first short, short story

So, This is Living


Fields of corn were being harvested. The town was a small town just outside the state’s capital. Steve and Arnold drove into Ashland in the middle of October. Steve drove while Arnold looked out of the window.
Arnold was just out of college and a decade younger than Steve, who had a wife and two children. The men were selling tax equipment to the different business owners in the small town.

Each man was dressed professionally—shined shoes, pleated pants, ties, and suit coats. They rode in the Honda, jacketless.
Steve was an experienced salesman, and now considered himself a financial consultant. Arnold, just out of college, still considered himself a student, and the job as only temporary.

Steve was fat, red-faced, red-haired, and wore a red beard. He drove and talked continually on, chewing tobacco and every so often spitting into a metal can.

They pair of men had been driving for two hours.

“You can do this. You have the personality. You seem to be a sharp kid. Don’t forget to give yourself more credit,” Steve said.

Arnold looked straight ahead out the window. He went long periods with saying anything. Steve was still growing accustomed to this. He sighed.

“O.K. now let’s review: the acronyms S.E.E ad L.A.R.C stand for. . .?
Arnold looked at his manual, then stated: “Smile, eye contact, enthusiasm, listen, agree, rebuttal, and close.”

“Yes. Exactly,” Steve said growing excited, “remember ABC—always be closing. Its all a system; its all in that manual; stay within the system and you’ll be fine.”

He continued on, “Let me put it this way. You’re a spitting image of me six months ago. You’re Steve, six months ago. The beautiful thing about Vantage Point is that you move up. Its all about management, getting six figures. Jesus, look at Deuce.”

Murphy Williams II, or Deuce, had been the manager who interviewed Arnold. There was something about Arnold that Deuce liked. Arnold was knowledgeable, and didn’t talk himself into ruts. He was good looking as well, which helped. Arnold still had the baby face college graduates keep until it is broken by living.

Arnold looked at Steve. The Honda continued to drive by brown fields of wheat and corn. It was overcast. Wind swept through the open windows.
“Deuce started out exactly like you and me. Ground level, cold calling and hearing ‘no’ a-l-l d-a-y l-o-o-n-g.”

“Look at him now,” Arnold said.

Steve glanced at the student through his peripheral.

“Exactly,” Steve said, “he’s making six figures now.”

“So this is living,” Arnold said.

“Exactly. You start as a trainee. The move to trainer, then assistant manager, and then to manager. It is all in the manual.
Arnold held a thick packet in his lap. Steve waited, then sighed.

“Look at me. I’ve been in sales my entire life. Banking, and before that, mortgaging. I left all of it. Gave it all up, for this. I’ve been in this six months. Its all a matter of time. Its simply a numbers game.”

Arnold grew frustrated. So this is living, he thought. Then it occurred to him, or rather, he grew confused. Had Steve been selling him this entire time?

Arnold let the feeling sit, with silence, wondering what it meant to be an actor. He looked out the window. So, the actor had a stage, and knew that he was performing. Further, he had stage directions and a script.

The student thought—the actor becomes something else entirely, a character with or without morals, specifically portrayed in careful lighting.

But no, Steve was not acting. He had, in fact, become a salesman over time, and could no longer separate the child from the adult.

Steve spit tobacco into the metal can.

“Look at it this way. My boy is in cub scouts. Next, he goes to boy scouts, and then eagle scouts. It is all a matter of time and keeping with it, through thick and thin.”

The student wondered what Steve was talking about. Steve paused, then sighed.

“It’s a rite of passage,” Steve said.

“Sales?”

“No, remember you’re not selling anything. You’re helping the owner out, saving him money.”

“So helping someone out is a rite of passage.”

“Now you’re getting it, boy.”



Later, Arnold would find out that according to the business owners and farmers, the two salesmen were just individuals passing through their town.

Afternoon would take light.

Soon, the corn being harvested would be bought, husked, and boiled. Buttered and salted and eaten.

As for now, the farm hands continued to harvest.
Every time the silence between Arnold and Steve grew almost too fat, Steve exercised his rite to educate the student on sales.

Something strange happened today. It was a good thing, though. I starting reading poetry that I liked. I read and read Raymond Carver and Robert Frost into the night. Re-read all my dog-eared pages. I listened to music I liked—I listened to Oasis. I smoked cigarettes in my room. Cold air came in from the night into my bedroom. I looked at my fishing poles and the old tackle box given to me from my dad, and thought of all the fishing I’ve been doing recently. Good fishing, catching a lot, even at the river. I thought about driving to the park and falling asleep under a tree, and then waking up to a pee-wee football game—the flood lights and parents screaming. I thought about my own life—don’t we all in that poetic way? I thought about my friends, my sponsor taking me to the magnolia record store where I got the Oasis CD. Guilty pleasures, maybe. But I came up with this poem:

Broken Belt

I watch, lying in front of a church,
Cars pass on the street
Like soft and silent orbs into the night.
My belt, my father’s old leather belt,
Has split into halves.
Carefully, I take each end
And hide them away in the church’s vines.
This has become my life:
A broken belt, alone at night,
Nowhere to go, nothing to do,
And frustrated about it all.


I thought some more about Raymond Carver. Him as a struggling poet. Working as a janitor at a community college. Attending that same college and meeting john Gardner. What dumb luck. I thought into the night about my next move and what it should be. Another job, then pay rent. Live like this, singular, but not. Happy. Happiness comes over me tonight, into tonight, unexpectedly. One night in the future, I'll remember the night where I was happy enough to stay up for it.

There's the river. There's always the river.
This river: low, shrunken in October.
Islands of gold weeds sprout in its middle.
Blocks of concrete
(with the roadway)
stand from an old bridge.
Faded, spray-painted, chipped, and screwed.

Leaves fall lightly from trees.
Every so often, a branch snaps--
the sound similar to an image
of a couch disarded to a curb.

Branches overhang the shores;
wind takes the leaves down river;
light lessens the water.

There's always the river. This river
only slightly grazed by us with garbage.
This old river, always
lessened by light and us.
If only it was as is without us
growing and winding freely with its course.

Children's book

My roommate and I are starting a new project. I’m writing the narrative of a children’s book, and he’s doing the illustrations. We’re writing a children’s book, called

Grandpa Joe and the Island Hotel.

Jerry and Quentin sat bored by the fire in the living room. There was nothing to do so the two boys sat doing nothing. The two friends sighed, looking glum.
For a moment, they thought.
Just then, Rebecca, Jerry’s mother, walked in looking for her father, Grandpa Joe.

“Have you two seen Grandpa Joe?” Rebecca asked.

“We’re bored,” the boys exclaimed.

“Do you know that you’ve just asked the age old question?” said Rebecca.

“We have?” they asked.

“Yes, of course. . .” said Rebecca, “the question of what is there ever to do.”

Jerry and Quentin sighed.

“We’re on vacation, we’re not supposed to be bored,” they exclaimed.

But Rebecca knew what to do.

“I’ll find Grandpa Joe,” she said.

Just then, Grandma Sue came in looking for her husband, Grandpa Joe, so he
could fix her accordion. Before Grandma Sue could open her mouth, Jerry and

Quentin sighed, and said: “Grandpa’s not here.”

Just then, Rebecca’s brother, Uncle Jimmy, came in looking for Grandpa Joe, and asked: “Has anyone seen Grandpa Joe?”

Again, Jerry and Quentin sighed, and said, “He’s not here.”

Then, in walked Grandpa Joe with a hatchet and armful of wood.
“You all look like you’ve been thinking,” said Grandpa Joe.

“Thinking what?” asked Uncle Jimmy.

Jerry and Quentin sighed, and said, “The age old question…what is there ever to do?”

First Half of "What I've Read!" post

This is not about writing. This is about reading. I can’t tell you how or why I became intrigued in reading, but I did, at lets say age four, and have been ever since.
You don’t read, but get your first books read to you: Dr. Seuss' Cat in the Hat, Green Eggs and Ham, O the Places You’ll Go, One Fish Two Fish Red Fish Blue Fish. The Velveteen Rabbit by Margery Williams. Love You Forever by Robert Munsch.

Even when entering kindergarten, then first grade, you still get read to, but usually on giant carpet rugs. This time, between kindergarten and fifth grade, I only remember a select few, though to my teachers’ credit, there were dozens. I remember Where the Wild Things Are; Titanic; Freak the Mighty; BFG; Swan Lake.
Then fourth grade came, or before fourth grade. At the local library, I joined the book club, and did so for many summers to come. I read Beverly Cleary, Roald Dahl, Judy Blume’s Are You There God, It’s Me Margaret? series. The R.L. Stine Goosebump's series, Mathilda, James and the Giant Peach, Old Yeller, Where the Red Fern Grows, The Yearling, The Bridge to Terabithia, Hatchet, The Secret Garden, The Phantom Tollbooth, Island of the Blue Dolphins, A Wrinkle in Time, Number the Stars, Maniac McGee. Ad infinitum. There is an entire world of good literature out there for fifth, sixth, and seventh graders.
Unfortunately, seventh and eighth grade was a different time for me, which we Americans call puberty. Although in honors English by then, I simply didn’t have time to read. I played sports. When I did read, it was text books. Maybe this time in my life was so traumatizing that retrospectively looking back, I remember nothing, so as to save myself from embarrassment. Maybe Sounder and Mr. Popper’s Penguins, but that’s all I got.
High School was the big shift. Kind of like the gear shift. The tactile shift.
More honors English and more books. Everyman, and all Charles Dickens. A lot of Shakespeare. Things Fall Apart. Jane Eyre.
Brontë's Wuthering Heights.
Buck's The Good Earth. The House On Mango Street. The Red Badge of Courage. The Great Gatsby. A Farewell to Arms.
For Whom the Bell Tolls. The Sun Also Rises. The Iliad. The Odyssey.Death of a Salesman. The Crucible.
Gone With the Wind. The Things They Carried.1984.
In four years you can read a lot of books when you are forced to. And I was forced to. However, by my junior year, I lost interest. No more honors English. Now regular English. Different people in these classes. More apathy, and I loved it.
But the big shift came in eleventh grade. I took a poetry class, for some reason, and have since “stuck with it.” Well, it’s an on again, off again, relationship.
I started buying books, and buying books for people. For girlfriends, for teachers. I was shameless. See a book, buy a book. I can’t say what happened, but when reading and writing crossed, they stayed together like two good friends. I started slowly with Hemingway. Read all Hemingway. . . . . . . . . .



O.K, second half to be announced at a later date.

Art Festival


Sparks ignite
from a man with a long metal mask
welding two pieces of steel.
Two women, possibly friends,
illustrate on a concrete wall.
Other people glance
with eyes that lean
over cups almost spilling with beer.

Bands play. Different clouds of smoke
float.
I drink from a paper cup of lemonade.
A yellow rind floats on top of ice cubes,
while lemon seeds collide with one another.

Behind still glass
are three white rooms
where profssional paintings hang.
This is an art gallery
in the center of an art festival.
People, men and women, walk the rooms.
They disappear, then reappear,
disappear, then reappear
within these quiet rooms.

I catch a women's eye on the street
or we glance
then glance again
over cups.
Something happens, but nothing happens,
as I disappear into the white rooms.

Valleys with Hills of Sawdust

October comes,
Stripping the land of color—
Green apples fall ripe from trees.
October comes
Stripping trees bare.
The grounds are air-raided, dug up,
Made ready for winter.
Dry brown shrubs have died,
And are ready to be dug up.

Today is darker, overcast.
The air is chilled.
We’re at the dumping ground
Picking up damp
clods of hay
Old trees
wooden rods
Off of the trailer.

All to be shredded.

Piles of wooden chips surround us,
Hills of sawdust,
Crowding up next to the myriad of workers
Walking the grounds.
Motion. We all continue to move
among these valleys. . .

On the horizon, a storm is coming.

A post Dedicated to ee cummings and Suburbs

For a brief moment,
I looked for a television camera
Filming this scene:
father drives in driveway
black asphalt new-black
two healthy children
y o u n g boyandgirl,
in swimming suits,
yelling: “D A A A A D.”

But there wasn’t one.
This was real life,
And I found myself
With a handful of sticks, mulch, and small leaves,
Of varying greens and blacks,
In the palm of my hand.

Then, the color yellow,
and the Egyptian pyramids came to mind,
but only for a brief moment.
Kids crossing the street with a wagon
brought me back to reality
and I found myself
with a handful of sticks, mulch, and leaves,
of varying greens and blacks,
in the palm of my hand.

This is my life.
Picking up
From where I left it off:
a suburb in the suburbs
Within the bright yellow of an afternoon.

I've thought about school. I've thought about writing, and writing in different forms. Writing letters--I've even wrote two, but alas, they've gone unsent. Poems, plays, short stories.

I've thought about reading. Reading Eliot, Stevens, Dante, Roethke, Frost, Yeats, and Whitman. And actually I've read most of who I wanted to read, but I haven't written what I wanted to write. I think the problem is that I can't figure out what to write about, how to write, or in what way to write.

On a side note, I probably like your favorite band. There's a reason what they are your favorite, and I can probably see somewhat, however momentarily, through the same lens as yourself. I call this 'coming to where your from.'

I've been studying, and reading 'The Waste Land' for this blog, but I'm a ways away from coming to any conclusion. In the meantime, as said by Spacehog, I'll write down two poems I just wrote...

A Movie Scene

When the music-of-life stops,
like in slow motion,
and she jumps around noiselessly,
exuberantly, happily,
she receives shivers.
Continues to dance a strange dance.
She is not dancing sexual,
nor any other way--though her arm-hairs stand up.
She is having individual moments
and individual moods,
and she receives each as if a gift.

It is like she is at a funeral service
for someone she loved a long time ago.

She is inspired, and really doesn't dance,
but walks on the sidewalk somewhere, I can't tell.



Death is a Misplaced Object

On the promenade
behind the funeral home
among two geese picking themselves
I recollect: "I have a lot to learn."

My Grandfather John has died.
My father, in a tailored suit,
carries himself differently.
Announces me as: "My son. . . "

By the promenade
the stream searches, and finds,
a green pond filled with lily pads.
Sun sits on leaves.

By a stream, I think of death.
I think of death by water
finding other waters,
or of death just as an individual stream appearing by a road.
Like death,
today seems the first day before the next season,
or like a watershed in the middle of a far away field.

Gertrude Stein

I’m starting a new blog project. Every week I will be writing on a different modern poet. By modern, I mean a poet from the 20^th century. I’ll write what I think of their lives, their works, their deaths. I’ll write about the poet and the poetry. I’ll write about Gertrude Stein, Wallace Stevens, T.S. Eliot, cubism, allergies, the color green, and much more.

Today, the poet is Gertrude Stein, and the poem is ‘Picasso.’

http://lumpy-pudding.tumblr.com/post/64566809/gertrude-stein-portrait-of-picasso

 Stein writes: “This one was one who was working and certainly this one was needing to be working so as to be one being working.”

The whole poem goes on like so. The first three sentences are as follows:

“One whom some were certainly following was one who was completely charming. One whom some were certainly following was one who was charming. One whom some were following  was one who was completely charming.”

Stein’s poem has the form of a short story started, but not finished, by Faulkner. The sentences are long and winding, repetitive, and use the same dozen or so words.

Stein even said see wanted her poetry to have ‘sameness.’ No focal point. She preferred portraits rather than stories. ‘Picasso’ is a portrait, not a story. Not a narration. Subject matter was not important, according to Stein.

A quick way to describe Picasso’s vision: “When he saw an eye from a profiled view, the other eye did not exist.” He saw flat surfaces stripped of hidden meaning. Stein’s style is similar. She strips down her writing to words that are not representations. Language, to Stein, equals calligraphy. In other words, language or words do not represent or symbolize something, but are actually ‘the thing itself.’ The concept is that Stein utilizes what is seen, rather than what is remembered. When one sees a profile of a person, the assumption is that the other side does have an eye. Both Stein and Picasso assume nothing. There is a continual blank slate, a flat surface, which is filled before their perception by what they immediately observe. But, how does one describe Stein’s perception?

            The reader can assume that Stein’s subject is Picasso. Her poem is about an artist whose style she appreciates and deviates toward. Stein’s gaze, her perspective, her style, really has nothing to do with Picasso in the sense that he was a painter who painted this or that and lived this sort of life. Instead, her perspective in poem ‘Picasso’ is objective. Let’s return. . .

“This one was one who was working and certainly this one was needing to be working so as to be one being working.”

The action of working can be the work of the artist painting, like Picasso. Word choice is Stein’s style. In order to be, Picasso had to be painting. The artist is being an artist when he is creating work. What is the individual itself, though? Being what? By unusual choice of words, Stein brings into question the existence of the individual with . . . “this one was needing to be working so as to be one being working.” This sentence operates on different levels intellectually—it can be meta-art, if work is painting.

I'm pretty tired of writing poems that really aren't very good. Poems that don't have the quality to ever be published. Most of my writing this month has been that way, and the sooner I realize my writing this month has been below average, the sooner I'll write poems that are above average. But when this happens I'll have no clue, because writing won't be relevant to my life anymore. Soon enough, I will quit writing, expel any creativity what-so-ever from my life. There will be no more narration. The music will end. Art will imitate life. And with imitating life, art will become a parrot. A squawking remembrance of the past.

I'm tired, really, of writing the same way, the same style, the same bends and turns. I'm kind of tired of writers who repeat their cadence with every new sentence. For something different, read Laughter in the Dark or any Salinger or Thoreau. If you're into that sort of repetition that tells itself I'll do it different later, then read my past posts in August.

Maybe I should explain: "'If you're into that sort of repetition that tells itself 'I'll do it later'" means. . . if you're into a writing style, a specific brand, like a line of clothing items which are different, yet all have the same logo somewhere on them,  if you're into disguises, masks, then there cannot be any change through sweat that dissolves fat.

Anything that talks to itself convinces itself otherwise. Anything that talks to itself convinces itself of something false, usually.

"Anything that talks to itself, convinces itself," said the conscious to the man in a black overcoat.

This one even puzzles me.

I Listen to Sound

Smoke lingers as the moon rises,
and the light wanes for a quarter hour.
Smoke lingers from my cigarette.
Night will soon be complete,
and I'll sleep like this smoke.

The harsh difference
between summer air and air conditioning
irritates me
like the slap from an ex-girlfriend.

I want to laugh, but can't
like the stale taste of dinner's coffee.

However, this is it.
From tip to tip,
ear to ear,
I listen to sound.

I hear my voice searching for my ears.

Semi-Connected to August 9 Post

Love is a Driver Without a Passenger

I met you outside
to return your apartment key.
There was a warm, August rain between us.
You laughed as I high stepped bare foot
through grass and mud to your car.

It rained down on everything.
Claps of thunder sounded.
I couldn't hear a thing but your laugh,
or see a thing but a slight profile,
distant like the faded faces on coins,
through the car's fogged and cracked window.

You drove off as I stood there.
I couldn't help but wonder
what your car looked like in the
bumper to bumper world
of traffic in the rain.

It was very hot today

How I would read this upcoming poem: 5 vignettes that are connected together.



100 Degrees

The grass is dead.
Street workers handle shovels
and some drink from cans.
Heat waves rise from asphalt.

I let the electrician into an empty apartment.
The wooden floors are warped
and dirty from vacancy.

Outside the back window,
a child glides half-nude
down an aluminum slide.
Clothes hang from a line.

Sweat hangs from my glasses.
It must be 100 degrees.
Someone has written and left MOM
into the dirt of a window.

The electrician, wearing fire-proof gloves,
has his hand deep into a heater.

New news on the home-front: new poem.


Moving Clouds   


Tonight, a commercial airplane passes overhead
as I continue fishing.
No luck tonight, and its utterly dark.
The grass is soaked, my socks wet,
and I keep losing my train of thought.
It begins someplace,
and ends up somewhere else.
Then, I return to fishing.
To my bait colliding with small sunken rocks
on the bottom of the pond.
I wonder if, comparatively, I'm a true fisherman.
Who would say?
My eyes coast around the pond.
Light emerges in places.
One man wears a miner's light.
Finally, the Big Dipper
emerges boldly from a series of clouds.

Here, On the Outskirts

New poem of the week. I wish I could be like those bloggers who have a poem of the week. But alas, you, ACorkAndABottle, have no structure. Screw it, I'm done free-writing. Here is, again, my poem of the week.


Here, On the Outskirts


Lightning flashes
silently white
on the horizon over the city.
It has already rained here, on the outskirts.
Alley street lamps blur.
Pavements glisten from slick oil,
and there is not a sound within earshot.
Silence, so it seems--
a suspicious companion.

Any second now someone will shout in the distance.
Slowly, it will begin again.

"(Untitled)"

How I Want to Die

I want to die with a clear mind.
In a hospital bed, with no one watching.
Hopefully, I simply leave.
Just like that.
Without wondering where I've been
or where I'm going.

You and I, two half-moons in a summer light

Because I've deactivated Facebook, this blog is probably going to be less read. But, I'm going to post the same, but more poems, and less blog-ery stuff. Here's a new poem . . .


As We Walk to the Corner Store


We’re half-seen like quarter-moons
as we leave the building into sunlight.

Next, you’ll say that you’re on the cusp
of a nervous breakdown,
and I’ll stumble into an explanation of a past experience.
Then, you’ll say something about your exhaustion,
how your muscles ache,
as we walk to the corner store.

As we walk to the corner store
I see you in short jean shorts,
and I’m reminded that it’s summer,
though at this point
seasons are like pools I don’t swim in.

We walk past a pool full of new water
and tenants upright in plastic chairs.
Everyone is dressed in bathing suits
which reveal winter skin.

Grass lifts into the air
from the running lawnmowers
of the lawn service.

Classes are finished and school is out,
as we walk to the corner store.
What to do now?
We’ll walk to the corner store for lemonade and cigarettes.
Then?
Then, we’ll rupture inside air conditioned rooms,
and bleed out onto porches.
Summer is simply a combination of sunlight and temperature,
and the veil between us had faded.
You and I, two half-moons in a summer-light,
Are, whether we like it or not, close friends.

Three lawnmowers continue to cut
separate small patches of grass,
as it flies into the air behind us,
as we approach the busy street
on our way to the corner store.

Old drafts of some-what pretentious hoop-la that I haven't had the chance to read

***

Find what you’re looking for in the cabinet—

The white cup with the broken handle.

Tell me about it,
And how its every angle affects you.
I believe that may be your excuse for coming.

It’s time spent,
Lost-touched and separate.

Let the half-hours pass.

***

I caught a song on the radio today-- it was a Harry Connick Jr. one. I thought that it was ridiculously infantile. I think it was from the When Harry Met Sally soundtrack. Suddenly angry, I almost succumbed to the craziness and confusion of anger, of shame, of regret. Why do we feel the need to laugh? Why do we feel the compulsion to express everything we are thinking? Why don't we repress it, engrave it so it becomes incomprehensibly intertwined with our opinions? Then, maybe your cleverness will take a walk. Maybe if you're angry, you should let it go unresolved for the rest of your life, until it turns into boredom, regret, and confusion. You should sacrifice yourself, forget about what makes you happy, reject yourself. By doing so, you'll be doing someone a favor. Then you will stop feeling. Reject the body and accept the brain. Maybe then you'll stop caring about money, and the cleverness of laughing at a Harry Connick Jr. song.

Because he's not funny. And you're probably impressionable and corruptible, or incorrigible.

Please, be quiet. Stop, and forget everything I am. Listen to the air conditioner, or something. Or do what I do, and listen to yourself, and hate yourself. I command you to die alone, and never teach another student for the rest of your life. Don't publish anymore papers on acadamia, because everything you write parades around like an italicized thought. Why should I follow your rules on your terms. I forget if that was a question or not.

***

"Lost" --Ethan Frome? John Locke? Although at times it seems like another Jack bauer-ish 24, it's not. And when the show flies too close to the suspended disbelief sun of God, it backs away...and with good reason. I know, I know, the "Lost" finale was last week. There were going away parties. I even know the finale was some 6 hours long. My favorite sports writer even dedicated a dozen or so podcasts to the series, and a final dedication to it with an hour and a half long podcast (with three TV critics, each going about 30 minutes). But, I didn't listen to it, or any of his other 'Lost' podcasts. Here's the link, for all you "Lost" fans:

http://sports.espn.go.com/espnradio/podcast/archive?id=2864045

. . .it's the 5/24 podcast. Also, 5/14's podcast talks with the "Lost" co-writer Carlton Cuse.

Anyway, I'm just finishing Season 1 on sidereel. One thing I wish was different: the show should be on Showtime or HBO. It could be so much more explicit and sexual. What's for sure, is that it's probably the last show 'of its kind.' Basic cable, really? To give you a quick idea of the shows I like:

1. Six Feet Under
2. Dexter
3. Breaking Bad
4. Seinfeld
8. It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia
9. Arrested Development

Nothing wrong with Dexter. Absolutely nothing. A cool and calm serial killer? With reason and morals? Born out of blood? Hits everything on my wish-list, plus it's on Showtime.

***

Can't write. Haven't been writing. Haven't felt like it. Nothing coming, really. Some good ideas, but nothing past that. Even then, ideas are short to come by. But Stephen King and Bill Simmons say, that as writers, they read or write a couple hours per day. Even with reading: haven't been doing it. Can't do it, don't really feel like doing it. It's not writer's block or laziness. I haven't moved on from writing, like I do with relationships. The conclusion I would say, concerning my lack of writing, would be: if I never wrote another day in my life, I would be ok with it. If I wrote every day, from here on, and never got published, I would be ok with it. If I never accomplished any of my honest goals-- becoming a professor, grad student in New Orleans, or owner of a cabin in Wisconsin--I would be fine with it. If I in fact became a secretary who sets out glass bowls of candy I would still be something. If I never travelled I would be fine. But enough of the 'what-ifs'

There are a few things I do when I can't read or write: I read Samuel Beckett, write about sports, listen to Elliott Smith, watch a movie, or check my cell-phone for texts. In this case, I'm going to write about sports, because a lot has happened in my sports-world--the NFL draft, the NBA playoffs and the Cavaliers second round loss, the Cincinnati Reds in first place, the NBA lottery, the upcoming NBA summer of free-agency, the upcoming World Cup and U.S.'s draw, and probably more.

***

Being an Ohio sports fan, much of my sports-world rotates around Ohio related teams. So, for me the NFL draft is all about the Browns, Bengals, Ravens, and Steelers. Being at heart a Browns fan, I know more about their draft and offseason than any of the latter. Colt McCoy. I'm elated with this pick, and with the time in the draft they got him. Shorter, but shifty in the pocket like a Brees. Light arm, but accurate. Won and won in college. Played in the high pressure and insanely loud state of Texas, for high school and college. The best way I can explain it: the burnt orange of Texas translates fatefully to the brown of the Browns. The colors compliment. However, it's long term. McCoy won't start in '10. So, what can Cleveland do-for-me-now? They can win 6 games, and hopefully beat Cincinnati twice. Other than that, they can find the high potential between Mangini-Holmgren.

I know the Bengal's fan. He grew up in-and-around Cincinnati. Later in life he goes to the home games, but also listens in on his AM-headphone-radiostation to the commentary. Early in life, when he first begins to appreciate the commentary and analysis of the game, he attaches the team and this analysis to home-town pride. A mob of un-curbed enthusiasm walks, in union, into Paul Brown in continual agreement.

I know the Bengal's fan better than I know the Browns' fans. I live, and have lived in Cincinnati, as a Brown's fan, for my life. I've argued with genuine hatred with Bengal fans. Ironically, the arguments always start with the 'cities' of Cleveland and Cincinnati, and end with the team' mascots. There is never a solution.

But I have the advantage of being a fan of the team from their city which I'm not from. Or, I'm a fan of the city that I've never lived in.

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Movies I've watched recently:

Exotica, U-Turn, Valentine's Day, Angel Heart, The Man Who Wasn't There, The Deep End
A Walk in the Clouds, Cache, Oldboy, The Salton Sea
Kiss Kiss Bang Bang, George Washington

Lost Highway, Trees Lounge, Layer Cake, The Dreamers,
The Talented Mr. Ripley, The Professional, The Sweet Hereafter,
Brothers, Avatar, The Hurt Locker, Bright Star, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, 2012,
Broken Embraces, Disgrace, You The Living,

Shutter Island, Leaves of Grass, Chloe, Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call, New Orleans,
Humpday, Chop Shop, Mon oncle Antoine, Brick, Without Limits, Hable Con Ella, L'Enfant,
4 Months, 3 Weeks, and 2 Days, The Class, You Can Count on Me, Paranoid Park

1. The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo-- A gothic, lesbian computer hacker and a political journalist have seriously (in my opinion) great chemistry.

2. Leaves of Grass-- Edward Norton plays two characters who are identical twins: a stoner and an Ivy-league, Classics professor.

3. L'Enfant (The Child)--The casted couple are unfamiliar faces, but perfect for the film. Best ending of a movie that I can remember.

4. Oldboy--A man kidnapped and locked in a hotel room for 15 straight years. Why? And what does he watch on TV?

5. You Can Count on Me-- I've been wanting to watch this movie for awhile. Mark Ruffalo as a drifter-- doing the Kerouac-beat travelling brother.

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Genre takes away mystery, as I've recently found out. Or, genre takes away that specific quality we appreciate in art. Another way to put it: the definition of a term takes away the intuitive meaning we naturally give it. The mystery of meaning is really our enjoyment of the feeling which is unexplainable. Genre, like all definitions, will take

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A man announces to a crowd: "I am lying to you.". . . So, is the man telling the truth because he confesses to being 'untruthful,' or is he lying, by saying, 'I am lying to you,' and by using the verb 'lying' in the sentence.

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So begins the idea of absolute truth and certainty. Pilgrimages and journeys have been made over the question of reality.

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You start reading, or listening, on a whim. There is an assumption, like what you're about the hear or read or listen to has already been heard, read, or listened to. There is a comparison, or a prior conviction.


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I've finally started Stephen King's book On Writing and a volume of Yeats's poems. Something from King's book: ". . .good story ideas seem to come quite literally from nowhere, sailing at you right out of the empty sky: two previously unrelated ideas come together and make something new under the sun."

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Little did I know it would mean nothing just a week later.


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--"Who's that singing?"

-"Edith Piaf."

--"What's she so upset about?"

-"Her lover left her, and she sees his face everywhere she goes."

She sings, 'You say things that make my eyes close.'

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I'm writing this while waiting for the film Hannah and Her Sisters to finish illegally downloading, so I'm trying to finish this post in '15 min 47 sec.' The movie is another Woody Allen. For the most part I'm choosing to watch it, among the infinite list of internet movies, for a few reasons:

Its a Woody Allen from 1986--an interesting in-between time for directors in general. I can only compare my attraction to 1986 to the '86 or '87 David Lynch film Blue Velvet-- its my favorite Lynch film, after Dune but before Mulholland Drive, because its more polished than Dune but less experimental than Mulholland Dr.

I'm finding that Woody Allen has done a lot more movies than I thought, however I follow the same opinion of a friend that all Woody Allen movies have a recurring element that tends to dominate his movies (you decide what the element is), and thus most of his movies are the same. So Annie Hall is revisited over and over if you were to purchase the Woody Allen box set at Boarders (which I have). But what director or artist doesn't have this hackneyed fault?

As for the march madness tourney I'm really looking forward to the Michigan St/Northern Iowa game --mostly because I'm a huge state fan. Hopefully CBS airs the whole game because they really missed the boat with state's last game vs. maryland. Vegas is giving them 1 1/2 points but the overall feeling is that N. Iowa should win by, say, 4 pts. I feel that either MSU will either win by 1/2 pts or get blown out. I'm discovering every game that involves a team I'm a fan of is not a game where I should hedge my bet. Nonetheless, I'll be watching the game with my dad, an MSU grad, hopefully with his self-proclaimed famous nachos, and German beer.

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As for what I'm reading right now, my cousin recently gave me Stephen King's On Writing which is pretty awesome, and Stoppard's Rosencrantz and Guildstern. I feel both books are sort of must-reads for the reader/writer.

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Finally, here is an incomplete poem I've been working on, but cannot find a way to end:


In Treatment

From the glass bowl in the cafeteria,
full of apples pears and peaches,
we would fill up a paper bag
with a half dozen Red Delicious
and walk to the horse stables.
On the way, Charis Ann and I
would stop by the small pond
and watch the orange coy zip
from rock to rock.
Clear sky spread purple and gold during these evenings.
We would split the apples
into halves against the wooden fence,
and reach our hands through the stable's gate
to feed the horses.
The stables overlooked
the shaded Santa Catalina Mountains
and acres of rolling ground
sectioned off by picket fence.
The Paolo Verde trees were in yellow bloom
and purple violets emerged into groups
from hard, dry Tucson dirt.
These horses were once wild horses,
but now were domesticated horses
helping patients with therapy.
The first time I met Henrietta
was in front of my focus group in a gated ring.
Coincidentally, I chose the alpha-female,
and she wasn't enthusiastic
as I shyly approached her.
My glands were inflamed from the horses' hair and hay.
She drove her hooves into the ground
as I sneezed repeatedly.
This was Equestrian Therapy
and my life long battle with allergies was surfacing.
Henrietta's frayed tail swatted flies
while her muscles flexed smooth and taught.
I ran my fingers down her long nose while snot
dripped from her nostrils.


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I guess I'm in-between days--its Monday and my next final isn't until Thursday, and then Friday, and then spring break.

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Well,