I borrowed the following from Sofiya Yuzefpolskaya , whose friendship pleases me, enlightens me:
Charles Bukowski
1920-1994
"the life of Borodin"
the next time you listen to Borodin
remember he was just a chemist
who wrote music to relax;
his house was jammed with people:
students, artists, drunkards, bums,
and he never knew how to say: no.
the next time you listen to Borodin
remember his wife used his compositions
to line the cat boxes with
or to cover jars of sour milk;
she had asthma and insomnia
and fed him soft-boiled eggs
and when he wanted to cover his head
to shut out the sounds of the house
she only allowed him to use the sheet;
besides there was usually somebody
in his bed
(they slept separately when they slept
at all)
and since all the chairswere usually taken
he often slept on the stairway
wrapped in an old shawl;
she told him when to cut his nails,
not to sing or whistle
or put too much lemon in his tea
or press it with a spoon;
Symphony #2, in B Minor
Prince Igor
On the Steppes of Central Asia
he could sleep only by putting a piece
of dark cloth over his eyes
in 1887 he attended a dance
at the Medical Academy
dressed in a merrymaking national costume;
at last he seemed exceptionally gay
and when he fell to the floor,
they thought he was clowning.
the next time you listen to Borodin,
remember...
Borodin's Symphony No. 2 (second movement)
Sunday, November 7, 2010
things that ooze back in
I'm thinking about Ronnie Bannister and his family. Back in 1962. Mrs. Bannister was my 5th-grade teacher. In class, she would read us a chapter a day from A Wrinkle in Time (which had come out that year). After school, she would secretly slip me books on Communism. Mr. Bannister was an acerbic, taciturn atheist, a pipe fitter at the refinery who also read strange foreign literature. Mr. Bannister did not like me for some reason. They were socialists or something in our south Arkansas reactionary town. Very odd situation.
And Ronnie himself -- odd. Neighborhood kids picked on him. When we played Army, he always wanted to be the medic. Unheard of! Ronnie was into science stuff, strange theories about outer space and electrons and what-not.
They lived two houses to the east. The east, where I lived, always had something unusual about it. I'll not veer off here and tell you about the east of our town. Except to say that it moved toward and into a slightly different dimension, different from the one in which our west, north, and south existed. The terrain sloped down from our house to the Bannister's. Their yard always filled up with water when it rained. I was enthralled by the rain back then. It rained existentially or spiritually. The rainfall came down like shredded pieces from a sad old abyss.
One late afternoon in my backyard with Ronnie. I was swinging like a monkey on the tire-rope swing, which was suspended from the branch of a large hickory tree. I'll never forget it. Out of the blue, Ronnie announced: "One day you are going to be an important man." He said it with such an oracular tone that I was nonplussed. Every now and then, it pops back into my head. He seemed so certain, like he was seeing into the future. But he was wrong. I never became important. I think he jinxed me. If he hadn't said that, who knows? If he had just kept it to himself, I might have actually turned into someone important. Like Churchill or a professor.
Going over Ronnie's house to play and hang out.
Mr. Bannister was usually unseen but always a brooding, threatening presence. Like some kind of coiled-spring, erudite psychopath. I imagined him in another room and with his nose buried in some god-knows-what book of European literature. The kind of book that if put in the hands of all the other dads in our rather coarse neighborhood would have made them quiver and spazz until they almost exploded with perplexity.
I loved Mrs. Bannister. But lets shift away from that before I get moody.
Ronnie's bedroom. It felt funny. Had a strange atmosphere. Like all the atoms in it were from an alien universe. I'm not kidding. It felt like I had entered the ambiance of one of those reruns from the TV show "Science Fiction Theatre," which aired early on Saturday mornings and which made me feel very uncomfortable, put me on edge.
[Science Fiction Theatre]
By all appearances, it was a normal, well-lit bedroom. The odds-and-ends and toys and books weren't that bizarre. But from a very early age, I've had a sense about the uncanny. I knew what was normal, what was not normal, and how even normal stuff was moving through an unsuspected-by-others haze of weirdness. I was an expert in detecting changes in barometric pressure between this world and the possible oozings from other dimensions.
While in his bedroom especially, Ronnie would talk a lot about science and theories and things no one would expect from the brain of a boy. Maybe his room wasn't really weird. Maybe it was something the room absorbed from Ronnie's soul that made it seem not-quite-right. I really liked Ronnie.
I think the Bannisters might have been genuine aliens. From far, far away. And what better place to go mostly undetected than El Dorado, Arkansas?
Years later, they moved to somewhere in Louisiana. Mr. Bannister died of a stroke or heart attack. I've tried to look Ronnie and his mother up on Google, but no luck. I hope they are okay.
And Ronnie himself -- odd. Neighborhood kids picked on him. When we played Army, he always wanted to be the medic. Unheard of! Ronnie was into science stuff, strange theories about outer space and electrons and what-not.
They lived two houses to the east. The east, where I lived, always had something unusual about it. I'll not veer off here and tell you about the east of our town. Except to say that it moved toward and into a slightly different dimension, different from the one in which our west, north, and south existed. The terrain sloped down from our house to the Bannister's. Their yard always filled up with water when it rained. I was enthralled by the rain back then. It rained existentially or spiritually. The rainfall came down like shredded pieces from a sad old abyss.
One late afternoon in my backyard with Ronnie. I was swinging like a monkey on the tire-rope swing, which was suspended from the branch of a large hickory tree. I'll never forget it. Out of the blue, Ronnie announced: "One day you are going to be an important man." He said it with such an oracular tone that I was nonplussed. Every now and then, it pops back into my head. He seemed so certain, like he was seeing into the future. But he was wrong. I never became important. I think he jinxed me. If he hadn't said that, who knows? If he had just kept it to himself, I might have actually turned into someone important. Like Churchill or a professor.
Going over Ronnie's house to play and hang out.
Mr. Bannister was usually unseen but always a brooding, threatening presence. Like some kind of coiled-spring, erudite psychopath. I imagined him in another room and with his nose buried in some god-knows-what book of European literature. The kind of book that if put in the hands of all the other dads in our rather coarse neighborhood would have made them quiver and spazz until they almost exploded with perplexity.
I loved Mrs. Bannister. But lets shift away from that before I get moody.
Ronnie's bedroom. It felt funny. Had a strange atmosphere. Like all the atoms in it were from an alien universe. I'm not kidding. It felt like I had entered the ambiance of one of those reruns from the TV show "Science Fiction Theatre," which aired early on Saturday mornings and which made me feel very uncomfortable, put me on edge.
[Science Fiction Theatre]
By all appearances, it was a normal, well-lit bedroom. The odds-and-ends and toys and books weren't that bizarre. But from a very early age, I've had a sense about the uncanny. I knew what was normal, what was not normal, and how even normal stuff was moving through an unsuspected-by-others haze of weirdness. I was an expert in detecting changes in barometric pressure between this world and the possible oozings from other dimensions.
While in his bedroom especially, Ronnie would talk a lot about science and theories and things no one would expect from the brain of a boy. Maybe his room wasn't really weird. Maybe it was something the room absorbed from Ronnie's soul that made it seem not-quite-right. I really liked Ronnie.
I think the Bannisters might have been genuine aliens. From far, far away. And what better place to go mostly undetected than El Dorado, Arkansas?
Years later, they moved to somewhere in Louisiana. Mr. Bannister died of a stroke or heart attack. I've tried to look Ronnie and his mother up on Google, but no luck. I hope they are okay.
a typical dream
A woman with three musician guys walked right in to my house at night. Made themselves at home. Soon I announced: "For this to be a proper party, I must go buy some non-ginger ale alcohol."
So I went outside and got in my old pick-up truck. Went searching for a non-ginger ale alcohol store. I topped a hill and started down it. Then I realized this was a long hill tilting almost straight down. I stomped on the brakes as my truck went speeding down toward certain doom. Somehow, I slowed down enough and coasted to the bottom. But the next hill was also very long and also nearly straight up. I didn't have enough momentum or power to make it up this new hill.
So I got out of my vehicle and stood there pondering. Some indistinct person walked up behind me and said: "You better get going. Now! Small violent hogs are coming to get you. Run!"
I started quickly up the new hill on foot, and the hill turned into an institutional staircase. Indeed, small violent hogs were coming up behind me. I ran.
I made it upstairs to an indistinct hallway. I darted inside a room and closed the door. There were about 15 other hog refugees in this medium-sized room, which was like a classroom without desks. We mingled for a while, discussing in low tones our predicament.
The door flew open and in walked two blue-uniformed official people. Like prison guards or street police. They looked us up and down with derision, with arrogance. It was known without saying that we were somehow illegal and now under the tyranny of these two uniformed officials.
Then about six small violent hogs burst in through the open door and went after us. They snapped at our ankles viciously. Total chaos ensued. All of us, including the two Stasi guys, ran around in panicked circles or bounced off one another like pin balls.
I think I somehow escaped and survived. I can't remember if I made it back to my house with non-ginger ale alcohol.
So I went outside and got in my old pick-up truck. Went searching for a non-ginger ale alcohol store. I topped a hill and started down it. Then I realized this was a long hill tilting almost straight down. I stomped on the brakes as my truck went speeding down toward certain doom. Somehow, I slowed down enough and coasted to the bottom. But the next hill was also very long and also nearly straight up. I didn't have enough momentum or power to make it up this new hill.
So I got out of my vehicle and stood there pondering. Some indistinct person walked up behind me and said: "You better get going. Now! Small violent hogs are coming to get you. Run!"
I started quickly up the new hill on foot, and the hill turned into an institutional staircase. Indeed, small violent hogs were coming up behind me. I ran.
I made it upstairs to an indistinct hallway. I darted inside a room and closed the door. There were about 15 other hog refugees in this medium-sized room, which was like a classroom without desks. We mingled for a while, discussing in low tones our predicament.
The door flew open and in walked two blue-uniformed official people. Like prison guards or street police. They looked us up and down with derision, with arrogance. It was known without saying that we were somehow illegal and now under the tyranny of these two uniformed officials.
Then about six small violent hogs burst in through the open door and went after us. They snapped at our ankles viciously. Total chaos ensued. All of us, including the two Stasi guys, ran around in panicked circles or bounced off one another like pin balls.
I think I somehow escaped and survived. I can't remember if I made it back to my house with non-ginger ale alcohol.
Robyn Field -- a certain shape of consciousness
Some of you are mutual friends. I would like to introduce my friend Robyn to others.
I'm a fan of consciousness in human beings. By that, I mean a particular manifestation: those with a large and resilient field of vision. So many operate on direct-current. I prefer alternating-current. I like Nikola Tesla. I like minds that loop and curve. That are like magic mirrors not merely reflecting but somehow also absorbing. Minds that are like Krishna's – knowing, smiling, slippery. Minds one can rely on to always be unexpected.
Every morning and every night, Robyn shines through with good spirits. A cycle of salutation and closing that is warm, genuine, and exuding an atmosphere of hope. She's one of those people who make you think: “Yep, were all headed for pitch-black doom or at least a highly murky unknown, but it's reassuring to know we're not isolated in our peculiar abysses. As weak as we all are against the enormity of being, how pleasant to be in the winking company of this elliptical woman who keeps filling my glass with red wine!”
And serving dreamy dishes the mere cyber descriptions of which are mouth-watering. A way of being in the world at once elegant and down-home. Cosmopolitan and provincial.
Robyn likes art. Weird freaking art. Surrealism (and other stuff, too). She also likes Camus. And Dada.
I mentioned that magic-mirror-absorbing thing. Her consciousness also has something of the fun-house mirror to it. Like how her mind bends and warps and quivers, depending on what enters it from outside and what is projected from strange realms within. She is even – can you believe it? – able to track my own consciousness to a high degree. That pleases me.
Oh...she also knows languages that haven't been invented yet.
Robyn is mutable, flexible. If you say something stupid, she is gracious toward you. Patient, forbearing. If you say something mean or way-stupid...well...be prepared for a subtle, sardonic riposte. The change can occur quickly, throwing you off-balance. You thought you were dealing with a soft-shaded daffodil, but suddenly the petals might turn into honed blades of human truth.
Robyn is genuinely far-out. Like those pioneers of hyper-consciousness back in the sixties. But she's not strictly mental, abstract, and psychedelic. She's also warm and charming. Unique.
Here's a song for you, Robyn:
Strange Overtones
I'm a fan of consciousness in human beings. By that, I mean a particular manifestation: those with a large and resilient field of vision. So many operate on direct-current. I prefer alternating-current. I like Nikola Tesla. I like minds that loop and curve. That are like magic mirrors not merely reflecting but somehow also absorbing. Minds that are like Krishna's – knowing, smiling, slippery. Minds one can rely on to always be unexpected.
Every morning and every night, Robyn shines through with good spirits. A cycle of salutation and closing that is warm, genuine, and exuding an atmosphere of hope. She's one of those people who make you think: “Yep, were all headed for pitch-black doom or at least a highly murky unknown, but it's reassuring to know we're not isolated in our peculiar abysses. As weak as we all are against the enormity of being, how pleasant to be in the winking company of this elliptical woman who keeps filling my glass with red wine!”
And serving dreamy dishes the mere cyber descriptions of which are mouth-watering. A way of being in the world at once elegant and down-home. Cosmopolitan and provincial.
Robyn likes art. Weird freaking art. Surrealism (and other stuff, too). She also likes Camus. And Dada.
I mentioned that magic-mirror-absorbing thing. Her consciousness also has something of the fun-house mirror to it. Like how her mind bends and warps and quivers, depending on what enters it from outside and what is projected from strange realms within. She is even – can you believe it? – able to track my own consciousness to a high degree. That pleases me.
Oh...she also knows languages that haven't been invented yet.
Robyn is mutable, flexible. If you say something stupid, she is gracious toward you. Patient, forbearing. If you say something mean or way-stupid...well...be prepared for a subtle, sardonic riposte. The change can occur quickly, throwing you off-balance. You thought you were dealing with a soft-shaded daffodil, but suddenly the petals might turn into honed blades of human truth.
Robyn is genuinely far-out. Like those pioneers of hyper-consciousness back in the sixties. But she's not strictly mental, abstract, and psychedelic. She's also warm and charming. Unique.
Here's a song for you, Robyn:
Strange Overtones
my weird hometown (a re-post)
I was born in El Dorado, Arkansas, way back in '52. My brother and I always felt that our town was odd. Had a sort of uncanniness to it. And some odd people (heh) grew up there. Things seemed colored with melodramatic shades. Like that hysterical, screaming night woman, pounding on our front door -- an unhinged oracle speaking of sudden death on the highway just now...and implicitly forecasting metaphysical doom to come. There were nightly drum beats in the pinewoods and viney jungle distance, giving me and my brother chronic, delicious frights. There was that creature -- half-pig, half-man -- that would occasionally appear at our bedroom window and peer silently. Ghosts came and went; it was problematic being left alone in the house. One night, very loud thumping -- no, more like a linebacker bouncing off the rafters -- in the attic prompted Dad to call the sheriff. He and a deputy showed up but were too afraid to climb up there to check it out. So Dad went up, while the law looked on from below. He found nothing at all up there.
Maybe kids are unusual everywhere, but back then, our friends and acquaintances certainly seemed so. Not anything overt; just an extra, inscrutable sheen. The strangest thing about them -- and adults -- was the fact that they felt entitled to exist. No qualms whatsoever about being real. They obviously never gave it a second thought. When I think back on my very-young to medium-young days, I see that kid who was in almost constant perplexity. Sitting in the monstrous, tank-like Olds 98, while my mother drove through various sections of town, I was saturated with so many fantastical impressions. Every street, every neighborhood glowed with a kind of mystical weirdness. Especially that half-hidden black part of town. Like it was somehow organically disconnected from the rest of El Dorado. Like it was built up on ground imported from another dimension. I think the word is "incommensurable." Just didn't physically or metaphysically compute in the algorithm of our town's normality. Later, I realized that was attributable to the shameful apartheid so prevalent in the South. But for a while back then...when I was a child soaking up all forms of weirdness...the emphatic difference of the black neighborhood seemed almost enchanting, magical. Sort of like turning down a supposedly familiar street and coming face-to-face with a Medieval village. The dilapidation and make-shiftness of those poor homes appeared charming to my little brain...a colorful, crazy-quilt architecture.
Hernando De Soto came through what was later to be Union County (very south Arkansas). Those Spainiards were a grim, determined lot. What in the world were they doing, traipsing through our godforsaken neck of the woods? Ticks, chiggers, snakes, disease, nonplussed, suspicious natives. Guess it was just something to do back then. Europe must have been awfully boring or just too banal. Popes being courted like blushing, wrinkled maidens by one royal nest of rats after another.
In the early 19th century, a trapper stopped in these environs and set up a trading post. From that beginning, a village sprouted and later the town of El Dorado. Toward the end of that century, the town had become a sort of chic cultural center, at least more chic than Smackover and other outliers. It's hard for me to imagine my town as having been such. It always struck me as uncouth and, well, unimaginative. Then in the early new century, a wild shoot-out -- an undignified duel -- took place in front of the court house in the center of town. Must have been quite a dust-up and something to talk about for a long time.
In the early '20s Busey's well came in, and El Do became an overnight oil boom town. Speculators poured in, as well as hordes of workers for the burgeoning oil fields. Here tell, the town was like a latter-day Dodge City. Wild and woolly. Those days must have doused El Dorado's vaunted cultural fire. As the decades tumbled by, oil refineries were built, and my father was a plant manager at Amoco. Before they built the separate managers' building up on the hill, Mother and I would pick him up in the late afternoon down at the main refinery entrance gate. I still remember being dazzled and frightened by the roaring flames and clouds of steam. And, especially, the psychologically disturbing maze of pipes twisting and running off into unknowable dimensions. Looking back, the whole place was like a vast greedy god -- as if the black blood of unseen sacrificial victims was running through those pipes and being refined into unspeakable elixirs.
Growing up in the early '60s was sort of neat. All the clothing stores and banks surrounding the town square seemed more than houses of commerce. They seemed like environs ripped from my young night dreams and plopped down, helter-skelter, in front of the sidewalks. Charming brass spittoons were everywhere, and cigar smoke saturated every establishment. The merchants had an unusual air about them. It was like existence itself was equatable with their occupations. Not as if working was something to be endured to survive; rather, it was their entire reason for being. One couldn't imagine any of them actually having a separate home life. Surely, they lived every moment of their lives in their houses of business. Yes, strange. Even as a child, I felt alienated from this attitude of allowing one's soul, consciousness, or identity to disappear into any activity.
Howard's Newsstand! For my brother and me, it was a house of dreams. And the proprietor, Howard, was our grizzled, morose priest, granting us access to visions of heaven on earth: that full back wall of comic books (or "funnybooks," as we called them). Every Saturday, we'd be driven with our quarters to Howard's. We would stare, stunned each time before that wall of mesmerizing color and beckoning adventure. I'm serious: it always took us a few moments to come to senses whip-lashed by amazement. Then came the delicious agony of trying to choose from among the hundreds of titles. You could only afford five or six, when twenty or thirty were screaming and pleading at you. You know...actually buying and reading them was probably just an after thought. The main thing about funnybook day was just standing there in adolescent bewilderment and awe.
Junior high was traumatic. If you were from the rich side of town, you went to one school. Not so rich, like us, you attended hell on earth: Roger's Junior High School. The main building was three or four stories and had been built waaay back in history. Besides looking haunted and ferocious, it seemed as if it would come falling down like a House of Usher on us young teens. All the toughs went there. Bloody, vicious fist-fights were daily distractions. The teachers were weird. It was less a school than a survival course. In fact, could it be reconstructed, I would recommend it for a Green Beret training facility. The cafeteria food alone was an existential challenge. I bet those kids across town were being served French cuisine on silver platters.
Memories! Oh, my gosh. Please fly from me! 8th-grade science class...I sat a few seats behind Linda Harris. She was no ordinary 14-year-old lass. She looked like and had the aloof, mature, suave grace of Sophia Loren. So how does a pimply idiot-child like me get the attention of a goddess? Well, you aim your No. 2 pencil at her head, eraser first, and send it flying in a flirtatious gesture. But in transit, the thing reverses orientation, and the point-end hits her smack upside the head...and painfully. That look she gave me. No words were needed. Henceforth, I was a metaphorical leper to her. When all I wanted to do was somehow inform her of my love-sickness! Oh, well.
OK. I'm probably making more of my hometown than I should. Most likely everyone's town is strange in certain ways. But if you ever pass through El Dorado, I caution you against driving down East Main Highway. You just might enter an invisible portal, teeming with ghosts and weirdness. You might never be heard from again.
Maybe kids are unusual everywhere, but back then, our friends and acquaintances certainly seemed so. Not anything overt; just an extra, inscrutable sheen. The strangest thing about them -- and adults -- was the fact that they felt entitled to exist. No qualms whatsoever about being real. They obviously never gave it a second thought. When I think back on my very-young to medium-young days, I see that kid who was in almost constant perplexity. Sitting in the monstrous, tank-like Olds 98, while my mother drove through various sections of town, I was saturated with so many fantastical impressions. Every street, every neighborhood glowed with a kind of mystical weirdness. Especially that half-hidden black part of town. Like it was somehow organically disconnected from the rest of El Dorado. Like it was built up on ground imported from another dimension. I think the word is "incommensurable." Just didn't physically or metaphysically compute in the algorithm of our town's normality. Later, I realized that was attributable to the shameful apartheid so prevalent in the South. But for a while back then...when I was a child soaking up all forms of weirdness...the emphatic difference of the black neighborhood seemed almost enchanting, magical. Sort of like turning down a supposedly familiar street and coming face-to-face with a Medieval village. The dilapidation and make-shiftness of those poor homes appeared charming to my little brain...a colorful, crazy-quilt architecture.
Hernando De Soto came through what was later to be Union County (very south Arkansas). Those Spainiards were a grim, determined lot. What in the world were they doing, traipsing through our godforsaken neck of the woods? Ticks, chiggers, snakes, disease, nonplussed, suspicious natives. Guess it was just something to do back then. Europe must have been awfully boring or just too banal. Popes being courted like blushing, wrinkled maidens by one royal nest of rats after another.
In the early 19th century, a trapper stopped in these environs and set up a trading post. From that beginning, a village sprouted and later the town of El Dorado. Toward the end of that century, the town had become a sort of chic cultural center, at least more chic than Smackover and other outliers. It's hard for me to imagine my town as having been such. It always struck me as uncouth and, well, unimaginative. Then in the early new century, a wild shoot-out -- an undignified duel -- took place in front of the court house in the center of town. Must have been quite a dust-up and something to talk about for a long time.
In the early '20s Busey's well came in, and El Do became an overnight oil boom town. Speculators poured in, as well as hordes of workers for the burgeoning oil fields. Here tell, the town was like a latter-day Dodge City. Wild and woolly. Those days must have doused El Dorado's vaunted cultural fire. As the decades tumbled by, oil refineries were built, and my father was a plant manager at Amoco. Before they built the separate managers' building up on the hill, Mother and I would pick him up in the late afternoon down at the main refinery entrance gate. I still remember being dazzled and frightened by the roaring flames and clouds of steam. And, especially, the psychologically disturbing maze of pipes twisting and running off into unknowable dimensions. Looking back, the whole place was like a vast greedy god -- as if the black blood of unseen sacrificial victims was running through those pipes and being refined into unspeakable elixirs.
Growing up in the early '60s was sort of neat. All the clothing stores and banks surrounding the town square seemed more than houses of commerce. They seemed like environs ripped from my young night dreams and plopped down, helter-skelter, in front of the sidewalks. Charming brass spittoons were everywhere, and cigar smoke saturated every establishment. The merchants had an unusual air about them. It was like existence itself was equatable with their occupations. Not as if working was something to be endured to survive; rather, it was their entire reason for being. One couldn't imagine any of them actually having a separate home life. Surely, they lived every moment of their lives in their houses of business. Yes, strange. Even as a child, I felt alienated from this attitude of allowing one's soul, consciousness, or identity to disappear into any activity.
Howard's Newsstand! For my brother and me, it was a house of dreams. And the proprietor, Howard, was our grizzled, morose priest, granting us access to visions of heaven on earth: that full back wall of comic books (or "funnybooks," as we called them). Every Saturday, we'd be driven with our quarters to Howard's. We would stare, stunned each time before that wall of mesmerizing color and beckoning adventure. I'm serious: it always took us a few moments to come to senses whip-lashed by amazement. Then came the delicious agony of trying to choose from among the hundreds of titles. You could only afford five or six, when twenty or thirty were screaming and pleading at you. You know...actually buying and reading them was probably just an after thought. The main thing about funnybook day was just standing there in adolescent bewilderment and awe.
Junior high was traumatic. If you were from the rich side of town, you went to one school. Not so rich, like us, you attended hell on earth: Roger's Junior High School. The main building was three or four stories and had been built waaay back in history. Besides looking haunted and ferocious, it seemed as if it would come falling down like a House of Usher on us young teens. All the toughs went there. Bloody, vicious fist-fights were daily distractions. The teachers were weird. It was less a school than a survival course. In fact, could it be reconstructed, I would recommend it for a Green Beret training facility. The cafeteria food alone was an existential challenge. I bet those kids across town were being served French cuisine on silver platters.
Memories! Oh, my gosh. Please fly from me! 8th-grade science class...I sat a few seats behind Linda Harris. She was no ordinary 14-year-old lass. She looked like and had the aloof, mature, suave grace of Sophia Loren. So how does a pimply idiot-child like me get the attention of a goddess? Well, you aim your No. 2 pencil at her head, eraser first, and send it flying in a flirtatious gesture. But in transit, the thing reverses orientation, and the point-end hits her smack upside the head...and painfully. That look she gave me. No words were needed. Henceforth, I was a metaphorical leper to her. When all I wanted to do was somehow inform her of my love-sickness! Oh, well.
OK. I'm probably making more of my hometown than I should. Most likely everyone's town is strange in certain ways. But if you ever pass through El Dorado, I caution you against driving down East Main Highway. You just might enter an invisible portal, teeming with ghosts and weirdness. You might never be heard from again.
When the alligator scarpers
[Below is a short story written by my friend Regina BOu. This story means a lot to me. It is the kind of story I would write if I could write this kind of story. I think it is marvelous. It reminds me of some of my favorite writers. And I adore it when imagination goes veering off into special precincts -- beyonds colored in eccentric hues.]
Every human being has an alligator at home. Naturally, I had an alligator too, and I say “had”, because I no longer have one. One night, he simply opened the door with his muzzle, and announced to me that he was leaving. Yes, I am aware that alligators are incapable of speech, but did you know they can communicate with their gaze? He thumped his tail on the floor twice, and as the tenant downstairs gave the ceiling a stroke with his broom, the alligator broke into a quadrupedal, short-leg run down the apartment building’s stairs; there, he met a few more alligators who were scarpering from their homes, and soon an unprecedented hubbub had taken over the staircases.
I am not going to say that I missed the alligator, since at this very moment a fucking fly is dancing around my eyes. It’s trying to sit on my eyelashes, and its buzzing is so annoying, that I wish I could just unleash pesticide through my teeth. Ha, that’s a good one: the fly disappeared the moment I typed “pesticide”. Imagine, if I were to type “ten million pounds”, and, as I did so, the bell rung; and I would open the door and find a sack full of cash outside my apartment.
It would have been amazing, if I could make anything I write come true. My alligator brought to life everything I dreamt about, and that is why we did not always get along. I would dream of something pleasant, and voila, welcome to the land of milk and honey, what a great time I would have! But if I were to dream, for instance, a dead horse draggling me uphill, or a howling madman chasing after me, then – good God, I do not even want to remember those times! One morning, freshly awoken from a dream, I found a hanged man pirouetting in the middle of the room, tugging mightily at his rope to gather momentum.
I helped him stop, and then I asked how come he had found himself in my room, struggling, quite naturally, to keep a cool head. He answered; I found myself in your room, because it was you who brought me here, you should quit on that canned stuff you consume before bedtime. I pulled the alligator from under my bed, and I was so livid with him that I actually threatened to sleep between his teeth, if he ever brought a hanged man in my room again: for I can fathom no worse punishment for a home alligator, than forcing himself, against nature, to keep those jaws open, in order not to dig his teeth in the snoring flesh between them; and I am glad my mind takes those sadistic turns from time to time, for the notion really frightened him out of his wits.
He knew that if were to allow a teeny tiny tooth’s misstep or a tidbit of saliva loose, this would result in reminding him of his lower instincts, making him disappear on the spot. What tethered him to life, what regulated his existence, was my own desire to keep him here. With two fangs embedded in my throat, I could have no desire. He was as imaginary as my imagination can possibly be, and was as real as the very same imagination. And, by all means, my imagination can be imaginary, as well as real.
Imaginary in all that it creates at the center of its core, and as real as it is within the very same core. The centre of an imagination can be real as long as it exists, for, if it did not, I would not speak of an imagination. I imagine the absolute void to be the opposite thing, though I have reasonable doubt that it is not as absolute as it wishes to appear, or else I would have thrown the alligator in there a long time ago, just to test my limits. Once I was afraid of wells a lot, now I believe I could easily take a plunge inside of them, and why not?
The alligator also had the habit of leaving a tooth under my bed, a tooth apiece for every dream he delivered to my hands. When he left and I pulled the bed, I discovered there a proper tooth graveyard, but I could not be bothered with it, I just pushed the bed back into place and wished I had never seen such a freakish assemblage. Alligators are, deep down, foolish creatures of stupid habits, and, unfortunately, quite a lot of teeth.
Do you believe that I should go out in the city and look for my alligator, pleading with him to come back home, or, as a last resort, tie him up with a leash and drag him all the way to the elevator? Promise I shall not be contemptuous of him, no matter what dream he materializes before me? That I shall take care to supply him with special boxes for collecting his teeth? But how am I going to discern which one is mine, now that all of the alligators have run away from their houses and apartment buildings?
I come out to the balcony and gaze upon a green-coppery sea of scaly alligator backs, moving on the streets as a vast current of water.
A carpet of them; people are forced to walk on alligators to reach the opposite sidewalk, cars are all but drivable, I imagine it is only a matter of hours for them to become completely immobilized; and I finished my creative writing exercise, of a thousand - at most - words. I would like to conclude with a moral, as was the custom of the American writer James Thurber, whose name now escapes my grasp, though I can recall he always concluded his short stories with one: do you have an alligator under your bed, and if that is so, do you ever feel the undeniable desire to kick it out? If you have kicked it out, did you realize, in the end, that what you did was wrong, and if so, why? Those were two questions, but no matter.
Every human being has an alligator at home. Naturally, I had an alligator too, and I say “had”, because I no longer have one. One night, he simply opened the door with his muzzle, and announced to me that he was leaving. Yes, I am aware that alligators are incapable of speech, but did you know they can communicate with their gaze? He thumped his tail on the floor twice, and as the tenant downstairs gave the ceiling a stroke with his broom, the alligator broke into a quadrupedal, short-leg run down the apartment building’s stairs; there, he met a few more alligators who were scarpering from their homes, and soon an unprecedented hubbub had taken over the staircases.
I am not going to say that I missed the alligator, since at this very moment a fucking fly is dancing around my eyes. It’s trying to sit on my eyelashes, and its buzzing is so annoying, that I wish I could just unleash pesticide through my teeth. Ha, that’s a good one: the fly disappeared the moment I typed “pesticide”. Imagine, if I were to type “ten million pounds”, and, as I did so, the bell rung; and I would open the door and find a sack full of cash outside my apartment.
It would have been amazing, if I could make anything I write come true. My alligator brought to life everything I dreamt about, and that is why we did not always get along. I would dream of something pleasant, and voila, welcome to the land of milk and honey, what a great time I would have! But if I were to dream, for instance, a dead horse draggling me uphill, or a howling madman chasing after me, then – good God, I do not even want to remember those times! One morning, freshly awoken from a dream, I found a hanged man pirouetting in the middle of the room, tugging mightily at his rope to gather momentum.
I helped him stop, and then I asked how come he had found himself in my room, struggling, quite naturally, to keep a cool head. He answered; I found myself in your room, because it was you who brought me here, you should quit on that canned stuff you consume before bedtime. I pulled the alligator from under my bed, and I was so livid with him that I actually threatened to sleep between his teeth, if he ever brought a hanged man in my room again: for I can fathom no worse punishment for a home alligator, than forcing himself, against nature, to keep those jaws open, in order not to dig his teeth in the snoring flesh between them; and I am glad my mind takes those sadistic turns from time to time, for the notion really frightened him out of his wits.
He knew that if were to allow a teeny tiny tooth’s misstep or a tidbit of saliva loose, this would result in reminding him of his lower instincts, making him disappear on the spot. What tethered him to life, what regulated his existence, was my own desire to keep him here. With two fangs embedded in my throat, I could have no desire. He was as imaginary as my imagination can possibly be, and was as real as the very same imagination. And, by all means, my imagination can be imaginary, as well as real.
Imaginary in all that it creates at the center of its core, and as real as it is within the very same core. The centre of an imagination can be real as long as it exists, for, if it did not, I would not speak of an imagination. I imagine the absolute void to be the opposite thing, though I have reasonable doubt that it is not as absolute as it wishes to appear, or else I would have thrown the alligator in there a long time ago, just to test my limits. Once I was afraid of wells a lot, now I believe I could easily take a plunge inside of them, and why not?
The alligator also had the habit of leaving a tooth under my bed, a tooth apiece for every dream he delivered to my hands. When he left and I pulled the bed, I discovered there a proper tooth graveyard, but I could not be bothered with it, I just pushed the bed back into place and wished I had never seen such a freakish assemblage. Alligators are, deep down, foolish creatures of stupid habits, and, unfortunately, quite a lot of teeth.
Do you believe that I should go out in the city and look for my alligator, pleading with him to come back home, or, as a last resort, tie him up with a leash and drag him all the way to the elevator? Promise I shall not be contemptuous of him, no matter what dream he materializes before me? That I shall take care to supply him with special boxes for collecting his teeth? But how am I going to discern which one is mine, now that all of the alligators have run away from their houses and apartment buildings?
I come out to the balcony and gaze upon a green-coppery sea of scaly alligator backs, moving on the streets as a vast current of water.
A carpet of them; people are forced to walk on alligators to reach the opposite sidewalk, cars are all but drivable, I imagine it is only a matter of hours for them to become completely immobilized; and I finished my creative writing exercise, of a thousand - at most - words. I would like to conclude with a moral, as was the custom of the American writer James Thurber, whose name now escapes my grasp, though I can recall he always concluded his short stories with one: do you have an alligator under your bed, and if that is so, do you ever feel the undeniable desire to kick it out? If you have kicked it out, did you realize, in the end, that what you did was wrong, and if so, why? Those were two questions, but no matter.
Friday, November 5, 2010
Feryal Önal -- a beautiful soul
Feryal lives in Istanbul. Feryal is hard to pin down inside my brain. She is expansive and eccentric -- like a mysterious morning fog rising off the Bosporus.
She strikes me as a thoughtful, sensitive person. A person who has an immense curiosity about life and the world. I thought I had an immense curiosity, but she has me beat. And Feryal is spiritually, intellectually nimble: she can juggle a whole range of conceptions and possibilities. They say the mark of a substantial, flexible, and even ethical mind is one in which contraries can be entertained simultaneously. I think that not only means being able to see another's point of view but also an approach to life that is open-hearted.
I think Feryal is aware of reality's obtuse angles, of its irrational shadows, and of its amorphous shapes.
On Facebook, she posts all kinds of wild stuff -- interesting stuff. From black holes, to quantum pulses, to poetic epiphanies, to romantic perturbations, to ethical imperatives, to political articles, to...well...a whole lot of neat stuff. And she usually does a thematic series of posts. This is cool. It provides a range of complementary angles from which to consider a given topic.
Once I did something very stupid. I realize that's hard to believe. She had posted something to which I left a very goofy comment. I then decided I must have shattered the serious intent of her post. That I had dishonored that thread. So I removed myself from her friends list as an act of self-mortification. Doing so was the kind of thing that should have banished me to the far zones of ridiculousness. But Feryal is amazing. She probably only smiled slightly before saying, in effect: "Hey...it's not like you blew up the solar system. Come on back, sit by the fire. I'll bring you some wine and tell you a folk tale that will bear on your crazy condition."
I think Feryal is planning on moving to Tel Aviv, if she hasn't already. That will be cool. I have some friends living there. From what I gather, it's a place of many dimensions. Not really spooky mathematical dimensions. I mean, rather, that it is an environment of high culture, intelligence, soul, and imagination. I think Feryal would fit in there and like it very much. I think Tel Aviv would like her very much.
She strikes me as a thoughtful, sensitive person. A person who has an immense curiosity about life and the world. I thought I had an immense curiosity, but she has me beat. And Feryal is spiritually, intellectually nimble: she can juggle a whole range of conceptions and possibilities. They say the mark of a substantial, flexible, and even ethical mind is one in which contraries can be entertained simultaneously. I think that not only means being able to see another's point of view but also an approach to life that is open-hearted.
I think Feryal is aware of reality's obtuse angles, of its irrational shadows, and of its amorphous shapes.
On Facebook, she posts all kinds of wild stuff -- interesting stuff. From black holes, to quantum pulses, to poetic epiphanies, to romantic perturbations, to ethical imperatives, to political articles, to...well...a whole lot of neat stuff. And she usually does a thematic series of posts. This is cool. It provides a range of complementary angles from which to consider a given topic.
Once I did something very stupid. I realize that's hard to believe. She had posted something to which I left a very goofy comment. I then decided I must have shattered the serious intent of her post. That I had dishonored that thread. So I removed myself from her friends list as an act of self-mortification. Doing so was the kind of thing that should have banished me to the far zones of ridiculousness. But Feryal is amazing. She probably only smiled slightly before saying, in effect: "Hey...it's not like you blew up the solar system. Come on back, sit by the fire. I'll bring you some wine and tell you a folk tale that will bear on your crazy condition."
I think Feryal is planning on moving to Tel Aviv, if she hasn't already. That will be cool. I have some friends living there. From what I gather, it's a place of many dimensions. Not really spooky mathematical dimensions. I mean, rather, that it is an environment of high culture, intelligence, soul, and imagination. I think Feryal would fit in there and like it very much. I think Tel Aviv would like her very much.
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