Community

I'm out like seventy thousand
measures of zipless Noras
and every day it gets
attenuating the spontaneity chain
yank of the untenable this
dialectic timing the things not said
and don't say you're not saying
your particular nonspecific [need]
You can't ask a question
You can't make an answer
whose rules are these
who is whom
who is whom n'importe
You don't know you're lying
misunder wishful fingertrap
recondite as melba duck
and every day it
specificity, deliberateness
relevance in an immediate
silent bellowing at each
and every day
over the interstate bridge
up above the stalk
the stump, the flies
staring in the mist
and every
and

acrylic sweater

My dad was a giant brown acrylic sweater that never had a collar or cuffs. I wore that sweater to bicycle across town to go to work-study jobs, I wore it while I guarded at the ice rink, the knit partially blocking the air and wind, keeping me from being chilled but letting me breathe.

My mother was a 30' section of fallen giant oak in the woods across the street from the house, hovering 18" from the ground the entire 17 years I lived there, a rich, rusty red with nubbles of light green lichens over it, with tiny flecks of red. The log would stop us, for a time, keeping us from straying further into the woods, where there were patches of poison ivy, old farmer’s dumps full of broken glass, snakes, possibly-rabid raccoons, and occasionally people out to grab us. Like a giant welping bitch it lay there, allowing us to climb all over it and nestle in its great forks. Yet, I could not go back to the house dirty, so I mustn't.

It has come to me that the notion of a thing, of a person, is something you observe and internalize, and carry with you. My dad the sweater, my mother the log, give me comfort, soothed me from upset, propped me up, kept me warm.

My dad approached us the way a child would approach a litter of puppies. He wanted us to amuse him, seduce him, make him laugh. Or he wanted to do something to get my mother's goat. One was as good as another, or maybe he had a favorite, I dunno, but it seems he thought we were interchangeable. maybe like a collection of purses, if he had carried a purse. I realized, late in the game, that he really didn't know which one I was. I'm not saying he suffered a mental decline. He was always vague on this. I wasted an incredible amount of precious time trying to get him to like me.

So, I think, prompted by some church program, my dad wanted to set things to rights with me, so he sends me an unsigned typed paragraph, suggesting we should meet in any place of my choosing and hammer things out, once and for all -- him an' me in an iron cage, NO HOLDS BARRED!!! Just to sweeten it, he said he'd pay for my therapist to come, if I wanted.

So I call him up on the phone and get to talking. I mean, the thing about meeting face-to-face is he's going to try to touch me, or bully me in several other ways he's accustomed to. So I tell him every time I talk to him I feel like I'm being erased. He says nothing. I talk about several things I've put up with from him. He says nothing at first, then acts like I'm really complaining about my mother, and tut-tuts me like he's on my side. A few more items, despite the failure ... and he's rhythmically saying "yeah, yeah, yeah," not in time to what I'm saying, but like he's having a seizure or is masturbating. I tell him I'm hanging up, and do so. I suppose he thinks I am rude.

My dad always acted like some other dad should have already told me something, and he was just reminding me what a bad dad that other dad was compared to him, like, this imaginary other dad should have told me what a Rube Goldberg machine was. Then my dad would come up to me and say "Like a Rube Goldberg machine, ah? AH?" and clock me on the arm, Bam! And I was supposed to laugh, and express recognition; or misbehave, and not.

you arrive like an
uncle on a motorcycle
frissons and I am nine
and have at least one
plan for when I grow up

Folk Physics and Common Philosophy

re-grafted cyborg saints

reverse transcriptase

partial take palimpsest

stranded DNA strands

viral transposons

host-encoded factors

run to the other room

to get the clipboard

mis-heard words

old wives' tales

tried and true

faux-indie

board games

unlikely occurrences

time-honored

off the cuff

old religion

new rules

what I think he said

vestigial intelligences

demographic relaunch

some caveats, just beware

estimated is the angel's share

give the devil his due

things beyond judgment

things beyond calculation

devil take the hindmost

shoot the moon

4/12/13

"My childhood dog was the best dog ever, no contest."

O: "My childhood dog was the best dog ever, no contest."

My dog was too good to even be called a dog. Can't even compare her to anybody else in the dog category.

This is my totally awesome dog, PB, modelling an Elizabethan collar I made for her. PB and I ran an after-school daycare together from when I was 9 to when I was 12, in which we supervised 5 little kids; my brothers and three kids named Randy, Sandy, and Andy. When it was high time for someone to tell me about the birds and the bees, neither of my parents nor my older sisters had the guts, so PB barked out the whole story for me.
PB, as far as I could tell, didn't even poop, she was so amazing. -- As opposed to Andy, who was a really late learner in the toiletting department -- the only thing that I would not do, besides make any money, in running the daycare/camp, was wipe Andy's butt -- it was the single thing that was so repulsive to me my mother could not trick me into believing was my responsibility.

We also had Lucy, the dog in the background, who was just an ordinary dog. She's not looking at me in this pic because she was humoring me about the Elizabethan collar. She was ... a QUEEN!

O: PB looks similar to Crystal, my dog, she must have been a good caretaker.

Oh, yeah, she'd round those kids up and bring 'em into the paddock like nuthin.

G: My dog would've gladly rolled around in your dog's feces, for mine was a believer in canine equality,

Me: NO NO NO! Not equal, no poops ... (I grew up in a woods, with oak leaf litter all around, as pictured ... we let her out, we let her back in ...)

PB was a Pembroke Welsh Corgi, with papers showing how she's related to Queen Elizabeth.

PB was more Goku than that. She howled whenever the town's fire whistle went off, and she'd pretty much bark until you figured out what she was talking about. We fed her food in a margerine tub, and when it was empty, she would bring it into the living room where we were watching tv, turn her head sideways, and fling it up into the air until we paid attention, and weighted it down with food again. One could imagine most of what she said could have been prefaced with "hey dummay," except she was a real lady. I try to emulate her, that way.

She would like you, mainly in a kind of watching-over-you way; but if you pointed something at her in a gun-like fashion, she would go ballistic. I taught her loads of tricks in just a few afternoons, rollie-over, do-a-donut, which-hand-is-it ... My family would show her off, but let her get sloppy, and I'd have to have another session to make the tricks military-sharp again. She hung with me because I was the stray sheep, and probably bcs I was the most interesting to her.

She would fetch, but only about 4 times, saying, "this is getting repetitive." She was terrible at kickball, and would waddle around the infield with complete disregard for which trees were bases. She was pretty short, and only blocked grounders. She also didn't ride a bike, which was a big difference between us.

 Our other dog, Lucy, was a beagle. We kept her on a chain in a pen, but she would still get out. She'd climb the mesh and squeeze out though a gap in the top, and either get off the chain or hang there, grabbing the wire from the outside, until we found her, or run away, and go baying across the small ridge at the back of the woods, and there wasn't any sense trying to catch her until she ran it off. Besides eating and trying to get away, she didn't do much. She was always quivering with nerves. My oldest sister took her to 4H dog training classes, but she never learned a single thing.

One of PB's pups lived up the street, and he would fetch forever, all the time. He was always trying to balance a soggy tennis ball on top of your shoe, no matter what you were doing. You'd be all gathered around a car hood, trying to figure out how to replace a head gasket, and he'd go around an put the ball on top of each person's foot, in turn, even if they were lying down. One track mind, that dog.

Yes, the ball is like the talking stick, the ball is representative of the relationship sustained; even when the ball is stopped, it is in motion. The ball is with you and with me ...

My mother only wanted me to have one friend, a dopey try-hard who got the same grades as me but had to study 3-4 hours a night to do it ... a dog is better ... I am embarrassed to say how long it took me to realize, "This is, very likely, never going to stop sucking."

I had to leave PB when I went away to university. I didn't really ever move back again. I regretted leaving her there. A month after she died, my mother called and claimed PB was driven crazy by locusts, stopped going outside, and ... blah, blah, insane b.s., blah. ... Actually, I can imagine PB barking ferociously at the locusts settled in the trees ... if you've ever experienced it ... the whole woods throbs with the constructive interference of the swarm singing. Maybe it could drive a dog dead-crazy.

You stop me

flashbang throwdown degree of difficulty

alternating bold statements dithering triangulation half-masticated

easy digestion rasterized through obfuscation

tossed across most receptors intermittent firing

digital approximations [of] emulsive immersion

forced blooms pasteurized

within the acceptable range of tolerance

unrooted free-floating charm

tchochke, busybox, knickknack chelenque gew gaw doodad

materialization of foundations

skittering chattered crosscut

deliberate non-synthetic collisions

deconstruct base processes

necessary reordering running unseen

inadvertent loss of obscurity

potent quiet useful energy never quite certain

fire eater wet blanket damping shunt

lights fractured out methods

Can’t sit around for/through that

Non-incremental but logarithmic (a delicate subject)

rather like the decibel leaving me

listening hard except innumerable five objections

clarified by the antecedent; type: wait and see

there is no rhythm here, brother

meatspace alone-time, appointment TV & webinars

knuckles rapping knuckles; labile cube, rolling deadline

anytime and never regardless turnabout

baby duck

continent-wide imprinting suspension amplified frustration

slow motion frantic unhurried panic

cracked open memory case seven things at one time

papered externalities paradox fingertrap seesaw

consciousness waves refreshing and nauseous kiss and tell

mindful actions

paradoxically driven

You stop me cold

you go me hot

Oh powerful Kali

knock me down,

knock my breath from me

tear my clothes,

tear my skin

smash my bones

take my identity

wash it

wash it away

It's Rules of Thumb, All the Way Down

My father was a door-to-door salesman of machine-generated literature, for the consumption of machines.

His biggest clients were dairy farmers with balky milking machines.

The theory at the time was that machines, when read to, would be more efficient and require less repair; just as houseplants, when spoken to, have greater well-being.

In fact, the benefits of literature have not been proven except in the case of machine literature, wherein studies have shown the recitation of such resulted in more even distribution of lubrication among working machine parts.

Why? We still don't know. As in all science, a relationship can only be proven to some extent, until it is overthrown.

There is no certainty, only the adoption of clever new heuristics, based on newly-proven weak relationships.

In other words, "It's Rules of Thumb, All the Way Down."

How the Earth was Measured

CM: The French measured the earth around the equator, using stainless steel meter-sticks laid end-to-end, all on a rainy Sunday.

NGF: I'd worry more about the ocean than rain if that was the case.

CM: Maybe it was buoyant stainless steel. Or maybe they never did that, they just used Pi to calculate it after putting meter-sticks end to end from the surface of the earth to its core.

NGF: I don't think we went to the core, as the earth is too dense deep, the former seems more sensible honestly.

CM: Because they could stay dry that way. The Tour Eiffel is a meter-stick derrick that pounds them into the ground.  ... Yeah, besides, they would have run into the Chinese down there. I did not know you are French.

NGF: I'm actually Irish. I just travel quite a lot.

CM: This page could be renamed "People who have complicated feelings about the ocean."

NGF: I love the ocean, though. I'm just scared of it. I am not the best swimmer and because of that, the only thing I plan to drown in is a pint of beer.

CM: I think the ocean is a big ol' bitch and I want to totally cancel out its waves with my massive butterfly stroke, but I wear out, and it mocks me relentlessly. Maybe I could invent a machine to slap it and counter the waves and tide. Perhaps doing such a thing could bring down the moon, or just disturb its orbit.

NGF: Or you could, like, destroy the moon?

CM: I will destroy the moon with my massive butterfly stroke, stirring up moondust as I circumnavigate it, and making the moon dissolve into its own comet-tail, which will thus become the earth's Kuiper belt, or just a plain ol' mess of finely pulverized space junk. Huhn. Maybe this is why my life smells like a car fire. It's moon dust. I need some rain, NGF.

NGF: It is raining here. I don't mind sharing.

Anatomy of Persuasion

08/19/07 ... Once we were all bicyclists ...

I learned on the interwebs that walking, computer-chair-sitting human individuals are evolved -- you will be dumbfounded -- from bicyclists. BICYCLISTS. BICYCLISTS!

I've heard a lot of stuff about our evolution, and the last working theory I had was that we were "from the water," like, all swimmy things, fins turning into arms and feet and stuff.

And then not having gills and all, we couldn't go all around under the drink, we had to stay close enough to the surface so that it would be there every time we needed a breath, so we're relegated to the in-between space of air and water, so then we made it worse by getting out of the pond and walking all around on land but not flying. (I don't know why, as a species, we make the choices we do, but I feel, oftentimes, that I'm in the voting minority.)

So it makes a lot more sense to know, now, that we're up from bicyclists. 'Cause bicyclists can't do everything. I once biked for 35 days straight and then tried to walk around Manhattan for a day. Guess what? My walking muscles had atrophied; I had devolved to a state of "pre-walking bicyclist." But I relearned all that stuff again, which would have been much harder if I had devolved into a mermaid.