From cbd5199529209059be3bde0d6572a1ba192b84d3 Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001 From: Case Duckworth Date: Wed, 28 Jan 2015 22:22:15 -0700 Subject: Add Elegies; template; pandoc compile script --- 09-and.txt | 28 +++++++ 11-apollo11.txt | 29 ++++++++ 12-arspoetica.txt | 38 ++++++++++ 13-theoceanoverflowswithcamels.txt | 25 +++++++ 14-boar.txt | 24 ++++++ 15-deadman.txt | 22 ++++++ 16-angeltoabraham.txt | 25 +++++++ 17-feedingtheraven.txt | 34 +++++++++ 20-onformalpoetry.txt | 22 ++++++ 22-i-am.txt | 23 ++++++ 23-howithappened.txt | 21 ++++++ 25-lovesong.txt | 27 +++++++ 26-roughgloves.txt | 19 +++++ 27-ronaldmcdonald.txt | 35 +++++++++ 29-moongone.txt | 16 ++++ 3-howtoread.txt | 148 +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ 32-mountain.txt | 26 +++++++ 33-serengeti.txt | 19 +++++ 34-shipwright.txt | 23 ++++++ 35-spittle.txt | 16 ++++ 36-squirrel.txt | 21 ++++++ 38-swansong.txt | 20 +++++ 39-telemarketer.txt | 73 ++++++++++++++++++ 41-weplayedthosegamestoo.txt | 26 +++++++ 42-todaniel.txt | 22 ++++++ 44-deathstrumpet.txt | 32 ++++++++ 99-elegyforanalternateself.txt | 22 ++++++ 99-statements-frag.txt | 68 +++++++++++++++++ 99-swansong-alt.txt | 27 +++++++ _template.html | 40 ++++++++++ compile.sh | 10 +++ 31 files changed, 981 insertions(+) create mode 100644 09-and.txt create mode 100644 11-apollo11.txt create mode 100644 12-arspoetica.txt create mode 100644 13-theoceanoverflowswithcamels.txt create mode 100644 14-boar.txt create mode 100644 15-deadman.txt create mode 100644 16-angeltoabraham.txt create mode 100644 17-feedingtheraven.txt create mode 100644 20-onformalpoetry.txt create mode 100644 22-i-am.txt create mode 100644 23-howithappened.txt create mode 100644 25-lovesong.txt create mode 100644 26-roughgloves.txt create mode 100644 27-ronaldmcdonald.txt create mode 100644 29-moongone.txt create mode 100644 3-howtoread.txt create mode 100644 32-mountain.txt create mode 100644 33-serengeti.txt create mode 100644 34-shipwright.txt create mode 100644 35-spittle.txt create mode 100644 36-squirrel.txt create mode 100644 38-swansong.txt create mode 100644 39-telemarketer.txt create mode 100644 41-weplayedthosegamestoo.txt create mode 100644 42-todaniel.txt create mode 100644 44-deathstrumpet.txt create mode 100644 99-elegyforanalternateself.txt create mode 100644 99-statements-frag.txt create mode 100644 99-swansong-alt.txt create mode 100644 _template.html create mode 100644 compile.sh diff --git a/09-and.txt b/09-and.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..09e82ca --- /dev/null +++ b/09-and.txt @@ -0,0 +1,28 @@ +--- +title: 'And' +project: 'Elegies for Alternate Selves' +epigraph: | +"What is your favorite word?" +"And. It is so hopeful." +... + +And you were there in the start of it all \ +and you folded your hands like little doves \ +that would fly away like an afterthought \ +and you turned to me the window light on your face \ +and you asked me something that I did not recognize \ +like a great throng of people who are not you \ +and I asked are we in a church \ +and you answered with the look on your face \ +of someone grieving something gone for years \ + but that they had been reminded of \ +by a catch in the light or in someone's voice \ +and I think maybe it could have been mine \ +and I looked away thickly my head was in jelly \ +and I didn't get an answer from you but I got one + +I looked at the man in front of us with glasses \ +he was speaking and holding a book \ +and I didn't understand him he was far away \ +and I could tell I was missing something important \ +and you nodded to yourself at something he said diff --git a/11-apollo11.txt b/11-apollo11.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..07e9884 --- /dev/null +++ b/11-apollo11.txt @@ -0,0 +1,29 @@ +--- +title: 'On seeing the panorama of the Apollo 11 landing site' +project: 'Elegies for Alternate Selves' +... + +So it's the fucking moon. Big deal. As if \ +you haven't seen it before, hanging in the sky \ +like a piece of rotten meat nailed to the wall, + +a maudlin love letter (the i's dotted with hearts) \ +tacked to the sky's door like ninety-eight theses. \ +Don't stare at it like it means anything. + +Don't give it the chance to collect meaning \ +from your hand like an old pigeon. Don't dare ascribe \ +it a will, or call it fickle, or think it has any say + +in your affairs. It's separated from your life \ +by three hundred eighty-four thousand miles of space, \ +the same distance you stepped away from time that night + +you said your love was broken, a crippled gyroscope \ +knocking in the dark. It was then that time fell apart, \ +had a nervous breakdown and started following you + +everywhere, moonfaced, always asking where you're going. \ +You keep trying to get away from it but it nuzzles closer \ +and sings you songs that sound like the cooing of a dove \ +that will only escape again into an empty sky at dawn. diff --git a/12-arspoetica.txt b/12-arspoetica.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..382378e --- /dev/null +++ b/12-arspoetica.txt @@ -0,0 +1,38 @@ +--- +title: 'Ars poetica' +project: 'Elegies for Alternate Selves' +... + +What is poetry? Poetry is. Inasmuch as life is, so is poetry. Here is +the problem: life is very big and complex. Human beings are neither. We +are small, simple beings that don’t want to know all of the myriad +interactions happening all around us, within us, as a part of us, all +the hours of every day. We much prefer knowing only that which is just +in front of our faces, staring us back with a look of utter contempt. +This is why many people are depressed. + +Poetry is an attempt made by some to open up our field of view, to maybe +check on something else that isn’t staring us in the face so +contemptibly. Maybe something else is smiling at us, we think. So we +write poetry to force ourselves to look away from the mirror of our +existence to see something else. + +This is generally painful. To make it less painful, poetry compresses +reality a lot to make it more consumable. It takes life, that seawater, +and boils it down and boils it down until only the salt remains, the +important parts that we can focus on and make some sense of the +senselessness of life. Poetry is life bouillon, and to thoroughly enjoy +a poem we must put that bouillon back into the seawater of life and make +a delicious soup out of it. To make this soup, to decompress the poem +into an emotion or life, requires a lot of brainpower. A good reader +will have this brainpower. A good poem will not require it. + +What this means is: a poem should be self-extracting. It should be a +rare vanilla in the bottle, waiting only for someone to open it and +sniff it and suddenly there they are, in the orchid that vanilla came +from, in the tropical land where it grew next to its brothers and sister +vanilla plants. They feel the pain of having their children taken from +them. A good poem leaves a feeling of loss and of intense beauty. The +reader does nothing to achieve this—they are merely the receptacle of +the feeling that the poem forces onto them. In a way, poetry is a crime. +But it is the most beautiful crime on this crime-ridden earth. diff --git a/13-theoceanoverflowswithcamels.txt b/13-theoceanoverflowswithcamels.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..659fe7d --- /dev/null +++ b/13-theoceanoverflowswithcamels.txt @@ -0,0 +1,25 @@ +--- +title: 'The ocean overflows with camels' +project: 'Elegies for Alternate Selves' +... + +We found your shirt deep in the dark water, \ +caught on the clothesline of sleeping pills. \ +Your head on the shore was streaming tears \ +like sleeves or the coronas of saints saved \ +from fire. The burning bush began crying \ +like a child who misses his mother. Traffic \ +slammed shut like an eye. God's mean left hook \ +knocked us out, and we began swimming. \ +Bruises bloomed like algae on a lake. \ +Your father beat your chest and screamed \ +for someone to open a window. The air \ +stopped breathing. Fish clogged its gills. \ +Birds sang too loudly, trying to drown out \ +your father's cries, but all their sweetness \ +was not enough. No polite noises will be made \ +anymore, he told us, clawing your breastbone. \ +He opened your heart to air again. Camels \ +flowed from you both like water from the rock. \ +God spoke up, but nobody listened to him. \ +We hung you up on the line to dry. diff --git a/14-boar.txt b/14-boar.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..b5ac468 --- /dev/null +++ b/14-boar.txt @@ -0,0 +1,24 @@ +--- +title: 'The Boar' +project: 'Elegies for Alternate Selves' +... + +Now the ticking clocks scare me. \ +The empty rooms, clock towers, belfries; \ +I am terrified by them all. + +I really used to enjoy going to church, \ +singing in the choir, listening to the sermon. \ +Now the chairs squeal like dying pigs--- + +It was the boar that did it. \ +Fifteen feet from me that night \ +in the grass, rooting for God \ +knows what, finding me instead. + +I ran, not knowing where or how, \ +not looking for his pursuit of me. \ +I ran to God's front door, found \ +it locked, found the house empty + +with a note saying, "Condemned." diff --git a/15-deadman.txt b/15-deadman.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..ced8ed0 --- /dev/null +++ b/15-deadman.txt @@ -0,0 +1,22 @@ +--- +title: 'Dead man' +project: 'Elegies for Alternate Selves' +... + +A dead man finds his way into our hearts \ +simply by opening the door and walking in. \ +He pours himself a drink, speaks aimlessly \ +about hunting or some bats he saw \ +on the way over, wheeling around each other. \ +Look how they spin, he says, it's like the \ +ripples atoms make as they hurl past each other \ +in the space between their bodies. \ +We mention the eels at the aquarium, how \ +their bodies knot while mating. The dead man \ +was a boyscout once, and tied a lot of knots. \ +His favorite was the one with the rabbit \ +and the hole, and the rabbit going in and out \ +and around the tree. The dead man liked it \ +because he liked to pretend that the rabbit \ +was running from a fox, and the rabbit \ +always ended up safe, back in his hole. diff --git a/16-angeltoabraham.txt b/16-angeltoabraham.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..cce80e1 --- /dev/null +++ b/16-angeltoabraham.txt @@ -0,0 +1,25 @@ +--- +title: 'The angel to Abraham' +project: 'Elegies for Alternate Selves' +... + +Abraham, Abraham, you are old and cannot hear: \ +what if you miss my small voice amongst the creaking \ +of your own grief, kill your son unknowing \ +of what he will be, and commit Israel to nothing? + +Abraham, you must know or hope that God \ +will not allow your son to die; you must know \ +that this is a test, but then why \ +are you so bent on Isaac's destruction? \ +Look at your eyes; there is more than fear \ +there. I see in your eyes desperation, \ +a manic passion to do right by your God \ +whom you are not able to see or know. + +Am I too late? I will try to stay \ +your old hands, the knife clenched \ +within them, intent on ending life. + +Will you hear my small voice amongst the creaking, \ +or will it be the chance bleating of a passing ram? diff --git a/17-feedingtheraven.txt b/17-feedingtheraven.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..c9a2b8f --- /dev/null +++ b/17-feedingtheraven.txt @@ -0,0 +1,34 @@ +--- +title: 'Feeding the raven' +project: 'Elegies for Alternate Selves' +... + +You never can tell just when Charlie Sheen will enter your life. For me, +it was last Thursday. I was reading some translation of a Japanese +translation of "The Raven" in which the Poe and the raven become +friends. At one point the raven gets very sick and Poe feeds him at his +bedside and nurses him back to health. The story was very heartwarming +and sad at the same time and my tears were welling up when suddenly I +heard a knock on my door. + +I shuffled over, sniffling but managing to keep my cheeks dry to open +it. Of course Charlie was beaming on the other side, with a bag of +flowers and a grin like a dog's. He bounded in the room without saying +hello and threw the flowers in the sink, opened the refrigerator and +started poking around. I said "It's nice to see you too" and went to my +room to get a camera, as well as a notebook for him to sign. + +When I came back he was on the floor, hunched and groaning. I looked on +the table to see a month-old half-gallon of milk---now cottage +cheese---half-empty and dripping. The remnants were on his mouth, and at +once I saw my chance to become Poe in this translation of a translation +of a translation. I knelt next to Charlie, cradled his head in my lap. +He looked up at me with a stare full of terror. I returned it levelly, +making cooing noises at him until he calmed down. + +When he was calm he excused himself to be sick on my toilet. He wouldn't +let me follow but said he would sign whatever I liked when he got back. +After half an hour passed and all I'd had for company was the ticking of +the clock, I went to the bathroom door. I knocked carefully---once, then +twice---to no beaming face, no flowers. I opened the door. There was shit +on the floor and the window was open. There was a breeze blowing. diff --git a/20-onformalpoetry.txt b/20-onformalpoetry.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..746105d --- /dev/null +++ b/20-onformalpoetry.txt @@ -0,0 +1,22 @@ +--- +title: 'On formal poetry' +project: 'Elegies for Alternate Selves' +... + +I think that I could write formal poems \ +exclusively, or at least inclusive \ +with all the other stuff I write \ +I guess. Of course, I've already written \ +a few, this one included, though "formal" \ +is maybe a stretch. Is blank verse a form? \ +What is form anyway? I picture old \ +women counting stitches on their knitting, \ +keeping iambs next to iambs in lines \ +as straight and sure as arrows. But my sock \ +is lumpy, poorly made: it's beginning \ +to unravel. Stresses don't line up. Syl- \ +lables forced to fit like McNugget molds. \ +That cliché on the arrow? I'm aware. \ +My prepositions too---God, where's it stop? \ +The answer: never. I will never stop \ +writing poems, or hating what I write. diff --git a/22-i-am.txt b/22-i-am.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..da36507 --- /dev/null +++ b/22-i-am.txt @@ -0,0 +1,23 @@ +--- +title: 'I am' +project: 'Elegies for Alternate Selves' +... + +I am a great pillar of white smoke. \ +I am Lot's nameless wife encased in salt. \ +I am the wound on Christ's back as he moans \ +with the pounding of a hammer on his wrist. \ +I am the nail that holds my house together. \ +It is a strong house, built on a good foundation. \ +In the winter, it is warm and crawling things \ +cannot get in. This house will never burn down. \ +It is the house that I built, with my body \ +and with my strength. I am the only one who lives \ +here. I am both father and mother to a race \ +of dust motes that worship me as a god. I have \ +monuments built daily in my honor in dark \ +corners around the house. I destroy all of them \ +before I go to bed, but in the morning \ +there are still more. I don't think I know \ +where all of them are. I don't think I can get \ +to all of them anymore. There are too many. diff --git a/23-howithappened.txt b/23-howithappened.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..dbadb1c --- /dev/null +++ b/23-howithappened.txt @@ -0,0 +1,21 @@ +--- +title: 'How it happened' +project: 'Elegies for Alternate Selves' +... + +I was away on vacation when I heard--- \ +someone sat at my desk while I was away. \ +They took my pen, while I was taking \ +surf lessons, and wrote the sun into the sky. \ +They pre-approved the earth and the waters, \ +and all of the living things, without even \ +having the decency to text me. It was not I \ +who was behind the phrase "creeping things." \ +When I got back, of course I was pissed, \ +but it was already written into the policy. \ +I'm just saying: don't blame me for Cain \ +killing Abel. That was a murder. I'm not a cop. \ +The Tower of Babel fell on its own. The ark \ +never saw a single drop of rain. I'm the drunk \ +sitting on the curb who just pissed his pants, \ +holding up a sign asking where I am. diff --git a/25-lovesong.txt b/25-lovesong.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..47738e6 --- /dev/null +++ b/25-lovesong.txt @@ -0,0 +1,27 @@ +--- +title: 'Love Song' +project: 'Elegies for Alternate Selves' +... + +Walking along in the dark is a good way to begin a song. Walking home in +the dark after a long day chasing criminals is another. Running away +from an imagined evil is no way to begin a story. + +I am telling you this because you wanted to know what it's like to tell +something so beautiful everyone will cry. I am telling you because I +want you to know what it is to keep everything inside of you. I am +telling you. + +Can you see? Can you see into me and reach in your hand and pull me +inside out, like an old shirt? Will you wear me until I unravel on your +shoulders, will you cut me apart and use my skin to clean up the cola +you spill on the floor when you're drunk? + +I want you to know that I want you to know. Do you want me? To know is +to know. I, you want we. We want. That is why we're here. To want is to +be is to want and I want you. Do you also? Check yes or no. + +There is a way to end every story, every song. Every criminal must be +caught. Even those who cry dry their tears. I cannot tell you all I want +because I want to tell you everything. There is no art because there is +no mirror big enough. We wake up every day. Sometimes we sleep. diff --git a/26-roughgloves.txt b/26-roughgloves.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..3824799 --- /dev/null +++ b/26-roughgloves.txt @@ -0,0 +1,19 @@ +--- +title: 'Rough gloves' +project: 'Elegies for Alternate Selves' +... + +I lost my hands & knit replacement ones \ +from spiders' threads, stronger than steel but soft \ +as lambs' wool. Catching as they do on nails \ +& your collarbone, you don't seem to like \ +their rough warm presence on your cheek or thigh. \ +I've asked you if you minded, you've said no \ +(your face a table laid with burnt meat, bread \ +so stale it could break a hand). Remember \ +your senile mother's face above that table? \ +I'd say she got the meaning of that look. \ +You'd rather not be touched by these rough gloves, \ +the only way I have to knit a love \ +against whatever winters we may enter \ +like a silkworm in a spider's blackened maw. diff --git a/27-ronaldmcdonald.txt b/27-ronaldmcdonald.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..03a0858 --- /dev/null +++ b/27-ronaldmcdonald.txt @@ -0,0 +1,35 @@ +--- +title: 'Ronald McDonald' +project: 'Elegies for Alternate Selves' +... + +When Ronald McDonald takes off his striped shirt, \ +his coveralls, his painted face: when he no longer looks \ +like anyone or anything special, sitting next to women + +in bars or standing in the aisle at the grocery, \ +is he no longer Ronald? Is he no longer happy to kick \ +a soccer ball around with the kids in the park, + +is he suddenly unable to enjoy the french fries \ +he gets for his fifty percent off? I'd like to think \ +that he takes Ronald off like a shirt, hangs him + +in a closet where he breathes darkly in the musk. \ +I'd like to believe that we are able to slough off selves \ +like old skin and still retain some base self. + +Of course we all know this is not what happens. \ +The Ronald leering at women drunkenly is the same who \ +the next day kicks at a ball the size of a head. + +He is the same that hugs his children at night, \ +who has sex with his wife on the weekends when they're \ +not so tired to make it work, who smiles holding + +a basket of fries in front of a field. He cannot \ +take off the facepaint or the yellow gloves. They are \ +stuck to him like so many feathers with the tar + +of his everyday associations. His plight is that \ +of everyone's---we are what we do who we are. diff --git a/29-moongone.txt b/29-moongone.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..4f97fff --- /dev/null +++ b/29-moongone.txt @@ -0,0 +1,16 @@ +--- +title: 'The moon is gone and in its place a mirror' +project: 'Elegies for Alternate Selves' +... + +The moon is gone and in its place a mirror. Looking at the night sky now +yields nothing but the viewer's own face as viewed from a million miles, +surrounded by the landscape he is only vaguely aware of being surrounded +by. He believes that he is alone, surrounded by desert and mountain, but +behind him---he now sees it---someone is sneaking up on him. He spins around +fast, but no one is there on Earth. He looks back up and they are yet +closer in the night sky. Again he looks over his shoulder but there is +nothing, not even a desert mouse. As he looks up again he realizes it's +a cloud above him, which due to optics has looked like someone else. The +cloud blocks out the moon which is now a mirror, and the viewer is +completely alone. diff --git a/3-howtoread.txt b/3-howtoread.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..4345442 --- /dev/null +++ b/3-howtoread.txt @@ -0,0 +1,148 @@ +--- +title: 'How to read this' +project: 'Elegies for Alternate Selves' +... + +This book is an exploration of life, of all possible lives that could be +lived. Each of the poems contained herein have been written by a +different person, with his own history, culture, and emotions. True, +they are all related, but no more than any of us is related through our +genetics, our shared planet, or our yearnings. + +Fernando 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. He called them +heteronyms as opposed to pseudonyms because they were much more than +names he wrote under. They were truly different writing selves, +concerned with different ideas and writing with different styles: +Alberto Caeiro wrote pastorals; Ricardo Reis wrote more formal odes; +Álvaro de Campos wrote these long, Whitman-esque pieces (one to Whitman +himself); and Pessoa's own name was used for poems that are kind of +similar to all the others. It seems as though Pessoa found it +inefficient to try and write everything he wanted only in his own self; +rather he parceled out the different pieces and developed them into full +identities, at the cost of his own: "I subsist as a kind of medium of +myself, but I'm less real than the others, less substantial, less +personal, and easily influenced by them all." de Campos said of him at +one point, "Fernando Pessoa, strictly speaking, doesn't exist." + +It's not just Pessoa---I, strictly speaking, don't exist, both as the +specific me that writes this now and as the concept of selfhood, the +ego. Heraclitus famously said that we can't step into the same river +twice, and the fact of the matter is that we can't occupy the same self +twice. It's constantly changing and adapting to new stimuli from the +environment, from other selves, from inside itself, and each time it +forms anew into something that's never existed before. The person I am +beginning a poem is a separate being than the one I am finishing a poem, +and part of it is the poem I've written has brought forth some other +dish onto the great table that is myself. + +In the same way, with each poem you read of this, you too could become a +different person. Depending on which order you read them in, you could +be any number of possible people. If you follow the threads I've laid +out for you, there are so many possible selves; if you disregard those +and go a different way there are quite a few more. However, at the end +of the journey there is only one self that you will occupy, the others +disappearing from this universe and going maybe somewhere else, maybe +nowhere at all. + +There is a scene in *The Neverending Story* where Bastian is trying to +find his way out of the desert. He opens a door and finds himself in the +Temple of a Thousand Doors, which is never seen from the outside but +only once someone enters it. It is a series of rooms with six sides each +and three doors: one from the room before and two choices. In life, each +of these rooms is a moment, but where Bastian can choose which of only +two doors to enter each time, in life there can be any number of doors +and we don't always choose which to go through---in fact, I would argue +that most of the time we aren't allowed the luxury. + +What happens to those other doors, those other possibilities? Is there +some other version of the self that for whatever complexities of +circumstance and will chose a different door at an earlier moment? The +answer to this, of course, is that we can never know for sure, though +this doesn't keep us from trying through the process of regret. We go +back and try that other door in our mind, extrapolating a possible +present from our own past. This is ultimately unsatisfying, not only +because whatever world is imagined is not the one currently lived, but +because it becomes obvious that the alternate model of reality is not +complete: we can only extrapolate from the original room, absolutely +without knowledge of any subsequent possible choices. This causes a deep +disappointment, a frustration with the inability to know all possible +timelines (coupled with the insecurity that this may not be the best of +all possible worlds) that we feel as regret. + +In this way, every moment we live is an elegy to every possible future +that might have stemmed from it. Annie Dillard states this in a +biological manner when she says in *Pilgrim at Tinker Creek*, "Every +glistening egg is a memento mori." Nature is inefficient---it spends a +hundred lifetimes to get one that barely works. The fossil record is +littered with the failed experiments of evolution, many of which failed +due only to blind chance: an asteroid, a shift in weather patterns, an +inefficient copulation method. Each living person today has twenty dead +standing behind him, and that only counts the people that actually +lived. How many missed opportunities stand behind any of us? + +The real problem with all of this is that time is only additive. There's +no way to dial it back and start over, with new choices or new +environments. Even when given the chance to do something again, we do it +*again*, with the reality given by our previous action. Thus we are +constantly creating and being created by the world. The self is never +the same from one moment to the next. + +A poem is like a snapshot of a self. If it's any good, it captures the +emotional core of the self at the time of writing for communication with +future selves, either within the same person or outside of it. Thus +revision is possible, and the new poem created will be yet another +snapshot of the future self as changed by the original poem. The page +becomes a window into the past, a particular past as experienced by one +self. The poem is a remembering of a self that no longer exists, in +other words, an elegy. + +A snapshot doesn't capture the entire subject, however. It leaves out +the background as it's obscured by foreground objects; it fails to +include anything that isn't contained in its finite frame. In order to +build a working definition of identity, we must include all possible +selves over all possible timelines, combined into one person: identity +is the combined effect of all possible selves over time. A poem leaves +much of this out: it is the one person standing in front of twenty +ghosts. + +A poem is the place where the selves of the reader and the speaker meet, +in their respective times and places. In this way a poem is outside of +time or place, because it changes its location each time it's read. Each +time it's two different people meeting. The problem with a poem is that +it's such a small window---if we met in real life the way we met in poems, +we would see nothing of anyone else but a square the size of a postage +stamp. It has been argued this is the way we see time and ourselves in +it, as well: Vonnegut uses the metaphor of a subject strapped to a +railroad car moving at a set pace, with a six-foot-long metal tube +placed in front of the subject's eye; the landscape in the distance is +time, and what we see is the only way in which we interact with it. It's +the same with a poem and the self: we can only see and interact with a +small kernel. This is why it's possible to write more than one poem. + +Due to this kernel nature of poetry, a good poem should focus itself to +extract as much meaning as possible from that one kernel of identity to +which it has access. It should be an atom of selfhood, irreducible and +resistant to paraphrase, because it tries to somehow echo the large +unsayable part of identity outside the frame of the self. It is the +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. This is why the commentary on poems is so voluminous: a poem +is tightly packed meaning that commentators try to unpack to get at that +universality inside it. A fortress of dialectic is constructed that +ultimately obstructs the meaning behind the poem; it becomes the +foreground in the photograph that disallows us to view the horizon +beyond it. + +With this in mind, I collect these poems that were written over a period +of four years into this book. Where I can, I insert cross-references +(like the one above, in the margin) to other pieces in the text where I +think the two resonate in some way. You can read this book in any way +you'd like: you can go front-to-back, or back-to-front, or you can +follow the arrows around, or you can work out a complex mathematical +formula with Merseinne primes and logarithms and the 2000 Census +information, or you can go completely randomly through like a magazine, +or at least the way I flip through magazines. I think writing is a +communication of the self, and I think this is the best way to +communicate mine in all its multiversity. diff --git a/32-mountain.txt b/32-mountain.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..64e15fe --- /dev/null +++ b/32-mountain.txt @@ -0,0 +1,26 @@ +--- +title: 'Mountain' +project: 'Elegies for Alternate Selves' +... + +The other side of this mountain \ +is not the mountain. This side \ +is honey-golden, sticky-sweet, \ +full of phone conversations with mother. \ +The other side is a bell, \ +ringing in the church-steeple \ +the day mother died. + +The other side of the mountain \ +is not a mountain. It is a dark \ +valley crossed by a river. \ +There is a ferry at the bottom. + +This mountain is not a mountain. \ +I walked to the top, but it turned \ +and was only a shelf halfway up. \ +I felt like an unused Bible \ +sitting on a dusty pew. + +A hawk soars over the mountain. \ +She is looking for home. diff --git a/33-serengeti.txt b/33-serengeti.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..7f13011 --- /dev/null +++ b/33-serengeti.txt @@ -0,0 +1,19 @@ +--- +title: 'Serengeti' +project: 'Elegies for Alternate Selves' +... + +The self is a serengeti \ +a wide grassland with baobab trees \ +reaching their roots deep into earth \ +like a child into a clay pot \ +A wind blows there or seems to blow \ +if he holds it up to his ear the air shifts \ +like stones in a stream uncovering a crawfish \ +it finds another hiding place watching you \ +Its eyes are blacker than wind \ +on the serengeti they are the eyes of a predator \ +they are coming toward you or receding \ +a storm cloud builds on the horizon \ +Are you running toward the rain or away from it \ +Do you stand still and crouch hoping for silence diff --git a/34-shipwright.txt b/34-shipwright.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..81f5c91 --- /dev/null +++ b/34-shipwright.txt @@ -0,0 +1,23 @@ +--- +title: 'Shipwright' +project: 'Elegies for Alternate Selves' +... + +He builds a ship as if it were the last thing \ +holding him together, as if, when he stops, \ +his body will fall onto the plate-glass water \ +and shatter into sand. To keep his morale up \ +he whistles and sings, but the wind whistles louder \ +and taunts him: Your ship will build itself \ +if you throw yourself into the sea; time \ +has a way of growing your beard for you. \ +Soon, you'll find yourself on a rocking chair \ +on some porch made from your ship's timbers. \ +The window behind you is made from a sail, thick \ +canvas, and no one inside will hear your calling \ +for milk or a chamberpot. Your children \ +will have all sailed to the New World and left you. \ +But he tries not to listen, continues to hammer \ +nail after nail into timber after timber, \ +but the wind finally blows him into the growling ocean \ +and the ship falls apart on its own. diff --git a/35-spittle.txt b/35-spittle.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..58dccf2 --- /dev/null +++ b/35-spittle.txt @@ -0,0 +1,16 @@ +--- +title: 'Spittle' +project: 'Elegies for Alternate Selves' +... + +My body is attached to your body by a thin spittle of thought. \ +When you turn away from me, my thought is broken \ +and forms anew with something else. Ideas are drool. \ +Beauty has been slobbered over far too long. God \ +is a tidal wave of bodily fluid. Even the flea has some \ +vestigial wetness. We live in a world fleshy and dark, \ +and moist as a nostril. Is conciousness only a watery-eyed \ +romantic, crying softly into his shirt-sleeve? Is not reason \ +a square-jawed businessman with a briefcase full of memory? \ +I want to kiss the world to make it mine. I want to become \ +a Judas to reality, betray it with the wetness of emotion. diff --git a/36-squirrel.txt b/36-squirrel.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..610b40d --- /dev/null +++ b/36-squirrel.txt @@ -0,0 +1,21 @@ +--- +title: 'Squirrel' +project: 'Elegies for Alternate Selves' +... + +He is so full in himself: \ +how far down the branch to run, \ +how long to jump, when to grab the air \ +and catch in it and turn, and land on branch \ +so gracefully it's like dying, alone \ +and warm in a bed next to a summer window \ +and the birds singing. And on that branch there \ +is the squirrel dancing among the branches \ +and you think What if he fell? but he won't \ +because he's a squirrel and that's what \ +they do, dance and never fall. It was erased \ +long ago from the squirrel, even \ +the possibility of falling was erased \ +from his being by the slow inexorable evolution \ +of squirrels, that is why all squirrels \ +are so full in themselves, full in who they are. diff --git a/38-swansong.txt b/38-swansong.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..c59ec0c --- /dev/null +++ b/38-swansong.txt @@ -0,0 +1,20 @@ +--- +title: 'Swan song' +project: 'Elegies for Alternate Selves' +... + +Swans fly overhead singing goodbye \ +to we walkers of the earth. You point \ +to them in formation, you tell me \ +you are not you. You are the air the swans \ +walk on as they journey like pilgrims \ +to a temple in the south. A curtain \ +there separates me from you, swans \ +from the air they fly through. I say \ +that you are no longer the temple, \ +that you have been through fire \ +and are now less than ash. You are \ +a mirror of me, the air without a swan. \ +Together, we are each other. You \ +and I have both nothing and everything \ +at once. We own the world and nothing in it. diff --git a/39-telemarketer.txt b/39-telemarketer.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..ef9dd27 --- /dev/null +++ b/39-telemarketer.txt @@ -0,0 +1,73 @@ +--- +title: 'Telemarketer' +project: 'Elegies for Alternate Selves' +... + +It was one of those nameless gray buildings that could be seen from the +street only if Larry craned his neck to almost vertical. He never had, +of course, having heard when he first arrived in the city that only +tourists unaccustomed to tall buildings did so. He'd never thought about +it until he'd heard the social injunction against such a thing; it was +now one of the things he thought about almost every day as he rode to +and from work in gritty blue buses. + +Inside the building, the constant sound of recirculating dry air made +Larry feel as though he were at some beach in hell, listening to the +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. The buzz of the fluorescent bulbs +overhead sounded like the hot sun bearing down all day in this metaphor, +a favorite of Larry's. + +His cubicle was made of that cheap, grayish-blue plywood that cubicles +are made of; inside it, his computer sat on his desk as Larry liked to +think an eagle perched on a mountainous crag much like the crag that was +his desktop wallpaper. The walls were unadorned except for a few +tacked-up papers in report covers explaining his script. When Larry made +a call to a potential customer it always went the same way: + +"Hi, Mr/Mrs (customer's name). My name is Larry and I'm with (client's +name), and was just wondering if I could have a minute of your time?" + +"Oh, no, sir; I don't want whatever it is you're selling." (customer +terminates call). + +Larry had only ever read the first line of the script on the wall. +Sometimes he had an urge to read more of it, to be ready when a customer +expressed interest in whatever it was Larry was selling, but something +in him---he liked to think it was an actor's intuition that told him it +was best to improvise, though he worried it was the futility of it---kept +him from reading further into the script. So when Jane said, "Sure, I +have nothing better to do," he was thrown completely off guard. + +"Um, alright Mrs…Mrs. Loring, I was wondering---" + +"It's Ms, not Mrs. em ess. Miz. No ‘r,' Larry." She sounded patient, as +if she were used to correcting people about the particulars of her +title. But how often can that happen? Larry thought, and he was suddenly +deeply confused. + +"Oh, sorry, ma'am, uh, Miz Loring, but I wanted to know whether you'd +like to, ah, buy some…" Larry put his head in his hand and started +twirling his hair in his finger, a nervous habit he'd had since +childhood, and closed his eyes tightly. "Why don't you have anything +better to do?" + +Immediately he knew it was the wrong question. Even before the silence +on the other end moved past impatience and into stunned, Larry had a +mini-drama written and staged within his mind: she would call customer +service and complain loudly into the representative's ear. The rep would +send a memo to the head of telemarketing requesting disciplinary action, +and the head would delegate the action to Larry's immediate supervisor, +David. David would saunter over to Larry's cubicle sometime within the +next week, depending on when he got the memo and when he felt like +crossing fifty feet of office space, and have one of what David liked to +call "chats" but what Larry knew were lectures. After about half an hour +of "chatting" David would give Larry a warning and ask him to come in +for overtime to make up for the discretion, and walk back slowly to his +office, making small talk with the cubicled workers on the way. The +world suddenly felt too small for Larry, or he too big for it. + +Quietly, 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. diff --git a/41-weplayedthosegamestoo.txt b/41-weplayedthosegamestoo.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..fef8154 --- /dev/null +++ b/41-weplayedthosegamestoo.txt @@ -0,0 +1,26 @@ +--- +title: 'We played those games too' +project: 'Elegies for Alternate Selves' +... + +I saw two Eskimo girls playing a game \ +blowing on each other's' vocal chords to make music \ +on the tundra. I thought about how \ +once we played the same game \ +and the sounds blowing over the chords of our throats \ +was the same as a wind over frozen prairie. \ +We are the Eskimo girls who played \ +the game that night to keep ourselves warm. \ +I run my hands over my daughter's \ +voicebox as she hums a song \ +about a seal and about killing the seal and about \ +skinning it and rendering the blubber \ +into clear oil to light lamps. \ +I remember you are my lamp. She remembers \ +you although you left before she arrived. \ +I can never tell her about you. \ +I will never be able to express that taste of your oil \ +as we pushed our throats together. \ +I will never be able to say how \ +we share this blemish like conjoined twins. \ +I will fail you always to remember you. diff --git a/42-todaniel.txt b/42-todaniel.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..eb33e69 --- /dev/null +++ b/42-todaniel.txt @@ -0,0 +1,22 @@ +--- +title: 'To Daniel: an elaboration of a previous comment' +project: 'Elegies for Alternate Selves' +... + +There are more modern ideals of beauty \ +than yours, young padowan. Jessica has \ +some assets, that I'll give you easily, \ +but in my women I prefer pizzazz. + +I don't want to bring you down, or make you think \ +that your perfected woman isn't so. \ +It's just that, like Adam said, 2006 \ +has come and gone. What did she do + +in that year anyway? IMDB \ +has, surprisingly, none, though in '05 \ +she's in four titles. Sin City \ +I've never seen, although from many I've + +heard it's good. But it's still irrelevant--- \ +no matter how comely, she lacks talent. diff --git a/44-deathstrumpet.txt b/44-deathstrumpet.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..c549c78 --- /dev/null +++ b/44-deathstrumpet.txt @@ -0,0 +1,32 @@ +--- +title: 'Death's Trumpet' +project: 'Elegies for Alternate Selves' +epigraph: 'So Death plays his little fucking trumpet. So what, says the boy.' +epigraph-credit: 'Larry Levis' +... + +He didn't have any polish so he spit-shined the whole thing, \ +top to bottom. It gleamed like maybe a tomato on the vine \ +begging to be picked and thrown on some caprese. Death loved caprese. + +He stood up and put the horn to his lips, imagining \ +it was a woman he loved. He blushed as he realized \ +it was a terrible metaphor. \ +He practiced for six hours a day---what else to do? + +Death looks at himself in the mirror as he plays. \ +The trumpet is suspended in midair. Damn vampire rules. \ +Death is always worried he might have missed a spot shaving \ +but he'll never know unless a stranger is polite enough. \ +Not that he ever goes out or meets anyone. + +He wakes up late these days. Stays in bed later. \ +He thinks he might be depressed. The caprese has gotten soggy \ +since he made it, maybe three days ago or maybe just two. \ +The sun streams through his kitchen blinds like smoke. \ +He decides to go to the arcade. When he gets there, + +there's only a little boy with dead eyes. So far so good. \ +He's playing a first-person shooter. Death walks past him \ +and watches out of the corner of his eye. The kid's good. \ +Death wants to congratulate him. His trumpet is in his hand. diff --git a/99-elegyforanalternateself.txt b/99-elegyforanalternateself.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..cb297d8 --- /dev/null +++ b/99-elegyforanalternateself.txt @@ -0,0 +1,22 @@ +--- +title: 'Elegy for an alternate self' +project: 'Elegies for Alternate Selves' +... + +Say there are no words. Say that we are conjoined \ +from birth, or better still, say we are myself. \ +---But I still talk to myself, I build my world \ +through language, so if we say there are no words \ +this is not enough. Say we are instead some animal, \ +or better yet, a plant, or a flagellum motoring \ +aimlessly around. (Say that humans are the only things \ +that reason. Say that we're the only things that worry.) + +Say that I am separate. To say there's everything else \ +and then there's me is wrong. Each thing is separate: \ +there is no whole in the world. Say this is both good \ +and bad, or rather, say there is no good or bad but only \ +being, more and more of it always added, none taken out \ +though it can be forgotten. Say that forgetting \ +is a function of our remembering. (Say that humans only \ +worry about separation. Say that only humans feel it.) diff --git a/99-statements-frag.txt b/99-statements-frag.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..26e67b7 --- /dev/null +++ b/99-statements-frag.txt @@ -0,0 +1,68 @@ +--- +title: 'Statements' +subtitle: 'a fragment' +project: 'Elegies for Alternate Selves' +... + +I. Eli {#i.-eli .unnumbered} +------ + +"Can one truly describe an emotion?" Eli asked me over the +walkie-talkie. He was in the bathroom, & had taken the walkie-talkie in +with him absent-mindedly. I could hear sounds of his piss hitting the +toilet water. + +"I can hear you peeing," I said. He didn't answer so I said in apology, +"It's okay. Humans are sexually dimorphic." I was sitting on my blue +baby blanket texting Jon, who was funny and amicable over the phone. He +made a three-message joke about greedy lawyers and I would have been +laughing if not for my embarrassment toward Eli. He finally came out of +the bathroom and kept his eyes straight ahead, toward the wall calendar +and not at me, as he passed through the family room into his bedroom, +were he shut the door quietly. Presently I heard some muffled noise as +he turned on his iPod. I guessed he didn't feel like talking so I stayed +on my blanket watching the Price is Right and texting Jon. + +Drew Carrey was doing his wrap-up speech on TV when Eli finally came out +of his room, red puffy streaks covering his face. His eyes and nose were +red too, which was almost festive against the pale green and white of +the wallpaper. I had been laughing at the goofy costumes on the Price is +Right and the jokes Jon was texting me, but when Eli came out of the +room I stopped and just looked at him as well as I could. He was staring +at my right shoulder as he said, "Go home now." + +"What?" + +"I said go home now. I don't want you here anymore, because I just +remembered I have someone coming over and I have to clean." + +"Look, Eli, I'm sorry---" + +"It doesn't have anything to do with you, I swear. Just go, okay? Go +home now." + +I got up and tried to give him a hug but he withdrew from me sharply. So +I walked around the coffee table as he sat down, not looking at me +anymore, and stared at the blank TV. The blanket I had been sitting in +was crumpled next to him like a dead bird. I opened my mouth but thought +better of talking, and closed the door behind me slowly. + +II. Dimorphic {#ii.-dimorphic .unnumbered} +------------- + +Oranges. Poison. A compromise +between Mary & Judas. Blue +baby blankets swaddling greedy lawyers. + +Can one truly describe an emotion? +I cut my ankle with a razor blade. +I can only go one at a time. Humanity +has a seething mass of eels +for a brain, mating in the water so forcefully +that it could drown you under the moon. + +III. Declaration of Poetry {#iii.-declaration-of-poetry .unnumbered} +-------------------------- + +You have to go one line at a time, and you have to start on the first or +second line. diff --git a/99-swansong-alt.txt b/99-swansong-alt.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..b6cbab2 --- /dev/null +++ b/99-swansong-alt.txt @@ -0,0 +1,27 @@ +--- +title: 'Swansong' +subtitle: 'alternate version' +project: 'Elegies for Alternate Selves' +... + +This poem is dry like chapped lips. \ +It is hard as teeth---hear the tapping? \ +It is the swan song of beauty, as all \ +swan songs are. Reading it, you are \ +puzzled, perhaps a little repulsed. \ +Swans do not have teeth, nor do they sing. \ +A honking over the cliff is all \ +they can do, and that they do \ +badly. You don't know where I'm going. \ +You want to tell me, You are not you. \ +You are the air the swan walks on. \ +You are the fringe of the curtain \ +that separates me from you. I say \ +that you are no longer the temple, \ +that you have been through fire \ +and are now less than ash. You are \ +the subtraction of yourself from \ +the world, the air without a swan. \ +Together, we are each other. You \ +and I have both nothing and everything \ +at once, we own the world and nothing in it. diff --git a/_template.html b/_template.html new file mode 100644 index 0000000..187e5d7 --- /dev/null +++ b/_template.html @@ -0,0 +1,40 @@ + + + + + + + + + + $pagetitle$ + + $for(css)$ + + $endfor$ + + + $for(header-includes)$ + $header-includes$ + $endfor$ + + + $for(include-before)$ + $include-before$ + $endfor$ + $if(title)$ +
+

$title

+ $if(subtitle)$ +

$subtitle$

+ $endif$ +
+ $endif$ + $body$ + $for(include-after)$ + $include-after$ + $endfor$ + + diff --git a/compile.sh b/compile.sh new file mode 100644 index 0000000..3877be0 --- /dev/null +++ b/compile.sh @@ -0,0 +1,10 @@ +# for windows only right now + +for file in *.txt; do # TODO: change this to work with globs & args & stuff + pandoc -f markdown \ # all files are in pandoc's markdown + -t html5 \ # they're being outputted to html5 + --template=_template.html \ # use this file as a template + --smart \ # smart quotes, etc. + $file \ + -o "${file%.txt}.html" +done -- cgit 1.4.1-21-gabe81