When in Rome

Jeffrey Robert Harrison

To Jen.
Thank you, Dr. Barbara Guetti.

I created
this
to put these thoughts
and feelings in
the past. I have
succeeded as
long as I
do not add
to, remember,
or translate
this work.
This is
an accusation.

1. Premise

The possibility that I am accountable for all evil conceived or enacted since time began terrifies me, along with all suffering – vicious to banal. One of my greatest horrors is the moment realizing I’m responsible for the world and simultaneously powerless to do anything about it. (Not everyone has this fear.) Here the whole of history is authored by one. More specifically – I will never have any other brain or consciousness beyond what I’ve always had. My only constant is my own consciousness; everything external is up for grabs. I will never know that there is existence outside myself. Thus, I can never be certain that the entire universe I know does not emanate from or through or for or because of me. If this system is the case, then I may be responsible for every conceivable event or idea in this universe. Of course, such fantastic thoughts can be called useless at best, self-obsessed solipsism at worst. Still, at certain moments of anguish, I have felt the weight of centuries of guilt on my back, and I want to know why. At these moments I am in literal hell. I am mute. I am powerless to think or act. I shed persona to become a guiltless object. I become an instrument played by non-objects and non-identities. External hard determinism becomes my propellant. I sit wide-eyed and silent until someone puts me to bed, and I sleep it off.
When Candide and Pangloss found the astronomer who controlled the world, they saved him from his illusion. They made him stop guiding the spheres. When he saw the universe did not crash into chaos, he rejoiced. What a dildo. His painful, self-destructive illusion ended. Can I pull the trigger?
I sat in night class listening intently to the lecture,
“Perception is ongoing, always changing, and part of the process. Poetry is, thus, essential human activity.”
Then I heard a growl near or inside my left ear. There was nothing to my left but space and a wall. There was no ghost. The only ventriloquist to my right was a ragged row of desks. There was only an impossible event and residual panic. Then I reoriented my attention. I could forget it as trifling. Of course the wall is not going to swallow me.
If I pound my fist on the door 11 million years, eventually the atoms will be perfectly aligned, and they’ll go right through. What if I got lucky in the 35th year?
I use naiveté to be complex. If you can tell that figurative language is being used, then the spell is broken. If you have to speak, to say “It’s chilly,” you raise doubt as to what the truth is. When a flower is made a thing of beauty, it becomes contextualized, and it dies too soon. Its decay is vital to the creative process. Still, most of us throw them away before the spell is ever broken. I use dead flowers.
The more unambiguous you try to make language, the more ambiguous it becomes. You can’t be too ambiguous.
Two nights ago I performed my songs on stage and heard good praise. I then went to the after hours party. It included cheap beer, scant conversation, pot, and a video recording of a wrestling match. My companion and I were bored if not a bit repulsed. The conversation included only brief, personal ejaculations. It was primal communication. I told my girlfriend that being in extreme situations helps me be a writer, even if they’re just extremely simple and boring situations. Eternity and truth are everywhere, nowhere. The night drew on. We drank and smoked. Later, in a flash of cognition, time stopped streaming. There was either no time or all eternity. I did not exist in the present, only the past or the future. Both felt the same, but switching between them stuns the mind. I had no time, and I was doing nothing. I had stopped talking. I was overwhelmed by the identities of the others that seemed so concrete and determined to prove their individual cases into a unity of nothing that every utterance declined to contain meaning. They all felt the same about particular wrestlers. I wasn’t even watching the show. I was watching them. My identity seemed so airy diffuse that I felt only emptiness. I experienced my own nonexistence during a dull party. When I got “bored” in such social situations, I would go to extremes. I felt I was the void the wrestling fans drove against. Since I had nothing to offer, I became the worst in the room. Even my dozing companion was more profound.
We’re all afraid we’ll kill our father and marry our mother and live to see our lives after the backdrop has fallen. When the cop stops you while you were doing something, what you were doing becomes contextualized. Unity has been a positive term for years, but what about Object. Forget dualism and trinity. I became an admitted atheist out of convenience. This is a convenient term, since it has nothing to do with metaphysics. It is only a rejection of religion. It explains nothing, which is a thing that demands explanation. It’s one of the hardest concepts of the language. Nothingness may be the most sublime unity. No, this ain’t Buddhism here!

A near death experience:
After prolonged and life-threatening childbirth she said she felt herself fading out of this world. As she lay dying she saw a circling tunnel of vapors in outer space with points of pulsating lights all speaking to her. Each spoke in turn, their statements piling up ad infinitum creating a chilling whole.
“You do not now, nor have you ever, existed.”
“You never will exist.”
“Noone you ever knew, nor anything you ever experienced
existed, nor will it ever exist.”
“You were permitted to create all this, and now this shall stop.”
“You do not now, nor have you ever, existed.”
“You never will exist.”
“Noone you ever knew, nor anything you ever experienced,
existed, nor will it ever exist.”
“You were permitted to create all this, and now this shall stop.”

This actually happened. These are our new near death experiences. In medieval times they contained tunnels with fire and hell at the end. In more recent times they contained tunnels with bright light and our dead loved ones at the end. Now they contain annihilation. We used to see the world as a torment, then we glossed over the pain and suffering with false hope. Now we have an unmediated middle path leading to a new hell of omnipotent annihilation.
It takes seven years for the human body to regenerate every cell. The overarching sameness negates the difference. After high school, college is different, except that you still have yourself. In grad school, after college, you’re still you. There is no fundamental personal or global accumulation of knowledge. Same old me. Same old me. Same old me. Same old me. Same old me. Same old me. Same old me. Same old me. Same old me. Same old me. Same old me. Same old me. Same old me. Same old me. Same old me. Same old me. Same old me. Same old me. Same old me. Same old me. Same old me. Same old me. Same old me. Same old me. Same old me. Same old me. Same old me. Same old me. Same old me. Same old me. Same old me. Same old me. Same old me. Same old me. Same old me. Same old me.
Did you read every word above? Since I hid behind (someone else’s) device, does that make it bad? Can you judge value based on whether or not you felt what I was feeling when I wrote it? How could you possibly feel that? Is there some other value at work? Some other valuation you need and use every day?
“Poetry dissolves, diffuses, and dissipates our comfortable view of the world, and that is worthwhile. It must be provocative.”

I am trapped in a destructive cycle of paradox in which all art and science reinforce a system of ultimate solitude and negation. These processes and products are affirming for me a systematic prohibition of existence – of systems, you, flowers, me. If I’m the only thing, if all is just an illusion, dreamtime, if after I die everything ceases to exist, if I’ve been permitted to create this world, if I created Walt Disney, Jim Jones, Christianity, and if I’m powerless to change any of it, then how can I move or speak or act with anything but grief and guilt. Am I the only lowly thing? Without illusions I must curl up and die. You are living the Great American Novel.
Reverse Paranoia- The belief that the world is conspiring to make you a better person.
Throughout college I felt a system in place, instituted by a governmental/psychiatric authority slightly greater than my parents, though they were complicit, in which every moment was designed to test and educate me on goodness. This was because my brain is so small. This is still true. There never was a conspiracy. The mind grew madness, self-love/self-hate. Its police melted, and the leaders never appeared. The world is too unkind for such a conspiracy to merit a millisecond of consideration (my new illusion). Still, the illusion of conspiracy continues despite universes of reason. As I endeavor to get a step ahead of it, I feel the eyes watching and recording. Do not call this sniveling awe for the gods. I feel identity shrink and swell. I am powerless to stop it or time. How then could I have any ego over this?
As I wrote that a middle-aged women walked up the sidewalk. I felt pity for her having a pronounced limp. When she stopped at the curb, she looked up at me in my fourth floor window. She went from trudging forward to staring right at me. I swallowed my pity in admonishment. I quickly averted my gaze. I haven’t the courage or the will or the desire because I’m probably wrong about everything, and I’ll only destroy myself and injure those who love me. I must find out why for me intense academic study always brings with it thoughts of suicide. Why does my open, busy mind always reach such horrifying conclusions? I know they’ll never be carried out. Yet, why should all be so bleak and blighted when in the light? Perhaps I feel too responsible. I spend most of my time endeavoring not to be a destroyer of this world – a hopeless task. I spend some days wracked with guilt for things I have never done. This depression I stoically despair of ever loosing.
Many nights ago we drank and smoked until a flash of dark cognition left me mute and motionless. I could think of nothing but that it was a cunning design to pair me with this woman that is so comforting, that is preparing to be a nurse practitioner for the socially deviant. The whole setup of meeting her months earlier, her taking me from the party that night to her home and making love to me, was flawlessly applied. I was immediately her subject and she mine from the moment we met. Now that I was seeing the truth I was frozen. Do I rebel? Against this perfect of system of love? She began to worry about my behavior. She took me to her bedroom and sat me on the bed. It was soft and warm in there. I didn’t feel tired or energetic. I didn’t move or communicate. I saw her as a stranger. She could see no familiarity in my regard for her. I was speechless, still. She asked questions. I could barely respond with slight nodding or shaking of the head. She undressed me and put me to bed. I felt that, as the mental patient, there was nowhere better for me to go. I feared that I would never rise from this womb of flannel sheets, soft light, and love with my revelation in hand without having to be a robot. Whatever the result, life was forever altered. I thought I had finally cracked up precisely how I was intended to crack. I feared that with the backdrop gone I could no longer relate to this woman, the friends, and the parents I once dearly loved. I gave into the care of this stranger I thought I had once known before meeting her. I trembled at the softness of the bed and its enveloping warmth. I fell asleep.

What about memory she asks?

I want to know why when everything in my life is going well and exactly as I would want it at the moment, I still feel in my bones that there’s something wrong with everything.

I am trying to make meaning out of meaninglessness. A futile task, but I am powerless to stop trying.

Because I rely so much on external validation, I can easily be confused. I can easily presume that as I give a soliloquy to my apartment window and see some minute change in the immediate scene, such as a street light turning red the moment I admit I’m an elitist, the admission, whether truthful or not, becomes overwhelming, stops me from moving or thinking anything but, “What did that mean?” Then, suddenly, I’m no longer an elitist.

I mean I’m the most immoderate flout on the scene. I see myself making a scene of this on a Virginia porch. I don’t mind if I do. I’m so happy to disappoint the expectation that I’ll be a nice teacher who gives his all for the children and does not harbor any feelings outside of those of the new puritan, even when reading Blake aloud to the rapscallions. Imagine that each of these words was metal with bases and that they were pushed into a muddy hillside in honor and in jest of the poet that wrote the words. Perhaps the poet would want the metal words back when she learned they were going to be stuck in a hill. By then, it was too late. The university owned the words, and the poem so the poet was stuck with ripping the words out of the earth every night. Every morning they would appear in a jumbled pile noone knew what to do with.

She tells me in our phone conversation for the evening in the week that we are apart that I am silly because I’ve been drinking.

I feel like I’m standing on all fours snarling, plastic toothed, expressing anger at being so annoyed by being stuck in this cosmic bathtub.
And I don’t mean the love that loves my toothy obsolescence and groin growths
I’m asking light to show me the way to be let free in the world.
I’m ready to be let go of stupidity
we all accept as
part of living.
C’mon
We’ve only been
doing this
civilization bit
for about
50,000 years.
That is certainly
not enough time
for us to agree
who should do what.
The wrongs ones do
but not forever.
When I’m drinkin’
and listenin’
to
John Lee Hooker
I could kill somebody.

December shining
everywhere
all the time

nihilistic solipsism at best

Now, my renunciation won’t spare you or me
No, that renunciation won’t spare you or me
But, my sugar mama,
You help me ease my misery.

Jennifer, Jen,
you the sweetest girl I know.
Jennifer, Jen,
you the sweetest girl I know.
Would you walk with this husband
to the gulf of Mexico?

So this is my grimoire. This is where it gets to the point where
I suggest to everyone that they should have
such a lizard in life.

You’re innocent
when you dream.
-Tom Waits

You get sad
you feel happy
you get depressed
you get lucky
But I was lucky
not like you
(except for you
that reads this).
I was lucky
and work
against you
keeps turning
into more luck.

I can’t help but think
of a duck right now
and what looks like a duck.

The God had his/her time.
What an underachiever
We can dance without their shit
in the cracks
of our soles.

The artists
crawled from the warmth
of their nuptial beds
to give the digging
a go
as others
took back the lies

Student said to teacher,
“the philosophy dept.
would tell you you can’t
prove you exist”
Teacher said, “I often find that to be a very good thing.”

2. Flashes, Cuts, and Cruel Instances of Foolish Hope

The following was presented to Dr. Barbara Guetti on August 11, 2000
as Critical Analysis of Bharati Mukherjee’s Holder of the World.
Thus, in reading this you are the voyeur. This unimpressive piece of academic drivel was never intended for your consumption. It was written merely to entertain one person. And though this was a graded assignment, it has no academic worth or integrity.

Looking at page 129 of Bharati Mukherjee’s Holder of the World we have far more detail presented than an actual historian could recover. Only a fiction writer could embellish this minor history with the poetic description that “as the monsoon broke and the very bowels of the Bay of Bengall were churned as though an elephant had tramped through a paddy field, the Golden Bliss, carrying Martha Ord . . .” and so on. Such details provide the reader the painterly images that make past settings live on the human breath of fiction. This is an ideal method of exploring the past as it truly was, by entering it via the rip in the space/time continuum with the tool of fiction.
Dr. Greg Geokjian was fond of pointing out that there is no positive delineation between fiction and other works meant to carry more truth-value – nonfiction. It would seem, too most, logical that the converse of fiction would be reality or truth. However, because fiction wears its disconnection from reality on its sleeve, it can indulge in presenting a facsimile of reality, a virtual reality, a framed reality, a fake reality that nonfiction must resist. Nonfiction is a portion of all literature that generally avoids the assumptions that go into making fiction, primarily that real events and made-up events can be presented as equally valid representations of truth and reality.

Still, I wander from one literature class to the next and think:

Fuck! This world is too accommodating!
Look. Here is the realm of prophets
castigated and fucking who knows what
dangled like bologna before the very
hounds of hell, darling. Believe me, if
I could provide you with a reason
for all this porn, reason, and loveliness I would.
However the love of humanity keeps me
deep in the mist of poetic joys.
aaaaaaaaaaaaa. please let me take a minute
to enjoy what I have. Lord, the ocean waves
are so symbolic. They seem to contain my
aspirations in a cloud of reasoning foam.

Here is a romantic yearning to engage in the sensual pain and pleasures of fictional and fictionalized real people to satisfy selfish desires for culture. It is an exaltation [exhilation] of humanism and art as well as reason (slightly). Those lines preceding it were polite lies made to travel toward the hope of truth. Critics will always read themselves into the text and use it to support their predilections. They are far more damaging than fiction writers, honest liars, but not by far.

Born in March, my birthstone is a bloodstone, a fake ruby. Though I despise all pseudo science I momentarily grew up thinking the bloodstone to be a part of me, perhaps somewhere or everywhere in me, literally or figuratively, but both universal and individual. I recently learned that the gem business calls a fake ruby passing itself off as the real thing a “jack ruby.” The man whose job is to silence the patsy [Oswald] by spilling his blood would claim the name Jack Ruby. Before I internalize this conspiracy I can conclude that I am something that could be confused for something real and precious but in actuality, I’m just blood and stone. Then the conspiracy surrounding America’s most famous hit puts me all in the shadow of ancient manichaean, cryptographic forces that use LSD as freely as it uses lies to control. I return to a fear that America is under a psychological totalitarianism. Shaking on the back patio smoking, eyes wide, realizing that thought control requires no technology. The people must not know they’re being manipulated for them to be manipulated effectively. How is it that the conservative poor and middle class, the majority, voraciously defend a plutocracy that demands nothing changes, that power remain exclusively in the hands of a historic, probably inbred, few? In this context I’m working for them every time I smoke a cigarette, take a drink, watch TV, or go to sleep. Because I hand out artsy sociopolitical chapbooks that travel no further than among my friends I’m spilling blood that could be exercised and vivid in protest if it wasn’t convinced the protest was on. Would my blood better serve the world if it were cop-spilled on the paving stones?

“Who we are really is up for grabs.”
Were I to figure out my purpose, I would disappear in a cloud of reasoning, a pile of worms and bugs, the apocalypse. The universe sizzles into nothing again as it does eternally.

What is this mental anguish when at this moment a young girl’s face and torso are being disfigured with acid and a group of women and children are hacked at by men with machetes? My fears are so personal and small, while people everywhere on the planet face genocide. I’m such a schmuck.
My professor asked me to read the first chapter of this before class. In the rereading I couldn’t believe how pathetic the words sounded, the expressed persona so abject in fear and despair. I stopped halfway through to laugh nervously and say as much. Several people said it didn’t sound melodramatic but “witty.” I still don’t see how that term applies. My professor said I should make it a novel. I got to be the star grad student, but I had no idea of this until years later.
No matter how hard I work on a piece I’m never satisfied with it. It is never finished, and it is never good enough. This result occurs only because of the projects I allow myself, all of which must be impossible to accomplish, Sisyphean. None of my work will ever meet scorching standards. When listening to a recording of my songs I am usually cringing and wincing at innumerable flaws noone else perceives. Therefore, I have no way of judging the value of anything I do because, for me, it’s always so poor. I am then in a position of dependence on the audience, a random collection of strangers, most of whom I would never want to know, in order to derive some feeling as to whether I’m succeeding or failing at the most important endeavor of my life. Is it possible that the thing I love to do most, that which provides me my sole sense of existential meaning, upon which I base my character and worth as a human being, was just a bad decision from the start?
Monica Lewinsky was rudely surprised that the delete button for her e-mail didn’t obliterate the data. It just deleted the shortcut to it. Hillary Rodham-Clinton said she’d never keep a journal since it could be subpoenaed like Packwood’s. That poor man said it felt like his heart was torn to shreds when his most private passions and mundane thoughts, such as a simple recipe for cherry cobbler, all irrelevant to his lawsuit, were ridiculed on the pages of The Washington Post. Such an invasion would be catastrophic to one’s sense of self. I must be an idiot to write this down. A good lawyer could find in it proof of what?
Naked Lunch is a treatise on becoming a writer. When in Rome is a treatise on retreating into a shell and being a wimp. Drugs unlock devils, gods, intensive reality, time and history via free association. Another story about affectlessness. (The following story was not written for this class. Therefore, you are not obliged to read it.)
John and Pete leaned from their stools on the bar of a downtown tavern resembling a polluted ski chalet. John asked Pete, “What do you want to do tonight more than anything else? What would make tonight perfect?”
“Get in a fight!” Pete joked.
“That’s exactly what I was thinking.” said John in drunken solemnity. He was perhaps less serious than Pete. However, there was a smoldering anger in him. This had nothing to do with misanthropy, self-hatred, or stupidity. John felt as though he could never have a good metaphorical shit in life. There was always more waiting to come out. He was sick of the same sound he heard as everyday he had to pinch the loaf. Sorry girls.
John and Pete rejoined their friends and a few familiar strangers at a long table full of drinks. John was very quiet as new drinks kept arriving and conversations bellowed and swirled. After some time of silence, he rose and poured an unsipped Jack and coke over the head of the biggest guy at the table, one of the biggest guys in the bar. Everyone stared in shock and disbelief. They could barely contain crazy screaming laughs when John poured someone else’s brand new drink on top of this man’s large and closely cropped head. The crushed ice and sticky liquid flowed all over the man’s folded scalp while he shook his head in gentle surprise. John never said a word. Everyone was almost motionless. Time was rigid and tense. Noone moved. Finally John turned from them and walked quickly for the door. When the door closed the bar exploded with laughter.
When John reached the sidewalk he began to run. He was not too clumsy in his leather boots, vintage suit and tie, and head full of booze. He was used to these nice clothes and drunkenness. Recently he knew he was prone to trouble so he dressed nicely. As he slowed his pace in the dark street and the light rain, he wondered why he put forth this illusion of respectability. He began to hate the dead corporate civility he faced in the few days he worked. He never dressed so well there. John began to feel his ego dislodge in a reverie of bizarre purpose. He envisioned himself embodying the corporate stiff that had finally become unhinged from his personality, driven to some desperate act to save human dignity from the inevitable predations of human enterprise.
John soon found himself in one of the largest intersections in the city.
Cars came and went in 6 different directions from this point. Though it was late and traffic was light, John stood in the place he felt most effective for stopping the flow of traffic. However, this was utterly futile. There was never more than one car passing through. It was late. The slow cars always approached him carefully in the rain and flashed their lights or politely honked, but always banked slowly around him and drove on. To say the least, this was not Tienammen Square. Still, John felt he was doing something, at least. His manic desperation peaked out as a near-passive request for all the madness to just stop. He thought he might get run over or that maybe the image of this clean, well-dressed man standing in the rain would imprint itself on the drivers’ minds. Then the cops came.
The single officer barked his frustration at John, “What the hell are you doing? C’mere!”
Dazed that the police were present, John cautiously walked toward the approaching officer who seized his arm, brought him to the car, put him in handcuffs, and guided him into to back seat of the cruiser. There was no conversation on the way to the pokey. John thought “and shrieked in police cars.”
John had to stand outside for a long time before he was admitted to the drunk tank. They took his tie, belt, boots, and everything in his pockets. After being handcuffed and corralled so long, John began to protest once inside the tank in front of the other drunks.
“What am I being charged with? How can you hold me without charging me? What have I done?” He was really wondering about that last question.
The guards behind the screen firmly told him he could use the pay phone in the corner to call his lawyer if he wanted. John moved over there and tried to use the phone but found himself incapable of remembering how to work his phone card information into it. He gave up. He was extremely restless at this point. He looked around at all his fellows in this high-tech medieval cave. He noticed that most of them were Mexicans with a few whites. He heard Russian spoken. He didn’t know what to do with himself. He did some yoga moves to relax himself and to look like a weirdo. He then sat down at a bench with other inmates to hear some stories. He heard mostly bitching so he curled up in a quiet end of the cave and fell asleep.
In the morning the shift workers returned his belongings and asked a list of questions. They were very surprised to find that John remembered where he was picked up and why. They were even more surprised that he had done no other drugs than alcohol. From his behavior they were sure he was on PCP or something similar.
John walked the remaining blocks home. The drunk tank was conveniently placed between the bum ski chalet and his downtown apartment. He slept until nightfall, picked up some Chinese food from his neighborhood grocery store, and cleaned his apartment for the poetry reading he would have that night with his writer friends.
(Resume Reading Here)
The great absurdity of the primal fear is that if I did author the universe, all that human suffering never would have existed. Certainly, I would be implicated as perverse, since I invented all perversions. Yet, what if none of the pain was real? Pain is, unfortunately, relative.
The Christian intellectual must see this neurotic searching as plain ol’ screamin’ for Jesus. How they love the scientist’s uncertainty. They don’t realize that so does the scientist. If meaning and purpose were truly available, if history and reality could be truly represented, if our fundamental struggles reached closure the world would stop moving. The stars in the sky would go out – one by one.
Can you accept a world committing suicide?

Too bad. One day after reading the history of English Departments by Gerald Graff I figured it all out. I drew up a manifesto which argued that postmodernism had become a new dogma (I’ve since learned that this is a common attack), demonstrated it to be a dead-end project, unveiled my positivistic new project; “constructionism,” and declared we are now in the paradigm of New Modernism. That night my girlfriend took me out to a delightful Italian restaurant. As we toasted my genius with a brilliant Chianti I declared, “today is probably as happy as I’m ever going to be about this manifesto.” Now, when I face these weak, derivative, unimaginative, meaningless terms, this pathetic attempt at radical theoretical analysis and reinterpretation – I feel profound nausea, self-loathing, and dark, painful feelings of worthlessness. I see the transformation of a seeming victory into an indisputable failure to rise from the muck of mediocrity, a mockery of intellectual abstraction and an indictment of supposed humanistic cultivation. I see a black mark, a barren field, a void. I am deeply embarrassed. To anyone upon which I forced my unfounded, inconclusive, and unenlightening babbling on this subject, I say, with full sincerity, agonizing humility, and disturbing regret – I am sorry. I’m am deeply sorry. I apologize with every last shred of my remaining being. The path of atonement ahead of me is terrible and excruciating and it has no visible end. Though the self-hate generated in this incident is absolutely murderous and harrows up my very soul, I find it redeeming to suffer so. To witness my ability to endure so great a burden, weather so destructive a storm, withstand such a trial by fire, enkindles my spirits so dramatically that I not only consider myself a hero, a saint, a martyr for all that is honest and pure. I consider myself a superior being, capable of pathos and a sense of justice so great that it is, in fact, godlike in its proportion. Yes, I am worthy of a seat among the immortal. Yea, I am the ideal being, the perfect embodiment of spirit and intellect. That which humanity has struggled to achieve for centuries – I have become. Bow down before me you slime, you filth, you worms!

I keep writing and nothing changes. Nothing still.

. . .

. . .

. . .

. . . Nothing still.

Confessions keep rumbling on. Against the fucking fake memoir I will write out my life in order to annihilate the certainties and meanings that terrify me. No suiciding here. No noosing. A loosening, loosing, letting go.

3. Vehicle Failure

One might think that alcohol abuse is the road to artistic profundity. After much testing of this theory I’m left with few results beyond a pile of poetry and a heap of embarrassing memories. I’ve pissed beds! (Don’t worry, that’s as embarrassingly confessional as this gets.) Drink does pick the lock of one’s true intentions at the moment, and if it’s piss, well, then it’s piss. The extremely humbling effect of this is that immediate intentions are abysmally base. It unseats the ego and lets the personal world pour out like an exploding drainpipe. Even if you don’t remember what happened, even though it’s the world’s fault, you are responsible, and you always respond. It’s a sort of privilege. [See Naked Lunch]
A voodoo doll whose privates were pleasured until the point of orgasm forced the victim to make a public spectacle. Immediately after cumming in his pants, before the dick goes limp, the penis suddenly detached and the blood exploded. The penis of the voodoo doll was gently plucked from the doll groin. The man died.
So shouldn’t I abuse the parents that made me? Aren’t they in some way responsible for everything? How else could I have existed? Years ago, when my parents visited me in Portland for the first time, we were all a little drunk. Mom was getting ready for bed. Dad sat in the living room in the chair with a beer in his hand. I put my hand on his shoulder and told him, “You know, I really am glad to be alive, glad I was born.” I don’t know why I said it. It was awkward, unconvincing, probably a bit creepy and sad.
Mom said recently, “I keep saying the same thing over and over again and no one ever listens to me.” I can’t tell if she’s talking about my hair or what. “I have one son that won’t slow down and another that won’t get going.” Guess which one I am.

This is just the child fiddlers again.

Everyone in my life is fair game. I wouldn’t give two shits about making my friends look bad in print if it made a good story. Well, then again, Bukowski ruined somebody, nudged him hard enough that he suicided. I’m not that good a writer, though. The real trouble is Everyone. They’re all fucked-up, but not enough, not as much as I know myself to be, not enough to be interesting. What I plan to do is write up a 20-question form designed to probe and plumb the depths of their depravity, fantasy, shame, neuroses, and delusions. I want them to give me the slight insights into their character upon which to make my own conclusions based on wildly negative imagination, suspicion, and fabrication. I plan to compile and publish each confession after thoroughly embellishing and exaggerating the facts and deliberately altering the testimony with lies and fictions to make the summary of each case a damning representation of each person, a profile including actual names, addresses, resumes, bank statements, medical and criminal records, no matter how mundane; all will be presented along with spectacular lies. And this will all be done not merely for literary conquest, the pursuit of fame, money, and immortality, but as an attempt to have some control over this maelstrom of social interaction I’ve usually considered necessary to my survival but have, to this day and beyond, been unable to justify. I plan to vivisect then crucify everyone I know as vividly and painstakingly as I do myself. Then they will finally understand and accept me, having no doubt as to my purpose and will to live. They will have the full experience of my life by virtue of experiencing the throes of my core existential project as its intimate and unwilling subject. “No fair.”
A young Zen Christian Buddhist, sitting on a wall at a hospital, got shit in the face by a swooping pigeon. He thanked God and tasted it.
I’ve had four vehicles stolen from me – two cars and two bikes. This bad luck with maintaining ownership of such things is not particularly revealing of character or worth this mentioning. I will not own a car not only because it’s a selfish, destructive practice, but because I’m sure it would be stolen eventually. I’m interested, anyway, in an event regarding the first vehicle to be stolen, a Toyota SR5 model truck with a bed liner and canopy, all in excellent condition. The insurance company recovered the truck after it had been somewhat stripped down and sold to an unlucky dealership. I was assigned, why I don’t know, to recover the truck from the impound lot and deliver it to the insurer. The evening I retrieved it I got a little drunk (no surprise) and decided to take it for one last ride in which I planned to give it a little abuse since, well, what did it matter at this point? It belonged to the insurer. All I had to do was deliver it the next day. Its condition was irrelevant. I decided to head out to a nearby industrial area near the Willamette River. This site included many wide-open fields of packed dirt and gravel full of deep pits and berms made by heavy trucks. As I drove recklessly through these fields under bridges I was thrown all about the cabin of the truck. I drove around the dirt field in spurts. It took little speed to send the truck crashing its frame against the mounds, the wheels flying off the earth irregularly. After each spurt of flying about and crashing I stopped shortly to catch my breath, but not long enough to think, exhilarated. With each stop I became bolder, pushing the truck harder, inching toward the brink of absolutely loosing control of the machine. On my last run, my speed was so great I was thrown too hard against the cabin ceiling and blacked out. Unfortunately, the truck had a great deal of momentum as my foot on the accelerator went limp. After it broke through the seawall, it tumbled down the rocky embankment, careening to the right just so so that the truck was upside-down precisely when it hit the water. Don’t ask me how I know this since I was unconscious. And because I was, I had the misfortune of drowning in the Willamette River that evening inside a stripped down truck that was no longer mine. The insurance company has not yet recovered their property or even learned of its current whereabouts. Perhaps, if you have the time, you could notify the State Farm Insurance branch on 10th and East Burnside in Portland, Oregon where they might recover this vehicle. But please, don’t tell them how you found out. Also, if you were inclined to call the agency, perhaps you could notify my parents in Rutherfordton, North Carolina as well. I’m sure they are quite concerned about me. And if you are willing to undertake both these chores my memory will be deeply indebted to you. Thank you.
It’s amazing how much freedom everyone has to manipulate the past. I spoke with an ex I broke up with about 9 years ago about our breakup. She saw the reason for me calling an end to the relationship in such a different way than me, I would never have considered it a possible reason for termination. But there’s half the story, undeniable. And as adults in charge of our own pasts we get to design all the story and a stolen bike or a stolen car never really happened to me because where is the damn thing now? I don’t miss it a bit. Mother Fucker STOLE IT!!!!
There’s really nothing more I need to get off my chest right now. You may want to skip over a few pages, since I don’t plan to talk about anything of great importance. You see, this writing that I’m doing now, well, I don’t know exactly how to say this, but, I’m making it up entirely off the top of my head, so to speak. Oh sure, I may have a glimmer of what the next sentence may be as I’m completing one. Yet, overall, there is little plan or purpose to this novel you hold in your hands. In fact, I have a hard time even calling it a novel at this point, since it seems to have no apparent dimensions, destination, no plot, no characters, no growth, nothing that defines a novel in the sense that Bakhtin so illuminated. You know, even when my girlfriend, slumbering in the next room, asks me, “Sweetie? What are you doing?” and I answer, “I’m working on my novel.” it seems a bit contrived. I feel a bit like a poseur. I’ve resorted to referring to this piece only by its title, since there seems no adequate description. Here again, as an artist, I have no faculty for making even the most rudimentary conclusions regarding my work. But, as a disclaimer of sorts, I want you to know that I really am working hard and doing my best to make your experience of this work, whatever you wish to call it, as fulfilling and enjoyable as possible. And just so you know, to insure that this work can both titillate your fancy and your intellect, I have designed it in the final stages of editing to be entirely a specific grade-based reading level. I’ve chosen to position the text at the reading level of a college student on summer vacation after completing their sophomore year of studying political science. I find this a most redeeming level of difficulty, since it contains both the illusion that one has conquered the majority of all that needs to be known about the workings of the world with a refreshing period of leisure away from studies in which one may be working as a counselor at a camp for rich adolescents, making occasional appearances at the offices of the family business, or providing tours or working in an information booth at Disneyland.
On the other hand, that is only half the story. Perhaps the greater truth is that I’m using the project stated above as a deliberate stance to demonstrate its absurdity and impossibility, the collapse of truth. This systematic failure is a consciously focused act. As anyone who knows me knows, my life can be summarized as a collection of little more than lesser and greater failures, mistakes, and fruitless accidents. Though this book represents the first time I consciously set out on a project with the sole aspiration of failing completely and utterly, all projects that precede this could be characterized quite similarly. So again, in the interest of full disclosure, it should now be abundantly clear that this project is a chronicle shame, a profile of miscarriage, a conceit of downfall, of collapse, and of defeat.
But don’t cry for me Argentina, for I do not dally down the primrose path of oblivion. I merely make oblivion a house, mine, mundanity. Mind you, it remains in my household only and because I’m there with it, I don’t ever reach and succumb to the abyss. I merely send out postcards depicting a black pit, sulfurous clouds, and a lake of fire, a small picture of my joyful face floating above it, and the words “wish you were here” superimposed in red, gothic lettering.
You see, my naked and singular intention to fail will be, so long as I complete the project without getting muddled or bogged down by trying, a victory unadulterated. I will go down with the greatest of philosophers who have inspired the ‘births of nations,’ authored countless genocides, spawned outrageously corrupt and malevolent systems of social and governmental organization, all because they could not ever come close to answering the simplest and most fundamental questions: “Do I exist?” “Why am I here?” “What is real?” “What is truth?” “What is ethical?” Most skip over that stuff every day, living the dream.
Please, don’t conclude that any of my projects, objects, and subjects proceed with any ease. It’s been said that writing is easy – one just sits at a typewriter and opens a vein. Well, I’m here to tell you that it is not easy to prolongingly sustain the tone of another writer one imitates. Nor is the act of stealing the work of past writers and presenting it as you own a simple task. It is in fact extremely difficult to write entirely with the voice of another writer in your head, having his or her hands on your wrists as you type. Some say this comes naturally to some lucky to be born with genius. I, however, am not. At this point I’m struggling for every sentence, every word. I’m constantly moving back and forth from my bookshelf and computer searching for the next phrase, device, or idea to pirate.
You may be thinking by now that I’m making every attempt I can to be postmodern, to be chic, to flaunt my highly specialized and utterly useless education. You could not be more incorrect if you have come to this conclusion. I am in no way attempting to problematize lay conceptions of authorship. That’s been done down the line from Cervantes onward. Nor am I presenting you with an unreliable or mentally uncertain narrator. It should be fully obvious at this point that I really am writing this as honestly and unaffectedly as I can. It is no big secret that that’s the entire purpose of this whole work. And, that I admitted this is proof that this sentiment is entirely true, is it not? Certainly, it could not be a very honest work if I didn’t come write out and tell you its purpose, its meaning. No. How many authors would do this for you? How many writers would just cut to the chase as they say, perhaps in Hollywood, and spill the beans, as the Quakers say, and present you, unambiguously with the information, in a clear and concise manner, you need to have to make a complete reading of the work. Very few. In fact, it’s popular amongst most writers never to discuss their work lest they mar the possibility of ever-evolving readings, so that it is its very ambiguity that generates its value. Borges argued that ambiguity must be installed by the author so that some regions of a creation remain foreign lands. This is not my game, nor am I playing with you, my patient and noble reader. I value you too greatly to deliberately misguide or confuse you. I want to assure you that we have been and will be on equal footing until the final page. Please have faith in me.
As a token of proof that I am not aspiring toward any semblance of elitist postmodern posturing, I present to you a manifesto (I fully support) that a colleague of mine presented to the university last spring which denounced the supposed dogmatism that the once-revolutionary world-view has supposedly come to embody. However, since postmodernism is not a system, movement, position, aesthetic, or, in any way, a comprehensible idea, I disclaim any knowledge of what the hell the following means or accomplishes. Furthermore, nobody at the university gave a shit about it anyway. Don’t worry. I edited this final portion down from 777 pages to .777 of a page.
But, before the manifesto, here’s a helpful outline. Skip it if you want. It’s only there in case you care. It’s not there to show that I’m smart. I don’t need to convince myself of that. I know I’m really really really really really really really really smart. Really. And also a little myopic, summing up reality out of all intelligibility or practical use. All of this is an unfortunate effect of being in grad school. Actually, that could be a good description of this book. So anyways, skip it, read it backwards, or upside-down, or with a dildo up your ass. It’s all the same to the clam.

poostmodernism

with modernism came the concern that there was no consistent dominant world view. Everything fell apart. Postmodernists said, “who cares.”

An outline of postmodernism specifying dominant theories is as insipid as calling one’s self an existentialist.

I. Theory is so pervasive and dominant in Lit. studies because it includes studies far outside the supposed traditional sphere of literary criticism. Theory utilizes philosophical, psychoanalytical, historical, political, and/or anthropological frameworks and categories for the interpretation of lit. (Culler’s def.)

Structuralism and Deconstruction – 2 of the most indefinable theories of Postmodern theory

A. Structuralism
1. Founded by Claude Levi-Strauss
a. French Anthropologist wrote Structural Anthropology
(1958)
b. Researched primitive cultures to discover the underlying
framework of all human existence
2. Broadened by Ferdinand de Saussure to include linguistics
a. Ordered language with a set of distinctions
1. Langue - - the rules that govern a language –
framework
2. Parole - - speech acts of a particular langue
3. Signifier - - the word
Signified - - the implied concept
Sign - - combo of signifier and signified
b. These distinctions demonstrated language to be arbitrary,
cultural, cultual.
c. Meaning arises not from the word but from its place in the language among other words.
3. Stevens and Stewart pointed out that linguists anticipated a new
science would come of this: Semiology – the study of signs and
the laws governing them in regard to the langue [they were wrong]
Example of semiology –
As we consider canons, we define paradigms such as that of Romantic poets as having an underlying structure – distrust of reason, introversion, embrace of passion to attain transcendence, etc. We also can view the Romantic poets syntagmatically as a response to a set of assumptions we make about the preceding paradigm

B. Deconstruction
1. May be the only critical method not ending with “-ism”
a. “Post-structuralism” only implies the belief that
structuralism is dead
2. Father of Deconstruction – Jacques Derrida
a. Not so much a tool as a phenomenon
1. The frame of a narrative or argument can be
demonstrated to collapse on itself. It’s not so much
that the critic turns a work into rubble.
Deconstructing it demonstrates that the author
inadvertently built it to collapse. The 3 stage
syllogism frame we use to make things intelligible
keeps collapsing on us.
Magritte wears this concept on his sleeve
b. Derrida began with the sign, signifier, signified
1. Saussure saw sign as dependent on langue and
difference from other signs
2. Derrida said it has nothing to do with langue, just the
fact that signs are not other signs. We distinguish
“tree” from “free” by the “t,” not the concept. This is
differance.
c. If there’s no structure provided by langue, then binary
oppositions don’t exist among signs.

Still, one could argue that lit. critics have performed these actions for centuries without ever admitting it.
II. Obscurant
A. The unmasterability of theory as well as intelligibility under criticism
1. A problem of specialization across wide range of subjects
2. The Babbler – current lit journal holds that theorists are
deliberately obscure to maintain intellectual hegemony of the
academy.
a. Culler also cited the presumed universality white male
theorists could often assume regarding race, gender,
class, etc.
1. need to rectify limitations of vision, sympathy and
understanding (scope must include Africa, S.
Amer., etc.)
b. Universality can become terribly insular
1. look at social constructionist composition theory
i. the debates tend to be inapplicable
to the classroom or anything else but the
debate
Ex.-Why won’t the father of deconstruction offer any definition
of the term? Derrida only shows what it is by using it or by
waving his hand around.

III. Unity
A. Comes only from desire to contest, and often destroy, traditional
assumptions.
1. leaves us in a position of needing to create new traditions
create new culture
a. examples – the new forms of protest bent on
reclaiming public spaces from gov’t (police) + corporate
control b. tree sitting c. raves in abandoned warehouses
d. homeless advocates publicly breaking open disowned
buildings for squatting, marching in the streets
e. smashing the windows of big franchise stores (Nike,
Starbucks)
1. these actions give groups identity and redefine the
landscape in a public manner (Symptomatic of a
society with a handicapped democracy.)
f. Another – Hip Hop culture: tagging/graffiti art, the
music is more directly an embodiment of postmodernism
than even compositions of serious music by Glass or Cage.

IV. Guillory said that throughout the evolution of New Criticism, structuralism, and post-structuralism there is consistent search for structure and definition. He pointed out however that the “social” of “social constructedness” is attenuated at best.
A. What follows after accepting social constructedness? Culler
said, “Nothing at all”
1. antifoundationalism itself will never create a new foundation
in its wake (my statement)
2. theory is resistant to practice (my statement, again)
3. “theoretical categories are not tools” (my statement? Probably
Guetti’s. The sign of a complete intellect is total scarcity of
originality.)

V. There is no essential unity to the disparate social strategies comprising postmodern theory. If there were, the term ‘postmodern’ would be easily defined.
A. Still, there’s a drive to synthesize different “schools” (loose term –
there’s no general movement, just a lively discourse // e.g. Queer Theory)
B. General debates have come to dominate debate across the collection
of schools
1. synthesis: mimetic representation in art forms, identity and
subject, literary vs. nonliterary, lit. and the aesthetic, high vs.
pop art – generally reflects new understanding of metaphysical
significance of creating in particular ways (thus it’s
hermeneutic, self-referential, self-aware.)

Perhaps it might benefit English departments in the future if theory collapses into a reassertion of the primacy of more direct experience of literature. There has been much criticism of lit. scholars that would write from the pretense of a philosopher, an anthropologist, or a psychologist without having had adequate training to do so. However, we’re in heady days. The most progressive thinkers of the later 20th century are connected to or found in English departments. It may be a long time before they are once again so vital and relevant. Theory departments will continue to grow out of English departments as independent entities until all the fashionable ideas are used up.

Like a 10-year old laptop, only a perverse few will care about any of this in a few decades.

[The above is much more satisfying in the form of a speech than here, in an outline. Indeed, these are the bones of a speech I’ve given several times. Perhaps I could come to your house for a hearing.]

Finished with Postmodernism
-A Declaration-

I am making this statement as an act of willful defiance against the intellectual hegemony of postmodernism, because I believe those who should know better are deliberately prolonging its arguments.
I am a writer and a student, convinced that I am acting on behalf of my colleagues. I believe the position of postmodernism, upon which I based my hopes for liberating and revolutionary thought, has now become an institution of antifoundationalism and the conquest of tenure. I believe that the purposes for which intellectuals and academes entered into this paradigm should have been so much more clearly stated as to have made it possible to change them, and that, had this been done, the objects which actuated us could now be attained.
I have seen and endured the suffering of my colleagues, and I can no longer be a party to prolong these sufferings for ends that I believe unintelligible and unmasterable.
I am not protesting against the benevolent goals of postmodernism, but against the prioritizing of ideology for which the experience of literature has been sacrificed.
On behalf of those who are suffering now, I make this protest against the prolonging of an undefinable world view being shunted upon them; also, I believe that I may help to destroy the callous complacence with which the majority of those outside the academy regard the continuance of agonies they do not share, and which they have not sufficient imagination to realize.

J. Americani
May 5, 2000
The declaration above came from the pen of my pseudonymical companion, Jeffro Americani. He had the insight to recognize parallel dramas occurring near the end of World War I and the end of the postmodern era. For instance, part of why everyone is there fighting comes from a desire to apply their new technology (i.e. the technology of deconstruction). In practice, both W.W.I and postmodernism resemble a Roman Coliseum. Both reflect how the most noble goals of humanity can turn into nihilistic chaos. Lastly, postmodernism, like W.W.I, demonstrates that there is no accumulation of knowledge despite all the lessons history has provided.
I certainly agree with Jeffro. After a discussion of our distaste for the nihilism and antifoundationalism inherent in so much postmodern theory, we concluded that postmodernism is spent and that he and I have tentatively evolved beyond it. History seems to dictate that nobody will successfully name an era until it is nearly over. While Jeffro believes postmodernism will linger until we first name the next age, then live it, I have faith that history can find its way without us consciously creating it.
But what do I want anyway? Why bother doing any of this? I’ll explain later why you probably don’t care. I’ll say now that I want anarchy and peace and a new rebirth of wonder.
It should now be fully clear why I don’t try to write nonfiction. I suck at it.

4. Ruined Signs and Values

I just call this “my book” now. I’m sticking with that for now.
Last night, as I battled caffeine for sleep (3:30 AM) – I don’t mind not getting sleep at night – my imagination created my first day of being teacher in a high school classroom. I envisioned a commonality that justifies their respect and attention to my teachings. I was saying, “No matter who you are or who you become, no matter how successful you become, at some point in your life each of you will suddenly stop in your tracks and say, “My God! What the hell am I doing with my life? What have I been striving to be for so long that now I have no idea what it was?” At that time you will know it is time to change your life, but you won’t know how. It is at that time you will need the assets that literature provided and will grant you at that difficult moment.” I feel that my most powerful tool as an educator will be the ability to induce fear and uncertainty in my students. Indeed, this is not only my strength, but my ultimate goal as well. I will not be satisfied unless each individual student is touched by my neurosis, permanently impregnated with disorders I claim not as my own, but the world’s.
You may wanna know:
I got the second chapter back from teacher today. I got an A+. She commented on the last sentence of the second paragraph; “So nonfiction is just boring fiction.” Yes. Well put. This is the first A+ I’ve ever gotten on a paper. As an undergrad I thought I’d never get one because a “+” means it’s worthy of publication. After I didn’t get a “+” on the first chapter, I got worried. I asked about it. Teacher told me it didn’t count for anything. It’s all 4.0. You can’t get higher than an “A.” The “+” is as meaningless as a smiley face. Naturally, she gave me a real big one on the last paper. What would have felt like a great success before I asked now seems somewhat insulting, condescending, a professional jab that could come from none other than one’s superior. It made me laugh. This is the one teacher I call “teacher.” I love everything she gives me. I cherish the days I visited her office to discuss my possible future career or my concerns about our age and she responded by rubbing her hands together, giggling while explaining how I am doomed. Her realism is a rare and beautiful thing, a national treasure.
I have a month to go before I get any financial aid money. I’m broke. I have no job and no intention of getting one. I played music for money on the street. I had a sign on my guitar case that read, “Help me pay for grad school. Tapes $4.” In 5 hours time I got about $3 from passersby. However, there was a couple that stopped and listened for 30 minutes. They actually sat and listened and made requests while the world went by. They gave me $5, emptying their change purses into my case, and even bought a tape. I don’t satisfy the crowd. A tiny segment of the crowd, however, hears me speak just to them. I’ll do gardening for my girlfriend’s mom. I tried panhandling once. It was amazing. I was wearing a clean leather jacket and carrying a Starbucks double tall mocha. I made 10 bucks in one hour. Of course, my method was a bit unconventional. I was out before 8 AM, getting people on their way to work. I was polite, articulate, congenial, even charming. When that didn’t work, I fell to my knees in their path weeping, clutching their legs; the words “please god help me” bubbling in my mouth. This worked great! However, I eventually lost my edge on the game when I voided my bowels to induce sympathy. This had a smashing effect on the immediate witness. She gave me a five-dollar bill. But after that, I just couldn’t get into the performance. I was too uncomfortable. I found a small group of homeless kids, gave them all the cash, then went home to clean up. As an old friend said, noone in America ever has to starve. Well, that is, of course, excluding children. They no longer have the talent or wherewithal to sing and dance for their crust of bread. No, not like they did in the good old days. Now they just starve like never before.

5. Horrible Box of Freedom

The streets are constantly being torn up and remade after putting some kind of pipe, duct, or tubing in it. The downtown streets are a labyrinth of construction and destruction. One can’t walk two blocks without the sidewalk being blocked by the construction of some new dull building. A severe lack of creativity and independence guides the aesthetic of all the new buildings. As if we weren’t demoralized enough that the streets and buildings were all organized in a grid to accommodate cars, not people, or bicyclists, or puppy-dogs, we suffer a latent penchant for colder, cheaper Bauhaus glass and concrete set in uninspiring defiance to the human need for beauty and awe. They produce no awe. I get no awe from the parking lot across the street or the white concrete, black window and window frame “1099” building across the corner. [That building’s gone now.] The only identity of this building is “1099” and “For Lease.” Shall I move in? The rent would be much cheaper, perhaps a hundred dollars less. Hun dread. Hund red.

One Hundred Dollars

On April Fools’ Day I leave a message at work
that I’m not coming in,
that I forgot my employee number,
and that the weather sucks.
My job with the electric co.
will be there tomorrow.
The money lost I paid
for this poem and others.

The 1st poem of the day was brilliant.
I put a parenthesis around
a mosquito I smashed in my notebook.

I don’t blame you for not buying that one,
for not caring what I did with this thread and that needle.
How could I expect you to pay for this poem?
Shouldn’t it be free
while you pay the electric bill,
those technicians
dirty from digging,
driving crane buckets the size of houses
into the ground in the middle of a strip mine
in the middle of nowhere?

(jesus, my dinner is salty. pre-prepared red beans and rice. cajun-style. fake sour cream don’t help. excuse the chewing in your ear.) Why the stupid decorative bushes? Grow something edible! There are a lot of hungry people walking around this town.
All I’d need is a hot pad, one of those little fridges, a business front with fake clients, respectable clothes, a haircut, and an ascetic’s sense of freedom. I’ve got most of that stuff.
As you can tell, I’m a bit dry on ideas. Nonetheless, although I despise reading a poem in which the poet drivels on about what poetry is and how they’re a poet and all, I confess I went to the Oregon State fair in Salem with the purpose of gathering new, real life material. So, here’s my painterly impression of the fair from my unique position as a writer:
There weren’t many people there. It was the first day. There were lots of big black cows, noisy sheep, cock-a-doodle-dooing cocks and clucking hens, not many pigs, almost no horses. The rides were nausea-inducing. The barkers were insulting and rude. One of them said, “He’s really punk” as I walked by. I’m 28. I thought at some point high school would end. In the schedule of events, for the miniature pig tent it said, “12:00 – Teaching Pigs Tricks” and “6:00 – Pig Tricks.” You’d think they’d train the pigs before the fair. Seems like a tight schedule. I dunno. They say pigs are smart.
Dammit! That’s all I got for a whole day and $60 spent at the goddamned state fair? Shit.
Yer just lucky I don’t just give up the whole narrator thing and start sputing nonsense. Sputnik I am not.

I truly wish that
I could just
pound my fists
on my keyboard
and have the reason
and emotion
appear inevitably
because like most Romantics
I get the Idea that
We are hard-wired
to be real
and the fucked
are off our kilter,
the dreaded dull
are stuck

well,
let me have a look
let me see

.,z xxxxxx ft/

I can’t believe it myself
but after pounding my fists
on the board for 60 seconds
All I got was
“.,z xxxxxx ft/ “
and some warnings.

Horrible box of freedom.
Think inside the box.

6. Hospitalization Sagas

I was asleep. Jen burst in the bedroom, phone clutched to chest, crying, “Jeffrey! Jeff’s in intensive care!” then sobbed inconsolably. Jeff’s her brother. For the last three months we’ve been collaborating on a handmade book project, his prints, my text, our ingenuity and work ethics combined. Jen was still wet from the shower, weeping. She was first in the family to get word; she had to track down her mom in the San Juan Islands and her dad in Greece to tell them what’s going on without even knowing the details herself. All we knew was that he had a severe motorcycle accident last night, but that he was still alive. We would later find that he ran into the side barrier of one of Portland’s tallest highway off ramps. He flew, landed on another bridge 31 feet below, traveling 51 feet: six smash marks in his helmet, but only a slight contusion to the frontal lobe, open fracture of the femur, lacerated liver, one spleen and one kidney removed, fractured spinal processes. Doctors said Jeff had a 95% chance of surviving and a 75% chance of making a full recovery. We discovered later that the doctors didn’t think he’d make it through the day. I’ve never seen anyone more lucky to be alive. Apparently he’d been drinking and was carrying his gun. Noone has been able to ask him what happened. Due to the paralytic sedation we can talk to him, but he can’t respond. I shiver recalling my DUI six and a half years ago, knowing this might have happened to me if the kindly policeman had not arrested me. (Image: riding the train home from the DUI trial drunk on little whiskey bottles.)
As she and I walked to the ICU ward from the parking garage I remembered the last time I was at this hospital. Someone I love in trouble.
Three years, one month, and sixteen days ago, a past lover (current friend) and I were painting watercolor animals on small pieces of thick paper. It was a hot July 16th. We painted and painted until she pulled me into the bedroom laughing. We disrobed hurriedly and began playing aggressively. As the lovemaking progressed it felt more and more dirty. I was on top of her, groping and slurping, as our moist flesh stuck together in the heat. Suddenly she went still. She stared into space. I quit hurriedly and dejectedly. As we got dressed, I supposed she had one of her frequent minor breakdowns, except that during these episodes she usually could to talk.
We moved back to the living room where she sat against the wall on a trunk, motionless, staring into space. She would later say her brain was moving so quickly she had no hope of reeling it back into control. All I could get from her was that she didn’t want to do anything but sit. I gathered that I should cancel the dinner party we planned for a mutual friend. The trouble was that he lived downtown in the St. Francis Hotel, a building I’m looking at this moment from this chair where I write. There was no telephone service to his room, so I had to ride my bike to give him the message.
After leaving a note with the desk clerk, I took a quick jaunt up the nearby hill where the largest of Portland’s hospital complexes sits. I suppose I was up there to get composure. I was shaken, an escapee, but when I stopped on a bluff from which I could see most of East Portland, I felt more at ease. That is, until my eyes wandered over the neighborhood where our house stood. Perhaps I actually perceived it or merely projected it, but I felt great trouble going on down there. A wretched abjectness blew up from the house, filled the river valley, and knocked against me on the hill. At this time she was actually screaming to a higher power to just let her go on to the next world. I hastily mounted my bike and sped home. When I arrived, the front door was locked and the windows darkened. Music blared from within. As I got the door open, Mozart’s Requiem wailed and blasted against me. The living room was dark and empty. I called out her name as I carried in my bike. I ran to the bathroom. The door was closed. It was dark in there. I flung it open to see her naked in the tub, the water red and covered with moistening dried flowers. She was still.
And now I can sing:
I’ll be back in a minute
After I’ve licked my wounds
Come by next time
You’re on a bender

They called as I returned
To your brandishing a spoon
You made such awful noise
When I was gone

I heard it as I looked
Down from the hills
Your screaming for a
Doorway out

Floating in hazy
Red Bathwater
With that terrible
Requiem playing

And after the screams
Protests and cries
After zipping you up
And locking you in

After leaving you in rough hands
I returned
To drink red wine
And clean up the blood
And play that requiem again

I drug her up from the tub, wrapped her in a rug, covered her wrists with towels, and called 911. The paramedics arrived almost instantly. They asked immediately, “Is she HIV+?” “Yes.” I said. Oh shit. I had forgotten in the moment.
Perhaps the worst was seeing her screaming hatred at the doctors and nurses who stitched her up, but I think the worst was when she was strapped in a wheelchair at the hospital on the hill, weeping, exhausted, pleading me not to abandon her. Getting home, cleaning up, and calling her parents at three AM was strangely comforting. I drank wine and read essays on suicide from Seneca to Joyce Carol Oates. Her Essay “The Art of Suicide” denounced Sexton and Plath for pursuing a sort of annihilative aesthetic nirvana. This did not sum up any of my experiences that day. Since this suicide attempt was somewhat stylized, I read it to her some time after her. She saw nothing in the reading. However, being a photographer, she did enlist an assistant to shoot images of her cuts and stitches.
Six months later my blood was still clean.

Jen and I were in the ICU waiting room from 9:00 to 6:30 on day one after Jeff’s accident. Time flew as new friends and relatives trickled in as slowly as did updates on his condition. The day was spent in intense anticipation. Hours reduced to minutes. So many profundities arose in conversation and reflection. Here was the most difficult of realizations: Jeff didn’t know it yet, but he was about to undergo the most painful physical, emotional, and spiritual trial of his life. No event before or after this (except, perhaps, dying) would produce so much guilt, self-loathing, self-pity, anger, despair, and misery. If we were to exclude all other facts about Jeff’s position and focus on this one detail, exclude his daily struggle, what may be in his sedated brain just now, how he must feel now, and all consider what he will go through in a month when he’s fully conscious, the trial that awaits; how can any of us laugh, eat, smile, make jokes, do anything but live in anxious mourning. Well, we are together. Somehow, despite the anxious mourning, we do laugh, eat, smile, and make jokes, but only when we’re together. The only safe place for any one of us was to be in the ICU waiting room where we are closest to him in case he died. Being alone is painful and terrifying.
“They’ve done the shift change, his fever’s OK, they raised his oxygen because there’s so little in his blood, they’re doing a chest x-ray, and the nurse is a bitch.”
“At least she’s fully dedicated.”

They assured me she’d be under suicide watch. When she was begging me to take her home I realized I’d have to sneak her out of there to do that, nor did I want her on my hands. Would I be an accomplice if she tried to do it again? An accessory to murder? How could I take her home? She might try to do it again. Would she? I couldn’t possibly take anymore responsibility for her than I had already exerted that day and night. I was fully drained of my mental powers, incapable of figuring out how to get home. I had no money, and there would be no more busses. It was too late. I couldn’t call any of my friends to pick me up because I’d have to explain what happened. I already determined that this incident was to remain largely a secret. Remarkably, she told me what to do, who I could call, she even gave me the phone number. With kind help, I finally got back to our home. That house was so dark and gruesome. It was ghastly, but I was numb.

The lawyer comes in every afternoon after five. We’re in constant communication with Jeff’s realtor. He was supposed to close the purchase on a house three days after the date of his accident. His realtor said we need to make up a story that he’s out of the country and unable to sign for the loan. We were thinking Cuba or Guatemala but then they might think he might not make it back. This was completely insane.

I met her mom at the airport the next day. I felt so relieved to see her. With her arrival I was no longer responsible for this situation or what happened next. She raised the question of whether or not we’d be able to get her out of the psyche ward, whether she was being kept sedated. How could we trust them not to keep her so zonked that they could judge and deem her unsafe to leave the hospital?
We saw her around two o’clock that afternoon. She was lucid and strong. She shed some tears, but mostly because she wanted to go home and wasn’t allowed. She couldn’t stand being there, what that meant, being around so many unhealthy, unhinged people. However, we did have some fun that day, racing through the main hallway with her in a wheelchair. They made us stop it and that made it even better. It was a highly positive sign. Still, the State would decide what all this meant.

I was shocked that he wouldn’t leave ICU for weeks, and that they didn’t know when they’d grant him consciousness. I thought his 5% chance of not making it had diminished to 0%. No one could confirm that he’d survive. Last night everyone was worried he wouldn’t. They feared a blood clot had reached his lungs. This is the danger of an immobile and severely injured patient. Never remain seated for more than two hours. Deep vein thrombosis – a blood clot could form in the legs, in veins, while driving or writing at the computer, travel to the lungs, and kill. There was the possibility of emergency surgery, a further threat to his life.
I’m fully honest now when I say I’m afraid for him and everyone involved, and I don’t know what’s going to happen, and it’s hard to be alone. Outside of the ICU all I can do is write about this or detach using some form of cheap, escapist entertainment. If he lives, he’ll be OK, and so will we. But no one can say “He’ll live.” We are all so perishable.

They didn’t even need to give her blood products. Luckily she was so furiously dazed when she cut her wrists that she just swiped at her arms with the razors. Though her wounds were deep, she missed her veins. It was still chilling to view the insides of her forearms, bulging red, black stitches. The photos she took of this eventually made it to the walls of a gallery. She said she almost laughed when she couldn’t find a razor when she wanted to do it. It was too practical to search through drawers and cluttered bins for a tool. It killed the moment.

Since Jeff fell we’ve lost summer. The Burning Man festival is going on right now. That’s exactly where Jeff, Jen, and I were a year ago this moment. In fact, today is Saturday, September 2nd. Tonight they’ll burn the man. Tonight will be the best night to be there. I think of my friends there, and how they don’t know about Jeff.
I’m glad that I could spend this moment with you, to have finally dropped the playful bullshit about being an author, a subject, an object, and give you something that may be real, share my experiences as they occur. I’ve been lying so much in this book. You see, right now I am crying on your shoulder. There really is no one else here but you and me. You may think I’m saying this to be cute or intense or to exercise another device. Please don’t. If you do than you don’t understand where I am and how much you help me. My mood is not light. My heart is heavy. I feel fearful and alone. I’m holding back tears. But I know you are out there; I see you reading this; it touches me, and I thank you.

After a full week in the intensive care waiting room I’m about mad. Right now (this is days later) is the first chance I’ve had to be alone for awhile. Jeff has stabilized. He’s breathing almost on his own, but he’s still got a high fever, adult respiratory distress syndrome, infections. They haven’t closed up his abdomen yet. It’s under a thin yellow occlusive wrap. I’m so sick of looking at his poor sad nipples under that wrap, the tube into his trachea, his swollen eyes dripping and lolling, his terrible grimaces whenever the sedative is too low. Certainly his physical state is stable, but it appears intolerable. That’s still the main worry. The most chilling concern is his mental state. He’s kept from consciousness by the sedative, but emerges at times. His heart rate went wild when his grandma joked about selling all his motorcycles. We don’t talk about motorcycles now. I read him short stories the first three days. On the fourth day, after the motorcycle incident, I read him poems quietly, sneaking the words in. I read Lawrence Ferlinghetti’s “I Am Waiting” and he responded suddenly, scrunching up his shoulders, rolling his head, trying to open his eyes and see me. I left there quickly. It was much easier to read to him when he was a lump, not a friend in extreme pain. From then on I didn’t touch him or talk to him when I went in. I just stood there looking at him, tense. His sedative has anti-anxiety and amnesiac properties. Each time he wakes he’s in a strange place with no idea why he’s there. He’s told again and again, “Jeff, you’re in a hospital. You’ve had an accident.” It’s eternal recurrence so far. At this point, accumulation of knowledge could kill him, could take the struggle out of him. The less rational he is now, the better his chance of survival. His body doesn’t need his brain but to breathe and to pump.

Pleasing Ideation
Sousa Asado felt blank. Sousa Asado blinked flimsy crust from binding eyelids. He felt himself all out of shape in the wound heal ward. The bed mates raced to fill bedpans on either side of his bad head. The streaming sun light night window was a cellar for stars to watch no more. The pennies on eyes of neighbor bed mates made states of blank day terror, ending the joy he gets in the quiet ward night. The dreamt dimples in the dream sandwich were now just a pencil mark, brought life off the sandwich and filled it with night watch. They loomed in each time he made joy.
The spoons tinked and pulled sheets away to clean and to wake him. Lights blanched with what he could not get out of his left eye. Pails of hot frothed water were moving all around him.
As with every day, after Jell-o, the crystal carpenters that were see-through blue didn't care him staring at them. They stare through his eyes. He was always too struck by their calm control to enter the room much less mind his own thoughts and business. But their pink calling voices calling the Sousa name made him feel plain and happy to say anything he meant. He popped dive stream winks blintz pin nibbler wicker fink. He said trellis pears bobby nice nice nice dim surp. He made their pink voices excite to what the crystal carpenters should sound like he thought they like to sound like.
They left everybody and Sousa watched halls get slick clean by socks, robes, and living hairy gray dust mops. The rest of the morning then got spent at cracker school, pockets crackling with salty tan shards, crunchy. Everybody chuckly.
They call it “group.” It was full of triggers. The therapist pulled one on Sousa. "Happy Camper!" he thought he heard the group chant there in group inside him. "That's what they feel to scream at me, so they did they do." The women with the pencils and the goal sheets started at him with silence, then dullness, then the yammering again. He chanted "they do! They do! They do!" angrily, as loud as he could with and in his mind.
Lunch. Lunch. Lunch. Lunch. Lunch. Lunch. It was good for peas popped in his mouth. Calmed, Sousa Asado looks back to see days that had him in them eating sandwiches, going to toilet, napping on grass, trying to kill a fly . . . The thought that he lived these days would not emerge in his brain because he did not live his days. However, he at least had some idea how to let a good day live.
Stinky crayons and chalk, both broken to nubs with teeth marks, after lunch pills. Had an uncontrollable erection for the full hour out of stultified mind and understimulated body. He was singled out in his calm personal feelings. They stood in a crowd away from him, observing him, discussing him, peering. He then had a shrill feeling of impatience, the need for activity, coupled with an inability to think what to do. Hammering dullness of tasks such as breathing, getting an itch, reaching and scratching it, adjusting himself to hide his erection made him groan and groan in exasperation. After the erection dropped he felt even more lost. Dull, brute, boring existence gave him a case of ants under the skin. He was even indignant at the chalk, crayon nubs, and the pile of useless bits of paper they sat him down to use. He squirmed violently gripped by a sensation that he wildly needed to pee, that his bladder was squeezing itself forcefully, his whole urethra itched and strained. His entire urinary tract felt dry, acidic. He crossed his legs tightly and pushed his groin down with both hands. Rocking gently back and forth, biting his lip, making a long, high, melancholy sound. Sousa Asado cursed his indignities.
As his sullenness expanded he felt himself pause. He stared straight ahead of him at the papers and colors on the table before him. With his lips pursed he began stroking his tongue against the insides of his cheeks and over his clean teeth. He sunk into a spiteful reverie. Unexpectedly, urine began to flow, streaming down his pant legs. He stood immediately. His bitterness retreated. He began to cry softly, feeling beautiful, sad, and alive. The light nourish nurse rounded him up in her big arms as he wept. She patted his back and stroked his wild greasy hair saying, "Shushushushushushushh." Oh, relief!
After a new pair o’ knickers he sat back down to the nubs and scraps. He
spent the afternoon beaming, carefully choosing these words:

"All dim tie pinch
wist pinch winch,
dream fleck retailing the instant bitter bun,
the peach reek filling, nailing anyone non
with the wish a failing, failing with a wish.
The thinker thought the wish of dish necks.
The word is a wish to win the black knack to home.
The inch of a brother's necktie blooms.
The french drink toast water steam on oven window
rumbling turret driver into store trust basket
basked devalve hampered stint
garage roster dis appearing clear heaven
high knot chair over turned."

She only had to stay at the psyche ward two days. It was bad in there. Some distressing outburst explodes every half-hour. The patients, the staff, visitors, everyone struggles in there to live through it. People are either conniving or cracking. Her release brought great relief. The aftermath felt as minimal as if she had just done something foolish after too much drinking. “God, I’ll never do that again.”

Jeff left the hospital last week, and he’s staying at grandma’s. It’s five weeks since the accident. I still see him nearly every night. He’s not bored, but he isn’t thinking much about the accident, its implications, or its consequences. The horror we predicted isn’t there. He’s just trying to get through each day well. He really just wants to get back into his life because before the accident his life was OK. That’s the key to recovery. He’s very pleasant to visit. He is finally enjoying a few moments in which he is unsupervised.
He’ll eventually ring in the New Year with Jen and I.

7. Shame

It’s a lie
for the flags to fly
above half-mast
while millions of men, women, children
go mad
in the streets,
hungry, homeless,
ignored.

Anytime must be a grand old time to run for president of the US. Police are the presidential candidates’ best buddies. When a candidate came to our town to give his “town hall” speech before a hand-picked audience of 40 people, the area was overrun with cops. Around noon they blocked off three downtown streets and two intersections. “Al’s going to lunch.” I overheard.

We need more police to police the police

A trash can becomes trash itself
when no one is responsible to pick it up
it sits on the sidewalk for weeks
and fills with trash from people walking by

I can’t use it
have no car to take it with to no place
don’t want to dirty my hands for nothing
I just hope whoever left it will return

some foreign journalists endanger their lives
everyday they show up to work
meanwhile our local journalists are too complacent
to question if police should gas and beat those
who march in the streets for what we never seem to figure out

the bottom-line suffocates the newsroom

people in other countries are dying for the right to vote
while some American says, around noon, “I’m starving”

pain is relative
and political

Why are most cops such assholes? Why do the media always side with cops when there’s a protest? Somewhere along the way American citizens lost their right to assemble in public except for family reunions in the park. Now when protesters seize a “public” place and demonstrate, they face riot-geared pigs with horses, pepper spray, tear gas, beanbag shotguns, nightsticks, cruel techniques, and hasty, brutal impulses. In the first 10 minutes of the IMF protest this week my friend Rob was tackled by two cops. A third came and dropped to his knee on Rob’s sternum. Apparently Rob was shaking his booty in front of the cops, taunting them. He deserved it, eh?
Rob was held in jail for 14 hours. For 10 of those hours he was in tight plastic wrist restraints and not allowed to pee. Did you know there are torture victims in your city? I suppose they would have been pleased if he pissed himself. Either that or they’re incompetent bureaucrats. Both?
Mayor Vera Katz expressed her pride in the performance of her police during this event.
It’s unclear whether or not any visible protest is ideologically an exercise of free assembly or civil disobedience. Clearly, the police and the government in general view such activities as being simply illegal.
Perhaps decades of teaching children grammar rather than critical thinking and political awareness (i.e. civic responsibility) we have grown accustomed to having our voice limited to mere voting. As Jello Biafra once asked, “Did you vote for the pentagon? Did you vote for the CIA? Ever try reading the bill of rights to a cop!?”
Voting pamphlets declare, “If you’re not registered you don’t have a vote. If you don’t vote you don’t have a voice.” How ruthlessly oppressive. Others say, “No, in reality your dollar is your vote.” Even worse – our only value and our only purpose in society is then simply to consume. Test lab rats in cages hitting lever A or lever B for the same addictive and carcinogenic pellet.

Visiting Jeff at the hospital on the hill we walk the quartermile long skybridge. I can see most of southeast Portland. I can see the neighborhood where I sat in the bedroom of my second address in the city, a house in an industrial area on busy streets. There were no houses near it, just large repair and fabrication shops and distribution houses. The flashing light from arc welding in the garage across the street tore apart the darkness of my room at night harder than day.
“Mom and Dad I’m sorry. Mom and Dad don’t worry. I’m not the son you wanted.” This was my perception as I sat drinking in that room watching the lights on the skybridge.
On the phone I told dad I’m writing a book and he asked, “This isn’t going to be ‘Mommy and Daddy Dearest’ is it?”
Without knowing that an old friend and I had grown to inhabit opposing worlds, I moved out here to play music with him. We shared a house with an ever-changing cast of about eight other males and one or two girlfriends (theirs). Meth often flowed through that house, sometimes heroin. The drug of choice, however, was beer. I sat in that house in my room many nights, feet on the window sill, drinking beers, staring at the part of the city I could see, including the skybridge with its intermittent lights, warnings to those in flight. I just watched them. It was a time I drank everyday. For novelty I’d occasionally get off the bus from work at the liquor store and drink from a pint of whiskey on the walk home. OK, I maybe did that once.
I had no friends outside that house or in it. No girlfriends. Not even a kiss for long after the day I arrived in Portland. One guy spread the rumor I was gay. Apparently, in an effort to assert dominance, white males often make claims that their perceived rivals are gay. I was the only one with a college education. I was sensitive, open-minded, politically progressive, something of a feminist. I often read, wrote poems, drank wine at times, had no relations with women and one suspiciously close relationship with a guy I really connected with, though platonically. All this added up to the perception that I was gay. Being gay would have really helped my writing career. Interesting. But, overall, none of us gave a shit about anything.
We made the worst noise in the basement of that house. We turned our amps up as loud as we could, an attempt to drown each other out and be heard, some slight desire to agglomerate our angers as well. We also did it because we could. Concrete buildings, not houses, surrounded this house. The music grizzled and plodded to the same beat every night, the closest we came to unanimity. Still, it usually ended up a revolting slogging morass, especially when we had parties. Then the house filled with shady strangers, most of them underage. No one knew who they were or where they came from. The basement would fill with wannabe rockers screaming ineffectually into mics, pounding on oil drums with hammers or screwdrivers, tweaking away on any free instrument there. No one was in control. I’m surprised the house was never looted and trashed. I was always in the basement drunk on the free keg. I weaved and lunged playing guitar. Once, with a wild hair, I jumped and fell backwards landing flat on my back just inches from a wooden pillar. Pert near broke mah neck! I got my long-awaited winter of living like a dirty punk, a dream since high school. It might have been better if it were in LA. More sordid.
Eventually I came up with some songs. We agreed to bring in a singer and a keyboard player. We managed to get a good gig opening for Crash Worship. This was a big night for me, performing for around 1000 people. I was under the misapprehension that it was a big night for us. I’d written the music, played lead guitar, and sang lead vocals on a few. It felt like my debut on the whole music scene. Before the show, the bassist and the drummer got themselves so drunk they made it a fiasco. All they could do was stumble, fuck up the songs, and giggle. They were having a ball. It was that night I resolved to get out of that house and get myself some new people. I got my first Portland kiss that night as well – from a girl no less. If you haven’t fucked for a year or more, that first night back in the saddle is like the Hoover Dam letting loose all its water, making LA burn so hard appliances ignite and lights explode. I lasted eight hours and still didn’t come. That’s not a boast.
So now I’m boastful of my masculinity. Well, to be honest I would not have lasted half as long if I were sober. Why on earth would anyone fuck for that long?
I had managed to spend the whole winter there before finally moving out. My coldest winter. The furnace of that house burned heating oil so easily that $100 would only keep us warm one week. Since only a few of us had jobs we couldn’t afford heat. We almost never bathed. There was no shower, only a clawfoot bath. Filling the bath with hot water made the room warm for a bit, but the cold could take the water’s heat in under 15 minutes. We rarely even changed our clothes. We went to work to get warm. One snowy day I opened the front room windows, put the speakers on the porch, and played some ridiculous Mickey Hart rainforest music. I stood in the snow in the front yard smoking a cigarette, holding a beer in my leather-gloved hand. Earlier, I had left work early because I had a terrible sore throat. To kill the paralyzing pain I swallowed two small bottles of Robitussin DM. As the busses passed, taking workers home, the dog came out through the window to join me. We started jumping and playing in the snow. The doggy joyfully leapt as I danced in graceful jumps from one foot to the next, my arms raised in stylized ecstasy. It felt the dog and I dancing. I hadn’t transcended anything. I just distorted reality so far that, just for a moment, it couldn’t get a clear shot at me. Keep that up and it might stay that way, or you’re life will be a pure work of art, or it may creep up slowly and shoot you dead.

Mom and Dad don’t worry.

8. Roots and Associations

My values and priorities have brought me much satisfaction but no worldly success. In fact, my values sabotage possibilities of worldly success. If I was handed a million dollars I feel that somehow my credibility would be for shit. Beauty and wealth are character flaws – one is either compensating for them by being insecure, or they’re an asshole. I would feel that the words I write and the songs I sing would be less real and believable were I beautiful, wealthy, or secure. I don’t even want to own a shitty car, rather ride the bus or bike it. This is fear of success and fear of failure in the same ball of shit. On the surface I don’t fear money and success. Deep inside I despise the material world, big and dumb. But if money could stain my voice so easily, does this not indicate the weakness of my voice? Well, much less money has brought many early graves. Plus, money breeds insecurity and fear (i.e. republican thinkin’).
“But I am the dice man
Balls on the line, man
Do you take a chance, Huh?”
We were drinking in his apartment and a friend of his and I gave him shit about fitting the yuppie profile so excellently. He rebelled against this implication by saying, “I am not! Here, I’ll put something on the stereo that will prove I’m not.” He went over to the stereo with his drink as conversation continued. After some time passed he finally got a CD in. He had obviously forgotten that he was going to prove something as his choice ended up to be soundtracks of Italian pornos. We excitedly called him on it, but he just shrugged it off and quickly put in some Husker Du.
Karen Finley once said that the only good reason to go home for the holidays was to get new material.
When I was 12, 13, and 14 my parents let me work 40 hours a week at a hardware store for $20 bucks a day. I’m used to never getting what I’ve earned. One of my earliest memories is telling my brother and dad that, “money’s bad.” That’s exactly what I said. I think I was about seven or eight. They said, “Well, you better like money. You’re gonna need it.” I don’t know if that’s exactly what they said.
Poor brother, he was actually made a shoeshine boy by the parents. This is funny. At around 12 years old, he was dressed in 19th century clothing and dropped off at a historic village for tourists to gawk at and intimidate. He was told to ask strangers if they’d like their shoes shined and, sure enough, he had to shine them. He wasn’t even paid! What humiliation. I imagine seeing this little boy’s face bent directly over the jauntily positioned shoe, a face full of confusion and bitterness. Supposedly, he worked for tips, but he never got any. I don’t know how long it lasted. I think I recall that after being caught in the rain and a lot of sobbing and pleading, he didn’t have to shine no shoes no mo’ no mo’. This is one of those charming stories families laugh about when they’re adults. Ha Ha.
My parents know what it is to be poor. They don’t want their sons to go through that, looking at each other in a bare, unfurnished apartment, no money, nothing to eat but a hot dog they shared, looking into each other’s eyes full of tears. They don’t want their son to go through winter without heat. They were right that I didn’t know what I was getting into when I came out west, that I didn’t know what it’s like to have to fend for yourself in a hostile environment. They knew how brutal life would be for me that first year, and they tried to prevent it. It would be too easy to say that I would have made the same choice again. However, they must know how much that winter deepened me. At least I know. I got through it without being damaged. I won.
I also think that intellectually I had an idea of what was coming. I knew I’d make near to nothing and consort with shady, destructive characters wherever I went. But I was ready to try everything, to destroy the last illusions that my liberal arts education hadn’t already smashed. For awhile there I was living like a destitute Byron (without the sex). I was young and ready to take full advantage of this opportunity to make mistakes and try the world, abolish mediocrity, have extreme experiences no matter how dark or ugly, stand around a San Francisco dive bar talking to girls naked after my rock show. Except for all the drink, I don’t regret those first eight months in the “city.” Ever since, it’s been an upward spiral.
Starting with nothing makes everything richer.
Mommy, I’m fine. Daddy, I’m fine.
I’ve been incredibly fortunate to have the family I have. I come from a long line of drunks and suicides. Fortunately for me and my brother, our parents worked on themselves and got rid of most, if not all, of their brutal upbringing before trying to raise kids. They severed the line on our sad, dark heritage and gave their children opportunities they could not have dreamt of in their youth. My father learned of parenting by caring for his abandoned mother. My mother learned to rise above the psychological war-ground of her childhood . They brought us up well.
When they took us to fine restaurants the other patrons would sink and sneer in loathing that small children were brought to such a place. They had a complete turnabout as they witnessed our refined manners and behavior. By the end of dinner, strangers would approach the table heaping compliments on my parents for raising such well-behaved children.
My most traumatic childhood experiences, though my parents caused them, bear no resemblance to mental abuse. Around the time I entered my teens I started getting in trouble nearly every month or less. It would be interesting to talk to them about what I did to get in trouble. There was nothing serious, criminal, or memorable. Mostly, I think, it was trouble for bad grades or selfish actions or staying out too late or being dishonest. Anyway, when the big trouble came I was given a heated lecture which concluded with my dad asking with exasperated frustration, “When are you going to wake up and join the real world?” or “When are you going to change?” He would stare me down, waiting for a reply. I would only mumble timidly, “I don’t know” or “I’ll try.” Then the parents would leave me alone to search my soul for an answer. I had no idea. The tension was unbearable there all alone with this question/accusation hanging over my head like the sword of Damocles. I would often throw myself on the bed or the floor, grip my head in my hands, and pound it into the pillow or the carpet. Or I would just sit there dumbfounded, shaking my head, trying to work the mathematical problem my parents set before me. But I would not be able to think. When I would ask myself when I’d “wake up and change and join the real world” my mind would go absolutely blank, as though frozen. I was entirely aware of my conscious, blank mind, its inability to produce a single thought, the extreme tension of anxiety, the palpable taste of failure, and a sense of future doom.
Of course, it’s unreasonable to expect anyone to have an answer to such a question, especially a child. I could have said, “right now,” “when I’m forty,” “two weeks, three days, seven hours, 32 minutes, and 59 seconds,” or “never.” All of these responses would have been quite inappropriate. No answer could be appropriate. Paralysis is appropriate.
Though these moments were extremely traumatic for me, I remember always feeling a strong sense of sadness for my parents that I could so easily hurt them, that they suffered so much confusion and fear, so much uncertainty about me and my future. I could see their love for me produce an agony which lodged itself in my own heart.
So, you see, for this to be the peak of my childhood trauma is not only incredibly lucky, it’s laughably minute. I can’t imagine experiencing the intricate and debilitating suffering created by incest, psychological abuse, or beatings. Comparatively, my childhood was something of a beautiful, perfect dream. I think psychologists should use us as subjects to study discord in the perfect family. The only conflict that remains is that while my parents placed the social contract on their pedestals, I put art and ideology on mine.
What I’m getting to is that these moments of my “trauma” (if that word is still applicable) engendered in me an ability to ruthlessly examine myself. This skill has been both my key to survival and my cross, poison/cure. To date, this book is the supreme expression of both. My pharmakon has helped me evolve emotionally and intellectually to heights I could never have imagined. It can also make my life hell (see chapter 1). Without this central feature of my psyche, this abstract gland emitting poison/medicine, I would be someone entirely different, probably rising through the ranks in the army or a multinational corporation instead of brainy deadbeat.

9. Strained Reason Missive

Our Fathers are
too old to be fathers.
Wind forced them to
wings of joy
and we to pretense
of fatherly love.

He Makes a Good Voyage of Nothing

Feste’s motley garb alienated him from the aristocrats’ sentiment of truth. Though his constant wisdom demonstrated that he wore no motley in his brain, he was not credited for service beyond what his station superficially represented.

“The rain, it raineth every day.”

March 1, 2002
Pacific Power
A PacifiCorp company

Dear reader,
Thank you for contacting us regarding your account. As the limiting of the vast waves of imagination digs at a strong craft bearing on the parched land through a stronger appeal that is winning this time; the greeting party is on steroid. The next time I enter into a wrestling match will be with you and you with me. The feeling threat to me is none to you as much as I am to you through who I've been. The next time I respect you will be now. The next time the world bathes a cold baby in cold water will be. If the reward of spring is summer to your fall, we won't have to Sunday our Friday nights. The next time I lift a finger it will be yours. If I couldn't swim I wouldn't swim, but I wouldn't stop anyone from trying to swim, only from drowning. I'm not done with you and killing me because of you, with you, for me. Someone always pays. It's reality, and we fall for it; we fall for it every time. Everybody down on the double! As you requested, enclosed is a copy of your billing or payment history with us. If you would relax we could talk about why you think the social security number, the telephone number, and the driver's license number have the mark of the beast. Perhaps I will change your mind.
On behalf of Power and Light, we want to say how much we value and appreciate you as a customer. If you have any questions or concerns, please call us toll-free at 1-888-221-7070, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, psychopathic.

Sincerely,

Pacific Power Customer Service
Enclosure

10. Shitting on Everything to Live

Frog-giggin’ meant going to a pond with our B B guns, approaching frogs who sat quietly with only their eyes and nostrils above the pond water surface, and shooting them. We’d grab the frogs and fling them in the grass, finish them off if need be. Jon would stand arm straight pointing his pistol down, grim, like he was executing a blindfolded captive. This started innocently as a more challenging game of catch and release. Jon and I’d gather them up in a pail, alive, and bring them to a large tub of water, put them in and watch them swim around. They were ours, until finally we gathered them up again and flung the whole pail of frogs into the middle of the pond in a cascade of brown pond water and splayed, frightened flying frogs. The challenge of catching live frogs got dull. Maybe we thought ourselves ready to tackle some adult issues, so we brought out our B B guns. After play evolved into full on frog-giggin’, we were desensitized enough to have manned the gas chambers. We killed and we killed.
One fine summer day we decided to drop some of our fresh kills into a pail, take them back near his parents’ trailer, douse them with kerosene, and light ‘em up. We flung plenty of fuel in there, tossed in a match, and stood back and watched. We were both pretty horrified to see the flesh covering their thighs peel off, little fingers melting, eyes popping, liquid fat pooling and boiling in the bottom of the pail. Thank providence we killed them first. Still, we sickened at the sight of it and disgusted ourselves for creating it. [Is this to confessional mode again? Sorry.] He tried to douse the flames with water, but they were stubborn and slow to die. We just felt dirty. How could we have such an appetite for annihilation to first massacre, then mutilate little froggies? It was hard to breathe under such suffocating weight. I was afraid I was breathing vaporized frog fat. We had done evil just then. We needed to hide what we’d done and give the violated frog corpses a nice burial with flowers and one solemn dog present.

I almost died there once, at that blueberry farm. It was Jonathan Motyka’s Dad’s Dad’s land. Jon went off to help his mom with something. I was climbing an old rope, commando-style, inside the walls of an old barn with no roof. The rope broke off. I flew off the wall backwards. I landed in a patch of grass. I fell from about 10 feet up flat on my back. I was so winded I was delirious. I just laid there with my eyes shut until I could breathe. I knew I wasn’t hurt, so I just relaxed. I eventually opened my eyes. I stared at the clouds and the sky awhile. When I finally looked around me I saw an overturned wheelbarrow, a sideways rototiller, some lawnmowers, all within arms-reach of where I fell. No one knew I was in there. I pictured lying there with a fractured neck, a broken head, impalement, my first brush with death.

After-school special: kids are told by parents, “Don’t play in that old barn on the hill.” Kids play in old barn on the hill. Jumping from loft into hay, a kid gets a rusty pitchfork through his thigh. Scared to tell parents he was playing in old barn on the hill. Makes other kids swear secrecy. Gets gang-green. Doctor tries amputation. Kid dies anyway. Child viewers terrified by paradox the fable suggests. They fear if they don’t tell their parents everything they do wrong they will die. Child horror immobilizes innocence and discovery both. No exits. “In” door with no “out” door. We simmer as the first word we learn is “no.” Ashamed of mistakes and the inevitability of them. Psychological scam from good neighbor Sam – paralyze with fear.

I’ll never understand the Republican conservative position except as a life of fear. Two psychologists in Tucson theorized that while the unconscious mind considers its mortality, it takes far more extreme measures against perceived enemies then when death is not in the mind. The preachers of death smile at the masses of Christian soldiers. They feel attacked by words like “homophobic.” They feel moral high ground under their feet, no matter where they stand. They have a term for those who actively or passively support “The Homosexual Agenda” – “heterophobic.” The gay agenda is to secure tolerance, equality, and acceptance. I fail to see what is even slightly scary about any of that. David Cross joked “I’m not opposed to gay marriage, because I am tolerant and rational.” What is that so threatening? Perception. Christians live by too pliable a poetry which they constantly read but fear interpreting.

So in the beginning you offered the option of taking up religion. Luckily, I didn’t have parents that brainwashed me with such comfortable and simple fears (pre-enlightenment). I was fortunate enough to decide from a blank slate. I found nihilism, hedonism, selfism, pleasure principles, poetic mysticism, political activism, cults of nonconformity, fashion, sobriety, marijuana, TV, art, toil, permaculture. I found intellectual self-flagellation, intellectual masturbation, and self-negation. I was an alcoholist, but never again. It wasn’t long ago that I realized the best you can give after kindness is nothing. A gift is a curse. I’ve tried my best to live by nothing, with it, in it, of it, as it. I felt that authenticity is impossible without nothing. Real expression impossible without negating ego, removing self. Nothing continues to be the focal point of all my intellectual activity and the subject of most of my poems and all my papers (especially King Lear, in which The Bard presents "nothing" in its most agonizing cruelty and its most beautiful exquisiteness.) So God, since it’s all you’ve given me and all you are, I’ve done my best with the nothing you gave me. I’ve elevated its intellectual possibilities beyond all reasonable proportion. I still think it’s scientific fact that 99% of our known and unknown universe is nothing. All of this adds up, of course, to nothing. That’s why I’m through now with nothing. I want nothing to do with philosophies that contain the word "nothing" in their title, subtitle, introduction, general text, footnotes, appendices, or works cited. Conversely, this does not mean that I’m actually looking for something. I still want nothing. Christ, All the People of America Feel Entitled! This wide-ranging entitlement has added just a few extra watts to every cubic meter of our atmosphere, the end result being an increase in temperature of 5 degrees Fahrenheit (so far) every decade and almost complete destruction of the landscape. Don’t believe me? Look out your window. If you aren’t repairing the damage, you’re making it worse. Even in the remotest parts of Arizona desert, Montana, etc., the impact of western culture has damaged the land for centuries. Irradiated landscapes are ruined for millennia. Earth is now a shabby place to live. Even the most remote places in the world – Antarctica, Siberia, Greenland, the Himalayas – all are rapidly declining, melting, smeared and lessened by greed in near and distant lands. Even our late 20th century Vice President stated that in 50 years we can expect to see the polar ice caps melt away entirely in summertime. Are we just gonna have to get used to it? Future generations will not be able to enjoy the changing of the seasons as we do. The heat will make water a scarce and bloody commodity. The legacy of the 20th century will be waste, mountains of waste, mickey mouse – still just as adored as ever, though nobody can say why – and a climate that forces every living thing on the planet to make some quick and final decisions that will result in the slim possibility of survival or their likely demise. Trees, plants, flora can’t migrate. Nor can the large mammals. We’re only a quarter of the way into this period, too, all because of a brief 150 year oil binge.
Life, you have offered me nothing as my hope. Now I must reject even that as fruitless, extravagant, and pointless. I
65555555555555555555555555555-===========================
(our cat, Hero, interjected the line above by walking on the keyboard. No, she didn’t actually walk. She typed this, and I think it’s fitting in the context. Hero channeled non-human life’s rebuttal. I don’t know what the "6" is to mean. Perhaps an allusion to The Beast and the pre-lapsarian era. I don’t really go for that though. The string of five’s is clearly symbolic of a human timeline, five signifying the defining characteristic that makes us who we are: five fingers, one of which being the thumb, without which we would not have tools, without which . . . blah blah blah. These fives line up in sequential generations, 28 epochs, eras, or ages since our distant ancestors wielded the first tool, whether its purpose was to produce dinner, music, or the death of another more evolved or less evolved ancestor. (I believe we had music before we had language.) Then comes a dash telegraphically connecting this whole history of humanity to an exceedingly long sign of equality, as if to stress the immensity of it. Interestingly enough, Hero typed 27 conjunctive equal signs, one less than our human history. The message here is not only universal imperfection, a lack of balance just slight enough to be persistently infuriating and irritating. It also points to the fact that the equality that is produced is profound, but can not be weighed evenly with human history. In other words, the history is an inadequate whole, irreducible to an idea of equal value in truth. And what is the truth the equal sign points to? Obviously, Hero typed just enough characters to fill the line and leave room for nothing. Yes, Nothing. The sum of human history equals nothing. Well, sort of. Isn’t that a relief to you? A grand piece of solace? I mean, it’s an incomplete truth, but you don’t want complete truth, right? That would destroy your freedom. You know what the priests say about free will, how happy they are you all got tossed out of the garden. I’m sorry non-god or Nobodaddy, but I can’t rely on rationality or insanity. All I can do now is pick my battles, decide my goals, and try not to keep fucking up. I’m not going to hitch a ride with passion either. I know she’s a cold, heartless bitch in the end who doesn’t give two shits for anybody but herself. I’m convinced that in order to be a functioning adult one must assemble their daily experience before it happens, travel through life ignoring it. One doesn’t have to loose one’s edge to be an adult. There’s no need to give in to relieving the desperation you cause the world. There’s no need to get soft and devote your nights and weekends to TV viewing and your days to getting a bigger better TV set. That’s part of the good fight. That’s part of what keeps us caring and working for peace and justice. That’s where the good art comes from. Of course nobody but a very perceptive few want to buy or even look at the good art because it screams out all these things. It demands you work in soup kitchens and stop driving that SUV and pick up that trash in the woods and listen to the protesters before judging them and know and care who your neighbors are and not base value of all things on their commercial potential and maybe not join the winning team just to be a winner. The winners are the problem. Like Zinn said, the wrong people are in power while those who should have power are at the bottom. Those who fight for justice and equality are often at the bottom while those with the worst impulse for greed and power are at the top.
The most damaging thing one can do with their adulthood is construct a value system in with the dollar sign at the top of the pyramid. Most Americans are guilty of this, and most of them don’t know it. They’ve lost all their childhood and have little memory and no concern for where they were when they were 2 or 10 or 14 or 17 years old, or what they thought of the world back then. Many children never get a chance to imagine, watching 3 hours of TV a day starting at 5 months old. A yearly two-hour meditation on the succession of one’s years would really help. I’m sounding like some dirty hippie here.
One of the more fascinating contradictions is the adult that thinks they are liberal, aware, and open to the world when they are actually conservative, closed-down, and afraid of nontraditional ideas. It’s even more funny when they are close to you and you just can’t find a good, positive way to tell them. Fascinating, just fascinating.
So anyway. What I’m saying here is that I deny everything. Conversely, I accept everything but feel in no way accountable. I’m just going to keep using my bike and public transit as long as I can. I knew a guy in his mid-50s that was still riding his bike up to 14 miles a day five days a week. I’m shooting for that.
But what would be more honest is this: I say almost anything I can to be provocative and entertaining. I don’t believe what I say. The greatest importance is simply to speak. I write to titillate myself then think it’s beautiful. I just assume I’m making sense and that some of you will know when I’m joking and when I’m serious. I’m the only one to blame for this chapter’s existence. In turn, I blame it on myself and everyone outside my door. Also, I don’t really care about being entertaining. I’ll never send my work to Ira Glass. He wants people to be honest. I need a big cigarette to tell me I’m fucked. And a dark letter tells me I have cancer. My liver went south. My joy is an off TV. Hate gets no name in my mouth, though it’s there secret in my heart. Meanwhile, I make art to hide it thinking I express it. Meanwhile the western world explodes through the East. Long as I’m humble I’ll make it, Right?

11. Bucolic Fable with Panel Discussion

Summoned out of the house at three A.M. by some hum in his head, the man jumped into his car, drove the bucolic lanes with eyes like an eel, making the limbs and hedges fly by like slaloms. He speed over a possum. The clearance of the axle spared the animal any injury. Two nights had passed since he was seized from his single-size mattress bed to inspect the hills for an end to his indistinct but irresistible yearning. The flat fields carved with tiny deep creeks and the little hills with tiny caves held no secrets, no treasure, no oracle, no answer. There was no tradition or history in the land that lived or spoke from the grave. No albino monks on the roadside, no all-nite tent revivals, no werewolves to battle, no lovers to run to, no life-changing meetings with worldly hitchhikers. He bit his lower lip in frustration. He took the curves dangerously, always keeping the car near 50 mph. Though the top was down he could barely breathe but better than in bed near suffocation. But as the wheels kept turning and the land rushed away, more kept coming. Always more earth, always more ground to cover. Pointless limitlessness. His bitterness at the limitations of dumb, dull life made him swerve toward a tree. He swerved back in the road and smiled at himself sadistically. Anger shot from his constricted chest to his head like a hot, white froth. He slammed his head on the steering wheel several times to make it go away. He was pissed at himself that he never let himself be more free to find what’s in his dreams. He never hoped for hope. He swerved the car into a lot at a construction site and braked abruptly. He let himself up from the rack. He sat in the car a moment, then opened the door and got out. He paced around and on top of the mounds of sand near the new foundation trying to stem the already abating attack of self-disgust. Obliviorating, he came upon a portapotty, opened the door, pulled down his pants, and sat down, head in hands, fingers in hair, eyes pulled wide open by strained flesh, s