Unfinished Blog in the Garage

Uncanny

2011-06-02T22:49:00.000-07:00

Chicago Poem #77

2011-01-30T00:46:00.001-08:00

What you want to know is
how it feels to walk down Berteau
and Know
that tomorrow this city bows
from Division to Roosevelt
from Madison to Eisenhower Express
ways of getting over
this is destitution...a word we make up
When we make up the city's makeup
Emmanuel and Ezekiel are made.

Chicago Poem #99

2010-11-10T22:22:00.000-08:00

"We did it!" we said,
to each other in the streets.
We meant, "We set ourselves up!"
We meant all that shit we talked.

"I am disappointed!" We exclaimed.
"I thought it was our time but it isn't!"
We looked over in the corner, and somebody
whispered to us, that guy owns the place

And that's when we knew
we were about to get more than our noses broken...

Chicago Poem #2

2010-10-02T16:26:00.000-07:00

King's not dead just stepping down.
A perpetual Prince is the best, safest kind of king.
The lake's unfinished but doesn't seem that way
from space.
The lakefront is a work of art in constant flux
And someone is always about to eat you alive.
Some invasive Asian carp was slouching towards Wacker.
Time to get out, you've been sent for
By the biggest shouldered brute,
It's time.

Chicago Poem #21

2010-06-18T20:53:00.001-07:00

I hope you sign LeBron or Dwayne
Because it always feels like home there.
And maybe this time I can be genuine
in my love of iconography
For a city so shot through with ask.

Where have you gone my gray-eyed planetarium?
And what have you bulldozed my cheesecake beef?
I spent so many nights on the Old Style veranda
I smoked so many lungs in the mouth of a new wave
And it was hard to find a job I didn't hate.

But hate for a job is the City that works.

Chicago Poem #45

2009-12-14T14:48:00.001-08:00

Brother and Sister kept, check
Family in the suburbs
Family in the retail shops
Stiff winds wound up; always movement
Putting on that Renaissance mask
Pretending another much needed rebirth,
Native sons grow up and move out.

I looked up pictures of you
on the internet
from the Forties, Fifties and Sixties
Those won't matter much longer.
They are scenes from a movie made
twenty years later doesn't matter anymore.
Those cars were beasts and it is all too bad we destroyed.

Chicago Poem #28

2009-02-15T10:04:00.000-08:00

A trailblazer and a felon
walk into a large building
towards a bank of elevators
and wait for the next car
going up.

Breezing past them,
in a plaid sport coat
is a Quiet American
with an appointment to keep.

A muted shuffling rush of humanity and...

There is only room for two men
on the next car going up.

What happens is an overreaching
respect for authority
mixes with a genuine loathing
of anything but the self.
No one will enter the next car.
No one was sent.

The doors close,
three men stand near the bank of elevators.
And the city moves forward,
educating its young kings
to clamor to be sent,
to be wanted.
To wear and where and wear.

Chicago Poem #47

2009-01-14T14:57:00.000-08:00

I could go just to hear:
the funny way the barmaid asks us
"What's you guys' story?"
The fact that teenagers I once knew
now own bungalows and brownstones
Just to see:
The light switch for the dartboard
put in a wiseguy location
six feet up a wall
with a sloppy paint job
The daily utterance
"just let me get offa work"
The daily plea
"where's my piece?"
Daily, this place was dirty snow
and walking uphill both ways
winds that turned the corner
to frostbite your lips
Your dry lips that spit
"just let me get outta this city"
Never, ever could escape
It closed up around my ankles,
my knees, my thighs, my right hand,
my left hand, my hat.

Chicago Poem #1

2008-11-30T15:04:00.000-08:00

I wonder how many sandwiches
Slid down the counter
in the midst of a conversation
That meant the birth of a child,
the loser meeting the winner,
the beginning of a job,
the end of a career.

I think of Studs
combing back his hair in the mirror.
I wonder what he preferred.
Italian beef, Turkey, an all beef hot dog.
Maybe a taco or a latke, instead.
Was he on the wall at Manny's Deli
with Jim McMahon? Nah.
He had more important things to do.

I imagine the best sandwich Studs ever ate
was served to him
in a simple apartment,
smoke from a cigarette hanging in the air
with the static of the tape rolling,
by a tough-handed woman
on stale bread, with a bit of government cheese
maybe some bologna and bright yellow mustard
And he savored its separate parts quietly
as she told him everything.

Chicago Poem #44

2008-11-05T09:01:00.000-08:00

So, we change the poem.

Fall to our knees,
stay up too late, take the fifth.
Chicago holds you in its memory
while a slaugtherhouse in Iowa
files for bankruptcy.
There is more work for you,
I will spirit,
now that you have volunteered.

So we change the poem:
Tonight, Division Street is united.

Chicago Poem #46

2008-10-09T08:20:00.000-07:00

They lost again.
And after all of that.
We pinned so much
hope, prized possessions, plastic googaw -
Remember that Ernie
never even tasted
the chilly, sweet dusk
on an October field
Under bright lights.
(The want is more/contains more)
Never heard the release
of a bellow and a linsky
like Novembers
that promise
to be
everything.

Yeah. You can call me Joe.

2008-10-03T11:12:00.000-07:00

Laser Quest: Book One

2008-09-07T09:20:00.000-07:00

They would go on to work on the Large Hadron Collider. But first, the war against evil scienitists and their abuses of lasers would be fought in the alleyways of Cambridge, England. This would only be the beginning; the beginning of a great and perilous journey. This was LASER QUEST!

Found Poem: For Sioban

2008-09-07T09:00:00.000-07:00

Sioban
you had all the time
to just come out
and say
But Im to low
for you
@*% Now
what I've
to tell
the other
half of the coin

Chicago Poem #33

2008-07-30T14:03:00.000-07:00

The Chicago Avenue bus is number 60
The Clark Street bus is 22
The Fullerton bus is 74
The Armitage bus is 73
One less.
The Ashland bus is 9
The Ashland Express X9
The Western bus is 49
The Western Express X49
The Damen Bus is 50
One more.

Waiting for the bus,
I imagine they are waiting
in a long queue for the Uffizi
to view some fine art
from some Renaissance
during some plague.

Handmade Underground Beautiful Books from Marseille

2008-07-18T12:42:00.000-07:00

If you're ever in Marseille, check out his bookstore:

Librairie Le Lievre de Mars
21, rus des 3 mages, 13001 marseille

I bought several handmade books there that were amazing and beautiful. My favorite "L'Usine Nouvelle" came with a website.

This website was everything I expected and more. It plays into my idea of French Artists. I clicked all over the page hoping it would lead me further. But, ah, Monsieur...Madamoiselle...Life is Absurd! Give cigarettes to babies!

http://stratalim.free.fr/

http://www.hallesaintpierre.org/

Chicago Poem #17

2008-07-02T15:57:00.000-07:00

Art by Todd Irwin

Old notebooks have resurfaced
and apparently,
late 20th Century Chicago
was full of whiny brats
with bad cursive,
naive notions of life and art
and disposable pens.
Let us now sing.

Chicago Poem #54

2008-06-10T12:49:00.000-07:00

Dear Brother, you ask:
How is the rest of the world?
I can only report on that
which is not in front of me.
These days are all looking behind
at a place it never was.
Even if I returned.
And London is never that way, I imagine:
The only thing left
is that bike we built. You were angry
when I left it in front of the taqueria.
It was stolen and then
Ditched in the river.
It's still submerged
in the waters by the old tannery
which will always stink up my memories
with the smell of tanning hides.

See Clare College Through My Eyes!

2008-06-10T12:38:00.000-07:00

The photo of Clare College Bridge on SCHMAP was taken by yours truly:

http://www.schmap.com/england/historic/

Chicago Poem #39

2008-06-02T14:27:00.000-07:00

I was so beautiful at nineteen,
I swear.
and so was the city,
when it was nineteen first
and when it was nineteen second.
I was never around for that.
But I am aware of the fact
and the possibility
of being nineteen twice.
To get there? Fire.

Apologies to Housman

2008-06-02T14:24:00.000-07:00

Chicago Poem #24

2008-05-29T09:00:00.000-07:00

I used to live
in the building
with the most stories.

Chicago Poem #73

2008-05-26T05:18:00.000-07:00

Rules on a paper napkin
written down.
These fools of my past
have let me down.

I Do Good Deeds in the name of Liza

2008-05-21T14:56:00.000-07:00

Most people will just assume you’re a regular Joe – a God-fearin’, America-lovin’ ex-Marine humbled by the insanity of his youth and the honesty of a steady job. But anything will make them nervous, be it a little bit of an accent to your speaking, a dreaminess to the tone of your voice or a funny stride. They’d just as soon throw you in a nice little category then try and figure what might be eating at you, what keeps you from blowing your brains out, you’re so depressed.
But I do have one sweet thought that keeps me hanging in there. I think about her about half the time I’m driving this tow truck around. I got two hands on the wheel and the third one scratching my ass when I pull up on this lady and her flashing hazards. That’s right. Three hands. And I don’t care if I’m a mutated freak or a normal hand-over-fist working man, I’m here to help with only the best of intentions. I do good works in the name of Liza.

The Times, Eh. They don't change so much...

2008-05-12T10:19:00.000-07:00

From a NYtimes article on Suze Rotolo's New Memoir (She's the girlfriend on the cover of Freewheelin'):

Still, she is not nostalgic. “All this indulgence of the ’60s, ay-yi-yi, get over it,” she said. Every era and place hold magic for people willing to live intently in them, she believes. “Everything occurs again, just differently,” she said. “There will always be creative people who feel that they’re different and create a community of some kind. Whether it’s a physical neighborhood or an Internet neighborhood, in Bushwick or in Greenwich Village, it’s not over."

Link to the article:
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/11/arts/music/11decu.html?pagewanted=all

I hope you are all out there creating your communities. Invite me over sometime.

Cars Suck

2008-05-06T07:18:00.000-07:00

Taking into account the height of the billboard, soaring an extra four or five stories over the highest five story building that runs along the Eisenhower Expressway razing land through the West Side, not land anymore but negative space sucking cars into downtown and all points south, and taking into account the subtlety of the change, the way the black letters on the ad had hung proudly, printing the product name simply: Cadillac CTS, a sexualized whisper to the masses set against a calm sea and a calm gray sky, the calm and cultured car parked in clam digging weather – whoever had changed the message, inverted its meaning to the exact opposite of the ad agency’s intent, had accomplished an enormous feat of will and wit, of brains and brawn and one asks, “How the fuck did they get all the way up there?”
Their work done, the billboard now read Cars Suck in the Monday morning rush. It was the dead of winter adding to the profundity of the feat and begging another question: “How the fuck did they not freeze to death?”
To be literal:

CADILLAC CTS
CA ILLAC TS
CA LAC S
CA AC SU
CARS SUCK

It was a seamless edit and the casual viewer could not make out where the original letters had been. The results were so expertly executed that it was as if this was the ad that had been paid for, this was the original intent.
Who are they? Who could have done this? Mischievous and unsupervised neighborhood kids? No way. Neo-situationists gone crazy with a degree in graphic design and too much unemployed time on their hands? Maybe. Communists we are unaware of? Maybe not. Was it a frat boy bet fulfilled? No fuckin’ way. Maybe it was a competing car company, a Japanese one like Toyota or Mitsubishi, who had in their employ seven samurai of civil disobedience. The message was written, regardless of who did it, and the message was received, regardless of who saw it. It made websites, briefly, it made news, maybe, but was blacked out, generally, by scandal in City Hall and a triple homicide out on the West Side – a drug deal gone wrong in a garage. And then there was the war and the coming war and the war behind us and we asked ourselves simply, who are we?

At four o’clock that Monday afternoon, a team of men ascended to the face of the billboard that hangs over the Eisenhower and began the work of replacing the ad, this time with an ad for breath-freshening gum featuring a black man’s nose, mouth and tongue and the phrase Fa shizzle.

The Luthier

2008-04-16T15:59:00.000-07:00

After the tragedy, the luthier gently glided into town with enough wood for 33 guitars. Looking around and seeing that no one wanted a guitar after the tragedy, the luthier, enjoying the sun and the brisk breezes the town offered, strolled to the park, across the street from the school, and pulled out his sketchbook. He drew up some plans. They looked like this:

The luthier decided his unused guitar materials would better serve the children of the town. While everyone was at the funerals or pitching in for the clean up effort or discussing preventative measures to avoid another tragedy, the luthier set to work. The adults looked at him with scorn for not being in attendance at one of the funerals, or pitching in for the clean up effort or coming up with preventative strategies. But what were they doing with their scornful looks? What was the good in that?

It looked like a skate board ramp but it wasn't. When the kids found out it wasn't going to be a skateboard ramp - they found out by walking up to the luthier and asking: "Hey. Are you building a skate ramp?" Luthier: "No." - the children looked upon the luthier with scorn. School had been called off indefinitely in the wake of the tragedy and when you're a kid, if you're not in school, you're either skating on a skate ramp or looking on scornfully waiting for one to appear. And that's OK, kids.

The luthier painted it in graduated shades of blue from a deep cobalt at the top to a light robin's egg near the bottom and then slowly, slowly into white. He painted one black stripe at the bottom. It did include a third dimension, not illustrated in the plan, but no one was for sure how deep the luthier went with that dimension. 33 guitars deep, I suppose.

The luthier finished and promptly left town. He headed for the city to hear some blues at a blues club he knew where his cousin was the chef d'hotel.

It was quite pretty. And slowly, because it still kind of looked like a skate ramp, the children approached it. They sat in its bottom. They said nothing to each other for hours on end. Eventually, school started back up, but the kids would all end up there after school, just sitting and being quiet and thinking. Or not thinking. It was nice. It was a dream.

One of the mothers of the tragedy could be found sitting there most mornings, while the kids were taking their lessons. The squirrels kind of liked it too, but couldn't manage to climb its sides. That was funny to watch.

But eventually, the kids realized it wasn't their dream, it was someone else's, someone strange. Before school let out for summer, two weeks later to make up for the time lost to the tragedy, the kids had kicked it down and used the wood to build a small skate ramp that they quickly lost interest in by mid-July.

Best Teacher of USA!

2008-04-10T10:03:00.001-07:00

What a great group! But back to Graz where they will lift weights and practice their English so that one day, they, too, may be Governor of California.

So, would this certificate, with its grammar mistakes, be a white elephant, a trojan horse or a pyrrhic victory? Or is there a better word for such a well-intentioned gesture?

NO FOOTBALL

2008-04-04T13:34:00.001-07:00

No football. No handball. No badminton. No yard darts. No lawn bowling. No archery, croquet or cricket. No jacks, craps or nine ball. No golfing, dog-walking or court jestering. No tomfoolery. No birdwatching. No regarding this grass with disdain. No running. No coveting the patch of grass. No imagining a freedom picnic taking place here - past, present, OR future. You may, however, light up a fag and drink a Carlsberg Special Brew out of a brown paper sack. That's just bloody well fine, now, innit?

Another Business Idea

2008-02-27T05:38:00.000-08:00

VIKING FUNERALS 4 LESS

The Book I Write in 2008?

2008-01-24T22:09:00.000-08:00

The ideas are already flowing. I had this stroke of genius! Its obviously related to my upcoming job search. I think this might get written. Here is the title page and table of contents.

"Business Ideas"

1) By-appointment-only coffee (Yr latest album, e-mail, customized cup, fresh underwear)

2) Haircut Hat Day (The Day In The Life of The Haircut Hat - "That's right. THE DAY."

3) Guitar Tuners Unlimited

4) Bottle Collecting Robots - Realistic and Practical Technologies

5) Smell This, Inc.

6) Thoughtful Cards to Your Sister

Books I Wrote in 2007

2008-01-16T22:12:00.000-08:00

The Blue Heron On Methadone

Stories by Ammon Torrence

To order a copy, e-mail ammontorrence@gmail.com and make an offer.

Cheerios!

I am a Honky ass reader?

2008-01-16T22:10:00.000-08:00

I resolve to read fewer books by white men and more books by presidential dogs.

Books I read in 2007

2008-01-16T22:02:00.000-08:00

20 Books in 2007 List

1. Gallatin Canyon Thomas McGuane (1/23)
2. Things of This World Richard Wilbur (1/25)
3. The Book of Dave Will Self (2/6)
4. Love and Hydrogen Jim Shepard (2/13)
5. The Road Cormac McCarthy (2/19/07)
6. Fun Home Allison Bechdel (2/20/07)
7. First Figure Michael Palmer (3/5/07)
8. Ooga-Booga Frederick Seidel (3/5/07)
9. Geography III Elizabeth Bishop (3/22/07)
10. Gulliver’s Travels Jonathan Swift (4/17/07)
11. 77 Dream Songs John Berryman (4/23/07)
12. You Don’t Love Me Yet Jonathan Lethem (5/2/07)
13. In Persuasion Nation George Saunders (5/21/07)
14. A Tranquil Star Primo Levi (6/19/07)
15. Stories in the Worst Way Gary Lutz (7/2/07)
16. I Sailed With Magellan Stuart Dybek (8/2/07)
17. Growth of the Soil Knut Hamsun (9/25/07)
18. What is the What Dave Eggers (10/14/07)
19. Tree of Smoke Denis Johnson (11/12/07)
20. The Brief Woundrous Life of Oscar Wao Junot Diaz (11/29/07)

Favorite Album Search Terms

2007-10-06T17:54:00.000-07:00

Whenever I'm in the mood for one of my favorite albums - yes, in spite of iTunes shuffle, I still sometimes listen to albums - I open up my iTunes library and type in a catchy little search phrase that will reduce the playlist to the songs on that album. The trick is to come up with a phrase that will include every song from the album and omit any songs from other albums that my sneak on becuase of similar themes/images/terms. Below are some of my favorites:

jew lite - "Starlite Walker" The silver jews

blood on the bob - "Blood on the Tracks" zimmy

enchanted men - "Slanted & Enchanted" pavement

forgot to impress - "The Young Mod's Forgotten Story" The Impressions

spring bra - "Nebraska" The Boss

mount the goat tree - "The Sunset Tree" Mountain Goats

genius words - "Liquid Swords" Genius/GZA

Whale call - "Woke on a Whaleheart" Bill Callahan

eat pepper - Sgt. Pepper's

plugged i n - Miles Davis, "Live at the Plugged Nickel, 1965"

Big City Sadness

2007-09-03T17:43:00.000-07:00

My big city sadness began when all my favorite T-shirts fell apart and my apartment was just me and some cheap furniture. I started running for exercise through the alleyways until I found those dead bodies. I put my mattress out on the street and moments later it was running down the alley. I was glad to be moving out.

That Summer Feeling...

2007-08-22T14:12:00.001-07:00

...is going to haunt you the rest of your days.

San Francisco at Night

2007-08-21T19:27:00.000-07:00

Down from Mt. Davidson

Uncle Andy's Screenplay

2007-08-18T00:31:00.001-07:00

Sketch for Uncle Andy’s Screenplay

Jonathan’s latest poem:

The Voice Mail I Painted on your Brain:

I saw the inside of your flower bed, your neuroblastoma,
Your first unformed words and ideas. It was ugly in there.
I came out with paint under my fingernails and a new idea
Of how smell can reshape your opinion
Of someone you once thought you knew.

Odors fade when you leave the blower on, and so –
The bluster of saints and demons, flying around
Suffering aerophagia – burping, burping – hoping to fly.

Can you tell me what I was painting in there?
Read it back to me on my machine.

The phone rings. Jonathan is in the second bedroom, the study, the office, the place he never hopes becomes the place he sleeps because he always wants to sleep in the big bed in the primary bedroom with Marie. He is working on his latest poem. He can’t help but let the machine take the call. He can’t help but let the machine taking the call creep its way into the poem he’s writing.

“Jan-uh-thaaaaan? Jan-uh-thaaaan? I know yr there cuz yr girlfrenn sejude be home all day. So since yr there, I wanna know, Buster. How’s my screenplay comin’ along? Give me a call. Itsyr Uncle Ayndy!”

Blue Heron on Methadone

2007-08-17T18:14:00.001-07:00

Blue Heron on Methadone

What kind of Blue Heron gets hooked on methadone? That’s just the type of question Charlie the Blue Heron on Methadone put to himself constantly. He sat on a park bench in the dog park hoping for a few crumbs from a passing human or, at worst, to be mauled to death by some unfettered pit bull. The Blue Heron on Methadone, who will henceforth be referred to as Charlie, was working on a poem. It was a modernistic and linguistic jaunt through early 21st century imagery that both cut to the bone of our dying society and gently stroked a hope for the future. He couldn’t quite get the last line right, but it went something like this:

MAAAAAAAW!
Ma, why did you leave me?
My wings hurt. Do you remember Suzette?
She’s a pretty bird, that Suzette.
But I’m flying away to the cape today
Where the skeletons of my grandbirdmothers
Writhe in the agony of blue, blue life
Of a Blue heron on Methadone
With one foot on a Cell phone?
With…dirty angel foolish cones?
With…fuck, I need another pill.

Charlie lit up a cigarette. How, I do not know. But he did it. His thin feathers, the breast feathers, looked frayed and stringy. He seemed injured, but he wasn’t. He’d always looked like an injured bird. He’d always liked the attention it had gotten him so he exploited it. He never spread his wings unless some dumb fuck was chasing him.
Charlie hadn’t ever done needle drugs, he’d just found himself resting in a park near a methadone clinic. He had friends, mostly street teenagers, who scored for him. Most of them – Tony and Timo and Tim and Tim’s girlfriend Pamela and Pamela’s sister Bandana and Bandana’s boyfriend Eric and Eric’s brother Sean and Sean’s boyfriend Parker - would place the methadone in slices of stale bread and feed it to him from a park bench where they sat chilling out on their own doses. The dispensary was notorious throughout the city as the easiest place to cop. So Charlie lived there as the only Blue Heron in the world who had a methadone habit.
Charlie pulled hard on the cigarette and watched a corgi run up on a homeless dude with disgustingly gnarled hair. The dude was pissed about the corgi. The dog ran away before the dude could whack him, though he tried. Charlie laughed which sounded like a pretty amazing screech.
Charlie saw a cop staked out behind a tree with his hand down his pants. He freaked out a little bit but then he saw two women with a bunch of dogs enter the park. He waddled tentatively towards them, hoping he might have his misery ended once and for all. A Siberian husky regarded him with disdain. Charlie craned his neck forward hoping it would be some instigating manoeuvre. Charlie liked to throw in useless frenchy words whenever possible. He was a real plongeur that way.
Charlie read somewhere, because he was a bleu éron on methadone who was completely literate and fairly well read, that the point of writing anything was only to examine the way in which a world could be created outside of the author’s suffering and in that way everyone was the author of everything. This thought occurred to Charlie as the seven dogs looked on with shame while their masters were dressed-down by a chronic masturbator in a uniform. Charlie realized that nothing was doing with these dogs and their contribution in his quest for a quick death. What he really wanted was a hit and he decided he had better do something about it because just sitting there wasn’t getting him anywhere. He wasn’t closer to death and he wasn’t closer to flying again. He was depressed but he knew his depression was just a bandied-about word that filled in an even more excruciating place of complete emptiness. At least he didn’t have to talk to anyone, one of the few saving graces of being a bird.
Charlie decided he might try something different. He was ashamed of his wish to die at the hands of bourgeois dogs. It was unfair to them, yes, to attempt to entice them into avian murder (or ornicide as it had become popularly known to anyone who has read this far). He felt like he was robbing his grandbirdmothers and his grandbirdfathers of the majesty of his species – species so very near extinction (along with all of you fucking people).
And so, as simply as that, with little fanfare and not much challenge to his psyche or general well-being, Charlie never took another hit. After six months of sobriety, Charlie regained his elegant plumage for a final flight into sweet, sweet OH-blee-VEE-Ahhhhn. Which is to say, he is the bird in that fucked-up video circulating around the internet that flew, inadvertently, into the engine of Boeing 747 and was instantly incinerated into one trillion easy pieces.
But truthfully, there is no internet.

Dogs on Leash

2007-08-17T16:06:00.000-07:00

I. Dogs on Leash

Chasing Aaron.

2007-08-07T23:00:00.000-07:00

Describe.

2007-08-02T15:44:00.000-07:00

Its a flashy little feeling of confidence. Its an embarrasment of riches. Its a cheesy pile of stinky, fusty expensive cheese. It laughs a lot.

Really Great Book About A Baseball Player

2007-07-30T23:27:00.000-07:00

If I were a Rothian or Bellovian or Fordian American writer - like the contemporary version - I would write a novel about the son of a famous baseball player who grows up to become an even MORE famous baseball player but does a lot of shitty stuff to get there. He breaks his wife's ribs, he takes drugs, he sells out friends, he may even be responsible for a few "gangland" style slayings. His wife bears him only daughters. That novel would be America.

Outtakes from the Wedding Vows

2007-07-30T23:23:00.000-07:00

I promise to “astound” you “with my velvet suit and Faustus hood” (Gregory Corso, Marriage)

“Let love to man be only a part of that glowing flame of universal love, which, after encircling humanity, mounts in grateful incense to God.” (Mary Wollstonecraft, A Vindication of the Rights of Woman)

I promise to be your best friend always in all weather at all times of day even at 3 in the morning when you can’t sleep and have stolen the blankets from me.

I promise to not be angry when you have forsaken the blankets in your sleep and awakened to presume that I have taken them.

“Prince thou art sad; get thee a wife, get thee a wife; there is no staff more reverent than one tipped with horn.” (Much Ado About Nothing, Wm. Shakespeare)

Let our union be the continuation of a great adventure from California to Illinois to England and across the universe (jai guru deva om).

“We shall scrimp and save.” (Paul McCartney)

The most beautiful sound to me is the sound of “Anne and Ammon”.

Do you promise to do me?

I do you.

I do you, too.

Dead Bird Window

2007-06-26T23:38:00.000-07:00

I think it was a shopping mall of unforgiving angles surrounded on all sides by parking garages. Or was it downtown in the financial district? Was it San Diego or San Francisco? The windows were scrubbed and windexed daily. Everyone peeked at their reflection as they strolled by. It was cold and sunny.
The birds kept coming. After the third dead bird, someone laughed. There were more. The continuing onslaught of birds expiring against the window was gluttonous. It was darkly celebratory. Too much thought ruined it.
The sound of their bodies breaking on the glass made some think of the French fries upstairs or the hot dog on a stick. I thought of the terrible dead baby jokes a classmate insisted on telling me.
Was it the mothers and fathers upstairs away from their children for the lengthy workday that made me think this was remarkable? No, I never think of that when I’m eating a hot dog. Was I eating a hot dog? Did I wonder how they would taste? These sparrows, these swallows, these birds nesting in an underpass?
It happens. It’s a great tragedy of architecture. We forgot to take this into account: living in a glass house kills unsuspecting birds that just want to fly there. It’s some fucked-up juxtaposition that makes some think of suicide and others of the foolishness of governments. Its not quite like lemmings, though. It’s an aerial fish-in-a-barrel scenario. For the birds, it’s a narcissus moment. For the birds. I am certain I was one of those birds. I am certain I am “for the birds”. In an election, I would be for the birds, or even Senator Byrd.
Do they live for a few short seasons and then perish ridiculously? Do they come back and crush their skulls against it in yet another meaningful life?

Getting a Handle

2007-06-26T23:36:00.000-07:00

I’m well into my shift – its 4 a.m. and I’ve been on the job twelve hours, smoked a pack of Reds and downed two liters of Coke, listened to rock radio, news radio, sports radio and then back to rock radio after a few minutes of classical but no fuckin’ country for me – when I get a call to pick up a woman stranded just the other side of the Caldecott tunnel.
I don’t generally have to deal with people for more than a few seconds – whether they’re stranded or trying to bribe me into letting them go this one time and they’ll never park here again, hell, they’ll never park again, they’ll never even come downtown, they’ll send someone to do their errands. I’m either the best or the worst kind of person, and it changes by the hour. People don’t want to think the worst about anyone when they first meet, but when you’re towing their car… well…Anyway, for this lady stranded on the other side of the tunnel, I’m the best protection she’s got from the elements, thanks to her trusty cell phone and her no-good Audi’s transmission.
Most people will just assume you’re a regular Joe, God-fearin’, America-lovin’, ex-Marine humbled by the insanity of his youth and the honesty of a steady job. But anything, be it a little bit of an accent to your English, a dreaminess to the tone of your voice, a funny stride, will make them nervous. They’d just as soon throw you in a nice little category than try and figure what might be eating at you, what keeps you from blowing your brains out, you’re so depressed, or opening fire in a shopping mall. I got one thing and I think about her about half the time I’m driving this tow truck around. I got two hands on the wheel and the other scratching my ass when I pull up on this lady and her flashing hazards. That’s right. Three hands.
I wave to the lady and she stands out of the way as I back in to hook her car up. Usually, I can just guide the hooks in, lift the car up and I’m ready to roll without leaving the comfort of my cab. But this time I didn’t back up the truck at exactly the right angle and the lady had pulled off at a kind of slant and was facing down an incline on the shoulder and I get real pissed at first, but take a deep breath and get out of the truck to do it by hand. Once I get my hooks in it, I can maneuver the car any which way I want. I bend over, and when I bend over, something happens to me, my jeans stretch in ways that normal people’s jeans don’t stretch and some things appear beneath my shirt in ways that would startle even the most casual viewer.
“What’s that under your shirt?” the lady asks me as I’m struggling with her goddamn car.
“Its my cell phone,” I say and I crawl a few more inches under the car so she can’t see me anymore and so I can hook up her car and get the hell on.
At this point this is what she’s doing: She’s thinking. She says to herself, “That was not a cell phone under his shirt. That was some kind of alien creature, moving around. Maybe he keeps a little dog under his shirt. But that didn’t look like a dog. What the hell is this guy doing to my car, anyway? Why does he have to crawl way under there? What sort of a tow is this?
I know she’s thinking by the way her eyebrows are working when I get back out from under her car. The sun is starting to break through and the morning commute is starting to pickup a little bit – the real early-bird mother fuckers, the traders up in time for the East coast markets and the coffee shop personnel (you can distinguish them by the year, make and model – lots of Benzes and Beemers for the former and Hyundais and Fords for the latter). I stand up right in front of her and I let her know how it’s going to be.
“Listen, lady,” I tell her and she’s got some obvious and understandable fear in her eyes when I take such a stern and direct approach, “I got three hands.” I hold up my grease-stained arms and show her my normal hands. “I got these two hard-working appendages and then I got a third one on my back, just above my ass. Now, I can give you a ride where you need to go. You can sit up front in the cab with me and my three hands or you can ride in your car in the back. And even though that’s highly illegal and against the code of ethics that comes with towing, I will understand if that is your desire.”
“Jesus Christ,” she said, “I guess this is California, isn’t it?” I thought that was about the dumbest thing she could say, but it was her way of saying she’d ride up front with me and that she could get over the fact that I had a third hand because I threw that fact down on the table up front. It explained that my mutation wasn’t something in my head that would make me want to skin her alive and hang her up in my closet. But what if I had made up that story about my third hand? What if it really was a dog under my shirt? She’d be dead meat.

April is the Foolest Moolest Droolest...

2007-04-03T23:48:00.000-07:00

OK, so I realize I haven't made a post in over a month. Well, I got engaged, asshole, so I haven't had the time. I've been planning a wedding to the most beautiful and awesome and smart girl who has {ed. Anne - thx.} ever considered my existence...So, I figure I lucked out and I'm marryin' up...

I just read Don DeLillo's latest story in the latest issue of the New Yorker (which reminded me to do my taxes with such artistic flair and subtlety). And, well, the story is called "Still-Life" and its OK, but it's about Manhattanites and 9/11 and I feel guilty for thinking it is so dated...Though it did make me think about the way the day unfolded (e.g., 1 plane = accident, 2 planes = no accident).

I guess its the [historical, big picture-ass] defining moment of my lifetime (so far) and it was inevitable that DeLilo, whose fiction predicted such an "airborne toxic event", would ultimately weigh in. I was counting on it, in fact. So why did it feel so...anti-climactic...

My wedding won't be that way...Back to it...

I need to write more myself. Remember that you said that.

Woo boy! Ima gettin' hitched up!

2007-03-02T22:34:00.000-08:00

The List of Books I read in 2006

2007-02-20T23:18:00.000-08:00

1. Middlesex Jeffrey Eugenides done
2. 14 Stories Stephen Dixon done
3. Light in August William Faulkner (2/16/06)
4. Bad Behavior Mary Gaitskill (3/1/06)
5. You Remind Me of Me Dan Chaon (3/7/06)
6. The Satanic Verses Salman Rushdie (4/18/06)
7. The Thin Man Dashiell Hammett (4/25/06)
8. One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich Alexander Solzhenitsyn (5/3/06)
9. The Moviegoer Walker Percy (5/10/06)
10. The Whore’s Child Richard Russo (5/13/06)
11. American Pastoral Philip Roth (5/24/05)
12. Housekeeping Marilynne Robinson (6/8/06)
13. The Amalgamation Polka Stephen Wright (6/25/06)
14. The Bridegroom Ha Jin (7/2/06)
15. The Shell Collector Anthony Doerr (8/9/06)
16. A Bit on the Side William Trevor (8/21/06)
17. The Barnum Museum Steven Millhauser (9/10/06)
18. 21 Stories Graham Greene (10/11/06)
19. Gilead Marilynne Robinson (10/18/06)
20. The March E. L. Doctorow (11/2/06)
21. CivilWarLand in Bad Decline George Saunders (11/6/06)
22. The Dead Fish Museum Charles D’Ambrosio (11/14/06)
23. Bad News of the Heart Douglas Glover (12/7/06)
24. Beloved Toni Morrison (12/15/06)
25. Twilight of the Superheroes Deborah Eisenberg (1/3/06)

Somedays, I feel like Björn.

2007-02-12T20:15:00.000-08:00

Somedays, I want to be Björn.

Places I Lived in Chicago (to be expanded)

2007-01-28T17:10:00.000-08:00

Ukrainian Village

In Chicago, On Chicago

Logan Square

General Logan, Here's your square. Highest Murder Rate Per Capita in Chicago that year...

The Fateful Year on the Gold Coast

I learned so much here. And not just about free improv comedy.

Roach Infested Colony of Cool Parties

We lived across the street from this high school. We broke several "Safe School Zone Laws"

College DAZE

I work in a Coffee Shop. These 2 guys came in on the same day.

2007-01-28T15:18:00.000-08:00

Willie McGee, 1985 NL MVP

Wavy Gravy, 1968 AL MVP

Hey - I've actually made a 2nd Post!

2007-01-28T15:05:00.000-08:00

OK, so here I am again to write in my blog, again for no particular reason, which seems silly because blogs are supposed to have reason and they are on the internet so they are publicly available, in a way, so nobody really wants to read it if you have nothing to say, but maybe I want a place on the internet to go and read what I had to write on the internet. Its not going to be a meta-blog, though. Maybe it will be about the books I read this year. I read 25 last year and kept a list of them on my computer but I didn't really write much about them.

I'm still trying to finish the Book of Dave. I admire what Will Self is doing but the story has yet to pick up some momentum. And I found Dave's relationship with his child's mother to be a bit of a stretch.

I finished the McGuane stories and the Wilbur book. I found Wilbur to be a little too formal for my taste. I wanted more violence. I did thoroughly enjoy the poem dealing with a friend's hike into the woods whereupon he discovers an old mill, no longer used and in disrepair, though the wheel still turned. There was something very real and visual and pleasurable in that image, which, to state the obvious, is what Wilbur's poetry is about. Y'know - "The Things of This World". I like concrete things. I like realism. This might just be a statement of self.

The McGuane stories were good in an old-timer, leather-faced cowboy way. I can't quite crack the short story code, it seems like, other than to know when a story is good and when it is not. I am just in awe of good short stories. I have been trying for the past five to eight years to write one. I have been considering returning to poetry. Not that it is any easier. But I am reminded at different points in my "writing career" of something a professor told me: "I think you may just find out that you're really a poet." Or not. I am reading more poetry now.

Right now, I've got two poetry books going. Michael Palmer's First Figure and Frederick Seidel's Ooga-Booga. They are great, though I'm only one third of the way into each. So, without saying anything more, here is an especially delicious line from Seidel's "From Nijinsky's Diary":

"I flee in terror to my tranquilizer the Sahara."

For the love of God...Write!

2007-01-16T23:21:00.000-08:00

I've started this blog really just for myself, so if you happened upon it, it is probably because you did some serious internet digging for me, wanting, for some weird reason to see if you could get some information on what I'm up to. Tough shit.

I'm reading Will Self's The Book of Dave right now and when that gets slow, because it kind of is even thought its interesting, I pick up a book of poems by Richard Wilbur "Things of This World" or Thomas McGuanes book of stories Gallatin Canyon which I can burn through in no time because they're fucking good.

I will curse alot in this blog and maybe write some poems or something about how hot my girlfriend is or how fucked up and stupid my job is or how much I can't stand the Berkeley elite, whomever they may be that day...

So fuck off. I'm done.