruffles the clown’s coat, his pompom buttons, his bright red hair. His nose becomes redder in the cold. Hours pass. All but the most dedicated of joke listeners leave him to rot <del>for all they may care</del>.</em></p>
30 <p><em>The clown opens his mouth to speak but no words come out. A tear falls down his cheek, and another. He begins to sob. The last joke listener comes over to comfort him. She puts a hand on his shoulder. He looks up at her, red face, red nose, white lips, and says <del>“Thank you.”</del> He vanishes from the clearing. The last joke listener sits on the log and looks up at the sky. The moon is full. The world creaks on its axis.</em></p>
31 <p>Paul looked up to the space on the wall where a window should be. The shadow of his face wavered in the candle light. He looked back down at the card he’d been writing on. He read the card. He crossed out the <em>for all they may care</em> in the first paragraph, and <em>“Thank you”</em> from the second one. “What could he say” he thought to himself. “What could he possibly say to her.” He went outside to clear his head with a cigarette. He took his axe with him this time.</p>
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28 <p>“How astonishing it is that language can almost mean, / and frightening that it does not quite,” Jack Gilbert opens his poem “The Forgotten Dialect of the Heart.” In a similar vein, Hass’s “Meditation at Legunitas” states, “A word is elegy to what it signifies.” These poems get to the heart of language, and express the old duality of thought: by giving a word to an entity, it is both tethered and made meaningful.</p>
29 <p>Words are the inevitable byproduct of an analytic mind. Humans are constantly classifying and reclassifying ideas, objects, animals, people, into ten thousand arbitrary categories. A favorite saying of mine is that “Everything is everything,” a tautology that I like, because it gets to the core of the human linguistic machine, and because every time I say it people think I’m being <a href="likingthings.html">disingenuous</a>. But what I mean by “everything is everything” is that there is a continuity to existence that works beyond, or rather underneath, our capacity to understand it through language. Language by definition compartmentalizes reality, sets this bit apart from that bit, sets up boundaries as to what is and is not a stone, a leaf, a door. Most of the time I think of language as limiting, as defining a thing as the <a href="i-am.html">inverse of everything</a> is not.</p>
30 <p>In this way, “everything is everything” becomes “everything is nothing,” which is another thing I like to say and something that pisses people off. To me, infinity and zero are the same, two ways of looking at the same point on the circle–of numbers, of the universe, whatever. Maybe it’s because I wear an analogue watch, and so my view of time is cyclical, or maybe it’s some brain trauma I had in vitro, but whatever it is that’s how I see the world, because I’m working against the limitations that language sets upon us. I think that’s the role of the poet, or of any artist: to take the over-expansive experience of existing and to boil it down, boil and boil away until there is the ultimate concentrate at the center that is what the poem talks around, at, etc., but never of, because it is ultimately made of language and cannot get to it. A poem is getting as close as possible to the speed of light, to absolute zero, to God, while knowing that it can’t get all the way there, and never will. A poem is doing this and coming back and showing what happened as it happened. Exegesis is hard because a really good poem will be just that, it will be the most basic and best way to say what it’s saying, so attempts to say the same thing differently will fail. A poem is a kernel of existence. It is a description of the kernel. <a href="arspoetica.html">It is</a>.</p>
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28 <p>He sat down at his writing desk and removed his new pen from its plastic wrapping. He remembered how to fill it from <em>The View from Saturday</em>, which he’d read as a kid. It had been one of his favorite books. He remembered the heart puzzle they completed, the origin of the word “posh,” and most of all his fourth-grade teacher Ms. (Mrs? He could never remember) Samovar. He smiled as he opened the lid on the ink well he’d just bought.</p>
29 <p>He dipped his pen in the inkwell, screwed the converter piston up, and watched as nothing entered the chamber. He screwed it back down and up again, while dipping the nib more deeply into the ink well. He watched as again nothing filled the capsule. He screwed it down a third time. His thumb knocked the inkwell over somehow by accident.</p>
30 <p>As he swore, stood up and away from the table, and went into the house proper for paper towels, he resolved to buy a typewriter.</p>
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28 <p>While chopping a tree in the woods with his hatchet (a Christmas gift from his mother) a bird he’d never heard before cried out. He jerked his head up and to the right as the hatchet fell down and to the left. It cut deep into the back of his left hand. A low thud didn’t echo in the forest because all the needles and snow absorbed <del>sound well</del> the sound.</p>
29 <p>When he got back to the house his hand wrapped in the end of his shirt he still felt no pain. He called for his mother and found her watching TV in the main room. He stayed in the kitchen not wanting to get blood on the carpet. She turned around cigarette dangling from her open mouth said “Oh god what happened.”</p>
30 <p>She drove him to the hospital in the car. The radio stayed off the entire way. Paul wanted to turn it on but <del>he didn’t want</del> the desire not to annoy his mother was stronger. They drove in silence.</p>
31 <p>At the hospital after the X-rays and stitching and pain medication prescription the doctor said “You got lucky, son. If that axe had hit a half-inch lower you’d have lost your hand. You won’t get full mobility back because we had to tie the tendons, but with therapy you should be able to work it pretty well.”</p>
32 <p>On the drive back home all he could think was that he was glad he didn’t hit his writing hand.</p>
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28 <p>He would enter data at work for fifty minutes and then go on break. He would walk down the hallway to the breakroom, which had a white refrigerator, a black microwave on a brown plyboard cart stocked with powdered creamer, sugar, and swizzle sticks, a dark red coffee maker, and yellow paint on the wall. He’d remember that somewhere he’d read an article about yellow walls being calming. “They use yellow in asylums” he’d say to himself.</p>
29 <p>He would sit down at the round table covered in newspapers that took up the half of the room not occupied by the refrigerator, microwave, or counter with coffee pot and sink. He didn’t drink coffee but he would think about starting. He would shuffle the newspapers around on the table and see they were all the same ones as an hour ago. “Or technically fifty minutes ago” he would say to himself. Sometimes Jill would come in for a cup of coffee. She would always check that her lunch, which she brought each morning in a Tupperware container with a blue lid with her name written on it in black sharpie, was still there. Once he asked her why she checked.</p>
30 <p>“Why do you always check if your lunch is in the fridge” he asked. “I don’t” she said. “Oh I thought you did.” “I don’t think so.” “Why do you check at all?” “Once it was stolen out of the fridge and returned empty before I had a chance to eat my lunch” she said. “So you make sure it won’t happen again.” “No I’m waiting for the day that it does.”</p>
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