Let Me Sleep It's Christmas Time--1997 (ii)

I drove and I smoked. I chased golden splashes of autumnal light. I took deep slurps of java. Occasionally I fired up a cigar, zipping down a forgotten country road, wondering what would happen if I left everything behind me. If I discarded the worthless putt-putt I was steering behind an abandoned Silo in a small town. If I hopped a train headed west, everything I needed stored inside my fingertips; stored inside the wild contours of my heart, the picture of my beloved crinkled inside the folds of my wallet.

I mused over Buddhist adages--how the Dhamapada insists that the further one travels the less one knows. How my mentor Mark-Andrew had a tatoo of the phrase, "He who does not know where he is going, will go furthest," eteched into his flesh.

I clung to these adages like a life vest as I traveled into the open pastures and harvested meadow land christening the majority of my state. I then laughed out loud, thinking of mock X-rated adages we had memorized over lunch trays in junior high.

Confucious says: It is good to meet girl in park, but better to park meat in girl.

"Life," I thought, pumping my elbow as I reeled down the drivers' side window and yelled out into the thick cool flaps of Novemeber wind, "How serious can you take it?"

I had no itinerary, no destination, no port. The gravel swerves and tortuous sways of the road shepherded each subtle tilt of the steering wheel. I passed through towns with population less than three hundred. A water tower and a Casey's General seemed to be the social hub for the entire county.

I was lost, yet I had never felt so sure of where I was going.

I've always secretly despised individuals who could make it from point A to point B with such ease and facility. Despised them then, anyway. I abhorred my siblings for escaping the genital wart of P-town; hated them for accomplishing something with their parental approving artistic medium. I hated peers who could attend college classes without having to work full time. Hated them until I read the introduction to William Gaddis' RECOGNITIONS where author William Gass posits that art, like life doesn't obey the linear trek from point A to point B--It's more like you're on the Eisenhower in Chicago during rush hour and you've missed your exit. You can hear the clamoring din of gridlock surrounding you. You've already gone through a pack of cigarttes and you're trying to shovel through the glove compartment to locate a map--to find out just where you are. The cell phone is ringing off the hook; whizzing an annoying tune your ex-girlfriend programed because the theme song from DAWSON CREEK gives her romantic nostalgia. A grandmother driving a Mercedes behind you is giving you the finger and just as you locate where you think you are headed on the map--you realize that you are holding the map upside down, and then you realize that it's not even the map of your own state--it's not even a map of your damn country--it's a map of Canada and all this time you THOUGHT you knew where you were headed, you really had no fucking clue.....Yeah, Gass asserts, life is like this, and thank God.

I continued to drive, the faster I drove the more time seemed to melt into a button of past experiences that no longer seemed to mattered. I thought about lovers, about poetry, about the concept of an aged, dottard God whose meaning seemed to differ from continent and tongue yet whose message remained constant. I thought about the borders of language; about universality of physics-- the cosmological tilt of the planet; our solar address, the aquatic bulb of planet earth, heavily turning its countenance of riddled land rashes into the solar lens of a nuclear hearth 93 million miles away.

Throughout his inspiring creative-surging lecture series Joseph Campbell notes the spiritual importance of a "Sacred Place"--a place of "spiritual incubation" a palce where you are free to be completely yourself--a place where you can let the long tresses of your hair stream freely from your skull.

I've dubbed my sacred places, with respect, by the moniker"vagina"--a place of pyschological rebirth; that golden November afternoon I landed in one of my vaginas--and I emerged different, changed, reborn.

Someday I plan on writing an autobiographical account entitled "Matthiessen Grace" about my sojourns to Matthiessen state Park, located near Ottawa, Illinois. It is my vagina--my creative womb; a place where I can let my untethered soul soar naked amongst the thick stalks of wild trees.

Everytime I leave Matthiessen Park something changes. I come home changed. I come home to new lovers; new employment--one time, to the sudden death of my father.

The park is arrayed in wildlife vectors--a huge waterfall coasting through the center of a park--hollow dells; a dented geological souvenir of the last Ice Age that somehow escaped us.

Over the years I've promenaded under icy waterfalls, skipped across hidden paths, bathed naked with hippies in the nearby Vermillion river, smoked weed with with peripatetic gypsies, felt at peace with the earth.

That Novemeber afternoon seven years ago, I ended up in Matthiessen State Park, about two hours north of Peoria. I was all alone. I escorted my heavy thoughts beneath the vacant garments of skeletel trees limbs. It was autumn, rich with hard-candy leaves; bouquets of lavender and orange flames raked across the pasture in a tidal wave of leafy foam.

Deer brushed throughout the park that day. I counted more than fifteen brown blurs cantering from the corner of my eye. I sat in front of the lower dells, watching water gush and flow from the bottom of the falls. I was all alone, my heart bleeding down my chest, into my stomach, feeling, for the first time, full.

I left that the park that night late; the indigo eye-liner sky gently sealed its lids into darkness, I drove home. I removed the photograph of Megan and instead thought about my co-worker, Jana; the girl I flirted with incessantly at work. I drove home, still smoking, still skiing through speed limits, but I drove home and returned to that place I had I had left ten hours earlier, that palce that I seemed to be coming back to after all this time.

Holiday Blogg-Nogg

Spent the last few days traveling around Illinois, engulfed in a constant stream of holiday commerce. Merry Christmas Migraine. Finished all my Christmas shopping w/out going too much in debt (indulged court side seats at the Bulls-Celtics game this coming January--holiday splurge for myself and my best friend, fellow sports writer John "yer mom's SO HOT" Danish)....

Bumped into my ex-girlfriend Kristina in Barnes-n-Nobles. I hadn't seen her in about five years and I didn't recognize her. She blinked her eyes and called out my name and I shrugged my shoulders unphased. She was seven months pregnant ( !!!!!) and has been mara-married for about three years. My mom was with me--Mom always LOVED Kristina and after accumulating the gall to re-introduce myself to the girl I took to East Peoria's 1996 prom;(Memories to dancing to "KILLING ME SOFTLY") after staring into the blue-willow pools of her eyes and feeling blessed that I don't have a morgage and a family to furnish with my unfinished novel, I told my mom that, "Ooops, there goes 'yer ex-daughter-in-law."

Mother and Kristina have always had a Ruth and Naomi type of rapport. When I finally broke up with Kris, I think my mom cried more than I did. Actually Kristina has a fat ass (sad but true) and on prom I kept picking her fat ass up and twirling her around, as if her Lane Bryant assenting torso were the width of a baton.

I got a hernia two days later.

It was weird. I guess sometimes the romantic residue of a person stays inside you even though you'd rather they leave. One time Kristina and I were watching a video in her parents basement, having a typical high-school post-prom pelvic thrust make-out session and later on the night, after I kissed her porcelain astro dome forehead goodbye and guzzled my vehicle across the banks of the Illinois river, only then I noticed that sometime during the night, Kristina had doffed her necklace, a sliver cubed K, and had clipped it around the contours of my own neck. I have no clue when she could have done this--it wasn't like I was conciously monitoring her every slight feline movement--but sometime that night she pinned her love around my neck and I didn't realize it until hours later.

Seems like a metaphorical mirror of life--shit happens and you don't realize it until later---the ramification of our every crazy longing--our art having effects on total strangers.

Today at lunch I was reading proofs for my professor upcoming "dazzling" novel WHITE LIGHT. I had a batch of my own poems scattered like leaves across the table. One poem was called AFTER SEX MY GIRLFRIEND AND I TALK ABOUT WHERE WE WERE WHEN CHALLENGER EXPLODED. I wasn't paying attention and the waitress (whose name was also Kris) told me abruptly: "I was in fourth grade."

I had no clue what she was talking about until she pointed at the title of my poem. I didn't intend for her to read the poem, but she kept on my prying.

"I was in first grade" I told her.

"They took us in from the cafeteria. They had it playing in all the classrooms." She said.

"Everyone made a big deal because a teacher was in space." I said.

After I saw Kristina last week--I swear--it felt like I was wearing that unsuspecting silver necklace once again. I could feel the cold steel slinking down my neck as I watched Kristina give my mom a hug (?) and then lumber, very pregnant, out of the wooden dentures of the bookstore. All the joys and lies of that dubious summer came back to me and I could feel her--her clean mouth and sunset eyelashes--her silence--could feel all of this, as I made a lame joke to my mom about the one that gottaway......

____________________________

Early in BEFORE SUNSET Jesse (Hawke) informs an interviewer that he wants to write a novel that takes place solely during the discourse of a pop song. I've been having writers block lately (which has transitioned into writers avenue; writers suburbia; writers continent) and so, as a holiday activity, I figured I'd plagerize this idea. The pop song is called "LET ME SLEEP IT'S CHRISTMAS TIME" is one of Pearl Jam's most beloved B-sides. I'll let the bloggs speak for themselves, but it'll cover a young man looking for himself around the holidays--ardently searching for joy....

Alpha and Omega Omlette

Showed my screenwriting teacher the romantic see-saw of BEFORE SUNSET/BEFORE SUNRISE. He told me that, seeing Julie Delpy on screen, he felt that, if he could some how touch her--she would save him. Heal him.

Watching those two movies again for me was weird. It was the first time watching BEFORE SUNRISE since multiple grunge-infested viewings in the mid-late nineties--In real life I'm OLDER than the two lovers (yet I still feel twelve, perks o' my profession) and watching the movie I felt older; or at least emotionally mitigated. It was interesting.....

Look wayward Father....

It's Novemebr 15th. My father would have been 57 today.....


Dadaism


First syllable sacrificed inside crib’s wooden prison
Vision strayed by stringed mobile heaven
Tip of tongue slowly combing against my soft palate

Scraping out forged syllables, collections of warbled din
Subconsciously ferried back into the world
“Da-Da.” I squeal, swirled by plucked verbal arpeggios

Stretched lips coated with pockets of pleasurable drool.
“Da da da da da da da da da.” I chant
Amused by my babbled nocturnal pushed out hymn

Voices reverberating against pastel oceans of childhood
Lotus tongue blossoming inside
Oval mouth, dank hovel of infancy burrowing words

At this time in my life have no other particular meaning
Their Alphabetical slants and curves
Sloughed naked, the invisible marrow of language

Oblivious I am ordering the towered form of the Father
To appear in the attic above my vision
Unaware my mantra has any other particular meaning

Than breath loosely attired in the slim bib of sound
This was not suppose to be the first
Cohesive word that slipped out my bubbly orifice

It was suppose to be a request for the maternal scent
An innate longing to plug
The coils of the umbilicus back into my swirled navel

Fasten the bridge inside the fertile maternal goddess
Between whose thighs I slid
A scatter of diced chromosomes late for the harvest

With breadcrumb lips and hirsute beard his shadow
Shields, his limbs coddle
His son-- animal whose limbs have been reaching

Up, into the ceiling, waiting for the scent of Father
To hold him. All this time
Saying his name without knowing what was meant.

Much later in life I optically shuffle over the origin
Of my first jarred rasp
Definition of the supplication for union with Father

Word randomly culled from French-German dictionary
By self-deemed artistic prophets
Constituting a noveau movement whose apparent meaning

Expressed polar opposites of what was initially meant
How I realized this too late in life
How much evil there is in a stick light

How sin can bleed baptism into a wayward vein
Come a fourth-century later
Yang freshly unfurled from the silhouette of Yin

When I found myself overlooking the crib
An embalmed echo of my first sound
A casket grin, never to hear those words again.

David A. Von Behren
-from VITRIFICATION
2003, SIZTA in a SUNDAY DRESS PRESS

Got a light?

My favorite poem about smoking by one of my favorite poets Billy Collins. Guess this poem only applies to the devout smokers such as myself and Lady Benz and to (hack-hack) excuse me (haria)....

The Best Cigarette

There are many that I miss
having sent my last one out a car window
sparking along the road one night, years ago.

The heralded one, of course:
after sex, the two glowing tips
now the lights of a single ship;
at the end of a long dinner
with more wine to come
and a smoke ring coasting into the chandelier;
or on a white beach,
holding one with fingers still wet from a swim.

How bittersweet these punctuations
of flame and gesture;
but the best were on those mornings
when I would have a little something going
in the typewriter,
the sun bright in the windows,
maybe some Berlioz on in the background.
I would go into the kitchen for coffee
and on the way back to the page,
curled in its roller,
I would light one up and feel
its dry rush mix with the dark taste of coffee.

Then I would be my own locomotive,
trailing behind me as I returned to work
little puffs of smoke,
indicators of progress,
signs of industry and thought,
the signal that told the nineteenth century
it was moving forward.
That was the best cigarette,
when I would steam into the study
full of vaporous hope
and stand there,
the big headlamp of my face
pointed down at all the words in parallel lines.

-Billy Collins, Sailing around the room alone

"Laughed and made love and were born and died"

"I remember in college listening to a professor explain that many painters chose colors that were in fact far more muted than the actual, outside world. The real world's palette was much closer to a sunny Monet than to a pallid Pissarro. It was as though painters were afraid to be so bright, so exposed, so opened to criticism. This always struck me as it relatd to fiction writing. In the real world, experience and passion are intense. People loved intensely, grieved intensely, laughed and made love and born and died, and all of it was pretty intense. Yet so many modern novels seemed to miss that--even to deny it. In modern fiction everything was distant and intellectualized. Relationships started and ended and you sighed, yes yes, so true, and the book was over."

-Dan Allan, author of Lisa33

"It Signifies a Search for Truth, for Enlightenment, at the same Time."

Hello Brother D,

*smiles*

It was such an interesting dream. I have been going through your blogs regularly and I found this just before I left for work. Because of Ramadan it's quite a sleepy place right now and activity is low so it gives me time :)

First of all amazing dream. I must say it is definitely interesting to find someone else dreaming about someone who's like their 'universal dual'. I'll try to decipher this dream to the best of my abilities. Here goes.

" Perhaps you are not getting enough love in your active life which is usually what dreaming of falling in love signifies. Also more importantly it signifies a union. A union of both the masculine and feminine aspects of yourself. However as I read I really do feel there's the strong element of union in the dream.Passion runs through you deep and you accept it [the hot lesbians] and you find that you are trying to find out who you are as a writer and develop your Self through this process[the workshop]. Her presence there makes it seem as if you are at peace and finding a harmonious co-existence between what she represents and what you are. I believe she is your eternal muse. She wouldn't have a name as yet perhaps but most definitely as you find yourself exploring the creative realms of this existence she is connected to you by the base of your existence. Basically it shows in ways that writing is your essence and this 'muse' is an integral part of you. It also shows how you have come to be at peace with her.

However you may not be happy at all in reality hence her presence in your dreams to compensate for the lack of it in the awake state.The presence of a swimming pool shows your need for love and that you'll only be happy when you truly find it. You find yourself re-evaluating your relationships with people close to you. Perhaps you find Uncle Mike to be at the centre of all this and you realize that things around you might be changing in ways and also that you might actually be doing all you can to please him.

People you come across are opening up to you in ways that you probably don't understand. You feel that almost everyone is falling in love or finding a sort of peace in ways. People around you moving into it faster and faster, but you are slowly finding a sort of peace with your muse. It feels as if you in the process of seeking harmony with your elusive muse you don't mind what the world does. While with her you are comfortable with who you are in society keeping your clothes on, and you don't really need to change.

It could be that you still see the side of yourself when you were a child coming back. The innocence returning in ways. The person youwere would've surely grown up to be just like your father was. It's as if a part of yourself realizes it and realizes that there has in someways been a diversion of paths but you are comfortable with it.

However you also find yourself increasingly dependant and there isalso an explicit need for a fatherly figure showing in ways in the dream.

The dream shows that there is a recognition and approval for your harmonious existence. You and your dual are getting recognized by people you don't know and people you come across. It also is helping you come to a sort of peace. This aspect of the dream is quite literal and you do find yourself surprised that you get support and recognition from people you don't see on a day to day basis.

However as the dream progresses it seems as if you are being torn apart from what you truly love as you progress with life. You are returning to where you began from on this journey and it's taking youacross a turning point of your life. I'm not sure how much of this is true but it seems though that there is going to be a major change in your life and you do sense it. It's interesting how the previous dream and this dream both point to that. A major change and progressing in this change seems to be taking you away from what you are recognized for
actually be doing all you can to please him. People you come across are opening up to you in ways that you probably don't understand. You feel that almost everyone is falling in love or finding a sort of peace in ways. People around you moving into it faster and faster but you are slowly finding a sort of peace with your muse.

It feels as if you in the process of seeking harmony with your elusive muse you don't mind what the world does. While with her you are comfortable with who you are in society [keeping your clothes on] and you don't really need to change. It could be that you still see the side of yourself when you were a child coming back. The innocence returning in ways. The person you were or would've surely grown up to be just like your father was. It's as if a part of yourself realizes it and realizes that there has in someways been a diversion of paths but you are comfortable with it.

However you also find yourself increasingly dependant and there is also an explicit need for a fatherly figure showing in ways in the dream. The dream shows that there is a recognition and approval for your harmonious existence. You and your dual are getting recognized by people you don't know and people you come across. It also is helping you come to a sort of peace. This aspect of the dream is quite literal and you do find yourself surprised that you get support and recognition from people you don't see on a day to day basis.

However as the dream progresses it seems as if you are being torn apart from what you truly love as you progress with life. You are returning to where you began from on this journey and it's taking you across a turning point of your life. I'm not sure how much of this is true but it seems though that there is going to be a major change inyour life and you do sense it.

It's interesting how the previous dreamand this dream both point to that. A major change and progressing in this change seems to be taking you away from what you are recognized for.

However it also signifies a search for the truth, for enlightenment at the same time. Perhaps what you love is going to change in ways and you'll find it as you quest for it. As you progress along this path you tend to rebel less and give into most poeple's wishes and sometimes it would be painful but you still proceed. It does seem thatin the process of searching for her or rather what she represents [which seems to me to be your creative muse] that you are struggling and lack confidence in pursuing the path and it also does seem to be keeping you grounded and on your feet.

As you progress on your quest you find that there's an exuding strength in ways growing in you, but at the same time you find yourself bound. However the binds do seem to be growing weaker and your spirit growing in strength."

This is definitely another amazing dream. I must say that you have been having really powerful dreams. Perhaps you are undergoing a majortransformation of sorts from within. Only one can say how it is. I do hope that this interpretation was satisfactory. *smiles* somehow I feel there's much more to be said but I have to look into it deeper.In case I find something more which I feel I will. I'll get back to you :)

take care my friend and may peace find a home in your heart,

Always Aashiq

Gonzo Fiddles while George Burns......

Shhhhhhh.....I found out that just today, my muppet-grooving classical musician composing cool boss Squirrel just started a blog.

http://squirrelystew.blogspot.com

Make sure to drop by and tell him how cool and loyal of a worker you think David is on the Reserves desk!!!!!

Don't Forget!!!

Uncle Mike's giving a lecture a week from today, Wed 20th at the house of Worship in Wilmette at 2 in the afternoon. If you happen to be lolling around Chicago and environs feel free to stop by and harangue. My hair isn't as long as it use to be but I'm still rather easy to pinpoint.....

....oh, and I feel extremely selfish asking this but keep me in your prayers. My boss thinks that my rashes may be staph infection (!!!!!)...there's been outbreak here in P-town and you know me, gregarious lad that I am.......daniela, I'm just gald we decided not to make out last night! *smiles*

...When Credit is due.

Here's ACE's kick-ass analysis of my dream!!!!!!!!

"Dream Interpretation:Well it's interesting that you see a log cabin because that in itselfyou're undergoing a transformation of sorts, it's mostly uunconsciousand that you're moving towards a self-reliant, independant yet humblemove. I guess it being built means you've just transformed to thisphase and that it feels positive.It's like a period of ill health, depression and the like are gettingover in ways and there's a pleasant positive change.In ways the woman basically shows that you're being slowly nurtured asyou seek escape from the past in ways and find that you need theemotional nourishment which you are getting from this person who couldbe yourself or the expression of your ideal person at its purest andmost refined.

This dream shows several elements of harmony and peace in fact it doesshow that you are quite happy in the current situation and happyenough to seek for more knowledge and let it out in the open foreveryone to see. For it is part of the quest.As you proceed on this journey you get a whiff of the sought afterspiritual enlightment in ways and aware and more in search of thetruth than ever. However you get this in small doses rather than inmuch bigger ones and at the same time there's an aspect of yourselfwhere you look back into the past as you move forward.

It sounds as if you realize the peace and harmony in your life.Perhaps she is your creative essence and she holds you onto thisessence of existence as you find yourself travelling across thiswonderful path. Your dream's intro show way too much signs of harmonyand contentment as if you have gotten over certain demons of the pastand are finally in a state of peaceful nourishment as you seek thetruth.

I think perhaps that you are feeling a sense of being torn fromeverything that you were used to, things that you had accepted in thepast and finding a peaceful communion with this being. It stronglydoes feel as if she is an element of yourself that seeks unity withyou. Perhaps your muse in terms of creativity. It feel so since shegets you to read and what you perceive as you do so. However as you doso a part of yourself, the active aware self, finds itself morevulnerable than ever because you are exposing yourself.

You find yourself thrown out of your comfortable shelter where you'dnestled where you'd once perhaps found harmony and now you're out ofall that and vulnerable. As you find yourself vulnerable you perhapsfeel that you are facing adverse situations and it threatens the veryexistence of that side of yourself you so wish to nurture. The side ofyourself that you feel needs nurture. Bears signify obstacles but theycan also be death and renewal. So it could be that in ways you arepreventing a type of renewal by trying to nurture what is.This obstacle of a creature obviously is testing your own commitmentto yourself, the side of yourself that you so need nurturing and triesto destroy it by destroying your commitment to your pursuits or youravoidance of certain pleasures[this is what the genitals rep.] and youface this obstacle and beat it and obtain a victory, a personalvictory.

However as it does you become whole, they no longer exist for theyboth represent aspects of yourself that has come and gone. Perhaps inyour quest to save a side of yourself you have unknowingly destroyedit. Perhaps it was necessary, perhaps not.However you realize it's absence and it leaves you feeling a bit'cold'. You are experiencing a major breakthrough there, but thelasting appeal of it perhaps depends on whether you can remaindetached from it or not.It's interesting that you feel isolated and alone literally in yourdream because that is what cold usually means. But perhaps you havelost a bit of yourself that you used to identify with and the loss ofit makes you feel lonely within but not the sense of loneliness thatone would usually associate with the word[I wonder if I am makingsense].This is a very powerful dream. I wonder how you must be feeling afteryou dreamt it."

Thanx again for your analysis, ACE. 'Yup, all the cool people congregate around daniela. Just goes to show why her blogshare is through the roof....

"We are the music makers and we are the dreamers of a single dream."
-Wily Wonka

Stainglass Invite

Readers of the Recital residing in the Chicago area are more than welcome to attend an upcoming lecture given by Uncle Mike WED, Oct 20th at the Baha'i House of Worship in Wilmette at I believe 2 pm. Uncle Mike is a delicious, insightful story-teller. He seems to take as much joy in communicating with the individual audience as he does in relaying delightful anecdotes coated with spiritual manna. His lecture is supposed to be corrleated with a musical number so it should be intriguing. For more info feel free to gmail me or contact the house of worship.

Also, if you attend and notice a short-haired lad lurking in the corner, don't hesitate to harangue and say h'llo.

What we Love most, We Grow to Resemble

After I wrote about the notorious "Megan Mara" last weekend I felt free. People who know me know that I love writing and have written a couple of shitty manuscripts and have sacrificied alot (mostly materialistic merit--no brand names for this luddite) to try to make ends meet while still trying to write the best I can everyday. When My girl Arya told me that bloggin' rivaled smoking as a wonderful, magicful vice that will make you cool because "everyone's doing it these days," I was immediately hooked after my first drag and spent the whole summer exhaling my smoky thoughts into a cyberlaced ashtray. I try to keep bloggin' separate from my novels, screenplays and books (yeah right) and I mainly blogg because I feel a special, mystical rapport with those who regularly visit my Internet apartment, lounging around with their feet up on my confessional coffee table while simultaneously fueling my creative flame.

Last weekend I spontaneously stumbled upon "Mara Megan's" photograph on-line and I wrote about her. As with any creative endeavor, the artist is more or less only a filter; all the refulgent glory and harsh experience this amazing life we lead entails pours through the imagination and fingertips of the "artist," and he tries to make sense of the crazy world through sentences and sound, through music and movement.

Everyone who has been in love knows exactly what it's like to see a picture of that goddess you once lived for who is no longer answering your prayers. By it's definition Love involves a physical exertion and a spiritual giving; sometimes pouring every emotional-riddled cell out of your body, into the ocean of another person's heart awards the Lover only with a saddled feeling of loneliness and failure.

What's amzing is that we still love. No matter how many emotional welts and romantic bruises we've doctored up in the past, we still accumulate the courage to reach down into that corner of our soul that is still capable of giving; that abandoned dusty, cobwebbed festooned corner of our psyche that is still capable of somehow connecting with other human beings and pouring everything that is inside of us out for the health and nourishment of another person.

Seems like this semester perfectly mirros the foreheads of previous lovers. I'm trying to do too much. I'm swinging the bat furiously over the plate before the ball has even left the captured palm of the pitcher. Everything I turn in the prof's seem to like at first and then they tilt their head in a vexing, rusty windmill reminiscent fashion, as if they are overtly baffled at what I am trying to say. This hurts, but naturally, I suck it up. Work late hours. Try not too smoke too much (ditto on the 'yeah right)......I think Whitman called it right-on, well over a century ago.

"I once loved a certain person ardently and my love was not returned
out of that I have written these songs."

After I blogged about Mara last week I somehow understood this: Every girl that is awarded a mystical slant on my left palm has heavily settled inside my chest like a granite anchor. Last weekend, after blogging about Mara's delicious tongue kisses, it sudenly felt like all that cement I had stowed up in various vectors of my heart had finally chipped away. That the cement wings were finally able to offer a little flap in the dierction of the sun at dusk.

I love writing and I love the activity of swirling words into a freightrain sentence. But last weekend, bam, I felt free, I felt unfettered. I felt like finally, I kissed a punctuation mark on the perfect forehead of a past love.

So we continue to throw ourselved into the shadow of our crazy lives. As Fitzgerald notes at the end of Gatsby, "Tomorrow we will run faster, stretch out our arms further…And one fine morning - So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past."


...PEACE

When I peruse the conquered fame

I've had this poem by Whitman lodged between me ears all day!!!!!

When I peruse the conquered fame of heroes, and the
victories of mighty generals, I do not envy the
generals,
Nor the President in his Presidency, nor the rich in his
great house;
But when I hear of the brotherhood of lovers, how it was
with them,
How through life, through dangers, odium, unchanging,
long and rong
Through youth, and through middle and old age, how
unfaltering, how affectionate and faithful they
were,
Then I am pensive--I hastily walk away, filled with the
bitterest envy.
-Walt Whiitman

Political ethos...

My philosophy is this...voting for John Kerry is alot like wearing a condom. It may be initially uncomfortable for you and your partner at first, but it's just a responsibilty that you have to take. A precaution to ward off future headaches.

That said to each his own.

Hymn of Praise for the Sunflower Sun

Praise and adulation--my loans fianlly came in this morning. $3000! I can finally eat!

Uncle Mike and I, in lieu of paupers cuisine, made spaghetti using sloppy joe sauce last night, if that tells you anything...

The loans came at the last possible conceivable moment, but they came. yesterday I lost ten pages I was trying to "post" on a blackboard assignment and then I dropped a class...more w's on my academic transcript than a dot com address and hell if I care (I'm still a full time student even with the dropped class). Been a crazy ride so far, but at least I ain't been buckled in the passengers seat. At least i know the color of the blazing sun I'm driving into....

Off to buy food and pay bills... send a shot out to daniela and arya, crazy cyber muses (and emotional pillars) whose collective smile splashes eternal kisses concevied in the moment..... Thanx for keeping my spirits aloft!

Freaky...

Reading Hemingway's THE GARDEN OF EDEN for class and it's really freaking me out, partly because it's about a WRITER named DAVID whose wife cuts her HAIR and then falls madly in love with a beauitful EUROPEAN GIRL. After a while DAVID the WRITER falls in love with the same beautiful EUROPEAN GIRL and wants to leave his wife, only DAVID's wife is happily involved with the EUROPEAN GIRL at the same time.

Ahhhh..Too many David's, so few goliaths. If this book has taught me one thing it's that it is never wise for a writer named David to get MARA-IED to a lesbian. Hahahaha.

Hip-Hip Hooray!!!!!!!

Yeah! My favorite local band FREUDIAN PRESS just put more free Mp3's on the web.

http://freudianpress.indiegroup.com/

Their lead singer is a fairy-tale psycheldelic pied piper named Charlie and boy, talk about having your twin double on stage. We've been each other's doppleganger for a number of years. His music is just amazing and his story telling capacity is magical. Charlie's never lost his childhood pixiedust. Listen to 'Lil' Tommy Jones' and to THE LIGHT...also AFTERNOON DELIGHTFUL DAYDREAM could be the soundtrack to our bloggin' campaign....

Listen to the tunes and let me know what you think!

Everyone gets to Yes in the end....

This is extracted dialogue from Linklater's Waking Life concerning Philip K. Dick's novel FLOW MY TEARS THE POLICEMAN said.

It was about that book, "Flow My Tears the Policeman Said." You know that one?

Uh, yeah yeah, he won an award for that one.

Right, that's the one he wrote really fast. It just like flowed right out of him. He felt he was sort of channeling it or something. But anyway, about four years after it was published, he was at this party, and he met this woman who had the same name as the woman character in the book, and she had a boyfriend with the same name as the boyfriend character in the book, and she was having an affair with this guy, the chief of police, and he had the same name as the chief of police in his book. So she was telling him all of this stuff from her life, and everything she is saying is right out of his book. So it's totally freaking him out, but what could he do?

And then shortly after that, he was going to mail a letter, and he saw this kind of dangerous, shady looking guy standing by his car, but instead of avoiding him, which he says he would have usually done, he walked right up to him and said, "Can I help you?" And the guy said, "Yeah, I ran out of gas." So he pulls out his wallet, and he hands him some money, which he says he never would have done, and then he gets home and thinks, wait a second, this guy can't get to a gas station, he's out of gas. So he gets back in his car and goes and finds the guy, takes him to the gas station, and as he's pulling up at the gas station, he realizes, hey, this is in my book too. This exact station, this exact guy, everything. So this whole episode is kind of creepy, right?


And he's telling his priest about it, you know, describing how he wrote this book, and then four years later all these things happened to him. And as he's telling this to him, the priest says, "That's the Book of Acts. You're describing the Book of Acts." And he's like, "I've never read the Book of Acts." So he goes home and reads the Book of Acts, and it's like uncanny. Even the characters' names are the same as in the Bible. And the Book of Acts takes place in 50 A.D., when it was written, supposedly. So Philip K. Dick had this theory that time was an illusion and that we are all actually in 50 A.D., and the reason he had written this book was that he had somehow momentarily punctured through this illusion, this veil of time, and what he had seen there was what was going on in the Book of Acts.

And he was really into gnosticism, and this idea that this demiurge or demon had created this illusion of time to make us forget that Christ was about to return, and the kingdom of God was about to arrive. And that we're all in 50 A.D., and there's someone trying to make us forget that God is imminent. And that's what time is. That's what all of history is. It's just this continuous daydream, or distraction.

And so I read that, and I was like, that's weird. And that night I had a dream. And there was this guy in the dream who was supposed to be a psychic. But I was skeptical. I was like, he's not really a psychic, you know I'm thinking to myself. And then suddenly I start floating, like levitating up to the ceiling. And as I almost go through the roof, I'm like, okay, Mr. Psychic. I believe you. You're a psychic. Now put me down please.

And I float down, and as my feet touch the ground, the psychic turns into this woman in a green dress. And this woman is Lady Gregory. Now Lady Gregory was Yeats' patron, this Irish person, and though I'd never seen her image, I was just sure that this was the face of Lady Gregory. So I'm walking along, and Lady Gregory turns to me and says, "Let me explain to you the nature of the universe. Philip K. Dick is right about time, but he's wrong that it's 50 A.D. Actually, there's only one instant, and it's right now, and it's eternity. And it's an instant in which God is posing a question, and that question is basically, 'Do you want to be one with eternity? Do you want to be in heaven?' And we're all saying, 'No thank you. Not just yet.' And so time actually is just this constant saying No to God's invitation. That's what time is, and it's no more 50 A.D. than it's 2001. There's just this one instant, and that's what we're always in." Then she tells me that actually, this is the narrative of everyone's life. That behind the phenomenal differences, there is but one story, and that's the story of moving from No to Yes. All of life is like, "No thank you, no thank you, no thank you," then ultimately it's, "Yes, I give in, yes, I accept, yes, I embrace." That's the journey. Everyone gets to Yes in the end, right?

American Buddha

Check this site out fell'o wanderin' wayfarer's!

http://www.american-buddha.com/site.map.htm#SITE%20MAP

Somewhere I have never traveled....

"I want to do everything. I want to see everything. I want to go everywhere. I know what kind of situation it is. Inside, I got everything straight."
-Bruce Springsteen

"What people are ashamed of usually makes a good story."
-F. Scott Fitzgerald


"Draw a crazy picture,
Write a nutty poem,
Sing a mumble-gumble song,
Whistle through your comb.
Do a loony-goony dance
'Cross the kitchen floor,
Put something silly in the world
That ain't been there before."

-Shel Silverstein

If only all writers could have perfectly spoiled lives....

-from this week's writers almanac...

It's the birthday of horror novelist Stephen King, born in Portland, Maine (1947). He's the author of many novels, including The Shining (1977), Pet Sematary (1983), and most recently From a Buick 8 (2002).
His father, a merchant seaman, deserted the family when he was two. He has no memories of the man, but one day he found a boxful of his father's science fiction and fantasy paperbacks, including an anthology of stories from Weird Tales magazine and a book by horror author H. P. Lovecraft. That box of his father's books inspired him to start writing horror stories.
After college, King worked jobs at a gas station and a laundromat. His wife worked at Dunkin' Donuts. He said, "Budget was not exactly the word for whatever it was we were on. It was more like a modified version of the Bataan Death March." His writing office was the furnace room of his trailer home, and all of his rough drafts were typed single-spaced, with no margins, to save paper.
He sold a series of horror stories to men's magazines, and he said that the paychecks from these stories always seemed to arrive when one of his kids had an ear infection or the car had broken down.
His first novel was Carrie (1973), about a weird, miserable, high school girl with psychic powers. The hard cover didn't sell very well, but when his agent called to say that the paperback rights had sold for $400,000, King couldn't believe it. He said, "The only thing I could think to do was go out and buy my wife a hair dryer. I stumbled across the street to get it and thought I would probably get greased by some car."
He went on to become one of the most popular novelists of all time. Before him, most horror novels took place in drafty old mansions and castles. His horror novels take place in ordinary American small towns, at fast food restaurants, local libraries, and little league baseball games. King says that he writes about his own fears, and he claims to be afraid of spiders, elevators, closed-in places, the dark, flying, sewers, funerals, cancer, heart attacks, and being buried alive, among other things.
The first time someone asked him for his autograph was in a deli. The man behind the counter looked at him funny and asked if King was somebody famous. King got excited about being recognized for the first time, but then man said, "I know, you're Francis Ford Coppola." King said yes, he was Francis Ford Coppola, and he gave the man a signed napkin that said, "Francis Ford Coppola."
Last fall, the National Book Foundation gave King its Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters. Previous recipients of the medal have been Saul Bellow, Philip Roth, Arthur Miller and Toni Morrison. Some members of the literary community objected to King receiving the medal because they claim he doesn't write literary fiction.
In his acceptance speech, King said, "I salute the National Book Foundation Board, who took a huge risk in giving this award to a man many people see as a rich hack...Giving an award like this to a guy like me suggests that...bridges can be built between the so-called popular fiction and the so-called literary fiction. The first gainers in such a widening of interest would be the readers."
When asked what he wanted to achieve when he first became a writer, King said, "I wanted people to leave jobs, to ride past their stop on a bus or train, to burn dinner--because of my books. I wanted to take them prisoner."

Canticle of Thanks

Canticle of thanks means pressing the little blue-bagged mystical taliman that your spiritual sister gave you a little over a week ago into the side of your temple and saying the greatest name over and over again as the blithe voice on the opposing side of the phone informs you that the amount you requested has been approved and will be dispersed this coming Monday. Canticle of thanks means that finally, after all this time, you won't have to kill yourself to make ends meet. Won't have to work until three in the morning. You'll be able to muster at least five hours of sleep. You'll be able to get a meal plan. Be able to buy the rest of the books you need this semester.

Canticle of thanks means finally, after all this time, getting on with your life.

Orcella Rexford (one of those weird inexplicable Blogging tugs)

Here's a painfully reproduced IN MEMORIUM of a spirit by the name of ORCELLA REXFORD culled from the 1946-1950 edition of THE BAHA' I WORLD (copyrighted by the permission of Angels)....Sometimes I flap through old editions of BAHA'I World and chant the prayers for departed for pioneers from the 'old school' era. When I was lead to this reading tonight, I was requested to transcribe it--so here it is....please remember her in your prayers. Like all of us bloggers, perhaps she's just another lonely spirit waiting for an occasional intra-dimensional connection:

ORCELLA REXFORD

Orcella Rexford (Loiuse Cutts-Powell) was born June 12, 1887 in Tracey, Minnesota. Planning in her youth to become a college professor, she attendd the university of California, Berkeley, where she studies four languages and majored in philosophy and psychology, found her interests changing, and became a writer and lecturer.

The name "Orcella Rexford" is a cryptogram chosen for her by an old acquaintance in New York City. To Orcella this name symbolized her wish to link her personality to cosmic forces for good, which would give her the greatest impetus for development.

Orcella first heard of the Baha'i Faith from Mrs. Myrta Sandoz of Cleavland, Ohio, and was later confirmed by Dr. Edward Getsinger in Boston, Mass. She became a believer in 1918-1919.

Since belief and action were inseprable to her, while studying the faith with Dr. Getsinger she brought along two students from her own classes. These, too, became Baha'is. Soon she began to organize classes for Dr. Getsinger. In order to serve the Faith with Maximum efficiency, Orcella now took stock of educational equipment and capacities; she even investigated her geneaology to appraise possible inherited tendencies and thus fully to obey the commandment, "Know Thyself". As a child she had often been told of her second great-grandfather, William Jarvis, appointed by Jeffersonas consul and charge d'affaires at Lisbon, who gave his services without cost to the then young and impercunious American Government for nine years (1802-1811). Orcella felt that her tendency to pioneer, and to contribute her servcies to a righteous Cause, might have come down to her from this ancestor.

........

"She talked like a Baha'i, she radiated it; she seemed like some spiritual elf, trying to share with us teh ethereal joy of her religion. "Baha'is love peace.' She explained "They are hospitable. NO one has too much, for all too share. Children must get consent of both parents before they marry. Those who come into the faith receive a special outpouring from the Holy Spirit. This comes always with a new manifestation. Oh, If I could be your spiritual mother, and bring you into peace, the happiness, the utter contentment, that the faith has given me."

A fool, a beautiful fool.....

Cool quotes of the week, compliments of the Writers Almanac


"A person is a fool to become a writer. His only compensation is absolute freedom."

-Roald Dahl


"The trouble with super heroes is what to do between phone booths."

-Ken Kesey

Making out with Mara....

Mara's a sloppy kisser. Even when I pull her into me and bend the lids of my eyes I immediately feel uncomfortable. Her tongue sways seemingly between my lips sharply like a credit card being swiped. The inside of her mouth tastes like someone has decomposed. Her teeth feel like cold moldy slices of stalactite burrowed deeply in a rancid, underground insect riddle cavern.

I don't like making out with Mara at all. I'd rather be known as the neighborhood dish at the local nusring home than be forced into making out with Mara.

I keep trying to shove her away from me, but her hands grope everywhere, biting into the back of my neck, with thick, poison nails. When I manage to get a moment where her lips are not breathing into my mouth, Mara endeavors to suck out the pigment from the bottom of my chin.

It's like we are back in junior high making out under the tube-slide and Mara won't stop giving me hickies. She's wearing vintage JEM perfume. She want's everyone to know that I made out with her. She want's people to see her in my Varsity jacket and little-class ring hung around her neck. She wants people to see our initials added together in the locker room using permanent marker.

D.V.B.
+
MARA

Our names forever branded and multiplied in a crooked heart that is shaped more like a liver.

I hate Mara and I've been making out with Mara all day. I've been pinching my nostrils and piercing shut my eyes. I've been writing dry, arid, tasteless academic papers. I am always so scared shitless what my prof's will think, even if they just rectify a facile comma splice.

After all, I am the crazy writer. I'm supposed to be an authority.

But I have to make out with Mara. I have to do all the tedious, dry academic homework. Have to write more footnotes to another man's genius. Have to work crazy hours so I can pay my exorbitant tuition.

Have to do a lot of things I'd rather not be doing right now so that one day, during a missed curfew make-out session in the backseat of my father's Chevette, I'll be able to taste the fresh pasture of her tongue; I 'll be able to feel the early dawn of her flesh and I'll look up and see that Mara has become someone else. Perhaps even an angel.

But today. No writing. Just academic shit. Just making out with Mara for hours and hours until I fall down exhausted and she slides on top of me, wanting to know why I give so much to someone who looks and tastes like her.

I don't like kissing Mara.

Try not to cry

......from this Saturday's edition of Writers Almanac:

"On this day in 2001, it was a clear, crisp, sunny morning in New York City. Students were in their second week of school. People were getting to work in cars, buses, and trains. Alessandra Fremura had planned on leaving for work at 8:00, but her babysitter was 20 minutes late. Virginia DiChiara couldn't get her golden retrievers to come in from the backyard, so she decided to have another cup of coffee. Kenneth Merlo was supposed to go in the office, but he decided to spend the morning helping a friend hook up her computer instead of going to his office. Michael Lomonaco stopped in the lobby of the World Trade Center to order some reading glasses from the one-hour eyeglass store. Michael Jacobs was running late when he reached the Trade Center lobby. He rushed to make the elevator, but the doors slid shut in his face. A musician named Michelle Wiley was at home in her apartment. She sat down at her piano in her nightgown and shower shoes, and stared out her window at the Twin Towers before beginning to play."

Bliss

Here's one for all you strugglin' writers out there compliments of NPR's writers almanac. Enjoy!


It was on this day in 1952 that Ernest Hemingway came out with his last novel, The Old Man and the Sea. After he published his first two novels, The Sun Also Rises (1926) and A Farewell to Arms (1929), he was considered the best living American writer, and he was probably the most famous writer in the world. But he began to write less and less fiction in the 1930s. He went on long hunting and fishing expeditions. He became an intrepid journalist, covering the civil war in Spain. He moved to Cuba and organized a private spy network to uncover Nazi sympathizers. He patrolled the Gulf of Mexico in his fishing boat, looking for Nazi submarines, though he didn't find any. He covered the invasion of Normandy on D-Day and the liberation of Paris, and he was one of the only armed journalists fighting alongside the other soldiers. After participating in the war, he had a hard time getting back to writing. He said, "[It's] as though you had heard so much loud music you couldn't hear anything played delicately." He finally published his first novel in 10 years in 1950, Across the River and Into the Trees, about World War II. It got terrible reviews. Critics said that maybe he was overrated as a writer. Journalists started contacting him, asking to write his biography, as though he were already dead. Hemingway had been working on a long novel that he called The Sea Book, about different aspects of the sea. He got the idea for it while looking for submarines in his fishing boat. The book had three sections, which he called "The Sea When Young," "The Sea When Absent," and "The Sea in Being," and it had an epilogue about an old fisherman. He wrote more than 800 pages of The Sea Book and rewrote them more than a hundred times, but the book still didn't seem finished. Finally, he decided to publish just the epilogue about the old fisherman, which he called The Old Man and the Sea. He knew that the book was almost too short to be a novel, but he was tired of not publishing anything. The Old Man and the Sea won the Pulitzer Prize, and two years later Hemingway won the Nobel Prize for Literature. He didn't publish another novel in his lifetime.

Since everyone is getting married...

Since everyone and their pet ferret is tying the matrimonial noose this weekend, I thought I'd submit my favorite love poem of all time; a sublime romantically tithed stanza from Wreckx-n-effex Rump Shaker "All I wanna do is a vroom-vroom-vroom an da' boom-boom!" NO! Just kiding. Here's William Shakespeare and one of the many mantra's I live by:

Sonnet CXVI

LET me not to the marriage of true minds
Admit impediments. Love is not love
Which alters when it alteration finds,
Or bends with the remover to remove:
O, no! it is an ever-fixed mark,
That looks on tempests and is never shaken;
It is the star to every wandering bark,
Whose worth’s unknown, although his height be taken.
Love ’s not Time’s fool, though rosy lips and cheeks
Within his bending sickle’s compass come;
Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,
But bears it out even to the edge of doom.
If this be error, and upon me prov’d,
I never writ, nor no man ever lov’d.

-William Shakespeare

"You ever notice that trees do everything to git attention..."

The magic of fiction is that somehow, though different incarnations of your life, you find yourself looping, swishing, circling through recursive periods and you find the vertical hard slant of the book that has spoken directly to you once again stationed at home in the grip of your palms; its spine slightly tattered, its glossed titled creased like outdated billboards. The pages of your book have become sallowed with expired coffee daubs sprinkled throughout chapters, its plot and characters a familiar comfort like scented holiday nostalgia; its language a reunion of taut syllables steamboating across the page puffing the scent of imagery into the transparent margins above, halting just short of the optical shore where sight diffuses language at the tablecloth edge of reality...a still-life pond of language dribbling into your lap below.

My first formative read in High school was Alice Walker's Possessing the Secret of Joy.
Apparently Walker's text served as the spiritual sonic impetus for Tori Amos's song Cornflake Girl. ( I was going to marry Tori Amos of course. She'd have to marry me! Once she met me.) I still remember reading Walker's novel ten years ago this autumn, 1994, beginning of my Junior year in high school. I was sitting on the swing on my old front porch in the neighborhood where I grew up; the neighborhood where Uncle Mike has just relocated. It was probably the first time in my life I had ever seriously read anything outside of class...

Like my Father I'm a tad dyslexic and the words entered my vision like circus contortionists; with chipped shapes and sights and subtle nascent kicks. The creature of langauge swiggling into my sight, clanging against the tissue of my optic nerves with the quiet quavering resonance of a timpani.

I kept with it, kept reading and kept trying to write and ten years later I find myself living less than a mile from where I grew up, my hair cropped short (just like it was ten years ago...exactly)....a few more subtle facial blemishes dotted across my face and deeper skid marks tracked beneath my once optically strained sockets. Ten years later and I'm re-reading Alice Walker's THE COLOR PURPLE for Prof. Worthington's splendiferous 20th century lit class. Ten years later and I'm still dutifully searching for myself, following the linguistic creek of inky words, hoping to follow this treacle of language into a deep ravine fraught with self-discovery.


"
God don't think it dirty? I ast.

Naw, she say. God made it. Listen, God love everything you love--and a mess of stuff you don't. But more than anything else, God love admiration.

You saying God Vain? I ast.

Naw, she said. NOt vain, just wanting to share a good thing. I think it pisses God off you walk by the color purple in a field somewhere and don't notice it.

What it do when it pissed off? I ast.

Oh, it makes something else. People think pleasing God is all God care about. But any fool living in the world can see it always trying to please us back.

Yeah? I say.

Yeah, she say. It always making little surprises and springing them on us when us least expect.

You mean it want to be loved, just like hte bible say.

Yes Celie, she say. Everything want to be loved. Us sing and dance, make faces, give flower bouquets, trying to be loved. You ever notice that trees do everything to git attention we do, except walk?

Alice Walker, THE COLOR PURPLE

COVENANT

St Jerome’s Father’s covenant was a half-
Built Gazebo, located in the back of his
Father’s garage. It looked like the needle-
Tip of a rocket ship. Inside was stowed
Guns and porn and other relics of burnt-
Out masculinity. Some nights Rome’s
Father would come home early from the
Tracks and sit inside the Covenant and
Cry in between solitary shots of Kentucky
Sangria, toasting to his shadow, thinking
About something lost and not recovered.

“If they’re empty, they’re just like
Toys.” St. Jerome said, cocking the dual
Barrel of his fathers Remington, making
Blam! sounds through his lips. We all
Knew that St. Jerome’s father wouldn’t
Be back home from the Tracks until ten
Or eleven and that we could sift through
His shed for at least a couple more hours.
“Blam! Die fucker.” Jerome said, pointing
The dual nozzle at Anthony Noel. Noel
Wore Headgear and bore both braces and
Spectacles. Every day he would arrive home
From seminary with a wedgie. Feeding his
Index finger into the central part of his face,
Pushing up his glasses, Noel began to drool.
In a tender lisp. “Phat happens if Papa Bear comes
Home? He’ll skin each of our thucking hides.”
“Blam!” St. Jerome fired imaginary
Bullets into the back of Noel’s head. “Old
Man won’t come home ‘til he wins. He’ll be
Drunk as fuck anyoldways. Even when he
Is here, all he ever do is drink and smoke.”

“Blam!” Jerome fired the gun again blowing
Over the gaped nozzle. “Here,” Seb said,
Rustling through a heap of magazines.
“Bet you never seen this before.” He told
Noel, opening to the center of the magazine.
“Bet you never licked one of them before.”
Jerome said, Brushing his tongue over the Top
Of his lip. “Please,” Noel said shielding
His arm over his thick glasses as if the sight
Of a half-siren with her legs saddled in mid-
Squat would condemn him to box seats in
Hell. “Shit,” Jerome said, looking at the
Centerfold “I know I be hitting that shit
Night and Day,” Seb laughed as Rome
Pretended to ride an imaginary colt,
Spanking it’s behind with his palm. “I be
Hitting that shit Night and Day.” “With
What?” Noel retorted to Jerome, making
Jerk-off motions with a clenched fist. “Yo’
Mama?” Rome’s face became Vesuvius. He
Quickly grappled the musket by the femur barrel
And took a hammering swing at Noel. It was
Well known both in the mold of the locker
Room and in the dimness of St. DuPree
That you just never talked casually about
Jerome’s Mother, Lady Piffany, who drove
Out to Casey’s General one night and
Was found washed up, naked, against the
Grainy shores of Hillsborough thirty miles
North, a month later, her thighs riddled with
Cigarette burns. “Thorry,” Said Noel, with a
Slight lisp.

“I tho-gauth, about what
Thappened to your Mom,” Jerome had Noel
Pinned inside the deep gravel of the Covenant,
His arm locked, uncled around Noel’s back,
There were several cracks. With his a free
Hand Rome grabbed the magazine and held
The page wide-open like a hymnal during
Chapel. “Look at it!” He demanded as
Noel cowered, his hands behind his neck,
His body lodged in embryonic posture.


Seb picked up the Gun, cocked it several
Times. “Open one fourth of your eyelids
And look at it!” The lids of Noel’s eyes
Slowly creviced open. Rome spread the
Centerfold ajar to the glossed sheen of the
Siren. “Now lick it,” He demanded, to a
Writhing Noel. “Stick your fucking tongue
To the page and lick it!” Noel was shaking,
Uttering the rosary to himself in Latin.
“Pussy,” said Rome, shoving Noel over to
The corner, tossing the glossed dog-earred
Magazine on top of him like Noel was a
Martyr.

The sun was positioning itself
Into a heavy squint over the nuclear
Woods. It was the third week of March.
In the north, near the Bluff, the slight
Pentecostal glower of smoke lit like an
Ember from the riots. Yedish stores were
Pillaged by Vice Lords. ATM’s were
Ploughed over with rigged Hummers.
Mayor Jude declared a State of Marshall
Law on Spring Equinox. News copters
Clipped by overhead and the cafeteria
Applauded today when Lunch lady Iola
Johnston was interviewed on CSPAN.
“Those little shits should not be in this
Country. They should not be in any country.
They should burn in hell." The whole
Cafeteria exploded in calloused palms while
Rome got detentions from Sister Teresita for
Claiming to have found a human ear in the
Stuffing. “Thighm no futhy!” Noel volleyed
Back, his lisp in full bloom. “Here then.”
Said Jerome reaching behind the half-
Finished bar his Father found down on
Moreland and Fourth and promised to fix
Up one day. Behind it were two handguns.
Noel’s shoulders once again jolted north.
“Don’t worry, they’re empty. They’re
Toys.” Rome tossed one handgun over to
Seb. With the weight of a petrified boomerang,
He dropped the six-shooter in Noels lap.
“Just a toy. Just like the shit you play with
In the crib, when you go home at night and
Yo Moma tucks your ass in and sings you a
Lullaby.” “Thighm no phuthy!” Exclaimed
Noel, pressing the index nozzle into his
Acne-riddled forehead. “Fire then.” Rome
Said. Seb looked at Rome like he was fucking
Nuts. No one fires a handgun at their temple,
Even if the barrel is empty. “Come on now, fire it.
It’s empty. It’s just like a toy.” Noel’s eyes
Welded shut. There was a moment of silence.
Rome called Noel a little shit. He elucidated
The Freudian connotations implicit in the
Term motherfucker. He continued to deride
Noel, asking him why he was so afraid.
With a deep breath, a concentrated gaze
Sketched to his face, Noel’s eyes
Buttoned shut, his cheeks bulged, his
Adam’s apple seem to swallow itself in a
Constipated gulp. “Go on fucker. Fire it.
Why don’t you put your balls where
Your Brain is? Fire the gun.”
Noel’s mouth opened in slow motion. His
Chapped lips seem to swallow the nozzle.
There was the snap, the sound of granite
Applause and a quaver of cobalt that
Sifted above his head as his body peeled
In opposite directions.

“Don’t Worry,” Rome said, later. “Well just
Bury him at the Old mill.” “What about the
Covenant?” Seb said, picking off a slab of
Noel’s brain as if it was lint.
“Well have to clean it off
Of course. But don’t worry.
Even when dad comes in
Here he’s usually so fucked up that he don’t
Notice anything, and even if he do notice somethin'
It’s nothing that he hasn’t seen before.
It’s really no big deal.”

-from Glass Continent

GUILTY.....

Took my friends Shannon's advice and printed out both Bloggs (they copy and paste PERFECTLY to MS WORD...) I took the square pillowy heap and collated it into a cool binder, embellishing the cover with a modern-deco painting by Elizabeth Peyton of Sophia Copola, titling the "novel" YOU WERE ONLY WAITING FOR THIS MOMENT TO BE FREE....usurped from the Beatles song BLACKBIRD......subtitled A Chronology of Seasonal Bloggs by David A. Von Behren....Crazy bloggs...on the back of the novel I posted pictures of daniela, shannon and arya.....Boticelli's Three Graces (ibid primavera)....I remember the first time I saw arya's blogg ( I never heard of a blogg before....."Blogg...isn't that like black smog or something?")..... I honestly thought it was borderline frivolous "Who would want to post all of their emotions on line? For the entire planet to pick at and peruse?"

You don't have to be a modest camel-herding professor to know that Sistah A occasionally reels in a tautly baited hook (daniela was part of the initial tackle)..... I am completely 80% proof oblivious of exactly where this fetish sprouted from (?)...but it's been fun....Thanks arya!

Here's how little David's summer commenced: I went up to St. Paul MN. to attend the 30th anniversary of my literary mentor Garrison's Keillor PRAIRIE HOME COMPANION. Keillor's about twenty-five percent responsible for my literary lifestyle (listen to NPR's Writer's Almanac)...anyway, I purcahsed two tickets months in advance and you-know-who bowed out of attending the concert with me, so I had to spend the vacation trekking across the thick-plains of Mn. and Wisconsin alone, which wasn't exactly all that bad. But when I actually attended the concert there was a vacant seat next to me (where, of course, I imagined Swissy Missy's svelte shoulders to be)....the person who sat on the opposite side of this vacant seat was dressed like an Eskimo attired in Lands End garb and periodically, throughout the concert, he would slough segments of his outfit from his skin so at the end of the performance there was this gigantic mound of cotton and tattered threads stationed next to me, in my purchased seat, where I had imagined her impeccable body to be located.

No, swissy Missy wasn't there with me that night in late May, but I'm blessed to say that I've had some beautiful soul's seated next to me, smiling through the elctronic shaded blue of the computer screen, throughout the entire summer!

Thanx! It's been real. It's been fun, and shit, girls, we're just getting started.....

Alright Sport Dweebs....

Check this out:

http://nik.lockergnome.net/blog/_archives/2004/5/4/51731.html

3x5 inch qoutes

Since I no longer have access to a writers desk, here's some literary quotes that would have been posted above my old smith-corona on Little 3 x5 inch notecards back in the day.... sorry they look like easter skittles......


"Whatever evolution this or that popular charachter has gone through between book covers, his fate is fixed in our minds, and, similarly, we expect our friends to follow this or that logical or conventional pattern we have fixed for them. Thus X will never compose the immortal music that would clash with the second rate symphonies he has accustomed us to. Y will never commit murder. Under no circumstances will Z ever betray us. We have it all arranged in our minds, and the less we see of a particular person the more satisfying it is to check how obediently he conforms to our notion of him every time we hear of him. Any deviation in the fates we have ordained would strike us as not only anomalous but unethical."

-VLADIMIR NABOKOV, LOLITA


"JUST BECAUSE YOU KNOW ONE STATE OF AFFAIRS, WITTGENSTEIN ASSERTS, DOESN'T MEAN YOU CAN NECESSARILY INFER ANOTHER DIFFERENT STATE OF AFFIARS FROM THEM. AND YET, THIS IS WHAT WE ALL TRY DOING WHEN WE SPEAK ABOUT THE FUTURE, ISN'T IT? THE RESULT BEING THAT WE NEVER REALLY KNOW, IF, WHEN WE THROW THE APPLE INTO THE AIR THIS TIME IT WILL COME DOWN. NOT AT LEAST UNTIL WE SEE IT DROP. IF, THAT IS, WE ARE ACTUALLY SEEING IT DROP WHEN WE THINK WE ARE ACTUALLY SEEING IT DROP, AND NOT IMAGINING IT, AND NOT BELIEVING IT, AND NOT HOPING. IF, THAT IS, IT IS AN APPLE. IF IT IS AIR. IF WE ARE WE. NO, WE REALLY DON'T "KNOW" MUCH, IF ANYTHING ABOUT A PLURIVERSE ASWARM WITH LANGUAGE GAMES THAT MUST BE PLAYED OUT AS CERTAINTIES THOUGH THE NEXT SECOND MAY GIVE THEM EACH AND EVERY ONE THE LIE.....WE'RE ALL CONTINUALLY WAKING UP IN OUR BEDS, A FUNNY FEELING THAT THAT UNEASY DREAM WE JUST HAD WASN'T A DREAM."

-LANCE OLSEN, TERMITE ART, OR WALLACE'S WITTGENSTEIN, from THE REVIEW OF CONTEMPORARY FICTION, YOUNGER WRITERS ISSUE; SUMMER 1993

President George W. Blogg

Wondering what's in George Bush's Blogg (or his brain) click here:

http://www.theonion.com/news/index.php?issue=4031

In tandem

Here's a little passage from Stephen King's ON WRITING that I've been thinking about today.

For years I dreamed of having the sort of massive oak slab that would dominate a room--no more child's desk in a trailer laundry-closet, no more cramped kneehole in a rented house. In 1981 I got the one I wanted and placed it in the middle of a spacious, skylighted study. For six years I sat behind that desk either drunk or wrecked out of my mind, like a ship's captain in charge of a voyage to nowhere.

A year or two after I sobered up, I got rid of that monstrosity...I got another desk--it's handmade, beautiful, about half the size of the T. Rex desk. I put it in the far west end of the office under the eave... I'm sitting under it now, a fifty-three-year-old man with bad eyes, a gimp leg, and no hangover. I'm doing what I know how to do, and as well as I know how to do it. ....

It starts with this: put your desk in the corner, and every time you sit down there to write, remind yourself why it isn't in the middle of the room. Life isn't a support system for art. It's the other way around.

Dust Spangles on the lips of Wayfarer's Glory

Uncle Mike gives his nocturnal lecture inside William's cafeteria where I eat breakfast and lunch during the school year. It is the first night of Heartland. Prayers and chants have been said. Students are reminded of curfue. Everyone walks around continually fidgeting with their nametags. When I walk into Williams Hall with Mike, a young kid with auburn hair pulls me over and gives me a hug.

"I remember you from last year." He says, recalling my name.

"Thanks, And-drew," I say, squinting at his nametag.

"I have to ask you something," Andrew nods. "It's personal. I mean, it's really personal."

"Ok," I nod. I'm balancing a stack of books Uncle Mike will reference in his speech.

"There was a girl who said something about you last year. I need to ask you if it's true or not." His pupils widen to the size of manholes.

"Sure," I assent. We are surrounded by bodies. Uncle Mike embraces older Baha'is from Bloomington. The room becomes a carousel of flurry.

"Only I can't ask you here." Andrew says, concentrating very intently.

"Alright," I add "No problem."

*
Uncle Mike commences his lecture by informing the audience to be audacious. To take chances. To "preservere", as Shogi Effedni would say. He relays the story about Abdu'l-baha and the cornerstone to the House of Worship in Wilmette.

"Remember what Abdul-Baha said when the cornerstone was christened? "It's already built'."

Heads bob and inwardly sway. There are approximately seven of us. The tops of the heads range from thining to glazed white to hubcap bald. It is ten at night. I'm by far the youngest.

Mike continues melting perfunctory proper speech building icebergs into fluid oratation. He quotes a spam headline scraped from his latest e-mail, encouraging his audience to be intrepid and dauntless; to be fearless in our thinking, to take chances. He encourages us not to be afraid of failure, especially when a movement is intrincially 'youthful' is learning how to walk, autonomously, only all of us are trying to keep precision and balance.

"Remember, amatures built the Ark, professionals built the Titanic."

There are a gaggle of huffed-grins and periodic nods. Uncle Mike's voice is a verbal shine, a buffed avuncular grin with a slight midwestern twang peeled into his resonance. His voice feels like it could be gently stirring autumnal leaves into a dervish scuffle beneath a pumpkin heavy October sunset. Although adavanced in years there is not a scratch of senility itched into his rhetoric. Vivid streams of dialect seem to foam from the side of his mouth. Stories salivate and grace his every smile. Uncle Mike has a gift of making the Baha'i faith simultaneously sound very mystical and extremely practical at the same time. He has a gift of coalescing these two spiritual extremes in his speech-taming them with his benevolent tongue-exhibiting how these two polarities globally mesh, constituting a singular horizon for mankind's intermindable future rather than a question mark positing anxiety culled from a collective species tumultuous past.

There is union threaded in a genetic horseshoe strand of oneness. The bulk of mankind's epistemological pinnings fuse open into a periscopic stem of similarity, sprouting from the soil of every continent.

And there are seven of us huddled around xeroxes and hard-jaundice glower of cafeteria lights, listening to Uncle Mike's parlance, as one listens to the gentle tap of rain. He seems excited and smiles.

Archived photo albums from previous Summer and Winter school lay behind the table where Mike is lecturing. Sporadically a couple saunters by, slow in discourse, pausing to listen at Mike's discussion and alights the album, sifting through each page with a golden pause and gradual smile. Mike warmly acknowledges the alumni's, tossing out his welcome matt smile.

*

"It's something really personal." Andrew says, tugging at my sleeve. I have my "David-we-really-ought-to-start-thinking-about-your-health-in-terms-of-physically-longevity" noctural cup o' jamoke toated in paw. I set down my heap of books and follow Andrew, into the corner, near the old couches where I used to sit and dream with a girl named Melissa months before.
Andrew metronomically moves closer to me and squints in my ear.

"Do you smoke pot?" He inquires, with Blakean innocence.

"What," I say, intermittently startled.

"There was a girl here last year who said that the reason you were smiling all the time was because you liked to smoked pot."

I smile.

"No Andrew. I don't smoke pot. I just smile alot. You can say alot with a smile, even if you don't have much to smile about."

A toothy grin arcs into color above Andrews chin.

"I'm sorry. I just thought about that alot since we met last year."

"No problem," I say, turning around, looking for Uncle Mike. Andrew nudges at my sleeve again.

"Remember the handshake you taught me last year?" Andrew says. I smile. I remeber Andrew. He's grown about three feet in the last year.

We perform our 'secret-brother' handshake, pummeling our clenched fists, benignly smashing our knuckels together. I tell him attaboy and tussle his hair, scooping up the mound of Books like a papoose en route to Mike's lecture. When I see Mike and spot the flock of patient-gaited friends stepping gingely into the cafeteria I am completely unaware that Andrew is behind me, stepping into the contours of my flailed shadow, watching my direction, tracing my every step.


*

"When we emblazon His name, we emblazon all the names." Mike says, with warmth and conviviality. Mike has just handed out cheaply collated Xeroxes with trignometric lines. The word ABRAHAM headlines the top of the page like a Title of a syndicated newspaper. Branching off from the word Abraham are three discrete (yet connected at the top) parrellel bars, the names of ABRAHAM'S three wives, SARAH, HAGAR and KATURAH each propagate additional black streams. Sprouting from SARAH there is a little incompleted square that ends with the names MOSES and JESUS respectively. From Hagar (who, along with Katurah, I had never previousy heard of before the lecture) is a long artery stemming down three-fourths of the page. The word MOHAMMAD opens up mightily like a island with wings in the center of the page, only the line continues through Mohmmad, down to almost the bottom of the page, ending in the words 'THE BAB'. On the far branch, the branch that demarcates Abraham's third wife KATURAH, a long, singular black river slices down the far right hand side of the page, shooting straight down like a comet in perfect linearity ending with the word BAHA'U'LLAH. Caterpillared across the bottom of the page lies what my mom might classify as a "verse of scripture." It is Genesis 22:18 :

And in thy seed shall all nations of the earth be blessed.

Uncle Mike continues to discuss religious plurality and spiritual union. He discusses scriptural correlations. He quotes (a la William Sears) a Buddhist adage that heralds the forthcoming Buddha arriving in a time when "metal strikes metal" and then he notes that in 1844, the same day when the Bab declared was also the same day when Morse sent the first telegraph, saying "What hath God wrought?" (Numbers 23:23). Uncle Mike reads the word 'Jesus' in the original aramaic and then reads the name of Baha'u'llah and notes the uncanny similarities.

He does all this while smiling.

Lavender Prayer

Lavender prayer for two bloggin' buddesses and the rest of turtle Island (Now that I know yer' both alive and well).....only rule...you have to read the poem slow and loud.....


For All.


Ah to be alive
on a mid-September morn
fording a stream
barefoot, pants rolled up,
holding boots, pack on,
sunshine, ice in the shallows,
northern rockies.

Rustle and shimmer of icy creek waters
stones turn underfoot, small and hard as toes
cold nose dripping
singing inside
creek music, heart music,
smell of sun on gravel.

I pledge allegiance

I pledge allegiance to the soil
of Turtle Island,
and to the beings who thereon dwell
one ecosystem
in diversity
under the sun
With joyful interpenetration for all.

-Gary Snyder

Recital Song for the Resilient Hearted

Here's a few Joyful thoughts by Uncle walt I've been reflecting over today...parlty because it's been a sandpaper- rough emotional abrading week, partly because my co-workers are still acting like royal you-know-what's.....enjoy (sorry Uncle Walt's Song of Joy's are smashed into a poetic heap).....

Yet, O my soul supreme! Know’st thou the joys of pensive thought? Joys of the free and lonesome heart—the tender, gloomy heart?Joy of the solitary walk—the spirit bowed yet proud—the suffering and the struggle? The agonistic throes, the extasies—joys of the solemn musings, day or night? Joys of the thought of Death—the great spheres Time and Space? Prophetic joys of better, loftier love’s ideals—the Divine Wife—the sweet, eternal, perfect Comrade? Joys all thine own, undying one—joys worthy thee, O Soul.  16O, while I live, to be the ruler of life—not a slave, To meet life as a powerful conqueror, No fumes—no ennui—no more complaints, or scornful criticisms.   O me repellent and ugly! To these proud laws of the air, the water, and the ground, proving my interior Soul impregnable,And nothing exterior shall ever take command of me.   O to attract by more than attraction! How it is I know not—yet behold! the something which obeys none of the rest, It is offensive, never defensive—yet how magnetic it draws.   17O joy of suffering!To struggle against great odds! to meet enemies undaunted! To be entirely alone with them! to find how much one can stand! To look strife, torture, prison, popular odium, death, face to face! To mount the scaffold! to advance to the muzzles of guns with perfect nonchalance! To be indeed a God!  18O, to sail to sea in a ship! To leave this steady, unendurable land! To leave the tiresome sameness of the streets, the sidewalks and the houses; To leave you, O you solid motionless land, and entering a ship, To sail, and sail, and sail!  19O to have my life henceforth a poem of new joys! To dance, clap hands, exult, shout, skip, leap, roll on, float on, To be a sailor of the world, bound for all ports, A ship itself, (see indeed these sails I spread to the sun and air,) A swift and swelling ship, full of rich words—full of joys.

Is That Your Nimbus 2000....

...or are you just happy to see me? Hello Hermoine!!! It's love-o-my-life J.K. Rowlings birthday this weekend, and although she's already comfortably married, I still harbor fantasies of marriage with Miss Rawlings and all the magic a Hogwarts Honeymoon would entail.

"Quiddith, anyone?"

When I read Order of the Phoneix last summer I just cried. I know what's it's like to be a younger writer who's piss poor and who writes and dreams and witnesses their vision blossom into fruition. Miss Rawlings constructs paragraphs of such sublime linearity that they could easily serve as a butress for Gothic Cathedrals. Attagirl J.K. !!!

Here's what the Writer's Almanac says this week about Miss Rawlings:

"As a child, Rowling was short and stocky and wore very thick glasses, just like Harry Potter. She says she was very bossy, very bookish and terrible at school. When Rowling started writing Harry Potter, she was unemployed and divorced and living on public assistance in a tiny Edinburgh apartment with her infant daughter. She wrote during her daughter's naps, at a table in a café. She couldn't afford even a used typewriter. Then the Scottish Arts Council gave her a grant to finish the book. She did, and in the U.S. it was called Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone (1998). It was a dramatic overnight success. She was instantly famous and Harry Potter became a household name. She experienced a level of fame usually reserved for politicians and rock stars. On book tours, she spoke at big sporting venues, with images of her face projected on big screens behind her. At age thirty-five she was the highest-earning woman in Britain, netting more than thirty million dollars in 2000. Rowling has had the plots mapped out for a series of seven Harry Potter books since 1995. There's a book for each year that Harry spends at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. She said, "I want to finish these seven books and look back and think that whatever happened—however much this hurricane whirled around me—I stayed true to what I wanted to write. This is my Holy Grail: that when I finish writing book seven, I can say—hand on heart—I didn't change a thing. I wrote the story I meant to write."

Rowling released Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix on June 21 last year. Within an hour, Barnes and Noble, the largest bookseller in the country, had sold 286,000 copies. That's eighty books per second. By the end of the day the book had sold five million copies total."

Moore Muse

"I guess," said Zoe.  She wished she could think of a joke, something slow and deliberate with the end in sight.  She thought about gorillas, how when they had been kept too long alone in cages they would smack each other on the head instead of mating.

-Lorrie Moore, "You're Ugly, Too"

*
"But if you don't want to work your ass off, you have no bussiness trying to right well--settle back  into competency and be grateful that you have even that much to fall back on. There is a muse, but he's not going to come fluttering down into your writing room scattering creative fairy-dust over your typewriter or computer station. He lives in the ground. He's a basement guy. You have to descend to his level and once you get down there you have to furnish an apartment for him to live in. You have to do all the grunt labor, in other words,  while the muse sits and smokes cigars and admires his bowling trophies and pretends to ignore you. Do you think this is fair? I think it's fair.  He may not be much to look at, that muse-guy, and he may not be much of a conversationalist, but he's got the inspiration. It's right that you should do all the work and burn all the midnight oil, because the guy with the cigar and the little wings has got a bag of magic. There's stuff in there that can change your life.

"Believe me, I know."

-Stephen King, "On Writing"

 

*
His eyes lit up. He wanted to talk about love. " But I keep thinking love should be like a tree. You look at trees and they've got bumps and scars from tumors, infestations, what have you, but they're still growing. Despite the bumps and bruises, they're--straight."

-Lorrie Moore, "You're Ugly, Too"

They don't write books like that anymore...

"  What the hell's going on, I wonder. Frank Martin uncrosses his arms and takes a puff on the cigar.  He lets the smoke carry out of his mouth.  Then he raises his chin towards the hills and says, "Jack London used to have a big place on the other side of this valley.  Right over there behind that green hill you're looking at.  But alcohol killed him. Let that be a lesson.  He was a better man than any of us. But he couldn't handle the stuff, either." He looks at what's left of his cigar.  It's gone out. He tosses it into the bucket.  "You guys want to read something while you're here, read that book of his The Call of the Wild. You know the one I'm talking about? We have it inside, if you want to read something.  It's about this animal that's half dog and half wolf. They don't write books like that anymore. But we could have helped Jack London, if we'd been here in those days. And if he'd let us. If he'd ask for our help. Hear me? Like we can help you. If. If you ask for it and if you listen. End of sermon. But don't forget. If," he says again. Then he hitches his pants and tugs his sweater down. "I'm going inside," He says. " See you at lunch."

"I feel like a bug when he's around," J.P says. "He makes me feel like a bug. Something you could step on." J.P shakes his head. Then he says. "Jack London. What a name! I wish I had a name like that. Instead of the name I got."

-Raymond Carver, "Where I'm calling From" 

 

Do not go gentle, do not go away.....

Been generously sifting through old heaps of books all week. Books that cranked my creative generator in the formative years...I came across my first ever book of prose/poetry by Kahil Gibran and can still remember when I bought it in High school, at Willow Tree second hand books near the north side of Town. Willow Tree heavily reeked of moldy-cardboard and thick, dusty old paperbacks with jaundice pages. Beautiful Rachael, the girl with the china-doll ashen face, velvet choker and thick black hair that hung over her bosom like renaissance drapes in the Louvre guided me to the poetry section. She was studying English at Southern Illinois University but had just dropped out for reasons she chose not to share. 

Rachael wore thick burgundy fairy-tale dresses and bracelets. She was always sitting in perrfect erect posture reading behind the counter; her glazed marble-eyes stared into her current hymnal like she was gazing through stain glass in a eurpoean cathedral at dawn. I used to flirt with her. I had already been to Europe twice and was myself a "Poe-it" my unfledged poems, a branch stemming from the thick trunk of ego that someday, (thankfully) would be gradually axed into pools of saw dust. 

  She told me she had dabbled in poems herself, that she possesed a poets heart, only her professors in college had told her the her original poetical-tithes weren't very good. She played George Winston, enya and early "Under the Pink" Tori Amos in the store. There was a cat she called Dorien Gray that "lived" underneath the sky-line of books. There was a stash of complimentary Herbal-organic tea that I stole a box of once and snorted and then periscopically floated around in a helium cotton-cloud lavender haze for days.

And there was A TREASURY OF Kahil Gibran, a book of short stories which one-ups The Prophet. As the introduction made note, oddly enough, Gibran's short stories were often more mystical than his poems.     

I remember the night I first read Gibran's short story THE TEMPEST. I remember how each page smelled like an old leaf salvaged from previous autumns. I remembered the wayfarer getting purposefully abandoned in the Tempest, so he could take refuge with a reclusive Hermit and hopefully glean a shred of mystical insight. 

I remember how my bed was made with the quilt mother had stitched for me. How I had Ralphael and Renoir and Durer paintings tacked to my wall. How I had snap-shots of Big Ben and the Eiffle tower and a closet full of the old suits my cool Italian Granpa Frank used to wear-- fashionable 1940's jackets I'd wear to high school amd smile when I was mistaken by faculty as a Student Teacher.

I remember how I used to tape the Texaco Opera broadcasts. How I planned on proposing to Cecelia Bartoli on her next American tour. How I would attentively listen to The Writers Almanac every afternoon, at Three fifty-four, after cranking out an article for the school newspaper. I collected weekly editions of the BOOK sections shed from the chicago tribune. Everytime I read an article and came across a word I didn't know, I would circle the word and punch the  definition into a word calculator my father had given me. 

I misused words all the time in highschool. My highschool was more adept in churning out gangster disciples than it was Rhodes scholars but a few of the older teachers seemed to be amused by my forged poetic parlance. I told fiery red-haired Karen Strickler that it was very "pensive" of her to think about me over the holidays because I had read that the word "pensive" meant "thoughtful".  I wrote a detailed paper about teen-angst and depression in a prozac marketed economy where I discussed the on-going perils of teen accentuation (A word I derived from 'accentuate' to emphasize 'stress' as on a syllable, not on a person). I remember very vivdly having my senior high school teacher lacerate my paper on "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" out loud chiding my excessive brooklynite-big poofy haired voacbulary so that my peers, a scattered handfall of sloped-scholars in a high school that boasted the Highest teenage Pregnancy rate in the nation my senior year, chuckled and derided me for weeks after.  When I finally broke up with Jana Solomon (for good this time, I swear) she adamantly informed me that I misused the word 'facade' all the time in our relationship, and she knew words because her Uncle had reviewed Rick Moody's Purple America for the Tribune.  

But words. Buckeling the perfect word in the perfectly constructed sentence; strapping it into the confines of the paragraph as  delicately one would strap a child into a car seat.

There's no greater time in a writers life than that moment when he first slips on wet sentences and becomes inundated with language. I remember ferrying my original copy of LEAVES OF GRASS in the side pocket of my retro brown jacket my Dad had leftover from '78. I remember the color of that autumn, when the world chipped open, when I was in love with a girl who was unavailable and the only way I could manifest my emotions was to sit on my ass, crack open my skull and pour whatever carbonated heart I owned on to the perimeter of the page, whipping my pen, left to right, casting inky-waves into an invisible placid-sand shore I would someday find myself washed up on.