Big Days

How the River Gives

2012-01-03T19:50:00.000-06:00

As I'm blinded on the road by the sun

your body rises up in mine, my own

bride of Frankenstein. With talk of

the year ahead, the sky was a little kinder.

The birds perched in the evergreens back

of the house rose no whooping cry, but

nuzzled the young and looked across

a season to be. Honor in an ethic of

motion seems to be the viewer's eye

peeled back, dug up like the onion, and

every layer tasted with the pressure of

hunger. Come through the screen door.

See the lovers on leather rising in hollers

and loose laughter, my love. The

salmon find shelter on the tips of the

sun's tongues. The kids (we) drift softly

in organum on blue chilly rivers in

the country. Cigarettes are pilfered out,

epithets thrown around, and you take

hold of my toes, cold as they are, and

beat your wings across the rocks

and the rapids, to home.

Everyone Was Somewhere

2012-01-02T23:19:00.000-06:00

He always found himself scanning over
the night before, with its lips and eyes
and suspicious looks. The hours spread
out like the fingers of an eagles wing,
and he picked each one, smelled it
and sometimes touched it with his tongue.
Every one was somewhere in the wing,
crowded on a feather with another, or
broken across the fragile plane like
frost designs on glass. There was the
aging player piano, aching out of tune,
and the old lady leaning on it, halo of
hairspray and cigarette smoke. Teevees
pleaded like the old lady, stuck a tongue
into the night, and he turned away with
a love for color, an instant magnetism
into the birthing circuital circus of talk.

No Property

2011-12-27T16:27:00.000-06:00

Frost coughs and pricks the heart
tonight. It's only nine o'clock and you
pick up dry sticks in short sleeves,
wade in old leaves like a mapmaker
might. Headlights throw you in relief
to the apartment steps, a marble gaze
and a mind without property. You
would be a fountain undiscovered,
bought and made a public treasure.

Holiday Binge

2011-12-17T20:09:00.000-06:00

You take forever getting dressed,
but I take another pull from this bottle
I bought, and imagine your eyes
in a mirror steps away. The sway
of a lighted lantern and the shine
of a polished blade equate to the way
you lay me on the table, cut me open clean.

Down lighted streets for Christmas
time, and my shoes click out a rhythm
akin to a high hat shuffle. The voices
are muffled through the yellowing
windows, laughter and all. Plastic
Jesus meets with the fire-nosed angel
on the lawn and multiplies the stars,
only to shut them down again.
They have a funny secret to keep it seems,
in the sunset of my upbringing,
in the dawn as your ready to leave.

Heard

2011-12-11T23:18:00.001-06:00

I heard a cigarette burning for the first time tonight.
I heard a dog in the distance barking at the lighted steeple.
I heard a faraway engine burning in electric current,
and the air all around, the air all around.
I saw the way they calm the breakfast folk
and your face alight in the night's fire.

The old man I used to work for, he's
still in town, living with his child lover
and standing with his fist in the wind.
It's funny how a memory pushes up
with empty lungs to kiss and pull you
to the floor again. The show is upstairs.
Flip that coin on the walk up and you'll
know the answer, baby.

Standard

2011-11-26T15:13:00.000-06:00

Like an old standard, it's just
another Saturday. My niece was
retrieved about an hour ago by
my sister and her husband. I
guess you're still in Florida.

Your smile is like the autumn wind.
Your eyes the moon if she were twins.

The night was long, but it felt like summer.
I wore only a t-shirt and wondered
at the crowds around the firepit,
like crows on a frozen lake.

Your lips they stole the rose's hue.
I can't forget this song of you.

How many drinks have I had
in the past week? In the midst
of the holiday crawl I guess my
moral conscience gets a discount.
But I have been tired lately.

Your lovely smile, it radiates.
The sun and stars will have to wait.

I haven't been sure how to fill
my days. Sitting in a reverie is easy,
and the pen in my hand is light. Still,
my hands are dry with sanitizer.

Your absence turns my heart a blue.
I can't forget this song of you.

Now my friends are on the way,
and the highway groans across
the miles. Such a warm day for
November. And I want to know,
has the spirit gone or iced over?

Your smile is like the autumn wind.
Your eyes the moon if she were twins

I got back home at about 3:30,
and the clothes were spread
across the floor. The late fall light
crowded between the shut blinds.
I lay down.

Don't let me fall in love with you.
I'm singing what you only knew.

The roads are quiet today, and
covered in leaves like a carpet. I
have no plans. You'll let me know
when you're back. I'll wait.

Your lovely smile, it radiates.
The sun and stars will have to wait.

New Meeting, You're Different

2011-11-24T18:13:00.001-06:00

The leaves are a tasteless yellow.
The sunlight backlights them like a thousand
butterflies, or a pirate's treasure sinking into
a sea. The sky grew cold in the night,
and my head is thick with sickness.
You're still not mine, but I'll work
with you tomorrow.

I sat next to this girl from high school
on the low brick wall and put my
arm around her. She got up,
shunning my embrace. The night
was alive because my nervous
system was under the palm of
some alcohol. His tongue was
asleep in the dark. Even though
the night was folding I felt excited.
Arkansas isn't that far away.
Listen to this song, man.

Wince Goes Birmingham

2011-11-15T14:39:00.001-06:00

Last Wednesday the county of Jefferson, the county where Birmingham resides, declared bankruptcy. I won't go into the details of how this happened, delineate the long road leading up to Chapter 9. You can read all about it via any major news outlet in the country. What interests me, what terrifies me, is the unknown the trajectory of this city now that it has slit its own throat. Everyone else in these united states now knows that Birmingham once again dropped the ball, and who wants live in a city that is obviously sinking and soon to drown? Who is going to invest in a city that cannot invest in its people? I honestly have not felt the shockwaves of this development yet, but I know I will in the coming months. It's like waiting on a tidal wave that can clearly be seen in the offing.

The citizens who work day jobs, the ones who are not in places of power will have to lift up this corpse of a town and slap it in the face, or give it mouth to mouth. Not many in this city seem to realize the potential this is immanent here. There is so much that is not being done in this city, and all it would take to fill that void is an individual's decision to do so. Who is going to do that now? What fresh blood will pour into a county that is terminally ill? I see the overall arc of this city and state as moving upward, but it is a long arc and some vital groundwork has yet to be laid to take it there. We all know that living in Birmingham is boring and awful in so many ways, but who is working against that and who is helping to make it a better place? Not many in my generation I know. We're all too busy looking for love and numbing ourselves to the howl that waits in the air outside.

There is an image that is being perpetuated in Birmingham. It is one of a backward, grizzled, slow-moving patriarch too pissed and bitter to lead his people to a promised land. He's going to die soon, so his children must choose to take on his mantle or weave their own. Or we could all move to a different city. A lot of people I know are or have, and I am close behind them. This city has little to offer the young and globalized set that grew up in the Web and breathes digital air. I would not hesitate to raise a family here, but that will not be for a long while. Some of my friends are on that road, but they didn't choose to be.

The first thought, the thought that is easiest and closest at hand, that comes to mind when I think about this disaster is that all we can do is wait for the wave to hit and survey the aftermath. But I think we should view this as an opportunity to realize how deep in the shit we really are, and start building our own ladder out. The county and city governments will continue bickering and in-fighting and the citizens will languish. We'll go to the farmer's market and eat fresh fruits and vegetables while the city continues to shrink and the youth pours out like water through a collander. We need a new grassroots movement, one that is visible not subterranean, and one that restructures this community. Up until now we've been playing games.

Cauliflower

2011-10-06T16:57:00.000-05:00

When we put ourselves completely in,

the action there becomes the reverb-

return of a body once asleep, your little

brother faking sleep. You see the eyelids

twitch and the smell of the breath is weak

and solid as cauliflower. Yeah, you're there

inside. Your bare feet touch the wheel.

Your naked arms fuse into the coldness

of bare industry, and on the turnaround

trip you are caught in a hold, but bold

on deck as well. The dream has eaten

itself and the parade is on a side-street.

For the next year or so, you will flip

through different keys until you have

a dream of a little brother watching you

sleep. You work on the way.

The 80's in the Aughts

2011-09-12T18:31:00.000-05:00

So over the past year or so I've noticed this growing trend in music of appropriating styles of the 80's, from fashion to graphic design to the music itself. The bands are usually children of the 80's, rehashing the sounds they dig out of their own nostalgia. This is something I can totally understand. I sympathize. But why is it happening? It's really fascinating and annoying to me at the same time. It almost seems audacious to so blatantly rip off a complete era to pass it off as new, but I guess that's nothing new itself. This is the post-modern era. Isn't it? Something tells me we've moved beyond that tag.

Anyway, a lot of new genres are popping up, or being created by journalists. There's "hypnagogic pop" (that's the dreamy chillwave stuff a la Washed Out), there's the straight up "pop" in the Duran Duran vein, think Twin Shadow, there's the synth-bomb danceparty houseparty sound (M83), the C86 revivalists, Wild Nothing, and many other subsets of subsets. It can only be expected, I suppose, that the internet generation, spawn and masters of the synthesis of all media into one's own personal culture, would take the 80's and mine it musically. The 90's are too close at hand for anyone to be nostalgic or ironic about it yet. So we take the 80's, with its chorused and cutting guitars, reverbed drums and lazy vocal stylings, filter it through the proceding two decades and here we are, listening to our collective childhood.

What I always wonder when I read the exuberant comments on Youtube, when I talk to friends, when I see a local venue lining up these acts for months to come is how are these people really viewing this phenomenon? Do they take it tongue in cheek, or are they honestly taking it as the genuine article? Can my generation honestly take anything as the genuine article? We are mired in irony, and we love it, I love it. Nothing that happens can not be a reference to its antecedents, so why even attempt to make it so? Maybe that's what these artists have realized. Maybe they see our time as one wave in a tide of cultural history, nothing new. And don't the moon look so high and lonesome? We long for what was regardless of what we've got, and quite honestly the popular music scene right now is no Maltese Falcon.

But is the current music scene so barren and boring that we can only take from what has been done, or have we come to our senses to realize that the synthesizer is the mechanical savior of a damned mankind? It seems that a lot of bands in the 90's were reacting to what had been done in the previous decade by playing the most stripped-down abrasive music possible. At that point, the choice to take stock of what was and learn from it, build on it, was not there. Now we've got hindsight, we're on higher ground looking down at the highpoints sticking through the clouds. They look so good, why not copy them? I guess it all comes down to one's take on "retro." I view that whole concept with a slight disgust and a profound distrust. Never look back! Right?

One could say that retro is nothing more than the continuation of what was. If something worked, it can work. If it's good, it's good. And seen through the lens of what is "now," the styles of old come across as ironic. Coupled with a true artistic integrity is this ironic conceit, this allusion to a different world. As conceited as the music may seem it actually turns out to be quite guileless and innocent. The possibility of pretension in the music never arises because it has been neutralized from the get-go. The irony is the anesthetic. This music cannot take itself too seriously, nor can the listener. What's left is sheer enjoyment and a strange detachment. One turns on the stereo in midmorning traffic and finds that this new world of 2011 is suddenly bathed in the analog light of a time now lost. It's eerie and freeing and an experience that's completely new.

Making

2011-09-08T23:48:00.000-05:00

They made him and sent him out

into the world, with arms and legs

and favorite songs and a little fear

of the dark. He walked around and

spoke with the others, about the

trees, the light and the good weather.

In time he came to learn the operation,

and he walked in a knowing, strided

upon the cool water of solitude and

the warm water of camaraderie.

The days filled out before him,

in his mind and feeling, and

the closeness of himself came

to feel like the soft clutch of a wetsuit.

He flailed in the water, and the let

the waves wash over him, in and out,

to his lungs and through his hair.

Many times he was reborn, and many

times he believed that he walked upon

the road in gold, the bamboo tilting

in the wind, and the womb of leaves

calling to come in. The women he had

met, the ones he had loved, they flew

and dove and he disintegrated in their

gaze. The body he was given was a haze

in the sunlight. He spoke and received

but was many lives away. They thought

him real but he withered like a robin

in winter, without flock and eyeless.

Soon the word which rested upon the

rock, the feather which twisted within,

it caught a yelling wind and he remained,

dumb. His makers walked above. They

spoke in stories and caressed with hands

believed to be made in love. And he ran.

He strode unto the brink, the quivering

lip of the end, the unmade abode of men.

And he ceased, and he spoke.

Ride

2011-06-15T22:50:00.001-05:00

The storms are coming,

and I drive across the viadock

to see the city receive its fullness.

Over its chest and legs a rain

sings in diminuendo. Please play

along, please play along. Sing

a song beyond the long unfolding

of drink and release.

The storm comes and I hold

a harmony in the face of a cloudbank.

Though I am shifting and drinking

in this parade I made a pact

with me to find you in it somehow.

And as a crack is made I turn

out the lights. We are riding

a wind over the lips of night.

Mardi Gras Mobile, IV

2011-03-12T12:53:00.000-06:00

The next day, and this is a day that, at this point, I am remembering. We loafed around the house. J and L had gotten off of work for the big fat day. I woke around nine and unrolled from my fetal position that didn't really change all night. The room was cold, and since the mattress was on the floor it was akin to sleeping on one gigantic ice pack, the kind filled with gel that freezes. The coffee had already been made when I shuffled into the kitchen, and I poured myself a cup. I cut a triangle of king cake out of the wheel and some bagels went into the oven (not of their own conveyance). The three of us sat at the round linoleum-topped table in the combination dining, library, computer, music room and talked about Lady Gaga. She stared up at us from the cover of the new Vogue on the table, her pink hair cropped into a perfectly angled square containing her face. It was lovely, really.

We talked for a while after breakfast and considered our options for a day off. We began walking downtown through the slight humidity and in warmer sunlight. Car after car filtered into the city doubtless filled with primed partygoers, many of whom had begun drinking in the younger half of the day. A few blocks down and the traffic became visible, the big ghetto cars in candy paint and chrome rolling slowly into the city like cynical panthers. The closer we got to the city the more the porches were occupied. There would be a matriarch sometimes, with the kids in the yard running and laughing, and she'd be stone-faced and meditative, like a marble Buddha. Most of the houses belonged to black families, but on a few porches I would see a white man or a man and woman hanging out with everybody. I couldn't help but notice. They were simply out of place, at least aesthetically. Slowly, the trees lifted their limbs letting in more light and air. The lawns widened and we began to hear music. A Will Smith jam warbled over the street from the system on the porch of a seemingly empty house. The yard was all dirt. On our side of the street and the other the improvised parking lots started, their borders delineated with white string, and there was always a paper sign taped at the entrance. "$10.00 Parking." "$20 Parking." In the distance, I spotted Broad. An old man on our right was selling sausage dogs and barbecue under a low rickety gazebo, gesturing to us and stepping in rhythm with his words. "Got real Conecuh sausage right here! I know y'all want some! All right!"

When Old Shell T'd into Broad the traffic was no more, or rather it was stationary. It had to stop here for all the people in the streets talking, eating, chilling. It was a sea of humanity, all of them waiting for the next procession. Judging from the littered streets, one had passed through already that day. The breath of the best, those beautiful beads, were everywhere. I had walked through this same area the day before, but now it was changed. We found simply getting down to Dauphin St. difficult. Cars and motorbikes lined the street, dudes in full riding gear sitting atop some of them, just digging the scene. Pot smoke wafted through the air every now and then. A couple times we passed by whole rows of crotch rockets. Each of them with customized paint jobs, the words and symbols of a crew. Some vendors had set up in the actual street and we squeezed in between them, moving at a turtle's pace. We started walking between the cars, one parked and the other stalled in the street. Two guys seemed to be working something out beneath the hood. They'd reach in and fiddle about, then stop, survey the engine and talk it out. I had to stop to let a group of old ladies pass, and J and L continued on into open space. They got about fifty yards down the road when I finally managed to break free and run to catch up with them.

The parade proper had begun, so we found a spot to stand and watch. A float filled with what looked like white frat guys sailed by. They tossed beads into the mostly black crowds, hiding their eyes with Raybans and not really giving a damn about any of it. A series of floats with pseudo-political and totally politically incorrect messages painted on plywood boards started rolling past us. The signs were attached on either end of the float, so the whole contraption looked something like a miniature football field, the signs being the field goals. On one sign the message read, "Take the Troops Out of Afghanistan, Send Them to Midtown!", a sentiment I'm guessing stems from some common knowledge of crime and general dereliction. I think it was also indicative of the overall mood of these float people: white, angry, jubilant, insouciant. The scene was what I think the Last judgement will be like.

We moved on down the street, weaving and dodging past others going in the opposite direction. Sometimes we would have to stop suddenly so as not to be pelted with a new wave of oncoming beads. The way they fly through the air is a beautiful thing, spinning and unfurling from the pitcher's hand like a flying squirrel.

The parade ended and people started jumping the barricades to cross the street and pick up dropped Gras paraphernalia. We were at Dauphin, so I hopped the barricade crossed over the road, carefully dodging all the piles of horseshit. J was helping L over the fence when I got to the curb and they walked over. Lunch time was imminent, and we discussed where to eat. No one wanted to do anything too involved it seemed, so we decided to hit up a food truck. A couple of blocks down Dauphin we had to stop at another line of barricades, and we caught the parade we saw pass five minutes before. The same floats, the same signs rolled by in a physical deja vu. This time the parade route was much smaller snaking between squat buildings, and a food truck that looked like it had lost the carnival it belonged to. A cluster of high school kids stood on some kind of low platform across the street. They jumped and bounced in sick glee and the whole structure looked like it might collapse at any second. The redneck propaganda floats floated by again, and I noticed one I hadn't seen a few minutes before. It was a bad painting of two Mexican caricatures, ponchos and all, giving the finger and scowling like the bad guy from The Magnificent Seven. The message had something to do with jobs and how Mexicans are basically lower on the Darwinian scoreboard than we whites. I thought this chain of trash would never pass, just keeping filing by, like a sunny purgatory. But eventually it did pass, and we crossed into downtown.

Mardi Gras Mobile, III

2011-03-10T17:48:00.000-06:00

They all faced the street, all the designers and writers in their button-downs and dresses, and it was beautiful. The ground was already littered with beads, foam footballs, moonpies and confetti, and a little girl played her best trumpet on a big plastic pipehorn. This is where we would finally get preferential treament, all the beads we could dream of, enough moonpies to sink the USS Alabama. And the storm came on. With each float a rain of shimmering miniature plastic balls came down on us like hail from an acid trip. The screams and yells never stopped, from our mouths and from those around us. I kept looking over at a girl in a sundress (not in sundress weather) with dark hair and a perpetual smile. But she seemed to be with Frat Joe and I turned back to the business in the street. After a while I glanced to my right and noticed a face that looked too familiar, a former classmate from college. We took a poetry class together. I can't really say if it was awkward or not. It wasn't for me, but the communication seemed to simply stop at some indefinable point. We said our "hello-don't-I-know-you?'s" and I gave her a side-hug. Normally, I'm a firm believer in a right firm hug, but it felt right at the time. She seemed to be saying with her sudden silence, "This encounter is over. We have met the requirements." I walked back to my three person party four feet away.

Again a repeat of an hour ago, with the floats and the screaming and the disturbing floaters, roaming about on their mobile stage, expressionless and malicious, rich in the goods of the night. The floor filled up with the beads. I got a football, a handful of zodiac coins, and the great Pie-in-the-Sky did choose to smile upon me in that dark gulf. A pillow all the colors of the rainbow caught the street light and careened in a perfect arc up to my outstretched hand, a bag of beads at least five pounds heavy. The heft felt good in my grip, where it stayed all night. I was frightened for a minute some bead-head with floatlust, high on powdered sugar and year old grease, might spring from the shadows, from under that balcony table! and steal my lenten child.

When the last float had passed, the street crews came on to sweep up the debris. The scene reminded me of a zombie movie, the workers' measured but offbeat step, and the way they moved through empty streets in rows and knots. Many of them simply walked, picking up nothing, clearing away nothing, with absurdist resignation. At this point in the party, everyone had begun to move from the balcony back indoors. Kids and overzealous adults darted from curb to curb down below collecting artifacts of what had passed. They looked like paupers in the wake of a royal procession, collecting scraps and staples to cherish and consume. In my hands I had a football in the colors of the U of A, imitation moonpies (the audacity!), a plastic blowhorn, a purple mini frisbee and the limp carcass of beads. But I felt incomplete. I looked over to the bartable on my right and lo and behold, there stood a pink and white Ty Beanie Baby unicorn. My absurd lust for more shit to carry overrode my second-guessing conscience (maybe it belongs to that little girl over there...) and I picked up the lonely animal, stuffing it in my jacket pocket.

We headed inside and milled about for a minute or two. I saw my estranged schoolmate, but she went off into the shadows of the building, probably to pee, maybe to write a haiku about lost unicorns. Back down on the street, the gas-powered leaf-blowers echoed between the low downtown walls and families quickly scattered back to their minivans and SUVs, lest the drunks find them and smell their vulnerability. In less than ten minutes the whole square was a waste, only the homeless still posted in place, waiting for the real show tomorrow. We got back to the car after a quick port-a-john visit and unloaded our bounty into the car trunk. A couple girl walked across the parking lot, the guy holding a kid's football. He chucked it over to J who missed the pass, then threw it back for zero overall completions. It seemed that there was always a football around that night, like a comfort amidst the dreamy shimmer of it all. And there is always football, consistent as fall following summer, not to mention its being the symbol of southern dominance, skill and tradition in America. The football is like the moonpie in its ability to instantly invoke worlds. It stands in dumb strength for something static and monolithic, like the eagle of Rome, the cross of Christ, but its world is alive in that it is animated by kids straight out of high school, humans like us, searching for contact and surrender. Imagine a linebacker crying. That's Alabama.

Our original plan that night was to go downtown to eat dinner, so finally we were pursuing this. We walked to the Bicycle Shop, a taqueria fitted with neon on its facade. We were stopped at the door by a lady at a low table. She told us that we had to join the "club" to go inside, a rule due to the outdated liquor laws of Mobile which I guess prohibit any establishment from selling alcohol past midnight. So they'd be open until two am. I ordered a fish taco and black bean empanadas and we all drank beer. A band played about five feet away from our table. They must have all been at least thirty-five, but they sounded like they were two months into lessons from a thirteen year old. We slowly sank into a state of silent despair. The bass player played on, all the while pulling on a cigarette, and when the check came, we left.

Mardi Gras Mobile, II

2011-03-08T16:34:00.001-06:00

Four young bohemian types on bikes just rode past the house down Old Shell Road. The air is much warmer today, much more coastal. We, my lovely host-couple and I, just had a breakfast of bagels with jam and cream cheese and coffee. We talked about living in other countries. We talked about the infinite depth and absurdity of the Bible, and how a book like Isaiah, a beautiful book, could come to be. In the mind of the prophet, how do the words feel, and how does he see himself among the people, a mouthpiece for the Almighty, a man with too much to say? Today, later, we're going to the parades, or processions, excuse me, but other than that I'm not sure what's on the agenda.

Yesterday was a day of continued debauchery, not with us so much (J and L both worked all day) but for the city in general. I walked into downtown around noon, a walk of maybe thirty minutes, past all the live oaks decked in moss and the turn-of-the-century antebellum homes. Eventually, the road opens out into a four-way stop with train tracks cutting through, and cars parked wherever they can light. On my left and right were vacant lots and backyards with the ever-present parking attendants hawking for exorbitant fees, shooting the shit in the meantime. Old soul and R&B was being blasted next to a food truck selling barbecue and burgers, and I tried to figure out how to cross the metal barricades set in place by the city for the coming parade.

From my right to left two motorcycle mounted cops flew by, lights flashing blue. As I got closer to Broad I saw two little girls leading what looked like a pair of overfed dogs in sweaters. After a couple of seconds I realized that they were pygmy horses. Not ponies, but the bulky dwarfs of the equine family, always ridiculous, usually slightly surreal. Over Broad and into the city proper, I made my way into the maw of the Gras, passing frequent groups of college kids spouting nothing, just loud, and families, always with the patriarch leading. At this point, I had to pee so badly that I considered stopping into a bar to relieve myself of this liquid burden, but I didn't. Only a few more blocks and I'd be at Red Square, where J works. He was on his lunch break, so I headed into the city to grab a bite to eat from one of the streetside vendors.

When I turned onto Conception I thought I spotted J on the balcony, his arms aloft in a victory pose. The closer I got, though, the more its figure and color into focus, and I realized that it was actually a decoy. Just a beaded mannequin in shorts, like a pale Mr. T for the necklaces. J came outside and we double-high-fived. I urinated as soon as I got inside the box of a building (in the restroom, of course). Everyone, the graphic designers and copywriters, was working in silence on big Macintosh computers, the high ceiling lending no echo to the industry. J's buddy and co-worker R was there and we exchanged greetings. Across the street I saw the rest of the company facilities, then we headed to Mama's food truck where I got a Conecuh sausage dog with peppers and onions. It got a healthy slathering of mustard from the barrel of a condiment dispenser, the kind you press down on, and we headed back to Red Square.

From there we parted ways and I walked down to the shipyards to look at the ships and the water. The sky was almost clear save a few layers of lacy cloud and a contrail. A homeless man in fatigues with a duffel sat on a park bench, eating something from a plastic bag. He said, "Hello, nice weather today." I agreed and walked over to the railing. Two couples stood over to the left, snuggling and talking low, and a mom with her two kids ran around the small park. Docked and motionless directly to the right was a huge Carnival cruiseliner called "Elation." Two african-american girls lay down separately on benches behind me, totally alone, totally silent, but they were awake. They looked completely worn out. I kept walking and ended up at a bookstore, Bienville Books, where I bought a Kobo Abe novel and a postcard of a wet bear holding a frog lovingly in his paws. It was a printed painting.

Through the square (a square) and past a huge metal fountain I started home. A stage had been erected in the grass and two metrosexual dudes stood on it talking about god-knows-what and saying, "If anybody can bring up a paper clip, anybody with a paper clip! We need somebody with a paperclip!" At the last second a young girl walked up with a paperclip. She won a coupon for free frozen yogurt. Eventually, I got back home, crossing over more barricades and crowds of onlookers.

When J and L got home we decided to get some dinner and catch a procession, so we got in the car back to the city. Ten minutes down the road we hit the traffic, big Cadillacs with pastel interiors and rims to match, crowds on the streets oblivious to the cars, and jacked up Lincoln Continentals, the kind that look like cop cars. We got stuck for about five minutes behind two black dudes and their sons, I'm guessing. If we had literally rear-ended them they wouldn't have cared. With a studied apathy they kept on walking up the middle of the road. When a Ford Explorer with two girls inside came down the other side of the street, forcing us to stop so they could pass, the alpha of the group That-Dost-Not-Move leaned into the window to get some honey, extend his male prowess if only for a minute. We drove on finally, almost colliding with a Lincoln and J said in frustration, "No one cares about anything!" It seemed that way. Once we got through this cluster of chill humanity we were trolling the streets for a place to park. No luck, and we ended up parking by the main post office downtown. The festival crowd was in full effect.

We picked our way down to the square, the streets by now littered with confetti, beads, plastic bottles and crushed Moonpies. Let me stop now to meditate on this crumbly treat. Up above the city, hanging on the corner of one its tallest buildings there is a gigantic Moonpie with the Moonpie logo across it. They say that it drops on New Year's Eve, like the ball in Times Square. Why choose this singularly strange food, one with no especially redeeming characteristics, other than its irredeemable commonness, to be the symbol of a city and an internationally-known festival? It is comprised of a marshmallow layer sandwiched between dry cakey cookies, and the whole thing is then coated in this pseudo-frosting, which is more like a sugar-sleeve. The old joke, thanks to southern rock & soul gods NRBQ, is to eat the pie with an RC Cola. I haven't tried it yet, but it is obviously something to be done. How else to neutralize a palate paralyzed by crumby dryness than with a syrupy soda? Probably the best strategy for taking all this in is to basically inhale both elements simultaneously, resulting in an ambiguous cloudy mush of sweetness and hollow calories.

Where is this going? I can see this mysterious snack as a microcosm of all of Mardi Gras. It has no value, no purpose, beyond its mere being. Both of them, the festival and its culinary representative, say, "I am here. Take me or leave me, but either way you cannot unlock my secret logic, and dammit! you will enjoy me if you can only surrender your feeble soul to this hedonistic glory!" But still, alas, this vehicle of enjoyment, and yes, love, finds itself strewn in pieces across the avenues of fair Mobile, like the inhibitions of its supplicants, lost and free.

From many blocks away you can hear the crowds. The sound is like river rapids filtered through Autotune, like one enormous grease-sucking beast who whispers in affectionate tones to the all-powerful Moonpie hanging silently in the sky. When we got to the parade route the street was already lined with families and young drunks jumping up and hitting the ground and screaming for beads. Time is on their side. We ended up partially behind a tree, not the best place to catch parade booty (in the piratical sense and the urban sense), but we ended up with a necklace or two. Standing next to us was a mother with her son on her shoulders. We could not stop laughing because the boy was giving forth this sound like a struggling tea kettle, but with the most droll look on his face. He wanted so badly to be excited, it seemed. The high school marching bands began filing by with the dancers out front, popping and locking and sticking their asses out like vibrant feather-tufts. Float after float came and went and we realized that we could find a better spot. We started down the block in the thin corridor between the barricaders and the wallflowers, once passing some girls in gowns and layers of make-up and guys in tuxedos. On the ball and having one too.

Next to a corner convenience store we stopped and propped up against the barricade, hoping for something, anything. The lady next to us, at least thirty years our senior, crouched down and shot her leg through the barricade like a fat rake to pull back a tangle of beads. I got jealous and pulled back some Kelly-green beads, the color of me homeland. Beads are the currency of Mardi Gras, at once a gift, a commodity and a sign of signified pleasure, abandon and just plain I-don't-give-a-fuck. I drooped the chain around my neck, invoking some hazy vision of homeboy baditude, and screamed and yelled, but float people don't readily pass out their wares to twenty-something white guys, so, I just slowly lost my voice. Still, it's always fun to belt out a good "skeeeeeeewww!!!" every now and then. We moved on.

J mentioned that Red Square had a balcony, so we started in that direction. When we hit the door we all three bounded up a flight of brown concrete stairs and strolled into the company kitchen. In the corner was a full bar. Beer cans and plastic cups and trays of sliced fruit were spread around in party disarray. Outside the balcony was packed, and I could hear the crowds in a muffled roar.

Mardi Gras Mobile, I

2011-03-07T16:40:00.000-06:00

It is morning in Mobile, and the cars keep passing by at intervals on the way to or from the countless parades that last all day. We're close to the Gulf coast, but there is still a chill in the air. Some trees are blossoming for the second time. I'm out on the front porch just in shadow, but a foot away from the morning sun that creeps closer by the minute. Next door, there's a family of Russian hippies. There are three or four kids, and they play in the empty parking lot a few feet from the yard. That's where I parked my truck, the truck that used to have tie-down straps in the bed, but they must have been stolen back in Birmingham. I didn't notice until I stopped for gas at a nameless station in the country between here and there. I bought them at a Home Depot to haul around my music gear. Hadn't used them in a while.

Last night we all ate dinner here at the house, an old shotgun that I guess has been renovated a couple times to be today a spacious and clean couple's bungalow. When I first arrived and got all my shit situated (by the air mattress and records), we headed out to see a parade, for Joe Cain, I think. Knots of rednecks tailgated in a cloud of overloud hip hop and beer. Little kids ran around in the blocked-off streets, taking in maybe too much but loving it. Middle-aged women stood on faux-French balconies feigning to flash the middle-aged men down in the streets. We ate pizza and drank beer at a Bauhaus-style (in my mind) pizza parlor, where the town pervert gawked at the girls and took a snapshot of one on his smartphone.

When the parade started it was weirder than I could have imagined. A collision of outmoded ideologies and secret histories in the form of floats, food and straight-up pandemonium snaked around the old city blocks. Handfuls of beads in gold, purple and green were hurled with direct intent at the drunk crowds, hands out-stretched in hunger and supplication. And they threw plastic wrapped marshmallow pies, hard candy, and I saw a few baby dolls and plush animals held out like sacrifices and shaken by the float people. I gave a couple of my best rebel yells and we moved on, beadless.

They say that there is a black Mardi Gras and a white Mardi Gras here in Mobile. Driving to the parade yesterday, I could believe it. All the parks and greenspaces were fenced off with chainlink to keep the crowds from filling them up with beer cans, cups and whatever unknown kipple accumulates at these things. Black families parked their cars along the streets, trunks facing the traffic, and they grilled out and socialized. Many of them bring their own port-a-johns then charge out the ass for their use. In every empty parking lot, which is all of them now, because no self-respecting business owner wants to stay open during the processions, there stood a lone attendent waiting for eye contact from the lost and frustrated flood of cars hunting carnival food and the surreal. Most of the lots were full by the time we got downtown. But we drove on through and eventually reached the downtown, easily finding a place to park. This is where the whites are, out in full force because it's their parade day. Every other young male sported the colors of Auburn or Alabama, their tribe, and I wondered how they all knew to stay separated from the de facto regions on the outskirts. These were all yuppies, good ol' boys, psuedo-hippies, and whatever else there is, regular people. On parade day, which is every day for a couple of weeks, the public is free to drink in the streets, so almost everyone had a beer or a cup of something in their grip. The mood was lifted, to be sure. We filed through the crowds, picking our steps gingerly lest we step on some bro's foot and start a much-wanted fight. My buddy got a called "faggot" by some guy with glazed-over eyes, someone we had never seen before, and I knew the whole episode was meaningless to him. Just part of the scene, a reflex and a reaching out to a man he thinks he understands. My buddy smiled at his wife, and we walked on.

One of the stranger and more amazing aspects of all the craziness was how these groups and ten or fifteen, anchored in lots and under trees could stand and be said to "hang out" in the din of some of the most bass-heavy and absurdly loud dancemethiphop I have ever heard. They talked I'm sure, but it must have been minimal. Keep the conversation simple, feel the vibe, bud. And a mile away, by the strip malls and gas stations, directly under the sun, were the ministers of this music, listening and vibing all the same. The whites and black had the same sounds coming out of their cars and stereos, had the same sentiments falling from their lips, but never across the color line. Maybe they wanted it that way. Probably, they didn't think about it. That is the way things are, which means that is the way things have been. That is the south, and this is Mardi Gras.

Possession

2011-02-19T13:54:00.000-06:00

A clouded light, like an artificial tide,

falls through the blinds and my body

is enveloped both by bed and a fresh fear,

a new day. I can hear the yardsale across

the street where small voices scream

beneath the mumbling of car motors.

Those kids themselves, in blues, greens and browns,

route out the warming day like apostles

in a distant land. They will throw

their hands to the tongues of their betters

and make a show of the order of things.

My head settles into its skin and

breathing returns like a brother

come back from the cellar for fuel.

The night is entwined in the morning,

a marriage of warnings, as two sharks mating,

and your face flows over the voices that

never stopped, clouds over ripening crops.

I'll step out of bed, find my shoes,

walk downstairs and heave this vessel onto

the outer sea of new wine. The day

began long ago and now I am among it.

Behind gray folding tables the family

stands and rids itself of junk now spent--

books, shoes, a hunting bow and all their dust.

Crowds flood in and hover for longer than

necessary. They come to buy the grass, the clay,

the rolling sky, strange eyes, and voices of

kids they would tremble to know.

If their cars could hold so much they

would fill their homes with it, dirt

piles making it difficult to juice an orange,

trees transplanted into each bedroom and

the whole house awash in strangers.

Then they spill into the street again.

I escape into the attic to hide

what I have failed to possess, and

be buried in the dirty dark like the

pregnant boxes, but with eyes around.

My hands rove over these relics until

they touch another set of skin containing

bones. I weigh it in my hands, judging

the fit and how it would become my own.

Another set of hands is always welcome here.

They will soon feel me and my branches,

and weigh the findings. How will he seem

in my kitchen and den, in my bedroom?

Out of a Clean Day

2011-01-13T20:55:00.000-06:00

The shotgun in her hand—
The glance behind the counter—
The corners of her eyes reaching upward—
We talked across the marble bar for
maybe half an hour, talk walking from
the backwoods to the gardens of Socrates.
Work had ended for me, but after
the bank I returned and found her there.
She held silver in her hands and made
a bungalow from middle-class diplomas.

A canopy of garlic, pepper, and oil
fell about us, filled our skin,
and the people ate in silence. Some
friends from the farm walked in
just then, and told us about the chickens.
Recreational without a permit, they grazed
amongst the business district, played between
the raped rows, knowing an idiotic glee
both above and below us. You stepped
away to take a table and the sun hit the ice.

Getting off the interstate I drove into
the forties. The pines came on and the
road was bathed in white. On my side,
in the road, an old man tried to push his
car up the road. I parked on the shoulder
and helped him labor back over the vanilla
slush. I gave him my name, then he said,
"I got it."I saw him recede in stages, as I
checked back and the sun set. You rose
back up behind the counter again.

Roll On Old Boy

2011-01-08T00:31:00.000-06:00

I developed a roll of film at the big-box
store hoping to see something in the negative,
a language I had forgotten or some pictures
of me in the black. When I got it back the roll
was blank and I recreated right there what
I should have lived in the dark, me on a cliff
with a forest behind or the faces of my three
friends up in the mountains, hammering
hardwood and laying down green lead paint
to dry in the California sun. There was a river
over the road and a girl went there even
on cold days, at night she went, and bathed
there alone, naked sometimes, instead of
punching walls and lying in bed with thoughts
of home. Instead I held a paper bag with
a shining coil inside. The unexposed celluloid
was brown and blind but somehow rolled
into its shell like something was there to tell.
The counter-lady was nice enough and
threw away the remains of my attempt
at artistry, be what you want to be.

Field

2011-01-06T21:06:00.001-06:00

The distant blinking lights across the field
from here call to me in a voice like sirens,
reminding me of myself but younger, when
I walked across that field, across the
stubble in winter and the grass in spring,
to the house of a girl I loved, I think I loved,
when I was dumber and wiser and made
deft sleights of hand without recourse to
my head and the wall between was only
a few red lines long. Yesterday I served
the customers out of a dream-state and
struggled to stay awake, thinking of wars
I have fought centuries ago, passing out
orders like wedding presents for the dead
and going home to my wife of many years,
to dream of a life mundane as draining a
carton of milk. The postman came and ate
his lunch, the banker stayed and talked
coded talk of the world he builds, to his
fellows in arms and whoever else will listen.
Every pedestrian walking past bearing those
headstones I struggled to see out of the
pane-glass between. And it soaks up the
light, and the light is no wiser but laughs
as it shoots, laughs the laugh of meeting,
on the street, by the car of new lovers,
under lamp and saying nothing. Every ball
goes into its hole and nothing is left but green
and smoke and the dark flowing of sleeves
and skirts, filled with flesh. The queen
arrives right on time. She calls across
the old sleepy face of brown soil, the
roots meeting in finger-like webbing
so you can remember and revolve around
to who you were. The lights are not so
distant in the end. All that is between is the
field and breathing a thousand ins and outs.

2010-12-02T23:41:00.001-06:00

We talked about movies and the ball
rolling in Spanish. We talked about
work and the people there flowing
like caverns in oceans, like being
broken down in mid-morning traffic
with your stereo on 8 and your chest
filled with bricks. We talked about
one another and how growing up
was more of a chore than taking out
the trash and the girls checked the tags
in your clothes to see where they
had come from. I started out on
the couch and then walked outside.
The stars laughed as if their beauty
were just a joke and I searched thru
the trash for something to smoke.
You stopped in static a few times,
and I met and received you and lay
on the cold floor tiles to beckon up
the crawling invertebrates, dormant
and living, so that they and you may
know that even a boy can touch your
mind. The wine in my glass was
guttering, the phone in my hand was
dead. I stood and stretched and lay
on my bed, so that a feeling in
crescendo might break in even waves.
You laughed again and again. I
thought of a way out of all this, my
times in forest sunlight, a ride by
bike to the hamburger stand. How
can you measure the space of a heart
and lay it on the bloody heat of a
body in the dark? The talk went on.

Flood

2010-11-09T19:14:00.001-06:00

Out of a dark sea of drink
I came into the morning,
beached as an orca would be,
on the shore of some alien
dream. Lying before the day,
I flooded into myself. There
was tall grass concealing fishes,
whole schools bedecked in dew,
and the news of a friend who
passed. Wrapped like gauze
my body played dumb, and
spoke a humming tongue,
keeping me lucid as coral
in glass. I looked to ceilings
of foam and of bone, reading
the tags and touching the
string between the two. All
this ahead of the sun. Blueblack
cold still calls the mirror and
floor, the chest of drawers
and the organ. I am still
in the water. My feet are
unfamiliar to me.

Nice Things Are Enjoyable

2010-11-04T09:55:00.000-05:00

Here are a few beautiful things that I have seen in the past few weeks:

A city bus parked at stop with the engine still going because the driver is on the sidewalk passionately kissing her man.

Two small Asian children playing on the handrail outside of a supermarket that has just gone out of business. I walk up to the automatic sliding door, but it does not open. The inside is all white shelves, eerily empty and bare-bones. "They closed...they closed the other day," the little boy says.

Gigantic cumulus clouds overtaking the city at sundown.

Gangs of teenagers, some 12 strong, milling around in the movie theater lobby, doing nothing in particular. Then in the theater itself there wasn't a seat to spare, and everyone was quiet.

New Direction

2010-10-02T13:22:00.001-05:00

For the past month or so I've been blogging on largely inconsequential happenings in my everday life and small reflections on it. Somtimes I would post a poem or some sort of theoretical sketch. Starting today though, I will be moving this blog in a new direction, away from the personal and toward the communal or universal. After having different discussions with friends and family, and after some meditation on these, I've again come to the conclusion that my own little world is meaningless without the network of people and resources that support it. I will blog on this network. I will try to understand it and pay it homage, if you will. The situation in which I find myself day to day, the thoughts that pass through my brain and the feelings that connect it all, they are subjective and fleeting. The community and a collective spirit of love (or if you want, compassion) are the resources by which we will see some future, any future, because we are in a privileged situation to have a future at all. Please forigive any indulgence I may have portrayed on this blog in the past. There are already enough personalities on the web for us all to have a backup. Let's not strive to be someone, but rather rest in our actual nature and try for others.

Family of Man

2010-09-29T22:12:00.001-05:00

I've finally found a routine for my days, now that I'm back home and a routine is what needs to be made. I get up and go to work, and pittle around for a while after that. Then I go home and eat and maybe play music. Later, I go and drink coffee and read. There's a book by Murakami I'm trying to read, The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, without buying it, so I sit at the bookstore and go through about fifty pages while watching the people that come and go through the front door. After that I come home and write, on here maybe, and in my notebook maybe. It's a thorough and all-consuming routine, occupying my mind and body in a solid twelve-hour span. I don't understand how some people don't work, sitting at home and basically working to occupy themselves. I've never been very good at that. I need a job and I need a fixed schedule or else I go slightly crazy. When I say crazy, I mean I don't know what to do with myself, so I end up thinking too much, eating and drinking too much, and generally being uptight. Thank God for the eight hour workday. Or Lincoln. I don't know.

Yesterday I went to the new railroad park downtown. It's spacious and new and seems to be solidly built. Kids run around on the jungle gyms and couples walk their dogs. Across the road skaters and bmxers do their thing on the concrete foundation of an old building. The park is between them and the railroad tracks. There are two bowls too, in the park, and sometimes the skaters go over and use it. I saw a guy on a bmx flying from one bowl to the other, and the pedestrians and people sitting by ooh-ed and aah-ed. This new weather is nice.

Earlier today, while driving I realized that something happened to me over the summer, something so subtle I didn't realize it had happened. I used to think that I was alien and incapable of connecting or socializing in a real human way with most people, namely my own generation. But this summer that's what I was forced to do and realized that the trappings of others, their style and personalities go in the way for me. I failed to see that we all have the same basic sense of humor and a common perspective on the world right now. It's a comforting, but slightly odd, realization. Born into a time, without choice, we all move together in the same direction and cope in our own common way. There is a family of man (humans I mean) and I am a part of it.

Travel

2010-09-27T23:24:00.001-05:00

I recently returned from a trip down to south Alabama to see my grandparents and some old friends. All in all it was a righteous time. I spent a couple days in Elba (that's where my grandparents live) and wandered around their property, struggling to breath through the pseudo-coastal heat, and darkening up my clothes with sweat. When they dried they looked like they had been smashed around in flour. The salt content of my body is alarming. Anyway, on that same day my grandmother and I visited my granddad. He's in what I guess you would call a "nursing home," though it seems to be a little more hospital than resort. He had a stroke a few years back, right after being diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease, so he is less than he was in social situations. We sat and talked with him until his dinner was wheeled into the room, after which we watched t.v. game shows, but I don't think he was following that. Later, my grandmother made an excellent spaghetti dinner. The dessert was peach cobbler. The movie was Forrest Gump. That was really the only full day I had there.

On the next, we ate a big breakfast and talked for quite some time. She was alarmed at my indecision in serious life-matters, mainly getting a job and figuring out what it is I "want to do with my life." I still feel like I am at the same perpetual crossroads (one which I may hang around until I die), but the mere geographical remove of travel to distant places gives me space and objectivity to think more clearly. On Saturday, after lunchtime, I packed up my stuff and started the drive to Spanish Fort. It's situated on the eastern finger of Alabama, across the bay from Mobile. The drive down was uneventful except for a little rain which was welcome.

When I arrived, Lou (that's Josh's wife) and I went to pick up Josh from work. It was his last day at a half-frame shop/half-art gallery. They have beer on tap at all times. The Alabama game was on and I had three little red plastic cupfuls of Yuengling. After leaving there we got a few necessities at the grocery store and headed back to J and L's for the "deck party" that was under weigh. It was a party like most others. Beer and wine was guzzled, cigarettes were smoked, Nintendo football was played, and I was totally smitten with a pregnant lady. Towards the end of the night Josh and I got high in the garage and had an imaginary church service. He was the rapt devotee to my fiery but subtle preacher. The next day we had Frosted Flakes for breakfast and I read a little more of the Odyssey, which I have never read. Later we went to Mobile for lunch, ending up at Hopjacks, a pizza joint with a strong draft beer selection. And they were half-off. With a slight collective buzz, we ventured into the downtown sector and saw Josh's new place of business, Red Square. It's an ad agency. They have a full bar. Apparently, Mobilians (Mobilites?) like to drink.

That night we watched a Harry Potter movie. Whichever one is based on the 5th book. It was whimsically dark and fairly entertaining. Before that, more Nintendo had been played, and we had breakfast for dinner. Next day: bagels for breakfast with seedless Raspberry jelly. We discussed "Golden Girls" and "Doug" for a while, and I mentioned how I wished that flashbacks (like the ones sitcoms have) happened in real-life. You know, "Well, I woke up, had breakfast, watched Golden Girls. A day like any other... Cue flashback sound effect and fade to new scene. I'm not totally sure how that would technically play out, though. Would you watch the flashback or actually re-live the scene? There are benefits to both, I suppose. So, most of that day, which was earlier today, we shopped at Antique Malls in Foley. I bought three books: The Memoirs of William T. Sherman, A Death in the Family, and a book by Shunryu Suzuki, the name of which I can't recall. I also got a reproduction of a print of three different Atlantic whales drawn in profile. A good haul, I'd say (as I lean toward you onto my elbow). On the way home we bought doughnuts at Daylight Doughnuts (or is it "Donuts"?) The lady who helped us looked like Josh's mom. Back home and we ate pizza for lunch, putting the jalapenos that we had canned the day before on our slices. A fine meal. When lunch was cleaned up Doug, Josh and I "jammed" for a while, mostly on Black Keys riffs. I played drums, they played guitars. The last time that I had played drums before that was about a year ago, or maybe 9 months, but we still toe it up. The coffee was ready, so we stopped and went onto the new back porch to "kick it", as it were. And that's what we did until I left. We talked about eagles flying up into the stratosphere (apparently there are videos of this), house-sized bug nets, and building furniture (as in, constructing furniture, not furniture made to be in buildings, which is all furniture, I guess. I rarely hear of outdoor tables, chairs, and the like being referred to as "furniture." "Lawn furniture." How white.)

Then I drove home on the 65. Not much to speak of there, except for the gas station I stopped at that had a vegetable garden on the side of the building and a little greenhouse next to it. Who owns that? Chevron? Are they petroleum plants? So, to sum up this mindless ramble, waiting as long as possible to urinate while driving is a good method to combat drowsiness. Later on, peeps.

Taxonomy

2010-09-12T21:00:00.001-05:00

Take a walk around the block and see
the neighbors with their kids. So deep
in a life, but digging what you buried.
With every other porchfront there's
a lingering face, held aloft in fluorescent
lamplight. The pack is now broken and named,
but you use those words to touch them,
and you use your hands to push them back.
Come out on this porch and sit with me
a while. Leave a space for cicadas to sing,
and I'll divine the equation of your face,
mirror your motions with studied grace.
We walk and hum, and the blades of grass
in your hair fall like canoes in a cataract.
Together, we keep our eyes from the stoops
and porchsteps where the others are, crowding
like a herd and braking in a rush, dust
suspended in your head. So your silken
fingers squeeze tighter onto the thick,
wet night, onto these hands and the words
that we make. Later, we watch city-kids
breakdance, spinning and angled on ratty
cardboard, the code a movement, atomic love
in physical form. Back on our ground,
your name means nothing. Your momma may
be a martian from a withered arm of the
galaxy, but she filled your cup with words.
We hold one another. No light between us.

Pure Annihilation

2010-09-12T20:39:00.001-05:00

I was just working on a poem, and this fucking computer somehow glitched and deleted it. That's all.

Intuitive/Nonintuitive

2010-09-11T16:18:00.001-05:00

Lately I've been thinking about different processes (learning speech), devices (a car or truck), or procedures (making spaghetti) that are automatically understood (intuive), versus those which are not automatically understood (nonintuitive) or which simply cannot be understood (barring a genius or idiot savant) without the aid of someone already skilled in the given area. I'm going to make a list of intuitive procedures or processes, and then a list of nonintuitive procedures or processes. But really, how can any any process be said to be inherently intuitive or not? All processes pertaining to human beings are subject to the nature of a given human being. Take, for example, simple social interaction. For some, this is as natural as urinating, as easy as walking down the street. But for others it takes effort, like riding a bike or opening a new can of jam. So, the process is reliant upon the person, it's inventor. It is not a matter or intuition or lack of intuition, it is a matter or predisposition to the given process or procedure. Not all of us are painters, not all of are mechanics, not all of us are chefs, but we all speak and we all eat, and we all need our cars worked on every now and then. What is it that binds us and makes us a common family here on this alien soil? Well, our individual invention may make an individual out of the common person, but this is also what galvanizes the human race as "human". So anyway, here's a working list. Let me know what you think.

INTUITIVE:

thought
speech
movement (walking, running, eating)
sex
social interaction (the need to connect with other human beings)
covering (i.e. we seek shelter and the covering of clothing, or a home)
vision
hearing
taste
smell
touch (all of these referring to the simple perception of stimuli)
cups (you put the liquid in the end with the opening)
most musical instruments (pick it up, hit it a little and you begin to see how it works)
a hammer
a bicycle (to a degree, this is intuitive. the desire to balance and not fall is a basic intuitive struggle)
a typewriter
a radio
smoking
drinking
eating, chewing and swallowing
direction (to not trip, run into things or generally fall off of a path)
eye contact (intuitive though uncomfortable for many)
jumping
exploration or to understand one's surroundings (possibly not a universal human trait, though we all have our own methods or exploration, whether by sight alone or by physical ventures into the environment)
expression (a slippery one. some seem to be born with a need to express their own thoughts or feelings in a mode above normal everyday speech. most humans, however, seem to have at least a baseline desire to vocally express how they are feeling or what they desire, be it food or emotional turmoil. some outside the psychological norm may not have such a need)
relations with the opposite sex

Nonintuive:

logic
driving
writing
sex
social interaction (the need to connect with other human beings)
buttons for automatic windows in automobiles (pushing it forward does not always achieve the same result for every vehicle)
most cooking (for example, making cheese, or most dairy products for that matter. many culinary processes and procedures, though, are easily and almost automatically understood, such as roasting meat or frying an egg)
brewing beer
making wine
reading
brewing tea or coffee
most drugs (as they are the result of empirical experimentation, though we are at the tail end of thousands of years of such experimentation)
programming (as the writing and coding of most languages is nonintuitive)
calculus
the movement of celestial bodies through space
gravity, space-time and the relation of one to the other
light and its behavior
organic decay (something dies, it decays)
germs and their proliferation
the structure of matter
fashion (as much of art is culturally relative and in a sense, illogical)
law
morality
politics
sound and the propagation of sound
electronics and electricity
relations with the opposite sex

That's all I've got for now. I was hoping that I would be able to compile a list of more everyday procedures and processes in life, but most of these are quite abstract and broad. Hopefully next time I'll have a few more down-to-earth and simply puzzling facets of life in the 21st century. Later on.

Home

2010-09-06T03:12:00.000-05:00

I'm back in Alabama now, and I know it, because I swam in a creek in the country and had some barbeque to bring me back to what this place is. Coming through the Midwest, through Kansas City, and seeing Missouri, and then driving down through Tennessee partways, I recognized Alabama with its trees and humidity and the buzz of whatever life seems to grow in the greenery thats everywhere. I spent some time with some friends of mine tonight, and we had a few beers and caught up on Birmingham. A little while ago I walked around in my parents backyard. There's an old shed back there, overgrown with bamboo and weeds. The rats and mice must have been sleeping because it was dead quiet, and I felt that finally I was back home. You can tell because the air is a little thicker. The stars don't shine so bright, but it's all right because you know you're just deeper in it, deeper in whatever this country is. Back in living, back in the tongues so familiar.
The first thing I did when I got back was go to my grandparent's 50th wedding anniversary. This was an hour after I had pulled into Birmingham and laughed because it was all new for the first time. New as a European aquaduct. I walked into a big room filled with faces I hadn't seen in months, and in some cases, years. There was a multi-layered cake and an open bar, and my uncle was DJing so the party was definitely on. Making the rounds I felt like a different person. Like walking through a dream and every back you pat brings you closer back to who you were and what you had left behind. Oh well. This is a part of me no matter what. The "this" being my family and my friends and sitting for hours saying only obvious and meaningless lines that tie you together forever. I hope this can last. I'm afraid that soon I'll settle back in and all the work that I did out west will be for nought. Who was I out there? Who can I be back here now, when everything over the summer is only a happy vision? Like I was in dress rehearsal for a season. Well, I'm going deeper into it, to south Alabama to see my grandparents and other friends there. Is something waiting for me there? Maybe I know what will happen already and I'm simply moving in to pick it up. It's all new and it's all so old.

Bringing Back All

2010-05-13T21:33:00.000-05:00

Found this in my notebook from when I was traveling in Italy. I was probably drunk when I wrote it.

I'm bringing back all the essential elements to bear
upon what I have been borne upon for a lifetime.
You say that I have not thought in completion,
but I see that you can speak about exactly what
you nullify. This, the words being made out
of shapes on a page, they begin to unravel like
wicker chairs in summer because of the load
you wish them to maintain. This is impossible.
Communication in the elemental: what a joke.
We spoke of only the fringes of undulating
countries. We touch the lips of a creature
naked in the night. The sound that we
receive will phase away the tongue.

Chanson

2010-05-01T13:49:00.000-05:00

The righteous lay in wait, exhuming names
and mystery codes―the tangible music
forgotten in the gap when the sun kissed
the lip of night and the eyeless stalk
the horizon. My book of Emerson
is on the table, washed in pollen, washed
in weeks. I lie on the couch sinking deep
into my own buzzing loam, fern-thick robes
and my dominion in the hollow. I
learn new words and hike up heavy gears.
All the speed you may desire rests sweetly
between the leaves, congregations of tongues,
conflagration of the young. I fought
a strange path from that house but fell under
in the making. Now the rain comes, the good
part, when we see our winning selves starry
and falling into the web, like the poet
told us. A wreath of treetops, arms like
beeches and feet deep with the lava-lovers,
eating it up, soaking it all up. You may
remember how the woodsman came to
touch the lakebottom, or how the account-
ant figured the best day to die. You may now
cash your numbers and skate the galactic chanson,
head awash in the nodes of glowing night,
rummaging the chest of fire, dust and light.
The ring reaches its peak, and now we are
in orbit, surfing a wave named in tones and
rising, and sinking, and rising and subsiding.

Well

2009-09-02T19:53:00.000-05:00

Well

If the well become dry the
cross-country message lines
short-circuit and Mr. Dunning
forgets to take out the dogs.

A cascade of pheromones
speak in s's and p's where
the paneglass lovers go.
And while the communication
work crews joke by electric
lamps, lawnchair families circle
around candles and sleep early.

The stars get brighter and
those before unseen are obvious.

So Let It Be Written, So Let It Be Un-

2009-08-19T22:07:00.000-05:00

There's a certain part of my mind that one glass of wine totally annihilates. If I could cruise through the rest of my life in that state of mind I wouldn't object. That judge, that critic that questions and undermines every situation I find myself in, that's who disappears. After an hour or so he's back. I can feel him coming back, like I'm lying in bed and I hear him as he comes in the front door, then slowly stomps up the stairs, then stumbles down the hall, and I see his shadows comes up under the door. Hey, I'm back!

All the time, most times, I enter into conversations that I could care very much less about but instead I pretend to be interested. And the whole time I'm wondering if the other party sees my lack of interest, sees my effort. Really, I want to engage with this other person, but maybe I've been too insulated throughout my life and now there's this indestructible wall between me and others. Am I a product of the wall or did I build that wall? Or was the wall built for me by others around me in childhood? Is there a wall? Are abstractions of any use? Put up a ton of posters over the weekend, posters for the zine. I've gotten feedback from one person who saw one of them, so I know they're visible, receivable. The release party is coming up soon and ideally that will be gigantic. I'd like to have a DJ and bubbles fall from the ceiling and monkeys and pony rides but hey, readings are cool too, right?

About halfway through Can't Stop, Won't Stop: A History of the Hip Hop Generation, and it's incredible. The late seventies fascinates me like no other time, and the hip hop scene back then was just so alive and powerful, just before it blew up and covered the earth. At work, we've all got DJ or MC names. Mines is D Fresh aka Grilled Chicken Deluxe, the second coming from 8th grade algebra glass. Then there's DJ Don't Stop and DJ NASDAQ or DJ S&P or something like that. Work has been hectic lately with me going full time at the restaurant and telling the library that I'm quitting. Yeah, I just walked up to the physical edifice and told it, "I quit!" Actually, I had to turn in a written(typed) notice, which is just another facet of the whole Birmingham City bureaucratic machine that eats up the little guy while plugging its ears with IOU's.

Here's some poetry:

A transparent purple amidst a swarm
of white - the immortal crutch of strings
that pulls while pushing and speaks while touching.

A man sits alone against the piano,
upright and solid as a cathedral,
but the lights bleeds out, the light is forged.

At the factory wheel a father
of two stands upon the killing heat,
and waits to fly away upon himself at dawn.

It's That Interesting

2009-08-12T21:28:00.000-05:00

A couple of days ago I wrote down what at the time seemed like a genius little maxim of wisdom. I wrote it down on one of the blue bookmark-shaped pieces of paper that are used to mark books shelved by new hires at the library and now I can't find it. It had something to do with "the void" and "true thought," and I used the construction "in which" so you know it was legit. A part of me must have wanted to lose it. Whenever I churn out a proverb like that, the little me back in the shadows is scoffing like, "what, you think you're Kant or something?" I wonder if philosophy is dead. Lately, I've been skimming through Plato's Republic and not long before that I read The Myth of Sisyphus, a book of essays by Camus. The latter put me into a shallow existential swamp for about three days, but I came out of it. What makes me want to read these books? The thirst for knowledge? Truth? Street cred? Well, basically I'm a pretty illogical person, acting from my intuition and feelings and whatnot, so to me a watertight system of rigorous logic is something amazing and extremely interesting. Plus, it teaches me how to think, to really think and examine facets of life I would have otherwise taken for granted.

Been reading Baghdad Express lately. It's excellent. Well written and without pretense, and the things this guy shows, the insanity of the Gulf War, the enormous boredom, even the beauty of war and being a warrior, it's all so visceral and real. I endorse it 100%. A #1!+++++. There are even short little comics thrown in now and then. I thought about joining the army for about a day, probably one of those days of total youthful bewilderment where the future looks like a volcano erupting and all you want to do is watch t.v. Just boredom and searching with a lot of longing thrown in. Sometimes I wish I could have a day like that again. At least I felt it completely.

Lately I've been thinking about the time when I lived in the house on 11th place downtown and all the craziness, drudgery, joy, fear, hope and life that happened there. It was me and two of my best friends from all the way back in middle school, and we lived there for a year, learning from one another, feeding off of one another, sometimes loathing, sometimes loving one another and it was great. That was a pretty dark time for me though. I was always in a hurry it seemed, with school, work, music and everything else. Looking back on it, it's nostalgic and bright but anxiety kept me bound up and alienated many days. To fight it I played music, channeling feelings to strong for me into song. I also prayed and meditated a good bit. Now I wonder if meditating increased my anxiety, made me extra-sensitive, rather than calming me down. O past. Oftentimes I beheld a vision of space and brightness that could not be defined and I searched for it during my days, out in the street and in the sky. Now I know that many others are looking for the same thing, and it pushes us forward, defining lives, filling them up, ending them. In music and this I reach up to it, this space, this emptiness, this life. "Life is open." That's what I used to tell myself all the time in that house. The meaning of it was clearer to me then, but I still feel something of it now, see the lightness and expanse.

Driving

2009-08-10T19:38:00.000-05:00

A big chunk of my time lately has been spent driving, mostly to and from my two jobs. One is downtown, about twenty minutes away, and the other is in Huffman, 10-15 minutes away. Geographically the library is much closer, but with all the red lights it's a tedious motor away. When you (one? hell, I'm not English) drive this much the brain creates a new mode, a mode for driving and I slip into that as soon as I hit the seat in the morning. Back out of my driveway and after two lefts and two rights I'm on the four-lane highway and everybody's in a hurry because it's right around 9 o'clock. Then I drive, boy, slicing automotive throats and burnin' up the turn lane til I'm in the city in my little 4-cylinder. It gets good gas mileage but we're growing apart.

In the driver's seat everything is farther away, even when the windows are down. We're at the mercy of the machine under us, even though it's under us. You've got to be a passenger to see the sky going by behind the trees and storefronts and the people in them. There's a face! Do I know them? How am I related to that person there, living a life apart from me? Most of the time, and it's probably like this for the majority, I don't think about the background of others' lives. Even people I live with, how can I ever know them? They began at this place and are moving along a path all their own. So the tethers that connect us all are quite thin and tenuous. We're like a web of rafts going downriver. What happens when I come across the rope and get into yours? I'm getting all wet.

The zine will be coming out soon. All I can do right now, and it makes me feel completely helpless and frustrated, is save the money needed to print the thing. By the end of this week, I may have enough. If not by then, then by the end of next week. Time really is money. That's not a metaphor. They are the same thing. The website is up though. It's being forwarded temporarily until I start hosting at my own domain. Josh and I made also made up some flyers to post around town broadside style. He's done all the design work for the zine. He's the Jackie Chan of graphic design. When the zine finally does come out what will be keeping me in Alabama? I've had this great urge to get out for sometime now and I'm not sure I can wait even until the end of the year. If only this catalog of shit to buy wasn't lodged in the back of my brain, I could get out quicker. Can't even move without money.

Absurd!

2009-07-30T21:22:00.001-05:00

The evil twin of Ben Franklin stared back at me from the front page of the Birmingham News. I used it to wash the front windows at the restaurant because newspaper doesn't streak like rags. For a while, nobody showed up, but then we had a rush of sorts. The higher up the socio-economic ladder you go, the more attractive people you find hanging around. We serve mainly suits. Many of these suits are business men and women, and it is a prerequisite of the business world that you look your best. And why do you look your best? Because you feel your best! Tip top, my man! Tip top! Sometimes when I go into work, I'd say 50% of the time, I don't feel like being there. I don't feel like being anywhere. I'd rather be at home sleeping or just floating in some undefined nethervoid a few light years out. Just like the Silver Surfer. A cartoon character in crisis. Genius.

So I got into work, and eventually I wake up, and I start to think, "Hey, working here is not so bad. I work with people who have found a way to be happy most all of the time, and that makes me happy." But who is really happy all of the time? And if they exist, should I rely on them for stability? How to tell from a person's appearance and their internal psychosomatic state? Which is more important? Ultimately, which one matters? History, and maybe some existentialists, would tell us that the appearance is what counts in the end. Appearance splits the uprights, scores points, and heads back under the bleachers. Look at life in another way, not as a game, however, and you've got a different problem. The man who is truly content but accomplishes nothing: that is a life-long revolution, a revolt against all most of us on this planet hold up as admirable. History cradles big lives, but what is history to a body outside of time?

Nothing too extraordinary, nothing for me to remember now, happened at work. So I'll move on. After eating lunch at work (that was important) I went over to the big Regions building a couple blocks over and up to the food court on the second floor. There's this girl at the Planet Smoothie. That's why I go there. On campus at UAB I had seen her for the first time and then a few weeks ago I recognized her as I ate my spicy vegetables and rice. Make a move? What to do? That will be decided on the trip up the escalator before I step into the little smoothie kiosk. So we'll see. I am too indecisive, and in a sense, too impulsive to know what I will ever do in a situation like that. "Hey baby, I bought these cinammon twists for you...Yeah right over there...from the Taco Bell." That's gold. That's my ticket.

After work at the library (it was just Yolanda and me) I went home, feeling pretty tired and pretty compressed. Pulled into the driveway and Dad asks me to weed-eat the yard. The instant mental reaction to this was total frustration. How could I, battle-weary library page, be asked to perform a task befitting a peasant? But I came back to here and said I would do it. Got the weedeater revved up but it died immediately. Told Dad and he said, "Well just get the blower and blow the back patio and the driveway. Do all the important spots first. There's not much gas in it." Alright. At this point I was in a very serious mood, having nothing to do with my father's attempt at cordiality and general human-heartedness. An earnestness came over me and I was enjoying it all the way down. He saw this and just went back to mowing the yard. Mom pulled into the driveway as I was clearing it and she parked behind my green sedan instead of in her regular spot. She saw my lack of expression and my focus on the task and she didn't try any niceness. After a few minutes, she came back outside and began watering all her plants. And then there we were, in the backyard in this beautiful moment of focused labor, beyond all flimsy pretense of familiarity, as humans working. I guess that was the best part of my day.

No Work and Little Learning

2009-07-29T20:17:00.000-05:00

Went to work today around eleven and delivered a big order just when I arrived. Ben, Jose Luis and I took the $385 order to the Clarke Building. It was for the Lightfoot Law Firm. We joked about Gordon Lightfoot waiting for his lunch and singing "The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald" as we arrived. Actually, we just waited awkwardly in the strangely domestic lobby until we found out where to take it all. Up to the second floor and we went into the Terrace Room (called the Terrance Room by the receptionist) where we found a lady wiping down a big glass meeting table. We set down the food and got the hell out of there. On the way back we passed a Mexican restaurant and Jose Luis got stopped by one of the workers there. She jumped out of the door and said something about "pizza y pasta." He took it in stride and caught back up with Ben and me. We both asked if the lady was his girlfriend, but Ben went a little further and joked about Jose Luis fingerbanging his imaginary senorita. Another block and we were back at the restaurant. We went inside and made cracks about the delivery and possibly not getting paid. Then the boss cut me and I joined Ben where he was smoking on the bench outside. Jose Luis came out to smoke too. I asked him how long he had smoke. Since he was fifteen, he said, and he's twenty now.
Now with nothing to do I went into the UPS store and got a price quote on the magazine. To print two hundred and fifty copies would cost about $475. The girl at the counter gave me something to hand over to my boss. There was a line now coming out the open door of the pizza place and I shot in to give it him. After that I couldn't decide whether to stay downtown and wait on my class to start or to head back to Trussville to eat lunch and change clothes. I went back home and wasted time checking e-mail and that's when I realized I had questions to answer for class. So I went upstairs, found an e-text version of A Brief History of Time, and did the questions. Went to class and took a nap in the car afterward. I woke up when the car almost died. I'm not sure why. Maybe because it was idling for so long with the AC on. When I woke up I felt actually capable of going to the boring-ass lab which I later found out was unnecessary. A girl from the lab came down the stairs as I was going up and said instead of doing the lab we could just write an essay on any topic relating to astronomy that interested us. I'll probably do mine on the multiverse. After I found that out I went back to the house. On the way home the overcast sky was breaking up and some blue was coming through in patches.