atavism

Crouched in the broken shadow with the sun at his back and holding the trap at eyelevel against the morning sky he looked to be trusting some older, more subtler instrument.  Astrolab or sextant.  Like a man bent at fixing himself in someway in the world.  Bent on trying by arc or chord the space between his being and the world that was.

--Cormac McCarthy, The Crossing

Merchants, observations

1. how men respond to a woman holding a glass of red wine

2. the way women smile at each other when entering and exiting public bathroom

INT: Tell me, was there a real Big Ben and a Lion?

WF:  Yes.  There used to be a bear like Big Ben in our county when I was a boy.  He'd gotten one paw caught in a trap, and 'cause of that, folks used to call him Reel Foot, 'cause of the way he walked.  He got killed too, though not so spectacularly as I killed him in the story of course...(drawing on pope reflectively.)  I took Hogganbeck from a fella that worked for my father.  He was about thirty, but had the mind of a fourteen-year-old.  I was about eight or nine.  'Course, me being the boss's son, we always did what I wanted to do.  It's a wonder we survived, some of the things we got into.  It's a wonder..."

A couple nights ago Adrienne was at Sean's, so Sailor and I had the bed to ourselves.  It was a cold and overcast, and around 8 I became incredibly sad for no apparent reason.  I blamed my feelings on the weather and went to bed early.  Sailor came and lay next to me.  For the next five hours I suffered through this strange tripped-out half-sleep that was balanced perfectly between sleep and wakefulness.  I was also conscious of Sailor the entire time, and I kept turning and looking at him, to find him watching me with half-closed eyes.  I woke up fully at 4:30 and went to the kitchen to get something to eat.  I felt so unsettled that I began to worry that something was wrong, somewhere--The first person who came to mind, of course, was the DSO.  

While we were walking to his house the next night he told me about how suddenly unhappy he had become the night before.  Sad and angry.  Later he dreamt that I was upset; Sailor had gone missing & I was running around in his dream, looking for my sweet cat.

***

I have been thinking about consciousness and how it's so easy for me to feel empathy and to care for someone who I am automatically atuned to.  Elena and I spoke about this recently when she confessed how concerned she was that she could only feel a sense of caring for certain people; others strike her cold.  Strange to hear because she is, perhaps, the most caring person I know, though maybe I think this only because she is able to care so much for me.

The other night a friend came over, drunk and upset almost to the point of tears.  This is the most emotional I have ever seen him.  For the past two weeks he has been racially trageted by a group of town men.  They drive down Isaacs and throw things or yell at him.  They've started coming to his house.  Throwing rock through the windows (my friend & his beta friends dented the side of their car--these guys' anger is fueled by property damage as well as racism).  While he was talking to me I acted concerned.  I felt slightly concerned, and a little uncomfortable. How much this puzzled me!  I knew that if he were the DSO (who, frankly, does NOT even deserve the moniker) or Elena, I would have gone out of my mind with worry.  In this case, though, I felt emotionally detached.  And my friend is one who I have been intimate with in a number of different contexts.  

He stayed the night for safety, and I slept huddled flat against the side of the wall.  Despite the distance between us, however, I dreamt that we were running from something together.  The dream wasn't terrifying or anxious, either; it was deeply adventurous, and I remember thinking at a point in it, finally a good dream!  

***

Elena finally went to her philosophy major advisor and asked him to tell her about desire.  He gave her a book.  "Read this."

It makes sense to me that we both practice a kind of practical, utilitarian humanism.  Elena is by no means an open-hearted watershed of love.  She is critical, practical, creative, purposeful. And: judgmental.  She is discriminating and rational--but it offends her sense of logic that she can sit across from a sobbing person whose experience of pain is similar to her own, and not feel moved.  She thinks, I am a human being, you are a human being.  Our experiences/emotions are similar, so why don't they flow more easily between us?"  It also makes sense that she would accept the help of a book for clear-cut, immediate answers.

For me, 'a kind of' selective caring contradicts my rational sense of justice.  Why do I care about N when C's actions are more deserving of recognition?  (Well, maybe I think N needs the care more, but is that my own projection, and is that even a legitimate reason?)

***

In the end, maybe all our musings are ridiculous speculation.  Nothing beats an open heart, and an open heart is totally contingent upon sincere selflessness.  Selflessness means non-attachment, and non-attachment means taking a major step back from personal feelings about justice and even that age-old 'humanist' desire to treat others well so that kindness will be reciprocated.  

I mean, in matters of love/caring reason is the red herring.

I was flipping through Orion this morning while waiting for the sauna to warm up, and I came across this gem of a recipe, created by Roger Pinckney.

"To swinge a possum, impale the entire animal lengthwise on a sharpened green stick, preferably hickory. Build a fire in the yard. Sit by the fire on a concrete block and drink whiskey. Rotate possum slowly over coals until well charred. Let cool. The hair and skin will peel off easily. Remove the entrails, cut off the head, feet, but not tail. Rinse thoroughly. Rinse again. Hang possum by tail overnight from the eave of your porch, preferably in frosty weather. Parboil about one hour in salty water, quarter, and lay in a well-greased cast iron pot with tight-fitting lid. Dust with salt, pepper, and brown sugar. Put four whole sweet potatoes and one sliced apple atop the possum. Cover and bake at 350. Possum is done when potatoes are done. Serve with homemade biscuits, butter, and cane syrup."

mm, possum.  Good meat, that.

And speaking of Pinckney, he has actually written a book titled Reefer Moon.

root vegetables: plant roots used as vegetables (peanuts are not root vegetables; they're underground seeds), storage organs, enlarged to store energy in the form of carbohydrates:

celery, burdock, carrot, leek, rutabaga, yam, jicama, parsnip, daikon, radish, potato, ginger, turmeric, ginseng, garlic, onion, shallot

ten ways to use root vegetables 

miracle of a website: www.foodspotting.com

particularly, this one.

To ease homesickness: Heartless Bastards, Kings Of Leon, Jeff Tweedy, light

jimgermanbar

Last night the DSO and I went to the Jim German Bar in Waitsburg.  It was beautiful!  I wish I had taken the camera, so I could have saved some shots, especially of their private room, Heaven. Here's one imported from the internet, instead (shoddy lighting): 

Jim German mixes the drinks, and his wife (who we didn't meet, formally) cooks the food. Both are artists, and they live in an apartment above the bar.  The bar is classy; dimly lit, wood tables, paintings up, a Persian carpet laid out before the door.  Heaven is next door to the bar, and the gallery is next door to Heaven.  Jim let us into both so we could check out the art on display.  I can't remember the artist's name, but ultimately I was more interested in the building design.  The two completely renovated the place in the style of their favorite Seattle architect (again, wish I could remember his name--I knew I would have to write it down, but felt embarrassed pulling out a pen and piece of paper).  The art space and Heaven both look slightly unfinished, but I think that might be part of the purpose of the presentation.  They feel open, clean.  They also both hold a ton of light (lamped, and I'm sure incredible during the day, w/the huge glass windows at the entrance) and have great acoustics.

last night the dso told me that colorwise, i remind him of a brick red

and i love the way dead leaves look against brick

(couldn't upload this image for some reason, but: william morris's wandle)

--and want to look more closely at this soon, more time granted:
http://thetextileblog.blogspot.com/2008_09_01_archive.html

a friend's room

wild turkey leg + super-sharp claws

bookshelf w/books

two books on the table: one is Norman Mailer's The Naked and the Dead

typewriter on the table

pictures of indians on the wall

Cracker Barrel cup on the table, also cup with Alaska on it (this is the one I'm given when I come over)--both hold coffee

tall plank of wood, painted white and collaged over

i-pod playing Lightning Hopkins

guitar

green metal junk-box

couch, easy chair

small sculptures (metal, feather, string)

dried crocodile head

tobacco & rolling papers on the table

("Last night I dreamed I was being stalked by a cougar.")

***

Are you capable of distinguishing not among particulars but only among movements?  not horizontals but only perpendiculars, nothing human but only softness?

  Are you capable of everything?

--Peter Handke, "Suggestions for Running Amok"

what

While I was walking down the side of the road, someone screamed "Hey Sexy" at me.  I was totally shocked and confused, as I thought I was still within the parameters of the Whitman bubble.  Then I turned just in time to see a 10yr. old boy in glasses pull his head back through the car window.

v. good song: "Sycamore" Bill Callahan

+

My favorite thing to do in this town is go into Merchants early in the morning, around 5:00am when they open.  I'll buy a cappuccino or something to bring back home and drink while I work. When I arrive there, it's dark outside (and becoming colder--I think it'll be even better when it's snowing out).  There's always a group of older men sitting together, either on the patio or in the chairs by the stage.  Old friends probably, I imagine they meet there daily, because I see them on any given day of the week I randomly decide to go.  I think they're friends of the owner, too, because they all go around the counter to help themselves to whatever they please.  

I like this.  When I worked at Austin Java a similar group of men came in Saturday mornings.  Sit around laughing, leave huge tips, sometimes bring their wives!  One of them wore a Communist hat.  I became friendly with another who told me I have nice skin.

***

Sailor is becoming more and more affectionate.  I feel bad sometimes because I think he misses Macon (the ideal is another cat, not 2 human beings), but I feel less bad when he curls his body against my head at night.  Having him near is a little bit like raising a child, though; I'm bound by the thought that if I don't give him enough attention, he'll grow up with some kind of cat neuroses.  

When I was in seventh grade I had a powerful crush on a boy named Cory, who was a sk8r.  He often wore a shirt with "enjoi" written on it in graphic lettering.  I remember how impacted I was by the word, which I later found out is the name of a skateboarding company.  At the time I was struck by the simplicity of the concept.  Enjoy.  Doubtless some of the attraction (maybemost of the initial attraction) was sparked by my feelings for the boy, and by the presentation of the word; the spelling, which I couldn't understand at first, and then was surprised when I'd puzzled out the meaning: enjoi = enjoy.

Now I've been thinking about the word's meaning for a while now, six or seven years, and I think I may only recently have begun to be able to live with "enjoy"--to think about its implications and its presence as a word in intimate relation to my own life.

I guess pleasure and enjoyment (joint words, often) are sometimes difficult to come to terms with, because there's so much else that comes to take priority in a person's life--and so to sabotage the space p & j might otherwise occupy.  For me, it's difficult to return to a more sensual way of experiencing the world, in part because I've spent so many years practicing a very analytical, abstracted way interpreting/finding meaning/learning.  Now I'm trying to re-learn how to think about things.  At the heart of this reeducation is enjoyment (something strange, becoming more familiar...).

A couple weeks ago, when I was going through a wild emotional upheaval, I was sitting on the doorstep w/Noah, trying to puzzle through the mess.  We were petting Sailor who was nestling in Noah's lap, and I believed then, and told my friend, that the kitten was probably one of the main causes of my anxiety.  

So much of my attention and energy was devoted to figuring out the cat's needs, and most of my days were spent in the apartment, with a sleeping sister and a sleeping kitten (a utopia, actually).  Sailor just acted like a baby animal, and he is incredibly well-rounded.  In fact, I haven't been able to find any quirks in his personality.  He's loving, and loved, and to be around him is to feel as though you're in the presence of something very--simply--good.  A joy.  It was hard for me to go back and forth between that and: school, uncertain relationships with others, & Noah, who reminds me of Sailor, but who insists, as a warning, that he is "a fucked up human being."

It's hard to maneuver these seeming-dichotomies sometimes, but maybe I can make "enjoy" something of a constant mantra, even when among something that is painful, confusing, or difficult to untangle.

Anyway, I enjoy these photos:

notes

(from Jay Griffiths's article for Orion, The Sound of One Trickster Clapping):

"Motivated, like the Trickster, by powerful appetite, the winged media swoops on the odd, glinting incidental."

"but the boulevard of public life needs both Les Funambules and Le Grand Theatre, needs what in Latin is called altus, a word meaning both high and low: high as a man on wire, and also low, profound, deep as the spirit under the land."

"The tricksterish media needs to be heard against a backdrop of the older, slower voices of the pantheon: storytellers, artists, shamans, call them the poets for short--those who attend the deep voices of the body politic." 

"The academy is terrified of taking up a moral position as if that would undermine its authority; although arguably this abnegation is a corruption of its authority." 

"In Greek, truth is alethia where lethe means forgetting, as the souls of the dead drink to forget from the River of Lethe.  To tell the truth then is to be unforgetting, holding the past in present mind."

"There is a direct--inverse--relation between environmental devastation and the respect given to the voice of the shaman-poet.  When either one is in ascendance, the other will be in decline, which is why that voice has never been more ignored, never more reviled, and never more needed than now." 

link to the article: http://www.orionmagazine.org/index.php/articles/article/4944/

some notes from the week:

A. drinking an entire bottle of wine and a 40oz b/c she wanted to be drunk when she saw S.  Depressed that he spends all his day time with another girl, his best friend, and only wants to see her (A) at night, 1/2 hour before his bed time.

Alumni in the quiet room of the library with her two sons.  Telling them about how smart their mama is.  Now she is a housewife, but she was the first person to achieve honors in economics at Whitman in three years.

A sad separation between Noah and I.  Sad because we spent so much of our (short) time together talking about how we didn't want to perpetuate old, destructive habits.  We had a lot of hope for this, but maybe history is inescapable.  Is it?  I, the motivational half, kept insisting on agency, then did the same things I did two years ago to L. 

 ("To tell the truth then is to be unforgetting, holding the past in present mind.")

We're still trying to figure out if people can change.  Yes they can, but can two people change together?  Do they have to be exactly the right kinds of people (together) in exactly the right circumstances?  Is that thought just another fall-back on fate? 

--first venture in the direction of campus since we spoke & somehow ran into him. awkward.  rainy, he on the phone, I, unsure of whether to keep walking or wait in case he wanted to get under my umbrella. he crossed to the other side of the street. 

The worst part is that we talked about God as much as we did (& is God just an excuse to run after white rabbits?)

I miss Austin and not feeling claustrophobic.

http://imagejournal.org/page/journal/articles/issue-16/fentress-essay

I like this, too.

Because I've been thinking about what myths dictate how I live my life.  And because these reminds me of my childhood.

(jessereno)

The story of the future as told by his mind?  San Francisco?

(theoellsworth)

Beautiful!

(teeshamoore)

A wizard in his way.

(timothyely)

Table of Jupiter

Black Maps

Diagraming Fate

"Poetry, of course, has many names in many languages.  Its English name comes, as you know, from Greek, from the verb [peio, peiein]which means to do or to make.  In early Greek, peiein isn't a word used for feeble-bodied creatures sitting at desks with pencil and paper; poein is what capenters and ironworkers do.  It's the verb the Homeric poets use to talk about making a sword of a ploughshare or building a house."

--Robert Bringhurst, The Tree of Meaning

more Blake

The road of excess leads to the palace of wisdom.

The pride of the peacock is the glory of God.

The lust of the goat is the bounty of God.

The wrath of the lion is the wisdom of God.

The nakedness of woman is the work of God.

The cistern contains: the fountain overflows.

Every thing possible to be believ'd is an image of truth.

You never know what is enough unless you know what is more than enough.

To create a little flower is the labor of ages.

Exuberance is Beauty.

Sooner murder an infant in its cradle than nurse unacted desires.

Enough!  or Too much.

W.B.

As a new heaven is begun, and it is now thirty-three years since its advent, the Eternal Hell revives.

Without Contraries is no progression.  Attraction and Repulsion, Reason and Energy, Love and Hate, are necessary to Human existence.

From these contraries spring what the religious call Good and Evil.  Good is the passive that obeys Reason.  Evil is the active springing from Energy.

Good is Heaven.  Evil is Hell.

The Voice of the Devil

All Bibles or sacred codes have been the causes of the following Errors:

1. That Man has two real existing principles: Viz: a Body & a Soul.
   
2. That Energy, call'd Evil, is alone from the Body; & that Reason, call'd Good, is alone from the Soul.
   
3. Energy is Eternal Delight.

But the following Contraries to these are True:

1. Man has no Body distinct from his Soul; for that call'd Body is a portion of Soul discern'd by the five Senses, the chief inlets of Soul in this age.
   
2. Energy is the only life, and is from the Body; and Reason is the bound or outward circumference of Energy.
   
3. Energy is Eternal Delight.
   

It indeed appear'd to Reason as if Desire was cast out; but the Devil's account is, that the Messiah fell, & formed a heaven of what he stole from the Abyss.

If the fool would persist in his folly he would become wise.

Shame is Pride's cloke.

(the list goes on...)

This is mostly a continuation of my interest in the list of Incongruities.  My friend made a list inspired by Shang-Yin's.  Hers reads like this:

Disparate items that match perfectly

One cerulean ankle length sock and one magenta pink

Basil ice cream

Vegetarians buying (used) leather

A mati from your grandmother's rival

I'm not sure if Blake's are incongruities in the same sense, though they are for the same purpose: to denounce/undermine/contradict expectation.  

A good poem conveys irony, or at least carries a perfectly timed tension.  Maybe a good poem produces some sort of revelation--emotional or intellectual--within its reader.  The poem is like a quick route to surprise; a condensed phenomenon.  Lists of Incongruities remind me of collages of one-line poems.  They are pleasurable to read; partly because they are so visual (when I read "basil ice cream" I immediately imagine what basil ice cream might look like), and partly because they're another reminder that life is made up of contradictions.  

...

I've met a few people who communicate the same feeling.  They avoid the inclination of adopting the "legit" life that is molded into the contours created by order and reason.  Instead of writing lists about contradictions, they are the lists.  They have a dramatic effect on the lives of those who meet them, who merely come into brief contact with them--and sometimes on those who only see them once, in passing.

***

As for the crotchety old man who yelled at me on the trail: I passed him again yesterday and we said "good morning" at the same time.  I was really on top of it--I made sure to greet him right as we were passing each other, so that the timing would be perfect, and the interaction would go smoothly.  I was hoping he wouldn't remember me from last time.  He didn't give any indication that he did, and I felt relieved immediately afterward.  Then I began to feel uneasy and to regret that I'd said anything.  Was it all necessary?  For "good" feelings?  Would he have turned around, chased me down, and given me a lesson in etiquette if I had only walked on by?

Miscellany (Li Shang-Yin, translated by E.D. Edwards)

Incongruities
A poor Persian.
A sick physician.
A Buddhist disciple not addicted to drink.
Keepers of granaries coming to blows.
A great fat bride.
An illiterate teacher.
A pork-butcher reciting sutras.
A village elder riding in an open chair.
A grandfather visiting courtesans.

Shameful
A pregnant nun.
Wrestlers with swollen faces.
A rich man suddenly poor.
A maid offending public opinion.
A son in mourning getting drunk.

No Alternative
Drinking wine when ill.
Attending meetings in hot weather.
Beating children without explanation.
Being ceremonious when sweating.
Being cauterized when in pain.
Abusing one's concubine at the behest of one's wife.
Receiving visitors in hot weather.
Applying to resign on account of old age.
Entertaining guests in a miserable temple.

The essay continues; lists of: Resemblances, Vexations, The Name Without Reality, Indications of Prosperity (flower petals), Disheartening, Dismaying, Desecration of Scenery (to weep when looking at flowers), Unbearable (the sound of music when in mourning), Hard to Bear, The Power of Suggestion (seeing water cools one), Bad Form, Contemporary Crazes, Things Gone Awry (looking at beautiful flowers and not reciting poetry), Unlucky (to go to the toilet or let down one's hair in the light of the sun or moon).

4. morning bike ride down Mill Creek: an old man with a dog, who I believe I've seen before, said "good morning" as we passed each other. I'm not sure why I didn't reply; I may have still been processing his face. Then he turned around and yelled, "GOOD MORNING!!" in a cranky, aggressive voice. I felt bad--kind of stung. Thought about walking through Oxford w/Grandfather & all the passerby's who ignored his greeting. We were awkward with each other every time he was shunned. Both embarrassed.

(photo by Dena)


(from Hannah's tumblr)

coincidences from the past three weeks:

1. @ a coffee shop in Austin--I borrowed a lighter from the man who was sitting next to me on the porch and we started to have a conversation. Among other things, he told me he is a carpenter who lives between Austin and Marin County. He had returned to Austin recently after building a barn for some folks in California's wine country. His cell phone interrupted us. He answered it, spoke briefly to his friend on the other end, then hung up and told me that I should go see his friend's band play that night at Flipnotics, another local coffee shop (I had told him that I hadn't listened to much live music over the summer; it just wasn't my focus. Sacrilege in Austin). The phone call had been from a friend who hadn't contacted him in over four months. Friend's name is Sick; he plays guitar for a band called Sicks Pack. I heard Sicks Pack for the first time two years ago, at a small, hideaway bar in Austin. I was there by chance. A friend had been invited by a boy she barely knew and she asked me to come along. I didn't enjoy the bar, but I was blown away by the band (wild bluegrass, great performers). I followed them for a while, then forgot about them a year later.

On that night two years ago, after the band had finished, Shaym called me, for Luis, against Luis' wishes. I went over to their house, Luis and I met, discovered that we had many strange, seemingly significant things in common, and prescribed our meeting to fate (I did, at least, with more conviction). Over the next two days, I kept telling the story of the strand of precise, random events that led to our meeting.

After the man at the coffee shop told about Sicks Pack's upcoming show, another young man came out of the coffee shop and asked my friend for a lighter. He asked me to name my favorite chapter of Ulysses, the book I was reading for a summer class on Joyce. He had taken the same class with the same professor two years ago.

2. Sleeping in the same bed as Adrienne, having the same dreams.

3. I wrote a short story after an uncomfortable interaction with an old acquaintance. This was the first piece of fiction I've tried to write in many months, and it ended up being at least partially truthful. Anyway, how could my emotions transcribe themselves into something more tangible?!--I had no idea what I was feeling, so I wrote about different things that I ended up relating to each other in certain ways. The great motif was bones. The next day I went to the first session for the writing class: organic form and hybridity. In her introduction to the class, the professor coincidentally referenced many of the things I had written about, the most surprising being a dead rabbit and Alice in Wonderland.

Before I wrote the story--a day or so before--Adrienne had shown me some drawings by Arthur Rackham, an artist whose name I hadn't known. When I told her about the intersections between my short story and my professor's lecture, she confessed that she'd just discovered a series of drawings (paintings?) Rackham made for an edition of Alice in Wonderland! Crazy...

4. Everything is Illuminated:

A boss at a former job played Devotchka constantly at work. I was disconnected from the band until this summer's road trip to Walla Walla, when Adrienne and I heard "How It Ends" on one of Michael's mixes. "How It Ends" was my favorite song by the band (maybe their most commercial? not sure), and I was so surprised to hear it--I think it came on somewhere in the middle of Arizona. Adrienne became a fan of the band and started listening to them regularly after we settled our things in Walla Walla. At some point during the past week, maybe during Alex's visit, someone mentioned the book, "Everything Is Illuminated." Maybe it was the writer's other book--Or, actually, Adrienne mentioned the book because she had recently watched the movie version of "Everything is Illuminated." After the movie, she watched a trailer for the movie, which used Devotchka's music. Later in the week Matthew sent me a text message from Austin asking if I thought he should read "Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close." This, completely out of the blue; I don't think I've ever expressed interest in Jonathan Safran Foer or his writing...