To watch you fill a glass

To watch you fill a glass, so very careful not to over-pour, is an exquisite pain. You re-purpose the glass to dominate the liquid it is meant to serve. Abomination or just folly? Will you not see this, know this, as choosing a pauper's existence? The regal hold nothing very tightly.

Then we know how you choose words. The miserly touch which surely affronts your better nature. The resultant acid that indigests you, pushes you away from the table. Such grand tableau unborn then. And so I must explain: word, line, sentence, and whatever follows: they exist only as servants to your command. No one remembers the peasant. Live as Queen then.

the Fourth Wall, the Chair, the Eunuch, and a Commercial from our Sponsor

They would have you be at their pleasure without consideration for your own, making you much like a decoration for a themed party, or as an ornament on a holiday tree. They would take comfort in the incompleteness they have drawn into your features, the omitted protuberance, the hairlessness, the fuzzy contours and corrected conversations. They would know you as a toy then. The big fun walking talking sipping spitting toy. Look! he makes smoke rings. Do it again! again.

And always Miss Marian that is where I drew the line with you. The only hard and fast line, I think now. Do you remember C sitting on the floor in the corner, pulling poetry rapid-fire from her head? Your favorite, she. And I didn't begrudge you that, your 2nd favorite was sufficient and much more than I expected at the beginning. And who did you ask to call on your daughter when in the Dallas area? The great salesman now nervous to handle the phone, fumbling to form complete sentences. How could she not be spectacular? Who could ever be worthy?

But did you not co-conspire with your pronounced silence on the lascivious, the carnal, the physically perfected allures? When did you announce: I am as a man must. No, you skulked about the periphery as a beggar, not even rattling your beggar's tin, never raising your voice to command: I must eat! No, you are the lead conspirator, not once raising your eyes to see which full man does not dignify you with so much as a hateful glance and a spit at his feet. You disservice the very dirt that has become your bed.

The play's the thing, no? And so I put names to every slight and exaltation and bend it whatever way it needs be. Attempt to wring some art from everyday. James Allen to be revealed. Please forgive the interruption.

It's Friday night so after you strike out in the bars get your ass over to Dicky's Joint and eat some homemade macaroni and gravy with some nice sausage or meatballs and try your luck at Rough and Tumble. Don't be a fucking pussy and head straight home or go try to grab some snatch out of the  diners - when did that move ever pay off? We got free booze for the players. Got broads too. Don't be a pussy now. And yeah, of fucking course you need a vouch. Any time after ten tonight. Ask for Dicky. I'll be here.

How James Allen spent his Wednesday:

6:45  Rise and shine

7:00  Drink coffee, look out windows and write. Wonder about things.

1:15  Enough. Mushy brain. Crank up Alan Mudd's Pandora, shower, etc.  

1:45  Open some pain in the ass mail from the big stack. Deal with it. Loud music helps

2:05  Taco Garage: chicken and beef fajitas w/guacamole & charro beans. Eavesdrop on 2 hookers 

2:05  Read some correspondences and poetry. Edit a manuscript. Curse loud guy on cellphone 

2:05  Feel overly pleased with self. Thus: overly converse with waitress who is now nervous

2:10  Turn the charm back down. See? Not hitting on you, just being pleased about things

2:15  Eat drink read. Listen for hooker convo. Blocked by cellphone guy. Accept defeat

2:50  Nice tip for waitress: let her figure it out. Exit through doors: turn which way?

2:50  Stroll about Milam Park. See: make-out couple - rendezvous? homeless sleeping, stirring

3:00  Make joke to pretty girl who is now nervous. Reveal pure heart/intent. Success

3:05  Laugh at pretty girl's unfunny joke. Think: doors are always open to the young and fetching

3:05  Walk and think and avoid looking too closely at anything, particularly the unpleasant

3:35  Bus stop bench in shade: a few pages of Phillip Roth (like - see you later). Watch people

4:15  Rest

6:00  Eat Alan Mudd's mango yogurt - awesome. Also a couple of cherries and an apple. 

6:30  Red Sox game. Email and the like. An apology crafted and sent. Jotting ideas.

7'ish  Doze off. Sox give up 5 runs while I'm out. Glad I missed it. Internets.

8:45  A peach and a pear. Wanting Alan Mudd's remaining yogurt but deciding to save

9:10  Write a bit. Stare at city night. Like: the idea/spark; Hate: the piddling words

10:15 Curse the shallowness of my reservoir. Find paper to make a list for proof

10:15 List: Nervous girl, sizzling food, annoying guy on phone obscuring conversation,  hookers, rendezvous couple, park - almost desolate now, homeless, pretty girl, jokes funny and not, people of all kinds walking by me, bus stop, pigeons, shade tree, pavement, heat, city day, city night, goddamn city sounds and smells and shouts and lulls, Christ! no more. enough.

10:20 Wonder: who the fuck can't do something with that haul? Answer: 

10:30 Hot shower to wash off disgust, prep for sleep. As long as cursing: what aches

10:45 Phillip Roth continued. Immigrant lit? Solid smooth storyteller. Good pace and tone.

10:50 Think, while reading: bet he could do something with my list. Re-read several pages, several times

11:4_ Sleep. 

another whimsy-free excerpt:

It will not prove surprising to even the most casual sort that Henry and wife chose left center aisle, three rows from the front, seats one and two had they been numbered, which church seats are not.  Well at least not this church in this place in time, twelve years after Brooklyn's Dodgers changed coasts and shortly after the slow to adhere pronouncements of Vatican II. If we should choose to fasten John to seat three, a seat he has once before chosen with considerable consequence, well, an interesting thought but quite impossible as sixth grade valedictorian John at this very moment opens his King James bible and lightly clears his throat in preparation for his first reading to the Easter Sunday congregation, John the first anointed schoolboy lay lector and don't think Henry's chest isn't puffed out more than a little and also that he wears his best suit, funerals and weddings only, and it would be informative to know that his wife added a freshly cut flower to his lapel, and one that matched her carefully applied rouge. Please open to Mark, chapter 16, verse one, Not only to the pious women who went out to embalm the body, and John's voice is excited but true, annunciating the words carefully but confidently, correctly, as likely nothing comes more easily to little John Duff than words on a page. And so this celebration of the divinity of Jesus of Nazareth continued without incident and one might fairly question the detour to this spot on John's map, Why stop here, What is there to see, and that criticism would be more than apt if it was not also mentioned that after the mass was over, after John had accepted handshakes and tiny kisses and some back pats from numerous parishioners and after The Monsignor had made his way over to thank the little fellow for his contribution to The Lord's Celebration, well after all of that and John had left church feeling as some sort of pint-sized conquering hero, later, at their home and after the roasted ham and mashed potatoes had been cleared from the table, after the boston cream pie, bought from the Jewish bake shop they were in the habit of visiting every Sunday after church, no irony intended, after that pie had been half-eaten and cleared, after all of the nourishment of the day, literal and figurative alike, had left John feeling sated beyond expectation or experience, without reference, a sort of pre-adolescent post-coital hue that he could do nothing with but absorb, and then attempt to cling to as experience had taught him that when good times are visiting now, bad and worse times are around all corners, after all of that and please forgive the excessive detail and posturing, Henry thought to offer some constructive opinions to the young lector, because, as we all know, everyone likes praise but we benefit more from criticism. Johnny, if they invite you back again, don't read so fast next time, The older people couldn't keep up, And then they were looking at your mother and me, like we could do some damn thing about it. Slow the hell down next time, would you please.

the Minister, Mister Gray, the Cuckold, the Nameless, the Inevitable, and the Beat

With the same quivering lips that will recite a passage from his Greek bible, and with a pound of the fist that has thumped many Sunday pulpits, with that same breath he will insist that he knows of a fellow that you are a fool not to use to purchase your next new vehicle as this fellow is guaranteed, Guaranteed I tell you, to save you thirty percent off sticker, at a minimum. And because I have seen him preach, heard him exhort, witnessed his eyes turn up towards Him, I am certain he believes the one as the other. Truly a sucker for a salesman.

It seems we have more in common than I had previously been willing to concede: baseball, tidy contracts, illusiveness, smooth bourbon, tweed. And you seem to be a solo operator although I  originally miscast you as little more than a minion. Know: I am thinking on you now and you will give it up. You have been in the shadows long enough.

How'd you like them apples?

I empty the cupboards, dump the perishable goods onto the floor, in pursuit of you. And we both know I hate a mess, particularly in the kitchen. And so your taunts cause me to continuously overstock, to purchase as if for a famine, to ignore the most basic edict of nature: kill the useless. And if I have a soul the decay of you stains like Cain, like the original stain, like the blood of Jesus on the face of Magdalene. Hah! it is true: nothing is changed.

Of course I will come. My illusion of control: the fearful scratching of fingers, the clawing skid marks of faulty brakes (or an acceleration that exceeds recommended speed for safe braking - yes, that). Will I grow past that? Evolve? Actualize? Are not all seasons promised? Is it not written that summer must follow spring, and then autumn, the glorious fall? Well it should be so written, you and I both know that.

You used to speak of Path. I will sip from one of those past conversations [Yes, I did save so many - poured into a canteen, the symbolism particularly fitting, I thought (well, yes, a flask would have been better, but too small and once the laughter had faded not nearly as practical) and remember to measure whether I move forward or away, the only reliable measure]. And now for you every day is a Big Day for Sailing?

an excerpt:

And while it is true that John looked pleased, it is also true John has spent a lifetime looking other than he actually feels. Or perhaps more illustratively, John has mapped a course of feeling that like the political parties of the day leans towards the middle, with little tolerance, in John's case, for the angst on the left or exuberance on the right, and he has run a flag up the mast declaring his centrist affiliation, and that is that. And that would be that if John were truly a centrist at his core, but who is truly such a thing. If Henry were near we might nudge him in the ribs and ask, How would you describe the boy's temperament, and Henry, depending on time of day and whether at work or home, would likely either shrug or ignore the inquiry, answering in absentia, What a stupid question. It is also possible he would shout an invective or two and to his last breath Henry would feel exactly the same, we could not drop into his life at any point and get a different, or more meaningful, report on John as a child, and while the next thought is to ask the wife, John's mother, who could be a better source than the woman who pushed John from her womb, and not without considerable pain, suffering, and blood sweat and curses, words the pristine catholic girl did not realize she was capable of repeating, and with such gusto and spit, and why wasn't she thought of first. Because John is little interested in her opinion.

an almost genetic fallacy

Recently I was looking at some of Eliot's thoughts and Tom borrowed this concept and tilted it for his literary purposes and so I decided I would borrow his tilted fallacy and tilt it some more for mine. I should admit that what he says isn't a clean parallel with a problem I have been having, but it seems to me it's close enough. Namely, how does a writer re-enter/continue/pick up where left off a large piece and maintain some cohesion when said writer is writing from a radically different place in their life? When one is a largely different person?

We all know fixing a sentence or paragraph is easily done, and maybe a different writer is as preferable as the original for the requisite emotional distance, functioning more as close reader rather than author, focusing less on the pleasures of the author and entirely the interests of the reader. Donald Hall writes a poem and puts it in a drawer for 6 months before he next looks at it. I believe this to be more rule than exception and, as the roughness of these blog posts demonstrate, a desired approach.

But what when reader/writer realizes something needs be tossed, scrapped entirely, taken in a different direction? Or just finished? It is time for the author to appear and do his stuff. It is time for the author to feel through the existing piece and create space within an internal sense of its totality. Needed: author's vision, and all that falls in line behind that. But if that author is dead? What then?

(Thank you, Alan Mudd: Queen's Bohemian Rhapsody cascading my windows during this needed timeout. Loving the Pandora.)

Well this is a hard argument for me to make because a large part of me says, Horse shit. But that part doesn't sit down to continue the work and write the most tone deaf ill-fitting sentences that were surely written by someone else. Time, then. Yes, that's all that's needed. How much, I say. And also, Wouldn't that be nice. And also, I'll believe that for now because: A) I have no proof one way or the other; B) It's less disturbing to believe so until proven otherwise makes sense to be hopeful (unless, of course, there is a great opportunity cost involved: so far, No, or not measurable; but being delusional is never without substantial cost).

So while I am nagged by this argument (one of the many I keep active, like an incessant autistic juggler who also throws knives to keep his hands busy) I know I must move, in some direction. I am finally prepared for both outcomes: either I can meld old and new (or again revert to old - we can debate how desirable this is at another time) or old must be scrapped, attributed to a cost of living, and that is that. No sense crying over spilled milk, or words.

But, of course, that is exactly what I have until very recently been doing, crying over what I can not seem to do now that I could do before. The thought that this (beautiful) chunk of my life gets tossed - well, has held me captive. And who better to encapsulate this than Mike Tyson: Everyone has a plan until they get punched in the face. So get up and fight with what you've got left or get the hell out of the ring.

I am far from done with this. But for now I will continue to write to see if old me lives or if not, how miserable I must be with new me. The preliminary results suggest that I am needing a heavy dose of whimsy. Other opinions appreciated.