portent addendum

Driving back from the grocery store, we notice a man walking up the steps of his porch. He is long haired, shirtless, with some sort of tattoo on his back. Vanessa and I are both watching him, in that way you watch your neighbors when they emerge from their dens: recognizing, ok, you, it's you who lives in close proximity to me. Then Vanessa says, is that a gun? And yes, we see, the man has some sort of rifle tucked under his arm. It's sleek and silvery and looks freshly polished.* Its these times we need to remind ourselves we live in Indiana.

*Lest you worry, it seemed likely it was hunting related, and he did not appear hurried or distressed.

portents

From atop the pines comes a scrambling and squawking. I look up to see a murder of crows erupting from and returning to the treetops, barely visible against the dark sky. It is an ebb and flow of conflict, rustling wings and branches in slightly different tenors. I pull my hood up and walk under the possibility of falling needles, shadowed in an old-fashioned silhouette against the sidewalk. No wolves in sight, though.

The next day, a man bicycles past, a quiver of arrows stuck out of the back of his pack. I think about the man in Rhode Island who killed another man, in a road rage incident, with a crossbow he'd pulled from his car.

We eat candy canes at the bar from a small glass cup. None of them are peppermint.

bloomington can be pretty in winter

back to poetry

I'm tired of narrative right now, and yet I can't quite escape it. In honor of this, I'm posting Misty Harper's beautiful poem, "Plot." I just reread Misty's chapbook (chosen by Charles Simic for the PSA Chapbook Prize) and it's so good. She does such wonderful things by impregnating common phrases with unexpected images. Here you go:

Plot
Never Fails. Slick with ice
then thick with blossoms.

Let birds subpoena the trees.
Let Miscellany loosen her ornate plot.

I was born on my due date.
I was placed on a red plate.

A nurse said O Sawbones
this one doesn't look too good.

Arithmatic of pestilence and light,
answer my hands their questions.
Answer my questions their hands.

new dress

The black was becoming oppressive.

oh and also (first lyrics post!)

It's Over
(Tom Waits and Kathleen Brennan-Waits)

You must have brought the bad weather with you
The sky's the colour of lead
All you've left me is a feather
On an unmade bed

It's always me whenever there's trouble
The world does nothing but turn
And the ring it fell off my finger
I guess I'll never learn

But it's over, it's over, it's over
I'm getting dressed in the dark
Our story ends before it begins
I always confess to everyone's sins
The nail gets hammered down
And it's over, let it go

So don't go and make a big deal out of nothing
Well it's just a storm on a dime
And I've always found there's nothing
That money can't buy
I've already gone to the place I'm going
There's no place left to fall
And there's something to be said
For saying nothing at all

And it's over, it's over, it's over
It's done forgotten and through
No one cares what it's all for
You'll be buried in the clothes
That you've never wore
So keep your suitcase by the door
It's over, let it go

No one cares what it's all for
You'll be buried in the clothes
That you never wore
So keep your suitcase by the door
It's over, let it go
You gotta let it go
Let it go, let it go

today i am thankful for

good health. And the knowledge that the positive side of the close knit between my mental state and my physical state is that it lets me off the hook for being a miserable wretch these past couple days.

I can't stop listening to Tom Waits' incredible new album(s), particularly the song "First Kiss." Two songs at least on these albums mention Indiana. Holla.

Samrat gave a wonderful reading last night which opened with a sex scene from The Guru of Love in which monkeys interrupt the action delightfully and mischeiviously. His explanation was equally wonderful: I got the two lovers together in the temple and then I didn't know what to do with them. I didn't want to do a traditional love scene. His story "The Wedding Hero" from The Royal Ghosts showed astounding control of time, something which I'm struggling with. It made me grateful again for what I can learn from him.

blog as notebook

I'm taken with this Emily Dickinson definition of art I just stumbled across, in a wonderful little Slate photo essay on Joseph Cornell.

"Nature is a Haunted House - but Art - a House that tries to be haunted."

I like the idea that so much of what I do is hanging around, trying to haunt my house over and over again.

thank you soma

for playing Jerry Jeff Walker.

Pack up all your dishes.
Make note of all good wishes.
Say goodbye to the landlord for me.
That son of a bitch has always bored me.

If I can just get offa this L.A. Freeway without getting killed or caught.

cosmo's moon

Once when I was little I pitched an embarassing fit at the idea of renting Moonstruck, because I wanted something more "age appropriate." But my parents rented it anyway and after much stomping and huffing and slamming of doors, I crept down the stairs and watched the whole thing from the bottom step, peering around the living room wall. I'm sure my parents knew, even though I tried to be secretive.

Now I only want to be as tough as Loretta. I want to sit around drinking strong coffee and eating cannoli and little almond cookies with my mamma. To wear black all the time like a Sicilian grandmother. To exaggerate and turn over tables and compare everyone to feral animals. This is how it goes.

cnn headlines are often absurd

The demise of Encore has forced me to Starbucks where holiday music tinkles and the creepy men who are always here stare at me yet again. The next time the weak-chinned guy stares at me I'm going to tell him to put his eyes back in his head. You think I'm a nice person who is kidding about this, but I'm not.

Thanksgiving worked out! Way too much food, declamations, and Sailor Jerry, but fun was had by all.

I'm creeped out right now about this.

And I'm feeing as though there are an awful lot of stories in the news today about zoo animals. Is that what we turn to in the face of hundreds of deaths in Sadr City?

Hope never seems to stick around.

idle days

Has it seriously been a week? Here's the deal: A says I should be preparing for wintering in, hauling firewood and digging up the tubers and stirring the large pots of preserves. That the mind slowing down and the body speeding up is the natural course of events. I agree and that's been my life this week. Therefore no posts, only Gillian Welch and Dave Rawlings and the way they alternately coddle and throttle their guitars. Only surrender to the sound.

Weekend, Weekend

Turns out herding MFAs really does get them out onto the dance floor. What with the rain tents and lights and the serious rock of Steven!, the MFA band, it was quite the time. Would that the rest of the weekend had been as work productive as that was fun productive. V and I have been ridiculous with our chit chatting instead of working (too fun!). I love it when she says things like "befitting her station."

This weekend's distraction was brought to you by The Queen. Beautifully done. It made sense when I saw that the director, Stephen Frears, had made Dirty Pretty Things, which I loved. Even though I'm not going to England this winter, I'm immersing myself in its culture (reading England, England now). This movie made me think about how having a female monarch presiding over the fall of the Empire might have contributed to the monarchy retaining what power it has; the film's illumination of the Rosie the Riveter aspects of the Queen's personality helped me understand the "progressive" element of her postion, which I think I'm generationally and culturally removed from. I've also been wondering what will happen to the institution in the coming male reigns. Which will happen soon, I suppose -- an odd thought.

I would much rather rake leaves and run on a treadmill than read right now. My brain is a floating balloon. But look at me avoid The Wizard of Oz which is playing out there in the living room and focus. Yes, look at me go.

"it's all right to feel things, though the feelings may be strange"

I wonder to what extent (my language is so inflected by teaching comp) my life as it is now could fit into the narratives of "Free to Be You and Me."

Tonight the MFA band (including dear housemate o' mine) is playing a party and I am obliged to go and cheer for them. I'm actually excited about it, though I've been feeling pretty anti-party lately. I need to practice guitar so I can some day appear with them.

All the leaves have dried up in the last week and the trees are shedding rapidly. It's as though Bloomington said, oh yeah, it's November, better get barren. Except that it's been very warm. The temperature in my house is so much cooler that I keep feeling tricked when I open the door.

I met our non-regular (subbing on days off) mailman today. I always love meeting the mailman because of my dad, and also because it's nice to know the face of the person who stops by your house every day. He was super nice, as is the regular carrier. I want to make them baked goods. Can't forget to leave the holiday card out this year.

Some hopeful news on the IR front regarding solicitations. Keeping fingers crossed.

"Let us take a turn about the room"

Is it a seminar foul when the professor has the flu but asks the students to have the class anyway? What if it's an election night and the students would like to watch the results come in?

V and I ate sesame chicken and broccoli and cabbage whipped up on the spot by me and watched the Midterm Midtacular. I was teased by multiple parties for my grimacing and fidgety involvement in the election results, but there is a long tradition of this, from Mary and my marathon Katrina coverage sessions to the Buffy crowd event mentioned over in Stoveland. It was a little bit like the feeling of following the last football game I watched. Familiar, old and exciting. Even if the stakes were ever so much higher. Perhaps I needed to think of it that way so I wouldn't be so sad if the results went badly.

V just wrote this beautiful line: "its wings as grey as timber beat upon the bulb."

I want to write all about Stove's visit, but she did it all. Suffice it to say, all parties including Barnaby are sad that she is gone. And a little worried that too much gossip was had. But mostly feeling the aftermath of her presence that made everything glow a little bit brighter in this dim November.

life starts again today

The Big Presentation is done, rawther well I think, and even though I went on for far too long and couldn't answer all the questions posed, I always feel that the fact that there -are- questions posed is a sign of engagement. Also, faced with concerns about just who is thinking about author intentionality anyway these days, I feel I acquitted myself well as a writer. I'm no fan of interpreting a work with an author's bio. in my back pocket, but when you're a writer, it's hard to argue that the author doesn't matter. I'm trying to figure out whether the author-function is the same as the implied author. It's all knotty terminology.

Anyway. It's chilly and my feet are freezing and I was happy to wake up from a dream of a plane doing barrel-rolls over the Great Marvels of the Western World (Leaning Tower of Pisa, Acrpolis, etc.) and not have to worry about a presentation or reading 25 stories. I bathed and read 10 and practiced guitar and thought fond thoughts of visitors from out of state. Really, it's almost cheerful.

one more delay

The clouds moving across the sky, the few leaves shuddering on the branches fingered out above us, the distant call of the freight train all made me think of Bard, of the Hudson, of Donna and of Dennis's songs about women and cities: "these are my mountains, these are my hills, the train runs through them, fills me with chills...the quiet titans, the monsters sleep, the locomotive, the river deep." The man skulking about the cemetary all in black cut short the excursion, but V and I held close and traipsed through the city streets nonchalantly nonetheless. When a big black dog tethered to an invisible leash leapt barking out of the darkness she became larger than life, told it to back off in a firm deep voice. We are brave girls, we. Forlorn sometimes, dreamy often, longing girls but brave.

I would ask pardon for the sentimentality, but I'm trained not to. No disclaimers. Take it for what it is tonight; tomorrow will be another story.

i feel like i know her but sometimes my arms bend back

Oh Stove, you're going to addict me to this thing.

Neko Case makes me feel like I should be hanging out at the Road House from Twin Peaks. Shaking my hips back and forth and twirling cherry stems like Audrey. It's very very warm out and I should be sitting outside, but I won't be able to see my computer screen. So instead: soft light and mint green variegated walls. Looking at a man with a waxed moustache (for reals) and a woman who once taught me Pilates. Both employees.

I would like to work out the vagueries of my thoughts on unreliable narration post-research into scholarship of The Remains of the Day, but I have a feeling that work had best be done within a paper form. So off I go to be productive.

stick leash:

what the little girl walking past the window is being dragged along with. Slightly unsettling.

As previously mentioned, it's homecoming weekend, and that makes everything rawther surreal (as Nanny would say). Today's example: V and I are having brunch at the Runcible, when a cadre of pleated-docker wearing young gentlemen come in and surround us in a sinuous l-shape. The group, we are told, is called "Straight, No Chaser," and they've come from Hillel House to sing us a ditty or two, after which they're going to collect money for "The Sudan, Israel, and" some other unrelated country that I've forgotten. I have to say, I've never been the biggest fan of acappella music, and their song that involved a distance between the speaker and the narratee, as it were, was a surround-sound version of pretty terrible. I mean, they were "good boys," they had nice voices, but sheesh. V made the highly entertaining observation that if we were a couple in the middle of a breakup, the song choice would have been highly traumatic.

Best Halloween costume gimmick so far: competition between "The Snuggler," the blankie-d superhero who went around the Vid giving hugs, and my friend A's "Intergallactic Love Warrior" that went around shooting folks with a love gun. The ladies seemed to love the love gun.

In a time of slutty "fill in the blank" being the most prevalent costume, I'd like to take the idea to the extreme. Slutty Eggplant, perhaps, or Slutty Trash Bin. Now that I think of it, though, Mary already did this best with her "Baberaham Lincolm" costume.

Saturday is a Work Day

There's something deeply satisfying to me about sitting here at this table in this cafe with all these stories spread out around me to read. Dozens. I'm listening to Radio Free Klezmer. I'm plowing through story after story about father/son relationships, most of which involve a)hunting b)fishing or c)camping. Then there's winter sports. Poor V has to deal with my constant stream of "never do this" in a story. The latest had to do with fabric stretched tight over women's breasts. Christ. She said she wants to write a story in which fabric droops over a woman's breasts. I say more power to her. I'm realizing why Jenna Blum was so anti-child narrators now, and why AGNI has a blanket policy. (That sounds like a policy to issue afghans to its contributers, but of course I mean a blanket policy against child narrators).

It's homecoming weekend and yesterday I passed a float that consisted of two large papier mache yams. How rad is that?

Stove, the leaves on the trees are still bright. I wondered to myself whether that would still be the case when you came, then realized you'll be here in 5 days, and how much can really change in that time? Yee-haw.