From e0b1c2737397839ff5ba8c129d31baf6f97805fe Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001 From: Case Duckworth Date: Sat, 31 Jan 2015 13:10:17 -0700 Subject: Finish linking Elegy, Hezekiah; Rename files --- 01-epigraph.txt | 34 -------- 02-howtoread.txt | 156 ------------------------------------- 08-and.txt | 46 ----------- 10-apollo11.txt | 50 ------------ 11-arspoetica.txt | 43 ---------- 12-theoceanoverflowswithcamels.txt | 31 -------- 13-boar.txt | 30 ------- 14-deadman.txt | 26 ------- 15-angeltoabraham.txt | 28 ------- 16-feedingtheraven.txt | 40 ---------- 19-onformalpoetry.txt | 27 ------- 21-i-am.txt | 28 ------- 22-howithappened.txt | 26 ------- 24-lovesong.txt | 32 -------- 25-roughgloves.txt | 25 ------ 26-ronaldmcdonald.txt | 40 ---------- 28-moongone.txt | 21 ----- 31-mountain.txt | 31 -------- 32-serengeti.txt | 24 ------ 33-shipwright.txt | 28 ------- 34-spittle.txt | 21 ----- 35-squirrel.txt | 26 ------- 37-swansong.txt | 26 ------- 38-telemarketer.txt | 78 ------------------- 40-weplayedthosegamestoo.txt | 31 -------- 41-todaniel.txt | 26 ------- 43-deathstrumpet.txt | 38 --------- 98-hez-likingthings.txt | 52 ------------- 98-hez-movingsideways.txt | 56 ------------- 98-hez-philosophy.txt | 31 -------- 98-hez-prelude.txt | 12 --- 98-hez-problems.txt | 65 ---------------- 98-hez-proverbs.txt | 40 ---------- 98-hez-purpose-dogs.txt | 35 --------- 98-words-meaning.txt | 50 ------------ 99-elegyforanalternateself.txt | 22 ------ 99-statements-frag.txt | 68 ---------------- 99-swansong-alt.txt | 27 ------- and.txt | 46 +++++++++++ angeltoabraham.txt | 39 ++++++++++ apollo11.txt | 44 +++++++++++ arspoetica.txt | 52 +++++++++++++ boar.txt | 39 ++++++++++ deadman.txt | 37 +++++++++ deathstrumpet.txt | 47 +++++++++++ elegyforanalternateself.txt | 26 +++++++ epigraph.txt | 34 ++++++++ feedingtheraven.txt | 49 ++++++++++++ howithappened.txt | 35 +++++++++ howtoread.txt | 156 +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ i-am.txt | 37 +++++++++ likingthings.txt | 57 ++++++++++++++ lovesong.txt | 41 ++++++++++ moongone.txt | 30 +++++++ mountain.txt | 40 ++++++++++ movingsideways.txt | 63 +++++++++++++++ onformalpoetry.txt | 36 +++++++++ philosophy.txt | 38 +++++++++ prelude.txt | 17 ++++ problems.txt | 72 +++++++++++++++++ proverbs.txt | 47 +++++++++++ purpose-dogs.txt | 42 ++++++++++ ronaldmcdonald.txt | 49 ++++++++++++ roughgloves.txt | 34 ++++++++ serengeti.txt | 33 ++++++++ shipwright.txt | 37 +++++++++ spittle.txt | 30 +++++++ squirrel.txt | 35 +++++++++ statements-frag.txt | 72 +++++++++++++++++ swansong-alt.txt | 31 ++++++++ swansong.txt | 35 +++++++++ telemarketer.txt | 87 +++++++++++++++++++++ theoceanoverflowswithcamels.txt | 40 ++++++++++ todaniel.txt | 36 +++++++++ weplayedthosegamestoo.txt | 40 ++++++++++ words-meaning.txt | 60 ++++++++++++++ 76 files changed, 1743 insertions(+), 1470 deletions(-) delete mode 100644 01-epigraph.txt delete mode 100644 02-howtoread.txt delete mode 100644 08-and.txt delete mode 100644 10-apollo11.txt delete mode 100644 11-arspoetica.txt delete mode 100644 12-theoceanoverflowswithcamels.txt delete mode 100644 13-boar.txt delete mode 100644 14-deadman.txt delete mode 100644 15-angeltoabraham.txt delete mode 100644 16-feedingtheraven.txt delete mode 100644 19-onformalpoetry.txt delete mode 100644 21-i-am.txt delete mode 100644 22-howithappened.txt delete mode 100644 24-lovesong.txt delete mode 100644 25-roughgloves.txt delete mode 100644 26-ronaldmcdonald.txt delete mode 100644 28-moongone.txt delete mode 100644 31-mountain.txt delete mode 100644 32-serengeti.txt delete mode 100644 33-shipwright.txt delete mode 100644 34-spittle.txt delete mode 100644 35-squirrel.txt delete mode 100644 37-swansong.txt delete mode 100644 38-telemarketer.txt delete mode 100644 40-weplayedthosegamestoo.txt delete mode 100644 41-todaniel.txt delete mode 100644 43-deathstrumpet.txt delete mode 100644 98-hez-likingthings.txt delete mode 100644 98-hez-movingsideways.txt delete mode 100644 98-hez-philosophy.txt delete mode 100644 98-hez-prelude.txt delete mode 100644 98-hez-problems.txt delete mode 100644 98-hez-proverbs.txt delete mode 100644 98-hez-purpose-dogs.txt delete mode 100644 98-words-meaning.txt delete mode 100644 99-elegyforanalternateself.txt delete mode 100644 99-statements-frag.txt delete mode 100644 99-swansong-alt.txt create mode 100644 and.txt create mode 100644 angeltoabraham.txt create mode 100644 apollo11.txt create mode 100644 arspoetica.txt create mode 100644 boar.txt create mode 100644 deadman.txt create mode 100644 deathstrumpet.txt create mode 100644 elegyforanalternateself.txt create mode 100644 epigraph.txt create mode 100644 feedingtheraven.txt create mode 100644 howithappened.txt create mode 100644 howtoread.txt create mode 100644 i-am.txt create mode 100644 likingthings.txt create mode 100644 lovesong.txt create mode 100644 moongone.txt create mode 100644 mountain.txt create mode 100644 movingsideways.txt create mode 100644 onformalpoetry.txt create mode 100644 philosophy.txt create mode 100644 prelude.txt create mode 100644 problems.txt create mode 100644 proverbs.txt create mode 100644 purpose-dogs.txt create mode 100644 ronaldmcdonald.txt create mode 100644 roughgloves.txt create mode 100644 serengeti.txt create mode 100644 shipwright.txt create mode 100644 spittle.txt create mode 100644 squirrel.txt create mode 100644 statements-frag.txt create mode 100644 swansong-alt.txt create mode 100644 swansong.txt create mode 100644 telemarketer.txt create mode 100644 theoceanoverflowswithcamels.txt create mode 100644 todaniel.txt create mode 100644 weplayedthosegamestoo.txt create mode 100644 words-meaning.txt diff --git a/01-epigraph.txt b/01-epigraph.txt deleted file mode 100644 index 1adac49..0000000 --- a/01-epigraph.txt +++ /dev/null @@ -1,34 +0,0 @@ ---- -title: epigraph -subtitle: An epigraph -genre: prose - -project: - title: Elegies for alternate selves - css: elegies - order: 1 - next: - title: How to read this - link: howtoreadthis - prev: - title: Death's Trumpet - link: deathstrumpet -... - -I saw my life branching out before me like the green fig tree in the story. -From the tip of every branch, like a fat purple fig, a wonderful future -beckoned and winked. One fig was a husband and a happy home and children, and -another fig was a famous poet and another fig was a brilliant professor, and -another fig was Ee Gee, the amazing editor, and another fig was Europe and -Africa and South America, and another fig was Constantin and Socrates and -Attila and a pack of [other lovers][] and queer names and offbeat professions, -and another fig was an Olympic lady crew champion, and beyond and above these -figs were many more figs I couldn't quite make out. I saw myself sitting in -the crotch of this fig tree, starving to [death][], just because I couldn't -make up my mind which of the figs I would choose. I wanted each and every one -of them, but choosing one meant losing all the rest, and, as I sat there, -unable to decide, the figs began to wrinkle and go black, and, one by one, -they plopped to the ground at my feet. - -[other lovers]: spittle.html -[death]: deathstrumpet.html diff --git a/02-howtoread.txt b/02-howtoread.txt deleted file mode 100644 index 2fed4be..0000000 --- a/02-howtoread.txt +++ /dev/null @@ -1,156 +0,0 @@ ---- -title: How to read this -genre: prose - -project: - title: Elegies for alternate selves - css: elegies - order: 2 - next: - title: And - link: and - prev: - title: epigraph - link: epigraph -... - -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.][pessoa-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. - -[pessoa-exist]: philosophy.html -[same river]: mountain.html -[elegy]: words-meaning.html -[kernel]: arspoetica.html diff --git a/08-and.txt b/08-and.txt deleted file mode 100644 index a351665..0000000 --- a/08-and.txt +++ /dev/null @@ -1,46 +0,0 @@ ---- -title: And -genre: verse - -epigraph: - content: | - "What is your favorite word?" - "And. It is so hopeful." - attrib: Margaret Atwood - link: 'http://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2011/oct/28/margaret-atwood-q-a' - -project: - title: Elegies for alternate selves - css: elegies - order: 3 - next: - title: On seeing the panorama of the Apollo 11 landing site - link: apollo11 - prev: - title: How to read this - link: howtoread -... - -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 - -[church]: boar.html -[grieving something gone]: roughgloves.html diff --git a/10-apollo11.txt b/10-apollo11.txt deleted file mode 100644 index 59dca05..0000000 --- a/10-apollo11.txt +++ /dev/null @@ -1,50 +0,0 @@ ---- -title: 'On seeing the panorama of the Apollo 11 landing site' -project: 'Elegies for Alternate Selves' -project-order: 10 -genre: 'verse' -... ---- -title: On seeing the panorama of the Apollo 11 landing site -genre: verse - -project: - title: Elegies for alternate selves - css: elegies - order: 4 - next: - title: Ars poetica - link: arspoetica - prev: - title: And - link: and -... - -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. - -[fucking moon]: deathstrumpet.html -[rotten meat]: roughgloves.html -[hearts]: proverbs.html diff --git a/11-arspoetica.txt b/11-arspoetica.txt deleted file mode 100644 index b950645..0000000 --- a/11-arspoetica.txt +++ /dev/null @@ -1,43 +0,0 @@ ---- -title: 'Ars poetica' -project: 'Elegies for Alternate Selves' -project-order: 11 -genre: 'prose' -... - -What is poetry? [Poetry is.][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. - -[is]: words-meaning.html -[mirror]: moongone.html diff --git a/12-theoceanoverflowswithcamels.txt b/12-theoceanoverflowswithcamels.txt deleted file mode 100644 index a817011..0000000 --- a/12-theoceanoverflowswithcamels.txt +++ /dev/null @@ -1,31 +0,0 @@ ---- -title: 'The ocean overflows with camels' -project: 'Elegies for Alternate Selves' -project-order: 12 -genre: 'verse' -... - -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. - -[shirt]: lovesong.html -[left hook]: roughgloves.html -[father]: angeltoabraham.html diff --git a/13-boar.txt b/13-boar.txt deleted file mode 100644 index 0608ec3..0000000 --- a/13-boar.txt +++ /dev/null @@ -1,30 +0,0 @@ ---- -title: 'The Boar' -project: 'Elegies for Alternate Selves' -project-order: 13 -genre: 'verse' -... - -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." - -[empty]: mountain.html -[Fifteen feet]: telemarketer.html -[house]: i-am.html diff --git a/14-deadman.txt b/14-deadman.txt deleted file mode 100644 index 6e134e7..0000000 --- a/14-deadman.txt +++ /dev/null @@ -1,26 +0,0 @@ ---- -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. - -[hearts]: words-meaning.html -[they spin]: moongone.html -[knot while mating]: spittle.html diff --git a/15-angeltoabraham.txt b/15-angeltoabraham.txt deleted file mode 100644 index ffd4a50..0000000 --- a/15-angeltoabraham.txt +++ /dev/null @@ -1,28 +0,0 @@ ---- -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? - -[God]: boar.html -[will try]: i-am.html diff --git a/16-feedingtheraven.txt b/16-feedingtheraven.txt deleted file mode 100644 index 14b50b7..0000000 --- a/16-feedingtheraven.txt +++ /dev/null @@ -1,40 +0,0 @@ ---- -title: 'Feeding the raven' -project: 'Elegies for Alternate Selves' -project-order: 16 -genre: 'prose' -... - -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. - -[dog]: purpose-dogs.html -[translation of a translation]: todaniel.html -[clock]: boar.html diff --git a/19-onformalpoetry.txt b/19-onformalpoetry.txt deleted file mode 100644 index af45519..0000000 --- a/19-onformalpoetry.txt +++ /dev/null @@ -1,27 +0,0 @@ ---- -title: 'On formal poetry' -project: 'Elegies for Alternate Selves' -project-order: 19 -genre: 'verse' -... - -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][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. - -[knitting]: roughgloves.html -[McNugget]: ronaldmcdonald.html diff --git a/21-i-am.txt b/21-i-am.txt deleted file mode 100644 index 8605f22..0000000 --- a/21-i-am.txt +++ /dev/null @@ -1,28 +0,0 @@ ---- -title: 'I am' -project: 'Elegies for Alternate Selves' -project-order: 21 -genre: 'verse' -... - -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][not think] I can get \ -to all of them anymore. There are too many. - -[white smoke]: deathstrumpet.html -[not think]: howithappened.html diff --git a/22-howithappened.txt b/22-howithappened.txt deleted file mode 100644 index 77e72aa..0000000 --- a/22-howithappened.txt +++ /dev/null @@ -1,26 +0,0 @@ ---- -title: 'How it happened' -project: 'Elegies for Alternate Selves' -project-order: 22 -genre: 'verse' -... - -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. - -[already written]: shipwright.html -[the drunk]: problems.html diff --git a/24-lovesong.txt b/24-lovesong.txt deleted file mode 100644 index d146b35..0000000 --- a/24-lovesong.txt +++ /dev/null @@ -1,32 +0,0 @@ ---- -title: 'Love Song' -project: 'Elegies for Alternate Selves' -project-order: 24 -genre: 'prose' -... - -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. - -[old shirt]: ronaldmcdonald.html -[every song]: swansong.html diff --git a/25-roughgloves.txt b/25-roughgloves.txt deleted file mode 100644 index 4848c9c..0000000 --- a/25-roughgloves.txt +++ /dev/null @@ -1,25 +0,0 @@ ---- -title: 'Rough gloves' -project: 'Elegies for Alternate Selves' -project-order: 25 -genre: 'verse' -... - -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][]. - -[cheek or thigh]: feedingtheraven.html -[break a hand]: weplayedthosegamestoo.html -[maw]: serengeti.html diff --git a/26-ronaldmcdonald.txt b/26-ronaldmcdonald.txt deleted file mode 100644 index 57d4642..0000000 --- a/26-ronaldmcdonald.txt +++ /dev/null @@ -1,40 +0,0 @@ ---- -title: 'Ronald McDonald' -project: 'Elegies for Alternate Selves' -project-order: 26 -genre: 'verse' -... - -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. - -[striped shirt]: theoceanoverflowswithcamels.html -[yellow gloves]: roughgloves.html diff --git a/28-moongone.txt b/28-moongone.txt deleted file mode 100644 index 8ae62d5..0000000 --- a/28-moongone.txt +++ /dev/null @@ -1,21 +0,0 @@ ---- -title: 'The moon is gone and in its place a mirror' -project: 'Elegies for Alternate Selves' -project-order: 28 -genre: 'prose' -... - -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. - -[alone]: apollo11.html -[Earth]: serengeti.html diff --git a/31-mountain.txt b/31-mountain.txt deleted file mode 100644 index 4221a3a..0000000 --- a/31-mountain.txt +++ /dev/null @@ -1,31 +0,0 @@ ---- -title: 'Mountain' -project: 'Elegies for Alternate Selves' -project-order: 31 -genre: 'verse' -... - -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][apollo] \ -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. - -[apollo]: apollo11.html -[dusty pew]: and.html diff --git a/32-serengeti.txt b/32-serengeti.txt deleted file mode 100644 index 29204e2..0000000 --- a/32-serengeti.txt +++ /dev/null @@ -1,24 +0,0 @@ ---- -title: 'Serengeti' -project: 'Elegies for Alternate Selves' -project-order: 32 -genre: 'verse' -... - -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][formal] \ -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 - -[formal]: onformalpoetry.html -[running]: squirrel.html diff --git a/33-shipwright.txt b/33-shipwright.txt deleted file mode 100644 index 16fd40f..0000000 --- a/33-shipwright.txt +++ /dev/null @@ -1,28 +0,0 @@ ---- -title: 'Shipwright' -project: 'Elegies for Alternate Selves' -project-order: 33 -genre: 'verse' -... - -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. - -[louder]: apollo11.html -[finally blows]: theoceanoverflowswithcamels.html diff --git a/34-spittle.txt b/34-spittle.txt deleted file mode 100644 index fecf417..0000000 --- a/34-spittle.txt +++ /dev/null @@ -1,21 +0,0 @@ ---- -title: 'Spittle' -project: 'Elegies for Alternate Selves' -project-order: 34 -genre: 'verse' -... - -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. - -[God]: howithappened.html -[shirt-sleeve]: lovesong.html diff --git a/35-squirrel.txt b/35-squirrel.txt deleted file mode 100644 index a4e3df6..0000000 --- a/35-squirrel.txt +++ /dev/null @@ -1,26 +0,0 @@ ---- -title: 'Squirrel' -project: 'Elegies for Alternate Selves' -project-order: 35 -genre: 'verse' -... - -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. - -[birds singing]: mountain.html -[dance]: movingsideways.html diff --git a/37-swansong.txt b/37-swansong.txt deleted file mode 100644 index fd0badb..0000000 --- a/37-swansong.txt +++ /dev/null @@ -1,26 +0,0 @@ ---- -title: 'Swan song' -project: 'Elegies for Alternate Selves' -project-order: 37 -genre: 'verse' -... - -Swans fly overhead singing goodbye \ -to we [walkers of the earth][ithappened]. 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][trumpet]. \ -Together, we are each other. You \ -and I have both nothing and everything \ -at once. We own the world and nothing in it. - -[ithappened]: howithappened.html -[mirror]: moongone.html -[trumpet]: deathstrumpet.html diff --git a/38-telemarketer.txt b/38-telemarketer.txt deleted file mode 100644 index 1a86afa..0000000 --- a/38-telemarketer.txt +++ /dev/null @@ -1,78 +0,0 @@ ---- -title: 'Telemarketer' -project: 'Elegies for Alternate Selves' -project-order: 38 -genre: 'prose' -... - -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. - -[ocean]: theoceanoverflowswithcamels.html -[eagle perched]: mountain.html -[bigger pain]: arspoetica.html diff --git a/40-weplayedthosegamestoo.txt b/40-weplayedthosegamestoo.txt deleted file mode 100644 index 478ca07..0000000 --- a/40-weplayedthosegamestoo.txt +++ /dev/null @@ -1,31 +0,0 @@ ---- -title: 'We played those games too' -project: 'Elegies for Alternate Selves' -project-order: 40 -genre: 'verse' -... - -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][spittle]. \ -I will never be able to say how \ -we share this blemish like conjoined twins. \ -I will fail you always to remember you. - -[my daughter]: and.html -[spittle]: spittle.html diff --git a/41-todaniel.txt b/41-todaniel.txt deleted file mode 100644 index dfe4512..0000000 --- a/41-todaniel.txt +++ /dev/null @@ -1,26 +0,0 @@ ---- -title: 'To Daniel: an elaboration of a previous comment' -project: 'Elegies for Alternate Selves' -project-order: 41 -genre: 'verse' -... - -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][trumpet]. \ -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. - -[trumpet]: deathstrumpet.html diff --git a/43-deathstrumpet.txt b/43-deathstrumpet.txt deleted file mode 100644 index eb874f8..0000000 --- a/43-deathstrumpet.txt +++ /dev/null @@ -1,38 +0,0 @@ ---- -title: 'Death's Trumpet' -project: 'Elegies for Alternate Selves' -project-order: 43 -genre: 'verse' - -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][moongone] 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. - -[moongone]: moongone.html -[little boy]: angeltoabraham.html diff --git a/98-hez-likingthings.txt b/98-hez-likingthings.txt deleted file mode 100644 index 385ea3d..0000000 --- a/98-hez-likingthings.txt +++ /dev/null @@ -1,52 +0,0 @@ ---- -title: 'Liking Things' -project: 'Book of Hezekiah' -project-order: 7 -project-prev: 'problems.html' -genre: 'prose' -... - -The definition of happiness is *doing stuff that you really like*. That -stuff can be eating soup, going to the bathroom, walking the dog, -playing Dungeons and Dragons; whatever keeps your mind off the fact that -you're so goddamn unhappy all the time. That, incidentally, is the -definition of like: *that feeling you get when you forget how miserable -you are for just a little bit*. Thus people like doing stuff they like -all the time, as often as possible; because if they remember how -horrible they really feel at not having a background to put themselves -against, they will want to hurt themselves and those around them. - -The funny thing is that something we people really like to do is hurt -ourselves and those around us. We do this by thinking other people are -more unhappy than we are. We convince themselves that we are truly -happy, ecstatic even, while they merely plod around life half-heartedly, -or, if they're lucky, incorrectly. We take it upon ourselves (seeing as -we are so happy, and can spare a little bit of happiness) to help them -become happy as well. We fail to realize that the people will probably -not appreciate our thinking that we're better than they are somehow, for -that is what we do even if we don't mean it. We forget that we are also -unhappy, and that we are just doing things we like in order to cheer -ourselves up a little bit, which really means that this cheering is -working; but there is such a thing as working too well. So in a sense -what I'm doing here is cheering myself up by reminding you that you are -unhappy; I'm trying to keep you honest in your unhappiness; and I admit -this is usually called a dick move. - -In fact, the best way to overcome happy-hungering (this is the term as I -dub it) is commit as many dick moves as possible, to keep people -remembering that unhappiness abounds. If you see someone smiling like a -little dog who knows it's about to get pet or get a treat or go to the -vet to donate doggy sperm, smile back. Grin toothily (a little too -toothily for a little too long). Their smile will start to fade if -you're doing it right. Saunter to them, slide as if you're an Olympic -quality ice-skater, as if you're a really good bowler who knows he's -playing against twelve year olds and'll win by a hundred. Get really -close. Far too close for what most people would call comfort. And remind -them of how awful life can be: "I really like your [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?" They -will probably get angry, but that's what's supposed to happen. By making -dick moves, you can overcome what may be the biggest evil on this earth: -Happy-Hungering. - -[shirt]: theoceanoverflowswithcamels.html diff --git a/98-hez-movingsideways.txt b/98-hez-movingsideways.txt deleted file mode 100644 index 43d5481..0000000 --- a/98-hez-movingsideways.txt +++ /dev/null @@ -1,56 +0,0 @@ ---- -title: 'Moving Sideways' -project: 'Book of Hezekiah' -project-order: 5 -project-prev: 'proverbs.html' -project-next: 'problems.html' -genre: 'prose' -... - -A dog moving sideways is sick; a man moving sideways is drunk. Thus if -you want to be mindful of the movings of the universe sideways, become -either drunk or sick. By doing this you remove yourself from the -equation, and are able to observe, without being observed, the universe -as it dances sideways drunkenly. - -Shit wait. The 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? The problem is *the actual act of observing that distorts the -world into what we want it to be*. - -What I want to know is this: Why is this necessarily a problem? The dog -is made, by mankind, to frolic and poop and sniff and growl and dig. Why -cannot the man be made to observe the world incorrectly around him, and -worry about it? Men have always wandered about the earth; does it not -make sense that also they should wonder in their minds what makes it all -work?[^2] In fact this is the very center of the creative being: the -ability to move sideways, to dance with reality and judge it as it -judges you, much like teenagers at the junior prom. - -Of course, reality doesn't judge us back. But that doesn't mean that it -doesn't! If you think it's judging you, then *observe in your -surroundings your own insecurities*. It is obvious that this way of -doing things is far from vogue; usually projecting [inner pain][] onto the -outer world is classified as pathology. However, 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. It follows that as [there is no backdrop][backdrop] -against which to judge our quirks, the quirks must not exist. Thus all -is right with the world. - -[inner pain]: telemarketer.html -[backdrop]: philosophy.html - -[^1]: Quantum mechanics, as is well known, are the most hornery and - least agreeable of all mechanics. The cost to get one quantum - serviced is usually at least eight times more expensive than the - cost of an average automobile tune-up, for reasons not clearly - known. The quantum mechanics themselves claim it's the smallness of - their work that justifies the price, but it doesn't really look like - they're doing anything, and besides, my quantum always seems to - break again within six months---maybe I'm just driving it too hard. - -[^2]: I attempted to strike this terrible pun from the account, but - Hezekiah demanded I keep it if he were to continue the relation of - his prophecy-slash-advice column diff --git a/98-hez-philosophy.txt b/98-hez-philosophy.txt deleted file mode 100644 index 1c50310..0000000 --- a/98-hez-philosophy.txt +++ /dev/null @@ -1,31 +0,0 @@ ---- -title: 'Philosophy' -project: 'Book of Hezekiah' -project-order: 3 -project-prev: 'purpose-dogs.html' -project-next: 'proverbs.html' -genre: 'prose' -... - -Importance is important. But meaning is meaningful. Here we are at the -crux of the matter, for both meaning and importance are also -human-formed. So it would seem that nothing is important or meaningful, -if importance and meaning are of themselves only products of the -fallible human intellect. But here is the great secret: *so is the -fallibility of the human intellect a mere product of the fallible human -intellect.* The question here arises: Is anything real, and not a mere -invention of a mistaken human mind? By real of course I mean -"that which is *on its own terms*," that is, without any [modification][] on -the part of mankind by observing it. But such a thing is impossible to -be known, for if it be known it has certainly been observed by someone, -and so it is not on its own terms but on the terms of the observer. So -it cannot be known if anything exists on its own terms, for it exists on -its own terms we certainly will not know anything about it. - -By this it is possible to see that nothing is knowable without the -mediating factor of our mind fucking up the "[raw][]," the "real" world. But -by this time it would seem that this chapter is far far too -philosophical, not to mention pretentious, so I must try again. - -[modification]: i-am.html -[raw]: spittle.html diff --git a/98-hez-prelude.txt b/98-hez-prelude.txt deleted file mode 100644 index c6e37f1..0000000 --- a/98-hez-prelude.txt +++ /dev/null @@ -1,12 +0,0 @@ ---- -title: 'Prelude' -project: 'Book of Hezekiah' -project-order: 1 -project-next: 'purpose-dogs.html' -genre: 'prose' -... - -Of course, there is a God. Of course, there is no God. Of course, what's -really important is that these aren't important. No, they are; but not -really important. All that's important is the relative importance of -non-important things. Shit. Never mind; let's start over. diff --git a/98-hez-problems.txt b/98-hez-problems.txt deleted file mode 100644 index d4a1f1c..0000000 --- a/98-hez-problems.txt +++ /dev/null @@ -1,65 +0,0 @@ ---- -title: 'Problems' -project: 'Book of Hezekiah' -project-order: 6 -project-prev: 'movingsideways.html' -project-next: 'likingthings.html' -genre: 'prose' -... - -The problem with people is this: we cannot be happy. No matter how hard -or easy we try, it is not to be. It seems sometimes that, just as the -dog was made for jumping in mud and sniffing out foxholes and having a -good time all around, man was made for sadness, loneliness and -heartache. - -Being the observant and judgmental people they are, people have for a -long time tried to figure out why they aren't happy. Some say it's -because we're obviously doing something wrong. Some say it's because we -think too much. Some insist that it's because other people have more -stuff than we do. These people don't have a clue any more than any of -the rest of us. At least I don't think they do, and that's good enough -for me.[^1] I think that the reason why people are unhappy (and this is -a personal opinion) is that they realize on some level (for some it's a -pretty shallow level, others it's way down there next to their love for -women's stockings[^2]) that there is no background to put themselves -against, no "[big picture][]" to get painted into. This 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. But -on another level, that of ... shit, wait. There are no other levels.[^3] - -What's more, people try to explain how to get happy again (although it's -doubtful they were ever happy in the first place---people are very good at -fooling). Some say standing or [sitting in a building][] with a lot of other -unhappy people helps. Some say that you can't stop there; you also need -to sing with those other unhappy people about how unhappy you are, and -how you wish someone would come along and help you out, I guess by -giving you money or something. I say all you really need to be happy is -a good stiff drink.[^4] - -In any case, people have for some reason or another, and to some end or -another, always been unhappy. And people have always tried to figure out -ways to be less unhappy---one of the most important things to people -everywhere is called "the pursuit of happiness." I think that calling it -a pursuit makes people feel more like dogs, who are the most happy -beings most people can think of. By pursuing happiness, they're like a -dog pursuing a possum or a bone on a fishing rod: two activities that -sound like a lot of fun to most people. I think most people wish they -were dogs. - -[big picture]: ronaldmcdonald.html -[sitting in a buiding]: feedingtheraven.html - - -[^1]: This seems to be an attempt on Hezzy's part to set an example for - mankind. It should be noted that he is an alcoholic, and not in any - shape to be an example to anyone. - -[^2]: It is thought that only the leg coverings of the female sex are - here referenced - -[^3]: You have hereby found the super special secret cheat code room. - Yes, this is just like Super Mario Brothers---you can skip right to - the end. Go and face the final boss already! - -[^4]: See footnote, above diff --git a/98-hez-proverbs.txt b/98-hez-proverbs.txt deleted file mode 100644 index 2b5c7a7..0000000 --- a/98-hez-proverbs.txt +++ /dev/null @@ -1,40 +0,0 @@ ---- -title: 'Proverbs' -project: 'Book of Hezekiah' -project-order: 4 -project-prev: 'philosophy.html' -project-next: 'movingsideways.html' -genre: 'prose' -... - -[Nothing matters; everything is sacred. Everything matters; nothing is -sacred][sacred].[^1] This is the only way we can move forward: by moving -sideways. Life is a great big rugby game, and the entire field has to be run -for a goal. The fact that the beginning two verses of this chapter have the -same number of characters proves that they are a tautological pair, that is, -they *complete each other*. Sometimes life seems like a dog wagging its tail, -smiling up at you and wanting you to love it, just wanting that, simple simple -love, oblivious to the fact that it just ran through your immaculately groomed -flower garden and tracked all the mud in onto your freshly steamed carpet. -Life is not life in a suburb. [There are no rosebushes, groomed never. There -is no carpet, steamed at any time.][rosebush] The dog looks at you wanting you -to love it. It wants to know that you know that it's there. *It wants to be -observed*.[\^2] - -[sacred]: words-meaning.html -[rosebush]: lovesong.html - -[^1]: Thank you Tom Stoppard. Ha ha ho ho and hee hee. - -[^2]: Ah ha! I knew this was going to happen at some point. Now things - are going to get more interesting because the dog wants what we - thought was a bad thing, right? Right? Didn't we go through that - part about how observing made it impossible to really know anything, - and I had to start over because it's really hard to figure out what - you're talking about when reality slips out of your hands like a - fish, but you're not a cat with claws so it just flops right outta - your hand back into the lake. (By the way, Nirvana is thought to be - what a drop of water feels upon flopping into a lake---doesn't that - seem important? Doesn't it seem like a fish and a drop of water here - are connected? It helps, of course, that the fish represents Reality - here.) diff --git a/98-hez-purpose-dogs.txt b/98-hez-purpose-dogs.txt deleted file mode 100644 index 04c50b3..0000000 --- a/98-hez-purpose-dogs.txt +++ /dev/null @@ -1,35 +0,0 @@ ---- -title: 'The purpose of dogs' -project: 'Book of Hezekiah' -project-order: 2 -project-prev: 'prelude.html' -project-next: 'philosophy.html' -genre: 'prose' -... - -Okay, so as we said in [the Prelude][], there either is or isn't a God. This -has been one of the main past times of humanity, ever since ... since the -first man (or woman) climbed out of whatever slime or swamp he thumbed his way -out of. What humanity has failed to realize is that an incredibly plausible -third, and heretofore unknown, hypothesis also exists: There is a dog. - -In fact, there are many dogs, and not only that. There are also many types of -dogs; these are called breeds, and each breed was created by man in order to -fulfill some use that man thought he needed. Some dogs are for chasing birds, -and some are for chasing badgers. Some are for laying in your lap and being -petted all day. Some dogs don't seem to be really for anything, besides being -fucking stupid and chewing up your one-of-a-kind collectible -individually-numbered King Kong figurine from the Peter Jackson film. But the -important thing is, (and here we go with important things again) all dogs have -been bred by people for performing some certain function that we think is -important. - -Note: *Just because we think it's important doesn't mean it is -important.* But it might as well be, because what we as humans think is -important is important. But be careful! just because something's important -doesn't mean it means anything, or that it actually makes anything happen. -Even though just because something makes something else happen doesn't mean -it's important. [Shit][]. Let me start again. - -[the Prelude]: prelude.html -[Shit]: feedingtheraven.html diff --git a/98-words-meaning.txt b/98-words-meaning.txt deleted file mode 100644 index 092b2d2..0000000 --- a/98-words-meaning.txt +++ /dev/null @@ -1,50 +0,0 @@ ---- -title: 'Words and meaning' -project: 'Elegies for Alternate Selves' -genre: 'prose' -... - -"How astonishing it is that language can almost mean, / and frightening -that it does not quite," Jack Gilbert opens his poem "The Forgotten -Dialect of the Heart." In a similar vein, Hass's "Meditation at -Legunitas" states, "A word is elegy to what it signifies." These poems -get to the heart of language, and express the old duality of thought: by -giving a word to an entity, it is both tethered and made meaningful. - -Words are the inevitable byproduct of an analytic mind. Humans are -constantly classifying and reclassifying ideas, objects, animals, -people, into ten thousand arbitrary categories. A favorite saying of -mine is that "Everything is everything," a tautology that I like, -because it gets to the core of the human linguistic machine, and because -every time I say it people think I'm being [disingenuous][]. But what I mean -by "everything is everything" is that there is a continuity to existence -that works beyond, or rather underneath, our capacity to understand it -through language. Language by definition compartmentalizes reality, sets -this bit apart from that bit, sets up boundaries as to what is and is -not a stone, a leaf, a door. Most of the time I think of language as -limiting, as defining a thing as the [inverse of everything][] is not. - -In this way, "everything is everything" becomes "everything is nothing," -which is another thing I like to say and something that pisses people -off. To me, infinity and zero are the same, two ways of looking at the -same point on the circle–of numbers, of the universe, whatever. Maybe -it's because I wear an analogue watch, and so my view of time is -cyclical, or maybe it's some brain trauma I had in vitro, but whatever it -is that's how I see the world, because I'm working against the -limitations that language sets upon us. I think that's the role of the -poet, or of any artist: to take the over-expansive experience of -existing and to boil it down, boil and boil away until there is the -ultimate concentrate at the center that is what the poem talks around, -at, etc., but never of, because it is ultimately made of language and -cannot get to it. A poem is getting as close as possible to the speed of -light, to absolute zero, to God, while knowing that it can't get all the -way there, and never will. A poem is doing this and coming back and -showing what happened as it happened. Exegesis is hard because a really -good poem will be just that, it will be the most basic and best way to -say what it's saying, so attempts to say the same thing differently will -fail. A poem is a kernel of existence. It is a description of the -kernel. [It is][]. - -[disingenuous]: likingthings.html -[inverse of everything]: i-am.html -[It is]: arspoetica.html diff --git a/99-elegyforanalternateself.txt b/99-elegyforanalternateself.txt deleted file mode 100644 index cb297d8..0000000 --- a/99-elegyforanalternateself.txt +++ /dev/null @@ -1,22 +0,0 @@ ---- -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 deleted file mode 100644 index 26e67b7..0000000 --- a/99-statements-frag.txt +++ /dev/null @@ -1,68 +0,0 @@ ---- -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 deleted file mode 100644 index b6cbab2..0000000 --- a/99-swansong-alt.txt +++ /dev/null @@ -1,27 +0,0 @@ ---- -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/and.txt b/and.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..4a2d163 --- /dev/null +++ b/and.txt @@ -0,0 +1,46 @@ +--- +title: And +genre: verse + +epigraph: + content: | + "What is your favorite word?" + "And. It is so hopeful." + attrib: Margaret Atwood + link: 'http://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2011/oct/28/margaret-atwood-q-a' + +project: + title: Elegies for alternate selves + css: elegies + order: 3 + next: + title: Words and meaning + link: words-meaning + prev: + title: How to read this + link: howtoread +... + +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 + +[church]: boar.html +[grieving something gone]: roughgloves.html diff --git a/angeltoabraham.txt b/angeltoabraham.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..5fd7ad1 --- /dev/null +++ b/angeltoabraham.txt @@ -0,0 +1,39 @@ +--- +title: The angel to Abraham +genre: verse + +project: + title: Elegies for alternate selves + css: elegies + order: 10 + prev: + title: Dead man + link: deadman + next: + title: Feeding the raven + link: feedingtheraven +... + +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? + +[God]: boar.html +[will try]: i-am.html diff --git a/apollo11.txt b/apollo11.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..a72aaab --- /dev/null +++ b/apollo11.txt @@ -0,0 +1,44 @@ +--- +title: On seeing the panorama of the Apollo 11 landing site +genre: verse + +project: + title: Elegies for alternate selves + css: elegies + order: 5 + next: + title: Ars poetica + link: arspoetica + prev: + title: And + link: and +... + +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. + +[fucking moon]: deathstrumpet.html +[rotten meat]: roughgloves.html +[hearts]: proverbs.html diff --git a/arspoetica.txt b/arspoetica.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..3014498 --- /dev/null +++ b/arspoetica.txt @@ -0,0 +1,52 @@ +--- +title: Ars poetica +genre: verse + +project: + title: Elegies for alternate selves + css: elegies + order: 6 + prev: + title: On seeing the panorama of the Apollo 11 landing site + link: apollo11 + next: + title: The ocean overflows with camels + link: theoceanoverflowswithcamels +... + +What is poetry? [Poetry is.][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. + +[is]: words-meaning.html +[mirror]: moongone.html diff --git a/boar.txt b/boar.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..049e0ff --- /dev/null +++ b/boar.txt @@ -0,0 +1,39 @@ +--- +title: The boar +genre: verse + +project: + title: Elegies for alternate selves + css: elegies + order: 8 + prev: + title: The ocean overflows with camels + link: theoceanoverflowswithcamels + next: + title: Dead man + link: deadman +... + +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." + +[empty]: mountain.html +[Fifteen feet]: telemarketer.html +[house]: i-am.html diff --git a/deadman.txt b/deadman.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..6ef673e --- /dev/null +++ b/deadman.txt @@ -0,0 +1,37 @@ +--- +title: Dead man +genre: verse + +project: + title: Elegies for alternate selves + css: elegies + order: 9 + prev: + title: The boar + link: boar + next: + title: The angel to Abraham + link: angeltoabraham +... + +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. + +[hearts]: words-meaning.html +[they spin]: moongone.html +[knot while mating]: spittle.html diff --git a/deathstrumpet.txt b/deathstrumpet.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..f5ad1ed --- /dev/null +++ b/deathstrumpet.txt @@ -0,0 +1,47 @@ +--- +title: "Death's trumpet" +genre: verse + +project: + title: Elegies for alternate selves + css: elegies + order: 28 + prev: + title: 'To Daniel: an elaboration' + link: todaniel + +epigraph: + content: | + So Death plays his little [fucking](apollo11.html) trumpet. + So what, says the boy. + attrib: 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][moongone] 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. + +[moongone]: moongone.html +[little boy]: angeltoabraham.html diff --git a/elegyforanalternateself.txt b/elegyforanalternateself.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..b52c2c4 --- /dev/null +++ b/elegyforanalternateself.txt @@ -0,0 +1,26 @@ +--- +title: Elegy for an alternate self +genre: verse + +project: + title: Autocento of the breakfast table + css: autocento +... + +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/epigraph.txt b/epigraph.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..1adac49 --- /dev/null +++ b/epigraph.txt @@ -0,0 +1,34 @@ +--- +title: epigraph +subtitle: An epigraph +genre: prose + +project: + title: Elegies for alternate selves + css: elegies + order: 1 + next: + title: How to read this + link: howtoreadthis + prev: + title: Death's Trumpet + link: deathstrumpet +... + +I saw my life branching out before me like the green fig tree in the story. +From the tip of every branch, like a fat purple fig, a wonderful future +beckoned and winked. One fig was a husband and a happy home and children, and +another fig was a famous poet and another fig was a brilliant professor, and +another fig was Ee Gee, the amazing editor, and another fig was Europe and +Africa and South America, and another fig was Constantin and Socrates and +Attila and a pack of [other lovers][] and queer names and offbeat professions, +and another fig was an Olympic lady crew champion, and beyond and above these +figs were many more figs I couldn't quite make out. I saw myself sitting in +the crotch of this fig tree, starving to [death][], just because I couldn't +make up my mind which of the figs I would choose. I wanted each and every one +of them, but choosing one meant losing all the rest, and, as I sat there, +unable to decide, the figs began to wrinkle and go black, and, one by one, +they plopped to the ground at my feet. + +[other lovers]: spittle.html +[death]: deathstrumpet.html diff --git a/feedingtheraven.txt b/feedingtheraven.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..ec47846 --- /dev/null +++ b/feedingtheraven.txt @@ -0,0 +1,49 @@ +--- +title: Feeding the raven +genre: prose + +project: + title: Elegies for alternate selves + css: elegies + order: 11 + prev: + title: The angel to Abraham + link: angeltoabraham + next: + title: On formal poetry + link: onformalpoetry +... + +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. + +[dog]: purpose-dogs.html +[translation of a translation]: todaniel.html +[clock]: boar.html diff --git a/howithappened.txt b/howithappened.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..f058c74 --- /dev/null +++ b/howithappened.txt @@ -0,0 +1,35 @@ +--- +title: How it happened +genre: 'verse' + +project: + title: Elegies for alternate selves + css: elegies + order: 14 + prev: + title: I am + link: i-am + next: + title: Love Song + link: lovesong +... + +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. + +[already written]: shipwright.html +[the drunk]: problems.html diff --git a/howtoread.txt b/howtoread.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..2fed4be --- /dev/null +++ b/howtoread.txt @@ -0,0 +1,156 @@ +--- +title: How to read this +genre: prose + +project: + title: Elegies for alternate selves + css: elegies + order: 2 + next: + title: And + link: and + prev: + title: epigraph + link: epigraph +... + +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.][pessoa-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. + +[pessoa-exist]: philosophy.html +[same river]: mountain.html +[elegy]: words-meaning.html +[kernel]: arspoetica.html diff --git a/i-am.txt b/i-am.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..f890283 --- /dev/null +++ b/i-am.txt @@ -0,0 +1,37 @@ +--- +title: I am +genre: verse + +project: + title: Elegies for alternate selves + css: elegies + order: 13 + prev: + title: On formal poetry + link: onformalpoetry + next: + title: How it happened + link: howithappened +... + +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][not think] I can get \ +to all of them anymore. There are too many. + +[white smoke]: deathstrumpet.html +[not think]: howithappened.html diff --git a/likingthings.txt b/likingthings.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..1c9c15a --- /dev/null +++ b/likingthings.txt @@ -0,0 +1,57 @@ +--- +title: Liking Things +genre: prose + +project: + title: Book of Hezekiah + css: hezekiah + order: 7 + prev: + title: Problems + link: problems +... + +The definition of happiness is *doing stuff that you really like*. That +stuff can be eating soup, going to the bathroom, walking the dog, +playing Dungeons and Dragons; whatever keeps your mind off the fact that +you're so goddamn unhappy all the time. That, incidentally, is the +definition of like: *that feeling you get when you forget how miserable +you are for just a little bit*. Thus people like doing stuff they like +all the time, as often as possible; because if they remember how +horrible they really feel at not having a background to put themselves +against, they will want to hurt themselves and those around them. + +The funny thing is that something we people really like to do is hurt +ourselves and those around us. We do this by thinking other people are +more unhappy than we are. We convince themselves that we are truly +happy, ecstatic even, while they merely plod around life half-heartedly, +or, if they're lucky, incorrectly. We take it upon ourselves (seeing as +we are so happy, and can spare a little bit of happiness) to help them +become happy as well. We fail to realize that the people will probably +not appreciate our thinking that we're better than they are somehow, for +that is what we do even if we don't mean it. We forget that we are also +unhappy, and that we are just doing things we like in order to cheer +ourselves up a little bit, which really means that this cheering is +working; but there is such a thing as working too well. So in a sense +what I'm doing here is cheering myself up by reminding you that you are +unhappy; I'm trying to keep you honest in your unhappiness; and I admit +this is usually called a dick move. + +In fact, the best way to overcome happy-hungering (this is the term as I +dub it) is commit as many dick moves as possible, to keep people +remembering that unhappiness abounds. If you see someone smiling like a +little dog who knows it's about to get pet or get a treat or go to the +vet to donate doggy sperm, smile back. Grin toothily (a little too +toothily for a little too long). Their smile will start to fade if +you're doing it right. Saunter to them, slide as if you're an Olympic +quality ice-skater, as if you're a really good bowler who knows he's +playing against twelve year olds and'll win by a hundred. Get really +close. Far too close for what most people would call comfort. And remind +them of how awful life can be: "I really like your [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?" They +will probably get angry, but that's what's supposed to happen. By making +dick moves, you can overcome what may be the biggest evil on this earth: +Happy-Hungering. + +[shirt]: theoceanoverflowswithcamels.html diff --git a/lovesong.txt b/lovesong.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..e504e14 --- /dev/null +++ b/lovesong.txt @@ -0,0 +1,41 @@ +--- +title: Love Song +genre: prose + +project: + title: Elegies for alternate selves + css: elegies + order: 15 + prev: + title: How it happened + link: howithappened + next: + title: Rough gloves + link: roughgloves +... + +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. + +[old shirt]: ronaldmcdonald.html +[every song]: swansong.html diff --git a/moongone.txt b/moongone.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..ad9135b --- /dev/null +++ b/moongone.txt @@ -0,0 +1,30 @@ +--- +title: The moon is gone and in its place a mirror +genre: prose + +project: + title: Elegies for alternate selves + css: elegies + order: 18 + prev: + title: Ronald McDonald + link: ronaldmcdonald + next: + title: The mountain + link: mountain +... + +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. + +[alone]: apollo11.html +[Earth]: serengeti.html diff --git a/mountain.txt b/mountain.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..c1666e4 --- /dev/null +++ b/mountain.txt @@ -0,0 +1,40 @@ +--- +title: The mountain +genre: verse + +project: + title: Elegies for alternate selves + css: elegies + order: 19 + prev: + title: The moon is gone and in its place a mirror + link: moonegone + next: + title: Serengeti + link: serengeti +... + +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][apollo] \ +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. + +[apollo]: apollo11.html +[dusty pew]: and.html diff --git a/movingsideways.txt b/movingsideways.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..bc373e2 --- /dev/null +++ b/movingsideways.txt @@ -0,0 +1,63 @@ +--- +title: Moving Sideways +genre: prose + +project: + title: Book of Hezekiah + css: hezekiah + order: 5 + next: + title: Problems + link: problems + prev: + title: Proverbs + link: proverbs +... + +A dog moving sideways is sick; a man moving sideways is drunk. Thus if +you want to be mindful of the movings of the universe sideways, become +either drunk or sick. By doing this you remove yourself from the +equation, and are able to observe, without being observed, the universe +as it dances sideways drunkenly. + +Shit wait. The 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? The problem is *the actual act of observing that distorts the +world into what we want it to be*. + +What I want to know is this: Why is this necessarily a problem? The dog +is made, by mankind, to frolic and poop and sniff and growl and dig. Why +cannot the man be made to observe the world incorrectly around him, and +worry about it? Men have always wandered about the earth; does it not +make sense that also they should wonder in their minds what makes it all +work?[^2] In fact this is the very center of the creative being: the +ability to move sideways, to dance with reality and judge it as it +judges you, much like teenagers at the junior prom. + +Of course, reality doesn't judge us back. But that doesn't mean that it +doesn't! If you think it's judging you, then *observe in your +surroundings your own insecurities*. It is obvious that this way of +doing things is far from vogue; usually projecting [inner pain][] onto the +outer world is classified as pathology. However, 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. It follows that as [there is no backdrop][backdrop] +against which to judge our quirks, the quirks must not exist. Thus all +is right with the world. + +[inner pain]: telemarketer.html +[backdrop]: philosophy.html + +[^1]: Quantum mechanics, as is well known, are the most hornery and + least agreeable of all mechanics. The cost to get one quantum + serviced is usually at least eight times more expensive than the + cost of an average automobile tune-up, for reasons not clearly + known. The quantum mechanics themselves claim it's the smallness of + their work that justifies the price, but it doesn't really look like + they're doing anything, and besides, my quantum always seems to + break again within six months---maybe I'm just driving it too hard. + +[^2]: I attempted to strike this terrible pun from the account, but + Hezekiah demanded I keep it if he were to continue the relation of + his prophecy-slash-advice column diff --git a/onformalpoetry.txt b/onformalpoetry.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..7e654b4 --- /dev/null +++ b/onformalpoetry.txt @@ -0,0 +1,36 @@ +--- +title: On formal poetry +genre: verse + +project: + title: Elegies for alternate selves + css: elegies + order: 12 + prev: + title: Feeding the raven + link: feedingtheraven + next: + title: I am + link: i-am +... + +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][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. + +[knitting]: roughgloves.html +[McNugget]: ronaldmcdonald.html diff --git a/philosophy.txt b/philosophy.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..0ac114f --- /dev/null +++ b/philosophy.txt @@ -0,0 +1,38 @@ +--- +title: Philosophy +genre: prose + +project: + title: Book of Hezekiah + css: hezekiah + order: 3 + next: + title: Proverbs + link: proverbs + prev: + title: The purpose of dogs + link: purpose-dogs +... + +Importance is important. But meaning is meaningful. Here we are at the +crux of the matter, for both meaning and importance are also +human-formed. So it would seem that nothing is important or meaningful, +if importance and meaning are of themselves only products of the +fallible human intellect. But here is the great secret: *so is the +fallibility of the human intellect a mere product of the fallible human +intellect.* The question here arises: Is anything real, and not a mere +invention of a mistaken human mind? By real of course I mean +"that which is *on its own terms*," that is, without any [modification][] on +the part of mankind by observing it. But such a thing is impossible to +be known, for if it be known it has certainly been observed by someone, +and so it is not on its own terms but on the terms of the observer. So +it cannot be known if anything exists on its own terms, for it exists on +its own terms we certainly will not know anything about it. + +By this it is possible to see that nothing is knowable without the +mediating factor of our mind fucking up the "[raw][]," the "real" world. But +by this time it would seem that this chapter is far far too +philosophical, not to mention pretentious, so I must try again. + +[modification]: i-am.html +[raw]: spittle.html diff --git a/prelude.txt b/prelude.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..91d4541 --- /dev/null +++ b/prelude.txt @@ -0,0 +1,17 @@ +--- +title: Prelude +genre: prose + +project: + title: Book of Hezekiah + css: hezekiah + order: 1 + next: + title: The purpose of dogs + link: purpose-dogs +... + +Of course, there is a God. Of course, there is no God. Of course, what's +really important is that these aren't important. No, they are; but not +really important. All that's important is the relative importance of +non-important things. Shit. Never mind; let's start over. diff --git a/problems.txt b/problems.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..c5de325 --- /dev/null +++ b/problems.txt @@ -0,0 +1,72 @@ +--- +title: Problems +genre: prose + +project: + title: Book of Hezekiah + css: hezekiah + order: 6 + next: + title: Liking things + link: likingthings + prev: + title: Moving sideways + link: movingsideways +... + +The problem with people is this: we cannot be happy. No matter how hard +or easy we try, it is not to be. It seems sometimes that, just as the +dog was made for jumping in mud and sniffing out foxholes and having a +good time all around, man was made for sadness, loneliness and +heartache. + +Being the observant and judgmental people they are, people have for a +long time tried to figure out why they aren't happy. Some say it's +because we're obviously doing something wrong. Some say it's because we +think too much. Some insist that it's because other people have more +stuff than we do. These people don't have a clue any more than any of +the rest of us. At least I don't think they do, and that's good enough +for me.[^1] I think that the reason why people are unhappy (and this is +a personal opinion) is that they realize on some level (for some it's a +pretty shallow level, others it's way down there next to their love for +women's stockings[^2]) that there is no background to put themselves +against, no "[big picture][]" to get painted into. This 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. But +on another level, that of ... shit, wait. There are no other levels.[^3] + +What's more, people try to explain how to get happy again (although it's +doubtful they were ever happy in the first place---people are very good at +fooling). Some say standing or [sitting in a building][] with a lot of other +unhappy people helps. Some say that you can't stop there; you also need +to sing with those other unhappy people about how unhappy you are, and +how you wish someone would come along and help you out, I guess by +giving you money or something. I say all you really need to be happy is +a good stiff drink.[^4] + +In any case, people have for some reason or another, and to some end or +another, always been unhappy. And people have always tried to figure out +ways to be less unhappy---one of the most important things to people +everywhere is called "the pursuit of happiness." I think that calling it +a pursuit makes people feel more like dogs, who are the most happy +beings most people can think of. By pursuing happiness, they're like a +dog pursuing a possum or a bone on a fishing rod: two activities that +sound like a lot of fun to most people. I think most people wish they +were dogs. + +[big picture]: ronaldmcdonald.html +[sitting in a buiding]: feedingtheraven.html + + +[^1]: This seems to be an attempt on Hezzy's part to set an example for + mankind. It should be noted that he is an alcoholic, and not in any + shape to be an example to anyone. + +[^2]: It is thought that only the leg coverings of the female sex are + here referenced + +[^3]: You have hereby found the super special secret cheat code room. + Yes, this is just like Super Mario Brothers---you can skip right to + the end. Go and face the final boss already! + +[^4]: See footnote, above diff --git a/proverbs.txt b/proverbs.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..d0ae38f --- /dev/null +++ b/proverbs.txt @@ -0,0 +1,47 @@ +--- +title: Proverbs +genre: prose + +project: + title: Book of Hezekiah + css: hezekiah + order: 4 + next: + title: Moving sideways + link: movingsideways + prev: + title: Philosophy + link: philosophy +... + +[Nothing matters; everything is sacred. Everything matters; nothing is +sacred][sacred].[^1] This is the only way we can move forward: by moving +sideways. Life is a great big rugby game, and the entire field has to be run +for a goal. The fact that the beginning two verses of this chapter have the +same number of characters proves that they are a tautological pair, that is, +they *complete each other*. Sometimes life seems like a dog wagging its tail, +smiling up at you and wanting you to love it, just wanting that, simple simple +love, oblivious to the fact that it just ran through your immaculately groomed +flower garden and tracked all the mud in onto your freshly steamed carpet. +Life is not life in a suburb. [There are no rosebushes, groomed never. There +is no carpet, steamed at any time.][rosebush] The dog looks at you wanting you +to love it. It wants to know that you know that it's there. *It wants to be +observed*.[\^2] + +[sacred]: words-meaning.html +[rosebush]: lovesong.html + +[^1]: Thank you Tom Stoppard. Ha ha ho ho and hee hee. + +[^2]: Ah ha! I knew this was going to happen at some point. Now things + are going to get more interesting because the dog wants what we + thought was a bad thing, right? Right? Didn't we go through that + part about how observing made it impossible to really know anything, + and I had to start over because it's really hard to figure out what + you're talking about when reality slips out of your hands like a + fish, but you're not a cat with claws so it just flops right outta + your hand back into the lake. (By the way, Nirvana is thought to be + what a drop of water feels upon flopping into a lake---doesn't that + seem important? Doesn't it seem like a fish and a drop of water here + are connected? It helps, of course, that the fish represents Reality + here.) diff --git a/purpose-dogs.txt b/purpose-dogs.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..052b656 --- /dev/null +++ b/purpose-dogs.txt @@ -0,0 +1,42 @@ +--- +title: The purpose of dogs +genre: prose + +project: + title: Book of Hezekiah + css: hezekiah + order: 2 + next: + title: Philosophy + link: philosophy + prev: + title: Prelude + link: prelude +... + +Okay, so as we said in [the Prelude][], there either is or isn't a God. This +has been one of the main past times of humanity, ever since ... since the +first man (or woman) climbed out of whatever slime or swamp he thumbed his way +out of. What humanity has failed to realize is that an incredibly plausible +third, and heretofore unknown, hypothesis also exists: There is a dog. + +In fact, there are many dogs, and not only that. There are also many types of +dogs; these are called breeds, and each breed was created by man in order to +fulfill some use that man thought he needed. Some dogs are for chasing birds, +and some are for chasing badgers. Some are for laying in your lap and being +petted all day. Some dogs don't seem to be really for anything, besides being +fucking stupid and chewing up your one-of-a-kind collectible +individually-numbered King Kong figurine from the Peter Jackson film. But the +important thing is, (and here we go with important things again) all dogs have +been bred by people for performing some certain function that we think is +important. + +Note: *Just because we think it's important doesn't mean it is +important.* But it might as well be, because what we as humans think is +important is important. But be careful! just because something's important +doesn't mean it means anything, or that it actually makes anything happen. +Even though just because something makes something else happen doesn't mean +it's important. [Shit][]. Let me start again. + +[the Prelude]: prelude.html +[Shit]: feedingtheraven.html diff --git a/ronaldmcdonald.txt b/ronaldmcdonald.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..a719ef8 --- /dev/null +++ b/ronaldmcdonald.txt @@ -0,0 +1,49 @@ +--- +title: Ronald McDonald +genre: verse + +project: + title: Elegies for alternate selves + css: elegies + order: 17 + prev: + title: Rough gloves + link: roughgloves + next: + title: The moon is gone and in its place a mirror + link: moongone +... + +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. + +[striped shirt]: theoceanoverflowswithcamels.html +[yellow gloves]: roughgloves.html diff --git a/roughgloves.txt b/roughgloves.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..6ef77f6 --- /dev/null +++ b/roughgloves.txt @@ -0,0 +1,34 @@ +--- +title: Rough gloves +genre: verse + +project: + title: Elegies for alternate selves + css: elegies + order: 16 + prev: + title: Love Song + link: lovesong + next: + title: Ronald McDonald + link: ronaldmcdonald +... + +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][]. + +[cheek or thigh]: feedingtheraven.html +[break a hand]: weplayedthosegamestoo.html +[maw]: serengeti.html diff --git a/serengeti.txt b/serengeti.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..cbac12a --- /dev/null +++ b/serengeti.txt @@ -0,0 +1,33 @@ +--- +title: Serengeti +genre: verse + +project: + title: Elegies for alternate selves + css: elegies + order: 20 + prev: + title: The mountain + link: mountain + next: + title: The shipwright + link: shipwright +... + +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][formal] \ +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 + +[formal]: onformalpoetry.html +[running]: squirrel.html diff --git a/shipwright.txt b/shipwright.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..4de8e1d --- /dev/null +++ b/shipwright.txt @@ -0,0 +1,37 @@ +--- +title: The shipwright +genre: verse + +project: + title: Elegies for alternate selves + css: elegies + order: 21 + prev: + title: Serengeti + link: serengeti + next: + title: Spittle + link: spittle +... + +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. + +[louder]: apollo11.html +[finally blows]: theoceanoverflowswithcamels.html diff --git a/spittle.txt b/spittle.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..e1a72e6 --- /dev/null +++ b/spittle.txt @@ -0,0 +1,30 @@ +--- +title: Spittle +genre: verse + +project: + title: Elegies for alternate selves + css: elegies + order: 22 + prev: + title: The shipwright + link: shipwright + next: + title: The squirrel + link: squirrel +... + +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. + +[God]: howithappened.html +[shirt-sleeve]: lovesong.html diff --git a/squirrel.txt b/squirrel.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..68936f9 --- /dev/null +++ b/squirrel.txt @@ -0,0 +1,35 @@ +--- +title: The squirrel +genre: verse + +project: + title: Elegies for alternate selves + css: elegies + order: 23 + prev: + title: Spittle + link: spittle + next: + title: Swan song + link: swansong +... + +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. + +[birds singing]: mountain.html +[dance]: movingsideways.html diff --git a/statements-frag.txt b/statements-frag.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..a3c40a1 --- /dev/null +++ b/statements-frag.txt @@ -0,0 +1,72 @@ +--- +title: Statements +subtitle: a fragment +genre: mixed + +project: + title: Autocento of the breakfast table + css: autocento +... + +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/swansong-alt.txt b/swansong-alt.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..e9a9eba --- /dev/null +++ b/swansong-alt.txt @@ -0,0 +1,31 @@ +--- +title: Swansong +subtitle: alternate version +genre: verse + +project: + title: Autocento of the breakfast table + css: autocento +... + +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/swansong.txt b/swansong.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..80417f9 --- /dev/null +++ b/swansong.txt @@ -0,0 +1,35 @@ +--- +title: Swan song +genre: verse + +project: + title: Elegies for alternate selves + css: elegies + order: 24 + prev: + title: The squirrel + link: squirrel + next: + title: Telemarketer + link: telemarketer +... + +Swans fly overhead singing goodbye \ +to we [walkers of the earth][ithappened]. 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][trumpet]. \ +Together, we are each other. You \ +and I have both nothing and everything \ +at once. We own the world and nothing in it. + +[ithappened]: howithappened.html +[mirror]: moongone.html +[trumpet]: deathstrumpet.html diff --git a/telemarketer.txt b/telemarketer.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..e43b87c --- /dev/null +++ b/telemarketer.txt @@ -0,0 +1,87 @@ +--- +title: Telemarketer +genre: prose + +project: + title: Elegies for alternate selves + css: elegies + order: 25 + prev: + title: Swan song + link: swansong + next: + title: We played those games too + link: weplayedthosegamestoo +... + +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. + +[ocean]: theoceanoverflowswithcamels.html +[eagle perched]: mountain.html +[bigger pain]: arspoetica.html diff --git a/theoceanoverflowswithcamels.txt b/theoceanoverflowswithcamels.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..94ba2a0 --- /dev/null +++ b/theoceanoverflowswithcamels.txt @@ -0,0 +1,40 @@ +--- +title: The ocean overflows with camels +genre: verse + +project: + title: Elegies for alternate selves + css: elegies + order: 7 + prev: + title: Ars poetica + link: arspoetica + next: + title: The boar + link: boar +... + +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. + +[shirt]: lovesong.html +[left hook]: roughgloves.html +[father]: angeltoabraham.html diff --git a/todaniel.txt b/todaniel.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..6e39f78 --- /dev/null +++ b/todaniel.txt @@ -0,0 +1,36 @@ +--- +title: To Daniel +subtitle: an elaboration of a previous comment +genre: verse + +project: + title: Elegies for alternate selves + css: elegies + order: 27 + prev: + title: We played those games too + link: weplayedthosegamestoo + next: + title: "Death's trumpet" + link: deathstrumpet +... + +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][trumpet]. \ +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. + +[trumpet]: deathstrumpet.html diff --git a/weplayedthosegamestoo.txt b/weplayedthosegamestoo.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..e73dc75 --- /dev/null +++ b/weplayedthosegamestoo.txt @@ -0,0 +1,40 @@ +--- +title: We played those games too +genre: verse + +project: + title: Elegies for alternate selves + css: elegies + order: 25 + prev: + title: Telemarketer + link: telemarketer + next: + title: 'To Daniel: an elaboration' + link: todaniel +... + +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][spittle]. \ +I will never be able to say how \ +we share this blemish like conjoined twins. \ +I will fail you always to remember you. + +[my daughter]: and.html +[spittle]: spittle.html diff --git a/words-meaning.txt b/words-meaning.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..ee87ad0 --- /dev/null +++ b/words-meaning.txt @@ -0,0 +1,60 @@ +--- +title: Words and meaning +genre: prose + +project: + title: Elegies for alternate selves + css: elegies + order: 4 + prev: + title: And + link: and + next: + title: On seeing the panorama of the Apollo 11 landing site + link: apollo11 +... + +"How astonishing it is that language can almost mean, / and frightening +that it does not quite," Jack Gilbert opens his poem "The Forgotten +Dialect of the Heart." In a similar vein, Hass's "Meditation at +Legunitas" states, "A word is elegy to what it signifies." These poems +get to the heart of language, and express the old duality of thought: by +giving a word to an entity, it is both tethered and made meaningful. + +Words are the inevitable byproduct of an analytic mind. Humans are +constantly classifying and reclassifying ideas, objects, animals, +people, into ten thousand arbitrary categories. A favorite saying of +mine is that "Everything is everything," a tautology that I like, +because it gets to the core of the human linguistic machine, and because +every time I say it people think I'm being [disingenuous][]. But what I mean +by "everything is everything" is that there is a continuity to existence +that works beyond, or rather underneath, our capacity to understand it +through language. Language by definition compartmentalizes reality, sets +this bit apart from that bit, sets up boundaries as to what is and is +not a stone, a leaf, a door. Most of the time I think of language as +limiting, as defining a thing as the [inverse of everything][] is not. + +In this way, "everything is everything" becomes "everything is nothing," +which is another thing I like to say and something that pisses people +off. To me, infinity and zero are the same, two ways of looking at the +same point on the circle–of numbers, of the universe, whatever. Maybe +it's because I wear an analogue watch, and so my view of time is +cyclical, or maybe it's some brain trauma I had in vitro, but whatever it +is that's how I see the world, because I'm working against the +limitations that language sets upon us. I think that's the role of the +poet, or of any artist: to take the over-expansive experience of +existing and to boil it down, boil and boil away until there is the +ultimate concentrate at the center that is what the poem talks around, +at, etc., but never of, because it is ultimately made of language and +cannot get to it. A poem is getting as close as possible to the speed of +light, to absolute zero, to God, while knowing that it can't get all the +way there, and never will. A poem is doing this and coming back and +showing what happened as it happened. Exegesis is hard because a really +good poem will be just that, it will be the most basic and best way to +say what it's saying, so attempts to say the same thing differently will +fail. A poem is a kernel of existence. It is a description of the +kernel. [It is][]. + +[disingenuous]: likingthings.html +[inverse of everything]: i-am.html +[It is]: arspoetica.html -- cgit 1.4.1-21-gabe81