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author | Case Duckworth | 2015-01-28 22:22:15 -0700 |
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committer | Case Duckworth | 2015-01-28 22:22:15 -0700 |
commit | cbd5199529209059be3bde0d6572a1ba192b84d3 (patch) | |
tree | 9be2bc424c6e471a13ca09678fce77075d1b63fe | |
parent | Revert "Include Elegies; template; pandoc compile" (diff) | |
download | autocento-cbd5199529209059be3bde0d6572a1ba192b84d3.tar.gz autocento-cbd5199529209059be3bde0d6572a1ba192b84d3.zip |
Add Elegies; template; pandoc compile script
-rw-r--r-- | 09-and.txt | 28 | ||||
-rw-r--r-- | 11-apollo11.txt | 29 | ||||
-rw-r--r-- | 12-arspoetica.txt | 38 | ||||
-rw-r--r-- | 13-theoceanoverflowswithcamels.txt | 25 | ||||
-rw-r--r-- | 14-boar.txt | 24 | ||||
-rw-r--r-- | 15-deadman.txt | 22 | ||||
-rw-r--r-- | 16-angeltoabraham.txt | 25 | ||||
-rw-r--r-- | 17-feedingtheraven.txt | 34 | ||||
-rw-r--r-- | 20-onformalpoetry.txt | 22 | ||||
-rw-r--r-- | 22-i-am.txt | 23 | ||||
-rw-r--r-- | 23-howithappened.txt | 21 | ||||
-rw-r--r-- | 25-lovesong.txt | 27 | ||||
-rw-r--r-- | 26-roughgloves.txt | 19 | ||||
-rw-r--r-- | 27-ronaldmcdonald.txt | 35 | ||||
-rw-r--r-- | 29-moongone.txt | 16 | ||||
-rw-r--r-- | 3-howtoread.txt | 148 | ||||
-rw-r--r-- | 32-mountain.txt | 26 | ||||
-rw-r--r-- | 33-serengeti.txt | 19 | ||||
-rw-r--r-- | 34-shipwright.txt | 23 | ||||
-rw-r--r-- | 35-spittle.txt | 16 | ||||
-rw-r--r-- | 36-squirrel.txt | 21 | ||||
-rw-r--r-- | 38-swansong.txt | 20 | ||||
-rw-r--r-- | 39-telemarketer.txt | 73 | ||||
-rw-r--r-- | 41-weplayedthosegamestoo.txt | 26 | ||||
-rw-r--r-- | 42-todaniel.txt | 22 | ||||
-rw-r--r-- | 44-deathstrumpet.txt | 32 | ||||
-rw-r--r-- | 99-elegyforanalternateself.txt | 22 | ||||
-rw-r--r-- | 99-statements-frag.txt | 68 | ||||
-rw-r--r-- | 99-swansong-alt.txt | 27 | ||||
-rw-r--r-- | _template.html | 40 | ||||
-rw-r--r-- | compile.sh | 10 |
31 files changed, 981 insertions, 0 deletions
diff --git a/09-and.txt b/09-and.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..09e82ca --- /dev/null +++ b/09-and.txt | |||
@@ -0,0 +1,28 @@ | |||
1 | --- | ||
2 | title: 'And' | ||
3 | project: 'Elegies for Alternate Selves' | ||
4 | epigraph: | | ||
5 | "What is your favorite word?" | ||
6 | "And. It is so hopeful." | ||
7 | ... | ||
8 | |||
9 | And you were there in the start of it all \ | ||
10 | and you folded your hands like little doves \ | ||
11 | that would fly away like an afterthought \ | ||
12 | and you turned to me the window light on your face \ | ||
13 | and you asked me something that I did not recognize \ | ||
14 | like a great throng of people who are not you \ | ||
15 | and I asked are we in a church \ | ||
16 | and you answered with the look on your face \ | ||
17 | of someone grieving something gone for years \ | ||
18 | but that they had been reminded of \ | ||
19 | by a catch in the light or in someone's voice \ | ||
20 | and I think maybe it could have been mine \ | ||
21 | and I looked away thickly my head was in jelly \ | ||
22 | and I didn't get an answer from you but I got one | ||
23 | |||
24 | I looked at the man in front of us with glasses \ | ||
25 | he was speaking and holding a book \ | ||
26 | and I didn't understand him he was far away \ | ||
27 | and I could tell I was missing something important \ | ||
28 | and you nodded to yourself at something he said | ||
diff --git a/11-apollo11.txt b/11-apollo11.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..07e9884 --- /dev/null +++ b/11-apollo11.txt | |||
@@ -0,0 +1,29 @@ | |||
1 | --- | ||
2 | title: 'On seeing the panorama of the Apollo 11 landing site' | ||
3 | project: 'Elegies for Alternate Selves' | ||
4 | ... | ||
5 | |||
6 | So it's the fucking moon. Big deal. As if \ | ||
7 | you haven't seen it before, hanging in the sky \ | ||
8 | like a piece of rotten meat nailed to the wall, | ||
9 | |||
10 | a maudlin love letter (the i's dotted with hearts) \ | ||
11 | tacked to the sky's door like ninety-eight theses. \ | ||
12 | Don't stare at it like it means anything. | ||
13 | |||
14 | Don't give it the chance to collect meaning \ | ||
15 | from your hand like an old pigeon. Don't dare ascribe \ | ||
16 | it a will, or call it fickle, or think it has any say | ||
17 | |||
18 | in your affairs. It's separated from your life \ | ||
19 | by three hundred eighty-four thousand miles of space, \ | ||
20 | the same distance you stepped away from time that night | ||
21 | |||
22 | you said your love was broken, a crippled gyroscope \ | ||
23 | knocking in the dark. It was then that time fell apart, \ | ||
24 | had a nervous breakdown and started following you | ||
25 | |||
26 | everywhere, moonfaced, always asking where you're going. \ | ||
27 | You keep trying to get away from it but it nuzzles closer \ | ||
28 | and sings you songs that sound like the cooing of a dove \ | ||
29 | that will only escape again into an empty sky at dawn. | ||
diff --git a/12-arspoetica.txt b/12-arspoetica.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..382378e --- /dev/null +++ b/12-arspoetica.txt | |||
@@ -0,0 +1,38 @@ | |||
1 | --- | ||
2 | title: 'Ars poetica' | ||
3 | project: 'Elegies for Alternate Selves' | ||
4 | ... | ||
5 | |||
6 | What is poetry? Poetry is. Inasmuch as life is, so is poetry. Here is | ||
7 | the problem: life is very big and complex. Human beings are neither. We | ||
8 | are small, simple beings that don’t want to know all of the myriad | ||
9 | interactions happening all around us, within us, as a part of us, all | ||
10 | the hours of every day. We much prefer knowing only that which is just | ||
11 | in front of our faces, staring us back with a look of utter contempt. | ||
12 | This is why many people are depressed. | ||
13 | |||
14 | Poetry is an attempt made by some to open up our field of view, to maybe | ||
15 | check on something else that isn’t staring us in the face so | ||
16 | contemptibly. Maybe something else is smiling at us, we think. So we | ||
17 | write poetry to force ourselves to look away from the mirror of our | ||
18 | existence to see something else. | ||
19 | |||
20 | This is generally painful. To make it less painful, poetry compresses | ||
21 | reality a lot to make it more consumable. It takes life, that seawater, | ||
22 | and boils it down and boils it down until only the salt remains, the | ||
23 | important parts that we can focus on and make some sense of the | ||
24 | senselessness of life. Poetry is life bouillon, and to thoroughly enjoy | ||
25 | a poem we must put that bouillon back into the seawater of life and make | ||
26 | a delicious soup out of it. To make this soup, to decompress the poem | ||
27 | into an emotion or life, requires a lot of brainpower. A good reader | ||
28 | will have this brainpower. A good poem will not require it. | ||
29 | |||
30 | What this means is: a poem should be self-extracting. It should be a | ||
31 | rare vanilla in the bottle, waiting only for someone to open it and | ||
32 | sniff it and suddenly there they are, in the orchid that vanilla came | ||
33 | from, in the tropical land where it grew next to its brothers and sister | ||
34 | vanilla plants. They feel the pain of having their children taken from | ||
35 | them. A good poem leaves a feeling of loss and of intense beauty. The | ||
36 | reader does nothing to achieve this—they are merely the receptacle of | ||
37 | the feeling that the poem forces onto them. In a way, poetry is a crime. | ||
38 | But it is the most beautiful crime on this crime-ridden earth. | ||
diff --git a/13-theoceanoverflowswithcamels.txt b/13-theoceanoverflowswithcamels.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..659fe7d --- /dev/null +++ b/13-theoceanoverflowswithcamels.txt | |||
@@ -0,0 +1,25 @@ | |||
1 | --- | ||
2 | title: 'The ocean overflows with camels' | ||
3 | project: 'Elegies for Alternate Selves' | ||
4 | ... | ||
5 | |||
6 | We found your shirt deep in the dark water, \ | ||
7 | caught on the clothesline of sleeping pills. \ | ||
8 | Your head on the shore was streaming tears \ | ||
9 | like sleeves or the coronas of saints saved \ | ||
10 | from fire. The burning bush began crying \ | ||
11 | like a child who misses his mother. Traffic \ | ||
12 | slammed shut like an eye. God's mean left hook \ | ||
13 | knocked us out, and we began swimming. \ | ||
14 | Bruises bloomed like algae on a lake. \ | ||
15 | Your father beat your chest and screamed \ | ||
16 | for someone to open a window. The air \ | ||
17 | stopped breathing. Fish clogged its gills. \ | ||
18 | Birds sang too loudly, trying to drown out \ | ||
19 | your father's cries, but all their sweetness \ | ||
20 | was not enough. No polite noises will be made \ | ||
21 | anymore, he told us, clawing your breastbone. \ | ||
22 | He opened your heart to air again. Camels \ | ||
23 | flowed from you both like water from the rock. \ | ||
24 | God spoke up, but nobody listened to him. \ | ||
25 | We hung you up on the line to dry. | ||
diff --git a/14-boar.txt b/14-boar.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..b5ac468 --- /dev/null +++ b/14-boar.txt | |||
@@ -0,0 +1,24 @@ | |||
1 | --- | ||
2 | title: 'The Boar' | ||
3 | project: 'Elegies for Alternate Selves' | ||
4 | ... | ||
5 | |||
6 | Now the ticking clocks scare me. \ | ||
7 | The empty rooms, clock towers, belfries; \ | ||
8 | I am terrified by them all. | ||
9 | |||
10 | I really used to enjoy going to church, \ | ||
11 | singing in the choir, listening to the sermon. \ | ||
12 | Now the chairs squeal like dying pigs--- | ||
13 | |||
14 | It was the boar that did it. \ | ||
15 | Fifteen feet from me that night \ | ||
16 | in the grass, rooting for God \ | ||
17 | knows what, finding me instead. | ||
18 | |||
19 | I ran, not knowing where or how, \ | ||
20 | not looking for his pursuit of me. \ | ||
21 | I ran to God's front door, found \ | ||
22 | it locked, found the house empty | ||
23 | |||
24 | with a note saying, "Condemned." | ||
diff --git a/15-deadman.txt b/15-deadman.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..ced8ed0 --- /dev/null +++ b/15-deadman.txt | |||
@@ -0,0 +1,22 @@ | |||
1 | --- | ||
2 | title: 'Dead man' | ||
3 | project: 'Elegies for Alternate Selves' | ||
4 | ... | ||
5 | |||
6 | A dead man finds his way into our hearts \ | ||
7 | simply by opening the door and walking in. \ | ||
8 | He pours himself a drink, speaks aimlessly \ | ||
9 | about hunting or some bats he saw \ | ||
10 | on the way over, wheeling around each other. \ | ||
11 | Look how they spin, he says, it's like the \ | ||
12 | ripples atoms make as they hurl past each other \ | ||
13 | in the space between their bodies. \ | ||
14 | We mention the eels at the aquarium, how \ | ||
15 | their bodies knot while mating. The dead man \ | ||
16 | was a boyscout once, and tied a lot of knots. \ | ||
17 | His favorite was the one with the rabbit \ | ||
18 | and the hole, and the rabbit going in and out \ | ||
19 | and around the tree. The dead man liked it \ | ||
20 | because he liked to pretend that the rabbit \ | ||
21 | was running from a fox, and the rabbit \ | ||
22 | always ended up safe, back in his hole. | ||
diff --git a/16-angeltoabraham.txt b/16-angeltoabraham.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..cce80e1 --- /dev/null +++ b/16-angeltoabraham.txt | |||
@@ -0,0 +1,25 @@ | |||
1 | --- | ||
2 | title: 'The angel to Abraham' | ||
3 | project: 'Elegies for Alternate Selves' | ||
4 | ... | ||
5 | |||
6 | Abraham, Abraham, you are old and cannot hear: \ | ||
7 | what if you miss my small voice amongst the creaking \ | ||
8 | of your own grief, kill your son unknowing \ | ||
9 | of what he will be, and commit Israel to nothing? | ||
10 | |||
11 | Abraham, you must know or hope that God \ | ||
12 | will not allow your son to die; you must know \ | ||
13 | that this is a test, but then why \ | ||
14 | are you so bent on Isaac's destruction? \ | ||
15 | Look at your eyes; there is more than fear \ | ||
16 | there. I see in your eyes desperation, \ | ||
17 | a manic passion to do right by your God \ | ||
18 | whom you are not able to see or know. | ||
19 | |||
20 | Am I too late? I will try to stay \ | ||
21 | your old hands, the knife clenched \ | ||
22 | within them, intent on ending life. | ||
23 | |||
24 | Will you hear my small voice amongst the creaking, \ | ||
25 | or will it be the chance bleating of a passing ram? | ||
diff --git a/17-feedingtheraven.txt b/17-feedingtheraven.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..c9a2b8f --- /dev/null +++ b/17-feedingtheraven.txt | |||
@@ -0,0 +1,34 @@ | |||
1 | --- | ||
2 | title: 'Feeding the raven' | ||
3 | project: 'Elegies for Alternate Selves' | ||
4 | ... | ||
5 | |||
6 | You never can tell just when Charlie Sheen will enter your life. For me, | ||
7 | it was last Thursday. I was reading some translation of a Japanese | ||
8 | translation of "The Raven" in which the Poe and the raven become | ||
9 | friends. At one point the raven gets very sick and Poe feeds him at his | ||
10 | bedside and nurses him back to health. The story was very heartwarming | ||
11 | and sad at the same time and my tears were welling up when suddenly I | ||
12 | heard a knock on my door. | ||
13 | |||
14 | I shuffled over, sniffling but managing to keep my cheeks dry to open | ||
15 | it. Of course Charlie was beaming on the other side, with a bag of | ||
16 | flowers and a grin like a dog's. He bounded in the room without saying | ||
17 | hello and threw the flowers in the sink, opened the refrigerator and | ||
18 | started poking around. I said "It's nice to see you too" and went to my | ||
19 | room to get a camera, as well as a notebook for him to sign. | ||
20 | |||
21 | When I came back he was on the floor, hunched and groaning. I looked on | ||
22 | the table to see a month-old half-gallon of milk---now cottage | ||
23 | cheese---half-empty and dripping. The remnants were on his mouth, and at | ||
24 | once I saw my chance to become Poe in this translation of a translation | ||
25 | of a translation. I knelt next to Charlie, cradled his head in my lap. | ||
26 | He looked up at me with a stare full of terror. I returned it levelly, | ||
27 | making cooing noises at him until he calmed down. | ||
28 | |||
29 | When he was calm he excused himself to be sick on my toilet. He wouldn't | ||
30 | let me follow but said he would sign whatever I liked when he got back. | ||
31 | After half an hour passed and all I'd had for company was the ticking of | ||
32 | the clock, I went to the bathroom door. I knocked carefully---once, then | ||
33 | twice---to no beaming face, no flowers. I opened the door. There was shit | ||
34 | on the floor and the window was open. There was a breeze blowing. | ||
diff --git a/20-onformalpoetry.txt b/20-onformalpoetry.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..746105d --- /dev/null +++ b/20-onformalpoetry.txt | |||
@@ -0,0 +1,22 @@ | |||
1 | --- | ||
2 | title: 'On formal poetry' | ||
3 | project: 'Elegies for Alternate Selves' | ||
4 | ... | ||
5 | |||
6 | I think that I could write formal poems \ | ||
7 | exclusively, or at least inclusive \ | ||
8 | with all the other stuff I write \ | ||
9 | I guess. Of course, I've already written \ | ||
10 | a few, this one included, though "formal" \ | ||
11 | is maybe a stretch. Is blank verse a form? \ | ||
12 | What is form anyway? I picture old \ | ||
13 | women counting stitches on their knitting, \ | ||
14 | keeping iambs next to iambs in lines \ | ||
15 | as straight and sure as arrows. But my sock \ | ||
16 | is lumpy, poorly made: it's beginning \ | ||
17 | to unravel. Stresses don't line up. Syl- \ | ||
18 | lables forced to fit like McNugget molds. \ | ||
19 | That cliché on the arrow? I'm aware. \ | ||
20 | My prepositions too---God, where's it stop? \ | ||
21 | The answer: never. I will never stop \ | ||
22 | writing poems, or hating what I write. | ||
diff --git a/22-i-am.txt b/22-i-am.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..da36507 --- /dev/null +++ b/22-i-am.txt | |||
@@ -0,0 +1,23 @@ | |||
1 | --- | ||
2 | title: 'I am' | ||
3 | project: 'Elegies for Alternate Selves' | ||
4 | ... | ||
5 | |||
6 | I am a great pillar of white smoke. \ | ||
7 | I am Lot's nameless wife encased in salt. \ | ||
8 | I am the wound on Christ's back as he moans \ | ||
9 | with the pounding of a hammer on his wrist. \ | ||
10 | I am the nail that holds my house together. \ | ||
11 | It is a strong house, built on a good foundation. \ | ||
12 | In the winter, it is warm and crawling things \ | ||
13 | cannot get in. This house will never burn down. \ | ||
14 | It is the house that I built, with my body \ | ||
15 | and with my strength. I am the only one who lives \ | ||
16 | here. I am both father and mother to a race \ | ||
17 | of dust motes that worship me as a god. I have \ | ||
18 | monuments built daily in my honor in dark \ | ||
19 | corners around the house. I destroy all of them \ | ||
20 | before I go to bed, but in the morning \ | ||
21 | there are still more. I don't think I know \ | ||
22 | where all of them are. I don't think I can get \ | ||
23 | to all of them anymore. There are too many. | ||
diff --git a/23-howithappened.txt b/23-howithappened.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..dbadb1c --- /dev/null +++ b/23-howithappened.txt | |||
@@ -0,0 +1,21 @@ | |||
1 | --- | ||
2 | title: 'How it happened' | ||
3 | project: 'Elegies for Alternate Selves' | ||
4 | ... | ||
5 | |||
6 | I was away on vacation when I heard--- \ | ||
7 | someone sat at my desk while I was away. \ | ||
8 | They took my pen, while I was taking \ | ||
9 | surf lessons, and wrote the sun into the sky. \ | ||
10 | They pre-approved the earth and the waters, \ | ||
11 | and all of the living things, without even \ | ||
12 | having the decency to text me. It was not I \ | ||
13 | who was behind the phrase "creeping things." \ | ||
14 | When I got back, of course I was pissed, \ | ||
15 | but it was already written into the policy. \ | ||
16 | I'm just saying: don't blame me for Cain \ | ||
17 | killing Abel. That was a murder. I'm not a cop. \ | ||
18 | The Tower of Babel fell on its own. The ark \ | ||
19 | never saw a single drop of rain. I'm the drunk \ | ||
20 | sitting on the curb who just pissed his pants, \ | ||
21 | holding up a sign asking where I am. | ||
diff --git a/25-lovesong.txt b/25-lovesong.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..47738e6 --- /dev/null +++ b/25-lovesong.txt | |||
@@ -0,0 +1,27 @@ | |||
1 | --- | ||
2 | title: 'Love Song' | ||
3 | project: 'Elegies for Alternate Selves' | ||
4 | ... | ||
5 | |||
6 | Walking along in the dark is a good way to begin a song. Walking home in | ||
7 | the dark after a long day chasing criminals is another. Running away | ||
8 | from an imagined evil is no way to begin a story. | ||
9 | |||
10 | I am telling you this because you wanted to know what it's like to tell | ||
11 | something so beautiful everyone will cry. I am telling you because I | ||
12 | want you to know what it is to keep everything inside of you. I am | ||
13 | telling you. | ||
14 | |||
15 | Can you see? Can you see into me and reach in your hand and pull me | ||
16 | inside out, like an old shirt? Will you wear me until I unravel on your | ||
17 | shoulders, will you cut me apart and use my skin to clean up the cola | ||
18 | you spill on the floor when you're drunk? | ||
19 | |||
20 | I want you to know that I want you to know. Do you want me? To know is | ||
21 | to know. I, you want we. We want. That is why we're here. To want is to | ||
22 | be is to want and I want you. Do you also? Check yes or no. | ||
23 | |||
24 | There is a way to end every story, every song. Every criminal must be | ||
25 | caught. Even those who cry dry their tears. I cannot tell you all I want | ||
26 | because I want to tell you everything. There is no art because there is | ||
27 | no mirror big enough. We wake up every day. Sometimes we sleep. | ||
diff --git a/26-roughgloves.txt b/26-roughgloves.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..3824799 --- /dev/null +++ b/26-roughgloves.txt | |||
@@ -0,0 +1,19 @@ | |||
1 | --- | ||
2 | title: 'Rough gloves' | ||
3 | project: 'Elegies for Alternate Selves' | ||
4 | ... | ||
5 | |||
6 | I lost my hands & knit replacement ones \ | ||
7 | from spiders' threads, stronger than steel but soft \ | ||
8 | as lambs' wool. Catching as they do on nails \ | ||
9 | & your collarbone, you don't seem to like \ | ||
10 | their rough warm presence on your cheek or thigh. \ | ||
11 | I've asked you if you minded, you've said no \ | ||
12 | (your face a table laid with burnt meat, bread \ | ||
13 | so stale it could break a hand). Remember \ | ||
14 | your senile mother's face above that table? \ | ||
15 | I'd say she got the meaning of that look. \ | ||
16 | You'd rather not be touched by these rough gloves, \ | ||
17 | the only way I have to knit a love \ | ||
18 | against whatever winters we may enter \ | ||
19 | like a silkworm in a spider's blackened maw. | ||
diff --git a/27-ronaldmcdonald.txt b/27-ronaldmcdonald.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..03a0858 --- /dev/null +++ b/27-ronaldmcdonald.txt | |||
@@ -0,0 +1,35 @@ | |||
1 | --- | ||
2 | title: 'Ronald McDonald' | ||
3 | project: 'Elegies for Alternate Selves' | ||
4 | ... | ||
5 | |||
6 | When Ronald McDonald takes off his striped shirt, \ | ||
7 | his coveralls, his painted face: when he no longer looks \ | ||
8 | like anyone or anything special, sitting next to women | ||
9 | |||
10 | in bars or standing in the aisle at the grocery, \ | ||
11 | is he no longer Ronald? Is he no longer happy to kick \ | ||
12 | a soccer ball around with the kids in the park, | ||
13 | |||
14 | is he suddenly unable to enjoy the french fries \ | ||
15 | he gets for his fifty percent off? I'd like to think \ | ||
16 | that he takes Ronald off like a shirt, hangs him | ||
17 | |||
18 | in a closet where he breathes darkly in the musk. \ | ||
19 | I'd like to believe that we are able to slough off selves \ | ||
20 | like old skin and still retain some base self. | ||
21 | |||
22 | Of course we all know this is not what happens. \ | ||
23 | The Ronald leering at women drunkenly is the same who \ | ||
24 | the next day kicks at a ball the size of a head. | ||
25 | |||
26 | He is the same that hugs his children at night, \ | ||
27 | who has sex with his wife on the weekends when they're \ | ||
28 | not so tired to make it work, who smiles holding | ||
29 | |||
30 | a basket of fries in front of a field. He cannot \ | ||
31 | take off the facepaint or the yellow gloves. They are \ | ||
32 | stuck to him like so many feathers with the tar | ||
33 | |||
34 | of his everyday associations. His plight is that \ | ||
35 | of everyone's---we are what we do who we are. | ||
diff --git a/29-moongone.txt b/29-moongone.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..4f97fff --- /dev/null +++ b/29-moongone.txt | |||
@@ -0,0 +1,16 @@ | |||
1 | --- | ||
2 | title: 'The moon is gone and in its place a mirror' | ||
3 | project: 'Elegies for Alternate Selves' | ||
4 | ... | ||
5 | |||
6 | The moon is gone and in its place a mirror. Looking at the night sky now | ||
7 | yields nothing but the viewer's own face as viewed from a million miles, | ||
8 | surrounded by the landscape he is only vaguely aware of being surrounded | ||
9 | by. He believes that he is alone, surrounded by desert and mountain, but | ||
10 | behind him---he now sees it---someone is sneaking up on him. He spins around | ||
11 | fast, but no one is there on Earth. He looks back up and they are yet | ||
12 | closer in the night sky. Again he looks over his shoulder but there is | ||
13 | nothing, not even a desert mouse. As he looks up again he realizes it's | ||
14 | a cloud above him, which due to optics has looked like someone else. The | ||
15 | cloud blocks out the moon which is now a mirror, and the viewer is | ||
16 | completely alone. | ||
diff --git a/3-howtoread.txt b/3-howtoread.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..4345442 --- /dev/null +++ b/3-howtoread.txt | |||
@@ -0,0 +1,148 @@ | |||
1 | --- | ||
2 | title: 'How to read this' | ||
3 | project: 'Elegies for Alternate Selves' | ||
4 | ... | ||
5 | |||
6 | This book is an exploration of life, of all possible lives that could be | ||
7 | lived. Each of the poems contained herein have been written by a | ||
8 | different person, with his own history, culture, and emotions. True, | ||
9 | they are all related, but no more than any of us is related through our | ||
10 | genetics, our shared planet, or our yearnings. | ||
11 | |||
12 | Fernando Pessoa wrote poems under four different identities---he called | ||
13 | them *heteronyms*---that were known during his lifetime, though after his | ||
14 | death over sixty have been found and catalogued. He called them | ||
15 | heteronyms as opposed to pseudonyms because they were much more than | ||
16 | names he wrote under. They were truly different writing selves, | ||
17 | concerned with different ideas and writing with different styles: | ||
18 | Alberto Caeiro wrote pastorals; Ricardo Reis wrote more formal odes; | ||
19 | Álvaro de Campos wrote these long, Whitman-esque pieces (one to Whitman | ||
20 | himself); and Pessoa's own name was used for poems that are kind of | ||
21 | similar to all the others. It seems as though Pessoa found it | ||
22 | inefficient to try and write everything he wanted only in his own self; | ||
23 | rather he parceled out the different pieces and developed them into full | ||
24 | identities, at the cost of his own: "I subsist as a kind of medium of | ||
25 | myself, but I'm less real than the others, less substantial, less | ||
26 | personal, and easily influenced by them all." de Campos said of him at | ||
27 | one point, "Fernando Pessoa, strictly speaking, doesn't exist." | ||
28 | |||
29 | It's not just Pessoa---I, strictly speaking, don't exist, both as the | ||
30 | specific me that writes this now and as the concept of selfhood, the | ||
31 | ego. Heraclitus famously said that we can't step into the same river | ||
32 | twice, and the fact of the matter is that we can't occupy the same self | ||
33 | twice. It's constantly changing and adapting to new stimuli from the | ||
34 | environment, from other selves, from inside itself, and each time it | ||
35 | forms anew into something that's never existed before. The person I am | ||
36 | beginning a poem is a separate being than the one I am finishing a poem, | ||
37 | and part of it is the poem I've written has brought forth some other | ||
38 | dish onto the great table that is myself. | ||
39 | |||
40 | In the same way, with each poem you read of this, you too could become a | ||
41 | different person. Depending on which order you read them in, you could | ||
42 | be any number of possible people. If you follow the threads I've laid | ||
43 | out for you, there are so many possible selves; if you disregard those | ||
44 | and go a different way there are quite a few more. However, at the end | ||
45 | of the journey there is only one self that you will occupy, the others | ||
46 | disappearing from this universe and going maybe somewhere else, maybe | ||
47 | nowhere at all. | ||
48 | |||
49 | There is a scene in *The Neverending Story* where Bastian is trying to | ||
50 | find his way out of the desert. He opens a door and finds himself in the | ||
51 | Temple of a Thousand Doors, which is never seen from the outside but | ||
52 | only once someone enters it. It is a series of rooms with six sides each | ||
53 | and three doors: one from the room before and two choices. In life, each | ||
54 | of these rooms is a moment, but where Bastian can choose which of only | ||
55 | two doors to enter each time, in life there can be any number of doors | ||
56 | and we don't always choose which to go through---in fact, I would argue | ||
57 | that most of the time we aren't allowed the luxury. | ||
58 | |||
59 | What happens to those other doors, those other possibilities? Is there | ||
60 | some other version of the self that for whatever complexities of | ||
61 | circumstance and will chose a different door at an earlier moment? The | ||
62 | answer to this, of course, is that we can never know for sure, though | ||
63 | this doesn't keep us from trying through the process of regret. We go | ||
64 | back and try that other door in our mind, extrapolating a possible | ||
65 | present from our own past. This is ultimately unsatisfying, not only | ||
66 | because whatever world is imagined is not the one currently lived, but | ||
67 | because it becomes obvious that the alternate model of reality is not | ||
68 | complete: we can only extrapolate from the original room, absolutely | ||
69 | without knowledge of any subsequent possible choices. This causes a deep | ||
70 | disappointment, a frustration with the inability to know all possible | ||
71 | timelines (coupled with the insecurity that this may not be the best of | ||
72 | all possible worlds) that we feel as regret. | ||
73 | |||
74 | In this way, every moment we live is an elegy to every possible future | ||
75 | that might have stemmed from it. Annie Dillard states this in a | ||
76 | biological manner when she says in *Pilgrim at Tinker Creek*, "Every | ||
77 | glistening egg is a memento mori." Nature is inefficient---it spends a | ||
78 | hundred lifetimes to get one that barely works. The fossil record is | ||
79 | littered with the failed experiments of evolution, many of which failed | ||
80 | due only to blind chance: an asteroid, a shift in weather patterns, an | ||
81 | inefficient copulation method. Each living person today has twenty dead | ||
82 | standing behind him, and that only counts the people that actually | ||
83 | lived. How many missed opportunities stand behind any of us? | ||
84 | |||
85 | The real problem with all of this is that time is only additive. There's | ||
86 | no way to dial it back and start over, with new choices or new | ||
87 | environments. Even when given the chance to do something again, we do it | ||
88 | *again*, with the reality given by our previous action. Thus we are | ||
89 | constantly creating and being created by the world. The self is never | ||
90 | the same from one moment to the next. | ||
91 | |||
92 | A poem is like a snapshot of a self. If it's any good, it captures the | ||
93 | emotional core of the self at the time of writing for communication with | ||
94 | future selves, either within the same person or outside of it. Thus | ||
95 | revision is possible, and the new poem created will be yet another | ||
96 | snapshot of the future self as changed by the original poem. The page | ||
97 | becomes a window into the past, a particular past as experienced by one | ||
98 | self. The poem is a remembering of a self that no longer exists, in | ||
99 | other words, an elegy. | ||
100 | |||
101 | A snapshot doesn't capture the entire subject, however. It leaves out | ||
102 | the background as it's obscured by foreground objects; it fails to | ||
103 | include anything that isn't contained in its finite frame. In order to | ||
104 | build a working definition of identity, we must include all possible | ||
105 | selves over all possible timelines, combined into one person: identity | ||
106 | is the combined effect of all possible selves over time. A poem leaves | ||
107 | much of this out: it is the one person standing in front of twenty | ||
108 | ghosts. | ||
109 | |||
110 | A poem is the place where the selves of the reader and the speaker meet, | ||
111 | in their respective times and places. In this way a poem is outside of | ||
112 | time or place, because it changes its location each time it's read. Each | ||
113 | time it's two different people meeting. The problem with a poem is that | ||
114 | it's such a small window---if we met in real life the way we met in poems, | ||
115 | we would see nothing of anyone else but a square the size of a postage | ||
116 | stamp. It has been argued this is the way we see time and ourselves in | ||
117 | it, as well: Vonnegut uses the metaphor of a subject strapped to a | ||
118 | railroad car moving at a set pace, with a six-foot-long metal tube | ||
119 | placed in front of the subject's eye; the landscape in the distance is | ||
120 | time, and what we see is the only way in which we interact with it. It's | ||
121 | the same with a poem and the self: we can only see and interact with a | ||
122 | small kernel. This is why it's possible to write more than one poem. | ||
123 | |||
124 | Due to this kernel nature of poetry, a good poem should focus itself to | ||
125 | extract as much meaning as possible from that one kernel of identity to | ||
126 | which it has access. It should be an atom of selfhood, irreducible and | ||
127 | resistant to paraphrase, because it tries to somehow echo the large | ||
128 | unsayable part of identity outside the frame of the self. It is the | ||
129 | kernel that contains a universe, or that speaks around one that's | ||
130 | hidden; if it's a successful poem then it makes the smallest circuit | ||
131 | possible. This is why the commentary on poems is so voluminous: a poem | ||
132 | is tightly packed meaning that commentators try to unpack to get at that | ||
133 | universality inside it. A fortress of dialectic is constructed that | ||
134 | ultimately obstructs the meaning behind the poem; it becomes the | ||
135 | foreground in the photograph that disallows us to view the horizon | ||
136 | beyond it. | ||
137 | |||
138 | With this in mind, I collect these poems that were written over a period | ||
139 | of four years into this book. Where I can, I insert cross-references | ||
140 | (like the one above, in the margin) to other pieces in the text where I | ||
141 | think the two resonate in some way. You can read this book in any way | ||
142 | you'd like: you can go front-to-back, or back-to-front, or you can | ||
143 | follow the arrows around, or you can work out a complex mathematical | ||
144 | formula with Merseinne primes and logarithms and the 2000 Census | ||
145 | information, or you can go completely randomly through like a magazine, | ||
146 | or at least the way I flip through magazines. I think writing is a | ||
147 | communication of the self, and I think this is the best way to | ||
148 | communicate mine in all its multiversity. | ||
diff --git a/32-mountain.txt b/32-mountain.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..64e15fe --- /dev/null +++ b/32-mountain.txt | |||
@@ -0,0 +1,26 @@ | |||
1 | --- | ||
2 | title: 'Mountain' | ||
3 | project: 'Elegies for Alternate Selves' | ||
4 | ... | ||
5 | |||
6 | The other side of this mountain \ | ||
7 | is not the mountain. This side \ | ||
8 | is honey-golden, sticky-sweet, \ | ||
9 | full of phone conversations with mother. \ | ||
10 | The other side is a bell, \ | ||
11 | ringing in the church-steeple \ | ||
12 | the day mother died. | ||
13 | |||
14 | The other side of the mountain \ | ||
15 | is not a mountain. It is a dark \ | ||
16 | valley crossed by a river. \ | ||
17 | There is a ferry at the bottom. | ||
18 | |||
19 | This mountain is not a mountain. \ | ||
20 | I walked to the top, but it turned \ | ||
21 | and was only a shelf halfway up. \ | ||
22 | I felt like an unused Bible \ | ||
23 | sitting on a dusty pew. | ||
24 | |||
25 | A hawk soars over the mountain. \ | ||
26 | She is looking for home. | ||
diff --git a/33-serengeti.txt b/33-serengeti.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..7f13011 --- /dev/null +++ b/33-serengeti.txt | |||
@@ -0,0 +1,19 @@ | |||
1 | --- | ||
2 | title: 'Serengeti' | ||
3 | project: 'Elegies for Alternate Selves' | ||
4 | ... | ||
5 | |||
6 | The self is a serengeti \ | ||
7 | a wide grassland with baobab trees \ | ||
8 | reaching their roots deep into earth \ | ||
9 | like a child into a clay pot \ | ||
10 | A wind blows there or seems to blow \ | ||
11 | if he holds it up to his ear the air shifts \ | ||
12 | like stones in a stream uncovering a crawfish \ | ||
13 | it finds another hiding place watching you \ | ||
14 | Its eyes are blacker than wind \ | ||
15 | on the serengeti they are the eyes of a predator \ | ||
16 | they are coming toward you or receding \ | ||
17 | a storm cloud builds on the horizon \ | ||
18 | Are you running toward the rain or away from it \ | ||
19 | Do you stand still and crouch hoping for silence | ||
diff --git a/34-shipwright.txt b/34-shipwright.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..81f5c91 --- /dev/null +++ b/34-shipwright.txt | |||
@@ -0,0 +1,23 @@ | |||
1 | --- | ||
2 | title: 'Shipwright' | ||
3 | project: 'Elegies for Alternate Selves' | ||
4 | ... | ||
5 | |||
6 | He builds a ship as if it were the last thing \ | ||
7 | holding him together, as if, when he stops, \ | ||
8 | his body will fall onto the plate-glass water \ | ||
9 | and shatter into sand. To keep his morale up \ | ||
10 | he whistles and sings, but the wind whistles louder \ | ||
11 | and taunts him: Your ship will build itself \ | ||
12 | if you throw yourself into the sea; time \ | ||
13 | has a way of growing your beard for you. \ | ||
14 | Soon, you'll find yourself on a rocking chair \ | ||
15 | on some porch made from your ship's timbers. \ | ||
16 | The window behind you is made from a sail, thick \ | ||
17 | canvas, and no one inside will hear your calling \ | ||
18 | for milk or a chamberpot. Your children \ | ||
19 | will have all sailed to the New World and left you. \ | ||
20 | But he tries not to listen, continues to hammer \ | ||
21 | nail after nail into timber after timber, \ | ||
22 | but the wind finally blows him into the growling ocean \ | ||
23 | and the ship falls apart on its own. | ||
diff --git a/35-spittle.txt b/35-spittle.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..58dccf2 --- /dev/null +++ b/35-spittle.txt | |||
@@ -0,0 +1,16 @@ | |||
1 | --- | ||
2 | title: 'Spittle' | ||
3 | project: 'Elegies for Alternate Selves' | ||
4 | ... | ||
5 | |||
6 | My body is attached to your body by a thin spittle of thought. \ | ||
7 | When you turn away from me, my thought is broken \ | ||
8 | and forms anew with something else. Ideas are drool. \ | ||
9 | Beauty has been slobbered over far too long. God \ | ||
10 | is a tidal wave of bodily fluid. Even the flea has some \ | ||
11 | vestigial wetness. We live in a world fleshy and dark, \ | ||
12 | and moist as a nostril. Is conciousness only a watery-eyed \ | ||
13 | romantic, crying softly into his shirt-sleeve? Is not reason \ | ||
14 | a square-jawed businessman with a briefcase full of memory? \ | ||
15 | I want to kiss the world to make it mine. I want to become \ | ||
16 | a Judas to reality, betray it with the wetness of emotion. | ||
diff --git a/36-squirrel.txt b/36-squirrel.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..610b40d --- /dev/null +++ b/36-squirrel.txt | |||
@@ -0,0 +1,21 @@ | |||
1 | --- | ||
2 | title: 'Squirrel' | ||
3 | project: 'Elegies for Alternate Selves' | ||
4 | ... | ||
5 | |||
6 | He is so full in himself: \ | ||
7 | how far down the branch to run, \ | ||
8 | how long to jump, when to grab the air \ | ||
9 | and catch in it and turn, and land on branch \ | ||
10 | so gracefully it's like dying, alone \ | ||
11 | and warm in a bed next to a summer window \ | ||
12 | and the birds singing. And on that branch there \ | ||
13 | is the squirrel dancing among the branches \ | ||
14 | and you think What if he fell? but he won't \ | ||
15 | because he's a squirrel and that's what \ | ||
16 | they do, dance and never fall. It was erased \ | ||
17 | long ago from the squirrel, even \ | ||
18 | the possibility of falling was erased \ | ||
19 | from his being by the slow inexorable evolution \ | ||
20 | of squirrels, that is why all squirrels \ | ||
21 | are so full in themselves, full in who they are. | ||
diff --git a/38-swansong.txt b/38-swansong.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..c59ec0c --- /dev/null +++ b/38-swansong.txt | |||
@@ -0,0 +1,20 @@ | |||
1 | --- | ||
2 | title: 'Swan song' | ||
3 | project: 'Elegies for Alternate Selves' | ||
4 | ... | ||
5 | |||
6 | Swans fly overhead singing goodbye \ | ||
7 | to we walkers of the earth. You point \ | ||
8 | to them in formation, you tell me \ | ||
9 | you are not you. You are the air the swans \ | ||
10 | walk on as they journey like pilgrims \ | ||
11 | to a temple in the south. A curtain \ | ||
12 | there separates me from you, swans \ | ||
13 | from the air they fly through. I say \ | ||
14 | that you are no longer the temple, \ | ||
15 | that you have been through fire \ | ||
16 | and are now less than ash. You are \ | ||
17 | a mirror of me, the air without a swan. \ | ||
18 | Together, we are each other. You \ | ||
19 | and I have both nothing and everything \ | ||
20 | at once. We own the world and nothing in it. | ||
diff --git a/39-telemarketer.txt b/39-telemarketer.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..ef9dd27 --- /dev/null +++ b/39-telemarketer.txt | |||
@@ -0,0 +1,73 @@ | |||
1 | --- | ||
2 | title: 'Telemarketer' | ||
3 | project: 'Elegies for Alternate Selves' | ||
4 | ... | ||
5 | |||
6 | It was one of those nameless gray buildings that could be seen from the | ||
7 | street only if Larry craned his neck to almost vertical. He never had, | ||
8 | of course, having heard when he first arrived in the city that only | ||
9 | tourists unaccustomed to tall buildings did so. He'd never thought about | ||
10 | it until he'd heard the social injunction against such a thing; it was | ||
11 | now one of the things he thought about almost every day as he rode to | ||
12 | and from work in gritty blue buses. | ||
13 | |||
14 | Inside the building, the constant sound of recirculating dry air made | ||
15 | Larry feel as though he were at some beach in hell, listening to the | ||
16 | ocean, or more accurately at a gift shop in a landlocked state in hell | ||
17 | listening to the ocean as represented by the sound a conch shell makes | ||
18 | when he holds it up to his ear. The buzz of the fluorescent bulbs | ||
19 | overhead sounded like the hot sun bearing down all day in this metaphor, | ||
20 | a favorite of Larry's. | ||
21 | |||
22 | His cubicle was made of that cheap, grayish-blue plywood that cubicles | ||
23 | are made of; inside it, his computer sat on his desk as Larry liked to | ||
24 | think an eagle perched on a mountainous crag much like the crag that was | ||
25 | his desktop wallpaper. The walls were unadorned except for a few | ||
26 | tacked-up papers in report covers explaining his script. When Larry made | ||
27 | a call to a potential customer it always went the same way: | ||
28 | |||
29 | "Hi, Mr/Mrs (customer's name). My name is Larry and I'm with (client's | ||
30 | name), and was just wondering if I could have a minute of your time?" | ||
31 | |||
32 | "Oh, no, sir; I don't want whatever it is you're selling." (customer | ||
33 | terminates call). | ||
34 | |||
35 | Larry had only ever read the first line of the script on the wall. | ||
36 | Sometimes he had an urge to read more of it, to be ready when a customer | ||
37 | expressed interest in whatever it was Larry was selling, but something | ||
38 | in him---he liked to think it was an actor's intuition that told him it | ||
39 | was best to improvise, though he worried it was the futility of it---kept | ||
40 | him from reading further into the script. So when Jane said, "Sure, I | ||
41 | have nothing better to do," he was thrown completely off guard. | ||
42 | |||
43 | "Um, alright Mrs…Mrs. Loring, I was wondering---" | ||
44 | |||
45 | "It's Ms, not Mrs. em ess. Miz. No ‘r,' Larry." She sounded patient, as | ||
46 | if she were used to correcting people about the particulars of her | ||
47 | title. But how often can that happen? Larry thought, and he was suddenly | ||
48 | deeply confused. | ||
49 | |||
50 | "Oh, sorry, ma'am, uh, Miz Loring, but I wanted to know whether you'd | ||
51 | like to, ah, buy some…" Larry put his head in his hand and started | ||
52 | twirling his hair in his finger, a nervous habit he'd had since | ||
53 | childhood, and closed his eyes tightly. "Why don't you have anything | ||
54 | better to do?" | ||
55 | |||
56 | Immediately he knew it was the wrong question. Even before the silence | ||
57 | on the other end moved past impatience and into stunned, Larry had a | ||
58 | mini-drama written and staged within his mind: she would call customer | ||
59 | service and complain loudly into the representative's ear. The rep would | ||
60 | send a memo to the head of telemarketing requesting disciplinary action, | ||
61 | and the head would delegate the action to Larry's immediate supervisor, | ||
62 | David. David would saunter over to Larry's cubicle sometime within the | ||
63 | next week, depending on when he got the memo and when he felt like | ||
64 | crossing fifty feet of office space, and have one of what David liked to | ||
65 | call "chats" but what Larry knew were lectures. After about half an hour | ||
66 | of "chatting" David would give Larry a warning and ask him to come in | ||
67 | for overtime to make up for the discretion, and walk back slowly to his | ||
68 | office, making small talk with the cubicled workers on the way. The | ||
69 | world suddenly felt too small for Larry, or he too big for it. | ||
70 | |||
71 | Quietly, with the same patience but with a bigger pain, Jane said, "My | ||
72 | husband just left me and I thought you could take my mind off of him for | ||
73 | just a minute," and hung up. | ||
diff --git a/41-weplayedthosegamestoo.txt b/41-weplayedthosegamestoo.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..fef8154 --- /dev/null +++ b/41-weplayedthosegamestoo.txt | |||
@@ -0,0 +1,26 @@ | |||
1 | --- | ||
2 | title: 'We played those games too' | ||
3 | project: 'Elegies for Alternate Selves' | ||
4 | ... | ||
5 | |||
6 | I saw two Eskimo girls playing a game \ | ||
7 | blowing on each other's' vocal chords to make music \ | ||
8 | on the tundra. I thought about how \ | ||
9 | once we played the same game \ | ||
10 | and the sounds blowing over the chords of our throats \ | ||
11 | was the same as a wind over frozen prairie. \ | ||
12 | We are the Eskimo girls who played \ | ||
13 | the game that night to keep ourselves warm. \ | ||
14 | I run my hands over my daughter's \ | ||
15 | voicebox as she hums a song \ | ||
16 | about a seal and about killing the seal and about \ | ||
17 | skinning it and rendering the blubber \ | ||
18 | into clear oil to light lamps. \ | ||
19 | I remember you are my lamp. She remembers \ | ||
20 | you although you left before she arrived. \ | ||
21 | I can never tell her about you. \ | ||
22 | I will never be able to express that taste of your oil \ | ||
23 | as we pushed our throats together. \ | ||
24 | I will never be able to say how \ | ||
25 | we share this blemish like conjoined twins. \ | ||
26 | I will fail you always to remember you. | ||
diff --git a/42-todaniel.txt b/42-todaniel.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..eb33e69 --- /dev/null +++ b/42-todaniel.txt | |||
@@ -0,0 +1,22 @@ | |||
1 | --- | ||
2 | title: 'To Daniel: an elaboration of a previous comment' | ||
3 | project: 'Elegies for Alternate Selves' | ||
4 | ... | ||
5 | |||
6 | There are more modern ideals of beauty \ | ||
7 | than yours, young padowan. Jessica has \ | ||
8 | some assets, that I'll give you easily, \ | ||
9 | but in my women I prefer pizzazz. | ||
10 | |||
11 | I don't want to bring you down, or make you think \ | ||
12 | that your perfected woman isn't so. \ | ||
13 | It's just that, like Adam said, 2006 \ | ||
14 | has come and gone. What did she do | ||
15 | |||
16 | in that year anyway? IMDB \ | ||
17 | has, surprisingly, none, though in '05 \ | ||
18 | she's in four titles. Sin City \ | ||
19 | I've never seen, although from many I've | ||
20 | |||
21 | heard it's good. But it's still irrelevant--- \ | ||
22 | no matter how comely, she lacks talent. | ||
diff --git a/44-deathstrumpet.txt b/44-deathstrumpet.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..c549c78 --- /dev/null +++ b/44-deathstrumpet.txt | |||
@@ -0,0 +1,32 @@ | |||
1 | --- | ||
2 | title: 'Death's Trumpet' | ||
3 | project: 'Elegies for Alternate Selves' | ||
4 | epigraph: 'So Death plays his little fucking trumpet. So what, says the boy.' | ||
5 | epigraph-credit: 'Larry Levis' | ||
6 | ... | ||
7 | |||
8 | He didn't have any polish so he spit-shined the whole thing, \ | ||
9 | top to bottom. It gleamed like maybe a tomato on the vine \ | ||
10 | begging to be picked and thrown on some caprese. Death loved caprese. | ||
11 | |||
12 | He stood up and put the horn to his lips, imagining \ | ||
13 | it was a woman he loved. He blushed as he realized \ | ||
14 | it was a terrible metaphor. \ | ||
15 | He practiced for six hours a day---what else to do? | ||
16 | |||
17 | Death looks at himself in the mirror as he plays. \ | ||
18 | The trumpet is suspended in midair. Damn vampire rules. \ | ||
19 | Death is always worried he might have missed a spot shaving \ | ||
20 | but he'll never know unless a stranger is polite enough. \ | ||
21 | Not that he ever goes out or meets anyone. | ||
22 | |||
23 | He wakes up late these days. Stays in bed later. \ | ||
24 | He thinks he might be depressed. The caprese has gotten soggy \ | ||
25 | since he made it, maybe three days ago or maybe just two. \ | ||
26 | The sun streams through his kitchen blinds like smoke. \ | ||
27 | He decides to go to the arcade. When he gets there, | ||
28 | |||
29 | there's only a little boy with dead eyes. So far so good. \ | ||
30 | He's playing a first-person shooter. Death walks past him \ | ||
31 | and watches out of the corner of his eye. The kid's good. \ | ||
32 | Death wants to congratulate him. His trumpet is in his hand. | ||
diff --git a/99-elegyforanalternateself.txt b/99-elegyforanalternateself.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..cb297d8 --- /dev/null +++ b/99-elegyforanalternateself.txt | |||
@@ -0,0 +1,22 @@ | |||
1 | --- | ||
2 | title: 'Elegy for an alternate self' | ||
3 | project: 'Elegies for Alternate Selves' | ||
4 | ... | ||
5 | |||
6 | Say there are no words. Say that we are conjoined \ | ||
7 | from birth, or better still, say we are myself. \ | ||
8 | ---But I still talk to myself, I build my world \ | ||
9 | through language, so if we say there are no words \ | ||
10 | this is not enough. Say we are instead some animal, \ | ||
11 | or better yet, a plant, or a flagellum motoring \ | ||
12 | aimlessly around. (Say that humans are the only things \ | ||
13 | that reason. Say that we're the only things that worry.) | ||
14 | |||
15 | Say that I am separate. To say there's everything else \ | ||
16 | and then there's me is wrong. Each thing is separate: \ | ||
17 | there is no whole in the world. Say this is both good \ | ||
18 | and bad, or rather, say there is no good or bad but only \ | ||
19 | being, more and more of it always added, none taken out \ | ||
20 | though it can be forgotten. Say that forgetting \ | ||
21 | is a function of our remembering. (Say that humans only \ | ||
22 | worry about separation. Say that only humans feel it.) | ||
diff --git a/99-statements-frag.txt b/99-statements-frag.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..26e67b7 --- /dev/null +++ b/99-statements-frag.txt | |||
@@ -0,0 +1,68 @@ | |||
1 | --- | ||
2 | title: 'Statements' | ||
3 | subtitle: 'a fragment' | ||
4 | project: 'Elegies for Alternate Selves' | ||
5 | ... | ||
6 | |||
7 | I. Eli {#i.-eli .unnumbered} | ||
8 | ------ | ||
9 | |||
10 | "Can one truly describe an emotion?" Eli asked me over the | ||
11 | walkie-talkie. He was in the bathroom, & had taken the walkie-talkie in | ||
12 | with him absent-mindedly. I could hear sounds of his piss hitting the | ||
13 | toilet water. | ||
14 | |||
15 | "I can hear you peeing," I said. He didn't answer so I said in apology, | ||
16 | "It's okay. Humans are sexually dimorphic." I was sitting on my blue | ||
17 | baby blanket texting Jon, who was funny and amicable over the phone. He | ||
18 | made a three-message joke about greedy lawyers and I would have been | ||
19 | laughing if not for my embarrassment toward Eli. He finally came out of | ||
20 | the bathroom and kept his eyes straight ahead, toward the wall calendar | ||
21 | and not at me, as he passed through the family room into his bedroom, | ||
22 | were he shut the door quietly. Presently I heard some muffled noise as | ||
23 | he turned on his iPod. I guessed he didn't feel like talking so I stayed | ||
24 | on my blanket watching the Price is Right and texting Jon. | ||
25 | |||
26 | Drew Carrey was doing his wrap-up speech on TV when Eli finally came out | ||
27 | of his room, red puffy streaks covering his face. His eyes and nose were | ||
28 | red too, which was almost festive against the pale green and white of | ||
29 | the wallpaper. I had been laughing at the goofy costumes on the Price is | ||
30 | Right and the jokes Jon was texting me, but when Eli came out of the | ||
31 | room I stopped and just looked at him as well as I could. He was staring | ||
32 | at my right shoulder as he said, "Go home now." | ||
33 | |||
34 | "What?" | ||
35 | |||
36 | "I said go home now. I don't want you here anymore, because I just | ||
37 | remembered I have someone coming over and I have to clean." | ||
38 | |||
39 | "Look, Eli, I'm sorry---" | ||
40 | |||
41 | "It doesn't have anything to do with you, I swear. Just go, okay? Go | ||
42 | home now." | ||
43 | |||
44 | I got up and tried to give him a hug but he withdrew from me sharply. So | ||
45 | I walked around the coffee table as he sat down, not looking at me | ||
46 | anymore, and stared at the blank TV. The blanket I had been sitting in | ||
47 | was crumpled next to him like a dead bird. I opened my mouth but thought | ||
48 | better of talking, and closed the door behind me slowly. | ||
49 | |||
50 | II. Dimorphic {#ii.-dimorphic .unnumbered} | ||
51 | ------------- | ||
52 | |||
53 | Oranges. Poison. A compromise | ||
54 | between Mary & Judas. Blue | ||
55 | baby blankets swaddling greedy lawyers. | ||
56 | |||
57 | Can one truly describe an emotion? | ||
58 | I cut my ankle with a razor blade. | ||
59 | I can only go one at a time. Humanity | ||
60 | has a seething mass of eels | ||
61 | for a brain, mating in the water so forcefully | ||
62 | that it could drown you under the moon. | ||
63 | |||
64 | III. Declaration of Poetry {#iii.-declaration-of-poetry .unnumbered} | ||
65 | -------------------------- | ||
66 | |||
67 | You have to go one line at a time, and you have to start on the first or | ||
68 | second line. | ||
diff --git a/99-swansong-alt.txt b/99-swansong-alt.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..b6cbab2 --- /dev/null +++ b/99-swansong-alt.txt | |||
@@ -0,0 +1,27 @@ | |||
1 | --- | ||
2 | title: 'Swansong' | ||
3 | subtitle: 'alternate version' | ||
4 | project: 'Elegies for Alternate Selves' | ||
5 | ... | ||
6 | |||
7 | This poem is dry like chapped lips. \ | ||
8 | It is hard as teeth---hear the tapping? \ | ||
9 | It is the swan song of beauty, as all \ | ||
10 | swan songs are. Reading it, you are \ | ||
11 | puzzled, perhaps a little repulsed. \ | ||
12 | Swans do not have teeth, nor do they sing. \ | ||
13 | A honking over the cliff is all \ | ||
14 | they can do, and that they do \ | ||
15 | badly. You don't know where I'm going. \ | ||
16 | You want to tell me, You are not you. \ | ||
17 | You are the air the swan walks on. \ | ||
18 | You are the fringe of the curtain \ | ||
19 | that separates me from you. I say \ | ||
20 | that you are no longer the temple, \ | ||
21 | that you have been through fire \ | ||
22 | and are now less than ash. You are \ | ||
23 | the subtraction of yourself from \ | ||
24 | the world, the air without a swan. \ | ||
25 | Together, we are each other. You \ | ||
26 | and I have both nothing and everything \ | ||
27 | at once, we own the world and nothing in it. | ||
diff --git a/_template.html b/_template.html new file mode 100644 index 0000000..187e5d7 --- /dev/null +++ b/_template.html | |||
@@ -0,0 +1,40 @@ | |||
1 | <!DOCTYPE html> | ||
2 | <!-- Template for compiled 'Autocento' documents --> | ||
3 | <html$if(lang)$ lang="$lang$"$endif$> | ||
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>$pagetitle$</title> | ||
11 | <link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="_poems.css"> | ||
12 | $for(css)$ | ||
13 | <link rel="stylesheet" href="$css$"> | ||
14 | $endfor$ | ||
15 | <!-- link to javascript? --> | ||
16 | <!--[if lt IE 9]> | ||
17 | <script src="http://html5shim.googlecode.com/svn/trunk/html5.js"> </script> | ||
18 | <![endif]--> | ||
19 | $for(header-includes)$ | ||
20 | $header-includes$ | ||
21 | $endfor$ | ||
22 | </head> | ||
23 | <body> | ||
24 | $for(include-before)$ | ||
25 | $include-before$ | ||
26 | $endfor$ | ||
27 | $if(title)$ | ||
28 | <header> | ||
29 | <h1 class="title">$title</h1> | ||
30 | $if(subtitle)$ | ||
31 | <h1 class="subtitle">$subtitle$</h1> | ||
32 | $endif$ | ||
33 | </header> | ||
34 | $endif$ | ||
35 | $body$ | ||
36 | $for(include-after)$ | ||
37 | $include-after$ | ||
38 | $endfor$ | ||
39 | </body> | ||
40 | </html> | ||
diff --git a/compile.sh b/compile.sh new file mode 100644 index 0000000..3877be0 --- /dev/null +++ b/compile.sh | |||
@@ -0,0 +1,10 @@ | |||
1 | # for windows only right now | ||
2 | |||
3 | for file in *.txt; do # TODO: change this to work with globs & args & stuff | ||
4 | pandoc -f markdown \ # all files are in pandoc's markdown | ||
5 | -t html5 \ # they're being outputted to html5 | ||
6 | --template=_template.html \ # use this file as a template | ||
7 | --smart \ # smart quotes, etc. | ||
8 | $file \ | ||
9 | -o "${file%.txt}.html" | ||
10 | done | ||