From 96ab7a3ce522f38a768e67c73021bf1071832a37 Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001 From: Case Duckworth Date: Mon, 9 Feb 2015 12:04:05 -0700 Subject: Add Paul; move source files to src/ --- src/TODO.txt | 7 ++ src/and.txt | 46 +++++++++++ src/angeltoabraham.txt | 39 +++++++++ src/apollo11.txt | 44 ++++++++++ src/arspoetica.txt | 52 ++++++++++++ src/art.txt | 30 +++++++ src/axe.txt | 37 +++++++++ src/boar.txt | 39 +++++++++ src/building.txt | 42 ++++++++++ src/cereal.txt | 43 ++++++++++ src/deadman.txt | 37 +++++++++ src/deathstrumpet.txt | 47 +++++++++++ src/dream.txt | 43 ++++++++++ src/early.txt | 42 ++++++++++ src/elegyforanalternateself.txt | 26 ++++++ src/epigraph.txt | 34 ++++++++ src/father.txt | 39 +++++++++ src/feedingtheraven.txt | 49 +++++++++++ src/fire.txt | 40 +++++++++ src/hands.txt | 44 ++++++++++ src/hardware.txt | 37 +++++++++ src/howithappened.txt | 35 ++++++++ src/howtoread.txt | 156 ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ src/hymnal.txt | 38 +++++++++ src/i-am.txt | 37 +++++++++ src/joke.txt | 44 ++++++++++ src/leaf.txt | 35 ++++++++ src/leg.txt | 48 +++++++++++ src/likingthings.txt | 57 +++++++++++++ src/lovesong.txt | 41 ++++++++++ src/man.txt | 43 ++++++++++ src/moongone.txt | 30 +++++++ src/mountain.txt | 40 +++++++++ src/movingsideways.txt | 63 +++++++++++++++ src/notes.txt | 44 ++++++++++ src/onformalpoetry.txt | 36 +++++++++ src/options.txt | 43 ++++++++++ src/paul.txt | 54 +++++++++++++ src/philosophy.txt | 38 +++++++++ src/phone.txt | 42 ++++++++++ src/planks.txt | 38 +++++++++ src/prelude.txt | 17 ++++ src/problems.txt | 72 +++++++++++++++++ src/proverbs.txt | 47 +++++++++++ src/punch.txt | 39 +++++++++ src/purpose-dogs.txt | 42 ++++++++++ src/question.txt | 43 ++++++++++ src/reports.txt | 40 +++++++++ src/ronaldmcdonald.txt | 49 +++++++++++ src/roughgloves.txt | 34 ++++++++ src/sapling.txt | 43 ++++++++++ src/serengeti.txt | 33 ++++++++ src/shed.txt | 35 ++++++++ src/shipwright.txt | 37 +++++++++ src/snow.txt | 43 ++++++++++ src/spittle.txt | 30 +++++++ src/squirrel.txt | 35 ++++++++ src/stagnant.txt | 39 +++++++++ src/statements-frag.txt | 72 +++++++++++++++++ src/stump.txt | 41 ++++++++++ src/swansong-alt.txt | 31 +++++++ src/swansong.txt | 35 ++++++++ src/swear.txt | 58 ++++++++++++++ src/tapestry.txt | 42 ++++++++++ src/telemarketer.txt | 87 ++++++++++++++++++++ src/theoceanoverflowswithcamels.txt | 40 +++++++++ src/todaniel.txt | 36 +++++++++ src/toilet.txt | 36 +++++++++ src/toothpaste.txt | 40 +++++++++ src/treatise.txt | 62 ++++++++++++++ src/underwear.txt | 40 +++++++++ src/wallpaper.txt | 40 +++++++++ src/weplayedthosegamestoo.txt | 40 +++++++++ src/window.txt | 42 ++++++++++ src/words-meaning.txt | 60 ++++++++++++++ src/writing.txt | 35 ++++++++ src/x-ray.txt | 44 ++++++++++ src/yellow.txt | 40 +++++++++ 78 files changed, 3378 insertions(+) create mode 100644 src/TODO.txt create mode 100644 src/and.txt create mode 100644 src/angeltoabraham.txt create mode 100644 src/apollo11.txt create mode 100644 src/arspoetica.txt create mode 100644 src/art.txt create mode 100644 src/axe.txt create mode 100644 src/boar.txt create mode 100644 src/building.txt create mode 100644 src/cereal.txt create mode 100644 src/deadman.txt create mode 100644 src/deathstrumpet.txt create mode 100644 src/dream.txt create mode 100644 src/early.txt create mode 100644 src/elegyforanalternateself.txt create mode 100644 src/epigraph.txt create mode 100644 src/father.txt create mode 100644 src/feedingtheraven.txt create mode 100644 src/fire.txt create mode 100644 src/hands.txt create mode 100644 src/hardware.txt create mode 100644 src/howithappened.txt create mode 100644 src/howtoread.txt create mode 100644 src/hymnal.txt create mode 100644 src/i-am.txt create mode 100644 src/joke.txt create mode 100644 src/leaf.txt create mode 100644 src/leg.txt create mode 100644 src/likingthings.txt create mode 100644 src/lovesong.txt create mode 100644 src/man.txt create mode 100644 src/moongone.txt create mode 100644 src/mountain.txt create mode 100644 src/movingsideways.txt create mode 100644 src/notes.txt create mode 100644 src/onformalpoetry.txt create mode 100644 src/options.txt create mode 100644 src/paul.txt create mode 100644 src/philosophy.txt create mode 100644 src/phone.txt create mode 100644 src/planks.txt create mode 100644 src/prelude.txt create mode 100644 src/problems.txt create mode 100644 src/proverbs.txt create mode 100644 src/punch.txt create mode 100644 src/purpose-dogs.txt create mode 100644 src/question.txt create mode 100644 src/reports.txt create mode 100644 src/ronaldmcdonald.txt create mode 100644 src/roughgloves.txt create mode 100644 src/sapling.txt create mode 100644 src/serengeti.txt create mode 100644 src/shed.txt create mode 100644 src/shipwright.txt create mode 100644 src/snow.txt create mode 100644 src/spittle.txt create mode 100644 src/squirrel.txt create mode 100644 src/stagnant.txt create mode 100644 src/statements-frag.txt create mode 100644 src/stump.txt create mode 100644 src/swansong-alt.txt create mode 100644 src/swansong.txt create mode 100644 src/swear.txt create mode 100644 src/tapestry.txt create mode 100644 src/telemarketer.txt create mode 100644 src/theoceanoverflowswithcamels.txt create mode 100644 src/todaniel.txt create mode 100644 src/toilet.txt create mode 100644 src/toothpaste.txt create mode 100644 src/treatise.txt create mode 100644 src/underwear.txt create mode 100644 src/wallpaper.txt create mode 100644 src/weplayedthosegamestoo.txt create mode 100644 src/window.txt create mode 100644 src/words-meaning.txt create mode 100644 src/writing.txt create mode 100644 src/x-ray.txt create mode 100644 src/yellow.txt (limited to 'src') diff --git a/src/TODO.txt b/src/TODO.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..0030650 --- /dev/null +++ b/src/TODO.txt @@ -0,0 +1,7 @@ +TODO: +----- + +* add in prose stuff from Elegies +* remove numbers from filenames & links +* add genre to YAML metadata blocks + diff --git a/src/and.txt b/src/and.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..645f0c2 --- /dev/null +++ b/src/and.txt @@ -0,0 +1,46 @@ +--- +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/src/angeltoabraham.txt b/src/angeltoabraham.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..5fd7ad1 --- /dev/null +++ b/src/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/src/apollo11.txt b/src/apollo11.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..a72aaab --- /dev/null +++ b/src/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/src/arspoetica.txt b/src/arspoetica.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..3014498 --- /dev/null +++ b/src/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/src/art.txt b/src/art.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..c439598 --- /dev/null +++ b/src/art.txt @@ -0,0 +1,30 @@ +--- +title: Art +genre: prose + +project: + title: "Buildings out of air: Paul in the Woods" + css: paul + order: 1 + next: + - title: Hymnal + link: hymnal + - title: Axe + link: axe +... + +Paul was writing in his diary about art. + +_This is my brain_ he wrote. _This is my brain and all it contains. 'I +contain multitudes' said Legion. I think it was Legion._ The big heading he +had written at the top of the page (_ART_ it read, but only when looking at it +from his point of view) sat cold and alone, neglected in the white space +surrounding it. He noticed this presently (but not after he had written a +little more about multitudes), paused, frowned, and began to write again. + +_ART stands alone at the top of a blank page_ he wrote. _It follows ~~itself +in circles~~ its own footprints in a circle around its own name. It leads +nowhere but is present everywhere. ~~It contains~~ It contains multitudes. +Every painting ever made is a painting of every other painting. Every song is +a remix, a cover version._ He crossed out the part about songs for getting +off topic. He made a note to himself in the margin---_Music is not ART._ diff --git a/src/axe.txt b/src/axe.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..2c7454b --- /dev/null +++ b/src/axe.txt @@ -0,0 +1,37 @@ +--- +title: Axe +genre: prose + +project: + title: "Buildings out of air: Paul in the Woods" + css: paul + order: 5 + next: + - title: Leaf + link: leaf + - title: Building + link: building + previous: + - title: Dream + link: dream + - title: Art + link: art +... + +Paul took his axe and went out into the woods to chop trees. Or rather he +went into the trees to chop wood. He wasn't sure. Either way it helped him +think. Last time he'd gone out, he'd had an idea for a shoe-insert company he +could start called "Paul's Bunyons." He chuckled to himself as he shouldered +his axe and went into the forest. + +Deep into the woods he admired the organization of the trees. "They grow +wherever they fall" he said "but still none is too close to another." He +sounded like Solomon to himself. He imagined he had a beard. + +He walked for a long time in the shadows of the forest, in its coolness. It +sounded like snow had fallen but it was still October. The first time the +trees seemed to radiate out from him in straight lines he stopped and turned +around four times. After he walked on he noticed it happened fairly often. + +Still, after he felled his first tree that day he realized they grew from the +epicenter of his axe. He paused in the small dark sound of the forest quiet. diff --git a/src/boar.txt b/src/boar.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..049e0ff --- /dev/null +++ b/src/boar.txt @@ -0,0 +1,39 @@ +--- +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/src/building.txt b/src/building.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..4ceb244 --- /dev/null +++ b/src/building.txt @@ -0,0 +1,42 @@ +--- +title: Building +genre: prose + +project: + title: "Buildings out of air: Paul in the Woods" + css: paul + order: 28 + next: + - title: Yellow + link: yellow + - title: Cereal + link: cereal + previous: + - title: Stagnant + link: stagnant + - title: Axe + link: axe +... + +_ART and CRAFT are only the inside and outside of the same building. The +ceiling is_---here he put his eraser to his bottom lip, thinking. He crossed +out _~~The ceiling is.~~_ _The floor is reality and the ceiling is +~~aspiration~~ ~~desire~~ that which is desired. CRAFT is building a chair +from wood. ART is using the wood as a substrate for an emotional message to a +future person, the READER / VIEWER._ + +_The important thing is they are both made of wood. The important thing is +they were both, at one point, alive natural things that grew and changed and +pushed their way out of the dirt into the air. They formed buildings out of +the air. They didn't even try._ + +_What separates us from them, the trees? We have to try. We must labor to +create our ART, our buildings of air. We lay them out brick by brick, we +build them up by disintegrating trees and forming them again into what they +were before. Why must we do this? are there any advantages to this human +method?_ + +_Our advantage is memory. Our advantage is the reaching-out over space and +time to others with our words, our ART. Our buildings last for generations, +and after they are demolished they are written about, photographs are taken, +we **remember**. The act of memory is our only ART._ diff --git a/src/cereal.txt b/src/cereal.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..8a2ba8e --- /dev/null +++ b/src/cereal.txt @@ -0,0 +1,43 @@ +--- +title: Cereal +genre: prose + +project: + title: "Buildings out of air: Paul in the Woods" + css: paul + order: 21 + next: + - title: Man + link: man + - title: Dream + link: dream + previous: + - title: Sapling + link: sapling + - title: Building + link: building +... + +He woke up after eleven and didn't go outside all day, not even to his Writing +Shack. What did he do? + +He watched late morning cartoons meant for children too young to go to school. +He ate bowls of cereal. He watched his mother play dominoes. He played +dominoes with her for a little while until she was winning by such a margin it +wasn't fun for either of them. He went down to the basement to do his +laundry. He pulled the chain for the light and it turned on like magic. +"Electricity is like magic" he said to himself. He thought he would like to +write that down but his Implements were in the Shack. He'd already built up +so much momentum inside. + +Inertia? he thought. "What's the difference between inertia and momentum" he +asked himself as he hefted dirty clothes into the washer. "Maybe inertia is +the momentum of not moving" he thought as he measured and poured the blue +detergent into the drum. "Momentum is the inertia of moving forward through +time" as he selected WARM-COLD on the dial and pulled it out to start the +machine. "What do you think is the difference between inertia and momentum" +he asked his mother when he opened the door at the top of the stairs. + +"When you switch over your laundry could you bring up my underwear from the +dryer" she asked not looking up from her dominoes. A thread of smoke curled +from her cigarette and spread out on the ceiling. diff --git a/src/deadman.txt b/src/deadman.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..6ef673e --- /dev/null +++ b/src/deadman.txt @@ -0,0 +1,37 @@ +--- +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/src/deathstrumpet.txt b/src/deathstrumpet.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..f5ad1ed --- /dev/null +++ b/src/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/src/dream.txt b/src/dream.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..b933977 --- /dev/null +++ b/src/dream.txt @@ -0,0 +1,43 @@ +--- +title: Dream +genre: prose + +project: + title: "Buildings out of air: Paul in the Woods" + css: paul + order: 4 + next: + - title: Axe + link: axe + - title: Early + link: early + previous: + - title: Underwear + link: underwear + - title: Cereal + link: cereal +... + +It had gotten cold. He went to lay down in bed with a pad and paper. He +began to write. Although he hadn't tried it much in bed before, he liked it +mostly. His arm got tired journeying across the page like a series of +switchbacks down the wall of the Grand Canyon. He wrote this down in the +margin, for later: + +```hand +Arm journeying across \ +the pg. like a \ +series of switch- +backs down the wall \ +of the Grand Canyon \ +``` + +His arm began to pain him. He adjusted his position in the bed. It didn't +help much with the pain. It still hurt as he wrote. He began to be +distracted by his mother's music playing in the next room. + +"Could you turn that down please" he hollered across the wall to his mother. +She made no reply (music too loud). He gave his arm a break to look at what +he'd written. He couldn't make heads or tails of it. It looked like Arabic. + +He woke up gasping in a sweat. diff --git a/src/early.txt b/src/early.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..04ab997 --- /dev/null +++ b/src/early.txt @@ -0,0 +1,42 @@ +--- +title: Early +genre: prose + +project: + title: "Buildings out of air: Paul in the Woods" + css: paul + order: 35 + next: + - title: Toothpaste + link: toothpaste + - title: Father + link: father + previous: + - title: Stump + link: stump + - title: Dream + link: dream +... + +_YOU CANNOT DISCOVER ART ART MUST BE CREATED_ he sat on the couch at home +while his mother watched TV and smoked. Dinner had been chicken and peas with +milk and afterward Paul and his mother sat on opposite ends of the couch. At +intervals she would look sideways at Paul writing. He pretended not to notice. + +_ART = ARTIFICE_ he wrote. _ARTIFICE MEANS UNNATURAL. ARTIFICE MEANS BUILT. +TO BUILD MEANS TO FIND A PATTERN & FIND A PATTERN IS WHAT WE ARE GOOD AT._ He +thought about this while someone else won a car. + +"Do you think humans are good at finding patterns because we are hunters" he +asked his mother. She looked sideways at him and said "Sure Paul." "Early on +in our evolution we were hunters right? And to hunt we had to see the +patterns in seemingly random events, like where the gazelle went each year" +"Paul I'm trying to watch TV. If you're going to write this stuff go do it in +your room you're distracting." Paul got up and went to his room and lay down +on his bed. + +"If the gazelle went to the same place every year" he thought "did they know +the pattern too? Or was it random for them, did they think each year 'This +seems like a good spot let's graze here' without knowing?" + +He wrote _PATTERN = MEMORY_ in his notebook. diff --git a/src/elegyforanalternateself.txt b/src/elegyforanalternateself.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..b52c2c4 --- /dev/null +++ b/src/elegyforanalternateself.txt @@ -0,0 +1,26 @@ +--- +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/src/epigraph.txt b/src/epigraph.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..1adac49 --- /dev/null +++ b/src/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/src/father.txt b/src/father.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..693a61f --- /dev/null +++ b/src/father.txt @@ -0,0 +1,39 @@ +--- +title: Father +genre: prose + +project: + title: "Buildings out of air: Paul in the Woods" + css: paul + order: 37 + next: + - title: Paul + link: paul + - title: Fire + link: fire + previous: + - title: Toothpaste + link: toothpaste + - title: Early + link: early +... + +"Is man the natural thing that makes unnatural things" he thought to himself +as he looked out the kitchen window at the shed. He wondered who built the +shed for the first time since he'd been going out there. "Mom who built the +shed out back" he asked. "That was your father" she said. + +His father. Paul had never met him. His mother had said when he was a kid +that his father was caught by a riptide while swimming in the ocean. He +hadn't noticed what was happening until the land was a thin line on the +horizon. He became exhausted swimming back and drowned. His body was found a +week later by the coroner's estimate. Paul never really believed this story +because his mother's face was sad in the wrong way when she told it. + +She said he looked like his father but she also said all men look alike. Paul +realized he'd been standing at the kitchen window for a long time looking out +at the shed without realizing it. He went out to take an inventory of +everything inside. + +"Where you going" asked his mother. "To the shed. I'll be back in a bit" he +said. diff --git a/src/feedingtheraven.txt b/src/feedingtheraven.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..ec47846 --- /dev/null +++ b/src/feedingtheraven.txt @@ -0,0 +1,49 @@ +--- +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/src/fire.txt b/src/fire.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..4ca2ce7 --- /dev/null +++ b/src/fire.txt @@ -0,0 +1,40 @@ +--- +title: Fire +genre: prose + +project: + title: "Buildings out of air: Paul in the Woods" + css: paul + order: 39 + next: + - title: Hands + link: hands + previous: + - title: Paul + link: paul + - title: Father + link: father +... + +His mother ran out of the house in her nightgown. "What the hell do you think +you're doing" she hollered as Paul watched the shed. "I'm burning the shed +down" he said smiling "isn't it warm?" "It's warm enough out here without +that burning down" she said "go get the hose and put this thing out." "But +Mom" "Do it" she said in the tone of voice that meant Do it now. He went +around the side of the house screwed the nozzle on grabbed the end of the hose +pulled it around the house and waited for water to come out the end. When it +did it was not in a very strong stream. "I don't think this is going to work" +Paul said to his mother. "God damn it I have to call the Fire Department" she +said and went inside the house. The shed continued in its burning. + +After the Fire Department put out the fire one of the men said "Your mother +says you set this building on fire. You know Arson is a major offense." "I +set it on fire" Paul said. "Why?" "Because ART wants to be random, it wants +to be natural, but it isn't. Humans create ART because we can't help but see +patterns in randomness. But we feel guilty about it." The man nodded to +another man in a blue uniform. "We want the ART to feel natural, to feel +random, but we can't stop seeing the patterns" as the man in blue walked over +and put a hand on Paul's shoulder "ART is unnatural by its very nature. I +took my ART and gave it back to nature" as the man led him over to a black and +white car and put him inside. He was saying something about Paul's right. +"No it's my left that was hurt" said Paul "but it's all better now." diff --git a/src/hands.txt b/src/hands.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..3d65193 --- /dev/null +++ b/src/hands.txt @@ -0,0 +1,44 @@ +--- +title: Hands +genre: prose + +project: + title: "Buildings out of air: Paul in the Woods" + css: paul + order: 10 + next: + - title: Toilet + link: toilet + - title: Hardware + link: hardware + previous: + - title: Shed + link: shed + - title: Fire + link: fire +... + +He looked down at his hands idly while he was typing. They were dry and +cracked in places. He thought he might start bleeding so he went inside for +some lotion. + +"Do we have any lotion" he asked his mother. "In the medicine cabinet" she +said without looking up from the TV. He walked into the bathroom and looked +at himself in the mirror. "I look strange" he said to himself "I look like a +teenager." He stared into his right eye, then his left. He saw nothing but +his own reflection fish-eyed in his pupils. He opened the medicine cabinet. + +Back in his Writing Shack, he started to type. + +```type +What is it about hands that gives +them such power? It is that their +power is hidden in the arm. Push +on the inside of the wrist--the +hand closes. Reach under the skin +and pull on the outside tendons-- +the hand opens again. Hands are +only machines for grasping, +controlled by the arm, not the +mind. +``` diff --git a/src/hardware.txt b/src/hardware.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..3ff1ddc --- /dev/null +++ b/src/hardware.txt @@ -0,0 +1,37 @@ +--- +title: Hardware +genre: prose + +project: + title: "Buildings out of air: Paul in the Woods" + css: paul + order: 14 + next: + - title: Treatise + link: treatise + - title: Hymnal + link: hymnal + previous: + - title: Planks + link: planks + - title: Hands + link: hands +... + +His mother drove him to the Hardware Store on a Tuesday. "I'm glad to see +you've taken my advice for once" she said. "What do you mean." "Applying to +work at the Hardware Store. I'm proud of you Paul." + +"Oh right. Sure thing." They pulled into the parking lot. "Just be a +minute" he said as he opened the car door. + +He walked under the door resplendent in its King William orange and white. He +saw the towering rows of shelves like mountain ridges in Hell. He strolled +among the fixtures, pipes, planks, sheets, plants (Why plants? he thought), +switches. He realized he didn't know the first thing about building +furniture. "I don't know the first thing" he muttered to himself "about +building furniture. I know the last thing would be a couch or chair or stool +but the first thing is a mystery." He turned around and walked straight out +of the store and to his mother's car without looking up. + +"How'd it go" she asked starting the car. "Great" he said. diff --git a/src/howithappened.txt b/src/howithappened.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..f058c74 --- /dev/null +++ b/src/howithappened.txt @@ -0,0 +1,35 @@ +--- +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/src/howtoread.txt b/src/howtoread.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..2fed4be --- /dev/null +++ b/src/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/src/hymnal.txt b/src/hymnal.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..199746d --- /dev/null +++ b/src/hymnal.txt @@ -0,0 +1,38 @@ +--- +title: Hymnal +genre: prose + +project: + title: "Buildings out of air: Paul in the Woods" + css: paul + order: 2 + next: + - title: Underwear + link: underwear + - title: Joke + link: joke + previous: + - title: Art + link: art + - title: Hardware + link: hardware +... + +_It's all jokes_ Paul wrote in what he was now calling his Hymnal. He had +been writing non-stop all day, because he didn't count pee- or cigarette- +breaks. _All art is an inside joke. The symbology involved must be_---and here +he put down his pen and held his head in his hands. He could never think of +the word---he said often that he had no words. He opened to a new page in his +Hymnal. On the top of it was written in bold script _**HYMN 386: JOKES**_. + +Paul scowled. Who had written in his Hymnal? he wondered. He said it out +loud a moment after: "Who has written in my Hymnal?" He realized he was alone +in his Writing Shack, which was really a shed in the back of his mother's +garden. He wondered why he had to say his thoughts before they became real to +him (if this was a habit or an inborn trait). He realized simultaneously that + +(a) he could ask someone and +(b) that this was something he wondered every time he spoke his thoughts out + loud. + +He resolved to put the issue to rest by asking someone. diff --git a/src/i-am.txt b/src/i-am.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..f890283 --- /dev/null +++ b/src/i-am.txt @@ -0,0 +1,37 @@ +--- +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/src/joke.txt b/src/joke.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..00053bd --- /dev/null +++ b/src/joke.txt @@ -0,0 +1,44 @@ +--- +title: Joke +genre: prose + +project: + title: "Buildings out of air: Paul in the Woods" + css: paul + order: 33 + next: + - title: Stump + link: stump + - title: Leaf + link: leaf + previous: + - title: Punch + link: punch + - title: Hymnal + link: hymnal +... + +He wrote _**JOKES**_ on the top of a page in his notebook. He had run out of +notecards and hadn't been able to convince his mother to go to the Office +Supply Store for him. He left a space underneath it and wrote. + +_"Tell us a joke" the listeners say to the clown. They have gather together +in the clearing because they have heard he would be there, and they have heard +he knew very funny jokes that were also true. "Tell us a joke that is true" +they say._ + +_The clown does not move from the stump. He doesn't move at all. The +listeners watch, gap-mouthed, as a butterfly lands on his hat. A breeze +ruffles his coat and the butterfly flies away. Hours pass. The listeners +grow impatient. Some begin yelling insults at the clown. Eventually, they +begin to walk away into the woods._ + +_The moon rises on the clearing. The only people left are the clown and a +listener, the last listener. She has been waiting for the joke a long time. +The clown opens his mouth and she leans in closer to hear. He closes it as a +tear falls onto his coat, then another. He opens his mouth again in a sob. +The listener walks over to him and puts a hand on his shoulder._ + +_"I'm sorry" says the clown. "Sorry for what" she asks. "I don't know. I +don't know any jokes." He disappears. The last listener sits on the log and +looks at the sky. There are no stars._ diff --git a/src/leaf.txt b/src/leaf.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..dec253c --- /dev/null +++ b/src/leaf.txt @@ -0,0 +1,35 @@ +--- +title: Leaf +genre: prose + +project: + title: "Buildings out of air: Paul in the Woods" + css: paul + order: 3 + next: + - title: Writing + link: writing + - title: Leg + link: leg + previous: + - title: Axe + link: axe + - title: Joke + link: joke +... + +He shrugged the wood off his shoulder, letting it fall with a clog onto the +earth floor of his Writing Shack. He exhaled looking out of the window. He +hoped to see a bird fly by, maybe a blue jay or raven. No bird did. He +inhaled. He exhaled again in a way that could only be classified as a sigh. +He sat down at his writing desk. He began shuffling through what he'd +written, trying to find some sort of pattern. + +"*Each piece of paper---each leaf---*" at this he smiled--- "*is like a tree +in the forest.*" He was writing as he thought aloud. "*I, as the artist, as +the **writer**, must select which to use, chop down those trees, bring them +back to my shed and*---and---" he frowned as he realized the only end to this +metaphor was fire. He ran his fingers through his hair in a self-soothing +gesture. + +"I need to build some furniture" he thought. diff --git a/src/leg.txt b/src/leg.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..ec09227 --- /dev/null +++ b/src/leg.txt @@ -0,0 +1,48 @@ +--- +title: Leg +genre: prose + +project: + title: "Buildings out of air: Paul in the Woods" + css: paul + order: 12 + next: + - title: Planks + link: planks + - title: Man + link: man + previous: + - title: Toilet + link: toilet + - title: Leaf + link: leaf +... + +His first chair was a stool. It was an uneven wobbly stool that would not +support even forty pounds. "So my first chair is a broken stool" he said +after nearly breaking his tailbone on the dirt floor. "Maybe I should start +again but this time only with legs." He began again but this time only with +legs. He built one leg, which means he cut a straight piece of wood down to +four feet in length, whittled the bark off, and sanded it down smooth in what +he was now calling his Woodworking Shack. He typed up a note on how to make +chair legs. + +```type +MAKING CHAIR LEGS + +1. get longish piece of wood +2. cut it to length (4 feet I'd + recommend) +3. whittle off bark +4. sand smooth the leg +``` + +After he tried remembered tried standing the leg up, failing, and after much +thought realizing that the ends needed to be flat, he typed one more line on +his notecard: + +``` +5. make ends flat +``` + +He had no tools with which to flatten the ends of his leg. diff --git a/src/likingthings.txt b/src/likingthings.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..1c9c15a --- /dev/null +++ b/src/likingthings.txt @@ -0,0 +1,57 @@ +--- +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/src/lovesong.txt b/src/lovesong.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..e504e14 --- /dev/null +++ b/src/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/src/man.txt b/src/man.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..686411f --- /dev/null +++ b/src/man.txt @@ -0,0 +1,43 @@ +--- +title: Man +genre: prose + +project: + title: "Buildings out of air: Paul in the Woods" + css: paul + order: 22 + next: + - title: Snow + link: snow + - title: Notes + link: notes + previous: + - title: Cereal + link: cereal + - title: Leg + link: leg +... + +_THIS MAN REFUSED TO OPEN HIS EYES_ + +Paul read this on an old mugshot in the library. He had taken the bus into +town to check out a few books on woodworking and got distracted by the True +Crime section. He found this mugshot in a book titled _Crooks like Us_ that +was published in Sydney. He liked how cities were named after women, or how +women were named after cities, whichever was true. + +The man in the picture's eyes were tightly shut, as though he'd just come into +the brightness of day after being dark inside for a long time. His head was +tilted up and slightly to the right. He was wearing a short light tie with +hash marks, and a pinstripe suit. Paul wished the photograph was in color. +He was standing in front of a plain brown wall covered in fabric. + +The man's eyes were not so tightly shut as Paul first thought. His eyebrows +lifted away from the eyes, giving the man a bemused look. His mouth was +slightly opened in what seemed to Paul like a grin. This was accentuated by +the man's ears, which were large. Paul wasn't sure why the ears made the man +look happier. He wondered what crime he had committed. + +Above the man's head was written _T. BEDE.22.11.28 / 203 A_. _THIS MAN +REFUSED TO OPEN HIS EYES_ was written over his suit, directly below his +ribcage. diff --git a/src/moongone.txt b/src/moongone.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..ad9135b --- /dev/null +++ b/src/moongone.txt @@ -0,0 +1,30 @@ +--- +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/src/mountain.txt b/src/mountain.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..c1666e4 --- /dev/null +++ b/src/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/src/movingsideways.txt b/src/movingsideways.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..bc373e2 --- /dev/null +++ b/src/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/src/notes.txt b/src/notes.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..024d18b --- /dev/null +++ b/src/notes.txt @@ -0,0 +1,44 @@ +--- +title: Notes +genre: prose + +project: + title: "Buildings out of air: Paul in the Woods" + css: paul + order: 8 + next: + - title: Shed + link: shed + - title: Options + link: options + previous: + - title: Writing + link: writing + - title: Man + link: man +... + +Paul began typing on notecards. Somehow this felt right to his sensibilities. +It was difficult to get the little cards into the typewriter. It was a pain +to readjust the typewriter for regular paper when he wasn't writing. He +started typing everything on those little notecards: grocery lists, letters to +his grandmother, even reports for work (which is what got him in trouble). + +But this was all later. For now he was writing his ideas, "notes" he now +called them, something for him to combine later into something. He didn't +like to think about it. On this particular cold winter morning, he wrote + +```type +Woke up from a dream I was famous. +One of the more famous people in +fact. I had written something +everyone could relate to and at +the same time proved my parents +wrong. Because I made a lot of +money. Or not a lot, but enough +and more than they thought I +would. It was a good day. +Woke up this morning and I was +still cold. Still Paul. Still not +good at furniture. +``` diff --git a/src/onformalpoetry.txt b/src/onformalpoetry.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..7e654b4 --- /dev/null +++ b/src/onformalpoetry.txt @@ -0,0 +1,36 @@ +--- +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/src/options.txt b/src/options.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..59f2c93 --- /dev/null +++ b/src/options.txt @@ -0,0 +1,43 @@ +--- +title: Options +genre: prose + +project: + title: "Buildings out of air: Paul in the Woods" + css: paul + order: 26 + next: + - title: Stagnant + link: stagnant + - title: Paul + link: paul + previous: + - title: Swear + link: swear + - title: Notes + link: notes +... + +What did he do when he was in the woods? Where did he go? Was there always +one spot, one clearing deep within the heart of them, that he would visit? +Did he talk to the trees or only to himself? When he chopped down trees, did +he leave them there to rot in the quiet or did he drag them out of the woods, +behind his Shack, and dismember them? Did he use any for firewood, or did the +pieces rot behind his Shack, forgotten? When was the last time he built any +furniture? Did he get any better at building it or did he just quit at some +point, let the desire to create fall behind him like a forgotten felled tree? + +A tree fell in the forest: did it make a noise? Paul typed his thoughts on +cards, or wrote them in a book: did anyone read it? If anyone did, was his +life changed? For the better or the worse? Did he glance at the mess in the +top drawer of his Writing Desk as he cleaned the Shack out long after Paul had +quit using it? Did he put tools in there or leave it empty? What did he do +with the desk? Did he add it to the pile of rotting wood out back, or did he +chop it up for a bonfire with friends, or a cozy fire with his wife and +children, or did he take it to the dump three miles away to rot there? Are +these all the options? + +Did Paul ever think about any of this? Walking in the woods one afternoon +after becoming frustrated with his writing, did he sit on a stump and cry? +Did he wonder whether he should have made other choices? Did he consider +quitting smoking? diff --git a/src/paul.txt b/src/paul.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..e95776b --- /dev/null +++ b/src/paul.txt @@ -0,0 +1,54 @@ +--- +title: Paul +genre: prose + +project: + title: "Buildings out of air: Paul in the Woods" + css: paul + order: 38 + next: + - title: Fire + link: fire + - title: Phone + link: phone + previous: + - title: Father + link: father + - title: Options + link: options +... + +```type +CONTENTS OF THE SHED + +- typewriter +- writing desk +- notecards (top drawer of desk) +- pen (fountain) +- inkpot (empty) +- wood (a lot, more out back) +- bare lightbulb +- candle +- wooden shelf with tools: + - claw hammer + - screwdriver + - prybar + - 2x wrench (different + kinds) +- tiller machine +- push lawnmower +- hatchet +- axe +``` + +He typed the list in the typewriter and looked around some more. He wanted to +make sure he didn't miss anything. Finally it hit him and he smiled. He +typed one more line, stood up, and went out of the shed. + +```type +- Paul Bunyon +``` + +He got some kerosene from under the house, poured it around the base of the +shed, lit a cigarette. He smoked half of it and threw it down to start the +fire. diff --git a/src/philosophy.txt b/src/philosophy.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..0ac114f --- /dev/null +++ b/src/philosophy.txt @@ -0,0 +1,38 @@ +--- +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/src/phone.txt b/src/phone.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..1460180 --- /dev/null +++ b/src/phone.txt @@ -0,0 +1,42 @@ +--- +title: Phone +genre: prose + +project: + title: "Buildings out of air: Paul in the Woods" + css: paul + order: 16 + next: + - title: Tapestry + link: tapestry + - title: Planks + link: planks + previous: + - title: Treatise + link: treatise + - title: Paul + link: paul +... + +"Hello Paul this is Jill Jill Noe remember me" the voice on the phone was a +woman's. He nodded into the receiver. "Hello" Jill asked again "hello?" +Paul remembered that phones work by talking and said "Hello Jill." + +"Do you remember me" she asked "we were in school together? How have you +been?" "Pretty well" said Paul "I've been writing and making furniture." "Oh +that's nice" said the woman's voice tinny in the phone "Listen I ran into your +mother at the Supermarket the other day and she said you need a job. You +still need one?" Paul had to tell the truth. His mother was watching him out +of the corner of her eye as she was playing dominoes at the kitchen table. +"Yes" he said sighing "Although woodworking takes up much of my time." + +"OK" she laughed uncomortably "I actually have something you could do for me +if you think you can get away from woodworking a bit. It's just data entry +really basic stuff entry-level." "What's it pay" he asked. "Minimum but +there is room for movement." "OK" he said. "Start on Monday okay?" "Sure" +he said "bye" and the tin voice in the phone said "Goodbye Paul see you" by +the time he put it back on the hook. + +"Who was that" asked his mother. "Jill Noe" he said. "Oh her was she calling +about a job for you?" "Yes starts Monday" he said. She smiled behind her +glasses reflecting dominoes. diff --git a/src/planks.txt b/src/planks.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..698f982 --- /dev/null +++ b/src/planks.txt @@ -0,0 +1,38 @@ +--- +title: Planks +genre: prose + +project: + title: "Buildings out of air: Paul in the Woods" + css: paul + order: 13 + next: + - title: Hardware + link: hardware + - title: Punch + link: punch + previous: + - title: Leg + link: leg + - title: Phone + link: phone +... + +```type +EVERYTHING CHANGES OR EVERYTHING +STAYS THE SAME +``` + +This sat alone on a blank notecard in Paul's typewriter. He stared at it, +sipping at his too-hot coffee. This made sense to him. + +He looked at the spot on the wall where he wanted a window to be, at the rough +planks above his desk as they were lit by the bare hanging lightbulb. He +sipped his coffee again. It was still too hot. His Woodworking Shack was +becoming full of wood that was not furniture. He feared it would never become +so. + +He threw open the door to the snow and the ground below it. He reached for +his axe on the wall. He reconsidered. He took a few tentative steps onto the +blankness on his own. He wasn't cold, not yet. He walked into the forest. +The snow crunched under his feet and did not echo. diff --git a/src/prelude.txt b/src/prelude.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..91d4541 --- /dev/null +++ b/src/prelude.txt @@ -0,0 +1,17 @@ +--- +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/src/problems.txt b/src/problems.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..c5de325 --- /dev/null +++ b/src/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/src/proverbs.txt b/src/proverbs.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..d0ae38f --- /dev/null +++ b/src/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/src/punch.txt b/src/punch.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..9509143 --- /dev/null +++ b/src/punch.txt @@ -0,0 +1,39 @@ +--- +title: Punch +genre: prose + +project: + title: "Buildings out of air: Paul in the Woods" + css: paul + order: 32 + next: + - title: Joke + link: joke + - title: Question + link: question + previous: + - title: Wallpaper + link: wallpaper + - title: Planks + link: planks +... + +When he finally got back to work he was surprised they threw him a party. +_**WELCOME BACK PAUL!**_ was written on a big banner across the back wall. +Someone had ordered a confectioner's-sugar cake with frosting flowers on the +corners. It said the same thing as the banner. "Welcome back, Paul" said +Jill as he was at the punch bowl. The cup was on the table as he ladled punch +in with his right hand. His left was wrapped in gauze. + +"Let me help you with that" said Jill. Paul had a strange feeling this had +happened before. She took the ladle and their hands touched. She picked the +cup up in her right hand and used her left to lift the spoon. "You know" she +said "we were worried about you. When Jerry heard about your hand he said +'There goes one of our best data entry men.'" "I still can't really move my +left hand" said Paul. "That's alright you can take your time with the entry." +"I'm sorry." + +"Sorry for what" she looked at his eyes. He imagined her seeing fisheye +versions of herself in them. "I don't know" he said because it was true. +"It's alright anyway" she said and placed the full punch cup in his right +hand. diff --git a/src/purpose-dogs.txt b/src/purpose-dogs.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..052b656 --- /dev/null +++ b/src/purpose-dogs.txt @@ -0,0 +1,42 @@ +--- +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/src/question.txt b/src/question.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..edaea2f --- /dev/null +++ b/src/question.txt @@ -0,0 +1,43 @@ +--- +title: Question +genre: prose + +project: + title: "Buildings out of air: Paul in the Woods" + css: paul + order: 19 + next: + - title: Sapling + link: sapling + - title: Reports + link: reports + previous: + - title: Window + link: window + - title: Punch + link: punch +... + +"Do you have to say your thoughts out loud for them to mean anything" Paul +asked Jill on his first coffee break at work. It was in the city and his +mother told him she wouldn't drive him so he'd had to take the bus. Number 3 +he thought it was – he couldn't quite remember. Jill said "Sorry what?" Paul +realized that she hadn't really noticed him there in the break room as he was +hunched behind the refrigerator a little and she was busy pouring coffee and +exactly two tablespoons of both milk and sugar into her mug before she put the +coffee in. He decided to repeat the question. + +"How do you think" he asked. "Like everyone else I guess" she said "I have a +thought and if it's important I write it down." "Do you have to say them out +loud for them to make sense?" "Are you asking if I talk to myself?" A pause. +"I guess so" he said looking down. He had a feeling this was a bad thing. +"Sometimes" she said and walked out of the break room. She didn't understand +the importance of his question. She popped her head back in a moment later and +his heart leaped in his chest. + +"How's your first day going so far" she asked. "Can you understand everything +okay?" "Yes" he said "you were right it's pretty basic." "Good" she said. +"Paul?" "Yes." "Do you have to say all of your thoughts out loud to remember +them?" He shook his head. + +Only all of the time, Paul thought to himself but didn't speak. diff --git a/src/reports.txt b/src/reports.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..61f7e12 --- /dev/null +++ b/src/reports.txt @@ -0,0 +1,40 @@ +--- +title: Reports +genre: prose + +project: + title: "Buildings out of air: Paul in the Woods" + css: paul + order: 24 + next: + - title: Swear + link: swear + - title: Sapling + link: sapling + previous: + - title: Snow + link: snow + - title: Question + link: question +... + +"Paul, you can't turn in your reports on four-by-six notecards" Jill told him +after he handed her his reports, typed carefully on twelve four-by-six +notecards. He had spent the weekend + +1. going to the Office Supply Store to buy notecards and typewriter ribbon (he + found it surprisingly easily) after his first payday +2. replacing the ribbon in his typewriter (this took approximately half an + hour, because he had to figure it all out on his own) +3. opening the package of notecards (this took approximately four seconds, + although he still had to figure out how to do it on his own. It was just + easier) +4. carefully typing the reports he'd handwritten on letter paper onto the + notecards (he made many mistakes and threw away many notecards, though + later he used them for kindling) + +so understandably he was upset. He told Jill all the work he'd gone to to +type those notecard reports for her, for the company. She shook her head. +"Paul, you don't have to do all that work at home. Just type it up on the +computers here, that's all you need to do. Thanks for the work though." He +nodded as she threw the notecards into the trashcan and left his cubicle. diff --git a/src/ronaldmcdonald.txt b/src/ronaldmcdonald.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..a719ef8 --- /dev/null +++ b/src/ronaldmcdonald.txt @@ -0,0 +1,49 @@ +--- +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/src/roughgloves.txt b/src/roughgloves.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..6ef77f6 --- /dev/null +++ b/src/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/src/sapling.txt b/src/sapling.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..e61d3ea --- /dev/null +++ b/src/sapling.txt @@ -0,0 +1,43 @@ +--- +title: Sapling +genre: prose + +project: + title: "Buildings out of air: Paul in the Woods" + css: paul + order: 20 + next: + - title: Cereal + link: cereal + - title: Shed + link: shed + previous: + - title: Question + link: question + - title: Reports + link: reports +... + +He chopped down a sapling pine tree and looked at his watch. From first chop +to fall it had taken him eight minutes and something like twenty seconds. +Maybe a little change. He leaned against another tree and fished in his +pocket for a cigarette. He lifted it out of its box and fished in his other +pocket for his lighter, failing to find it. He searched his other pockets. +He came to the realization that he had forgotten it in his Shack (in confusion +over his True Vocation, he'd resorted to calling it simply the Shack until he +could figure it out). He sighed and put his hands in his pockets. + +"I wonder if trees are protective of their young" he said to himself, then +wondered if why he had to think his thoughts out loud, then remembered he +always did this, then remembered his conversation with Jill. He hoped she +didn't. He hoped that conversation was like the tree that fell in the forest +with no one around. "I wonder if a thought said out loud isn't heard by +anyone, if it was made. I think maybe this is what Literature (big L) is all +about, if it's trying to make a connection because no idea matters unless it's +connected to something else, or to someone else. Maybe no wood matters unless +it's bound to another by upholstery nails. If 'the devil is in the details,' +as they say (who are 'they' anyway?), the details are the connections? That +doesn't make sense. Details are details. Connections are connections. + +"Still, a neuron by itself means nothing. Put them all together though and +connect them. You've got a brain." diff --git a/src/serengeti.txt b/src/serengeti.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..cbac12a --- /dev/null +++ b/src/serengeti.txt @@ -0,0 +1,33 @@ +--- +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/src/shed.txt b/src/shed.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..f312cd4 --- /dev/null +++ b/src/shed.txt @@ -0,0 +1,35 @@ +--- +title: Shed +genre: prose + +project: + title: "Buildings out of air: Paul in the Woods" + css: paul + order: 9 + next: + - title: Hands + link: hands + - title: Snow + link: snow + previous: + - title: Notes + link: notes + - title: Sapling + link: sapling +... + +"What do you do all day in that shed out back" his mother asked one night +while they ate dinner in front of the TV. "Write" he answered. "Write what" +she asked in that way that means he'd better not say I don't know. "I don't +know" he said. + +"Goddammit Paul" his mother said. "You're wasting your life out in that shed. +You need to go out and get---" "I chop down trees too" he said. "I make +furniture out of them." His mother's face did a Hitchcock zoom as she +considered this new information. "Is it any good" she asked, eyes narrowed. + +"It's getting there" he answered. "I'm getting better every day." "When is +it going to be there" she asked. "When are you going to sell this furniture +of yours?" "It'll be a while" he answered. + +"Then you'd better get a job until then" she said. diff --git a/src/shipwright.txt b/src/shipwright.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..4de8e1d --- /dev/null +++ b/src/shipwright.txt @@ -0,0 +1,37 @@ +--- +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/src/snow.txt b/src/snow.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..3bb250a --- /dev/null +++ b/src/snow.txt @@ -0,0 +1,43 @@ +--- +title: Snow +genre: prose + +project: + title: "Buildings out of air: Paul in the Woods" + css: paul + order: 23 + next: + - title: Reports + link: reports + - title: Stagnant + link: stagnant + previous: + - title: Man + link: man + - title: Shed + link: shed +... + +_I don't care if they burn_ he wrote on his last blank notecard. He'd have to +go to the Office Supply Store tomorrow after work. + +He looked at what he'd written. He'd been thinking about this for a while, +felt the frustration build slowly like a thundercloud in the back of his mind. +He thought he should write something else on the card, but everything he +thought of seemed too confessional or too real compromising. He didn't want +anyone, not even the notecards, to know what he was thinking. He decided to +try for more of an interview with the paper. + +_Why?_ asked the notecard. _Because there is nothing important on any of +them_ he wrote back. _What do you mean? You have some good stuff in that top +drawer there._ He looked in the top drawer. It was stuffed full of notecards +in no organization. He could see bits and pieces of thoughts like leaves +crunched underfoot in autumn. _It will take so much organization_ he wrote. + +_Why is organization important? Remember the trees, how they formed rows +without trying. No matter how the ideas fall, they make something. The snow +does that too_ he wrote. _It doesn't try to make anything but it does._ + +_No the snow is different_ the notecard was annoyed. _The snow is a blank +canvas that humans build into shapes or doppelgangers. It makes nothing on +its own._ diff --git a/src/spittle.txt b/src/spittle.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..e1a72e6 --- /dev/null +++ b/src/spittle.txt @@ -0,0 +1,30 @@ +--- +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/src/squirrel.txt b/src/squirrel.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..68936f9 --- /dev/null +++ b/src/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/src/stagnant.txt b/src/stagnant.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..6de7875 --- /dev/null +++ b/src/stagnant.txt @@ -0,0 +1,39 @@ +--- +title: Stagnant +genre: prose + +project: + title: "Buildings out of air: Paul in the Woods" + css: paul + order: 27 + next: + - title: Building + link: building + - title: Stump + link: stump + previous: + - title: Options + link: options + - title: Snow + link: snow +... + +"Riding the bus to work is a good way to think or to read" Paul thought to +himself on the bus ride to work. His thoughts couldn't become real to him +because he didn't want to look insane to everyone else on the bus. His +thoughts came to him like someone yelling over a hard wind. He was trying to +write them on his memory but the act of writing was easier and more immediate +than that of listening. He was afraid that when he looked at his memory later +he wouldn't be able to read what was written. + +"Thoughts are like the wind outside a moving bus" he thought "or rather the +bus is a brain slamming into columns of stagnant air causing them to whistle +past in a confusion of something." He could barely hear the voice yelling to +him over the wind. "Speak up" he thought to the voice, then remembered it was +his own. He wished he'd remembered a book to read. + +He looked at his hands to pass the time. They were dry in the winter air that +had seeped its way into the bus. He tried to figure out how many hours they +would make it before cracking and bleeding. "Maybe three or four" he thought +accidentally out loud. He looked around expecting stares from everyone on the +seat. He was surprised that he was the only one on the bus. diff --git a/src/statements-frag.txt b/src/statements-frag.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..a3c40a1 --- /dev/null +++ b/src/statements-frag.txt @@ -0,0 +1,72 @@ +--- +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/src/stump.txt b/src/stump.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..aae6084 --- /dev/null +++ b/src/stump.txt @@ -0,0 +1,41 @@ +--- +title: Stump +genre: prose + +project: + title: "Buildings out of air: Paul in the Woods" + css: paul + order: 34 + next: + - title: Early + link: early + - title: Swear + link: swear + previous: + - title: Joke + link: joke + - title: Stagnant + link: stagnant +... + +He walked into the woods for the first time in months. It was a bright summer +day but under the canopy of leaves it was cool and quiet and twilight. There +was no sound but his footsteps, his breathing. Instead of an axe, his right +hand clutched his notebook. His left was in his pocket. A pencil perched +behind his ear. + +He walked aimlessly until coming over a short rise he saw a stump. He +recognized his handiwork in the way the stump made a kind of chair back---flat +until the axe had gone through far enough, then a frayed edge like a torn +page. Paul walked over to the stump and sat down. + +He looked up and tried to find a pattern in the placement of the trees. There +was none. They grew randomly, beginning nowhere and ending in the same place. +A squirrel ran down one and up another for no reason. He opened his notebook +and took his pencil from his ear but could think of nothing to write. + +A crow called hoarsely to another, something important. Paul looked up but +could not see the black bird in the leaves of the trees. He looked back down +to the cream-colored pages of his notebook. + +He was surprised that he'd written _YOU CANNOT DISCOVER ART_. diff --git a/src/swansong-alt.txt b/src/swansong-alt.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..e9a9eba --- /dev/null +++ b/src/swansong-alt.txt @@ -0,0 +1,31 @@ +--- +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/src/swansong.txt b/src/swansong.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..80417f9 --- /dev/null +++ b/src/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/src/swear.txt b/src/swear.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..3dc80d7 --- /dev/null +++ b/src/swear.txt @@ -0,0 +1,58 @@ +--- +title: Swear +genre: prose + +project: + title: "Buildings out of air: Paul in the Woods" + css: paul + order: 25 + next: + - title: Options + link: options + - title: Tapestry + link: tapestry + previous: + - title: Reports + link: reports + - title: Stump + link: stump +... + +```type +EVERYTHING CHANGES OR EVERYTHING +STAYS THE SAME + +First, a history: I was writing my +thoughts in a book. I got a typewriter +and typing things in a book +became impossible. I began typing +on 4x6 notecards. I ran out of +ribbon in my typewriter. I wrote +on the 4x6 notecards. I bought a +new ribbon and new notecards. Now +again I am typing on notecards. + What have I been typing? +Thoughts, impressions maybe, a log +of changes to my mental state. I +waited long enough and I began +recording them in the same way. If +I wait longer the ribbon will run +out again and I'll write again, on +notecards or in my book. The same +thoughts in different bodies. + That's what it means, "Every +thing changes or everything stays +the same." It might as well be +"and." Local differences add up to +global identities. It's a hoop, +right? And we keep going around +and we think it's flat but it's +round like the Earth. +``` + +Paul pushed his chair away from the Writing Desk and stared at the notecard. +He stood up, knocked his head on the lightbulb, swore. He pulled the notecard +from his typewriter and crumpled it up with his left hand. With his right hand +he reached in his pocket and pulled out his cigarettes. He put one in his +mouth, threw the paper in the corner, grabbed his axe, went out into the +woods. diff --git a/src/tapestry.txt b/src/tapestry.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..ab87e19 --- /dev/null +++ b/src/tapestry.txt @@ -0,0 +1,42 @@ +--- +title: Tapestry +genre: prose + +project: + title: "Buildings out of air: Paul in the Woods" + css: paul + order: 17 + next: + - title: Window + link: window + - title: Toilet + link: toilet + previous: + - title: Phone + link: phone + - title: Swear + link: swear +... + +_Apparently typewriters need ribbon. Apparently ribbon is incredibly hard to +find anymore because no one uses typewriters. Apparently I am writing my +hymns from now on._ So he was back to calling his notes "hymns." He looked +up "hymns" in the dictionary. It said that a hymn was "an ode or song of +praise or adoration." Praise or adoration to what? he asked himself. He +thought maybe furniture. There was still a lot of notfurniture in what he was +again calling his Writing Shack. + +The dictionary also had this to say about "hymn": that it was possibly related +to the old Greek word for "weave." "Weave what" Paul wondered to himself. He +wrote this down on a new notecard. _Apparently "hymn" means weave somehow. +Or it used to. Or its cousin did. What is it weaving? Who is it weaving for? +I remember in school we talked about Odysseus and his wife Penelope, who wove +a tapestry every day just to take it apart at night. I forget why._ + +_Maybe she wove the tapestry for Odysseus. Maybe she wove it for herself. +What did she weave it of? Memory, maybe? Or dream? I think these words make +a kind of tapestry, or at least the thread it will be made of. I will weave a +hymn to the gods of Literature, out of fiction. My furniture was a try at +weaving, but I am shit at furniture. So writing it is again._ + +He wrote _**NOTES FOR A HYMN**_ at the top of this notecard. diff --git a/src/telemarketer.txt b/src/telemarketer.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..e43b87c --- /dev/null +++ b/src/telemarketer.txt @@ -0,0 +1,87 @@ +--- +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/src/theoceanoverflowswithcamels.txt b/src/theoceanoverflowswithcamels.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..94ba2a0 --- /dev/null +++ b/src/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/src/todaniel.txt b/src/todaniel.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..6e39f78 --- /dev/null +++ b/src/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/src/toilet.txt b/src/toilet.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..90ae836 --- /dev/null +++ b/src/toilet.txt @@ -0,0 +1,36 @@ +--- +title: Toilet +genre: prose + +project: + title: "Buildings out of air: Paul in the Woods" + css: paul + order: 11 + next: + - title: Leg + link: leg + - title: Toothpaste + link: toothpaste + previous: + - title: Hands + link: hands + - title: Tapestry + link: tapestry +... + +Paul only did his reading on the toilet. + +He read in a magazine that the universe as we know it is actually a hologram, +a three-dimensional projection of a lower, two-dimensional, "realer" reality. +The article said that this model explains things like quantum entanglement, +what it called "spooky action at a distance." + +After he finished, he ran back out to his Writing Shack and hammered out a +Treatise on Literature as Spooky Action. His mind was reeling. He typed out +an entire notecard on the subject. + +He stopped to catch his breath. Reading it over, he realized he was +completely wrong. "Paper is made from trees" he thought "and so is +furniture." He had thought that ART and CRAFT were two separate enterprises +but he realized in a flash that they were two sides of the same building. +Were there other walls? diff --git a/src/toothpaste.txt b/src/toothpaste.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..f8cd231 --- /dev/null +++ b/src/toothpaste.txt @@ -0,0 +1,40 @@ +--- +title: Toothpaste +genre: prose + +project: + title: "Buildings out of air: Paul in the Woods" + css: paul + order: 36 + next: + - title: Father + link: father + - title: Treatise + link: treatise + previous: + - title: Early + link: early + - title: Toilet + link: toilet +... + +He couldn't find a shirt to go to work in. They all had stains on them +somewhere. He pulled out a vest to put on over the stains but somehow all of +them were still visible. Most of them were unidentifiable but one he thought +could have come from that peach he ate two weeks before. Another looked like +toothpaste but he was paranoid it was something else. + +When he took the bus into work he couldn't relax. He was paranoid everyone +was staring at his stain and kept looking out the corners of his eyes to make +sure they weren't. They didn't seem to be but they could also be looking away +just as he looked at them. "The Observation Paradox" he muttered to himself. + +Jill was the only one to notice the stain at work. She came around to his +cubicle during a break because he dared not show his stain in the break room. +"You have a stain on your shoulder" she said "it looks like toothpaste." "Do +I" he feigned ignorance but went red at the same time "I didn't see that there +this morning." "How do you get toothpaste on your shoulder?" "I don't know +skills I guess" he said and she grinned. "You know vinegar will take that +out" she said "although I think I like it. You should start a museum of shirt +stains!" "I don't have that many shirts with stains" he said frowning. "Yes +you do" she said. diff --git a/src/treatise.txt b/src/treatise.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..8312be4 --- /dev/null +++ b/src/treatise.txt @@ -0,0 +1,62 @@ +--- +title: Treatise +genre: prose + +project: + title: "Buildings out of air: Paul in the Woods" + css: paul + order: 15 + next: + - title: Phone + link: phone + - title: Underwear + link: underwear + previous: + - title: Hardware + link: hardware + - title: Toothpaste + link: toothpaste +... + +```type +TREATISE ON LITERATURE AS "SPOOKY +ACTION FROM A DISTANCE" + +There is this thing called "spooky +action at a distance." Einstein +mentioned it first I believe. It +is about how two electrons can act +like they are right next to each +other although they are very far +away (lightyears even). For a long +time this puzzled scientists until +someone (not Einstein) figured out +that maybe the universe is a +hologram or projection. So what +appears to be very far apart in +the hologram might actually be +very close in the substrate +reality. + I want to talk about this +effect in literature. In literature +the writer writes words on a +substrate (paper) and later the +reader reads the same words off +the substrate. Although the writer +and reader might be very far apart +from each other in time and space, +they experience the same effect +from reading the words. Even the +writer reading his own words after +he has written them becomes a +reader and feels who he was at +that time, like a ghost. + +PROBLEMS: + Maybe the substrate isn't +paper it's what the writing is +about. Where is the hologram? Are +physics and literature comparable? +What if the universe isn't a +hologram what then? +``` diff --git a/src/underwear.txt b/src/underwear.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..7caedd9 --- /dev/null +++ b/src/underwear.txt @@ -0,0 +1,40 @@ +--- +title: Underwear +genre: prose + +project: + title: "Buildings out of air: Paul in the Woods" + css: paul + order: 3 + next: + - title: Dream + link: dream + - title: Wallpaper + link: wallpaper + previous: + - title: Hymnal + link: hymnal + - title: Treatise + link: treatise +... + +He dropped the penny in the dryer, turned it on, and turned around. "What" he +called upstairs, pretending not to hear his mother's question over the noise +of the dryer. He had heard her ask "Could you bring up my underwear from the +dryer" but didn't want to touch her underwear any more than he had to. "I +don't want to bring up your underwear" he said to himself, and walked back +upstairs as his mother was calling down again for her underwear. + +"Did you get them" she asked when he opened the basement door to the kitchen. +She was sitting at the table playing dominoes. "Get what" he asked. She +peered at him and said "my underwear." + +"Oh I didn't see them" he answered. He reflexively opened the refrigerator, +reflexively bent down, reflexively tried to feign non-disappointment +(appointment? he thought) at seeing the same disappointing empty pickle jar, +old head of lettuce, crusty mayonnaise he'd seen already on the way down to +switch his laundry over. "Paul" she said in that way that means Look at me. +Paul looked at her. + +"You had to get them out of the dryer to put your clothes in. Where did you +put them?" diff --git a/src/wallpaper.txt b/src/wallpaper.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..45de63c --- /dev/null +++ b/src/wallpaper.txt @@ -0,0 +1,40 @@ +--- +title: Wallpaper +genre: prose + +project: + title: "Buildings out of air: Paul in the Woods" + css: paul + order: 31 + next: + - title: Punch + link: punch + - title: Window + link: window + previous: + - title: X-ray + link: x-ray + - title: Underwear + link: underwear +... + + +He didn't go back into the shed for a long time. His hatchet was in there, +and his axe. He didn't want to face them. His papers, he decided, could wait +in the top drawer for a while before being looked at again. The pain +medication made him loopy. He couldn't think as well as he was used to, which +wasn't well to begin with. Even saying his thoughts out loud, it was as +though they were on the TV in the next room. Someone was cheering. They had +just won a car. + +His mother came in with lunch on a tray. It was hot tomato soup and a grilled +cheese sandwich. "What have you been doing all day" she asked "you haven't +just been staring at the wall have you?" He had been staring at the wall most +of the day. The wall without the window on it, with the woodgrain wallpaper. +"No" he said. "What have you been doing then" she asked setting the tray down +on his lap. He sat up and almost upset it, but she caught it before it +spilled anything. "Composing in my head" he lied. "A novel of my +experience." + +"Do you really think anyone will want to read about you" she asked and walked +out of the room. diff --git a/src/weplayedthosegamestoo.txt b/src/weplayedthosegamestoo.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..e73dc75 --- /dev/null +++ b/src/weplayedthosegamestoo.txt @@ -0,0 +1,40 @@ +--- +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/src/window.txt b/src/window.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..5df7dc5 --- /dev/null +++ b/src/window.txt @@ -0,0 +1,42 @@ +--- +title: Window +genre: prose + +project: + title: "Buildings out of air: Paul in the Woods" + css: paul + order: 18 + next: + - title: Question + link: question + - title: Writing + link: writing + previous: + - title: Tapestry + link: tapestry + - title: Wallpaper + link: wallpaper +... + +_**HYMN 386: JOKES**_ + +_"Tell us a joke" everyone asks of the clown. He sits on a log and begins to +think. Everyone waits gap-mouthed in anticipation. A slight breeze ruffles +the clown's coat, his pompom buttons, his bright red hair. His nose becomes +redder in the cold. Hours pass. All but the most dedicated of joke listeners +leave him to rot ~~for all they may care~~._ + +_The clown opens his mouth to speak but no words come out. A tear falls down +his cheek, and another. He begins to sob. The last joke listener comes over +to comfort him. She puts a hand on his shoulder. He looks up at her, red +face, red nose, white lips, and says ~~"Thank you."~~ He vanishes from the +clearing. The last joke listener sits on the log and looks up at the sky. +The moon is full. The world creaks on its axis._ + +Paul looked up to the space on the wall where a window should be. The shadow +of his face wavered in the candle light. He looked back down at the card he'd +been writing on. He read the card. He crossed out the _for all they may +care_ in the first paragraph, and _"Thank you"_ from the second one. "What +could he say" he thought to himself. "What could he possibly say to her." He +went outside to clear his head with a cigarette. He took his axe with him +this time. diff --git a/src/words-meaning.txt b/src/words-meaning.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..ee87ad0 --- /dev/null +++ b/src/words-meaning.txt @@ -0,0 +1,60 @@ +--- +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 diff --git a/src/writing.txt b/src/writing.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..4be9d0b --- /dev/null +++ b/src/writing.txt @@ -0,0 +1,35 @@ +--- +title: Writing +genre: prose + +project: + title: "Buildings out of air: Paul in the Woods" + css: paul + order: 7 + next: + - title: Notes + link: notes + - title: X-ray + link: x-ray + previous: + - title: Leaf + link: leaf + - title: Window + link: window +... + +He sat down at his writing desk and removed his new pen from its plastic +wrapping. He remembered how to fill it from _The View from Saturday_, which +he'd read as a kid. It had been one of his favorite books. He remembered the +heart puzzle they completed, the origin of the word "posh," and most of all +his fourth-grade teacher Ms. (Mrs? He could never remember) Samovar. He +smiled as he opened the lid on the ink well he'd just bought. + +He dipped his pen in the inkwell, screwed the converter piston up, and watched +as nothing entered the chamber. He screwed it back down and up again, while +dipping the nib more deeply into the ink well. He watched as again nothing +filled the capsule. He screwed it down a third time. His thumb knocked the +inkwell over somehow by accident. + +As he swore, stood up and away from the table, and went into the house proper +for paper towels, he resolved to buy a typewriter. diff --git a/src/x-ray.txt b/src/x-ray.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..19c03e0 --- /dev/null +++ b/src/x-ray.txt @@ -0,0 +1,44 @@ +--- +title: X-ray +genre: prose + +project: + title: "Buildings out of air: Paul in the Woods" + css: paul + order: 30 + next: + - title: Wallpaper + link: wallpaper + - title: Yellow + link: yellow + previous: + - title: Yellow + link: yellow + - title: Writing + link: writing +... + +While chopping a tree in the woods with his hatchet (a Christmas gift from his +mother) a bird he'd never heard before cried out. He jerked his head up and +to the right as the hatchet fell down and to the left. It cut deep into the +back of his left hand. A low thud didn't echo in the forest because all the +needles and snow absorbed ~~sound well~~ the sound. + +When he got back to the house his hand wrapped in the end of his shirt he +still felt no pain. He called for his mother and found her watching TV in the +main room. He stayed in the kitchen not wanting to get blood on the carpet. +She turned around cigarette dangling from her open mouth said "Oh god what +happened." + +She drove him to the hospital in the car. The radio stayed off the entire +way. Paul wanted to turn it on but ~~he didn't want~~ the desire not to annoy +his mother was stronger. They drove in silence. + +At the hospital after the X-rays and stitching and pain medication +prescription the doctor said "You got lucky, son. If that axe had hit a +half-inch lower you'd have lost your hand. You won't get full mobility back +because we had to tie the tendons, but with therapy you should be able to work +it pretty well." + +On the drive back home all he could think was that he was glad he didn't hit +his writing hand. diff --git a/src/yellow.txt b/src/yellow.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..693e76f --- /dev/null +++ b/src/yellow.txt @@ -0,0 +1,40 @@ +--- +title: Yellow +genre: prose + +project: + title: "Buildings out of air: Paul in the Woods" + css: paul + order: 29 + next: + - title: X-ray + link: x-ray + previous: + - title: Building + link: building + - title: X-ray + link: x-ray +... + +He would enter data at work for fifty minutes and then go on break. He would +walk down the hallway to the breakroom, which had a white refrigerator, a +black microwave on a brown plyboard cart stocked with powdered creamer, sugar, +and swizzle sticks, a dark red coffee maker, and yellow paint on the wall. +He'd remember that somewhere he'd read an article about yellow walls being +calming. "They use yellow in asylums" he'd say to himself. + +He would sit down at the round table covered in newspapers that took up the +half of the room not occupied by the refrigerator, microwave, or counter with +coffee pot and sink. He didn't drink coffee but he would think about +starting. He would shuffle the newspapers around on the table and see they +were all the same ones as an hour ago. "Or technically fifty minutes ago" he +would say to himself. Sometimes Jill would come in for a cup of coffee. She +would always check that her lunch, which she brought each morning in a +Tupperware container with a blue lid with her name written on it in black +sharpie, was still there. Once he asked her why she checked. + +"Why do you always check if your lunch is in the fridge" he asked. "I don't" +she said. "Oh I thought you did." "I don't think so." "Why do you check at +all?" "Once it was stolen out of the fridge and returned empty before I had a +chance to eat my lunch" she said. "So you make sure it won't happen again." +"No I'm waiting for the day that it does." -- cgit 1.4.1-21-gabe81