Activity, Writing

It was a mad and gloomy walk.

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It was a mad and gloomy walk, though less than Abraham and Isaac’s.

I had to get back to that patch of dirt, now mud, in the thunderstorm.

Crackling random nearness of the lightning bolts. Warm, demanding, saturating rain.

In cars growing up I would ride with a friend and we would chase down thunderstorms, what a cool way to die, we’d laugh, but we meant it.

Had a lightning bolt struck the car, BARROOMMMED next to us, us teens, we’d have been as blissed as panicked. Up hillsides we’d be close to eye level with the storms and sidle up to the churning forces. Hey.

Harrumphing now, as a man, in my mad and gloomy walk through the deluge I knew I would prevail on the way there, I would get there like a salmon to its ground unless nature escalated. I reached the patch of mud, once dirt, and knew it would be dirt again. I stood on my place. Mine. I would likely never return to it after looking around this last time. Over my shoulder, with a nod bequeathing it to all others in existence by my grace. The gusts and the light and the drama and bursts of rattling noise and the blanketing rain and the ripe damp saturation of everything made my mind quiet. Nothing left to keep dry. My thoughts and wants and memories and wishes no longer had to crackle and rumble and whisper and whoosh – the world was that all around me. Thoughts were a stone on the surface of the water, above the ripples.

Clothes including the boastful, now hubristic waterproof Gore-Tex jacket were soaked and so pointless the only thing keeping them on was modesty.

I still like walking in inclement weather. Boastworthy in a “How’s the weather?” chitchat the day of the walk. But mostly a leaning forward into hard circumstance. Make things wild and harsh, dear Nature (within endurable measure), and grant an interval of peace within.

Writing

Death is tedious

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A few events in the past week got this going. Photo is of a glass of wine I had tonight.

Death is tedious. It greets you with reminders of each time you met.

Death waits as a body turns against itself, eats an apple while seated on a windowsill choosing whether to nod at its name being called.

Death puts coarse molasses sugar over memory, then sears it brown. You take your teaspoon to crack at the glaze to let the memory breathe and stir it. The shellac cannot be broken.

Death jumps backward to parrot screams, coughs, laughs, a fond sigh, drowsy breaths that were once strong and pressed against you. It is a refrain only for you. You recall the light and who and the touch and are almost there. Almost. But they are the ripples Death has sent forward to you, and they break.

Death then leaves to sit on another windowsill, says that it will meet you again in the past, the future, or a sudden now.

You move forward, the only thing you can do, and see the compressed ripples before you, the laggard ripples in your wake, and wonder which of them Death will borrow and send to another.

Poetry, Reading, Writing

Attunement by a lusty old man

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I’ve been re-reading a favorite book, Harold Bloom’s The Western Canon, a massive elegy for the sublime in literature. Its tone of defiance and celebration of great art, yelling like Lear at the overwhelming storm of dying standards and political correctness. has always brought great pleasure.

And I hated, as Bloom did, what he labeled “The School of Resentment” — literature critics with political agendas that trounce aesthetics. The late 80s and early 90s were overrun by the massive overshoot by multiculturalists who went beyond consideration and reflection on other cultures to a mad competitive rush to see who could be the most sensitive over the self-identified labels of the day (generally fine) and on behalf of categories they did not belong to (okay in theory, hideous in practice).

And among the things I enjoy now, 20 years later, is the world feels as if the School of Resentment has significantly faded. Gone is the Carry Nation prudery and groupthink of anti-sex writers like Catherine MacKinnon and Andrea Dworkin. The feminist field is now as wide and diverse in approaches as it should be, given its constituents are more than half the population.

I credit this book for helping recover my love of reading after graduating college. Showing that it was important to read for reading’s sake – as I’d spent the last several years reading in anticipation of quizzes and discussions and dissecting the works in graded essays and other projects. Harold Bloom and Camille Paglia helped me recover my ability to enjoy and seek out works for their ambition and their strangeness, and that I could fly by the nets of identity politics and engage with art of lasting merit.

But Bloom himself.

The videos I’ve seen of him have been of a man who probably looked 60 by his late 30s yet has held steady within his sturdy torso, resembling a bag of profound sighs (though he rarely sighs). A melodious, despairing, challenging voice that suits his authorial tone. He proclaims himself “Bloom Brontosaurus Bardolator” as a badge, a sense of resignation, and “a certain fury”. He rarely looks at the interviewer or the camera. He obviously tasks his brain with searches and phrases too much for visual courtesies, though he is perfectly gracious in his words to people.

Naomi Wolf famously accused him of hitting on her while she was an undergraduate student at Yale. If true, doubtless a horrifying, macabre experience, and she’s entitled to her rage at the unethical behavior. Yet his alleged line to her was so sublimely skeezy (“You have the aura of election upon you”), the dirty old woman/man part within us all can’t help but feel a little moved.

But, all allegations, and who has NOT had a shady moment in the “Just trying to get laid” department?

Resolutely fond of him I will remain. Sorry for that Yoda syntax. I remain fond and grateful to the man.

 

Poetry, Writing

Waking from a nap

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I open the window to let in the sound of the rain.
Gust falls.
A police siren.
Subsides. A train whistle to the east.
Another heavy burst. Then quiet, steady.

Passing car in the alley splays the steady runoff down the pavement.
Dry room. Fond room.
Another heave of the wind brings water through the screen,
Onto the windowsill, onto the floor.
Worry later.

Poetry, Writing

The Soul Selects Her/His Own Society

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The Soul Selects Her Own Society
by Emily Dickinson

The Soul selects her own Society —
Then — shuts the Door —
To her divine Majority —
Present no more —

Unmoved — she notes the Chariots — pausing —
At her low Gate —
Unmoved — an Emperor be kneeling
Upon her Mat —

I’ve known her — from an ample nation —
Choose One —
Then — close the Valves of her attention —
Like Stone —

 

Socializing when you don’t want to is a drag. Even when socializing isn’t a dreary duty, the people delightful, the occasion a privilege.

Yes, everyone feels that way at times.

I really enjoy writing. The concentration. But I need to be away from people I know to do it. If only there were some way to easily close the valves Dickinson writes of, then open them again at will without feeling/being an asshole.

Writing

Choices, choices – video games v. art

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The last year has meant commitment to writing. Increased writing related to intermittent crankiness and rawness. In this last year, my video game playing has dropped to essentially nil. I love video games. They are mind-numbing (usually) and verrry pleasing to the reptile brain. It’s strange how I’ve not been inclined to play them unless asked by the kids. Have never installed a game on a smartphone, nor on Facebook. Have flushed hundreds, thousands of hours of my life in World of Warcraft. Recently? Nope. Doesn’t feel like it’s a testament to an improved character, simply not something my neurochemical system wants to do. Not feeling susceptible to granular rewards dosed at regular intervals. More cruelly charmless expensive dark chocolate, though, NOW! We wantssss it…

Reading, Writing

Fond of my Kindle (say it 3x, fast)

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The main thing I don’t like about the Kindle is its lack of heirloom value. “Yes, daughter. This DRM’d edition of ‘Middlemarch’ has been in our family for months and months. Is its format now obsolete? Regardless, (cough cough – consumptive hack into my greening lace handerkerchief) pass it along to your children so long as THEIR e-reader is adjoined to your account. No, wait. It should be my account to have access to it. Can we merge our accounts? Oh, FUCK IT, just put my Kindle on the photocopier and print out the book for yourself.”

Okay, and its lack of color. And its lack of a touch screen.

Otherwise, and especially for books that are current and not likely to be read by my descendents, it’s been a boon.

The ability to highlight notes and save them as text files has saved me dozens and dozens of hours of typing highlighted paper pages. Aaah.

Marvelous battery life. High contrast, no backlighting. Weird feature allowing Twitter and Facebook sharing with a few thumb gestures (easy e-erudition!) to clog up Feeds of friends with “Here’s something someone else said.”

I read faster with a Kindle, and am fairly certain I retain as much (or as little) as with a regular book.

Online dictionary. A rudimentary web browser – using it is like examining the runty spawn of a tablet and an Etch-a-Sketch. Look at it, go “Hunh. Kinda surprised it works at all.” and find it unusable after two minutes.

And walking around with eBook versions of novels that are near and dear grant a sense of power. I could look up pet phrases and be able to cite them in, like 30-45 seconds! Shake-n-Bake pretension in less than a minute! Assuming the eBook version isn’t riddled with typography errors. They often are, which might lead to my pronouncing “Slouching towards Bethel men to be born.” to grave embarrassment, point lost, dash into the bathroom until the other denizens of the salon have ceased with their clucking at my expense, embark their carriages, and return to their estates.

Having a Kindle in my possession makes each step a stomp with tremors that make the hordes of cretins tremble. That’s how it feels. Truer effect: puts even more of a lilt in my step, making it anthropologically MORE likely I will be selected out for abuse. Do your worst, bullies. My kids’ll be the boss of your kids.

Writing

Mebbe the world is fulla weirdos?

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Midway through a lunch hour I’ll break out the journal book and start scribbling. High-minded stuff occasionally, mostly dirty stuff. Deeply inward, slouched over, intermittently leaning back and laughing, other times frustrated how it reads like other parts I’ve written. A burst of goofy inspiration splashes on the page, I get happy, lean back again with another laugh or shake my head at some in-joke that’s been embedded and whether it will get a laugh. Then I’ll wonder what scene this behavior paints:

A gangly-ish, frumpy-ish dude in, as a neighbor described me, “corporate Joe” office regalia, seated solo making a series of pained faces, O faces, smirky faces. Occasional fidgeting and perusal of books, Kindle, reference sheets, notes. More smirking/anguish/maniacal rotations of postures and sounds.

Then I’ll look around and see a sprinkling of other hermits seated alone among the crowd. Some of them working intensely on something (usually on a laptop). I tend to write in places with lots of people around. Then I’ll glance at the tables with conversations going on. Presumably folks arrived in troupes from nearby workplaces. Maybe they choose each other’s company. Maybe some of them were press ganged and wish they could have a patch of solitude away from work.

Photo is of my pen, my notebook (at the time – now FILLED, bay-bee!, like, three journals ago!), and a fragment of pencil lead left behind at the table by a previous occupant.

Poetry, Writing

Anne Sexton at home

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Don’t know why this footage exists, but it’s compelling. The Spanish subtitles add to it. Does attunement and sublime expression require someone to be cracked?