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diff --git a/text/about-the-author.txt b/text/about-the-author.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..91e90a5 --- /dev/null +++ b/text/about-the-author.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,69 @@
1---
2title: About the author
3subtitle: (not pictured)
4genre: table
5
6id: about-the-author
7toc: "About the author (not pictured)"
8
9epigraph:
10 content: The body that surrounds him is his, but his insides are not.
11
12project:
13 title: Stark Raving
14 class: stark
15 order: 19
16 prev:
17 - title: Something about all music being performances of _4′33″_ in places where other bands happen to be playing
18 link: music-433
19 - title: Riptide of memory
20 link: riptide_memory
21...
22
23----------------------------------------------- ------------------------------------------------------------
24[He was born][] on a few separate occasions _[green traffic lights][] at night_
25
26There was the day of his conception \ _[a TV in front of a dumpster][]_
27a wintery affair saved for those involved
28
29The day he wriggled forth \
30from the dark tunnel of nothing \ _surprise photo of you at Walgreen's_
31[his mother's womb][]
32
33The founding of his little city \
34deep inside by the small builders \ _a [pink dress in the alley][] behind your house_
35alien as they were and still \
36somehow intimately familiar
37
38Like any city it had its ups \
39and downs the fever of 1994 \ _me buying a Reese's peanut butter cup for a child_ \
40was especially devastating \ _[whose family couldn't afford it]_ \
41but they were a hardy folk \ _[in front of me in line at Safeway][]_
42not much given to flight
43
44As all things must pass the \
45little city began slowly to decay \ _trees at night their skeletons_ \
46the [old ones claimed the young][] \ _revealed by a camera flash_
47had no respect for culture anymore
48
49They began to die off slowly \
50more quickly than being born \ _[two earthworms on pavement after a rain][]_
51the end was coming closer
52
53As the [last breath][] was made \
54the last accounts closed in the city _keys tacked to a sign in Buffalo Park_
55
56It was given over to other builders _man flipping a [four-wheeler][] and walking it off_
57
58----------------------------------------------- ------------------------------------------------------------
59
60[two earthworms on pavement after a rain]: the-sea_the-beach.html
61[He was born]: sixteenth-chapel.html
62[a TV in front of a dumpster]: options.html
63[his mother's womb]: death-zone.html
64[green traffic lights]: stayed-on-the-bus.html
65[pink dress in the alley]: in-bed.html
66[in front of me in line at Safeway]: last-bastion.html
67[old ones claimed the young]: creation-myth.html
68[last breath]: last-passenger.html
69[four-wheeler]: deadman.html
diff --git a/text/about.txt b/text/about.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..0ebc369 --- /dev/null +++ b/text/about.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,309 @@
1---
2title: Autocento of the breakfast table
3subtitle: about this site
4genre: prose
5
6id: about
7toc: "_about Autocento_"
8
9project:
10 title: Front matter
11 css: front-matter
12...
13
14## Introduction
15
16_Autocento [of the breakfast table][]_ is a hypertextual exploration of the workings of revision across time.
17Somebody^[[citation needed][]]^ once said that every relationship we have is part of the same relationship; the same is true of authorship.
18As we write, as we continue writing across our lives, patterns thread themselves through our work: images, certain phrases, preoccupations.
19This project attempts to make those threads more apparent, using the technology of hypertext and the opposing ideas of the _hapax legomenon_ and the _cento_, held in tension with each other.
20
21I'm also an MFA candidate at [Northern Arizona University][NAU].
22This is my thesis.
23Let me tell you about it.
24
25[of the breakfast table]: http://www.ibiblio.org/eldritch/owh/abt.html
26[citation needed]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Citing_sources#Dealing_with_unsourced_material
27[NAU]: http://nau.edu/CAL/English/Degrees-Programs/Graduate/MFA/
28
29### [Hapax][] legomenon, or _You are special_
30
31_Hapax legomenon_ ([ἅπαξ][] λεγόμενον) is Greek for "something said only once."
32It comes from the field of corpus linguistics, where it causes problems for translators of ancient texts.
33Because it only happens once in its corpus, a _hapax legmonenon_ is an enigma: there's only one context to guess its meaning from.
34This means that many _hapax legomena_ remain untranslated, as in Mayan tablets, or are questionably translated, as in the Bible.
35
36Given the way we use language every day, treading over the same words and thoughts in a way that is nonetheless comforting, and given the fact that a _hapax legomenon_ is, by its definition, the rarest word in the place it appears, you might think that _hapax legomena_, as phenomena, are rare.
37You'd be wrong.
38In the Brown Corpus of American English Text, which comprises some fifty thousand words, [about half are _hapax legomena_][].
39In most large corpora, in fact, between forty and sixty per cent of the words occur only once, and another ten to fifteen per cent occur only twice, a fact that I imagine causes translators all sorts of [grief][].
40
41This seeming paradox is reminiscent of another in biology, as summed up by this infographic I keep seeing around the Internet[^1]\:
42![Really. I see it everywhere.](https://i.imgur.com/Dub8k.png)
43
44Apparently, the chances of you, dear Reader, being born is [something][s1] like one in 10^2,685,000^.
45The chances of me [being born][] is [something][s2] like one in 10^2,685,000^.
46The chances of the guy you stood behind in line [for your coffee][] this morning?
47His chance of being born was [something][s3] like one in 10^2,685,000^.
48The thing is, a number like one in 10^2,685,000^ stops meaning so much when we take the number of times such a "rare" event occurs.
49There are about seven billion (or $7 \times 10^{9}$) people on Earth---and all of them have that same small chance of one in 10^2,685,000^ of being born.
50And they all were.
51
52It stops seeming so special after thinking about it.
53
54[Hapax]: hapax.html
55[ἅπαξ]: http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus:text:1999.04.0057:entry=a%28/pac
56[about half are _hapax legomena_]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hapax_legomenon#cite_note-6
57[grief]: one-hundred-lines.html
58[being born]: about-the-author.html
59[for your coffee]: yellow.html
60[s1]: music-433.html
61[s2]: poetry-time.html
62[s3]: dollywood.html
63
64### _Cento_, or _just like everyone else_
65
66_Cento_ is Latin, stolen from the Greek κέντρόνη, which means "patchwork garment."
67A _cento_ is a poem composed completely from parts of other poems, a mash-up that makes up for its lack of originality in utterance with a novelty in arrangement.
68
69If we apply the _cento_ to biology, we can win back some of that uniqueness, we can resolve some of that paradox of the _hapax legomenon_.
70Sure, [nothing is new under the sun][], but it can be made new if we say it differently, or if we put it next to something it hasn't met before.
71We can become hosts to the parties of our lives, and rub elbows with the same tired celebrities everyone's rubbed elbows with, but make it different.
72Because _we_ put the [tables on roller skates][].
73Because _we_ told [the joke][] this time with a Rabbi.
74Because _we_ are special [snowflakes][], and it doesn't matter that there's more of us than there is sand on the beaches at Normandy.
75Because _we_ are still all different somehow.
76
77[nothing is new under the sun]: https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Ecclesiastes+1%3A9&version=NIV
78[tables on roller skates]: call-me-aural-pleasure.html
79[the joke]: creation-myth.html
80[snowflakes]: snow.html
81
82### On _n_-grams
83
84What we have so far:
85- A _hapax legomenon_ technically refers only to _one word_ in a corpus.
86- A _cento_ technically refers to a poem with _whole phrases_ taken from others, patchwork-style.
87
88These concepts get more interesting as we play with their scopes.
89To do that, we need to take a look at the _n_-gram.
90
91In linguistics and computational probability, an _n_-gram is a [contiguous system of _n_ items from a given sequence of text or speech][ngram-def].
92By looking at _n_-grams, linguists can look at deeper trends in language than with single words alone[^2].
93_N_-grams are also incredibly useful in natural language processing---for example, they're how your phone can guess what you're going to [text your mom][] next[^3].
94They're also the key to fully reconciling the _hapax legomenon_ and the _cento_.
95
96If the definition of _hapax legomena_ is expanded to include _n_-grams of arbitrary lengths,
97 including full utterances, complete poems, or the [collected works of, say, Shakespeare][],
98 then we can say that all writing is a _hapax legomenon_,
99 because no one else has said the [same words in the same order][].
100In short, everything written or in existence is individual.
101Everything is differentiated.
102Everything is an [island][].
103
104If the definition of what comprises a _cento_ is minimized to individual trigrams, bigrams, or even unigrams (individual words), or even parts of words, we arrive again at Solomon's lament: that no writing is original; that every utterance has, in some [scrambled][] way at least, been uttered before.
105To put it another way, [nothing][] is individual.
106We're stranded [afloat on an ocean][] of language we did nothing to create, and the best we can hope to accomplish is to find some combination of flotsam and jetsam that hasn't been put together too many times before.
107
108This project, _Autocento of the breakfast table_, works within the tension caused by _hapax legomena_ and _centi_, between the first and last half of the statement _we are all unique, just like everyone else_.
109
110[ngram-def]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/N-gram
111[text your mom]: mountain.html
112
113[same words in the same order]: http://www.thisdayinquotes.com/2011/07/poetry-best-words-in-best-order.html
114[collected works of, say, Shakespeare]: http://shakespeare.mit.edu/
115[island]: island.html
116
117[scrambled]: howtoread.html
118[nothing]: no-nothing.html
119[afloat on an ocean]: riptide_memory.html
120
121## Process
122
123In compiling this text, I've pulled from a few different projects:
124
125- [Elegies for alternate selves][elegies-link]
126- [The book of Hezekiah][hez-link]
127- [Stark raving][stark-link]
128- [Buildings out of air][paul-link]
129
130as well as [new poems][], written quite recently.
131As I've compiled them into this project, I've linked them together based on common images or language, disregarding the order of their compositions.
132What I hope to have accomplished with this hypertext is an approximation of my self as it's evolved, but [all at one time][].
133Ultimately, _Autocento of the breakfast table_ is a [long-exposure photograph][] of my mind.
134
135[elegies-link]: elegyforanalternateself.html
136[hez-link]: prelude.html
137[stark-link]: table_contents.html
138[paul-link]: art.html
139[new poems]: last-passenger.html
140[long-exposure photograph]: building.html
141[all at one time]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oJjcF2DmFFY
142
143### A note on terminology
144
145_Autocento of the breakfast table_ comprises work of multiple genres, including prose, verse, tables, lists, and hybrid forms.
146Because of this, and because of my own personal hang-ups with terms like [_poem_][] applying to works that aren't verse (and even some that are[^4]), _piece_ applying to anything, really (it's just annoying, in my opinion---a piece of what?), I've needed to find another word to refer to all the _stuff_ in this project.
147While the terms "literary object" and "intertext," à la Kristeva et al., more fully describe the things I've been writing and linking in this text, I'm worried that these terms are either too long or too esoteric for me to refer to them consistently when talking about my work.
148I believe I've found a solution in the term _page_, as in a page or [leaf][] of a book, or a page on a website.
149After all, the term _page_ is accurate as it refers to the objects herein--each one is a page---and it's short and unassuming.
150But it's probably pretty pretentious, too.
151
152[_poem_]: on-genre-dimension.html
153[leaf]: leaf.html
154
155### The inevitable creep of technology
156
157Because this project lives online (welcome to the Internet!), I've used a fair amount of technology to get it there.
158
159First, I typed all of the objects present into a human-readable markup format called [Markdown][] by John Gruber, using a plain-text editor called [Vim][].[^5]
160Markdown is a plain-text format that uses unobtrusive mark-up to signal semantic meaning around a text.
161A text written with markup can then be passed to a compiler, such as John Gruber's `Markdown.pl` script, to turn it into functioning HTML for viewing in a browser.
162
163As an example, here's the previous paragraph as I typed it:
164
165~~~markdown
166First, I typed all of the objects present into a human-readable markup format
167called [Markdown][] by John Gruber, using a plain-text editor called [Vim][].
168[^5] Markdown is a plain-text format that uses unobtrusive mark-up to signal
169semantic meaning around a text. A text written with markup can then be passed
170to a compiler, such as John Gruber's original Markdown.pl script, to turn it
171into functioning HTML for viewing in a browser.
172
173[Markdown]: http://daringfireball.net/projects/markdown/
174[Vim]: http://www.vim.org
175
176[^5]: I could've used any text editor for the composition step, including
177 Notepad, but I personally like Vim for its extensibility, composability,
178 and honestly its colorschemes.
179~~~
180
181And here it is as a compiled HTML file:
182
183~~~html
184<p>
185 First, I typed all of the objects present into a human-readable markup format
186 called <a href="http://daringfireball.net/projects/markdown/">Markdown</a>
187 by John Gruber, using a plain-text editor called <a href="http://www.vim.org">
188 Vim</a>. <a href="#fn1" class="footnoteRef" id="fnref1"> <sup>1</sup></a>
189 Markdown is a plain-text format that uses unobtrusive mark-up to signal
190 semantic meaning around a text. A text written with markup can then be passed
191 to a compiler, such as John Gruber's original Markdown.pl script, to turn it
192 into functioning HTML for viewing in a browser.
193</p>
194
195<section class="footnotes">
196 <hr />
197 <ol>
198 <li id="fn1">
199 <p>
200 I could've used any text editor for the composition step, including
201 Notepad, but I personally like Vim for its extensibility, composability,
202 and honestly its colorschemes.
203 <a href="#fnref1">↩</a>
204 </p>
205 </li>
206 </ol>
207</section>
208~~~
209
210For these files, I opted to use John McFarlane's [pandoc][] over the original `Markdown.pl` compiler, because it's more consistent with edge cases in formatting, and because it can compile the Markdown source into a wide variety of different formats, including DOCX, ODT, PDF, HTML, and others.
211I use an [HTML template][] for `pandoc` to correctly typeset each object in the web browser.
212The compiled HTML pages are what you're reading now.
213
214Since typing `pandoc [file].txt -t html5 --template=_template.html --filter=trunk/versify.exe --smart --mathml --section-divs -o [file].html` over 130 times is highly tedious, I've written a [GNU][] [Makefile][] that automates the process.
215In addition to compiling the HTML files for this project, the Makefile also compiles each page's backlinks (accessible through the &phi; link at the bottom of each page), and the indexes of [first lines][], [common titles][], and [_hapax legomena_][hapaxleg] of this project.
216
217Finally, this project needs to enter the realm of the Internet.
218To do this, I use [Github][], an online code-collaboration tool that uses the version-control system [git][] under the hood.
219`git` was originally written to keep track of the source code of the [Linux][] kernel.[^6]
220I use it to keep track of the revisions of the text files in _Autocento of the breakfast table_, which means that you, dear Reader, can explore the path of my revision even more deeply by viewing the [Github repository][] for this project online.
221
222For more information on the process I took while compiling _Autocento of the breakfast table_, see my [Process][] page.
223
224[Markdown]: http://daringfireball.net/projects/markdown/
225[Vim]: http://www.vim.org
226[pandoc]: http://johnmcfarlane.net/pandoc/
227[HTML template]: https://github.com/duckwork/autocento/blob/gh-pages/template.html
228[GNU]: https://www.gnu.org/software/make/
229[Makefile]: https://github.com/duckwork/autocento/blob/gh-pages/makefile
230[first lines]: first-lines.html
231[common titles]: common-titles.html
232[hapaxleg]: hapx.html
233[Github]: https://github.com
234[git]: http://www.git-scm.com
235[Linux]: http://www.linux.org
236[Github repository]: https://github.com/duckwork/autocento
237[Process]: process.html
238
239### Motivation
240
241Although `git` and the other tools I use were developed or are mostly used by programmers, engineers, or other kinds of scientists, they're useful in creative writing as well for a few different reasons:
242
2431. **Facilitation of revision.**
244 By using a VCS like `git` and plain text files, I can revise a poem (for example, "[And][]") and keep both the current version and a [much older one][old-and].
245 This lets me hold onto every idea I've had, and "throw things away" without _actually_ throwing them away.
246 They're still there, somewhere, in the source tree.
2472. **Future proofness.**
248 By using a simple text editor to write out my files instead of a proprietary word processor, I've ensured that no matter what may happen to the stocks of Microsoft, Apple, or Google in the following hundred years, my words will stay accessible and editable.
249 Also, I don't know how to insert links in Word.
2503. **Philosophy of intellectual property.**
251 I use open-source, or libre, tools like `vim`, `pandoc`, and `make` because information should be free.
252 This is also the reason why I'm releasing _Autocento of the breakfast table_ under a Creative Commons [license][].
253
254[And]: and.html
255[old-and]: https://github.com/duckwork/autocento/commit/61baf210a9d0d4fffcd82751ba3419dd2feb349d#diff-8814290de165531212020a537e341e44
256[license]: license.html
257
258## _Autocento of the breakfast table_ and you
259
260### Using this site
261
262Since all of the objects in this project are linked, you can begin from, say, [here][possible-start] and follow the links through everything.
263But if you find yourself lost as in a funhouse maze, looping around and around to the same stupid [fountain][] at the entrance, here are a few tips:
264
265- The &xi; link at the bottom of each page leads to a random article.
266- The &phi; link at the bottom of each page leads to its back-link page, which lists the titles of pages that link back to the page you were just on.
267- Finally, if you're really desperate, the &loz; link sends you back to the [cover page][], where you can start over.
268 The cover page links you to the [table of contents][toc], as well as the indexes of [first lines][fl], [common titles][ct], and [_hapax legomena_][hl].
269
270[possible-start]: in-bed.html
271[fountain]: dollywood.html
272[cover page]: index.html
273[toc]: _toc.html
274[fl]: first-lines.html
275[ct]: common-titles.html
276[hl]: hapax.html
277
278### Contact me
279
280If you'd like to contact me about the state of this work, its history, or its future; or about my writing in general, email me at [case dot duckworth plus autocento at gmail dot com][email].
281
282[email]: mailto:case.duckworth+autocento@gmail.com
283
284[^1]: Which apparently, though not really surprisingly given the nature of the Internet, has its roots in [this][born-blog] blog post.
285
286[born-blog]: http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/abinazir/2011/06/15/what-are-chances-you-would-be-born/
287
288[^2]: For more fun with _n_-grams, I recommend the curious reader to point their browsers to the [Google Ngram Viewer][], which searches "lots of books" from most of history that matters.
289
290[Google Ngram Viewer]: https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=technically+refers&case_insensitive=on&year_start=1600&year_end=2008&corpus=15&smoothing=3&share=&direct_url=t4%3B%2Ctechnically%20refers%3B%2Cc0%3B%2Cs0%3B%3Btechnically%20refers%3B%2Cc0%3B%3BTechnically%20refers%3B%2Cc0
291
292[^3]: For fun, try only typing with the suggested words for a while.
293 At least for me, they start repeating "I'll be a bar of the new York NY and I can be a bar of the new York NY and I can."
294
295[^4]: For more discussion of this subject, see "[Ars poetica][ars]," "[How to read this][how-read]," "[A manifesto of poetics][manifesto]," "[On formal poetry][formal-poetry]," and [The third section] of "Statements: a fragment."
296
297[ars]: arspoetica.html
298[how-read]: howtoread.html
299[manifesto]: manifesto_poetics.html
300[formal-poetry]: onformalpoetry.html
301[The third section]: statements-frag.html#declaration-of-poetry
302
303[^5]: I could've used any text editor for the composition step, including Notepad, but I personally like Vim for its extensibility, composability, and honestly its colorschemes.
304
305[^6]: As it happens, the week I'm writing this (6 April 2015) is `git`'s tenth anniversary.
306 The folks at Atlassian have made an [interactive timeline][] for the occasion, and Linux.com has an interesting [interview with Linus Torvalds][], `git`'s creator.
307
308[interactive timeline]: https://www.atlassian.com/git/articles/10-years-of-git/
309[interview with Linus Torvalds]: http://www.linux.com/news/featured-blogs/185-jennifer-cloer/821541-10-years-of-git-an-interview-with-git-creator-linus-torvalds
diff --git a/text/about_author.txt b/text/about_author.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..4b6c42f --- /dev/null +++ b/text/about_author.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,28 @@
1---
2title: About Case Duckworth
3genre: prose
4
5id: about_author
6toc: "About the author"
7
8project:
9 title: Autocento of the breakfast table
10 class: autocento
11...
12
13Case Duckworth is the cowardly but lovable Great Dane who solves mysteries on TV.
14Maybe you've seen him while watching commercials for Pine-Sol or Orange-Glo cleaners.
15These products dress as monsters to lure only the right kind of venture capitalist, but Duckworth believes in the right of all [venture capitalists][] to invest in products they believe in.
16His mortal enemy is the evil Old Man Jenkins, who believes that the only venture capitalists that should be allowed to invests are from the Meddling Kids gang of Edo.
17
18When not being a Great Dane, Duckworth is a Christmas ham, spreading good cheer and pork products to underprivileged gangs of venture capitalists in winter.
19He keeps them warm with his questionable farming practices and threat of Trichinosis, as well as with his own brand of firestarter called Duckworth Stax.
20He usually steals his Stax from dog food factories, making him a modern Robin Hood in addition to a Great Dane and Christmas Ham.
21
22Case Duckworth truly is a jack-of-all-trades.
23The only thing missing from his repertoire is the ability to begin a word with anything but an "R" sound, although given the fact he is a dog, it's remarkable he can speak at all.
24Duckworth was voiced by [Don Messick][] until his death in 1997, when [Frank Welker][] took over, to the dismay of fans everywhere.
25
26[venture capitalists]: love-as-god.html
27[Don Messick]: http://www.behindthevoiceactors.com/Don-Messick/
28[Frank Welker]: http://www.behindthevoiceactors.com/Frank-Welker/
diff --git a/text/abstract.txt b/text/abstract.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..ea30fbb --- /dev/null +++ b/text/abstract.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,34 @@
1---
2title: Autocento of the breakfast table
3subtitle: abstract
4genre: prose
5
6id: abstract
7toc: "_abstract_"
8
9project:
10 title: Front matter
11 class: front-matter
12...
13
14## Brief Description
15
16_Autocento of the breakfast table_ is my Master's thesis, an inter/hypertextual exploration of the workings of inspiration, revision, and obsession.
17I've compiled this work over multiple years, and recently linked it all together to form a (hopefully) more cohesive whole.
18To make this easier than collating everything by hand, I've relied on a process that leverages open-source technologies to publish my work onto a web platform.
19
20## Things to notice
21
22Take a look around the site.
23See how it's navigable: there are links within each article to other articles and to the wider web, mapping common images, themes, or inspirations;
24 there's also navigation links at the bottom of each page:
25
26- The **&phi;** shows you the backlinks to each page.
27- The **&loz;** takes you back to the cover of the project, to start over.
28- The **&xi;** takes you to a random article in the project.
29- Some pages also have _previous_ and _next_ links. These take you to other articles in their original project-order. It's another way to navigate the page.
30
31Check out my [process narrative][] for the technical details of putting this site together, or see my [about page][] for an artist's statement.
32
33[process narrative]: process.html
34[about page]: about.html
diff --git a/text/amber-alert.txt b/text/amber-alert.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..305aec4 --- /dev/null +++ b/text/amber-alert.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,41 @@
1---
2title: AMBER alert
3genre: prose
4
5id: amber-alert
6toc: "AMBER alert"
7
8epigraph:
9 content: Apparently it does nothing.
10 link: 'http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/ideas/articles/2008/07/20/abducted/?page=full'
11
12ekphrastic:
13 image: amber.jpg
14 title: Amber Hagerman
15 link: 'https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AMBER_alert'
16
17project:
18 title: Stark Raving
19 class: stark
20 order: 6
21 next:
22 - title: Exasperated
23 link: exasperated
24 - title: The Death Zone
25 link: death-zone
26 prev:
27 - title: Last bastion
28 link: last-bastion
29 - title: Something about the nature of poetry and time
30 link: poetry-time
31...
32
33[Lost things][] have a way of [staying lost][].
34They have to want to be found---is that why we tack up signs, hang socks from hooks in the park, have a box for what's been lost but now is found?
35Maybe the lost *want* to be found but we're looking in the wrong places.
36Maybe we speak the wrong language, the language of the found, to call to them.
37Maybe we should [try another door][].
38
39[Lost things]: lappel-du-vide
40[staying lost]: http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/176996
41[try another door]: statements-frag.html
diff --git a/text/and.txt b/text/and.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..b673dc7 --- /dev/null +++ b/text/and.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,59 @@
1---
2title: And
3genre: verse
4
5id: and
6toc: "And"
7
8epigraph:
9 content: |
10 "What is your favorite word?"
11
12 "And. It is so hopeful."
13 attrib: Margaret Atwood
14 link: 'http://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2011/oct/28/margaret-atwood-q-a'
15
16project:
17 title: Elegies for alternate selves
18 class: elegies
19 order: 3
20 next:
21 - title: Words and meaning
22 link: words-meaning
23 prev:
24 - title: How to read this
25 link: howtoread
26...
27
28| And you were there at the start of it all
29| and you were there at the end bitter as a [nail][]
30
31| and you folded your [hands like little doves][]
32| that flew away like an afterthought
33
34| when you turned to me and the window light
35| on your face when you told me and I did not
36
37| recognize you in the throng of those who
38| are not you and I asked [are we in a church][church]
39
40| and you answered with the look on your face
41| like birds [caught in a snare][] like on a voice
42
43| and I think it might have been my voice
44| and I could not do but look away my head
45
46| was not my head anymore or hold my thoughts
47| I never did get an answer from you but from
48
49| the [man on the radio][] murmuring all night
50| and I couldn't understand him so far away
51
52| and I could tell I was missing something important
53| and you nodded to yourself at something he said
54
55[church]: boar.html
56[hands like little doves]: cold-wind.html
57[nail]: last-passenger.html
58[caught in a snare]: roughgloves.html
59[man on the radio]: worse-looking-over.html
diff --git a/text/angeltoabraham.txt b/text/angeltoabraham.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..aec33ce --- /dev/null +++ b/text/angeltoabraham.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,47 @@
1---
2title: The angel to Abraham
3genre: verse
4
5id: angeltoabraham
6toc: "The angel to Abraham"
7
8ekphrastic:
9 image: "Sacrifice_of_Isaac-Caravaggio.jpg"
10 title: "Abraham, Abraham!"
11 link: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abraham#/media/File:Sacrifice_of_Isaac-Caravaggio_%28Uffizi%29.jpg"
12
13project:
14 title: Elegies for alternate selves
15 class: elegies
16 order: 10
17 prev:
18 - title: Dead man
19 link: deadman
20 next:
21 - title: Feeding the raven
22 link: feedingtheraven
23...
24
25| Abraham, Abraham, you are old and cannot hear:
26| what if you miss my small voice amongst the creaking
27| of your own grief, kill your son unknowing
28| of what he will be, and commit Israel to nothing?
29
30| Abraham, you must know or hope that [God][]
31| will not allow your son to die; you must know
32| that this is a test, but then why
33| are you so bent on Isaac's destruction?
34| Look at your eyes; there is more than fear
35| there. I see in your eyes desperation,
36| a manic passion to do right by your God
37| whom you are not able to see or know.
38
39| Am I too late? I [will try][] to stay
40| your old hands, the knife clenched
41| within them, intent on ending life.
42
43| Will you hear my small voice amongst the creaking,
44| or will it be the chance bleating of a passing ram?
45
46[God]: boar.html
47[will try]: i-am.html
diff --git a/text/apollo11.txt b/text/apollo11.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..aef34dc --- /dev/null +++ b/text/apollo11.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,59 @@
1---
2title: On seeing the panorama of the Apollo 11 landing site
3genre: verse
4
5id: apollo11
6toc: "On seeing the panorama of the Apollo 11 landing site"
7
8ekphrastic:
9 image: "panorama-apollo11.jpg"
10 title: "Big deal."
11 link: "http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap141220.html"
12
13project:
14 title: Elegies for alternate selves
15 class: elegies
16 order: 5
17 next:
18 - title: Ars poetica
19 link: arspoetica
20 prev:
21 - title: And
22 link: and
23...
24
25| So it's the [fucking moon][]. Big deal. As if
26| you haven't seen it before, tacked to the sky
27| like a [rotten hunk of meat][], a maudlin love
28
29| letter (the _i_s dotted with hearts) hung
30| on the sky like ninety-eight theses.
31| Don't stare at it like it means anything.
32
33| Walk past it quickly, eyes averted.
34| Don't give it the chance to collect meaning
35| from your [outstretched hand like a pigeon][].
36
37| Ascribing it a will, calling it fickle, or
38| thinking it has any say or even an opinion
39| of your affairs is a mistake: it's separated
40
41| from you by three hundred eighty thousand miles
42| of emptiness, staring at you blankly like a child
43| or your reflection when you found your love broken
44
45| in the dark, when time fell apart, broke down,
46| started following you around everywhere, [moonfaced][],
47| doggedly asking where you're going, like you know.
48
49| Don't try side stepping time, either: it's only
50| a river you're stuck in, [carrying you][] under the glare
51| of the moon nuzzling closer, cooing in your ear
52
53| like a dove that escapes into the empty sky at dawn.
54
55[fucking moon]: deathstrumpet.html
56[rotten hunk of meat]: roughgloves.html
57[outstretched hand like a pigeon]: last-passenger.html
58[moonfaced]: boy_bus.html
59[carrying you]: music-433.html
diff --git a/text/arspoetica.txt b/text/arspoetica.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..2ca9033 --- /dev/null +++ b/text/arspoetica.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,50 @@
1---
2title: Ars poetica
3genre: prose
4
5id: arspoetica
6toc: "Ars poetica"
7
8project:
9 title: Elegies for alternate selves
10 class: elegies
11 order: 6
12 prev:
13 - title: On seeing the panorama of the Apollo 11 landing site
14 link: apollo11
15 next:
16 - title: The ocean overflows with camels
17 link: theoceanoverflowswithcamels
18...
19
20What is poetry?
21[Poetry is.][is]
22Inasmuch as life is, so is poetry.
23Here is the problem: life is very big and complex.
24Human beings are neither.
25We 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.
26We much prefer knowing only that which is just in front of our faces, staring us back with a look of utter contempt.
27This is why many people are depressed.
28
29Poetry 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.
30Maybe something else is smiling at us, we think.
31So we write poetry to force ourselves to look away from the [mirror][] of our existence to see something else.
32
33This is generally painful.
34To make it less painful, poetry compresses reality a lot to make it more consumable.
35It 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.
36Poetry 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.
37To make this soup, to decompress the poem into an emotion or life, requires a lot of brainpower.
38A good reader will have this brainpower.
39A good poem will not require it.
40
41What this means is: a poem should be self-extracting.
42It 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.
43They feel the pain of having their children taken from them.
44A good poem leaves a feeling of loss and of intense beauty.
45The reader does nothing to achieve this---they are merely the receptacle of the feeling that the poem forces onto them.
46In a way, poetry is a crime.
47But it is the most beautiful crime on this crime-ridden earth.
48
49[is]: words-meaning.html
50[mirror]: moongone.html
diff --git a/text/art.txt b/text/art.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..4571fcc --- /dev/null +++ b/text/art.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,40 @@
1---
2title: Art
3genre: prose
4
5id: art
6toc: "Art"
7
8project:
9 title: "Buildings out of air: Paul in the Woods"
10 class: paul
11 order: 1
12 next:
13 - title: Hymnal
14 link: hymnal
15 - title: Axe
16 link: axe
17...
18
19Paul was writing in his diary about art.
20
21_[This is my brain][]_ he wrote.
22_This is my brain and all it contains.
23['I contain multitudes' said Legion.][]
24I think it was Legion._
25The big heading he had written at the top of the page (_ART_ it read, but only when looking at it from his point of view) sat cold and alone, neglected in the [white space][] surrounding it.
26He noticed this presently (but not after he had written a little more about multitudes), paused, frowned, and began to write again.
27
28_ART stands alone at the top of a blank page_ he wrote.
29_It follows ~~itself in circles~~ its own footprints in a circle around its own name.
30It leads nowhere but is present everywhere.
31~~It contains~~ It contains multitudes.
32Every painting ever made is a painting of every other painting.
33Every song is a remix, a [cover version][]._
34He crossed out the part about songs for getting off topic.
35He made a note to himself in the margin---_Music is not ART._
36
37[This is my brain]: ouroboros_memory.html
38['I contain multitudes' said Legion.]: TODO_BIBLE_LINK
39[white space]: sense-of-it.html
40[cover version]: music-433.html
diff --git a/text/axe.txt b/text/axe.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..d53d58e --- /dev/null +++ b/text/axe.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,46 @@
1---
2title: Axe
3genre: prose
4
5id: axe
6toc: "Axe"
7
8project:
9 title: "Buildings out of air: Paul in the Woods"
10 class: paul
11 order: 5
12 next:
13 - title: Leaf
14 link: leaf
15 - title: Building
16 link: building
17 prev:
18 - title: Dream
19 link: dream
20 - title: Art
21 link: art
22...
23
24Paul took his axe and went out into the woods to chop trees.
25Or rather he went into the trees to chop wood.
26He wasn't sure.
27Either way it helped him think.
28Last time he'd gone out, he'd had an idea for a shoe-insert company he could start called "Paul's Bunyons."
29He chuckled to himself as he shouldered his axe and went into the forest.
30
31Deep into the woods he admired the organization of the trees.
32"They grow wherever they fall" he said "but still none is too close to another."
33He sounded like Solomon to himself.
34[He imagined he had a beard.][]
35
36He walked for a long time in the shadows of the forest, in its coolness.
37It sounded like snow had fallen but it was still [October][].
38The first time the trees seemed to radiate out from him in straight lines he stopped and turned around four times.
39After he walked on he noticed it happened fairly often.
40
41Still, after he felled his first tree that day he realized they grew from the epicenter of his axe.
42He paused in the [small dark sound][] of the forest quiet.
43
44[He imagined he had a beard.]: riptide_memory.html
45[October]: january.html
46[small dark sound]: last-bastion.html
diff --git a/text/big-dipper.txt b/text/big-dipper.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..bd3423e --- /dev/null +++ b/text/big-dipper.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,52 @@
1---
2title: The Big Dipper
3genre: verse
4
5id: big-dipper
6toc: "The big dipper"
7
8project:
9 title: Stark Raving
10 class: stark
11 order: 2
12 next:
13 - title: The Moon is drowning
14 link: moon-drowning
15 - title: Something about the nature of poetry and time
16 link: poetry-time
17 prev:
18 - title: The Death Zone
19 link: death-zone
20 - title: Table of Contents
21 link: table_contents
22...
23
24| After searching for days or even months
25| I finally find it reclining lazily
26| [above the peaks][] above the city as if to ask
27| Did you miss me? Yes very much I reply
28| and rush to embrace it but it smiles
29| and recoils and tells me No no you
30| have to try harder than that it says
31| I do not give myself up so easily
32
33| I try a different tack
34| I sing to it bring it flowers nightly
35| I compare its eyes to the morning dew
36| it has not seen the morning dew
37| I say its mouth is the sunset over mountains
38| it knows mountains but the sunset
39| is only a rumor from the Evening Star
40| I tell the Big Dipper that it moves
41| [like a quiet river across the earth][]
42
43| Rivers I have seen says the Big Dipper
44| they sparkle in the light from my stars
45| Your stars like eyes I say and it smiles
46| [No it says that is too easy][]
47| It turns its back
48| it walks home along the back of the mountain
49
50[above the peaks]: finding-the-lion.html
51[like a quiet river across the earth]: no-nothing.html
52[No it says that is too easy]: http://www.poets.org/poetsorg/poem/writer
diff --git a/text/boar.txt b/text/boar.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..70e199b --- /dev/null +++ b/text/boar.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,42 @@
1---
2title: The boar
3genre: verse
4
5id: boar
6toc: "The boar"
7
8project:
9 title: Elegies for alternate selves
10 class: elegies
11 order: 8
12 prev:
13 - title: The ocean overflows with camels
14 link: theoceanoverflowswithcamels
15 next:
16 - title: Dead man
17 link: deadman
18...
19
20| Now the ticking clocks scare me.
21| The [empty][] rooms, clock towers, belfries;
22| I am terrified by them all.
23
24| I really used to enjoy going to church,
25| singing in the choir, listening to the sermon.
26| Now the chairs squeal like dying pigs---
27
28| It was the boar that did it.
29| [Fifteen feet][] from me that night
30| in the grass, rooting for God
31| knows what, finding me instead.
32
33| I ran, not knowing where or how,
34| not looking for his pursuit of me.
35| I ran to God's front door, found
36| it locked, found the [house][] empty
37
38| with a note saying, "Condemned."
39
40[empty]: mountain.html
41[Fifteen feet]: telemarketer.html
42[house]: i-am.html
diff --git a/text/boy_bus.txt b/text/boy_bus.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..b8e1dd5 --- /dev/null +++ b/text/boy_bus.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,50 @@
1---
2title: Boy on the bus
3genre: verse
4
5id: boy_bus
6toc: "Boy on the bus"
7
8project:
9 title: Stark Raving
10 class: stark
11 order: 9
12 next:
13 - title: I think it's you (but it's not)
14 link: i-think-its-you
15 - title: Last Bastion
16 link: last-bastion
17 prev:
18 - title: L'appel du vide
19 link: lappel-du-vide
20 - title: Exasperated
21 link: exasperated
22...
23
24| When he said [Bible][] I heard his southern accent
25| and he had a face I expect all pastors must have
26| a round open honest face
27| that will always be a boy's face
28| though its owner may rightly call himself a man
29| near my age though I hardly call myself a man
30
31| I have seen this face before whether in life or a dream
32| I can't tell
33| if I've seen him on the street once
34| twice who knows and his pastor's [moon face][]
35| reminds me of something
36| some distant light my life used to own
37
38| [One night on my birthday the moon was so strong it cast shadows][]
39| I could see to the far hill and back it was all clear to me
40
41| The moon hasn't done that in a long time
42| [its face has been obscured by clouds][] for weeks
43| and that boy on the bus his face I've forgotten
44| I thought I recognized a good number of people
45| on that bus who I didn't know at all
46
47[its face has been obscured by clouds]: moongone.html
48[One night on my birthday the moon was so strong it cast shadows]: in-bed.html
49[moon face]: moon-drowning.html
50[Bible]: mountain.html
diff --git a/text/building.txt b/text/building.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..64e69b9 --- /dev/null +++ b/text/building.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,54 @@
1---
2title: Building
3genre: prose
4
5id: building
6toc: "Building"
7
8project:
9 title: "Buildings out of air: Paul in the Woods"
10 class: paul
11 order: 28
12 next:
13 - title: Yellow
14 link: yellow
15 - title: Cereal
16 link: cereal
17 prev:
18 - title: Stagnant
19 link: stagnant
20 - title: Axe
21 link: axe
22...
23
24_[ART and CRAFT][] are only the inside and outside of the same building.
25The ceiling is_---here he put his eraser to his bottom lip, thinking.
26He crossed out _~~The ceiling is.~~_
27_The floor is reality and the ceiling is ~~aspiration~~ ~~desire~~ that which is desired.
28CRAFT is building a [chair][] from wood.
29ART is using the wood as a substrate for an emotional [message to a future person][], the READER / VIEWER._
30
31_The important thing is they are both made of wood.
32The 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.
33They formed buildings out of the air.
34They didn't even try._
35
36_What separates us from them, the trees?
37[We have to try.][]
38We must labor to create our ART, [our buildings of air][].
39We lay them out brick by brick, we build them up by disintegrating trees and forming them again into what they were before.
40Why must we do this? Are there any advantages to this human method?_
41
42_Our advantage is [memory][].
43Our advantage is the reaching-out over space and time to others with our words, our ART.
44Our buildings last for generations, and after they are demolished they are written about, [photographs][] are taken, we **remember**.
45The [act of memory][] is our only ART._
46
47[ART and CRAFT]: toilet.html
48[chair]: boar.html
49[message to a future person]: poetry-time.html
50[We have to try.]: plant.html
51[our buildings of air]: common-titles.html
52[photographs]: man.html
53[memory]: ouroboros_memory.html
54[act of memory]: riptide_memory.html
diff --git a/text/call-me-aural-pleasure.txt b/text/call-me-aural-pleasure.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..d17127d --- /dev/null +++ b/text/call-me-aural-pleasure.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,59 @@
1---
2title: Call me
3subtitle: aural pleasure
4genre: verse
5
6id: call-me-aural-pleasure
7toc: "Call me aural pleasure"
8
9epigraph:
10 content: |
11 compiled thru Facebook statuses of the author
12 link: 'https://www.facebook.com/kittensruleforever38'
13
14project:
15 title: Autocento of the breakfast table
16 class: autocento
17...
18
19| Like _40_ as I challenge anyone to come too!
20| It's like you're the epitome of lame!
21| She's all _I am SOOOO CONFUSED_
22| Aw yeah she got [word from yarn][].
23| ---but technically it's a pretty sweet, huh?
24
25| Dude we were going and delicate fragrance of arguments get based off of are not try
26| dropping glasses in such an emotional rollercoaster you
27| and yes, I'm cocky enough to do anything!
28| I am as good as Phineas and make another picture symphony
29| This is a modification of a young woman to try
30| groups disband after they get your [Meacham stuff][] please let it
31| RJ Covino, own statuses that'll be a great
32
33| MY OWN afterbirth can do that
34| [I am 2 we can be KISSED][] ON THE page.
35| You know I'm not sure that
36| Ben & Jerry's FTW
37| 4/10 would not be able to vote, because I gotta do it
38| This is going to be sad about what
39| Rush Limbaugh comes forward with sunglasses but at least I wasn't wearing a messenger bag or skinny jeans!
40| The cooler THAN Facebook
41| Wine is the best.
42
43| YES I was surprised at first, [but the train one][], definitely.
44
45| Also Valhalla is a dumbass...
46| But we can get based off of course, Jon.
47| We watched this
48| CELEBRATE FRANKSGIVING TOO!
49| That didn't get started on that
50| FRANCIS OF VERULAM REASONED THUS WITH the courage to reply.
51| Anyone wanna watch out
52| I am cranky from Bro a good as a way to [hijack my hand][].
53| Afterbend was not to produce photographs.
54
55[word from yarn]: roughgloves.html
56[I am 2 we can be KISSED]: spittle.html
57[but the train one]: http://www.ugcs.caltech.edu/~deepthi/If_on_a_winter%27s_night_a_traveler.html
58[hijack my hand]: x-ray.html
59[Meacham stuff]: http://www.meachamwriters.org/index.htm
diff --git a/text/cereal.txt b/text/cereal.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..c12f561 --- /dev/null +++ b/text/cereal.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,48 @@
1---
2title: Cereal
3genre: prose
4
5id: cereal
6toc: "Cereal"
7
8project:
9 title: "Buildings out of air: Paul in the Woods"
10 class: paul
11 order: 21
12 next:
13 - title: Man
14 link: man
15 - title: Dream
16 link: dream
17 prev:
18 - title: Sapling
19 link: sapling
20 - title: Building
21 link: building
22...
23
24He woke up after eleven and didn't go [outside][] all day, not even to his Writing Shack.
25What did he do?
26
27He watched late morning cartoons meant for children too young to go to school.
28He ate bowls of cereal.
29He watched his mother play dominoes.
30He played dominoes with her for a little while until she was winning by such a margin it wasn't fun for either of them.
31He went down to the basement to do his [laundry][].
32He pulled the chain for the light and it turned on like magic.
33"Electricity is like magic" he said to himself.
34He thought he would like to write that down but his Implements were in the Shack.
35He'd already built up so much momentum inside.
36
37---Inertia? he thought.
38"What's the difference between inertia and momentum" he asked himself as he hefted dirty clothes into the washer.
39"Maybe inertia is the momentum of not moving" he thought as he measured and poured the blue detergent into the drum.
40"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.
41"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.
42
43"When you switch over your laundry could you bring up my underwear from the dryer" she asked not looking up from her dominoes.
44A [thread of smoke][] curled from her cigarette and spread out on the ceiling.
45
46[outside]: time-looks-up-to-the-sky.html
47[laundry]: underwear.html
48[thread of smoke]: last-passenger.html
diff --git a/text/cold-wind.txt b/text/cold-wind.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..a0ab094 --- /dev/null +++ b/text/cold-wind.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,33 @@
1---
2title: Cold wind
3genre: verse
4
5id: cold-wind
6toc: "Cold wind"
7
8dedication: Justin
9
10project:
11 title: Autocento of the breakfast table
12 class: autocento
13...
14
15| [Man of autumn][], cold wind,
16| blow down the trees' leaves.
17| [Fire on the ground][]. The sky is
18| perfect water, frost-cold,
19| rippled only by flocks
20| [of black birds][] flying and gone.
21| Their brightness can blind
22| an uncareful watcher, work him
23| [in a froth of hands][], not-wings
24| that ache with the loss of flight.
25| A tear is flung faithfully
26| [to the ocean of air][], slipping in
27| slowly, is as gone as the birds.
28
29[Man of autumn]: january.html
30[Fire on the ground]: fire.html
31[of black birds]: i-think-its-you.html
32[in a froth of hands]: when-im-sorry-i.html
33[to the ocean of air]: lappel-du-vide.html
diff --git a/text/collage-instrument.txt b/text/collage-instrument.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..d39ad08 --- /dev/null +++ b/text/collage-instrument.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,93 @@
1---
2title: Instrumented
3subtitle: a collage
4genre: prose
5
6id: collage-instrument
7toc: "Instrumented: a collage"
8
9project:
10 title: Autocento of the breakfast table
11 class: autocento
12...
13
14[`tr`][] has been a part of the Unix toolset since the late 70s.
15Short for translate or transliterate, `tr` takes two strings as arguments, and replaces incidences of the first with the second while reading a byte stream.
16It also supports ranges of characters, in formats such as `A-Z` as well as the POSIX-compliant `[:alpha:]`.
17Although [`sed`][] has more options and features, for a quick search-and-replace, `tr` is more than sufficient.
18
19The [wind blows hard up here][]---far harder than anywhere else I've been.
20I wonder, at times, if it might [pick me up like an angel][] and carry me into the night.
21
22The secret to truly great [rolls is mayonnaise][].
23Although I have received looks of disgust at this assertion, I think the explanation is enough to expel doubt: mayonnaise includes the fat, cream and egg content rolls need to be any good, plus in mayonnaise they come premeasured and perfectly blended, which makes for incredibly easy and delicious rolls.
24After I explain myself, the looks of disgust usually remain.
25
26My mother used to make me mayonnaise rolls, and hers will always be the best.
27I had a teacher in college who explained xenophobia as "Mother's cooking is best."
28
29One of my favorite fictional theories is the [Shoe Event Horizon][], an economic truth which states that as a society progresses, shoe stores become more and more prevalent.
30The demand for shoes raises slowly, almost imperceptibly, causing shoe manufacturers to make more and cheaper shoes.
31This begins a vicious cycle during which more and more shoes are made, more and more cheaply, causing more shoes to be bought, and thus made, until finally the society reaches the Shoe Event Horizon.
32This is the point at which it becomes economically impossible for any stores but shoe stores to exist.
33After the economy collapses, the society's people invariably turn [into birds][], never to touch ground again.
34
35***
36
37[`awk`][] is often used as a command-line stream-editing tool, but it is actually an entire interpreted language.
38It supports multiple variables and logical structuring, and has been the inspiration for [Perl][], which has largely replaced it.
39It was originally written in 1977, but over the years has evolved, with multiple implementations made for different uses.
40
41The best shoes I ever owned were Franco Fortinis, a brand I have yet to find anywhere else.
42Sometimes I wonder if I dreamed the shoes, like in stories where the protagonist buys a powerful object from a mysterious store and try to return it after it backfires in some tragic way, only to find the spot where the store stood is an empty lot, or worse, a [blank brick wall][].
43
44After having moved to Arizona, I fear I will forget what rain is like.
45I don't think it's sandbags falling on the body, and I believe it is cold.
46I think _Daredevil_, that piss of a film, has endeared itself to me forever with its depiction of rain.
47
48Recent studies have proven eyewitness testimony to be utterly unreliable.
49It turns out that memory is not a record set down on the tablet of the brain, but rather a series of impressions, emotions, and physical states that changes even with access.
50One of my students is having a hard time finding arguments in favor of the use of eyewitness testimony for a paper.
51This is how obvious the workings of memory are.
52
53And yet.
54[Without our memory we are nothing][].
55Memory is the tether to the floor of the ocean of our past, the ocean is our collective subconscious, which we float on, on the inner tube of individual perception, slathering on the suntan lotion of our prejudices, wearing the sunglasses of self-deception, all underneath the sun of technology.
56The seagulls of death circle slowly, calling to each other the call of their society, secret in its machinations.
57
58My father told me that once, when swimming, a rip tide pulled him far out to sea.
59He said it was impossible to tell until it was too late.
60The shore simply receded too slowly.
61He never told me how he made it back, but I imagine him, bearded, beached, coughing up saltwater: a new shipwrecked victim.
62
63***
64
65[`grep`][] is a basic search tool for UNIX-based systems.
66It has a robust syntax, though I've had trouble remembering the regex nuances between it, `sed`'s, and `perl`'s.
67There is a POSIX standard, but no one follows standards.
68
69My mother loves Annie Dillard.
70She always talks about the praying mantis egg case scene: Dillard could never find a praying mantis egg case, until she finally saw one by accident.
71After that, she saw them everywhere.
72
73My mother showed me an egg case once.
74I haven't seen one since.
75
76My friend Steven has over three hundred pairs of shoes.
77He tells me his goal is eventually to obtain a calendar of shoes, and wear a different one each day of the year.
78He doesn't include the forty days of Lent, however.
79[He goes barefoot those forty days][].
80
81[`tr`]: http://man.cx/tr
82[`sed`]: http://man.cx/sed
83[wind blows hard up here]: cold-wind.html
84[pick me up like an angel]: lappel-du-vide.html
85[rolls is mayonnaise]: riptide_memory.html
86[Shoe Event Horizon]: http://www.voxday.blogspot.com/2015/02/mailvox-marxism-and-shoe-event-horizon.html
87[into birds]: statements-frag.html
88[`awk`]: http://man.cx/awk
89[Perl]: http://www.perl.org/
90[blank brick wall]: building.html
91[Without our memory we are nothing]: early.html
92[`grep`]: http://man.cx/grep
93[He goes barefoot those forty days]: leg.html
diff --git a/text/creation-myth.txt b/text/creation-myth.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..6524193 --- /dev/null +++ b/text/creation-myth.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,52 @@
1---
2title: Creation myth
3genre: verse
4
5id: creation-myth
6toc: "Creation myth"
7
8project:
9 title: Autocento of the breakfast table
10 class: autocento
11...
12
13| So two hyperintelligent pandimensional beings
14| walk into a bar. One turns to the other and says,
15| "Did you remember to check the end state
16| of that simulation we were running?" The other
17| says, "No, I thought that you did?" To which
18| the first replies, "[Oh shit][], we missed it.
19| I suppose we must do all of this again. Barkeep,
20
21| two beers please." The bartender nods in that way
22| that bartenders do, pours the two beers,
23| expertly, by the way, just so, and hands them
24| to the first [hyperintelligent pandimensional][] being.
25| The second one pulls a few singles out of his
26| wallet, places them on the bar, and the pair
27| turn around and begin walking toward a table
28| in the middle of the mostly-empty bar. The bar-
29| tender picks up the money, fans it out, frowns,
30| and calls to his patrons' backs: "Hey, this
31| isn't enough!" The two turn around simultan-
32| eously, with parity, and stare at him. A beat.
33
34| One of them, the one without the beer, breaks
35| the silence by exclaiming, "Oh dear god, I'm
36| sorry! I didn't know your prices went up since
37| last time. What do I owe you?" The bartender
38| says, "Oh, just another [dollar][]-fifty." The being
39| reaches in his back pocket, slides out his
40| wallet, looks in smiling, and frowns when he sees
41| it's empty. He looks to the other and says,
42| "You got a [buck][]-fifty I can borrow?"
43
44| The second hyperintelligent pandimensional being
45| considers this. He sets the beers down
46| on the table, pulls out his own wallet, opens
47| it, and frowns. "I'm broke too," he says.
48
49[hyperintelligent pandimensional]: http://hitchhikers.wikia.com/wiki/Mice
50[Oh shit]: movingsideways.html
51[dollar]: one-hundred-lines.html
52[buck]: plant.html
diff --git a/text/deadman.txt b/text/deadman.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..e860ba3 --- /dev/null +++ b/text/deadman.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,77 @@
1---
2title: Dead man
3genre: verse
4
5id: deadman
6toc: "Dead man"
7
8project:
9 title: Elegies for alternate selves
10 class: elegies
11 order: 9
12 prev:
13 - title: The boar
14 link: boar
15 next:
16 - title: The angel to Abraham
17 link: angeltoabraham
18...
19
20| The dead man finds [his way into our hearts][]
21| by [opening the door][] and walking in.
22
23| He pours himself [a drink][], something like
24| German cognac, from the mini-bar. He starts talking
25
26| aimlessly about hunting or some bats he saw
27| on the way over, wheeling around each other
28
29| like [x-rays][] around bones and soft tissue.
30| The dead man can see x-rays now, he says,
31
32| a perk of his [condition][].
33| It's not so bad, he says, though
34
35| he stops short of saying it's as good as
36| being alive, an omission we can, ultimately,
37
38| forgive. There's [a short silence][] where nothing
39| is said, we're just looking at him as he looks
40
41| at the ceiling or through it. He looks good
42| for being dead. We mention this to him
43
44| but he just looks embarrassed. He mentions
45| eels he saw in the aquarium earlier, how they knot
46
47| while mating. For hours, it's just a huge mass
48| of [eel flesh, he says, undulating in the water][].
49
50| We nod, waiting for what he'll say next. He seems
51| uncomfortable carrying the conversation, but we
52
53| can't think of anything either. Now it's his turn
54| to look at us, and [ours to stare at the ceiling][]
55
56| or wherever. Finally, we mention the knots we tied
57| in Boy Scouts, especially the loop---a noose? he asks---
58
59| but we say no, the one with the rabbit in its hole
60| and the tree it goes around. The dead man
61
62| knows that knot, he says, it's a good knot. But what
63| he really likes is the rabbit, coming out of its hole
64
65| in the morning, eating some grass, and a fox creeping
66| out of its hiding place and chasing the rabbit around
67
68| the tree, back into its hole, where it always ends up safe.
69
70[his way into our hearts]: last-bastion.html
71[opening the door]: words-meaning.html
72[a drink]: ex-machina.html
73[x-rays]: x-ray.html
74[condition]: initial-conditions.html
75[a short silence]: creation-myth.html
76[eel flesh, he says, undulating in the water]: spittle.html
77[ours to stare at the ceiling]: moongone.html
diff --git a/text/death-zone.txt b/text/death-zone.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..8087130 --- /dev/null +++ b/text/death-zone.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,64 @@
1---
2title: The Death Zone
3genre: verse
4
5id: death-zone
6toc: "The death zone"
7
8epigraph:
9 content: And my life became death.
10 attrib: Philip Gould
11 link: http://www.npr.org/blogs/13.7/2013/11/19/245996903/embracing-life-and-death
12
13ekphrastic:
14 image: gould.png
15 title: Philip Gould
16 link: 'http://www.npr.org/blogs/13.7/2013/11/19/245996903/embracing-life-and-death'
17
18project:
19 title: Stark Raving
20 class: stark
21 order: 7
22 next:
23 - title: The Big Dipper
24 link: big-dipper
25 - title: Exasperated
26 link: exasperated
27 prev:
28 - title: Exasperated
29 link: exasperated
30 - title: AMBER alert
31 link: amber-alert
32...
33
34| When I think of death I think
35| of Peter Falk in _The Princess Bride_ patting
36| [his pockets][] as he leaves the room
37
38| Life is a series of doors or so
39| they say but I ask them this
40| where does that last door lead?
41
42| For Falk maybe it leads backstage
43| a black-walled catered affair with stage
44| lights slowly baking stale muffins
45
46| [Sweaty cheese][] leaking onto dried-out
47| grapes a chocolate fountain clogged
48| by some errant strawberry crown
49
50| but this is not where it leads for you or
51| for me that door opens onto darkness marked
52| only by a trellis or the lid of a casket
53
54| the door of the [earth's womb][] opening
55| finally to accept us and with us the dirt
56| not to grow more strawberries for Falk
57
58| but to pad his feet as he walks overhead
59| to visit someone he certainly cares about
60| but whose name is lost to posterity.
61
62[his pockets]: creation-myth.html
63[Sweaty cheese]: i-wanted-to-tell-you-something.html
64[earth's womb]: about-the-author.html
diff --git a/text/deathstrumpet.txt b/text/deathstrumpet.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..8e53d15 --- /dev/null +++ b/text/deathstrumpet.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,58 @@
1---
2title: "Death's trumpet"
3genre: verse
4
5id: deathstrumpet
6toc: "Death's trumpet"
7
8project:
9 title: Elegies for alternate selves
10 class: elegies
11 order: 28
12 prev:
13 title: 'To Daniel: an elaboration'
14 link: todaniel
15
16epigraph:
17 content: |
18 So Death plays his little fucking trumpet.
19 So what, says the boy.
20 attrib: Larry Levis
21 link: "http://michaelduke.org/2014/07/20/larry-levis-boy-in-video-arcade/"
22...
23
24| He didn't have any polish so he spit-shined the whole thing
25| until it gleamed like a [tomato on the vine][] that was begging
26| to be picked and thrown on some caprese. Death loved caprese.
27
28| He stood up to put the horn to his lips, trying to imagine
29| it was a woman he loved. He blushed as he realized how bad
30| [the metaphor was][]. He practiced anyway for six hours a day
31| in front of the mirror---what else to do with all the time?
32
33| Death looked at [himself in the mirror][] as he played, the trumpet
34| suspended in midair. _Damn vampire rules_, he thought.
35| He was always worried he might have [missed a spot][] while shaving
36| but he'd never know unless a stranger---he had no friends---
37| was kind enough. Not that he goes out anyway or meets people.
38
39| He started waking up late, staying in bed later.
40| He started thinking he was depressed. He never did eat
41| that caprese, and it started getting soggy, green spots
42| spreading on the mozzarella like bedsores. The sun
43| filtered through the [kitchen blinds like smoke][]. He had
44| to get out of the house. He decided to go to the arcade.
45
46| When he got there, it was empty except for a boy
47| [with dead eyes][]. So far so good, Death thought.
48| He was playing a first-person shooter, something violent.
49| Death walked past him and watched out of the corner
50| of his eye. The kid was good. Death decided
51| to congratulate him. He had his trumpet in his hand.
52
53[himself in the mirror]: moongone.html
54[with dead eyes]: big-dipper.html
55[tomato on the vine]: wallpaper.html
56[the metaphor was]: leaf.html
57[missed a spot]: january.html
58[kitchen blinds like smoke]: what-we-are-made-of.html
diff --git a/text/dollywood.txt b/text/dollywood.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..2408f5d --- /dev/null +++ b/text/dollywood.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,183 @@
1---
2title: Something
3subtitle: about my tenure as a bear
4genre: prose
5
6id: dollywood
7toc: "Something about my tenure as a bear"
8
9project:
10 title: Autocento of the breakfast table
11 class: autocento
12...
13
14I turned off the TV as soon as the end credits began.
15I stretched in the La-Z-Boy&trade; I grew up in, pushing its back until I lay horizontal, feet slightly elevated.
16I stared at the light, at the bugs silhouetted inside it.
17I relaxed, thought about sleeping in the chair with the light on.
18I decided against it, pulled the lever to pull the chairback up and the footrest down, stood up, went around the corner, turned off the light, [stripped to my underwear][], and got [in bed][].
19I made sure my alarm was set for 8:00 and lay face-up in the dark.
20Eventually I slept.
21
22I still consider this to be the best summer I ever had, in terms of my sleep schedule.
23Every night I went to bed at midnight, after Stewart and Colbert.
24Every morning I woke up at eight, took a shower, ate my Frosted Mini-Wheats&trade;, and brushed my teeth.
25I took my time because I didn't have to leave for work until 9:30.
26My shift at Dollywood started at 10:00.
27It was my second summer there---I worked as Larry the Cucumber&trade; mostly, though sometimes I would pick up the shift for one of the official Dollywood mascots when they had their day off.
28
29I went outside when the wall clock read 9:32.
30The day was already beginning to warm up.
31I walked across the road to my car, a Saturn&reg;, my first, started it, pulled into the road, and looked up at my window, the only one on the second floor of my house.
32I said "So long" [in my head][] to my room, the house, and my two sisters still sleeping inside, and drove down the road.
33
34***
35
36My morning commute was rural, through farms, creeks, hills, and hollows; past tourist cabin resorts and used Christian bookstores; nearly getting to Pigeon Forge but stopping before any of the Strip was visible.
37Like Las Vegas, Pigeon Forge has a Strip; it was second only to Vegas in terms of marriages performed; it was first in the country including Vegas to feature two Cracker Barrels&reg;.
38I went into Pigeon Forge only if I couldn't help it, which was rare; usually it was only if family from out-of-state were visiting, or the one time I and two friends went to the Buy-One-Pair-Get-Two-Pair-Free Boot Store and got a deal.
39
40I turned left before I got to any of Pigeon Forge, into the employee entrance of Dollywood.
41I drove down a small road: to my left a hill covered in kudzu; to my right a fence past which I could hear people riding The River Rampage&trade; or Rockin' Roadway&trade;.
42I turned left again, drove past HR and the Dollywood doctor's office, and checked for parking at the bottom of the hill.
43There wasn't any, so I drove up the hill, found a parking spot, and got out of my car.
44I thought about waiting for an employee shuttle until I realized it was 9:55, so I trotted down the hill and past HR.
45I crossed the road in front of the gazebo, walked down a little path, and met Tim the security guard as I was crossing the main road.
46He asked to see my ID, which I had ready for him.
47I showed it to him, he looked me up and down (I wasn't in costume, usually a no at Dollywood, but since my costume was green, expensive, and required at least two people to put on, I didn't have to wear it onto the park), and finally let me through.
48I walked through the employee entrance and clocked in at 9:58.
49
50I had only figured out how to clock in my second summer.
51The first summer I worked at Dollywood was also the first summer I worked a job, and due to the placement of the Atmosphere Characters in the hierarchy of Park management we got paid by the day.
52This confused me into thinking that I didn't need to clock in and out, especially since I still got paid.
53My confusion deepened when I walked onto Park one day with Chance, who also worked Veggie Tales&trade;, and he clocked in, but this was midway through the summer and I was too nervous to ask anyone about what I should do.
54I was worried that if I started clocking in it would cause suspicion, and I was terrified that my not clocking in would be caught and punished somehow.
55For about a month I lived in mild terror each morning and afternoon, avoiding my coworkers as they entered or left so they wouldn't see me walk past the red time clocks, each day wondering if the hammer would fall.
56I found out later that my manager Charlie had been paying me based on the days he'd scheduled me, clocking me in and out himself from his computer.
57He said it wasn't a big deal but to clock in next summer, this summer.
58So I clocked in and out every day, and these short sessions with the red time clock became favorite moments.
59
60I walked onto the park, past Jukebox Junction&trade;, over the bridge, under the rope that disallowed guests to visit the area until the Park opened at 10:00, down Showstreet, and into the back of Showstreet Palace Theater, where we characters shared a dressing room with the Veggie Tales&trade; actors.
61Our "dressing-room" was a part of backstage partitioned off by curtains, where the empty shells of Bob the Tomato&trade; and Larry the Cucumber&trade; lay, inside-out so the sweat inside could evaporate, between shifts.
62I grabbed my off-brand UnderArmour&trade; "slicks" from the laundry basket and went to the bathroom to change.
63
64After I changed I came out of the bathroom and knocked on the women's dressing room door, to see if Nina or Stacy were in yet.
65Nina opened the door.
66"Hey Case," she said. "How's it going?"
67"I'm good. Am I Larry today?"
68I had been off the day before, so I wasn't sure of the rotation.
69"Yeah I think so," said Stacy, putting on makeup in the mirror.
70So she was handling with Chance, while Nina and I were the vegetables.
71I liked this arrangement; I preferred to be Larry&trade; because I didn't have to talk to anyone, and I could make faces in the costume while families took pictures.
72Nina preferred the same thing, although she was slightly too tall to fit comfortably inside Bob&trade;.
73Stacy actually preferred to handle; her personality was bubbly and talkative; I don't think Chance liked any part of the job, really, and handling was less hot than being in the suit.
74
75"When's our first run?" I asked.
76"Well, the first show is at 10:20, so we were thinking about 11?"
77I nodded.
78"Where's Chance?"
79"I think he went out back to smoke," Nina said.
80"I'll go with you."
81The actors for the Veggie Tales show were coming in to use their dressing room, so we left Stacy with them.
82We walked through backstage, behind all the curtains, and through the side door into a sort of garage with ratty couches, a refrigerator, and an old TV mounted high up on the wall.
83Chance was sitting, smoking, and watching Jeopardy while thumbing through a magazine.
84"Hi Chance," I said.
85"Hey guys!" he flicked his smile, always somewhere between genuine and mocking, at us.
86
87"Think it'll rain today?"
88he asked, indicating the direction of the sky.
89It wasn't really visible from within the garage, due to the high fence keeping the guests on the path toward Timber Tower&trade; and Mystery Mine&trade;, and the tree just outside the garage.
90"I don't think there's a cloud in the sky," I said, but walked out of the garage and looked up to be sure.
91There were wisps of cirrus like stray brush strokes on a blue canvas, but that was all.
92"I think we'll have to do all of our runs today."
93"Damn," said Chance, and stubbed out his cigarette.
94We watched Jeopardy in silence for a few minutes.
95Chance checked his watch.
96"It's 10:19," he said, "we should get inside before the show starts."
97
98We went back to the dressing room, behind the curtains backstage, past the skins of Larry&trade; and Bob&trade;, their feet, and their battery packs, past the water fountain where I drank, and into the women's dressing room.
99Stacy had finished applying her makeup and was already in overalls, flannel, boots and cowboy hat.
100Seeing her, Chance said, "I'd better go put my outfit on."
101He left and came back, costumed.
102We killed time.
103Nina turned her wrist and looked at her watch.
104"It's 10:50," she said, looking at me and jerking her head toward the door.
105"Let's get ready."
106
107We went out and down the hall.
108The Veggie Tales were singing about Mr. Nezzer&trade; loving the bunny.
109Nina went to Bob&trade;, and I to Larry&trade;.
110We set to work pulling them right-side-out.
111When this was done we put on the backpacks that served as interior shells for the characters and held the battery packs.
112As Nina pulled on Bob&trade;'s legs, I pulled on Larry&trade;'s.
113I put my shoes in Larry&trade;'s feet---a concession made to the forms of us humans inside the suits (Bob&trade; and Larry&trade; on the show had no arms or legs).
114We clipped each other's batteries into the packs.
115We put our hands through the vegetables' arms.
116At this point, the vegetables' faces were sagging from our waists, like deflated balloons.
117We waddled over to the hallway outside the dressing rooms.
118Chance helped me put Larry's hands on, which were three-fingered like a cartoon, although in the cartoon the Veggie Tales characters don't have hands.
119He snapped them onto the arm.
120He helped me pull the head up and over my pack, and clipped the battery to the fan inside the suit.
121He zipped the back zipper, and the suit started to inflate---Bob&trade; and Larry&trade; were inflatable to cut down on their weight.
122Stacy had done the same with Nina and Bob&trade;.
123She asked, "Ready?"
124We said, "Ready."
125Chance got ahead of us, opening the door.
126I had to push my hands into my chest to deflate the suit so it could fit through the door.
127We stepped into the dappled sunlight of Dollywood.
128
129***
130
131The first few minutes of the run were fairly peaceful.
132A few families walking by saw us and walk over, forming a small line for their children to say hello, get a hug and a picture.
133One of the kids, about three, got about five feet from me, pass some sort of magic barrier, and suddenly become terrified.
134She screamed and run back to her parents.
135I tried to get eye-contact (it was hard to tell exactly where Larry&trade; was looking, since his eyes were about a foot above my head and were fixed forward), get small, and hold out my hand, but she had seen quite enough.
136She shook her head and hid behind her mother's leg.
137I waved with my fingers and stepped back to receive the next child.
138
139Sometimes, doing this job, I felt like a priest giving some sort of communion.
140Sometimes I felt like a celebrity, especially when children asked for an autograph (this happened fairly often, and Chance had to guide my hand with the Sharpie&trade; in it).
141Sometimes I felt like Santa Claus, or some other mythical creature come to Earth.
142Mostly, I felt a little hot and slightly bored.
143The boredom crystallized into stress when the Veggie Tales show let out.
144
145Showstreet Palace held something like four hundred people, and for a show like Veggie Tales, around half were children.
146For this run our post was around the side of the theater, so we didn't get the full press of the crowd, but there were quite a few people streaming out of the side door, fresh from seeing Larry&trade;, Bob&trade; and friends performing in a show.
147Of course they were excited to see them giving out hugs in the street.
148Chance and Stacy became busy trying to form the crowd into some semblance of a line while I and Nina were hugging children, trying to take our time with each but painfully aware of the next in line.
149This was the worst part of the job---I felt like I was on a factory line gluing widgets onto a product all day.
150I was always looking ahead, always at the next kid, barely noticing what the ones old enough to talk were saying to me, trying to show me.
151I felt callous and aloof from humanity, and a deep unease passed over me.
152
153With all of this on my mind, of course I didn't see the teenager running toward me from my left.
154Chance and Stacy can't be blamed; they were busy with crowd control.
155I don't know what happened to the kid afterward.
156All I know is what happened to me: suddenly a great weight on my left side, the hiss of air being forced out of Larry&trade;, me almost falling over.
157The weight fell off.
158I turned around, too stunned to yell, though Chance had caught it out of the corner of his eye.
159"Hey! Don't do that!" he said, his eyes on the fallen teenager.
160The kid was maybe fifteen, tall, with a white T-shirt and dark hair.
161He had an indescribable look on his face---surprise, satisfaction, and something else I couldn't identify.
162Before Chance could reach him he ran off.
163
164"You okay?"
165he turned to me and asked.
166I said in a low voice, "Yeah I'm fine."
167"We're going in," he said to Stacy.
168She checked her watch, said, "Yeah, it's been twenty minutes."
169To the crowd: "We have time for just two more pictures!"
170A wave of disappointment went through the people there.
171Most stayed, hoping for an extension of the rule, but we took two more pictures, turned around, and began walking inside.
172Some family tried to follow us in; Chance hollered over his shoulder, "I'm sorry folks, we have to go in.
173Bob&trade; and Larry&trade; need a break."
174The father asked, "When will you be back out?"
175"After the next show," Chance said as Stacy opened the door.
176
177I deflated Larry&trade;'s face again, to get in the door, and was safe in the darkness of the hallway.
178Chance unzipped me, allowing real, cool air to wash over my body.
179Nina and I waddled down the hallway to peel the vegetables off ourselves, and to repeat the process of waiting, dressing, and standing again.
180
181[stripped to my underwear]: underwear.html
182[in bed]: in-bed.html
183[in my head]: hymnal.html
diff --git a/text/dream.txt b/text/dream.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..14fdb3f --- /dev/null +++ b/text/dream.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,52 @@
1---
2title: Dream
3genre: prose
4
5id: dream
6toc: "Dream"
7
8project:
9 title: "Buildings out of air: Paul in the Woods"
10 class: paul
11 order: 4
12 next:
13 - title: Axe
14 link: axe
15 - title: Early
16 link: early
17 prev:
18 - title: Underwear
19 link: underwear
20 - title: Cereal
21 link: cereal
22...
23
24It had gotten cold.
25He went to lay down [in bed][] with a pad and paper.
26He began to write.
27Although he hadn't tried it much in bed before, he liked it mostly.
28His arm got tired journeying across the page like a series of switchbacks down the wall of the Grand Canyon.
29He wrote this down in the margin, for later:
30
31_Arm journeying across \
32the pg. like a \
33series of switch- \
34backs down the wall \
35of the Grand Canyon_
36
37His arm began to pain him.
38He adjusted his position in the bed.
39It didn't help much with the pain.
40It still hurt as he wrote.
41He began to be distracted by his mother's music playing in the next room.
42
43"Could you turn that down please" he hollered across the wall to his mother.
44She made no reply ([music too loud][]).
45He gave his arm a break to look at what he'd written.
46He couldn't make heads or tails of it.
47It looked like Arabic.
48
49He woke up gasping in a sweat.
50
51[in bed]: in-bed.html
52[music too loud]: music-433.html
diff --git a/text/early.txt b/text/early.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..38ddbcd --- /dev/null +++ b/text/early.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,53 @@
1---
2title: Early
3genre: prose
4
5id: early
6toc: "Early"
7
8project:
9 title: "Buildings out of air: Paul in the Woods"
10 class: paul
11 order: 35
12 next:
13 - title: Toothpaste
14 link: toothpaste
15 - title: Father
16 link: father
17 prev:
18 - title: Stump
19 link: stump
20 - title: Dream
21 link: dream
22...
23
24_YOU CANNOT DISCOVER ART ART MUST BE CREATED_ he sat on the couch at home while his mother [watched TV][] and smoked.
25[Dinner had been chicken][] and peas with [milk][] and afterward Paul and his mother sat on opposite ends of the couch.
26At intervals she would look sideways at Paul writing.
27He pretended not to notice.
28
29_ART = ARTIFICE_ he wrote.
30_ARTIFICE MEANS UNNATURAL.
31ARTIFICE MEANS BUILT.
32TO BUILD MEANS TO [FIND A PATTERN][] & FIND A PATTERN IS WHAT WE ARE GOOD AT._
33He thought about this while someone else won a car.
34
35"Do you think humans are good at finding patterns because we are hunters" he asked his mother.
36She [looked sideways][] at him and said "Sure Paul."
37"Early on in our evolution we were hunters right?
38And to hunt we had to see the patterns in seemingly random events, like where the gazelle went each year"
39"Paul I'm trying to watch TV.
40If you're going to write this stuff go do it in your room you're distracting."
41Paul got up and went to his room and lay down on his bed.
42
43"If the gazelle went [to the same place][] every year" he thought "did they know the pattern too?
44Or was it random for them, did they think each year 'This seems like a good spot let's graze here' without knowing?"
45
46He wrote _PATTERN = MEMORY_ in his notebook.
47
48[watched TV]: real-writer.html
49[Dinner had been chicken]: when-im-sorry-i.html
50[milk]: shipwright.html
51[FIND A PATTERN]: fire.html
52[looked sideways]: movingsideways.html
53[to the same place]: serengeti.html
diff --git a/text/elegyforanalternateself.txt b/text/elegyforanalternateself.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..4ea61d9 --- /dev/null +++ b/text/elegyforanalternateself.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,38 @@
1---
2title: Elegy for an alternate self
3genre: verse
4
5id: elegyforanalternateself
6toc: "Elegy for an alternate self"
7
8project:
9 title: Autocento of the breakfast table
10 class: autocento
11...
12
13| Say there are no words. Say that we are conjoined
14| from birth, or better still, say we are myself.
15| ---But I still talk to myself, I [build my world][]
16| through language, so if we say there are [no words][]
17| this is not enough. Say we are instead some animal,
18| or better yet, [a plant][], or a flagellum motoring
19| aimlessly around. (Say that humans are the only things
20| that reason. Say that we're the [only things that worry][].)
21
22| Say that I am separate. To say there's everything else
23| and then there's me is wrong. Each thing is separate:
24| [there is no whole in the world][]. Say this is both good
25| and bad, or rather, say there is no good or bad but only
26| being, [more and more of it always added][], none taken out
27| though it can be forgotten. Say that forgetting
28| is a [function of our remembering][]. (Say that humans only
29| [worry about separation][]. Say that only humans feel it.)
30
31[no words]: hymnal.html
32[a plant]: plant.html
33[only things that worry]: movingsideways.html
34[there is no whole in the world]: i-wanted-to-tell-you-something.html
35[worry about separation]: swansong-alt.html
36[build my world]: i-am.html
37[more and more of it always added]: no-nothing.html
38[function of our remembering]: collage-instrument.html
diff --git a/text/epigraph.txt b/text/epigraph.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..2dc2c13 --- /dev/null +++ b/text/epigraph.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,34 @@
1---
2title: epigraph
3subtitle: "&ndash; Sylvia Plath"
4genre: prose
5
6id: epigraph
7toc: "_epigraph_"
8
9project:
10 title: Elegies for alternate selves
11 class: elegies
12 order: 1
13 next:
14 - title: How to read this
15 link: howtoreadthis
16 prev:
17 - title: Death's Trumpet
18 link: deathstrumpet
19...
20
21I saw my life branching out before me like the [green fig tree][] in the story.
22From the tip of every branch, like a fat purple fig, a wonderful future beckoned and winked.
23One fig was a husband and a happy home and children,
24and another fig was a famous poet and another fig was a brilliant professor,
25and another fig was Ee Gee, the amazing editor,
26and another fig was Europe and Africa and South America,
27and another fig was Constantin and Socrates and Attila and a pack of [other lovers][] and queer names and offbeat professions,
28and another fig was an Olympic lady crew champion, and beyond and above these figs were many more figs I couldn't quite make out.
29I saw myself sitting in the crotch of this fig tree, starving to [death][], just because I couldn't make up my mind which of the figs I would choose.
30I 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.
31
32[other lovers]: spittle.html
33[death]: deathstrumpet.html
34[green fig tree]: peaches.html
diff --git a/text/ex-machina.txt b/text/ex-machina.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..70f879e --- /dev/null +++ b/text/ex-machina.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,55 @@
1---
2title: Ex machina
3genre: verse
4
5id: ex-machina
6toc: "Ex machina"
7
8epigraph:
9 content: with lines from National Geographic
10 link: 'http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/2013/08/sugar/cohen-text'
11
12project:
13 title: Autocento of the breakfast table
14 class: autocento
15...
16
17| Bottom of the drink: they had
18| to go. The Coke machine, the snack
19| machine, the deep fryer. Hoisted
20
21| and dragged through the halls
22| and out to the curb, they sat with
23| other trash beneath gray, forlorn
24
25| skies behind the elementary
26| school, wondering what their next
27| move would be. The Coke machine
28
29| had always wanted to live
30| the life of a [hobo][], jumping trains,
31| eating from garbage, making fire
32
33| in old oil drums. It had some
34| strange romantic notions of being homeless,
35| is what the deep fryer thought.
36
37| Its opinion was to head to court,
38| sue the bastards at the school for early
39| termination of contract. It was
40
41| the embodiment of [justifiable anger][].
42| It believed privately that it was an incarnation
43| of Nemesis, the goddess of divine
44
45| retribution. What the snack machine
46| thought, it kept to itself, but it did say
47| that [nothing ever ends][]. The others
48
49| were confused, then angry, but finally
50| understood, or thought they did. The snack
51| machine's candy melted in the sun.
52
53[hobo]: prelude.html
54[justifiable anger]: table_contents.html
55[nothing ever ends]: no-nothing.html
diff --git a/text/exasperated.txt b/text/exasperated.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..81fdc7a --- /dev/null +++ b/text/exasperated.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,74 @@
1---
2title: Exasperated
3genre: verse
4
5id: exasperated
6toc: "Exasperated"
7
8project:
9 title: Stark Raving
10 class: stark
11 order: 8
12 next:
13 - title: The Death Zone
14 link: death-zone
15 - title: Boy on the bus
16 link: boy_bus
17 prev:
18 - title: AMBER alert
19 link: amber-alert
20 - title: The Death Zone
21 link: death-zone
22...
23
24| I didn't write this sestina yesterday.
25| It's the first time I fell behind in my task
26| and hopefully, the only time it will.
27| This means that today I must write two
28| sestinas. If I don't write them today, I
29| will have to write two later down the line.
30
31| Although I feel I'm slogging through each line
32| I think I'm doing better every day,
33| though maybe this is wishful thinking: I
34| showed my friend my just-completed task
35| two days ago (my God, was it two
36| entire days? I've no idea what I'll
37
38| do [after thirty-nine days][]. I think I'll
39| feel like [Inigo Montoya][], who'd been in the line
40| of revenging for so long, he didn't know what to
41| do with the rest of his life), and he deigned
42| to be polite, but I could tell the task
43| was hard for him. He told me finally that I
44
45| had made a noble effort, but that ultimately I
46| failed. [So my question][]: when will
47| I be a decent sestina writer? For this is my task.
48| Maybe if I just keep cranking out line after line
49| I'll finally figure it out. Maybe one more day
50| or another week will do it, or maybe I'll need two,
51
52| or maybe it'll never happen. Maybe a sestina's too
53| involved, too much [weaving][] of words too fine, and I
54| will never write a good one, even on my best day,
55| even if I employ all my skill and all my will.
56| I'm not used to writing poems with thirty-nine lines,
57| that must be the problem, must be why this task
58
59| is Herculean. He only had to finish twelve tasks,
60| and I have one less one thousand, five hundred twenty-two,
61| and it's nothing but complaining lines
62| about [how hard it is to be a person][]. I
63| am getting sick of myself with these poems, and will
64| soon be loathe to get out of bed every day.
65
66| But I tasked myself with this, which may be the worst I
67| ever do to myself. I thought a poem NaNoWriMo would
68| be fun, would line my resume, give me something I could publish someday.
69
70[after thirty-nine days]: http://biblehub.com/2_corinthians/11-24.htm
71[Inigo Montoya]: death-zone.html
72[So my question]: question.html
73[weaving]: tapestry.html
74[how hard it is to be a person]: deathstrumpet.html
diff --git a/text/father.txt b/text/father.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..71103be --- /dev/null +++ b/text/father.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,45 @@
1---
2title: Father
3genre: prose
4
5id: father
6toc: "Father"
7
8project:
9 title: "Buildings out of air: Paul in the Woods"
10 class: paul
11 order: 37
12 next:
13 - title: Paul
14 link: paul
15 - title: Fire
16 link: fire
17 prev:
18 - title: Toothpaste
19 link: toothpaste
20 - title: Early
21 link: early
22...
23
24"Is man the natural thing that makes unnatural things" he thought to himself as he looked out the kitchen window at the shed.
25He wondered who built the shed for the first time since he'd been going out there.
26"Mom who built the shed out back" he asked.
27"That was your father" she said.
28
29His father.
30Paul had never met him.
31His mother had said when he was a kid that his father was caught by a [riptide][] while swimming in the ocean.
32He hadn't noticed what was happening until the land was a thin line on the horizon.
33He became exhausted swimming back and drowned.
34His body was found a week later by the coroner's estimate.
35Paul never really believed this story because his mother's face was sad in the wrong way when she told it.
36
37She said he looked like his father but she also said all men look alike.
38Paul realized he'd been standing at the kitchen window for a long time looking out at the shed without realizing it.
39He went out to take an inventory of everything inside.
40
41"Where you going" asked his mother.
42"To the shed.
43I'll be back in a bit" he said.
44
45[riptide]: riptide_memory.html
diff --git a/text/feedingtheraven.txt b/text/feedingtheraven.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..bded466 --- /dev/null +++ b/text/feedingtheraven.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,48 @@
1---
2title: Feeding the raven
3genre: prose
4
5id: feedingtheraven
6toc: "Feeding the raven"
7
8project:
9 title: Elegies for alternate selves
10 class: elegies
11 order: 11
12 prev:
13 - title: The angel to Abraham
14 link: angeltoabraham
15 next:
16 - title: On formal poetry
17 link: onformalpoetry
18...
19
20You never can tell just when Charlie Sheen will enter your life.
21For me, it was last Thursday.
22I was reading some translation of a Japanese translation of "The Raven" in which the Poe and the raven become friends.
23At one point the raven gets very sick and Poe feeds him at his bedside and nurses him back to health.
24The 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.
25
26I shuffled over, sniffling but managing to keep my cheeks dry to open it.
27Of course Charlie was beaming on the other side, with a bag of flowers and a grin like a [dog][]'s.
28He bounded in the room without saying hello and threw the flowers in the sink, opened the refrigerator and started poking around.
29I 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.
30
31When I came back he was on the floor, hunched and groaning.
32I looked on the table to see a month-old half-gallon of milk---now cottage cheese---half-empty and dripping.
33The remnants were on his mouth, and at once I saw my chance to become Poe in this [translation of a translation][] of a translation.
34I knelt next to Charlie, cradled his head in my lap.
35He looked up at me with a stare full of terror.
36I returned it levelly, making cooing noises at him until he calmed down.
37
38When he was calm he excused himself to be sick on my toilet.
39He wouldn't let me follow but said he would sign whatever I liked when he got back.
40After half an hour passed and all I'd had for company was the ticking of the [clock][], I went to the bathroom door.
41I knocked carefully---once, then twice---to no beaming face, no flowers.
42I opened the door.
43There was shit on the floor and the window was open.
44There was a breeze blowing.
45
46[dog]: purpose-dogs.html
47[translation of a translation]: todaniel.html
48[clock]: boar.html
diff --git a/text/finding-the-lion.txt b/text/finding-the-lion.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..c34af84 --- /dev/null +++ b/text/finding-the-lion.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,42 @@
1---
2title: Finding the Lion
3genre: verse
4
5id: finding-the-lion
6toc: "Finding the lion"
7
8project:
9 title: Autocento of the breakfast table
10 class: autocento
11...
12
13| Tonight, as I look up, the stars
14| hide themselves in shame. [There is no moon][].
15| The sky is black, like my desk,
16
17| [nothing like a raven][]. The streetlights
18| look on the scene disinterested.
19| They have their own [small gossips of the dark][].
20
21| I came here to find the Lion, old
22| friend, but he will not show his flanks, his
23| paws, his shoulders, [his mane][]. I
24
25| can hear him laughing from his hiding-place
26| behind the moon, nonexistent, under
27| the cold dead earth. The mountain is in front
28
29| of me now, a hole of stars daring me
30| to pierce it with my sight. The lion's still
31| laughing; the streetlamps talk about
32
33| me amongst themselves, and go out. There
34| never was any lion, they tell me.
35| [You only hear the wind][] [on the mountain][].
36
37[There is no moon]: moongone.html
38[nothing like a raven]: feedingtheraven.html
39[small gossips of the dark]: the-night-we-met.html
40[his mane]: axe.html
41[You only hear the wind]: cold-wind.html
42[on the mountain]: mountain.html
diff --git a/text/fire.txt b/text/fire.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..1bd70e0 --- /dev/null +++ b/text/fire.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,49 @@
1---
2title: Fire
3genre: prose
4
5id: fire
6toc: "Fire"
7
8project:
9 title: "Buildings out of air: Paul in the Woods"
10 class: paul
11 order: 39
12 next:
13 - title: Hands
14 link: hands
15 prev:
16 - title: Paul
17 link: paul
18 - title: Father
19 link: father
20...
21
22His mother ran out of the house in her nightgown.
23"What the hell do you think you're doing" she hollered as Paul watched the shed.
24"I'm burning the shed down" he said smiling "isn't it warm?"
25"It's warm enough out here without that burning down" she said "go get the hose and put this thing out."
26"But Mom---"
27"Do it" she said in the tone of voice that meant Do it now.
28He 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.
29[When it did it was not in a very strong stream.][]
30"I don't think this is going to work" Paul said to his mother.
31"God damn it I have to call the Fire Department" she said and went inside the house.
32The shed continued in its burning.
33
34After the Fire Department put out the fire one of the men said "Your mother says you set this building on fire.
35You know Arson is a major offense."
36"I set it on fire" Paul said.
37"Why?"
38"Because ART wants to be random, it wants to be natural, but it isn't.
39Humans create ART because we can't help but see patterns in randomness.
40But we feel guilty about it."
41The man nodded to another man in a blue uniform.
42"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.
43I 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.
44He was saying something about Paul's right.
45"No it's my [left that was hurt][]" said Paul "but it's all better now."
46
47[When it did it was not in a very strong stream.]: hard-game.html
48[black and white]: sense-of-it.html
49[left that was hurt]: x-ray.html
diff --git a/text/found-typewriter-poem.txt b/text/found-typewriter-poem.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..2d45a1a --- /dev/null +++ b/text/found-typewriter-poem.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,48 @@
1---
2title: Look
3subtitle: a found typewriter poem
4genre: verse
5
6id: found-typewriter-poem
7toc: "Look: a found typewriter poem"
8
9epigraph:
10 content: |
11 [Is he older](http://books.google.com/books?id=ALdlAAAAMAAJ&focus=searchwithinvolume&q=older+than)? I asked her.
12 And I never got an answer, because at the moment she disappeared in a puff of smoke.
13 I like to think nothing ever happened to her save that she went over to the spirit realm.
14 I usually know better though.
15
16project:
17 title: Autocento of the breakfast table
18 class: autocento
19...
20
21| Look, I say---look here---
22| at this old place
23| [where nothing changes][old-place].
24| Look at the people
25| who pass by. Look at
26| the trees. The flowers
27| full of wanting: look
28| [how full they are][] with
29| color. Look how they mock
30| us, empty people who
31| must fill themselves
32| with changes---emptiness.
33
34| "[There is nothing][] to be
35| but happy. [There is no][]
36| sadness to fall down
37| like cherry petals."
38
39| The [trees don't under-
40| stand:][trees] they are too
41| tall to see the germ
42| of discontent in us.
43
44[old-place]: planks.html
45[how full they are]: squirrel.html
46[There is nothing]: elegeyforanalternateself.html
47[There is no]: no-nothing.html
48[trees]: plant.html
diff --git a/text/hands.txt b/text/hands.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..9a79aeb --- /dev/null +++ b/text/hands.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,53 @@
1---
2title: Hands
3genre: prose
4
5id: hands
6toc: "Hands"
7
8project:
9 title: "Buildings out of air: Paul in the Woods"
10 class: paul
11 order: 10
12 next:
13 - title: Toilet
14 link: toilet
15 - title: Hardware
16 link: hardware
17 prev:
18 - title: Shed
19 link: shed
20 - title: Fire
21 link: fire
22...
23
24He looked down at his hands idly while he was typing.
25They were [dry and cracked in places][].
26He thought he might start bleeding so he went inside for some lotion.
27
28"Do we have any lotion" he asked his mother.
29"In the medicine cabinet" she said without looking up from the TV.
30He walked into the [bathroom][] and looked at himself in the mirror.
31"I look strange" he said to himself "I look like a teenager."
32He stared into his [right eye, then his left][].
33He saw nothing but [his own reflection fish-eyed][] in his pupils.
34He opened the medicine cabinet.
35
36Back in his Writing Shack, he started to type.
37
38> What is it about hands that gives
39> them such power? It is that their
40> power is hidden in the arm. Push
41> on the inside of the wrist--the
42> hand closes. Reach under the skin
43> and pull on the outside tendons--
44> the hand opens again. Hands are
45> only [machines][] for grasping,
46> controlled by the arm, not the
47> mind.
48
49[dry and cracked in places]: weplayedthosegamestoo.html
50[bathroom]: boar.html
51[right eye, then his left]: man.html
52[his own reflection fish-eyed]: deathstrumpet.html
53[machines]: ex-machina.html
diff --git a/text/hard-game.txt b/text/hard-game.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..4a2aab5 --- /dev/null +++ b/text/hard-game.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,35 @@
1---
2title: A hard game
3genre: verse
4
5id: hard-game
6toc: "A hard game"
7
8dedication: Jim Henson
9
10project:
11 title: Autocento of the breakfast table
12 class: autocento
13...
14
15| You think building Hoggle's a hard game?
16| You know bunk. Writing a ghazal's a hard game.
17
18| Let's meet in a place where words & fabric play---
19| but not [plastic][] words. (Boggle's a hard game.)
20
21| A cookout where we can hash our differences
22| over steak, though making it sizzle's a hard game.
23
24| Let's go to a brothel, [rub shoulders][] with bare
25| shoulders, or a bar. Being wastrel's a hard game.
26
27| Maybe we could switch professions, you and I,
28| you write the poems, I'll puppet Fozzie---a hard game.
29
30| When you call me, you never say my name.
31| Creativity's [a hose][]---shutting the nozzle's the hard game.
32
33[a hose]: fire.html
34[plastic]: sense-of-it.html
35[rub shoulders]: finding-the-lion.html
diff --git a/text/hardware.txt b/text/hardware.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..d403d30 --- /dev/null +++ b/text/hardware.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,48 @@
1---
2title: Hardware
3genre: prose
4
5id: hardware
6toc: "Hardware"
7
8project:
9 title: "Buildings out of air: Paul in the Woods"
10 class: paul
11 order: 14
12 next:
13 - title: Treatise
14 link: treatise
15 - title: Hymnal
16 link: hymnal
17 prev:
18 - title: Planks
19 link: planks
20 - title: Hands
21 link: hands
22...
23
24His mother drove him to the Hardware Store on a Tuesday.
25"I'm glad to see you've taken my advice for once" she said.
26"What do you mean."
27"Applying to work at the Hardware Store.
28I'm [proud of you][] Paul."
29
30"Oh right.
31Sure thing."
32They pulled into the parking lot.
33"Just be a minute" he said as he opened the car door.
34
35He walked under the door resplendent in its King William orange and white.
36He saw the towering rows of shelves like mountain ridges in Hell.
37He strolled among the fixtures, pipes, planks, sheets, plants (Why plants? he thought), switches.
38He realized he didn't know the first thing about building [furniture][].
39"I don't know the first thing" he muttered to himself "about building furniture.
40I know the last thing would be a couch or chair or stool but the first thing is a [mystery][]."
41He turned around and walked straight out of the store and to his mother's car without looking up.
42
43"How'd it go" she asked starting the car.
44"Great" he said.
45
46[proud of you]: sixteenth-chapel.html
47[furniture]: real-writer.html
48[mystery]: love-as-god.html
diff --git a/text/howithappened.txt b/text/howithappened.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..2fd39fe --- /dev/null +++ b/text/howithappened.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,38 @@
1---
2title: How it happened
3genre: 'verse'
4
5id: howithappened
6toc: "How it happened"
7
8project:
9 title: Elegies for alternate selves
10 class: elegies
11 order: 14
12 prev:
13 - title: I am
14 link: i-am
15 next:
16 - title: Love Song
17 link: lovesong
18...
19
20| I was away on vacation when I heard---
21| someone sat at my desk while I was away.
22| They took my pen, while I was taking
23| surf lessons, and wrote the sun into the sky.
24| They pre-approved the earth and the waters,
25| and all of the living things, without even
26| having the decency to text me. It was not I
27| who was behind the phrase "creeping things."
28| When I got back, of course I was pissed,
29| but it was [already written][] into the policy.
30| I'm just saying: don't blame me for Cain
31| killing Abel. That was a murder. I'm not a cop.
32| The Tower of Babel fell on its own. The ark
33| never saw a single drop of rain. I'm [the drunk][]
34| sitting on the curb who just pissed his pants,
35| holding up a sign asking where I am.
36
37[already written]: shipwright.html
38[the drunk]: problems.html
diff --git a/text/howtoread.txt b/text/howtoread.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..d03b1b2 --- /dev/null +++ b/text/howtoread.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,104 @@
1---
2title: How to read this
3genre: prose
4
5id: howtoread
6toc: "How to read this"
7
8project:
9 title: Elegies for alternate selves
10 class: elegies
11 order: 2
12 next:
13 - title: And
14 link: and
15 prev:
16 - title: epigraph
17 link: epigraph
18...
19
20This book is an exploration of life, of all possible lives that could be lived.
21Each of the poems contained herein have been written by a different person, with his own history, culture, and emotions.
22True, they are all related, but no more than any of us is related through our genetics, our shared planet, or our yearnings.
23
24Fernando Pessoa wrote poems under four different identities---he called them *heteronyms*---that were known during his lifetime, though after his death over sixty have been found and catalogued.
25He called them heteronyms as opposed to pseudonyms because they were much more than names he wrote under.
26They were truly different writing selves, concerned with different ideas and writing with different styles:
27Alberto Caeiro wrote pastorals;
28Ricardo Reis wrote more formal odes;
29Álvaro de Campos wrote these long, Whitman-esque pieces (one to Whitman himself);
30and Pessoa's own name was used for poems that are kind of similar to all the others.
31It seems as though Pessoa found it inefficient to try and write everything he wanted only in his own self;
32rather he parceled out the different pieces and developed them into full identities, at the cost of his own:
33"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."
34de Campos said of him at one point, "[Fernando Pessoa, strictly speaking, doesn't exist.][pessoa-exist]"
35
36It'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.
37Heraclitus famously said that we can't step into the [same river][] twice, and the fact of the matter is that we can't occupy the same self twice.
38It'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.
39The person I was when beginning a poem is distinct from the person who finished the poem, largely due to the poem itself.
40In a way, it's been the waiter that brought the next course into the great meal that is myself.
41
42In the same way, with each poem you read of this, you too could become a different person.
43Depending on which order you read them in, you could be any number of possible people.
44If 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.
45However, 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.
46
47There is a scene in *The Neverending Story* where Bastian is trying to find his way out of the desert.
48He 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.
49It is a series of rooms with six sides each and three doors: one from the room before and two choices.
50In 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.
51
52What happens to those other doors, those other possibilities?
53Is there some other version of the self that for whatever complexities of circumstance and will chose a different door at an earlier moment?
54The 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.
55We go back and try that other door in our mind, extrapolating a possible present from our own past.
56This 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.
57This 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.
58
59In this way, every moment we live is an [elegy][] to every possible future that might have stemmed from it.
60Annie Dillard states this in a biological manner when she says in *Pilgrim at Tinker Creek*, "Every glistening egg is a memento mori."
61Nature is inefficient---it spends a hundred lifetimes to get one that barely works.
62The 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.
63Each living person today has twenty dead standing behind him, and that only counts the people that actually lived.
64How many missed opportunities stand behind any of us?
65
66The real problem with all of this is that time is only additive.
67There's no way to dial it back and start over, with new choices or new environments.
68Even when given the chance to do something again, we do it *again*, with the reality given by our previous action.
69Thus we are constantly creating and being created by the world.
70The self is never the same from one moment to the next.
71
72A poem is like a snapshot of a self.
73If 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.
74Thus revision is possible, and the new poem created will be yet another snapshot of the future self as changed by the original poem.
75The page becomes a window into the past, a particular past as experienced by one self.
76The poem is a remembering of a self that no longer exists, in other words, an elegy.
77
78A snapshot doesn't capture the entire subject, however.
79It leaves out the background as it's obscured by foreground objects; it fails to include anything that isn't contained in its finite frame.
80In 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.
81A poem leaves much of this out: it is the one person standing in front of twenty ghosts.
82
83A poem is the place where the selves of the reader and the speaker meet, in their respective times and places.
84In this way a poem is outside of time or place, because it changes its location each time it's read.
85Each time it's two different people meeting.
86The 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.
87It 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.
88This is why it's possible to write more than one poem.
89
90Due 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.
91It 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.
92It is the [kernel][] 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.
93This 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.
94A 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.
95
96With this in mind, I collect these poems that were written over a period of four years into this book.
97Where 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.
98You 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.
99If writing is a communication of the self, then this is the best way to communicate mine in all its multiversity.
100
101[pessoa-exist]: philosophy.html
102[same river]: mountain.html
103[elegy]: words-meaning.html
104[kernel]: arspoetica.html
diff --git a/text/hymnal.txt b/text/hymnal.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..5978cd5 --- /dev/null +++ b/text/hymnal.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,44 @@
1---
2title: Hymnal
3genre: prose
4
5id: hymnal
6toc: "Hymnal"
7
8project:
9 title: "Buildings out of air: Paul in the Woods"
10 class: paul
11 order: 2
12 next:
13 - title: Underwear
14 link: underwear
15 - title: Joke
16 link: joke
17 prev:
18 - title: Art
19 link: art
20 - title: Hardware
21 link: hardware
22...
23
24_It's all [jokes][]_ Paul wrote in what he was now calling his Hymnal.
25He had been writing non-stop all day, because he didn't count pee or cigarette breaks.
26_All art is an inside joke.
27The symbology involved must be_---and here he put down his pen and held his head in his hands.
28He could never think of the word---he said often that he had no words.
29He opened to a new page in his Hymnal.
30On the top of it was written in bold script _**HYMN 386: JOKES**_.
31
32Paul scowled.
33Who had written in his Hymnal? he wondered.
34He said it out loud a moment after: "Who has written in my Hymnal?"
35He realized he was alone in his Writing Shack, which was really a shed in the back of his mother's garden.
36He wondered why he had to say his thoughts before they became real to him (if this was a habit or an inborn trait).
37He realized simultaneously that
38
39(a) he could ask someone and
40(b) that this was something he wondered every time he spoke his thoughts out loud.
41
42He resolved to put the issue to rest by asking someone.
43
44[jokes]: joke.html
diff --git a/text/i-am.txt b/text/i-am.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..5540ff2 --- /dev/null +++ b/text/i-am.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,41 @@
1---
2title: I am
3genre: verse
4
5id: i-am
6toc: "I am"
7
8project:
9 title: Elegies for alternate selves
10 class: elegies
11 order: 13
12 prev:
13 - title: On formal poetry
14 link: onformalpoetry
15 next:
16 - title: How it happened
17 link: howithappened
18...
19
20| I am a great pillar of [white smoke][].
21| I am Lot's nameless wife encased in salt.
22| I am the wound on Christ's back as he moans
23| with the pounding of a hammer on his wrist.
24| I am the nail that holds my house together.
25| It is a strong house, built on a good foundation.
26| In the winter, it is warm and crawling things
27| cannot get in. This house will never burn down.
28| It is the house that I built, with my body
29| and with my strength. I am the only one who lives
30| here. I am both father and mother to a race
31| of [dust motes that worship me as a god][]. I have
32| monuments built daily in my honor in dark
33| corners around the house. I destroy all of them
34| before I go to bed, but in the morning
35| there are still more. I don't think I know
36| where all of them are. I [don't think][not think] I can get
37| to all of them anymore. There are too many.
38
39[white smoke]: deathstrumpet.html
40[not think]: howithappened.html
41[dust motes that worship me as a god]: plant.html
diff --git a/text/i-think-its-you.txt b/text/i-think-its-you.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..83af30d --- /dev/null +++ b/text/i-think-its-you.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,46 @@
1---
2title: I think it's you
3subtitle: "but it's not"
4genre: verse
5
6id: i-think-its-you
7toc: "I think it's you (but it's not)"
8
9epigraph:
10 content: When you fall in love everyone looks the same.
11 link: i-think-its-you.html
12
13project:
14 title: Stark Raving
15 class: stark
16 order: 15
17 next:
18 - title: Initial conditions
19 link: initial-conditions
20 - title: Riptide of memory
21 link: riptide_memory
22 prev:
23 - title: Boy on the bus
24 link: boy_bus
25 - title: L'appel du vide
26 link: lappel-du-vide
27...
28
29| I thought I saw you walking
30| to the bus stop but it was only
31| a [raven][]. His croaks sounded nothing
32| like your footsteps (as they pound
33| down the hallway toward my bedroom)
34| his [wings][] looked nothing like your
35| legs (running on the wrong side
36| of the road away from my house)
37| I think the one resemblance was the eyes
38
39| But that's too easy
40| It's just that I was thinking
41| of you and a raven flew by
42| (maybe it was a [crow][])
43
44[raven]: feedingtheraven.html
45[crow]: stump.html
46[wings]: nothing-is-ever-over.html
diff --git a/text/i-want-to-say.txt b/text/i-want-to-say.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..3df48af --- /dev/null +++ b/text/i-want-to-say.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,57 @@
1---
2title: I want to say
3genre: verse
4
5id: i-want-to-say
6toc: "I want to say"
7
8project:
9 title: Autocento of the breakfast table
10 class: autocento
11...
12
13| I want to say I take it all back
14| I want
15| I want to take it back I want it none of it
16| to be ever have happened not
17| when I saw you step over the rope
18| when we went to New York for a week
19| but stayed upstate when you punched me
20| hard in the solar plexus in Prague
21| when I looked in your face and [saw myself][]
22| looking back smiling when we went on another trip
23| and another all the trips I want to have
24| stayed home I want to have seen the clouds
25| drifting past [my car window][] to have listened
26| to that sound the bridge makes driving over it
27| without thinking of you always it was you
28
29| I want
30
31| I [want to be fresh][] I want to roll out of bed
32| as though it were my [first morning in a new state][]
33| I want nothing more than absolution of sins
34| [a negation but there is no way to subtract here][]
35| I cannot remove this growth that appeared
36| seemingly overnight I cannot [cut you away from myself][]
37| I cannot forget what has already and will always have been
38| I cannot get out of a [new bed][] ever
39| New York will always be as it was when I saw it first
40| with you my breathing will always be labored outside
41| of the cafe I will always see you when [I look in a mirror][]
42| of someone's face the reflection of missed thoughts missed
43| [words will cease to give meaning][] the center will come out
44| of me I will make a new center yes I will drag what is
45| your center around with me and [repeat and repeat][] again
46| I cannot want cannot want want not
47
48[new bed]: in-bed.html
49[saw myself]: deathstrumpet.html
50[my car window]: boy_bus.html
51[want to be fresh]: plant.html
52[first morning in a new state]: collage-instrument.html
53[a negation but there is no way to subtract here]: no-nothing.html
54[cut you away from myself]: elegyforanalternateself.html
55[I look in a mirror]: lovesong.html
56[words will cease to give meaning]: words-meaning.html
57[repeat and repeat]: question.html
diff --git a/text/i-wanted-to-tell-you-something.txt b/text/i-wanted-to-tell-you-something.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..c9e4964 --- /dev/null +++ b/text/i-wanted-to-tell-you-something.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,66 @@
1---
2title: I wanted to tell you something
3genre: verse
4
5id: i-wanted-to-tell-you-something
6toc: "I wanted to tell you something"
7
8project:
9 title: Autocento of the breakfast table
10 class: autocento
11...
12
13| I wanted to tell you something in order [to][]
14| explain the way I feel about the [Universe][],
15| its workings, etc. But I couldn't [yesterday][]
16| ---I'm sorry---I wanted only to [ball][]
17| myself up and cry all day. It was the [sixteenth][]
18| day in a row this happened to me, and to [be][]
19
20| more than two weeks waiting to cry is,
21| especially when, the whole time, I wasn't able to,
22| absolutely horrible. It was no sweet sixteen,
23| I'll tell you that much. Unless at yours, the Universe
24| kept telling you to quit having such a ball
25| and that you should have died, like, yesterday.
26
27| At first, it feels like you're winning---that yesterday
28| you really were meant to die, but since you still _are_,
29| you beat the system somehow. But the Universe bawls,
30| "No, I meant you should've crawled into
31| a hole and fucking _died_!" And then the Universe
32| punches you right in the gut, something like sixteen
33
34| times, and all you can think is, "Some sixteenth
35| birthday! Maybe I will go die in a hole." Yesterday,
36| at times like this, is a luxury the cruel Universe
37| refuses to give you. This is when it's a pain just to _be_,
38| when that Marvell line about "[rolling our stuff into one ball][Marvell]"
39| just seems glib, when you don't want one body, let alone two.
40
41| Something else that may come as a surprise to
42| you: over the past more-than-a-fortnight, these sixteen
43| days, I've had nothing to eat but crackers and a cheese ball.
44| (That's not entirely true---yesterday
45| I had some candy, peppermints and Jujubes.)
46| Maybe this is why I'm so mad at the Universe---
47
48| because all it has ever wanted, this Universe
49| that gave me life, fed me from its breast til I was two,
50| and even before that, made a place in which I could be---
51| all it's wanted was for me to take the sixteen
52| steps to sobriety, fold the Eight-Fold Path over yesterday
53| and step around it lightly, as I would an exercise ball,
54
55| but the problem is, dear Universe, there's no way I could be
56| something as hard as all that, to wake up yesterday
57| morning, stretch over my sixteen selves, bound out like a ball.
58
59[to]: poetry-time.html
60[Universe]: initial-conditions.html
61[yesterday]: exasperated.html
62[ball]: ouroboros_memory.html
63[sixteenth]: sixteenth-chapel.html
64[be]: love-as-god.html
65
66[Marvell]: http://www.luminarium.org/sevenlit/marvell/coy.htm
diff --git a/text/in-bed.txt b/text/in-bed.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..b7be002 --- /dev/null +++ b/text/in-bed.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,151 @@
1---
2title: In bed
3genre: verse
4
5id: in-bed
6toc: "In bed"
7
8project:
9 title: Autocento of the breakfast table
10 class: autocento
11...
12
13## I
14
15| I hear [the rats][] run
16| in the walls like water
17| through a tree. My blood
18
19| thickens. As I dream
20| the masturbation dream
21| the shelf above my bed
22
23| falls covering me in
24| dirt and decaying beetles.
25| [I see my reflection is headless][].
26
27## II
28
29| When the waves stop
30| [and the moon grins down][]
31| to overtake me: the car
32
33| ran up the street that night
34| when you were nearly
35| molested in your neighbor's house:
36
37| is this why we don't have
38| neighbors? For this the trees
39| [rot only for us][]?
40
41## III
42
43| I woke screaming and you
44| came to sit next to me. I felt
45| my eyes were open too wide
46
47| that I could not shut them
48| from the horror movie sitting
49| on your lap in the easy chair
50
51| in the dream the other dream
52| in the living room under
53| the tree. Why do I feel guilty?
54
55
56## IV
57
58| I wake up in a pool of water
59| [closed over me like an eyelid][].
60| There is no longer comfort
61
62| in staring at the ceiling.
63| Its pitch blackness beckons
64| into a future of blankness.
65
66| My body lay still quaking.
67| My mind is chained fast
68| to the beating of my heart.
69
70## V
71
72| I sit up slowly creaking.
73| I find myself alone buried
74| [in an ocean][]. Far off
75
76| [there is an eagle][] flying
77| toward me. She lands on
78| my knee and lays an egg.
79
80| I think *not this again*
81| something I've never
82| thought in my life.
83
84## VI
85
86| I think *not this again*
87| something I've never
88| thought in my life. Not
89
90| after losing my car keys
91| in the easy chair. Not after
92| scratching myself on a branch.
93
94| Not after finding the thing
95| in your dresser drawer that
96| night. [I remember you suddenly.][]
97
98
99## VII
100
101| [You run through me
102| like rats][rats] down an alley.
103| You are in my [blood][].
104
105| You scared me once
106| remember? Jumped out
107| of the bathroom door.
108
109| I fell screaming onto
110| the linoleum. Did you
111| apologize? Did you need to?
112
113## VIII
114
115| The ocean that surrounds me
116| creaks like a rocking
117| cradle. Your face bright
118
119| as the moon at eclipse
120| and as [red][]. Low song
121| my tide stretching
122
123| to the horizon. Ripples
124| on the surface belie
125| something bigger beneath.
126
127## IX
128
129| In bed I am alone for
130| the only time. In bed
131| I am a grown man.
132
133| Below the blankets I
134| know you for who you are.
135| In bed I see your face
136
137| pressed against the window.
138| I look out and see you
139| and I am not afraid.
140
141[the rats]: last-bastion.html
142[I see my reflection is headless]: deathstrumpet.html
143[and the moon grins down]: moon-drowning.html
144[rot only for us]: options.html
145[closed over me like an eyelid]: theoceanoverflowswithcamels.html
146[in an ocean]: the-sea_the-beach.html
147[there is an eagle]: mountain.html
148[I remember you suddenly.]: ouroboros_memory.html
149[rats]: #I
150[blood]: plant.html
151[red]: window.html
diff --git a/text/initial-conditions.txt b/text/initial-conditions.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..5ee00b9 --- /dev/null +++ b/text/initial-conditions.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,80 @@
1---
2title: Initial conditions
3genre: verse
4
5id: initial-conditions
6toc: "Initial conditions"
7
8project:
9 title: Stark Raving
10 class: stark
11 order: 11
12 next:
13 - title: Love as God
14 link: love-as-god
15 - title: Ouroboros of memory
16 link: ouroboros_memory
17 prev:
18 - title: I think it's you (but it's not)
19 link: i-think-its-you
20 - title: Last Bastion
21 link: last-bastion
22...
23
24| There is a theory which states the Universe
25| if it began with the same initial conditions
26| ( [same gravity][] same strong weak nuclear force same
27| size and shape ) would unfold in exactly
28| the way it has : with the same planets [orbiting suns][]
29| same people making same mistakes : like this morning
30
31| ( It's actually past two but I will call it [morning][] )
32| while turning on the shower : I as the Universe
33| intended ( although I was expecting the heat of suns )
34| [had the ice of inner space][] : those pre existing conditions
35| before the Big Bang : the shower was almost exactly
36| freezing for a split second : every day it's the same :
37
38| [I turn on the tap][] hop in pull the knob have the same
39| moment of utter panic then pain then a relaxing morning
40| shower where I spend between five to ten ( I'm not sure exactly )
41| minutes : I have good thoughts : [this poem about the Universe][]
42| for example : I had the idea while I was conditioning
43| my hair : it came to me like accidentally looking at the sun :
44
45| the pain and the wonder that something as large as suns
46| could appear so small and yet so hot all at the same
47| time : so hot in the summer we require air conditioning
48| ( although now in the winter it's cold in the morning )
49| and I can't wait to hop in the shower that tiny universe
50| of water and steam and soap and [body][] : that and only that exactly
51
52| or rather exclusively ( it's hard to get the words exactly
53| right : the meanings bleed into each other like the sun's
54| shadows on pavement ) ready for me to [dream][] another universe
55| into it on top of it again and again until they all look the same :
56| I can't tell whether it's my morning or the shower's morning
57| or where I put the conditioner or what the initial conditions
58
59| could have been that decided I would misplace my conditioner
60| today : and why and how much planning was involved exactly
61| that would cause so far down the production line of this morning
62| \: me to [wake up so long after the rising][] of the sun
63| \: me to stay inside all day even after showering to look at the same
64| [computer screen][] : to give up the actual universe to the universe
65
66| in there with its conditions : where [the screen serves][] as sickly sun :
67| where there is apparently exactly what I need : no more : the same
68| three sites I visited this morning comprising my entire Universe
69
70[same gravity]: the-sea_the-beach.html
71[orbiting suns]: big-dipper.html
72[morning]: plant.html
73[had the ice of inner space]: one-hundred-lines.html
74[I turn on the tap]: hard-game.html
75[this poem about the Universe]: howtoread.html
76[body]: ouroboros_memory.html
77[dream]: dream.html
78[wake up so long after the rising]: stump.html
79[computer screen]: telemarketer.html
80[the screen serves]: reports.html
diff --git a/text/january.txt b/text/january.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..385d944 --- /dev/null +++ b/text/january.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,63 @@
1---
2title: January
3genre: verse
4
5id: january
6toc: "January"
7
8project:
9 title: Autocento of the breakfast table
10 class: autocento
11...
12
13| January.
14| It's cold, and I don't like it.
15| I prefer warm weather,
16| although I like sweaters. They are the one
17| warm spot in an otherwise [shitty][] season.
18| But fall is better sweater weather. So be patient,
19
20| _patient_,
21| while waiting for the end of January.
22| A change of season
23| brings a change of mood along with it,
24| although I never thought I'd be one
25| to believe that [SAD][] junk about effects of weather---
26
27| weather!---
28| on a person. Who becomes a patient
29| just because of one
30| [month of snow][]? I did say of January:
31| "It's cold, and I don't like it,"
32| but I hardly think it's fair, knocking whole seasons,
33
34| seasoning
35| your conversation with demands for better weather.
36| (While I find it
37| nearly impossible, it's my mission to be patient
38| while waiting for the end of January.)
39| Oh, but how the long nights do so [tax][] one!
40
41| One
42| [warm spot][] in an otherwise shitty season---
43| all I ask, January,
44| is one warm day. Do you care whether
45| I'm a person who becomes a patient
46| in some psych ward? This just about does it.
47
48| I.T.,
49| although I never thought I'd call one,
50| is fair and patient
51| when I call. They talk with me, season
52| my conversation of demands for better weather
53| with an argument for the white beauty of January.
54
55| They know it's hard; they say each season
56| has its detractors. _One day_, they say, _the weather
57| will be controlled---until then, patience in January_.
58
59[shitty]: tapestry.html
60[SAD]: seasonal-affective-disorder.html
61[month of snow]: snow.html
62[tax]: http://www.irs.gov/
63[warm spot]: real-writer.html
diff --git a/text/joke.txt b/text/joke.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..991d9b6 --- /dev/null +++ b/text/joke.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,60 @@
1---
2title: Joke
3genre: prose
4
5id: joke
6toc: "Joke"
7
8project:
9 title: "Buildings out of air: Paul in the Woods"
10 class: paul
11 order: 33
12 next:
13 - title: Stump
14 link: stump
15 - title: Leaf
16 link: leaf
17 prev:
18 - title: Punch
19 link: punch
20 - title: Hymnal
21 link: hymnal
22...
23
24He wrote _**JOKES**_ on the top of a page in his notebook.
25He had run out of notecards and hadn't been able to convince his mother to go to the Office Supply Store for him.
26He left a space underneath it and wrote.
27
28_"[Tell us a joke][]" the listeners say to the clown.
29They 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.
30"Tell us a joke that is true" they say._
31
32_The clown does not move from the stump.
33He doesn't move at all.
34The listeners watch, gap-mouthed, as a butterfly lands on his hat.
35A breeze ruffles his coat and the butterfly flies away.
36Hours pass.
37The listeners grow impatient.
38Some begin yelling insults at the clown.
39Eventually, they begin to walk away into the woods._
40
41_The moon [rises][] on the clearing.
42The only people left are the clown and a listener, the [last listener][].
43She has been waiting for the joke a long time.
44The clown opens his mouth and she leans in closer to hear.
45He closes it as a tear falls onto his coat, then another.
46He opens his mouth again in a sob.
47The listener walks over to him and puts a hand on his shoulder._
48
49_"I'm sorry" says the clown.
50"Sorry for what" she asks.
51"I don't know.
52I don't know any jokes."
53He disappears.
54The last listener sits on the log and looks at the sky.
55There are no [stars][]._
56
57[Tell us a joke]: window.html
58[rises]: the-sea_the-beach.html
59[last listener]: listen.html
60[stars]: big-dipper.html
diff --git a/text/lappel-du-vide.txt b/text/lappel-du-vide.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..67faae8 --- /dev/null +++ b/text/lappel-du-vide.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,67 @@
1---
2title: L'appel du vide
3genre: prose
4
5id: lappel-du-vide
6toc: "L'appel du vide"
7
8epigraph:
9 content: Don't you know you can't go home again?
10 attrib: Ella Winter
11 link: 'http://books.google.com/books?id=yybDMC0TRIwC&pg=PR12&lpg=PR12#v=onepage&q&f=false'
12
13project:
14 title: Stark Raving
15 class: stark
16 order: 14
17 next:
18 - title: Boy on the bus
19 link: boy_bus
20 - title: I think it's you (but it's not)
21 link: i-think-its-you
22 prev:
23 - title: Ouroboros of memory
24 link: ouroboros_memory
25 - title: Love as God
26 link: love-as-god
27...
28
29## I. Walter
30
31Walter [rides the bus][] into work on Wednesday morning when he realizes, with the force and surprise of a rogue current, that he is in the home-for-death phase of life.
32That era in which the next time he goes under, to the fields of seaweed waving gently, the anemones slowly filtering seawater, it will most likely be for a death in the family.
33
34He is able to idly speculate on who it might be, and this surprises him.
35Not much does surprise him after these few months above the waves, because so many things did surprise him those first few months: the plants standing still, the quickness of the fluid these creatures walk in, the lack of pressure that still makes him feel so alone and cold---as if all of his life he had been in an embrace by the ocean, and now for some reason it's pulled away from him, and it doesn't love him anymore.
36
37His speculations lead him to picture his grandmother, small and frail and forgetful.
38He always assumed she'd be next, since last year when the other one died and Gina said,
39"I wonder who'll be next."
40She said what they'd both been thinking.
41
42Soon after that he'd come up to land, to the mountains of all places, the most land-like land, and started a job with an [accounting firm][].
43While it was challenging to adjust to the change in pressure and movement, to people staring at him on the bus, in the supermarket, at the job, him with his scales and fins and breathing machine, he'd always made a point to make the best out of a situation.
44The problem was that the best wasn't good enough.
45
46[accounting firm]: telemarketer.html
47
48## II. L'appel du vide {.verse}
49
50And I'll get in my car and drive \
51and I'll want to keep driving \
52straight into the next state \
53or even the next country \
54or even even the ocean
55
56and go down deeper \
57keep exploring forever \
58find out what's down there \
59go to the Marianas trench \
60miss the air world and \
61come back up \
62itself a kind of unknown \
63the homecoming after
64
65What happened to the home I was?
66
67[rides the bus]: sense-of-it.html
diff --git a/text/largest-asteroid.txt b/text/largest-asteroid.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..aaf4ed9 --- /dev/null +++ b/text/largest-asteroid.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,41 @@
1---
2title: The largest asteroid in the asteroid belt
3genre: verse
4
5id: largest-asteroid
6toc: "The largest asteroid in the asteroid belt"
7
8project:
9 title: Autocento of the breakfast table
10 class: autocento
11...
12
13| What secrets does it hold?
14| Can it tell us who kissed Sara
15| that night on the veranda, or
16| who Joey is really in love with?
17| We all know it isn't Sara, we
18| mean look at them Christmas eve
19| and he's staring whistfully
20| at the stars, or the largest
21| asteroid in the asteroid belt.
22| She's staring at him, sure, but
23| she sees the twinkle in his eye
24| is not aimed in her direction.
25| The reflection of that reflection
26| will beam into space, lightyears
27| of space, dimming slowly each
28| second, until it dies out like
29| all of Sara's hopes for something
30| resembling love in this life, real
31| love that takes hold of her by
32| the throat and refuses to let go,
33| love that makes men travel for her
34| and only for her, love that launches
35| space ships to that asteroid, the
36| largest in the asteroid belt, that
37| jewel of dead rock and ice, harboring
38| something that could've been life
39| [and nothing that actually is][].
40
41[and nothing that actually is]: http://www.writing.upenn.edu/~afilreis/88/stevens-snowman.html
diff --git a/text/last-bastion.txt b/text/last-bastion.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..887f089 --- /dev/null +++ b/text/last-bastion.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,59 @@
1---
2title: Last bastion
3genre: verse
4
5id: last-bastion
6toc: "Last bastion"
7
8project:
9 title: Stark Raving
10 class: stark
11 order: 10
12 next:
13 - title: AMBER alert
14 link: amber-alert
15 - title: Initial conditions
16 link: initial-conditions
17 prev:
18 - title: The Sixteenth Chapel
19 link: sixteenth-chapel.txt
20 - title: Boy on the bus
21 link: boy_bus
22...
23
24| Dimly remembered celebrity chefs shuffle
25| down the cold and darkened highways of the heart.
26| They are the last personality left. They are [the meek
27| who inherited the heart][meek], what was left of it.\
28
29| Without food to cook in new or exciting ways
30| nor audience to gasp and cackle, the chefs
31| of the heart quietly waste away while staring
32| doe-eyed into now-empty Safeway windows
33| checking under the dusty produce shelves
34| for something they pray the [rats][] haven't found yet.
35
36| Years ago, the economy of the heart boomed
37| and there was food everywhere. Produce
38| piled high in pyramids of devotion, meat in
39| gilded glass cases opulent under fluorescence,
40| dairy which ran like the [mythical river][] toward
41| cereals hot and cold. Under it all, thrumming
42| like great stone wheels on sand under a hot sun
43| near a river where reeds sang in the wind
44| the heart produced and gave reward for hard labor.
45
46| No one knows when it all ended. No one can say
47| if it was the heart that dried up or the heart's supply.
48| Either way, food of the heart became scarcer and scarcer.
49| People began dying, not of starvation
50| but of a certain facial expression that could only
51| be described as desperation. Now
52| all that are left are the celebrity chefs, last bastion
53| of a once mighty empire of the [heart
54| are reduced to husks][heart] blown dry by wind.
55
56[meek]: http://biblehub.com/matthew/5-5.htm
57[rats]: in-bed.html
58[mythical river]: music-433.html
59[heart]: sense-of-it.html
diff --git a/text/last-passenger.txt b/text/last-passenger.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..a7157f3 --- /dev/null +++ b/text/last-passenger.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,42 @@
1---
2title: Last passenger
3genre: verse
4
5id: last-passenger
6toc: "Last passenger"
7
8project:
9 title: Autocento of the breakfast table
10 class: autocento
11
12TODO: revise based on reading notes
13...
14
15| Memory works strangely, [spooling its thread][]
16| over the [nails of events][] barely related,
17| creating finally some picture, if we're
18| lucky, of a life---but more likely, it knots
19| itself, catches on a nail or in our throats
20| that gasp, as it binds our necks, for air.
21
22| An example: today marks one hundred years
23| since your namesake, the last living passenger
24| pigeon, died in Cincinnati. It also marks
25| a year since we last spoke. Although around
26| the world, zoos mourn her loss, I'm done
27| with you. I mourn no more your voice, the first
28| sound I heard outside my body that reached
29| [into my throat and set me ringing][]. But that string---
30
31| memory that feels sometimes more like a tide
32| has yoked together, bound your voice to that bird,
33| the frozen, stuffed, forgotten pigeon---my heart
34| is too easy, but it must do---to blink, to flex
35| its unused toes, slowly thaw to the wetness
36| of [beating wings][], fly to me again, and alight,
37| singing full-throated, on my broken shoulder.
38
39[spooling its thread]: roughgloves.html
40[nails of events]: when-im-sorry-i.html
41[into my throat and set me ringing]: weplayedthosegamestoo.html
42[beating wings]: cold-wind.html
diff --git a/text/leaf.txt b/text/leaf.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..9251278 --- /dev/null +++ b/text/leaf.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,42 @@
1---
2title: Leaf
3genre: prose
4
5id: leaf
6toc: "Leaf"
7
8project:
9 title: "Buildings out of air: Paul in the Woods"
10 class: paul
11 order: 3
12 next:
13 - title: Writing
14 link: writing
15 - title: Leg
16 link: leg
17 prev:
18 - title: Axe
19 link: axe
20 - title: Joke
21 link: joke
22...
23
24He shrugged the wood off his shoulder, letting it fall with a clog onto the earth floor of his Writing Shack.
25He exhaled looking out of the window.
26He hoped to see a bird fly by, maybe a blue jay or raven.
27[No bird did][].
28He inhaled.
29He exhaled again in a way that could [only be classified][] as a sigh.
30He sat down at his writing desk.
31He began shuffling through what he'd written, trying to find some sort of pattern.
32
33"*Each piece of paper---each leaf---*" at this he smiled---"*is like a tree in the forest.*"
34He was writing as he thought aloud.
35"*I, as the artist, as the **writer**, must select which to use, chop down those trees, bring them back to my shed and*---and---" he frowned as he realized the only end to this [metaphor was fire][].
36He ran his fingers through his hair in a self-soothing gesture.
37
38"I need to build some furniture" he thought.
39
40[No bird did]: last-passenger.html
41[only be classified]: last-bastion.html
42[metaphor was fire]: the-night-we-met.html
diff --git a/text/leg.txt b/text/leg.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..339e71b --- /dev/null +++ b/text/leg.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,48 @@
1---
2title: Leg
3genre: prose
4
5id: leg
6toc: "Leg"
7
8project:
9 title: "Buildings out of air: Paul in the Woods"
10 class: paul
11 order: 12
12 next:
13 - title: Planks
14 link: planks
15 - title: Man
16 link: man
17 prev:
18 - title: Toilet
19 link: toilet
20 - title: Leaf
21 link: leaf
22...
23
24His first chair was a stool.
25It was an [uneven wobbly stool][] that would not support even forty pounds.
26"So my first chair is a broken stool" he said after nearly breaking his tailbone on the dirt floor.
27"Maybe I should start again but this time only with legs."
28He began again but this time only with legs.
29He 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.
30He typed up a note on how to make chair legs.
31
32> MAKING CHAIR LEGS
33>
34> 1. get longish piece of wood
35> 2. cut it to length ([4 feet][] I'd
36> recommend)
37> 3. whittle off bark
38> 4. sand smooth the leg
39
40After 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:
41
42> 5. make ends flat
43
44He had no tools with which to flatten the ends of his leg.
45
46[uneven wobbly stool]: stump.html
47[one leg]: i-think-its-you.html
48[4 feet]: boar.html
diff --git a/text/likingthings.txt b/text/likingthings.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..a7578ad --- /dev/null +++ b/text/likingthings.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,41 @@
1---
2title: Liking Things
3genre: prose
4
5id: likingthings
6toc: "Liking things"
7
8project:
9 title: Book of Hezekiah
10 class: hezekiah
11 order: 7
12 prev:
13 - title: Problems
14 link: problems
15...
16
17The definition of happiness is *doing stuff that you really like*.
18That 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.
19That, incidentally, is the definition of like: *that feeling you get when you forget how miserable you are for just a little bit*.
20Thus 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.
21
22The funny thing is that something we people really like to do is hurt ourselves and those around us.
23We do this by thinking other people are more unhappy than we are.
24We convince themselves that we are truly happy, ecstatic even, while they merely plod around life half-heartedly, or, if they're lucky, incorrectly.
25We 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.
26We 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.
27We 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.
28So 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.
29
30In 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.
31If 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.
32Grin toothily (a little too toothily for a little too long).
33Their smile will start to fade if you're doing it right.
34Saunter 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.
35Get really close.
36Far too close for what most people would call comfort.
37And remind them of how awful life can be: "I really like your [shirt][]---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?"
38They will probably get angry, but that's what's supposed to happen.
39By making dick moves, you can overcome what may be the biggest evil on this earth: Happy-Hungering.
40
41[shirt]: theoceanoverflowswithcamels.html
diff --git a/text/listen.txt b/text/listen.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..6dbc53e --- /dev/null +++ b/text/listen.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,23 @@
1---
2title: Listen
3genre: verse
4
5id: listen
6toc: "Listen"
7
8project:
9 title: Autocento of the breakfast table
10 class: autocento
11...
12
13| If you swallow hard enough
14| you'll [feel the stone][]
15| the one we all have waiting
16
17| Once I [found the stone][] in
18| the sea it kissed me as
19| [the sea pawed at my back][]
20
21[the sea pawed at my back]: the-sea_the-beach.html
22[feel the stone]: serengeti.html
23[found the stone]: plant.html
diff --git a/text/love-as-god.txt b/text/love-as-god.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..0eecee7 --- /dev/null +++ b/text/love-as-god.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,77 @@
1---
2title: Love as God
3genre: verse
4
5id: love-as-god
6toc: "Love as god"
7
8project:
9 title: Stark Raving
10 class: stark
11 order: 13
12 next:
13 - title: Worse looking over
14 link: worse-looking-over
15 - title: L'appel du vide
16 link: lappel-du-vide
17 prev:
18 - title: Initial conditions
19 link: initial-conditions
20 - title: Ouroboros of memory
21 link: ouroboros_memory
22...
23
24| [God is love][], they say, but there [is][]
25| no god. Therefore, how can there be love?
26| And if there is no love, how can there be God?
27| There are things in life, I suppose,
28| that are simply unanswerable mysteries
29| of existence. Maybe this God and love are one.
30
31| Maybe there are many loves, instead of one.
32| The difference between [what isn't][] and what is
33| could merely be one of scope. The mystery
34| is how we speak only of one love---
35| to act as though we know we are supposed
36| to love only one other, or that one other and God.
37
38| But supposing that one other is God?
39| What then? Is the God-lover to walk alone,
40| supported by God only when He feels He is supposed
41| to support her? What kind of love is
42| this? I would argue in fact this isn't love,
43| this [one-set-of-footprints-in-the-sand][] mystery.
44
45| How to define two loves as one is the mystery.
46| It's obvious to many there is a thing called God,
47| and just as obvious that there is one called love.
48| Maybe we fool ourselves, we who can't be alone;
49| maybe we don't know what either God or love is.
50| Maybe, and perhaps; but I for one propose
51
52| that we as only humans are not supposed
53| to know or understand capital-L Life, that mystery.
54| Isn't it enough to know that God is
55| love, and love is God,
56| no matter which one
57| does or does not exist? What is life, if no love,
58
59| if no God? [Maybe][Maybe1] this saying, "God is love,"
60| is less a definition of God what what love is supposed
61| to be. Of these two terms, [maybe2][] the one
62| we should capitalize is Love, that great mystery
63| of chemistry and longing. Maybe "Love is god"
64| is a more fitting [epigraph][] for what life is
65
66| [made of:][made of] Love, that most delicate, most misty
67| of all emotions, is supposed to be their god,
68| as the one that binds us, that was, that will be, that is.
69
70[is]: i-wanted-to-tell-you-something.html
71[God is love]: https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=1+John+4%3A8&version=NIV
72[what isn't]: largest-asteroid.html
73[one-set-of-footprints-in-the-sand]: http://www.footprints-inthe-sand.com/index.php?page=Poem/Poem.php
74[Maybe1]: cereal.html
75[maybe2]: death-zone.html
76[epigraph]: epigraph.html
77[made of]: tapestry.html
diff --git a/text/lovesong.txt b/text/lovesong.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..15970bd --- /dev/null +++ b/text/lovesong.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,55 @@
1---
2title: Love Song
3genre: prose
4
5id: lovesong
6toc: "Love song"
7
8project:
9 title: Elegies for alternate selves
10 class: elegies
11 order: 15
12 prev:
13 - title: How it happened
14 link: howithappened
15 next:
16 - title: Rough gloves
17 link: roughgloves
18...
19
20Walking along in the dark is a good way to begin a song.
21Walking home in the dark after a long day chasing criminals is another.
22Running away from an imagined evil is no way to begin a story.
23
24I am telling you this because you wanted to know what it's like to tell [something so beautiful][] everyone will cry.
25I am telling you because I want you to know what it is to keep everything inside of you.
26I am telling you.
27
28Can you see?
29Can you see into me and reach in your hand and pull me inside out, like an [old shirt][]?
30Will 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?
31
32I want you to know that I want you to know.
33Do you want me?
34To know is to know.
35[I, you want we.][]
36We want.
37That is why we're here.
38To want is to be is to want and I want you.
39Do you also?
40Check yes or no.
41
42There is a way to end every story, [every song][].
43Every criminal must be caught.
44Even those who cry dry their tears.
45I cannot tell you all I want because I want to tell you everything.
46[There is no art because there is no mirror big enough.][]
47We wake up every day.
48Sometimes we sleep.
49
50[old shirt]: ronaldmcdonald.html
51[every song]: swansong.html
52[something so beautiful]: window.html
53[cola you spill]: ex-machina.html
54[I, you want we.]: poetry-time.html
55[There is no art because there is no mirror big enough.]: hands.html
diff --git a/text/man.txt b/text/man.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..eff160b --- /dev/null +++ b/text/man.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,54 @@
1---
2title: Man
3genre: prose
4
5id: man
6toc: "Man"
7
8ekphrastic:
9 image: tbedemugshot.jpg
10 title: This man refused to open his eyes
11 link: 'http://collection.hht.net.au/firsthhtpictures/fullRecordPicture.jsp?recnoListAttr=recnoList&recno=31230'
12
13project:
14 title: "Buildings out of air: Paul in the Woods"
15 class: paul
16 order: 22
17 next:
18 - title: Snow
19 link: snow
20 - title: Notes
21 link: notes
22 prev:
23 - title: Cereal
24 link: cereal
25 - title: Leg
26 link: leg
27...
28
29_THIS MAN REFUSED TO OPEN HIS EYES_
30
31Paul read this on an old mugshot in the library.
32He had taken the [bus][] into town to check out a few books on woodworking and got distracted by the True Crime section.
33He found this mugshot in a book titled _Crooks like Us_ that was published in Sydney.
34He liked how cities were named after women, or how women were named after cities, whichever was true.
35
36The 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.
37His head was tilted up and slightly to the right.
38He was wearing a short light tie with hash marks, and a pinstripe suit.
39Paul wished the [photograph][] was in color.
40He was standing in front of a plain brown wall covered in fabric.
41
42The man's eyes were not so tightly shut as Paul first thought.
43His eyebrows lifted away from the eyes, giving the man a bemused look.
44His mouth was slightly opened in what seemed to Paul like a grin.
45This was accentuated by the man's ears, which were large.
46Paul wasn't sure why the ears made the man look happier.
47He wondered what crime he had committed.
48
49Above the man's head was written [_T. BEDE.22.11.28 / 203 A_.][emilia]
50_THIS MAN REFUSED TO OPEN HIS EYES_ was written over his suit, directly below his ribcage.
51
52[emilia]: http://emiliaphillips.com/books/signaletics/
53[bus]: boy_bus.html
54[photograph]: about-the-author.html
diff --git a/text/manifesto_poetics.txt b/text/manifesto_poetics.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..5b5181e --- /dev/null +++ b/text/manifesto_poetics.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,47 @@
1---
2title: Manifesto of poetics
3genre: prose
4
5id: manifesto_poetics
6toc: "A manifesto of poetics"
7
8project:
9 title: Stark raving
10 class: stark
11...
12
13What is a poem?
14I think it was Yeats that called a poem "the best words in the best order," and that isn't an inaccurate description, but I don't think it captures all of what a poem is.
15[Let me start][] with communication.
16
17Communication is a transaction, an exchange between two people or entities, in which one (the Speaker/Writer/Communicator) gives the other (the Reader/Listener/Consumer) a \
18set of ideas / \
19a wireframe organization of a concept / \
20a set of reasons/instructions for action.
21In many kinds of communication, for example speeches, reports, or advertisements, the kind of ideas transacted are generally factual/logical/brain-based in nature.
22In art, these ideas are emotional/heart-based.
23In short, Art is to Emotion as an [Article][] is to Information.
24I think art should strive to transmit the emotion the author feels as efficiently as possible to the reader of that art.
25
26In order to do this, multiple notation systems have been devised.
27Music is the most notable example that comes to mind, as it has the most rigid style, but grammar, as used self-consciously in writing, would be another example.
28Poetry has only a very loose set of rules and assumptions that allow it a sort of notational language, and this is complicated by the fact that when writing poetry, the author writes for a different medium: poetry is meant to be performed aloud.
29This makes the notation system even more important, but again, it's hard to come up with a system that will be read mostly the same by most people.
30
31What I've been trying to do since I began writing is develop a personal notation system, or what I think most would refer to as my "voice" as a poet/writer (I personally don't like the word "poet," as it sounds pretentious to me; I'm aware I should get over this).
32
33However, there were some places that still needed improving from my draft manuscript: most notably, my prose in "Rip Tide of Memory" (now only "Rip Tide") and "AMBER Alert."
34I rewrote each to tighten their syntactic and idea rhythm, to make them move more lightly and gracefully.
35
36The most notable difference in my series is the reordering of poems within it.
37I think that in my first draft, I spent so much time on getting my individual poems tight and polished that I threw them together somewhat haphazardly, using a loose thematic correspondence with the fake "Table of contents."
38With the new order, I hope this has been fixed: the piece consists of six sections, each with three poems (A new one, "Everything stays the same," makes the totals correct).
39Each section has a thematic/emotional/personal element that ties the sections together.
40They are ordered by the order in which I wrote the sestinas at the beginning of each section, which works out to make the series move from identity to memory to a feeling of universal justice, and from there to a discussion of death and (something like) love that culminates in an exploration of the nature of time and cosmology.
41The piece is bookended by the fake "Table of contents" (provided at the end as an ironic commentary on the rest of the text) and an "About the author" section.
42I think it works better this way, and I think the "About the author" at the beginning serves as a fair prelude poem to the piece.
43
44I'm excited to be a writer like I haven't been before.
45
46[Let me start]: prelude.html
47[Article]: README.html#fn1
diff --git a/text/moon-drowning.txt b/text/moon-drowning.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..a5ce50c --- /dev/null +++ b/text/moon-drowning.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,44 @@
1---
2title: The Moon is drowning
3genre: verse
4
5id: moon-drowning
6toc: "The moon is drowning"
7
8project:
9 title: Stark Raving
10 class: stark
11 order: 3
12 next:
13 - title: Something about all music being performances of _4&prime;33&Prime;_ in places where other bands happen to be playing
14 link: music-433
15 - title: Worse looking over
16 link: worse-looking-over
17 prev:
18 - title: Something about the nature of poetry and time
19 link: poetry-time
20 - title: The Big Dipper
21 link: big-dipper
22...
23
24| [The moon is drowning][] the stars it pushes them
25| under into the darkness they cannot breathe
26| they are flailing the moon boasts to my shadow
27| how powerful is the moon how great its light
28
29| My shadow nods and calls the moon father though
30| it acknowledges also the existence of others
31| headlights are like little moons father my shadow says
32| they pass like waves in a dark ocean
33
34| Father moon becomes angry and threatens
35| I can maroon you shadow I can trap you in darkness
36| your strength comes from my own the little moons
37| are fleeting like foam on a darkened sea
38
39| My shadow fears the night as it fears death
40| but it remembers the moon's strength is from another
41| my shadow wants the headlights like an ocean
42| might want the moon as a seducer as a lover
43
44[The moon is drowning]: moongone.html
diff --git a/text/moongone.txt b/text/moongone.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..88302d5 --- /dev/null +++ b/text/moongone.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,35 @@
1---
2title: The moon is gone and in its place a mirror
3genre: prose
4
5id: moongone
6toc: "The moon is gone and in its place a mirror"
7
8ekphrastic:
9 image: moongone.jpg
10 title: The moon is gone
11 link: 'http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap120102.html'
12
13project:
14 title: Elegies for alternate selves
15 class: elegies
16 order: 18
17 prev:
18 - title: Ronald McDonald
19 link: ronaldmcdonald
20 next:
21 - title: The mountain
22 link: mountain
23...
24
25The moon is gone and in its place a mirror.
26Looking 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.
27He believes that he is [alone][], surrounded by desert and mountain, but behind him---he now sees it---someone is sneaking up on him.
28He spins around fast, but no one is there on [Earth][].
29He looks back up and they are yet closer in the night sky.
30Again he looks over his shoulder but there is nothing, not even a desert mouse.
31As he looks up again he realizes it's a cloud above him, which due to optics has looked like someone else.
32The cloud blocks out the moon which is now a mirror, and the viewer is completely alone.
33
34[alone]: apollo11.html
35[Earth]: serengeti.html
diff --git a/text/mountain.txt b/text/mountain.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..28a0882 --- /dev/null +++ b/text/mountain.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,43 @@
1---
2title: The mountain
3genre: verse
4
5id: mountain
6toc: "The mountain"
7
8project:
9 title: Elegies for alternate selves
10 class: elegies
11 order: 19
12 prev:
13 - title: The moon is gone and in its place a mirror
14 link: moonegone
15 next:
16 - title: Serengeti
17 link: serengeti
18...
19
20| The other side of this mountain
21| is not the mountain. This side
22| is honey-golden, sticky-sweet,
23| full of phone conversations with mother.
24| The other side is a bell,
25| ringing in the church-steeple
26| the day mother died.
27
28| The other side of the mountain
29| [is not a mountain. It is a dark][apollo]
30| valley crossed by a river.
31| There is a ferry at the bottom.
32
33| This mountain is not a mountain.
34| I walked to the top, but it turned
35| and was only a shelf halfway up.
36| I felt like an unused Bible
37| sitting on a [dusty pew][].
38
39| A hawk soars over the mountain.
40| She is looking for home.
41
42[apollo]: apollo11.html
43[dusty pew]: and.html
diff --git a/text/movingsideways.txt b/text/movingsideways.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..dc56c57 --- /dev/null +++ b/text/movingsideways.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,56 @@
1---
2title: Moving Sideways
3genre: prose
4
5id: movingsideways
6toc: "Moving sideways"
7
8project:
9 title: Book of Hezekiah
10 class: hezekiah
11 order: 5
12 next:
13 - title: Problems
14 link: problems
15 prev:
16 - title: Proverbs
17 link: proverbs
18...
19
20A dog moving sideways is sick; a man moving sideways is drunk.
21Thus if you want to be mindful of the movings of the universe sideways, become either drunk or sick.
22By doing this you remove yourself from the equation, and are able to observe, without being observed, the universe as it dances sideways drunkenly.
23
24Shit wait.
25The problem is not that by observing you are observed (although quantum mechanics may disagree[^1]), 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?
26The problem is *the actual act of observing that distorts the world into what we want it to be*.
27
28What I want to know is this: Why is this necessarily a problem?
29The dog is made, by mankind, to frolic and poop and sniff and growl and dig.
30Why cannot the man be made to observe the world incorrectly around him, and worry about it?
31Men have always wandered about the earth; does it not make sense that also they should wonder in their minds what makes it all work?[^2]
32In 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.
33
34Of course, reality doesn't judge us back.
35But that doesn't mean that it doesn't!
36If you think it's judging you, then *observe in your surroundings your own insecurities*.
37It is obvious that this way of doing things is far from vogue; usually projecting [inner pain][] onto the outer world is classified as pathology.
38However, this is because it is assumed that the outer world is *on its own terms*, which it obviously isn't, as far as we know.
39It follows that as [there is no backdrop][backdrop] against which to judge our quirks, the quirks must not exist.
40Thus all is right with the world.
41
42[inner pain]: telemarketer.html
43[backdrop]: philosophy.html
44
45[^1]: Quantum mechanics, as is well known, are the most hornery and
46 least agreeable of all mechanics. The cost to get one quantum
47 serviced is usually at least eight times more expensive than the
48 cost of an average automobile tune-up, for reasons not clearly
49 known. The quantum mechanics themselves claim it's the smallness of
50 their work that justifies the price, but it doesn't really look like
51 they're doing anything, and besides, my quantum always seems to
52 break again within six months---maybe I'm just driving it too hard.
53
54[^2]: I attempted to strike this terrible pun from the account, but
55 Hezekiah demanded I keep it if he were to continue the relation of
56 his prophecy-slash-advice column.
diff --git a/text/music-433.txt b/text/music-433.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..82eed21 --- /dev/null +++ b/text/music-433.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,57 @@
1---
2title: Something
3subtitle: 'about all music being performances of _4&prime;33&Prime;_ in places where other bands happen to be playing'
4genre: verse
5
6id: music-433
7toc: "Something about all music being performances of _4&prime;33&Prime;_ in places where other bands happen to be playing"
8
9dedication: '[Randall](https://xkcd.com/1199/)'
10
11project:
12 title: Stark Raving
13 class: stark
14 order: 18
15 next:
16 - title: Riptide of memory
17 link: riptide_memory
18 - title: About the author
19 link: about-the-author
20 prev:
21 - title: The Moon is drowning
22 link: moon-drowning
23 - title: The Sixteenth Chapel
24 link: sixteenth-chapel
25...
26
27| Silence lies underneath us all in the same way
28| [the Nile has a river underneath ten times as large][nile]
29| (although this is an urban legend, apparently).
30
31| So underneath [truth][] or legend, flowing by
32| the feel of their own [silence][], move the stars:
33| silence lies underneath us all in the same way.
34
35| [John Cage][433], I think, understood this: the way
36| that, in a silent room, one still hears the nerves
37| (although this is an urban legend, apparently),
38
39| or the heart, which I find more easily
40| believable: there simply is no way that, by and large,
41| silence lies underneath us all in the same way.
42
43| There must be different silences, because we
44| have different [songs][] to drown them out, different gods
45| (although these are urban legends, apparently).
46
47| But is not all [sound one sound][]? You and I
48| are two faces to the same head, the same body.
49| Silence lies underneath us all in the same way---
50| although this is an urban legend, apparently.
51
52[433]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=zY7UK-6aaNA#t=39
53[truth]: phone.html
54[silence]: nothing-is-ever-over.html
55[songs]: swansong.html
56[sound one sound]: swansong-alt.html
57[nile]: http://members.authorsguild.net/svobodni/resonance_80307.htm "Personals"
diff --git a/text/no-nothing.txt b/text/no-nothing.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..459e717 --- /dev/null +++ b/text/no-nothing.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,74 @@
1---
2title: No nothing
3genre: verse
4
5id: no-nothing
6toc: "No nothing"
7
8project:
9 title: Autocento of the breakfast table
10 class: autocento
11...
12
13| While [swimming in the river][]
14| I saw [underneath it a river][]
15| of stars. Only there was no
16| river: it was noon. You can
17| say the sun is a river; you
18| can argue the stars back it
19| like [shirts behind a closet][]
20| door; you can say [the earth][]
21| holds us up with its weight
22| or that it means well or it
23| means anything.
24| There is no
25| closet, [nor door][]; there are
26| no shirts hanging anywhere.
27| There is no false wall that
28| leads deep into the earth's
29| bowels, [growing warmer][] with
30| each step. Warmth as a con-
31| cept has ceased to make any
32| sense. In contraposition to
33| cold, it might, but cold as
34| well [stepped out][] last night
35| and hasn't returned.
36| Last I
37| heard, it went out swimming
38| and [might've drowned][]. Trees
39| were the pallbearers at the
40| funeral, the train was long
41| and wailful, there was much
42| [wailing and gnashing][] of all
43| teeth--though there were no
44| teeth, no train, no funeral
45| or prayer or trees at all--
46| nor a [river underneath][] any-
47| thing. There was nothing to
48| be underneath anymore.
49| Look
50| around, and tell me you see
51| something. Look around, and
52| tell me something that I do
53| not know. I know, more than
54| anything, that the world is
55| always ending. Behind that,
56| there is nothing, save that
57| there is no nothing either.
58|
59| Nothing somehow still turns
60| and flows past us, past all
61| time and beyond it, a river
62| returning, to its forgotten
63| origins deep within itself.
64
65[swimming in the river]: father.html
66[shirts behind a closet]: lovessong.html
67[the earth]: big-dipper.html
68[nor door]: amber-alert.html
69[growing warmer]: real-writer.html
70[stepped out]: i-think-its-you.html
71[might've drowned]: in-bed.html
72[wailing and gnashing]: http://biblehub.com/luke/13-28.htm
73[river underneath]: howtoread.html
74[underneath it a river]: music-433.html
diff --git a/text/notes.txt b/text/notes.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..a14e53b --- /dev/null +++ b/text/notes.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,51 @@
1---
2title: Notes
3genre: prose
4
5id: notes
6toc: "Notes"
7
8project:
9 title: "Buildings out of air: Paul in the Woods"
10 class: paul
11 order: 8
12 next:
13 - title: Shed
14 link: shed
15 - title: Options
16 link: options
17 prev:
18 - title: Writing
19 link: writing
20 - title: Man
21 link: man
22...
23
24Paul began typing on notecards.
25Somehow this felt right to his sensibilities.
26It was difficult to get the little cards into the typewriter.
27It was a pain to readjust the typewriter for regular paper when he wasn't writing.
28He started typing everything on those little notecards: grocery lists, letters to his grandmother, [even reports for work][] (which is what got him in trouble).
29
30But this was all later.
31For now he was writing his ideas, "notes" he now called them, something for him to combine later into something.
32He didn't like to think about it.
33On this particular [cold winter morning][], he wrote
34
35> Woke up from a [dream][] I was famous.
36> One of the more famous people in
37> fact. I had written something
38> everyone could relate to and at
39> the same time proved my parents
40> wrong. Because I made a lot of
41> money. Or not a lot, but enough
42> and more than they thought I
43> would. It was a good day.
44> Woke up this morning and I was
45> still cold. [Still Paul.][] Still not
46> good at furniture.
47
48[even reports for work]: telemarketer.html
49[cold winter morning]: seasonal-affective-disorder.html
50[dream]: in-bed.html
51[Still Paul.]: something-simple.html
diff --git a/text/nothing-is-ever-over.txt b/text/nothing-is-ever-over.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..f2f1a25 --- /dev/null +++ b/text/nothing-is-ever-over.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,32 @@
1---
2title: Nothing is ever over
3genre: verse
4
5id: nothing-is-ever-over
6toc: "Nothing is ever over"
7
8project:
9 title: Autocento of the breakfast table
10 class: autocento
11...
12
13| [Nothing is ever over][]; nothing
14| is ever even begun. The foundation
15| hasn't been laid; how can we hope
16| to put in the plumbing? The bed
17| is unmade, not even made; the wood
18| [hasn't been cleft from the tree][];
19| the seed hasn't been cast
20| out of water and growth and sun,
21| which itself hasn't started shining.
22| The cock has never stopped crowing
23| because he never started. Peter
24| [betrays us again][] and again with
25| silence. Christ wakes up at night,
26| [choking from a bad dream][], wrists
27| aching from a dreamt, torturous pain.
28
29[choking from a bad dream]: in-bed.html
30[Nothing is ever over]: no-nothing.html
31[hasn't been cleft from the tree]: axe.html
32[betrays us again]: spittle.html
diff --git a/text/on-genre-dimension.txt b/text/on-genre-dimension.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..65d305d --- /dev/null +++ b/text/on-genre-dimension.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,93 @@
1---
2title: On genre and the dimensionality of poetry
3genre: prose
4
5id: on-genre-dimension
6toc: "On genre and the dimensionality of poetry"
7
8project:
9 title: Autocento of the breakfast table
10 class: autocento
11...
12
13How does one describe a poem?
14
15A genre is a set of creative outputs that fit a given set of criteria.
16Genres are useful as a sort of shorthand when describing a thing of art: instead of noting, for example, all of the objects depicted in a still-life that aren't people or land-features, we call it a still-life and get on to describing how the objects interrelate to each other on the canvas.
17If you ask me what kind of painting I'm working on, and I say, "a still-life," you have an expectation of certain elements the painting will contain.
18If you happen to be an agent and try to sell the painting later, you'll say to your prospective buyers, "It's a still-life," and whether the buyer is over the phone or standing in the gallery, they'll know whether they'll like it or not based on whether they like still-lifes.
19In the same way, they can call you up and ask if you have any still-lifes for sale right now, and get a simple yes-or-no answer for it.
20This is the first kind of genre, and it applies well within separate types of fundamentally-different media, such as painting, sculpture, film, or the written word.
21
22A poem, obviously, is in this last category, and for some reason its designation is hairier than others'.
23People refer to all sorts of art, or even dispassionate events, as poetry; dancing is called "poetry in motion," for example.
24I think the confusion is caused in part by the nature of writing as a medium, namely in that it captures thoughts more clearly and communicably than other art forms.
25While a picture can be "worth a thousand words," as the old cliché goes, when those words are actually written out they can contain shades of meaning impossible to capture in the picture itself, at least as quickly as they can be absorbed in writing.
26It seems as though writing is akin to the fundamental nature of thought, or at least of spoken language, which our thought is steeped in.
27
28So we know what _writing_ is.
29What is a _poem_?
30Especially in a world with such forms as prose poetry, flash fiction, short-shorts, lyrical essays, [lyrical _ballads_][], et cetera, what makes a poem a poem?
31
32I read an essay once that lamented the unidimensionality of writing.
33It posited that prose is really just a long, wrapped line of text that's bound by time---when you read a novel, for example, you really must start at the beginning and read through to the end, in order.
34Some newer forms of fiction are changing this, such as the Choose-Your-Own-Adventure genre in the 1970s and 80s, or hyperfiction found online, which raises the question for me if these newer forms could be considered on some level to be poetry.
35
36This is because poetry has more than one dimension, due to its linear nature---those line breaks are intentional, and the poem can't just fit into any-sized book or web page.
37If prose is a liquid, filling any container it's placed in with a constant volume, poetry is more like a crystallized form of prose, or to put it another way, poetry has between [one and two dimensions][].
38I wouldn't say that poetry has fully two dimensions, except for some of the more conceptually visual stuff that I'd call a word-picture anyway, because from line to line that unidimensionality of prose remains.
39Poetry has a higher dimensionality than prose, though, because it's crystallized there on the page; this fractal-dimensionality of poetry has interesting side effects on the genre itself.
40
41For one thing, poetry isn't as bound by time as prose is.
42It can, as Marianne Boruch writes, resist "narrative sequence," or "the forward press of _time_ itself," due to its repetitions and diversions, which are in turn made possible or more apparent by its line breaks.
43It's able to meditate on a subject, or expand on it lyrically, exploring the emotions connected with the images in the poem, or the connections between images.
44Through repitition of sounds, the poem builds meaning through resonance and rhyming, something that's harder to do in prose.
45Take, for example, the first lines of "[The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock][]:"
46
47> Let us go then, you and I, \
48> When the evening is spread out against the sky \
49> Like a patient etherized upon a table; \
50> Let us go, through certain half-deserted streets, \
51> The muttering retreats \
52> Of restless nights in one-night cheap hotels \
53> And sawdust restaurants with oyster-shells: \
54> Streets that follow like a tedious argument \
55> Of insidious intent \
56> To lead you to an overwhelming question.... \
57> Oh, do not ask, "What is it?" \
58> Let us go and make our visit.
59
60And here it is again, without line breaks:
61
62> Let us go then, you and I,
63> when the evening is spread out against the sky
64> like a patient etherized upon a table;
65> let us go, through certain half-deserted streets,
66> the muttering retreats
67> of restless nights in one-night cheap hotels
68> and sawdust restaurants with oyster-shells:
69> streets that follow like a tedious argument
70> of insidious intent
71> to lead you to an overwhelming question....
72> Oh, do not ask, "What is it?"
73> Let us go and make our visit.
74
75The end-rhymes that do so much for the sound of the poem are gone, and so part of the meaning of the poem---its obsessive self-consciousness, its paranoia---are gone as well.
76Additionally, line breaks act as punctuation in the entirety of this [fragment][]; without them, the meaning becomes obscured in the long first sentence of the poem.
77
78Perhaps due to this dwelling on scene, or on all aspects of a single scene at one time, poetry tends to be heavy on images, or lyrical.
79I think this is what's generally meant when someone describes a dance as "poetic," or a story or anything else: I think they really mean "lyrical," or maybe "beautiful." The images form sort of a narrative as the reader moves through them, as Cesare Pavese says, that's nevertheless [different than a traditional narrative][]: this "image narrative" jumps from image to image not by a logical progression but by the resonances between the images that run underneath them, on almost a subliminal plane.
80Almost without noticing, the reader of a poem is taken on an emotional journey that's not necessarily connected to the images of the poem, themselves.
81
82Poetry is a manipulation of emotion, or a communication of it.
83Prose has the space, the time to describe what's going on, even if the author stands by the old adage of "show, don't tell."
84_Showing_ in prose inherently involves more telling than poetry does, as poetry communicates a feeling itself.
85This definition may be broad enough to include certain dance performances or paintings, but that's okay.
86I'm of the opinion that the more useful genre distinctions are those which describe the thing technically: _verse_, for example, or _lyrical_.
87_Poetry_ is almost a value judgement, and that makes me a little uncomfortable.
88
89[lyrical _ballads_]: http://www.bartleby.com/39/36.html
90[one and two dimensions]: http://www.vanderbilt.edu/AnS/psychology/cogsci/chaos/workshop/Fractals.html
91[The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock]: http://www.bartleby.com/198/1.html
92[fragment]: statements-frag.html
93[different than a traditional narrative]: http://numerocinqmagazine.com/2011/03/07/translation-adaptation-and-transformation-the-poet-as-translator-an-essay-by-richard-jackson/
diff --git a/text/one-hundred-lines.txt b/text/one-hundred-lines.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..758a1e1 --- /dev/null +++ b/text/one-hundred-lines.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,128 @@
1---
2title: One hundred lines
3genre: verse
4
5id: one-hundred-lines
6toc: "100 lines"
7
8project:
9 title: Autocento of the breakfast table
10 class: autocento
11...
12
13| Whenever you call me friend
14| I fall down on my knees and cry
15| because I know it's the only thing
16| never to happen before in this
17| life is something you can't see
18| it's a pillow under a [hook shot][]
19| [I want to tell you something anything][tell-you]
20| but you are there and I am here
21| we are [trapped inside ourselves][trapped]
22| and the distance is too far
23| you are something that I would tell
24| [would be nothing][] before too long
25| you are not the finisher of dreams
26| you are the beginning of [nightmares][]
27| or waking but I'm not sure which
28| this [letter is for you][] in the future
29| it will lead you on the path
30| of goodness or of rightness or of
31| wrong people and right meanings
32| or the meaning will be hidden
33| or wrestling the demon I will have become
34| restless under the starlight
35| it's too bright here to think
36| the negatives would be pitch black
37| darkness of a silver mine
38| there are [no trees][] here
39| where have you been where are you now
40| I am no longer here or there
41| you are anywhere or are you
42| up in the clouds is a ghost
43| he is white and blue like a cloud
44| he paints with his teeth
45| he paints the rainbow before midnight
46| that you can see from your window
47| staring out under the sunlight
48| through the gauze curtains
49| [over the high mountain][mountain] far away
50| that is covered over with snow
51| past the rivers and forests
52| that lie awake under Orion
53| hunting the bull that runs forever
54| just out of his reach
55| pointing the way for the two of us
56| to join together in song or dance
57| or that other thing and sing
58| the Grinch down off Mount Crumpet
59| [his heart breaking his chest][heart]
60| thumping with the beat
61| his [little dog too][] running running
62| with the bull full of laughter and blood
63| he can't see it anymore because it's become him
64| we are trapped he says we are
65| trapped in ourselves it turns out
66| that all along it wasn't you or me
67| but he and her or her and him or
68| he and he or she and she or they
69| even they tell us that nothing has happened
70| even they know that it's a big joke
71| one more thing to know before the death
72| we are crying like crocodiles
73| before their loved ones' coffins
74| we are bellowing with grief like buffalo
75| on a berth of wild oxen
76| we are wailing our clothes are in rags
77| [we want][want1] [we want][want2] [we want][want3]
78| but never can we get
79| what is it
80| we don't know what it is
81| but it's something it's anything
82| it's too many people or not enough
83| it's too few trees we need more
84| beavers to build riverdams we need
85| grapes too or [plums][] from the ice box
86| or an ice box even would be nice
87| all I have is this cube isn't that right
88| or is a sphere a cube a donut a coffee
89| cup your hands in mine yes that's right
90| now bring the water to your face
91| clear and cool and
92| full of something
93| what is it wanting
94| or yearning
95| I can see in your eyes they're clear now
96| they are as clear as a running stream
97| or the sky that's clear right
98| or the water that is in the Bahamas
99| because I hear that's clear
100| you're as clear as the sound of a bell
101| you're as clear as the [braying of horses][]
102| you're as clear as the glass in God's eye
103| and I
104| I'm as dull as an ox plowing
105| [through fields in his yoke][yoke]
106| I'm as dull as clouded amber
107| I'm dull as you find me
108| tonight after dinner
109| I'm reading the crossword
110| you're sitting beside me
111| you're watching TV.
112
113[hook shot]: theoceanoverflowswithcamels.html
114[tell-you]: lovesong.html
115[trapped]: howtoread.html
116[would be nothing]: no-nothing.html
117[nightmares]: in-bed.html
118[letter is for you]: poetry-time.html
119[no trees]: plant.html
120[mountain]: mountain.html
121[heart]: moon-drowning.html
122[little dog too]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jUpxmlZ2hyM
123[want1]: i-wanted-to-tell-you-something.html
124[want2]: fire.html
125[want3]: lovesong.html
126[plums]: http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/245576
127[braying of horses]: table_contents.html
128[yoke]: last-passenger.html
diff --git a/text/onformalpoetry.txt b/text/onformalpoetry.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..f8acacd --- /dev/null +++ b/text/onformalpoetry.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,39 @@
1---
2title: On formal poetry
3genre: verse
4
5id: onformalpoetry
6toc: "On formal poetry"
7
8project:
9 title: Elegies for alternate selves
10 class: elegies
11 order: 12
12 prev:
13 - title: Feeding the raven
14 link: feedingtheraven
15 next:
16 - title: I am
17 link: i-am
18...
19
20| I think that I could write formal poems
21| exclusively, or at least inclusive
22| with all the other stuff I write
23| I guess. Of course, I've already written
24| a few, this one included, though "formal"
25| is maybe a stretch. Is blank verse a form?
26| What is form anyway? I picture old
27| women counting [stitches on their knitting][knitting],
28| keeping iambs next to iambs in lines
29| as straight and sure as arrows. But my sock
30| is lumpy, poorly made: it's beginning
31| to unravel. Stresses don't line up. Syl-
32| lables forced to fit like [McNugget][] molds.
33| That cliché on the arrow? I'm aware.
34| My prepositions too---God, where's it stop?
35| The answer: never. I will never stop
36| writing poems, or hating what I write.
37
38[knitting]: roughgloves.html
39[McNugget]: ronaldmcdonald.html
diff --git a/text/options.txt b/text/options.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..2c051fe --- /dev/null +++ b/text/options.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,49 @@
1---
2title: Options
3genre: prose
4
5id: options
6toc: "Options"
7
8project:
9 title: "Buildings out of air: Paul in the Woods"
10 class: paul
11 order: 26
12 next:
13 - title: Stagnant
14 link: stagnant
15 - title: Paul
16 link: paul
17 prev:
18 - title: Swear
19 link: swear
20 - title: Notes
21 link: notes
22...
23
24What did he do when he was in the woods?
25Where did he go?
26Was there always one spot, one clearing deep within the heart of them, that he would visit?
27Did he talk to the trees or only to himself?
28When 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][]?
29Did he use any for firewood, or did the pieces rot behind his Shack, forgotten?
30When was the last time he built any furniture?
31Did 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?
32
33A tree fell in the forest: did it make a noise?
34Paul typed his thoughts on cards, or wrote them in a book: did anyone read it?
35If anyone did, was his life changed?
36For the better or the worse?
37Did 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?
38Did he put tools in there or leave it empty?
39[What did he do with the desk?][]
40Did 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?
41Are these all the options?
42
43Did Paul ever think about any of this?
44Walking in the woods one afternoon after becoming frustrated with his writing, did he sit on a stump and cry?
45Did he wonder whether he should have made other choices?
46Did he consider quitting smoking?
47
48[dismember them]: weplayedthosegamestoo.html
49[What did he do with the desk?]: finding-the-lion.html
diff --git a/text/ouroboros_memory.txt b/text/ouroboros_memory.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..e1529ca --- /dev/null +++ b/text/ouroboros_memory.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,78 @@
1---
2title: Ouroboros of Memory
3genre: prose
4
5id: ouroboros_memory
6toc: "Ouroboros of memory"
7
8epigraph:
9 content: |
10 He used his body to remember
11 his body, but in the end could only
12 remember the string.
13 attrib: Jonathan Safran Foer
14 link: 'http://www.bet-tal.com/index.aspx?id=2315'
15
16project:
17 title: Stark Raving
18 class: stark
19 order: 12
20 next:
21 - title: L'appel du vide
22 link: lappel-du-vide
23 - title: Love as God
24 link: love-as-god
25 prev:
26 - title: Table of contents
27 link: table_contents
28 - title: Initial Conditions
29 link: initial-conditions
30...
31
32[He said][] at the beginning, "It's like rolling yarn into a too-small ball.
33Sure, you can roll the memories around for a while, and maybe even use some of them.
34Eventually, though, you'll wind them all the way out and you'll be left with nothing but a small loop.
35You can tie this loop around your finger, and start wrapping your body, but this is an extension of the same problem.
36You'll turn into a mummy of memory.
37There'll be nothing left underneath but a dead body.
38
39"But what does it mean, _To remember the body with the body?_
40I imagine a creature made of memory, putting its feet in its mouth, turning into a ball.
41In this way, it could roll all around the landscape of its memory.
42I've tried explaining this to other people, but it doesn't make any sense to them.
43The task of eating one's feet is, to them, an unsolvable problem.
44They seem to have forgotten that, as babies, they were able to make themselves into loops.
45
46"So I increase the count to two: two snakes eating each other's tales, forming a loop.
47In this way they are able to put two heads on one body.
48This doubles the number of memories, which really only exacerbates the problem.
49It's like trying to roll two different materials up into a ball.
50The people I tell this to don't understand this either, they say using two animals makes sense to them.
51They say there must be different types of memory.
52
53"I disagree with this theory of memory.
54I think there is, at bottom, only one type of anything, with subtypes grouped together along the edge of a loop.
55Color becomes a good metaphor: look how many of them!
56yet they are all consumed by the same part of the body.
57Maybe two different materials are still made of material, and maybe they can be rolled into a ball.
58Maybe there actually never was a problem.
59
60"Or maybe, and this is more likely, I need to restate the problem.
61I think it all boils down to the fact that I have a truly lousy memory.
62I've tried different mnemonic devices, like imagining each thing I need to remember being visited by a bouncing ball.
63I've tried trying string into finger-loops.
64I've even tried writing the things I need to remember on my body.
65If you asked me, 'Do any of these work,' I would have to answer, 'None of them.'
66
67"Sometimes in the morning I realize dumbly I've forgotten my words, all of them.
68They generally come back by around ten o'clock, but the frequency with which this is occurring is becoming a problem.
69I feel that my brain is being separated from my body.
70Is there a place in the universe for a misplaced memory?
71Does it eat its own tail and roll around the universe as it loops?
72Does it shrink down and become lost as a tiny ball?
73
74No matter what happens, eventually _I_ will become _them_ as I lose the last of my memory.
75I won't be able to solve the problem of my being, and my being will become my problem, in an eternal loop.
76I will roll my body into a prenatal ball.
77
78[He said]: joke.html
diff --git a/text/paul.txt b/text/paul.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..54b45ef --- /dev/null +++ b/text/paul.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,54 @@
1---
2title: Paul
3genre: prose
4
5id: paul
6toc: "Paul"
7
8project:
9 title: "Buildings out of air: Paul in the Woods"
10 class: paul
11 order: 38
12 next:
13 - title: Fire
14 link: fire
15 - title: Phone
16 link: phone
17 prev:
18 - title: Father
19 link: father
20 - title: Options
21 link: options
22...
23
24> CONTENTS OF THE SHED
25>
26> - typewriter
27> - writing desk
28> - notecards (top drawer of desk)
29> - [pen][] (fountain)
30> - inkpot (empty)
31> - wood (a lot, more out back)
32> - bare lightbulb
33> - candle
34> - wooden shelf with tools:
35> - claw hammer
36> - screwdriver
37> - prybar
38> - 2x wrench (different kinds)
39> - tiller machine
40> - push lawnmower
41> - hatchet
42> - axe
43
44He typed the list in the typewriter and looked around some more.
45He wanted to make sure he didn't miss anything.
46Finally it hit him and he smiled.
47He typed one more line, stood up, and went out of the shed.
48
49> - Paul Bunyon
50
51He got some kerosene from under the house, poured it around the base of the shed, lit a cigarette.
52He smoked half of it and threw it down to start the fire.
53
54[pen]: howithappened.html
diff --git a/text/peaches.txt b/text/peaches.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..81c37a2 --- /dev/null +++ b/text/peaches.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,87 @@
1---
2title: Peaches
3genre: prose
4
5id: peaches
6toc: "Peaches"
7
8project:
9 title: Autocento of the breakfast table
10 class: autocento
11...
12
13"My anger is like a peach," he said.
14He was trying to show how metaphors could be anything.
15I thought it worked.
16I wrote it down in my red notebook.
17
18In my other class, there was a long discussion about the difference between metaphor and simile as they relate to [Prufrock][].
19I could only think about his peaches.
20I wonder if he dared.
21
22A few years ago my friend dressed up as J. Alfred Prufrock for Halloween.
23Her costume consisted of rolled khaki trousers and a peach.
24(I wonder where she found that in [October][].)
25She was annoyed that she had to tell everyone who she was---"At a writers' party!"
26I don't remember if she ate that peach.
27I do remember the main meal was spaghetti.
28
29That party was held in a house in Chattanooga, in the basement.
30There was a big back yard where people drank and talked and sat in the darkness.
31Somewhere someone was smoking weed with a visiting writer.
32
33Earlier that day, [the writer had read a poem about his car accident][sebastian] a year ago, in Georgia, on the interstate.
34It had broken him pretty badly, and his wife, but somehow their child was unharmed.
35He said something about the peach pit being the one place Georgia held sacred.
36He said it was the place where all new things grow.
37
38I can see how anger could be like a peach: its juice runs out of the mouth and down the chin, dropping onto the pants and staining them.
39In the same way, I can see how [anger is like sex][]: they are both heightened states of emotional observation.
40
41In Atlanta, there are something like five or ten [Peachtree Streets][].
42I'm not sure if they all connect at some point, but from what I could see, they would have to do some contorting to get to the same point.
43I like to think a giant peach tree grows there, like the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil.
44
45I was walking down one of Atlanta's Peachtrees with my girlfriend when a man in tight pants, a runner, jogged past us.
46We both agreed he had a marvelous ass.
47I was annoyed, however, when she confessed that she wished I had one like his.
48Later, we ate at a taqueria with peach-habanero salsa.
49
50[My mother][] would read to us as children.
51The first real books I remember, the first novels, are Island of the Blue Dolphins and James and the Giant Peach.
52I don't remember Island of the Blue Dolphins as well, probably because no movie was made of it.
53
54There's an independent video rental store where I grew up called [Popcorn Video][], one of the only stores I went to in my hometown that wasn't a chain.
55Every time we went, my sister would rent two movies: _James and the Giant Peach_ and _Home Alone 3_.
56
57I wasn't allowed to stay home alone, or I don't remember it, until I was fifteen.
58I built a potato cannon out of PVC pipe and a barbecue lighter.
59I would load a potato, spray hairspray into the barrel, and light it.
60Once, the cannon wouldn't light.
61I looked down the barrel and pushed the trigger button to see if I could see a light.
62I forgot that I had already primed the barrel with hairspray.
63I singed my eyebrows and bangs.
64
65In peach season, my father would bring home a bag of the freestones every week or so.
66He always got the cheap ones, so they were usually dry and pithy, with a stone that fell apart and nearly broke my tooth.
67I don't eat them anymore when I go home.
68
69My mother would always eat canned peaches with cottage cheese.
70For some reason I didn't think this was common knowledge.
71I showed people how good it was when we went to a buffet: they said "I know."
72
73To be honest, I'm not even sure what a peach tree looks like.
74I do know what an orange tree looks like, from a backyard in Phoenix, and a fig tree, from a back yard in Chattanooga.
75I also know what a cherry tree looks like, or at least a type of them, from my own backyard at home, as well as mulberry and apple.
76If, for some reason, I find myself lost in a sinister Garden of Eden, I'll at least know a few of the trees I can eat from.
77
78I always heard growing up that the Fruit of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil was an apple.
79Maybe I'll luck out: maybe it'll be a peach.
80
81[Prufrock]: http://www.bartleby.com/198/1.html
82[October]: axe.html
83[sebastian]: http://www.32poems.com/blog/5158/weekly-prose-feature-an-interview-with-sebastian-matthews-by-justin-bigos
84[anger is like sex]: statements-frag.html
85[Peachtree Streets]: https://www.google.com/maps/place/Peachtree+Rd+NE,+Atlanta,+GA/@33.7779425,-84.3843615
86[My mother]: riptide_memory.html
87[Popcorn Video]: http://popcornvideo.net/
diff --git a/text/philosophy.txt b/text/philosophy.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..1ff2039 --- /dev/null +++ b/text/philosophy.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,34 @@
1---
2title: Philosophy
3genre: prose
4
5id: philosophy
6toc: "Philosophy"
7
8project:
9 title: Book of Hezekiah
10 class: hezekiah
11 order: 3
12 next:
13 - title: Proverbs
14 link: proverbs
15 prev:
16 - title: The purpose of dogs
17 link: purpose-dogs
18...
19
20Importance is important.
21But meaning is meaningful.
22Here we are at the crux of the matter, for both meaning and importance are also human-formed.
23So it would seem that nothing is important or meaningful, if importance and meaning are of themselves only products of the fallible human intellect.
24But here is the great secret: *so is the fallibility of the human intellect a mere product of the fallible human intellect.*
25The question here arises: Is anything real, and not a mere invention of a mistaken human mind?
26By real of course I mean "that which is *on its own terms*," that is, without any [modification][] on the part of mankind by observing it.
27But 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.
28So 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.
29
30By this it is possible to see that nothing is knowable without the mediating factor of our mind fucking up the "[raw][]," the "real" world.
31But by this time it would seem that this chapter is far far too philosophical, not to mention pretentious, so I must try again.
32
33[modification]: i-am.html
34[raw]: spittle.html
diff --git a/text/phone.txt b/text/phone.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..3058ae9 --- /dev/null +++ b/text/phone.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,54 @@
1---
2title: Phone
3genre: prose
4
5id: phone
6toc: "Phone"
7
8project:
9 title: "Buildings out of air: Paul in the Woods"
10 class: paul
11 order: 16
12 next:
13 - title: Tapestry
14 link: tapestry
15 - title: Planks
16 link: planks
17 prev:
18 - title: Treatise
19 link: treatise
20 - title: Paul
21 link: paul
22...
23
24"Hello Paul this is Jill Jill Noe remember me" the voice on the phone was a woman's.
25He nodded into the receiver.
26"Hello" Jill asked again "hello?"
27Paul remembered that phones work by talking and said "Hello Jill."
28
29"Do you remember me" she asked "we were in school together?
30How have you been?"
31"Pretty well" said Paul "I've been writing and making furniture."
32"Oh that's nice" [said the woman's voice][] tinny in the phone
33"Listen I ran into your mother at the [Supermarket][] the other day and she said you need a job.
34You still need one?"
35Paul had to tell the truth.
36His mother was watching him out of the corner of her eye as she was playing dominoes at the kitchen table.
37"Yes" he said sighing "Although woodworking takes up much of my time."
38
39"OK" she laughed uncomortably "I actually have something you could do for me if you think you can get away from woodworking a bit.
40It's just data entry really basic stuff entry-level."
41"What's it pay" he asked.
42"Minimum but there is room for movement."
43"OK" he said.
44"Start on Monday okay?"
45"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.
46
47"Who was that" asked his mother.
48"Jill Noe" he said.
49"Oh her was she calling about a job for you?"
50"Yes starts Monday" he said.
51She smiled behind her glasses reflecting dominoes.
52
53[said the woman's voice]: telemarketer.html
54[Supermarket]: last-bastion.html
diff --git a/text/planks.txt b/text/planks.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..0b5a54d --- /dev/null +++ b/text/planks.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,48 @@
1---
2title: Planks
3genre: prose
4
5id: planks
6toc: "Planks"
7
8project:
9 title: "Buildings out of air: Paul in the Woods"
10 class: paul
11 order: 13
12 next:
13 - title: Hardware
14 link: hardware
15 - title: Punch
16 link: punch
17 prev:
18 - title: Leg
19 link: leg
20 - title: Phone
21 link: phone
22...
23
24> [EVERYTHING CHANGES OR EVERYTHING][]
25> [STAYS THE SAME][]
26
27This sat alone on a blank notecard in Paul's typewriter.
28He stared at it, sipping at his too-hot coffee.
29This made sense to him.
30
31He 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.
32He sipped his coffee again.
33It was still too hot.
34His Woodworking Shack was becoming full of wood that was not furniture.
35He feared it would never become so.
36
37He threw open the door to the snow and the ground below it.
38He reached for his axe on the wall.
39He reconsidered.
40He took a few tentative steps onto the [blankness][] on his own.
41He wasn't cold, not yet.
42He walked into the forest.
43The snow crunched under his feet and [did not echo][].
44
45[EVERYTHING CHANGES OR EVERYTHING]: swear.html
46[STAYS THE SAME]: howtoread.html
47[blankness]: in-bed.html
48[did not echo]: last-passenger.html
diff --git a/text/plant.txt b/text/plant.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..61c706f --- /dev/null +++ b/text/plant.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,136 @@
1---
2title: Litany
3genre: verse
4
5dedication: a plant
6
7id: plant
8toc: "Litany for a plant"
9
10project:
11 title: Autocento of the breakfast table
12 class: autocento
13...
14
15| I need a plant. I need a thing
16| to take care of. I need
17| a little green brownspotted
18| [blackdirt][] growing
19| quietness. I need a sunlit
20| dawn knowing my name filtered
21| through a [thin green window][].
22| I need chlorophyll
23| working its [magic][] on beams of
24| grassmade early morning dewdrop
25| sweetmaking green. I need
26| the dark earth sucking water
27| from a black crevice
28| its black magic churning
29| wormilled rockturned starblind
30| darkness and cold into
31| [the opposite of dust][]. I need the heat
32| to blind me. I need the dumb making
33| to charge my coldened blood. I need
34| the dropturned leaves to turn again
35| their [faces to the windblown sun][].
36| I need millions of tiny years
37| summed up and burning out some unknown
38| new growth into the air. I need four
39| hundred feet of dark red gnarled wood
40| and needles glistening wetly on goldheaded
41| branches hoisting themselves
42| to the sky. I need ten strong men
43| to fail to bring you down. Old one
44| I need the peace that comes with knowing
45| something sacred holds still
46| in the world. I need your green tongues
47| [of flame to lick at old wounds][]
48| stitching us together away from ourselves.
49| I need your brownbranching grasp
50| to keep me from drifting off
51| into [unknowing terrible sleep][]. I need
52| [to know the snake][] hanging
53| from your branches. I need to watch
54| the dropping of flesh massful
55| onto the ground from a height. I need
56| the gnawer at your root to strike
57| a vein to quicken old brown stone
58| to movement. I need jeweleyed venom
59| barking new greennesses into the bark.
60| I need a knocker of dark secrets hidden
61| in the dark bark hiding a smallstone
62| smoldering pearl in the knot. I need
63| that [pearl held out in a hand][] like an offering.
64| I need the hand to be a plant's hand.
65
66| I need a plant. I need a growing
67| growler [groaning][] toward heat and air.
68| I need a green thin stem surprisingly strong
69| holding up the weight of a plain
70| of fallow [greennesses of creases and caresses][]
71| of tiny worldmaking hardworking grandeur.
72| I need a singer of life crying
73| forward into old roads covered over
74| by dead trees. I need the rasping of root
75| in dirt. I need the unfurling of fiddleheads
76| to sing forth a new symphony. I need
77| fruits swelling large for the harvest.
78| I need yellow light shining through white bark.
79| I need juicecrush flowing waterlike
80| through valleys percolating up
81| through the ground. I need springs bubbling sap
82| into cabins of wood fought for by labor.
83| I need snow on the ground with shoots
84| dotting the melting patches. I need two
85| leaves on a thin stalk shivering
86| in [moonlight][]. I need robinsong warbling
87| over the heads of small seeds sprouting
88| to enliven their growth. I need rings
89| of woody material widening to push
90| the ground out of their way. I need
91| new greennesses pushing out from
92| the brown dark bark gnarled. I
93| need the robin to build its songfilled
94| nest in a [branchcrotch][]. I need
95| the fecundity of fungi on the branches.
96| I need quiet of the sunlight shooting
97| through thousands of branched leaves
98| quivering. [I need whisper at dawn.][]
99| I need burrows underground foxholes.
100| I need duff layers eaten through
101| by worms. I need brooks murmuring
102| through crooks of roots. I need small
103| [fish swimming][] in their schools at
104| midnight. I need oldnesses giving way
105| [to youngnesses giving way to oldnesses][].
106| I need dapplegray yellowshot ashbark.
107| I need the crunch of dead leaves underfoot.
108| I need [snowquiet deadbranch][] mourning.
109| I need those [purple mountains majesty][].
110| I need a walk between trees in the dark.
111| I need that moment when stopping to rest
112| it suddenly seems that all the weary
113| [forestroads][] in all their meandering come
114| [to rest their heads][] at my astonished
115| feet, none of them needing more than me.
116
117[blackdirt]: building.html
118[thin green window]: window.html
119[magic]: cereal.html
120[to rest their heads]: riptide_memory.html
121[forestroads]: http://www.bartleby.com/119/1.html
122[purple mountains majesty]: http://www.wrensworld.com/purpmount.htm
123[snowquiet deadbranch]: one-hundred-lines.html
124[to youngnesses giving way to oldnesses]: about-the-author.html
125[fish swimming]: proverbs.html
126[I need whisper at dawn.]: apollo11.html
127[branchcrotch]: epigraph.html
128[moonlight]: finding-the-lion.html
129[greennesses of creases and caresses]: the-sea_the-beach.html
130[groaning]: feedingtheraven.html
131[pearl held out in a hand]: roughgloves.html
132[to know the snake]: ouroboros_memory.html
133[unknowing terrible sleep]: in-bed.html
134[of flame to lick at old wounds]: fire.html
135[faces to the windblown sun]: no-nothing.html
136[the opposite of dust]: https://samofthetenthousandthings.wordpress.com/2012/09/08/charles-wright-reads-james-wright-the-journey-audio-poem/
diff --git a/text/poetry-time.txt b/text/poetry-time.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..3dea687 --- /dev/null +++ b/text/poetry-time.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,76 @@
1---
2title: Something
3subtitle: about the nature of poetry and time
4genre: verse
5
6id: poetry-time
7toc: "Something about the nature of poetry and time"
8
9project:
10 title: Stark Raving
11 class: stark
12 order: 5
13 next:
14 - title: The Moon is drowning
15 link: moon-drowning
16 - title: AMBER alert
17 link: amber-alert
18 prev:
19 - title: The Big Dipper
20 link: big-dipper
21 - title: Worse looking over
22 link: worse-looking-over
23...
24
25| I'm writing this now because I have to.
26| Not in some "my soul yearns for this and
27| I can't help it" way, but in the way that this
28| moment is structured as such, that it is
29| crystallized this way, me writing this, and later
30| you reading it, now for you, later for me,
31
32| and this tenuous connection mates me
33| and you forever, combined with each other, two
34| [electrons momentarily entwined][]. Later,
35| when I'm dead or far too famous for you, and
36| you're in school, reading my words because it is
37| required reading, I want you to remember this
38
39| connection we've always had, this
40| [spider's thread][] hanging between you and me.
41| Which of us is the spider and which is
42| the fly still remains to be seen. To
43| eat, perchance to fly: all of that and
44| more. We can settle all of this later.
45
46| Yes, it is you I'm thinking of in your later
47| time: you specifically, not another. This
48| is true for all $x$ such that $x > 0$ and
49| $x$ is a real person, though it doesn't bother me
50| to write to a fictional figure or to
51| [a figment][], maybe, of my imagination. This is
52
53| what you are right now, anyway, [dear Reader][], is
54| it not? I'm talking about my now, of course, not later,
55| which is your now. Later will be my now too,
56| and maybe I'm ultimately writing to a future part of this
57| self: you could very well be me.
58| In fact, you probably are me, [some other version][], and
59
60| I am you in the past, or what you could've been, and
61| at the same time, this isn't true. Everything is,
62| and nothing isn't. The difference between "you" and "me"
63| is in name only. Maybe you'll get this later,
64| [when you're older][], when I'm older, when all of this
65| is something we'll look fondly back to,
66
67| because I do hope to meet you, although much later,
68| and I hope your feeling is the same. All this
69| talk on me and you and you and me we'll keep between us two.
70
71[electrons momentarily entwined]: treatise.html
72[spider's thread]: last-passenger.html
73[a figment]: epigraph.html
74[some other version]: elegyforanalternateself.html
75[when you're older]: found-typewriter-poem.html
76[dear Reader]: real-writer.html
diff --git a/text/prelude.txt b/text/prelude.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..03165bb --- /dev/null +++ b/text/prelude.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,28 @@
1---
2title: Prelude
3genre: prose
4
5id: prelude
6toc: "Prelude"
7
8project:
9 title: Book of Hezekiah
10 class: hezekiah
11 order: 1
12 next:
13 - title: The purpose of dogs
14 link: purpose-dogs
15...
16
17Of course, [there is a God][].
18Of course, [there is no God][].
19Of course, what's really [important][] is that these aren't important.
20No, they are; but not really important.
21All that's important is the relative importance of non-important things.
22[Shit.][]
23Never mind; let's start over.
24
25[there is a God]: boar.html
26[there is no God]: TODO_BONNIE_PRINCE_BILLIE_YOUTUBE
27[Shit.]: january.html
28[important]: building.html
diff --git a/text/problems.txt b/text/problems.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..191016d --- /dev/null +++ b/text/problems.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,61 @@
1---
2title: Problems
3genre: prose
4
5id: problems
6toc: "Problems"
7
8project:
9 title: Book of Hezekiah
10 class: hezekiah
11 order: 6
12 next:
13 - title: Liking things
14 link: likingthings
15 prev:
16 - title: Moving sideways
17 link: movingsideways
18...
19
20The problem with people is this: we cannot be happy.
21No matter how hard or easy we try, it is not to be.
22It 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.
23
24Being the observant and judgmental people they are, people have for a long time tried to figure out why they aren't happy.
25Some say it's because we're obviously doing something wrong.
26Some say it's because we think too much.
27Some insist that it's because other people have more stuff than we do.
28These people don't have a clue any more than any of the rest of us.
29At least I don't think they do, and that's good enough for me.[^1]
30I 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[^2]) that there is no background to put themselves against, no "[big picture][]" to get painted into.
31This makes sense, because on one level, the level of everyday life, the level of *observation*, there is always a background---look in a pair of binoculars sometime.
32But on another level, that of ... shit, wait.
33There are no other levels.[^3]
34
35What'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).
36Some say standing or [sitting in a building][] with a lot of other unhappy people helps.
37Some 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.
38I say all you really need to be happy is a good stiff drink.[^4]
39
40In any case, people have for some reason or another, and to some end or another, always been unhappy.
41And 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."
42I think that calling it a pursuit makes people feel more like dogs, who are the most happy beings most people can think of.
43By 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.
44I think most people wish they were dogs.
45
46[big picture]: ronaldmcdonald.html
47[sitting in a buiding]: feedingtheraven.html
48
49
50[^1]: This seems to be an attempt on Hezzy's part to set an example for
51 mankind. It should be noted that he is an alcoholic, and not in any
52 shape to be an example to anyone.
53
54[^2]: It is thought that only the leg coverings of the female sex are
55 here referenced
56
57[^3]: You have hereby found the super special secret cheat code room.
58 Yes, this is just like Super Mario Brothers---you can skip right to
59 the end. Go and face the final boss already!
60
61[^4]: See footnote, above
diff --git a/text/process.txt b/text/process.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..955f0f3 --- /dev/null +++ b/text/process.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,70 @@
1---
2title: Autocento of the breakfast table
3subtitle: process narrative
4genre: prose
5
6id: process
7toc: "Process narrative"
8
9project:
10 title: Front matter
11 class: front-matter
12...
13
14## Hi. My name is Case Duckworth. This is my thesis.
15
16_Autocento of the breakfast table_ is an inter/hypertextual exploration of the workings of inspiration, revision, and obsession.
17I've compiled this work over multiple years, and recently linked it all together to form a (hopefully) more cohesive whole.
18To make this easier than collating everything by hand, I've relied on a process that leverages open-source technologies to publish my work onto a web platform.
19
20## Process steps
21
221. Write poems.
232. Convert to Markdown.
24 - Markdown, originally by [John Gruber][], is a lightweight markup language that allows me to focus on the _content_ of my writing, knowing that I can work on the _presentation_ later.
25 - The original `markdown.pl` program is buggy and inconsistent with how it applies styles to markup. It also only works to convert text to HTML.
26 - Because of these limitations, I've used John MacFarlane's [extended Markdown syntax][], which lets me write richer documents and programmatically compile my work into multiple formats.
273. Compile to HTML with Pandoc.
28 - At first, I used this code in the shell to generate my HTML:
29 ```bash
30 for file in *.txt; do
31 pandoc "$file" -f markdown -t html5 \
32 --template=template.html -o "${file%txt}html"
33 done
34 ```
35 but this proved tedious with time.
36 - After a lot of experimenting with different scripting languages, I finally realized that [`GNU make`][] would fit this task perfectly.
37 - You can see my makefile [here][makefile]---it's kind of a mess, but it does the job. See below for a more detailed explanation of the makefile.
384. Style the pages with CSS.
39 - I use a pretty basic style for _Autocento_. You can see my stylesheet [here][stylesheet].
404. Use [Github][] to put them online.
41 - Github uses `git` under the hood---a Version Control System developed for keeping track of large code projects.
42 - My workflow with `git` looks like this:
43 - Change files in the project directory---revise a poem, change the makefile, add a style, etc.
44 - (If necessary, re-compile with `make`.)
45 - `git status` tells me which files have changed, which have been added, and if any have been deleted.
46 - `git add -A` adds all the changes to the _staging area_, or I can add individual files, depending on what I want to commit.
47 - `git commit -m "[message]"` commits the changes to git. This means they're "saved"---if I do something I want to revert, I can `git revert` back to a commit and start again.
48 - `git push` pushes the changes to the _remote repository_---in this case, the Github repo that serves <http://autocento.me>.
49 - Lather, rinse, repeat.
505. Write Makefile to extend build capabilities.
51 - As of now, I've completed a _[Hapax legomenon][]_ compiler, a [back-link][] compiler, and an updater for the [random link functionality][] that's on this site.
52 - I'd like to build a compiler for the [Index of first lines][] and [Index of common titles][] once I have time.
53
54## The beauty of this system
55
56- I can compile these poems into (almost) any format: `pandoc` supports a lot.
57- Once I complete the above process once, I can focus on revising my poems.
58- These poems are online for anyone to see and use for their own work.
59
60[John Gruber]: http://daringfireball.net/projects/markdown/
61[extended Markdown syntax]: http://johnmacfarlane.net/pandoc/README.html#pandocs-markdown
62[`GNU make`]: https://www.gnu.org/software/make/manual/make.html
63[makefile]: https://github.com/duckwork/autocento/blob/gh-pages/makefile
64[stylesheet]: https://github.com/duckwork/autocento/blob/gh-pages/style.css
65[Github]: https://github.com
66[Hapax legomenon]: hapax.html
67[back-link]: makefile
68[random link functionality]: trunk/lozenge.js
69[Index of first lines]: first-lines.html
70[Index of common titles]: common-titles.html
diff --git a/text/proverbs.txt b/text/proverbs.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..4f0e508 --- /dev/null +++ b/text/proverbs.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,50 @@
1---
2title: Proverbs
3genre: prose
4
5id: proverbs
6toc: "Proverbs"
7
8project:
9 title: Book of Hezekiah
10 class: hezekiah
11 order: 4
12 next:
13 - title: Moving sideways
14 link: movingsideways
15 prev:
16 - title: Philosophy
17 link: philosophy
18...
19
20[Nothing matters; everything is sacred.
21Everything matters; nothing is sacred][sacred].[^1]
22This is the only way we can move forward: by moving sideways.
23Life is a great big rugby game, and the entire field has to be run for a goal.
24The 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 *complete each other*.
25Sometimes 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.
26Life is not life in a suburb.
27[There are no rosebushes, groomed never. There is no carpet, steamed at any time.][rosebush]
28The dog looks at you wanting you to love it.
29It wants to know that you know that it's there.
30*It wants to be observed*.[^2]
31
32[sacred]: words-meaning.html
33[rosebush]: lovesong.html
34
35[^1]: Thank you [Tom Stoppard][]. Ha ha ho ho and hee hee.
36
37[^2]: Ah ha! I knew this was going to happen at some point. Now things
38 are going to get more interesting because the dog wants what we
39 thought was a bad thing, right? Right? Didn't we go through that
40 part about how observing made it impossible to really know anything,
41 and I had to start over because it's really hard to figure out what
42 you're talking about when reality slips out of your hands like a
43 fish, but you're not a cat with claws so it just flops right outta
44 your hand back into the lake. (By the way, Nirvana is thought to be
45 what a drop of water feels upon flopping into a lake---doesn't that
46 seem important? Doesn't it seem like a fish and a drop of water here
47 are connected? It helps, of course, that the fish represents Reality
48 here.)
49
50[Tom Stoppard]: http://www.thesatirist.com/books/CowGirlBlues.html
diff --git a/text/punch.txt b/text/punch.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..9b318f8 --- /dev/null +++ b/text/punch.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,49 @@
1---
2title: Punch
3genre: prose
4
5id: punch
6toc: "Punch"
7
8project:
9 title: "Buildings out of air: Paul in the Woods"
10 class: paul
11 order: 32
12 next:
13 - title: Joke
14 link: joke
15 - title: Question
16 link: question
17 prev:
18 - title: Wallpaper
19 link: wallpaper
20 - title: Planks
21 link: planks
22...
23
24When he finally got back to work he was surprised they threw him a party.
25_**WELCOME BACK PAUL!**_ was written on a big banner across the back wall.
26Someone had ordered a confectioner's-sugar cake with [frosting flowers][] on the corners.
27It said the same thing as the banner.
28"Welcome back, Paul" said Jill as he was at the punch bowl.
29The cup was on the table as he ladled punch in with his right hand.
30His left was wrapped in [gauze][].
31
32"Let me help you with that" said Jill.
33Paul had a strange feeling this had happened before.
34She took the ladle and their hands touched.
35She picked the cup up in her right hand and used her left to lift the spoon.
36"You know" she said "we were worried about you.
37When Jerry heard about your hand he said 'There goes one of our best data entry men.'"
38"I still can't really move my left hand" said Paul.
39"That's alright you can take your time with the entry."
40"I'm sorry."
41
42"Sorry for what" she looked at his eyes.
43He imagined her seeing [fisheye][] versions of herself in them.
44"I don't know" he said because it was true.
45"It's alright anyway" she said and placed the full punch cup in his right hand.
46
47[fisheye]: hands.html
48[frosting flowers]: big-dipper.html
49[gauze]: one-hundred-lines.html
diff --git a/text/purpose-dogs.txt b/text/purpose-dogs.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..53ac2b0 --- /dev/null +++ b/text/purpose-dogs.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,40 @@
1---
2title: The purpose of dogs
3genre: prose
4
5id: purpose-dogs
6toc: "The purpose of dogs"
7
8project:
9 title: Book of Hezekiah
10 class: hezekiah
11 order: 2
12 next:
13 - title: Philosophy
14 link: philosophy
15 prev:
16 - title: Prelude
17 link: prelude
18...
19
20Okay, so as we said in [the Prelude][], there either is or isn't a God.
21This 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.
22What humanity has failed to realize is that an incredibly plausible third, and heretofore unknown, hypothesis also exists: There is a dog.
23
24In fact, there are many dogs, and not only that.
25There 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.
26Some dogs are for chasing birds, and some are for chasing badgers.
27Some are for laying in your lap and being petted all day.
28Some 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.
29But 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.
30
31Note: *Just because we think it's important doesn't mean it is important.*
32But it might as well be, because what we as humans think is important is important.
33But be careful!
34Just because something's important doesn't mean it means anything, or that it actually makes anything happen.
35Even though just because something makes something else happen doesn't mean it's important.
36[Shit][].
37Let me start again.
38
39[the Prelude]: prelude.html
40[Shit]: feedingtheraven.html
diff --git a/text/question.txt b/text/question.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..4f02258 --- /dev/null +++ b/text/question.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,54 @@
1---
2title: Question
3genre: prose
4
5id: question
6toc: "Question"
7
8project:
9 title: "Buildings out of air: Paul in the Woods"
10 class: paul
11 order: 19
12 next:
13 - title: Sapling
14 link: sapling
15 - title: Reports
16 link: reports
17 prev:
18 - title: Window
19 link: window
20 - title: Punch
21 link: punch
22...
23
24"Do you have to say your thoughts out loud for them to mean anything" Paul asked Jill on his first coffee break at work.
25It was in the city and his mother told him she wouldn't drive him so he'd had to take the bus.
26Number 3 he thought it was.
27[He couldn't quite remember.][remember]
28Jill said "Sorry what?"
29Paul 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.
30He decided to repeat the question.
31
32"How do you think" he asked.
33"Like everyone else I guess" she said "I have a thought and if it's important I write it down."
34"Do you have to say them out loud for them to make sense?"
35"Are you asking if I talk to myself?"
36A pause.
37"I guess so" he said looking down.
38He had a feeling this was a bad thing.
39"Sometimes" she said and walked out of the break room.
40She didn't understand the importance of his question.
41She popped her head back in a moment later and his heart leaped in his chest.
42
43"How's your first day going so far" she asked.
44"Can you understand everything okay?"
45"Yes" he said "you were right it's pretty basic."
46"Good" she said.
47"Paul?"
48"Yes."
49"Do you have to say all of your thoughts out loud to remember them?"
50He shook his head.
51
52Only all of the time, Paul thought to himself but didn't speak.
53
54[remember]: riptide_memory.html
diff --git a/text/real-writer.txt b/text/real-writer.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..cb204df --- /dev/null +++ b/text/real-writer.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,51 @@
1---
2title: A real writer
3genre: verse
4
5id: real-writer
6toc: "A real writer"
7
8project:
9 title: Autocento of the breakfast table
10 class: autocento
11...
12
13| Sometimes I feel as though I am not a real writer.
14| [I don't smoke][]. I don't wake up early but I don't sleep
15| all day either. I find myself increasingly interested
16| in dumb luck. Chance: I've found two dimes in as many
17| days. Does this mean I've found twenty lucky pennies?
18| I want you to participate. You the reader. You,
19| the probabilistic god of my dreams. I've been having
20| [strange dreams][] lately. I don't remember them but
21| they leave impressions. A bare foot. A tunnel
22| of hair from her face to mine. A boat stranded
23| in a living-room. Something warm. Something like the sun
24| through my eyelids. [A hand, with all its dead symbology][].
25| [My teeth have fallen out][]. No, you pulled them out
26| with your hands, threw them over your left shoulder
27| [like salt][], to wish away bad luck. I have something
28| to tell you: bad luck follows like a dog. It lets you
29| get ahead for a few days, a week, a year. You'll see,
30| it'll bite your sleeping face when you're not looking.
31| I've been dreaming about the future, I know. In my dream
32| I am not a writer, [I live in a place with rain][]. You
33| are sunning yourself as you read this, on a beach or
34| maybe a desert. Let me move in with you. I can cook
35| [or clean][] or take care of your dog while you're out.
36| I'll never have to write again. [I'll watch television][].
37| Do I want to become a writer? Tell me. Should I smoke?
38| I can sleep all day in your attic if you want, become
39| [your god][], lose my own, settle to the bottom of the bed
40| like a boat in a river, dream about nothing but [furniture][].
41
42[I don't smoke]: cereal.html
43[strange dreams]: in-bed.html
44[A hand, with all its dead symbology]: roughgloves.html
45[My teeth have fallen out]: no-nothing.html
46[like salt]: i-am.html
47[I live in a place with rain]: riptide_memory.html
48[or clean]: when-im-sorry-i.html
49[I'll watch television]: about-the-author.html
50[your god]: love-as-god.html
51[furniture]: leaf.html
diff --git a/text/reports.txt b/text/reports.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..19d26cf --- /dev/null +++ b/text/reports.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,46 @@
1---
2title: Reports
3genre: prose
4
5id: reports
6toc: "Reports"
7
8project:
9 title: "Buildings out of air: Paul in the Woods"
10 class: paul
11 order: 24
12 next:
13 - title: Swear
14 link: swear
15 - title: Sapling
16 link: sapling
17 prev:
18 - title: Snow
19 link: snow
20 - title: Question
21 link: question
22...
23
24"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.
25He had spent the weekend
26
271. going to the Office Supply Store to buy notecards and typewriter ribbon (he
28 found it surprisingly easily) after his first payday
292. replacing the ribbon in his typewriter (this took approximately half an
30 hour, because he had to figure it all out on his own)
313. opening the package of notecards (this took approximately four seconds,
32 although he still had to figure out how to do it on his own. It was just
33 easier)
344. carefully typing the reports he'd handwritten on letter paper onto the
35 notecards (he made many mistakes and threw away many notecards, though
36 later he used them for kindling)
37
38so understandably he was upset.
39He told Jill all the work he'd gone to to type those notecard reports for her, for the company.
40[She shook her head.][]
41"Paul, you don't have to do all that work at home.
42Just type it up on the computers here, that's all you need to do.
43Thanks for the work though."
44He nodded as she threw the notecards into the trashcan and left his cubicle.
45
46[She shook her head.]: seasonal-affective-disorder.html
diff --git a/text/riptide_memory.txt b/text/riptide_memory.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..177a586 --- /dev/null +++ b/text/riptide_memory.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,59 @@
1---
2title: Riptide of memory
3genre: verse
4
5id: riptide_memory
6toc: "Riptide of memory"
7
8project:
9 title: Stark Raving
10 class: stark
11 order: 16
12 next:
13 - title: About the author
14 link: about-the-author
15 - title: The Sixteenth Chapel
16 link: sixteenth-chapel
17 prev:
18 - title: Something about all music being performances of _4&prime;33&Prime;_ in places where other bands happen to be playing
19 link: music-433
20 - title: I think it's you (but it's not)
21 link: i-think-its-you
22...
23
24| Inside of my memory, the poem is another memory.
25| The air up here is thin, but the wind blows harder
26| than anywhere else I know. It threatens to rip
27| my body away, like [an angel of death][], to the stars.
28
29| In Arizona, I thought I would forget the rain,
30| forget its sound on a roof like a hard wind, forget
31| its smell like a far away ocean. Luckily for me
32| it rains here. Luckily, because I forget too easily.
33
34| In a dream, [my father is caught by a riptide][] off-shore.
35| He's pulled far out, far enough that the shoreline's
36| a line in his [memory][] on the horizon. I can see him
37| swimming, hand over hand, pulling his small weight
38
39| back to land. I see him as [another shipwreck][] victim,
40| coughing sand and seawater, beard woven with seaweed.
41| I see him lying there a long time. I see all this
42| as he tells me the story, years later, the riptide
43
44| only a [ghost][] in his memory, I only a child falling
45| asleep. My mother's making mayonnaise rolls
46| in the kitchen, a recipe I'll send for years later,
47| in Arizona, in the monsoon season, when my thirst
48
49| pulls me back home, my memory's lonesome twinkle
50| like [stars above the mountains][]. I'll send for it
51| and try to make them, but in the thin air they'll
52| crumble into dust like desert air, like a memory.
53
54[an angel of death]: angeltoabraham.html
55[my father is caught by a riptide]: father.html
56[memory]: ouroboros_memory.html
57[another shipwreck]: shipwright.html
58[ghost]: one-hundred-lines.html
59[stars above the mountains]: finding-the-lion.html
diff --git a/text/ronaldmcdonald.txt b/text/ronaldmcdonald.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..87b57c1 --- /dev/null +++ b/text/ronaldmcdonald.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,52 @@
1---
2title: Ronald McDonald
3genre: verse
4
5id: ronaldmcdonald
6toc: "Ronald McDonald"
7
8project:
9 title: Elegies for alternate selves
10 class: elegies
11 order: 17
12 prev:
13 - title: Rough gloves
14 link: roughgloves
15 next:
16 - title: The moon is gone and in its place a mirror
17 link: moongone
18...
19
20| When Ronald McDonald takes off his [striped shirt][],
21| his coveralls, his painted face: when he no longer looks
22| like anyone or anything special, sitting next to women
23
24| in bars or standing in the aisle at the grocery,
25| is he no longer Ronald? Is he no longer happy to kick
26| a soccer ball around with the kids in the park,
27
28| is he suddenly unable to enjoy the french fries
29| he gets for his fifty percent off? I'd like to think
30| that he takes Ronald off like a shirt, hangs him
31
32| in a closet where he breathes darkly in the musk.
33| I'd like to believe that we are able to slough off selves
34| like old skin and still retain some base self.
35
36| Of course we all know this is not what happens.
37| The Ronald leering at women drunkenly is the same who
38| the next day kicks at a ball the size of a head.
39
40| He is the same that hugs his children at night,
41| who has sex with his wife on the weekends when they're
42| not so tired to make it work, who smiles holding
43
44| a basket of fries in front of a field. He cannot
45| take off the facepaint or the [yellow gloves][]. They are
46| stuck to him like so many feathers with the tar
47
48| of his everyday associations. His plight is that
49| of everyone's---we are what we do who we are.
50
51[striped shirt]: theoceanoverflowswithcamels.html
52[yellow gloves]: roughgloves.html
diff --git a/text/roughgloves.txt b/text/roughgloves.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..ebe32b8 --- /dev/null +++ b/text/roughgloves.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,38 @@
1---
2title: Rough gloves
3genre: verse
4
5id: roughgloves
6toc: "Rough gloves"
7
8project:
9 title: Elegies for alternate selves
10 class: elegies
11 order: 16
12 prev:
13 - title: Love Song
14 link: lovesong
15 next:
16 - title: Ronald McDonald
17 link: ronaldmcdonald
18...
19
20| I lost my hands & knit replacement ones
21| from [spiders' threads][], stronger than steel but soft
22| as lambs' wool. Catching as they do on nails
23| & your collarbone, you don't seem to like
24| their rough warm presence on your [cheek or thigh][].
25| I've asked you if you minded, you've said no
26| (your face a table laid with burnt meat, bread
27| so stale it could [break a hand][]). Remember
28| your senile mother's face above that table?
29| I'd say she got the meaning of that look.
30| You'd rather not be touched by these rough gloves,
31| the only way I have to knit a love
32| against whatever winters we may enter
33| like a silkworm in a spider's blackened [maw][].
34
35[cheek or thigh]: feedingtheraven.html
36[break a hand]: weplayedthosegamestoo.html
37[maw]: serengeti.html
38[spiders' threads]: poetry-time.html
diff --git a/text/sapling.txt b/text/sapling.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..29c4c8a --- /dev/null +++ b/text/sapling.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,49 @@
1---
2title: Sapling
3genre: prose
4
5id: sapling
6toc: "Sapling"
7
8project:
9 title: "Buildings out of air: Paul in the Woods"
10 class: paul
11 order: 20
12 next:
13 - title: Cereal
14 link: cereal
15 - title: Shed
16 link: shed
17 prev:
18 - title: Question
19 link: question
20 - title: Reports
21 link: reports
22...
23
24He chopped down a sapling pine tree and looked at his watch.
25From first chop to fall it had taken him eight minutes and something like twenty seconds.
26Maybe a little change.
27He leaned against another tree and fished in his pocket for a cigarette.
28He lifted it out of its box and fished in his other pocket for his lighter, failing to find it.
29He searched his other pockets.
30He 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).
31He sighed and put his hands in his pockets.
32
33"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.
34He hoped she didn't.
35He hoped that conversation was like [the tree that fell in the forest][] with no one around.
36"I wonder if a thought said out loud isn't heard by anyone, if it was made.
37I 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.
38Maybe no wood matters unless it's [bound to another][] by upholstery nails.
39If 'the devil is in the details,' as they say (who are 'they' anyway?), the details are the connections?
40That doesn't make sense.
41Details are details.
42Connections are connections.
43
44"Still, a neuron by itself means nothing.
45Put them all together though and connect them.
46You've got a brain."
47
48[the tree that fell in the forest]: options.html
49[bound to another]: last-passenger.html
diff --git a/text/seasonal-affective-disorder.txt b/text/seasonal-affective-disorder.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..d997e91 --- /dev/null +++ b/text/seasonal-affective-disorder.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,38 @@
1---
2title: Seasonal affective disorder
3genre: verse
4
5id: seasonal-affective-disorder
6toc: "Seasonal affective disorder"
7
8project:
9 title: Autocento of the breakfast table
10 class: autocento
11...
12
13| On your desk I set a tangerine:
14| a relic of a [winter][] quickly passing.
15
16| I'm reminded, fiercely, of a summer:
17| I watched the [cemetery grass][] on my stomach.
18
19| You hate the wind [blowing through buildings][]:
20| the coldness of fire, blister of a mountain stream.
21
22| When you broke down that night: your aunt / you
23| never have been / [you shook that night][] /
24
25| Seasonal affective disorder is real: you
26| [mutter under your breath on the highway][].
27
28| The ant carries an orange peel past a headstone:
29| it carries her nearly as often.
30
31| I set a tangerine on your desk:
32| an engagement ring, winter-returned.
33
34[winter]: january.html
35[cemetery grass]: death-zone.html
36[blowing through buildings]: building.html
37[you shook that night]: the-night-we-met.html
38[mutter under your breath on the highway]: last-bastion.html
diff --git a/text/sense-of-it.txt b/text/sense-of-it.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..b0868f8 --- /dev/null +++ b/text/sense-of-it.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,37 @@
1---
2title: Sense of it
3genre: verse
4
5id: sense-of-it
6toc: "Sense of it"
7
8project:
9 title: Autocento of the breakfast table
10 class: autocento
11...
12
13| I only write poems on [the bus][] anymore.
14| I sit far in the back to be alone.
15| I mark black things on white things in a black thing.
16| I try to make sense of it.
17
18| Every time I see a plastic bag in the wind I think:
19| [This is the most beautiful thing I've ever seen.][]
20| Most of my life I relate to something on the TV:
21| This is how I try to make sense of it.
22
23| The Talking Heads song ["Stop Making Sense"][stop]
24| is about a girlfriend caught cheating and willed oblivion.
25| The song's real title is "Girlfriend is Better"
26| but [lying][] about it is a way I try to make sense of it.
27
28| The day after I lost her I found you again.
29| Your face made a plastic bag of my heart.
30| Your eyes were [the wind][] pushing the bus forward.
31| I couldn't make sense of it.
32
33[stop]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9r7X3f2gFz4
34[This is the most beautiful thing I've ever seen.]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qssvnjj5Moo
35[the wind]: cold-wind.html
36[lying]: the-night-we-met.html
37[the bus]: stagnant.html
diff --git a/text/serengeti.txt b/text/serengeti.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..14ad409 --- /dev/null +++ b/text/serengeti.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,36 @@
1---
2title: Serengeti
3genre: verse
4
5id: serengeti
6toc: "Serengeti"
7
8project:
9 title: Elegies for alternate selves
10 class: elegies
11 order: 20
12 prev:
13 - title: The mountain
14 link: mountain
15 next:
16 - title: The shipwright
17 link: shipwright
18...
19
20| The self is a serengeti
21| a wide grassland with baobab trees
22| reaching their roots deep into earth
23| like a child into a clay pot
24| A wind blows there or seems to blow
25| if he holds it up to his ear the air shifts
26| like stones in a stream uncovering a crawfish
27| it finds another hiding place watching you
28| Its eyes are blacker than wind
29| on the serengeti they are the [eyes of a predator][formal]
30| they are coming toward you or receding
31| a storm cloud builds on the horizon
32| Are you [running][] toward the rain or away from it
33| Do you stand still and crouch hoping for silence
34
35[formal]: onformalpoetry.html
36[running]: squirrel.html
diff --git a/text/shed.txt b/text/shed.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..832291d --- /dev/null +++ b/text/shed.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,46 @@
1---
2title: Shed
3genre: prose
4
5id: shed
6toc: "Shed"
7
8project:
9 title: "Buildings out of air: Paul in the Woods"
10 class: paul
11 order: 9
12 next:
13 - title: Hands
14 link: hands
15 - title: Snow
16 link: snow
17 prev:
18 - title: Notes
19 link: notes
20 - title: Sapling
21 link: sapling
22...
23
24"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.
25"Write" he answered.
26"Write what" she asked in that way that means he'd better not say I don't know.
27"I don't know" he said.
28
29"Goddammit Paul" his mother said.
30"You're [wasting your life][] out in that shed.
31You need to go out and get---"
32"I chop down trees too" he said.
33"I make furniture out of them."
34His mother's face did a Hitchcock zoom as she considered this new information.
35"Is it any good" she asked, eyes narrowed.
36
37"It's getting there" he answered.
38"I'm getting better every day."
39"When is it going to be there" she asked.
40"When are you going to sell [this furniture][] of yours?"
41"It'll be a while" he answered.
42
43"Then you'd better get a job until then" she said.
44
45[wasting your life]: http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/177229
46[this furniture]: real-writer.html
diff --git a/text/shipwright.txt b/text/shipwright.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..4fe3500 --- /dev/null +++ b/text/shipwright.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,40 @@
1---
2title: The shipwright
3genre: verse
4
5id: shipwright
6toc: "Shipwright"
7
8project:
9 title: Elegies for alternate selves
10 class: elegies
11 order: 21
12 prev:
13 - title: Serengeti
14 link: serengeti
15 next:
16 - title: Spittle
17 link: spittle
18...
19
20| He builds a ship as if it were the last thing
21| holding him together, as if, when he stops,
22| his body will fall onto the plate-glass water
23| and shatter into sand. To keep his morale up
24| he whistles and sings, but the wind whistles [louder][]
25| and taunts him: Your ship will build itself
26| if you throw yourself into the sea; time
27| has a way of growing your beard for you.
28| Soon, you'll find yourself on a rocking chair
29| on some porch made from your ship's timbers.
30| The window behind you is made from a sail, thick
31| canvas, and no one inside will hear your calling
32| for milk or a chamberpot. Your children
33| will have all sailed to the New World and left you.
34| But he tries not to listen, continues to hammer
35| nail after nail into timber after timber,
36| but the wind [finally blows][] him into the growling ocean
37| and the ship falls apart on its own.
38
39[louder]: apollo11.html
40[finally blows]: theoceanoverflowswithcamels.html
diff --git a/text/sixteenth-chapel.txt b/text/sixteenth-chapel.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..179765c --- /dev/null +++ b/text/sixteenth-chapel.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,86 @@
1---
2title: The Sixteenth Chapel
3genre: verse
4
5id: sixteenth-chapel
6toc: "The sixteenth chapel"
7
8epigraph:
9 content: "Canadian High School!"
10 attrib: David Letterman
11 link: 'https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PI_pwLyeoqk'
12
13dedication: Max
14
15project:
16 title: Stark Raving
17 class: stark
18 order: 17
19 next:
20 - title: Last bastion
21 link: last-bastion
22 - title: Something about all music being performances of _4&prime;33&Prime;_ in places where other bands happen to be playing
23 link: music-433
24 prev:
25 - title: Worse looking over
26 link: worse-looking-over
27 - title: Riptide of memory
28 link: riptide_memory
29...
30
31| If Justin Bieber isn't going for the sixteenth
32| chapel, I'm not either. I admit he is my role
33| model. He's so current, so fresh and so new,
34| and Michelangelo is so old, his art so dated.
35| Where is the love in those old paintings? All
36| I see is [creation][], [judgment][], and [death][]---
37
38| and I don't get the preoccupation with death.
39| I'm about life! Ever since my sixteenth
40| birthday, when me and my two sisters all
41| nearly died when the car I was driving rolled
42| into a creek. Even though I've [forgotten the date][],
43| I think it keeps me thinking on the new,
44
45| something Biebs would be proud of if he knew.
46| I look at him, and see the [opposite of death][]
47| in his eyes, his youthful smile: though someday
48| he may [be a father][], and later host a Sweet Sixteen
49| for his daughter (for whom I know he'll buy a Rolls),
50| death will never find him. Living will be all
51
52| he'll ever do, because it will be all
53| he'll ever need to do. He is the eternal new,
54| the [forever youth:][] this is the simple [role][]
55| of every celebrity, to let us forget death.
56| Bieber didn't make a mistake on the Sistine
57| Chapel's name. He merely showed that someday
58
59| all old names must go, that on some day
60| a name must die so that the thing, which is all
61| that matters, can stay as it was in the sixteenth
62| century: fresh, ostentatious, and brand new.
63| In a way, [the name becomes a Christ][], experiencing death
64| so the world doesn't have to. But I am wary of this role
65
66| for a name. It seems a name gives meaning, rolls
67| the general idea together with the concrete, daily
68| toil of the mundane. Are not life and death
69| intertwined? Is not everything tied up all
70| with everything? I guess I'm saying the new
71| necessarily comes from the old, as every sixteen-
72
73| year-old has a parent. [Life rolls to death][], and all
74| is tied together. Each day is born of night, and dies so new
75| morning can occur. Even the sixteenth chapel holds death.
76
77[role]: words-meaning.html
78[death]: deathstrumpet.html
79[opposite of death]: death-zone.html
80[creation]: creation-myth.html
81[judgment]: movingsideways.html
82[forgotten the date]: riptide_memory.html
83[be a father]: i-am.html
84[forever youth:]: about-the-author.html
85[the name becomes a Christ]: nothing-is-ever-over.html
86[Life rolls to death]: ouroboros_memory.html
diff --git a/text/snow.txt b/text/snow.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..a565778 --- /dev/null +++ b/text/snow.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,57 @@
1---
2title: Snow
3genre: prose
4
5id: snow
6toc: "Snow"
7
8project:
9 title: "Buildings out of air: Paul in the Woods"
10 class: paul
11 order: 23
12 next:
13 - title: Reports
14 link: reports
15 - title: Stagnant
16 link: stagnant
17 prev:
18 - title: Man
19 link: man
20 - title: Shed
21 link: shed
22...
23
24_[I don't care if they burn][]_ he wrote on his last blank notecard.
25He'd have to go to the Office Supply Store tomorrow after work.
26
27He looked at what he'd written.
28He'd been thinking about this for a while, felt the frustration build slowly like a [thundercloud][] in the back of his mind.
29He thought he should write something else on the card, but everything he thought of seemed too confessional or too real compromising.
30[He didn't want anyone, not even the notecards, to know what he was thinking.][thinking]
31He decided to try for more of an interview with the paper.
32
33_Why?_ asked the notecard.
34_Because there is nothing important on any of them_ he wrote back.
35_What do you mean?
36You have some good stuff in that top drawer there._
37He looked in the top drawer.
38It was stuffed full of notecards in no organization.
39He could see bits and pieces of thoughts like leaves crunched underfoot in autumn.
40_It will take so much organization_ he wrote.
41
42_Why is organization important?
43Remember the trees, [how they formed rows][] without trying.
44No matter how the ideas fall, they make something.
45[The snow][] [does that too][]_ he wrote.
46_It doesn't try to make anything but it does._
47
48_No the snow is different_ the notecard was annoyed.
49_The snow is a blank canvas that humans build into shapes or doppelgangers.
50It makes nothing on its own._
51
52[I don't care if they burn]: fire.html
53[thundercloud]: serengeti.html
54[thinking]: lappel-du-vide.html
55[how they formed rows]: axe.html
56[The snow]: one-hundred-lines.html
57[does that too]: weplayedthosegamestoo.html
diff --git a/text/something-simple.txt b/text/something-simple.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..1c5f328 --- /dev/null +++ b/text/something-simple.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,29 @@
1---
2title: "Let's start with something simple:"
3genre: verse
4
5id: something-simple
6toc: "Something simple"
7
8project:
9 title: Autocento of the breakfast table
10 class: autocento
11...
12
13| in mammals the ratio between bladder size
14| and urethra is such that it takes
15| all of them the same time to piss. Take
16| for example the fact that Fibonnacci
17| numbers show up everywhere. How can you
18| look at this at all of this all of
19| these facts and tell me to my face there
20| is no God? And yet there isn't
21| you murmer quietly into my ear over
22| and over like a low tide sounding
23| its lonely waves on an abandoned beach.
24| The ocean that birthed us holds us
25| still. We are tied, you and I, together
26| in her arms. The [moon, caring father,][moon]
27| looks down from a dispassionate sky.
28
29[moon]: moon-drowning.html
diff --git a/text/spittle.txt b/text/spittle.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..9251580 --- /dev/null +++ b/text/spittle.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,33 @@
1---
2title: Spittle
3genre: verse
4
5id: spittle
6toc: "Spittle"
7
8project:
9 title: Elegies for alternate selves
10 class: elegies
11 order: 22
12 prev:
13 - title: The shipwright
14 link: shipwright
15 next:
16 - title: The squirrel
17 link: squirrel
18...
19
20| My body is attached to your body by a thin spittle of thought.
21| When you turn away from me, my thought is broken
22| and forms anew with something else. Ideas are drool.
23| Beauty has been slobbered over far too long. [God][]
24| is a tidal wave of bodily fluid. Even the flea has some
25| vestigial wetness. We live in a world fleshy and dark,
26| and moist as a nostril. Is conciousness only a watery-eyed
27| romantic, crying softly into his [shirt-sleeve][]? Is not reason
28| a square-jawed businessman with a briefcase full of memory?
29| I want to kiss the world to make it mine. I want to become
30| a Judas to reality, betray it with the wetness of emotion.
31
32[God]: howithappened.html
33[shirt-sleeve]: lovesong.html
diff --git a/text/squirrel.txt b/text/squirrel.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..25ab46e --- /dev/null +++ b/text/squirrel.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,38 @@
1---
2title: The squirrel
3genre: verse
4
5id: squirrel
6toc: "The squirrel"
7
8project:
9 title: Elegies for alternate selves
10 class: elegies
11 order: 23
12 prev:
13 - title: Spittle
14 link: spittle
15 next:
16 - title: Swan song
17 link: swansong
18...
19
20| He is so full in himself:
21| how far down the branch to run,
22| how long to jump, when to grab the air
23| and catch in it and turn, and land on branch
24| so gracefully it's like dying, alone
25| and warm in a bed next to a summer window
26| and the [birds singing][]. And on that branch there
27| is the squirrel dancing among the branches
28| and you think *What if he fell?* but he won't
29| because he's a squirrel and that's what
30| they do, [dance][] and never fall. It was erased
31| long ago from the squirrel, even
32| the possibility of falling was erased
33| from his being by the slow inexorable evolution
34| of squirrels, that is why all squirrels
35| are so full in themselves, full in who they are.
36
37[birds singing]: mountain.html
38[dance]: movingsideways.html
diff --git a/text/stagnant.txt b/text/stagnant.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..0ff676b --- /dev/null +++ b/text/stagnant.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,45 @@
1---
2title: Stagnant
3genre: prose
4
5id: stagnant
6toc: "Stagnant"
7
8project:
9 title: "Buildings out of air: Paul in the Woods"
10 class: paul
11 order: 27
12 next:
13 - title: Building
14 link: building
15 - title: Stump
16 link: stump
17 prev:
18 - title: Options
19 link: options
20 - title: Snow
21 link: snow
22...
23
24"Riding the bus to work is a good way to think or to read" Paul thought to himself on the bus ride to work.
25His thoughts couldn't become real to him because he didn't want to look insane to everyone else on the bus.
26His thoughts came to him like someone [yelling over a hard wind][].
27He was trying to write them on his memory but the act of writing was easier and more immediate than that of listening.
28He was afraid that when he looked at his memory later he wouldn't be able to read what was written.
29
30"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."
31He could barely hear the voice [yelling to him over the wind][].
32"Speak up" he thought to the voice, then remembered it was his own.
33He wished he'd remembered a book to read.
34
35He looked at his hands to pass the time.
36[They were dry in the winter air][] that had seeped its way into the bus.
37He tried to figure out how many hours they would make it before cracking and bleeding.
38"Maybe three or four" he thought accidentally out loud.
39He looked around expecting stares from everyone on the seat.
40[He was surprised that he was the only one on the bus.][]
41
42[He was surprised that he was the only one on the bus.]: stayed-on-the-bus.html
43[yelling over a hard wind]: sense-of-it.html
44[They were dry in the winter air]: hands.html
45[yelling to him over the wind]: cold-wind.html
diff --git a/text/statements-frag.txt b/text/statements-frag.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..eae6f8f --- /dev/null +++ b/text/statements-frag.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,70 @@
1---
2title: Statements
3subtitle: a fragment
4genre: prose
5
6id: statements-frag
7toc: "Statements"
8
9project:
10 title: Autocento of the breakfast table
11 class: autocento
12...
13
14## I. Eli {#eli}
15
16"Can one truly describe an emotion?" Eli asked me over the walkie-talkie.
17He was in the bathroom, & had taken the walkie-talkie in with him absent-mindedly.
18I could hear sounds of his piss hitting the toilet water.
19
20"I can hear you peeing," I said.
21He didn't answer so I said in apology, "It's okay. Humans are sexually dimorphic."
22I was sitting on my blue baby blanket texting Jon, who was funny and amicable over the phone.
23He made a three-message joke about greedy lawyers and I would have been laughing if not for my embarrassment toward Eli.
24He 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.
25Presently I heard some muffled noise as he turned on his iPod.
26I guessed he didn't feel like talking so I stayed on my blanket watching the _Price is Right_ and texting Jon.
27
28Drew Carrey was doing his wrap-up speech on TV when Eli finally came out of his room, red puffy streaks covering his face.
29His eyes and nose were red too, which was almost festive against the pale green and white of the [wallpaper][].
30I 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.
31He was staring at my right shoulder as he said, "Go home now."
32
33"What?"
34
35"[I said go home now][].
36I don't want you here anymore, because I just remembered I have someone coming over and I have to clean."
37
38"Look, Eli, I'm sorry---"
39
40"It doesn't have anything to do with you, I swear.
41Just go, okay? [Go home now][]."
42
43I got up and tried to give him a hug but he withdrew from me sharply.
44So I walked around the coffee table as he sat down, not looking at me anymore, and stared at the blank TV.
45The blanket I had been sitting in was crumpled next to him like a dead bird.
46I opened my mouth but thought better of talking, and closed the door behind me slowly.
47
48## II. Dimorphic {#dimorphic .verse}
49
50[Oranges][]. Poison. A compromise \
51between Mary & [Judas][]. Blue \
52baby blankets swaddling greedy lawyers.
53
54Can one truly describe an emotion? \
55I cut my ankle with a razor blade. \
56I can only go one at a time. Humanity \
57has a seething mass of eels \
58for a brain, mating in the water so forcefully \
59that it could [drown you under the moon][].
60
61## III. Declaration of Poetry {#declaration-of-poetry}
62
63You have to go one line at a time, and you have to start on the first or second line.
64
65[Judas]: spittle.html
66[wallpaper]: wallpaper.html
67[I said go home now]: lappel-du-vide.html
68[Go home now]: riptide_memory.html
69[Oranges]: seasonal-affective-disorder.html
70[drown you under the moon]: moon-drowning.html
diff --git a/text/stayed-on-the-bus.txt b/text/stayed-on-the-bus.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..9e69491 --- /dev/null +++ b/text/stayed-on-the-bus.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,28 @@
1---
2title: Stayed on the bus too long
3genre: verse
4
5id: stayed-on-the-bus
6toc: "Stayed on the bus too long"
7
8project:
9 title: Autocento of the breakfast table
10 class: autocento
11...
12
13| It was a [gamble][]
14| I lost---thought I could get closer
15| than the library, stayed
16| on past the admin building,
17| back down the hill to my beginning,
18| the driver's second-to-last stop.
19| [I have to walk now][],
20| through the wind and sun, past
21| [traffic][] moving merrily along
22| taking their own gambles
23| staying on or getting off
24| too soon.
25
26[gamble]: hard-game.html
27[I have to walk now]: lappel-du-vide.html
28[traffic]: theoceanoverflowswithcamels.html
diff --git a/text/stump.txt b/text/stump.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..7f4e4fd --- /dev/null +++ b/text/stump.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,49 @@
1---
2title: Stump
3genre: prose
4
5id: stump
6toc: "Stump"
7
8project:
9 title: "Buildings out of air: Paul in the Woods"
10 class: paul
11 order: 34
12 next:
13 - title: Early
14 link: early
15 - title: Swear
16 link: swear
17 prev:
18 - title: Joke
19 link: joke
20 - title: Stagnant
21 link: stagnant
22...
23
24He walked into the woods for the first time in months.
25It was a bright summer day but under the canopy of leaves it was cool and quiet and twilight.
26[There was no sound but his footsteps, his breathing.][]
27Instead of an axe, his right hand clutched his notebook.
28His left was in his pocket.
29A pencil perched behind his ear.
30
31He walked aimlessly until coming over a short rise he saw a stump.
32He 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.
33Paul walked over to the stump and sat down.
34
35He looked up and tried to find a pattern in the placement of the trees.
36There was none.
37They grew randomly, beginning nowhere and ending in the same place.
38[A squirrel][] ran down one and up another for no reason.
39He opened his notebook and took his pencil from his ear but could think of nothing to write.
40
41A crow called hoarsely to another, something important.
42Paul looked up but could not see the black bird in the [leaves of the trees][].
43He looked back down to the cream-colored pages of his notebook.
44
45He was surprised that he'd written _YOU CANNOT DISCOVER ART_.
46
47[There was no sound but his footsteps, his breathing.]: music-433.html
48[A squirrel]: squirrel.html
49[leaves of the trees]: death-zone.html
diff --git a/text/swansong-alt.txt b/text/swansong-alt.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..523d937 --- /dev/null +++ b/text/swansong-alt.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,43 @@
1---
2title: Swansong
3subtitle: alternate version
4genre: verse
5
6id: swansong-alt
7toc: "Swan song (alternate)"
8
9project:
10 title: Autocento of the breakfast table
11 class: autocento
12...
13
14| This poem is dry like [chapped lips][].
15| [It is hard as teeth][]---hear the tapping?
16| It is the swan song of beauty, as all
17| swan songs are. [Reading][] it, you are
18| puzzled, perhaps a little repulsed.
19| Swans do not have teeth, nor do they sing.
20| A honking over the cliff is all
21| they can do, and that they do
22| badly. You don't know where I'm going.
23| You want to tell me, [You are not you][].
24| [You are the air the swan walks on.][]
25| You are the fringe of the curtain
26| [that separates me from you][]. I say
27| that you are no longer the temple,
28| that you have been through [fire][]
29| and are now less than ash. You are
30| the subtraction of yourself from
31| the world, [the air without a swan][].
32| Together, we are each other. You
33| and I have both nothing and everything
34| at once, we own the world and nothing in it.
35
36[chapped lips]: time-looks-up-to-the-sky.html
37[It is hard as teeth]: no-nothing.html
38[Reading]: poetry-time.html
39[You are not you]: about-the-author.html
40[You are the air the swan walks on.]: swansong.html
41[that separates me from you]: elegyforanalternateself.html
42[fire]: fire.html
43[the air without a swan]: finding-the-lion.html
diff --git a/text/swansong.txt b/text/swansong.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..feae305 --- /dev/null +++ b/text/swansong.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,39 @@
1---
2title: Swan song
3genre: verse
4
5id: swansong
6toc: "Swan song"
7
8project:
9 title: Elegies for alternate selves
10 class: elegies
11 order: 24
12 prev:
13 - title: The squirrel
14 link: squirrel
15 next:
16 - title: Telemarketer
17 link: telemarketer
18...
19
20| Swans fly overhead singing goodbye
21| to we [walkers of the earth][ithappened]. You point
22| to them in formation, you tell me
23| you are not you. [You are the air the swans
24| walk on][alt] as they journey like pilgrims
25| to a temple in the south. A curtain
26| there separates me from you, swans
27| from the air they fly through. I say
28| that you are no longer the temple,
29| that you have been through fire
30| and are now less than ash. You are
31| a [mirror][] of me, the [air without a swan][trumpet].
32| Together, we are each other. You
33| and I have both nothing and everything
34| at once. We own the world and nothing in it.
35
36[ithappened]: howithappened.html
37[mirror]: moongone.html
38[trumpet]: deathstrumpet.html
39[alt]: swansong-alt.html
diff --git a/text/swear.txt b/text/swear.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..cfecab3 --- /dev/null +++ b/text/swear.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,64 @@
1---
2title: Swear
3genre: prose
4
5id: swear
6toc: "Swear"
7
8project:
9 title: "Buildings out of air: Paul in the Woods"
10 class: paul
11 order: 25
12 next:
13 - title: Options
14 link: options
15 - title: Tapestry
16 link: tapestry
17 prev:
18 - title: Reports
19 link: reports
20 - title: Stump
21 link: stump
22...
23
24> [EVERYTHING CHANGES OR EVERYTHING STAYS THE SAME][]
25>
26> First, a history: I was writing my
27> thoughts in a book. I got a typewriter
28> and typing things in a book
29> became impossible. I began typing
30> on 4x6 notecards. I ran out of
31> ribbon in my typewriter. I wrote
32> on the 4x6 notecards. I bought a
33> new ribbon and new notecards. Now
34> again I am typing on notecards.
35>
36> What have I been typing?
37> Thoughts, impressions maybe, a log
38> of changes to my mental state. I
39> waited long enough and I began
40> recording them in the same way. If
41> I wait longer the ribbon will run
42> out again and I'll write again, on
43> notecards or in my book. The same
44> thoughts in different bodies.
45>
46> That's what it means, "Every
47> thing changes or everything stays
48> the same." It might as well be
49> "and." Local differences add up to
50> global identities. It's a [hoop][],
51> right? And we keep going around
52> and we think it's flat but it's
53> round like the Earth.
54
55
56Paul pushed his chair away from the [Writing Desk][] and stared at the notecard.
57He stood up, knocked his head on the lightbulb, swore.
58He pulled the notecard from his typewriter and crumpled it up with his left hand.
59With his right hand he reached in his pocket and pulled out his cigarettes.
60He put one in his mouth, threw the paper in the corner, grabbed his axe, went out into the woods.
61
62[EVERYTHING CHANGES OR EVERYTHING STAYS THE SAME]: planks.html
63[hoop]: ourobors_memory.html
64[Writing Desk]: finding-the-lion.html
diff --git a/text/table_contents.txt b/text/table_contents.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..b239979 --- /dev/null +++ b/text/table_contents.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,100 @@
1---
2title: Table of contents
3genre: table
4
5id: table_contents
6toc: "A table of contents"
7
8epigraph:
9 content: We are awash in the unseen and science has made us aware of the flood.
10 link: http://www.npr.org/blogs/13.7/2013/11/05/243081116/dark-matter-eludes-capture-science-and-the-unseen
11
12project:
13 title: Stark Raving
14 class: stark
15 order: 1
16 next:
17 - title: Ouroboros of memory
18 link: ouroboros_memory
19 - title: The Big Dipper
20 link: big-dipper
21...
22
23--- ---------------------------------------- --- ------------------------------------
24 4. [The look she gave me][] 4. Half-hours in heaven are three times
25 [that in hell][]
26
27 5. [Not out of anger][] 5. [Pay the toll][], mister, or nothing
28 can get done
29
30 6. [A desire to understand][] 6. [Misattributed][]
31
32 7. [Seven syllables amble][] 7. [Disassociated][]
33
34 8. [To drink at the pond][] 8. [Advice from a cereal box][]
35
36 9. [Two fall in and drown][] 9. [The challenges of][] a modern life
37
3810. [Odd-numbered ponies][] 10. Probability and the American
39 [Dream][]
40
4111. [Buck and Whinny in the moonlight][] 11. [Two friends throw dice][]
42
4312. [To die tomorrow][] 12. [Fears of death][]
44
4513. [To be everywhere][] 13. The [solipsist talks to God][]
46
4714. [All at one time: my motto][] 14. [A phone conversation][] following
48 receipt of an ill-timed love letter
49
5015. [Of a perfect world][] 15. Woody Allen at [the horse races][]
51
5216. [This morning the sun][] 16. Whether you say [good morning][] or
53 good night
54
5517. [Wandering through the window][] 17. A traveler [waiting on the mountain][]
56
5718. [Alights on my shoulder][] 18. The impenetrable object falls in
58 [love][]
59
60 1. [Liquid messenger][]
61
62 2. [After a gate closes, dogs bark][]
63
64 3. [Finding old men at dusk][]
65
66--- --------------------------------------- ---- -----------------------------------
67
68[The look she gave me]: ouroboros_memory.html
69[Not out of anger]: lappel-du-vide.html
70[A desire to understand]: boy_bus.html
71[Seven syllables amble]: i-think-its-you.html
72[To drink at the pond]: initial-conditions.html
73[Two fall in and drown]: love-as-god.html
74[Odd-numbered ponies]: worse-looking-over.html
75[Buck and Whinny in the moonlight]: sixteenth-chapel.html
76[To die tomorrow]: last-bastion.html
77[To be everywhere]: amber-alert.html
78[All at one time: my motto]: exasperated.html
79[Of a perfect world]: death-zone.html
80[This morning the sun]: big-dipper.html
81[Wandering through the window]: poetry-time.html
82[Alights on my shoulder]: moon-drowning.html
83[Liquid messenger]: music-433.html
84[After a gate closes, dogs bark]: riptide_memory.html
85[Finding old men at dusk]: about-the-author.html
86[A phone conversation]: phone.html
87[that in hell]: telemarketer.html
88[Pay the toll]: no-nothing.html
89[Misattributed]: howithappened.html
90[Disassociated]: howtoread.html
91[Advice from a cereal box]: cereal.html
92[The challenges of]: call-me-aural-pleasure.html
93[Dream]: in-bed.html
94[Two friends throw dice]: deadman.html
95[Fears of death]: seasonal-affective-disorder.html
96[solipsist talks to God]: boar.html
97[the horse races]: one-hundred-lines.html
98[good morning]: big-dipper.html
99[waiting on the mountain]: mountain.html
100[love]: lovesong.html
diff --git a/text/tapestry.txt b/text/tapestry.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..e621d90 --- /dev/null +++ b/text/tapestry.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,60 @@
1---
2title: Tapestry
3genre: prose
4
5id: tapestry
6toc: "Tapestry"
7
8project:
9 title: "Buildings out of air: Paul in the Woods"
10 class: paul
11 order: 17
12 next:
13 - title: Window
14 link: window
15 - title: Toilet
16 link: toilet
17 prev:
18 - title: Phone
19 link: phone
20 - title: Swear
21 link: swear
22...
23
24_Apparently typewriters need ribbon.
25Apparently ribbon is incredibly hard to find anymore because no one uses typewriters.
26Apparently I am writing my hymns from now on._
27So he was back to calling his notes "hymns."
28He looked up "hymns" in the dictionary.
29It said that a hymn was "an ode or song of praise or adoration."
30Praise or adoration to what? he asked himself.
31He thought maybe furniture.
32There was still a lot of notfurniture in what he was again calling his Writing Shack.
33
34The dictionary also had this to say about "hymn": that it was possibly related to the old Greek word for "[weave][]."
35"[Weave what][]" Paul wondered to himself.
36He wrote this down on a new notecard.
37_Apparently "hymn" means weave somehow.
38Or it used to.
39Or its cousin did.
40What is it weaving?
41Who is it weaving for?
42I remember in school we talked about Odysseus and his wife Penelope, who wove a tapestry every day just to take it apart at night.
43I forget why._
44
45_Maybe she wove the tapestry for Odysseus.
46Maybe she wove it for herself.
47What did she weave it of?
48[Memory][], maybe?
49[Or dream][]?
50I think these words make a kind of tapestry, or at least the thread it will be made of.
51I will weave a hymn to the gods of Literature, out of fiction.
52My furniture was a try at weaving, but I am shit at furniture.
53So writing it is again._
54
55He wrote _**NOTES FOR A HYMN**_ at the top of this notecard.
56
57[weave]: likingthings.html
58[Weave what]: roughgloves.html
59[Memory]: ouroboros_memory.html
60[Or dream]: in-bed.html
diff --git a/text/telemarketer.txt b/text/telemarketer.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..64f0dd2 --- /dev/null +++ b/text/telemarketer.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,66 @@
1---
2title: Telemarketer
3genre: prose
4
5id: telemarketer
6toc: "Telemarketer"
7
8project:
9 title: Elegies for alternate selves
10 class: elegies
11 order: 25
12 prev:
13 - title: Swan song
14 link: swansong
15 next:
16 - title: We played those games too
17 link: weplayedthosegamestoo
18...
19
20It was one of those nameless gray buildings that could be seen from the street only if Larry craned his neck to almost vertical.
21He never had, of course, having heard when he first arrived in the city that only tourists unaccustomed to tall buildings did so.
22He'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.
23
24Inside the building, the constant sound of recirculating dry air made Larry feel as though he were at some beach in hell, listening to the [ocean][], 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.
25The buzz of the fluorescent bulbs overhead sounded like the hot sun bearing down all day in this metaphor, a favorite of Larry's.
26
27His 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 [eagle perched][] on a mountainous crag much like the crag that was his desktop wallpaper.
28The walls were unadorned except for a few tacked-up papers in [report][] covers explaining his script.
29When Larry made a call to a potential customer it always went the same way:
30
31"Hi, Mr/Mrs (customer's name).
32My name is Larry and I'm with (client's name), and was just wondering if I could have a minute of your time?"
33
34"Oh, no, sir; I don't want whatever it is you're selling." (customer terminates call).
35
36Larry had only ever read the first line of the script on the wall.
37Sometimes 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.
38So when Jane said, "Sure, I have nothing better to do," he was thrown completely off guard.
39
40"Um, alright Mrs ... Mrs. Loring, I was wondering---"
41
42"It's Ms, not Mrs.
43Em ess.
44Miz.
45No 'r,' Larry."
46She sounded patient, as if she were used to correcting people about the particulars of her title.
47But how often can that happen?
48Larry thought, and he was suddenly deeply confused.
49
50"Oh, sorry, ma'am, uh, Miz Loring, but I wanted to know whether you'd like to, ah, buy some..."
51Larry 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.
52"Why don't you have anything better to do?"
53
54Immediately he knew it was the wrong question.
55Even 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.
56The 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.
57David 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.
58After 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.
59The world suddenly felt too small for Larry, or he too big for it.
60
61Quietly, with the same patience but with a [bigger pain][], 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.
62
63[ocean]: theoceanoverflowswithcamels.html
64[eagle perched]: mountain.html
65[bigger pain]: arspoetica.html
66[report]: reports.html
diff --git a/text/the-night-we-met.txt b/text/the-night-we-met.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..aa6d89c --- /dev/null +++ b/text/the-night-we-met.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,45 @@
1---
2title: The night we met, I was out of my mind
3subtitle: or lying in the dark
4genre: verse
5
6id: the-night-we-met
7toc: "The night we met, I was out of my mind"
8
9project:
10 title: Autocento of the breakfast table
11 class: autocento
12...
13
14| My head is [full of fire][], my tongue swollen,
15| pregnant with all the things I should've said
16| but didn't. Last night, we met each other
17| in the dark, remember? You told me time was
18
19| pregnant with all things. I should've said
20| something, to draw you out from your place
21| in the dark. Remember, you told me time was
22| only an illusion, [and memory was][] only
23
24| something to draw. You, out from your place,
25| I out from mine, that night, I believed in you.
26| Only illusion and memory were one, lying
27| [down on your couch][], through the night you drew
28
29| me out from mine. That night, I believed in you
30| when you told me you loved me. I lay
31| down on your couch. Through the night, you drew
32| a picture of our [future together][].
33
34| When you told me you loved me, I lied
35| [in the dark][]. Remember, you told me time was
36| [a picture of our future][] together.
37| My head is full of fire, [my tongue swollen][].
38
39[my tongue swollen]: plant.html
40[a picture of our future]: last-passenger.html
41[in the dark]: apollo11.html
42[future together]: one-hundred-lines.html
43[down on your couch]: early.html
44[and memory was]: riptide_memory.html
45[full of fire]: found-typewriter-poem.html
diff --git a/text/the-sea_the-beach.txt b/text/the-sea_the-beach.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..ef295dd --- /dev/null +++ b/text/the-sea_the-beach.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,44 @@
1---
2title: The sea and the beach
3genre: verse
4
5id: the-sea_the-beach
6toc: "The sea and the beach"
7
8project:
9 title: Autocento of the breakfast table
10 class: autocento
11...
12
13| Waiting for a reading to start
14| when there's nobody coming anyway
15| is like waiting [for the tide][]
16| to make some meaning of the beach.
17
18| The sea doesn't know or care
19| what the beach even is, let alone
20| its cares or its troubles, its
21| little nagging under-the-skin annoyances
22| [that make the beach the beach][].
23
24| Sandworms, for example, or those crabs
25| with big pincers on one side
26| but not the other. Those really get
27| the beach's gander up, but the sea
28| doesn't care. The sea
29
30| only wants to [caress][] the beach
31| with its [soft arms][], to tell the beach
32| how much it's loved by the sea,
33| that complex of water, salt, and
34| the moon's gravity, the mercury
35| rising up and down slowly, like a [yawn][].
36
37| The sea only cares about itself.
38| The beach lays there and takes it.
39
40[for the tide]: cold-wind.html
41[that make the beach the beach]: real-writer.html
42[caress]: plant.html
43[soft arms]: something-simple.html
44[yawn]: serengeti.html
diff --git a/text/theoceanoverflowswithcamels.txt b/text/theoceanoverflowswithcamels.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..451d652 --- /dev/null +++ b/text/theoceanoverflowswithcamels.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,43 @@
1---
2title: The ocean overflows with camels
3genre: verse
4
5id: theoceanoverflowswithcamels
6toc: "The ocean overflows with camels"
7
8project:
9 title: Elegies for alternate selves
10 class: elegies
11 order: 7
12 prev:
13 - title: Ars poetica
14 link: arspoetica
15 next:
16 - title: The boar
17 link: boar
18...
19
20| We found your [shirt][] deep in the dark water,
21| caught on the clothesline of sleeping pills.
22| Your head on the shore was streaming tears
23| like sleeves or the coronas of saints saved
24| from fire. The burning bush began crying
25| like a child who misses his mother. Traffic
26| slammed shut like an eye. God's mean [left hook][]
27| knocked us out, and we began swimming.
28| Bruises bloomed like algae on a lake.
29| Your [father][] beat your chest and screamed
30| for someone to open a window. The air
31| stopped breathing. Fish clogged its gills.
32| Birds sang too loudly, trying to drown out
33| your father's cries, but all their sweetness
34| was not enough. No polite noises will be made
35| anymore, he told us, clawing your breastbone.
36| He opened your heart to air again. Camels
37| flowed from you both like water from the rock.
38| God spoke up, but nobody listened to him.
39| We hung you up on the line to dry.
40
41[shirt]: lovesong.html
42[left hook]: roughgloves.html
43[father]: angeltoabraham.html
diff --git a/text/time-looks-up-to-the-sky.txt b/text/time-looks-up-to-the-sky.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..fa21d0a --- /dev/null +++ b/text/time-looks-up-to-the-sky.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,39 @@
1---
2title: Time looks up to the sky
3genre: verse
4
5id: time-looks-up-to-the-sky
6toc: "Time looks up to the sky"
7
8project:
9 title: Autocento of the breakfast table
10 class: autocento
11...
12
13| I wish I'd kissed you when I had the chance.
14| Your face hovering there, so near to mine,
15| your mouth pursed---what word was it you pronounced?
16
17| When I think about you, [something in my pants][]
18| tightens, and my thoughts run, and I realize
19| I should've kissed you when I had the chance.
20
21| I want that moment never to be past
22| like Keats's lovers on the grecian urn:
23| his mouth pursed, her figure turned to pronounce
24
25| her hips in ways that are not feminist.
26| But time strolls mildly on, not glancing at my
27| wish to kiss you when I had the chance,
28
29| whispered like a [beggar to a prince][]
30| outside his palace: time looks up to the sky,
31| purses his lips, and hears what I pronounce
32
33| but pays it little mind. If he would just
34| turn back, bend down, and follow my design,
35| I would have kissed you when I had the chance,
36| as your mouth pursed and you pronounced goodbye.
37
38[something in my pants]: howithappened.html
39[beggar to a prince]: about-the-author.html
diff --git a/text/todaniel.txt b/text/todaniel.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..d8e5788 --- /dev/null +++ b/text/todaniel.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,39 @@
1---
2title: To Daniel
3subtitle: an elaboration of a previous comment
4genre: verse
5
6id: todaniel
7toc: "To Daniel"
8
9project:
10 title: Elegies for alternate selves
11 class: elegies
12 order: 27
13 prev:
14 - title: We played those games too
15 link: weplayedthosegamestoo
16 next:
17 - title: "Death's trumpet"
18 link: deathstrumpet
19...
20
21| There are more modern ideals of beauty
22| than yours, young padawan. Jessica has
23| some assets, that I'll give you easily,
24| but in my women I prefer pizzazz.
25
26| I don't want to bring you down, or make you think
27| [that your perfected woman isn't so][trumpet].
28| It's just that, like Adam said, 2006
29| has come and gone. What did she do
30
31| in that year anyway? IMDB
32| has, surprisingly, none, though in '05
33| she's in four titles. _Sin City_
34| I've never seen, although from many I've
35
36| heard it's good. But it's still irrelevant---
37| no matter how comely, she lacks talent.
38
39[trumpet]: deathstrumpet.html
diff --git a/text/toilet.txt b/text/toilet.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..29bea22 --- /dev/null +++ b/text/toilet.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,39 @@
1---
2title: Toilet
3genre: prose
4
5id: toilet
6toc: "Toilet"
7
8project:
9 title: "Buildings out of air: Paul in the Woods"
10 class: paul
11 order: 11
12 next:
13 - title: Leg
14 link: leg
15 - title: Toothpaste
16 link: toothpaste
17 prev:
18 - title: Hands
19 link: hands
20 - title: Tapestry
21 link: tapestry
22...
23
24Paul only did his reading on the toilet.
25
26He 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.
27The article said that this model explains things like quantum entanglement, what it called "spooky action at a distance."
28
29After he finished, he ran back out to his Writing Shack and hammered out a Treatise on Literature as Spooky Action.
30His mind was reeling.
31He typed out an entire [notecard][] on the subject.
32
33He stopped to catch his breath.
34Reading it over, he realized he was completely wrong.
35"Paper is made from trees" he thought "and so is furniture."
36He 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.
37Were there other walls?
38
39[notecard]: treatise.html
diff --git a/text/toothpaste.txt b/text/toothpaste.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..3803496 --- /dev/null +++ b/text/toothpaste.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,49 @@
1---
2title: Toothpaste
3genre: prose
4
5id: toothpaste
6toc: "Toothpaste"
7
8project:
9 title: "Buildings out of air: Paul in the Woods"
10 class: paul
11 order: 36
12 next:
13 - title: Father
14 link: father
15 - title: Treatise
16 link: treatise
17 prev:
18 - title: Early
19 link: early
20 - title: Toilet
21 link: toilet
22...
23
24He couldn't [find a shirt][] to go to work in.
25They all had stains on them somewhere.
26He pulled out a vest to put on over the stains but somehow all of them were still visible.
27Most of them were unidentifiable but one he thought could have come from [that peach][] he ate two weeks before.
28Another looked like toothpaste but he was paranoid it was something else.
29
30When he took the bus into work he couldn't relax.
31He was paranoid everyone was staring at his stain and kept looking out the corners of his eyes to make sure they weren't.
32They didn't seem to be but they could also be looking away just as he looked at them.
33"The [Observation][] Paradox" he muttered to himself.
34
35Jill was the only one to notice the stain at work.
36She came around to his cubicle during a break because he dared not show his stain in the break room.
37"You have a stain on your shoulder" she said "it looks like toothpaste."
38"Do I" he feigned ignorance but [went red][] at the same time "I didn't see that there this morning."
39"How do you get toothpaste on your shoulder?"
40"I don't know skills I guess" he said and she grinned.
41"You know vinegar will take that out" she said "although I think I like it.
42You should start a museum of shirt stains!"
43"I don't have that many shirts with stains" he said frowning.
44"Yes you do" she said.
45
46[find a shirt]: no-nothing.html
47[that peach]: http://www.bartleby.com/198/1.html
48[Observation]: problems.html
49[went red]: statements-frag.html
diff --git a/text/treatise.txt b/text/treatise.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..54c2c2c --- /dev/null +++ b/text/treatise.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,68 @@
1---
2title: Treatise
3genre: prose
4
5id: treatise
6toc: "Treatise"
7
8project:
9 title: "Buildings out of air: Paul in the Woods"
10 class: paul
11 order: 15
12 next:
13 - title: Phone
14 link: phone
15 - title: Underwear
16 link: underwear
17 prev:
18 - title: Hardware
19 link: hardware
20 - title: Toothpaste
21 link: toothpaste
22...
23
24> TREATISE ON LITERATURE AS "SPOOKY
25> ACTION FROM A DISTANCE"
26>
27> There is this thing called "spooky
28> action at a distance." Einstein
29> mentioned it first I believe. It
30> is about how two electrons can act
31> like they are right next to each
32> other although they are very far
33> away (lightyears even). For a long
34> time this puzzled scientists until
35> someone (not Einstein) figured out
36> that maybe the universe is a
37> hologram or projection. So what
38> appears to be very far apart in
39> the hologram might actually be
40> very close in the substrate
41> reality.
42>
43> I want to talk about this
44> effect in literature. In literature
45> the writer writes words on a
46> substrate (paper) and later the
47> reader reads the same words off
48> the substrate. Although the writer
49> and reader might be very far apart
50> from each other in time and space,
51> they experience the same effect
52> from reading the words. Even the
53> writer reading his own words after
54> he has written them becomes a
55> reader and feels who he was at
56> that time, [like a ghost][].
57>
58> PROBLEMS:
59>
60> Maybe the substrate isn't
61> paper it's what the writing is
62> about. [Where is the hologram][]? Are
63> physics and literature comparable?
64> What if the universe isn't a
65> hologram what then?
66
67[like a ghost]: howtoread.html
68[Where is the hologram]: toilet.html
diff --git a/text/underwear.txt b/text/underwear.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..be60ebe --- /dev/null +++ b/text/underwear.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,46 @@
1---
2title: Underwear
3genre: prose
4
5id: underwear
6toc: "Underwear"
7
8project:
9 title: "Buildings out of air: Paul in the Woods"
10 class: paul
11 order: 3
12 next:
13 - title: Dream
14 link: dream
15 - title: Wallpaper
16 link: wallpaper
17 prev:
18 - title: Hymnal
19 link: hymnal
20 - title: Treatise
21 link: treatise
22...
23
24He dropped the penny in the dryer, turned it on, and turned around.
25"What" he called upstairs, pretending not to hear his mother's [question][] over the noise of the dryer.
26He 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.
27"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.
28
29"Did you get them" she asked when he opened the basement door to the kitchen.
30She was sitting at the table playing [dominoes][].
31"Get what" he asked.
32She peered at him and said "my underwear."
33
34"Oh I didn't see them" he answered.
35He 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.
36"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.
40Where did you put them?"
41
42[question]: exasperated.html
43[dominoes]: phone.html
44[crusty mayonnaise]: riptide_memory.html
45[looked at her]: angeltoabraham.html
46[Look at me]: found-typewriter-poem.html
diff --git a/text/walking-in-the-rain.txt b/text/walking-in-the-rain.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..e8b3287 --- /dev/null +++ b/text/walking-in-the-rain.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,29 @@
1---
2title: Walking in the rain
3genre: verse
4
5id: walking-in-the-rain
6toc: "Walking in the rain"
7
8project:
9 title: Autocento of the breakfast table
10 class: autocento
11...
12
13| I can walk through the rain, [that rare occurrence][]
14| and never be hit by a drop. There is a space around me
15| that refuses to be [penetrated][] by weather of any kind
16| be it rain or snow or sunshine. [Is it cold I hear you][]
17| asking in your voice soft as a breeze. No it is not
18| [particularly cold][]. If I were to describe it as warm
19| [I would be lying as well][]. If I were to pretend I heard
20| you, far-off, mirage, breeze on the horizon, [no truth][]
21| would ever be said to have come from [my frozen lips][].
22
23[that rare occurrence]: collage-instrument.html
24[Is it cold I hear you]: seasonal-affective-disorder.html
25[particularly cold]: cold-wind.html
26[I would be lying as well]: todaniel.html
27[no truth]: no-nothing.html
28[my frozen lips]: swansong-alt.html
29[penetrated]: lovesong.html
diff --git a/text/wallpaper.txt b/text/wallpaper.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..364e166 --- /dev/null +++ b/text/wallpaper.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,48 @@
1---
2title: Wallpaper
3genre: prose
4
5id: wallpaper
6toc: "Wallpaper"
7
8project:
9 title: "Buildings out of air: Paul in the Woods"
10 class: paul
11 order: 31
12 next:
13 - title: Punch
14 link: punch
15 - title: Window
16 link: window
17 prev:
18 - title: X-ray
19 link: x-ray
20 - title: Underwear
21 link: underwear
22...
23
24He didn't go back into the shed for a long time.
25His hatchet was in there, and his axe.
26He didn't want to face them.
27His papers, he decided, could wait in the top drawer for a while before being looked at again.
28The pain medication made him loopy.
29He couldn't think as well as he was used to, which wasn't well to begin with.
30Even saying his thoughts out loud, it was as though they were on the [TV in the next room][].
31Someone was cheering.
32They had just won a car.
33
34His mother came in with lunch on a tray.
35It was hot tomato soup and a grilled cheese sandwich.
36"What have you been doing all day" she asked "you haven't just been staring at the wall have you?"
37He had been staring at the wall most of the day.
38[The wall without the window on it, with the woodgrain wallpaper.][]
39"No" he said.
40"What have you been doing then" she asked setting the tray down on his lap.
41He sat up and almost upset it, but she caught it before it spilled anything.
42"Composing in my head" he lied. "A novel of my experience."
43
44"[Do you really think anyone will want to read about you][do you]" she asked and walked out of the room.
45
46[TV in the next room]: statements-frag.html
47[The wall without the window on it, with the woodgrain wallpaper.]: in-bed.html
48[do you]: http://www.confederacyofdunces.com/
diff --git a/text/weplayedthosegamestoo.txt b/text/weplayedthosegamestoo.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..a96dd98 --- /dev/null +++ b/text/weplayedthosegamestoo.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,43 @@
1---
2title: We played those games too
3genre: verse
4
5id: weplayedthosegamestoo
6toc: "We played those games too"
7
8project:
9 title: Elegies for alternate selves
10 class: elegies
11 order: 25
12 prev:
13 - title: Telemarketer
14 link: telemarketer
15 next:
16 - title: 'To Daniel: an elaboration'
17 link: todaniel
18...
19
20| I saw two Eskimo girls playing a game
21| blowing on each other's' vocal cords to make music
22| on the tundra. I thought about how
23| once we played the same game
24| and the sounds blowing over the cords of our throats
25| was the same as a wind over frozen prairie.
26| We are the Eskimo girls who played
27| the game that night to keep ourselves warm.
28| I run my hands over [my daughter][]'s
29| voicebox as she hums a song
30| about a seal and about killing the seal and about
31| skinning it and rendering the blubber
32| into clear oil to light lamps.
33| I remember you are my lamp. She remembers
34| you although you left before she arrived.
35| I can never tell her about you.
36| I will never be able to express that taste of your oil
37| as we [pushed our throats together][spittle].
38| I will never be able to say how
39| we share this blemish like conjoined twins.
40| I will fail you always to remember you.
41
42[my daughter]: and.html
43[spittle]: spittle.html
diff --git a/text/what-we-are-made-of.txt b/text/what-we-are-made-of.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..2bbceef --- /dev/null +++ b/text/what-we-are-made-of.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,94 @@
1---
2title: What we are made of
3genre: prose
4
5id: what-we-are-made-of
6toc: "What we are made of"
7
8project:
9 title: Autocento of the breakfast table
10 class: autocento
11...
12
13There is a cave just outside of Flagstaff made from ancient lava flows.
14We went inside it to where the darkness was a presence, it walked with us like a Christ, our footsteps fell dead on its walls.
15We learned what space felt like, and drowning, and being crushed, and going blind and deaf.
16We made up words to push the feeling away, to goad it like mockingbirds fighting hawks.
17We called it creepy to its face.
18It stared back dispassionate.
19
20In a bathroom I know there is a low thrumming that comes from the air ducts in the ceiling.
21It comforts me in the same way the smell of toilet-water calms my stomach, it is a sound so close to quiet, so close to the porcelain whiteness of the toilet, it pushes all other noise away.
22It is deafening quiet in its most real form, its most realizable form.
23
24The eggs on the floor, broken.
25Not the eggs in their journey to the floor or from the farm or from the hen on the farm, in the cage, glowing under fluorescent lights, its neighbors pressed to its body, rotten-smelling, grotesque.
26Not the fateful meeting with the floor.
27Not the long wait in darkness for the fluorescent dawn, cacophonous with pain and smell.
28None of this: the sunlight on the kitchen tile, the refrigerator softly humming, the eggs on the floor.
29The yolks glistening.
30
31I compose with music best.
32Under its meaninglessness [I am able to hear the silence][], a different meaninglessness, a somehow-deeper meaninglessness, the inverse of repeating a word until it is only sound.
33I can hear the taboo, the never-spoken, unacknowledged.
34I write to drown its sound, with the scratching of my pen.
35
36Silence lies underneath us all in the same way \
37the Nile has a river underneath ten times as large \
38(though this is an urban legend, apparently) \
39
40I threw a party in my dream and went to the bathroom, down a long dark hallway.
41I began to leave and noticed the bathtub full of stuffed animals in a heap.
42I examined them each in turn: an elephant, a tiger, each backgrounded by white tile.
43A warthog sat at the top of the heap.
44It caught my eye, I stared, it slowly winked, sneering.
45I reached out my finger and poked it, like the Pillsbury Doughboy.
46It responded in kind, chuckling.
47I woke with a start, terrified.
48It had made no sound.
49
50There are at least two kinds of silence, in the same way that there are at least two kinds of sadness.
51There is the silence of after, the staring, open-mouthed silence, the what-do-we-do-now silence.
52There is the silence of before, the still before rainfall, the just-woken-up.
53
54There is, now I'm thinking about it, the silence of between:
55the waiting room after the heart attack,
56after the phone call,
57after the hurried drive,
58the fast walking down hospital hallways,
59the finding the room,
60my family,
61their faces the silence of after,
62the TV quietly playing _Maurie_,
63the silence underneath that; the waiting room _before_ the doctor comes in,
64tells us what happened,
65the chances,
66before my parents drive down,
67their three long hours in the car,
68before we become the Hospital People for five days,
69camped-out,
70loud,
71cackling,
72crying,
73doing crosswords,
74watching her die.
75
76The silence of wondering whether we could've known each other better.
77
78The silence of the long trip we prefer to believe she's gone on, which is really the silence of her absence.
79
80The eggs on the floor, broken.
81
82In other dreams, all I've watched all of my family dying.
83My father I remember best: he was on the wicker rocking chair on the porch, staring at the back yard, the evergreen trees in a magic triangle, their branches intertwined.
84We were all on the porch, and I heard like a far-away bell the moment of his death.
85I woke up crying, my throat closed with grief.
86
87Leaving after the goodbye at the hotel, [realizing I won't be home][] until Christmas, that I'm on my own long trip, someone on the radio station I'm listening to in the car screws up transferring tapes, broadcasts dead air.
88The silence yawns like a chasm, lasting for years.
89[The wind picks me up and carries me away][], I see everything from a great height, I see the future.
90I'm waiting.
91
92[I am able to hear the silence]: music-433.html
93[realizing I won't be home]: lappel-du-vide.html
94[The wind picks me up and carries me away]: riptide_memory.html
diff --git a/text/when-im-sorry-i.txt b/text/when-im-sorry-i.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..aaf7f30 --- /dev/null +++ b/text/when-im-sorry-i.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,37 @@
1---
2title: When I'm sorry I wash dishes
3genre: verse
4
5id: when-im-sorry-i
6toc: "Whem I'm sorry I wash dishes"
7
8project:
9 title: Autocento of the breakfast table
10 class: autocento
11...
12
13| Your casserole dish takes the longest:
14| it has some baked-in crust from when you
15| cooked chicken last night. Washing it
16| allows me to think about this poem's title
17| and the first few lines. Now that I've
18| written them down, I've [forgotten the rest][].
19
20| While scraping at something with my finger-
21| nail, I catch myself wondering again whether
22| you'll thank me for washing your dishes.
23| I realize that this would defeat the point
24| of my gesture, that this has destroyed
25| all good thoughts I've had about saying
26
27| "I'm sorry." This, [this is the reason][] why
28| I am always apologizing: because I never
29| mean it, because there is always, in [some
30| attic][attic], a thought roaming that says, insists:
31
32| "I've done nothing wrong, and I deserve
33| all I can take, and more than that."
34
35[this is the reason]: http://plagiarist.com/poetry/1703/
36[forgotten the rest]: elegyforanalternateself.html
37[attic]: real-writer.html
diff --git a/text/window.txt b/text/window.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..bf4b2aa --- /dev/null +++ b/text/window.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,59 @@
1---
2title: Window
3genre: prose
4
5id: window
6toc: "Window"
7
8project:
9 title: "Buildings out of air: Paul in the Woods"
10 class: paul
11 order: 18
12 next:
13 - title: Question
14 link: question
15 - title: Writing
16 link: writing
17 prev:
18 - title: Tapestry
19 link: tapestry
20 - title: Wallpaper
21 link: wallpaper
22...
23
24_**[HYMN 386: JOKES][]**_
25
26_"[Tell us a joke][]" everyone asks of the clown.
27He sits on a log and begins to think.
28Everyone waits gap-mouthed in anticipation.
29A slight breeze ruffles the clown's coat, his pompom buttons, [his bright red hair][].
30His nose becomes redder in the cold.
31Hours pass.
32All but the most dedicated of joke listeners leave him to rot ~~for all they may care~~._
33
34_The clown opens his mouth to speak but no words come out.
35A tear falls down his cheek, and another.
36He begins to sob.
37The last joke listener comes over to comfort him.
38She puts a hand on his shoulder.
39He looks up at her, red face, red nose, white lips, and says ~~"Thank you."~~
40He vanishes from the clearing.
41The last joke listener sits on the log and looks up at the sky.
42[The moon is full.][]
43The world creaks on its axis._
44
45Paul looked up to the space on the wall where a window should be.
46The shadow of his face wavered in the candle light.
47He looked back down at the card he'd been writing on.
48He read the card.
49He crossed out the _for all they may care_ in the first paragraph, and _"Thank you"_ from the second one.
50"[What could he say][]" he thought to himself.
51"What could he possibly say to her."
52He went outside to clear his head with a cigarette.
53He took his axe with him this time.
54
55[Tell us a joke]: joke.html
56[HYMN 386: JOKES]: hymnal.html
57[his bright red hair]: ronaldmcdonald.html
58[The moon is full.]: moon-drowning.html
59[What could he say]: elegyforanalternateself.html
diff --git a/text/words-irritable-reaching.txt b/text/words-irritable-reaching.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..07b5ef9 --- /dev/null +++ b/text/words-irritable-reaching.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,55 @@
1---
2title: Words and their irritable reaching
3genre: prose
4
5id: words-irritable-reaching
6toc: "Words and their irritable reaching"
7
8project:
9 title: Autocento of the breakfast table
10 class: autocento
11...
12
13Somewhere I remember reading advice for beginning writers not to show their work to anyone, at least that in the early stages.
14The author argued that it took all of the power out of the idea, like a pressure-release valve, before any of that creative power got to be applied to the page.
15It made me think of "[Meditation at Legunitas][]," when Hass writes "that each particular erases / the luminous clarity of a general idea."
16As a self-confessed General Idea person, I identify with the remark: it does seem as though, no matter how lofty the idea I originally have for a poem, once I sit down to write the thing I quickly get bogged down in the details, the particulars.
17I guess the writer of that lost article must work the same way, leading to their advice: if the "luminous clarity of a general idea" is so fragile that just beginning to write it down ruins it somehow, _telling_ people about it is even worse.
18
19But back to that Robert Hass poem: while he does say that thing about the "luminous clarity of a general idea," and he adds to it that "[a word is elegy][] to what it signifies," his tone is lightly chiding this philosophy.
20He opens his poem with "All the new thinking is about loss. / In this it resembles all the old thinking," which to my mind lampoons both the new and the old thinking for not having anything new, ultimately, to say.
21He attributes these thoughts to a friend, whose voice carried "a thin wire of grief, a tone / almost querulous" about that loss of luminous clarity.
22The speaker of Hass's poem remembers a woman he made love to, once, and this image takes over the poem in all its specificity, from "her small shoulders" to his "childhood river / with its island willows," to "the way her hands dismantled bread."
23
24Even in disproving his friend's remarks through his imagery, the speaker of "Meditation at Legunitas" admits that "It hardly had to do with her"---and here is the heart of what Hass is saying about poetry.
25A poem hardly has to do with what it's written about, on the surface level; as Richard Hugo says it in [a famous essay][], a poem has a "triggering subject" and it has a "real or generated subject," which for Hugo in "Meditation at Legunitas" is something about the way that not only general ideas, but particulars, such as the body or hands or "the thing her father said that hurt her," which is such a beautiful generality that is somehow also a particular truth, are luminous to poetry and to life-as-lived.
26The philosophers can say what they want, but we experience the world bodily and particularly to ourselves.
27
28There's still a problem with language, however, to which Hass speaks by the end of his poem, with those repetitions of "blackberry, blackberry, blackberry," in that, as Jack Gilbert says in his poem "[The Forgotten Dialect of the Heart][]," "How astonishing it is that language can almost mean, / but frightening that it does not quite."
29There is still that "[irritable reaching][] after fact & reason" that language, as communication, requires---I think Keats would agree that he wrote about a near-unattainable ideal in his letter that only Shakespeare and maybe Coleridge and a few others could achieve, this "Negative Capability."
30Gilbert furthers Keats in asserting that no matter what we write, "the words / Get it wrong," that utterance is itself that irritable reaching.
31
32In Gilbert's poem, though, he does reach after something.
33In the second half of the poem he begins to imagine what the "mysterious Sumerian tablets" could be as poetry, instead of just "business records:"
34
35> [...] My joy is the same as twelve \
36> Ethiopian goats standing in the morning light. \
37> O Lord, thou art slabs of salt and ingots of copper, \
38> as grand as ripe barley under the wind's labor. \
39> Her breasts are six white oxen loaded with bolts \
40> of long-fibered Egyptian cotton. My love is a hundred \
41> pitchers of honey. Shiploads of thuya are what \
42> my body wants to say to your body. Giraffes are this \
43> desire in the dark.
44
45This is my favorite part of the poem, and I think it's because Gilbert, like Hass, reaches for the specific in the general; he brings huge ideas like the Lord or Love or Joy into the specific images of salt, copper, or honey, or like he says at the end of his poem: "What we feel most has / no name but amber, archers, cinnamon, horses and birds."
46This, ultimately, is what Keats was getting at, and Hugo, too: that the real subject of any poetry is not capturable in the words of the poem, but that rather a poem speaks around its subject.
47To be honest, all [art][] may do this.
48What sets a poem apart is its honesty about that fact.
49
50[Meditation at Legunitas]: http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/177014
51[a word is elegy]: words-meaning.html
52[a famous essay]: http://ualr.edu/rmburns/RB/hugosubj.html
53[The Forgotten Dialect of the Heart]: http://www.smith.edu/poetrycenter/poets/theforgottendialect.html
54[irritable reaching]: http://www.mrbauld.com/negcap.html
55[art]: art.html
diff --git a/text/words-meaning.txt b/text/words-meaning.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..06747a1 --- /dev/null +++ b/text/words-meaning.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,43 @@
1---
2title: Words and meaning
3genre: prose
4
5id: words-meaning
6toc: "Words and meaning"
7
8project:
9 title: Elegies for alternate selves
10 class: elegies
11 order: 4
12 prev:
13 - title: And
14 link: and
15 next:
16 - title: On seeing the panorama of the Apollo 11 landing site
17 link: apollo11
18...
19
20"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."
21In a similar vein, Hass's "Meditation at Legunitas" states, "A word is elegy to what it signifies."
22These 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.
23
24Words are the inevitable byproduct of an analytic mind.
25Humans are constantly classifying and reclassifying ideas, objects, animals, people, into ten thousand arbitrary categories.
26A 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 [disingenuous][].
27But 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.
28Language 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.
29Most of the time I think of language as limiting, as defining a thing as the [inverse of everything][] is not.
30
31In this way, "everything is everything" becomes "everything is nothing," which is another thing I like to say and something that pisses people off.
32To me, infinity and zero are the same, two ways of looking at the same point on the circle---of numbers, of the universe, whatever.
33Maybe 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.
34I 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.
35A 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.
36A poem is doing this and coming back and showing what happened as it happened.
37Exegesis 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.
38A poem is a kernel of existence.
39It is a description of the kernel. [It is][].
40
41[disingenuous]: likingthings.html
42[inverse of everything]: i-am.html
43[It is]: arspoetica.html
diff --git a/text/worse-looking-over.txt b/text/worse-looking-over.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..08a32db --- /dev/null +++ b/text/worse-looking-over.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,49 @@
1---
2title: Worse looking over
3genre: verse
4
5id: worse-looking-over
6toc: "Worse looking over"
7
8project:
9 title: Stark Raving
10 class: stark
11 order: 4
12 next:
13 - title: The Sixteenth Chapel
14 link: sixteenth-chapel
15 - title: Something about the nature of poetry and time
16 link: poetry-time
17 prev:
18 - title: Love as God
19 link: love-as-god
20 - title: The moon is drowning
21 link: moon-drowning
22...
23
24| [The radio is screaming the man][]
25| on the radio will not be quiet he is
26| pushed far into the background
27| while some NPR talkers murmur over
28| his screaming he lost something
29| very important. He says it over
30| and over but they do not listen
31| they think of their children at home
32| lying [in bed][] dreaming sweet
33| childhood one of them is staying over
34| at a friend's house they are staying
35| up late they never want it to be over
36| not like the man. His life on the radio
37| will be the only one he ever has
38| his life it is wasted he's being spoken over
39| such pain is in his voice. I wish you
40| could hear it. [It's something never over][].
41| Suffering everywhere always and over it
42| the same serene murmur of the comfortable
43| distracted or worse looking over
44| the [shoulder][] and quietly looking away.
45
46[The radio is screaming the man]: moon-drowning.html
47[in bed]: in-bed.html
48[It's something never over]: nothing-is-ever-over.html
49[shoulder]: last-passenger.html
diff --git a/text/writing.txt b/text/writing.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..12381ab --- /dev/null +++ b/text/writing.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,41 @@
1---
2title: Writing
3genre: prose
4
5id: writing
6toc: "Writing"
7
8project:
9 title: "Buildings out of air: Paul in the Woods"
10 class: paul
11 order: 7
12 next:
13 - title: Notes
14 link: notes
15 - title: X-ray
16 link: x-ray
17 prev:
18 - title: Leaf
19 link: leaf
20 - title: Window
21 link: window
22...
23
24He sat down at his writing desk and removed his new pen from its plastic wrapping.
25He remembered how to fill it from _[The View from Saturday][]_, which he'd read as a kid.
26It had been one of his favorite books.
27He 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)][ms] Samovar.
28He smiled as he opened the lid on the ink well he'd just bought.
29
30He dipped his pen in the inkwell, screwed the converter piston up, and watched as nothing entered the chamber.
31He screwed it back down and up again, while dipping the nib more deeply into the ink well.
32He watched as again nothing filled the capsule.
33He screwed it down a third time.
34His thumb knocked the inkwell over somehow by accident.
35
36As he [swore][], stood up and away from the table, and went into the house proper for paper towels, he resolved to buy a typewriter.
37
38[ms]: telemarketer.html
39[The View from Saturday]: http://www.elkonigsburg.com/
40[swore]: swear.html
41[heart]: swansong-alt.html
diff --git a/text/x-ray.txt b/text/x-ray.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..d8df7f0 --- /dev/null +++ b/text/x-ray.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,46 @@
1---
2title: X-ray
3genre: prose
4
5id: x-ray
6toc: "X-ray"
7
8project:
9 title: "Buildings out of air: Paul in the Woods"
10 class: paul
11 order: 30
12 next:
13 - title: Wallpaper
14 link: wallpaper
15 - title: Yellow
16 link: yellow
17 prev:
18 - title: Yellow
19 link: yellow
20 - title: Writing
21 link: writing
22...
23
24While chopping a tree in the woods with his hatchet (a Christmas gift from his mother) a bird he'd never heard before cried out.
25He jerked his head up and to the right as the hatchet fell down and to the left.
26It cut deep into the back of his left hand.
27A low thud didn't echo in the forest because all the needles and snow absorbed ~~sound well~~ the sound.
28
29When he got back to the house his hand wrapped in the end of his shirt he still felt no pain.
30He called for his mother and found her watching TV in the main room.
31He stayed in the kitchen not wanting to get blood on the carpet.
32She turned around cigarette dangling from her open mouth said "Oh god what happened."
33
34She drove him to the hospital in the car.
35[The radio stayed off the entire way.][]
36Paul wanted to turn it on but ~~he didn't want~~ the desire not to annoy his mother was stronger.
37They drove in silence.
38
39At the hospital after the X-rays and stitching and pain medication prescription the doctor said "You got lucky, son.
40If that axe had hit a half-inch lower you'd [have lost your hand][].
41You 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."
42
43On the drive back home all he could think was that he was glad he didn't hit his writing hand.
44
45[The radio stayed off the entire way.]: worse-looking-over.html
46[have lost your hand]: roughgloves.html
diff --git a/text/yellow.txt b/text/yellow.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..7b7dcdb --- /dev/null +++ b/text/yellow.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,44 @@
1---
2title: Yellow
3genre: prose
4
5id: yellow
6toc: "Yellow"
7
8project:
9 title: "Buildings out of air: Paul in the Woods"
10 class: paul
11 order: 29
12 next:
13 - title: X-ray
14 link: x-ray
15 prev:
16 - title: Building
17 link: building
18 - title: X-ray
19 link: x-ray
20...
21
22He would enter data at work for fifty minutes and then go on break.
23He 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.
24He'd remember that somewhere he'd read an article about yellow walls being calming.
25"They use yellow in asylums" he'd say to himself.
26
27He 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.
28He didn't drink coffee but he would think about starting.
29He would shuffle the newspapers around on the table and see they were all the same ones as an hour ago.
30"Or technically fifty minutes ago" he would say to himself.
31Sometimes Jill would come in for a cup of coffee.
32She 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.
33Once he asked her why she checked.
34
35"Why do you always check if your lunch is in the fridge" he asked.
36"I don't" she said.
37"Oh I thought you did."
38"I don't think so."
39"Why do you check at all?"
40"Once it was stolen out of the fridge and returned empty before I had a chance to eat my lunch" she said.
41"So you make sure it won't happen again."
42"No I'm waiting for the day that it does."
43
44[refrigerator]: feedingtheraven.html