Ink-Spotted Field Notes

Obama Fever?

2008-05-06T20:17:00.000-07:00

Well, tonight it looks like Obama will win North Carolina, Hillary Indiana. The ballots haven't all been counted, but most of the votes are in. Will Clinton pull out of the race? Unlikely. Will her funding plummet? Will her backers hesitate? Will she remain short of delegates? Likely.

At the beginning of this democratic primary race, I found myself torn between candidates. But after doing some research and reading many (too many) articles on each contender, I was able to settle my sights on Obama. He's smart and flexible, if slightly unexperienced as an actual leader. He strikes me as the candidate most able to think on his feet, the most diplomatic, the most articulate, and the most able to inspire large groups (and young people, finally!). His skills are not necessarily better than Hillary's, but then, I don't think it's a matter here of good or ill. They're both skilled politicians, both capable human beings. Obama's skill set is simply more suited to the needs of the United States at this particular moment in time. We fear the recession, the war, the rising prices of food and oil. We have suffered terrible government and been wounded by the current administration. We have regrets. We are irrate and tired. We desire change. We are a people who need someone to cheer and unite us, to make us feel strong and to put a bright, caring face on our international endeavors. The right leader will be able to smooth the way for our efforts to pick ourselves up off the asphalt of the international playing field and get back into the game. I think Obama is that leader.

But the longer the primary becomes, and the more the elective process reverts to the familiar slog of vapid "controversies," yapping pundits, and endlessly-discussed exit polls, the more I become disillusioned. I was naive in 2004; I thought John Kerry had a real shot at victory, even as the depressing election returns flooded my television. I don't want to be naive in 2008, and I fear that the campaign I envisioned--a race between democrat and republican that made cultural history while concerning itself with the kinds of tangible political and economic issues that currently worry real Americans--is becoming a pipe dream.

Don't do it, Obama. Hillary, hold back. Let me, like so many young people, people who have never been moved to vote before this historic election, retain some shred of my old, dewy outlook. For one, just one, election cycle, let me believe democracy can do more than the Bush administration has demonstrated is possible. Let the race be smart, let it have a little dignity, let it have a strong democratic candidate to stand up for and shed light on the issues that concern folks like me.

Crappy Poem for Y'all!

2007-01-17T23:07:00.000-08:00

My latest crappy poem. Pirated from pieces of another, longer work (of my own) as per a poetry class assignment. Freudian bits. Not sure what THAT means...

Becky Adams
Stage Blocking

Blocking the "light" of heaven,
this continuing gloomy mind.
Ironic—to be arrogant
takes life. He who has not experienced
unconsciousness may not fear death.
I thought this image was death:
a penis.
Being treated as dead before dead? Horrifying.
Resurrection that is too late, and reverses? Terrifying
human reality.

High class against the workers:
enlightened destruction, symbolic exploration,
intellectual understanding.
Forced from Utopia, humans succumb to vermin.
This seems to sum up "vigorous health"
([though] I don't think poor farmers would see it)—
unity. Circles. Extravagance
sometimes judges
true fantasy, romanticizes old doubts.

Metaphor has been literalized then turned
back to metaphor, has reached a fevered pitch.
Unheimlich meanings,
like algebra,
depend on the nature
of the journey we intend. Metaphor
now literal, projecting memories—
man without community:
sickly, unhappy.

Queen of Sleep

2006-12-14T04:23:00.000-08:00

Anybody who's known me for long knows--if only peripherally--that I have long lauded myself the Queen of Sleep. I've fallen asleep on park benches, in classes, in airports and bus stations, etc. It's not that I can't keep awake when I want to (I'm not narcoleptic), it's just that if I'm tired, I don't have trouble nodding off. And, unlike, say, Kasey, I can be asleep at night in seconds flat. I've never woken up for small sounds and I've never really had any chronic problem with insomnia. In my past life, I could just lay down and wake up eight hours later, rested, with no trouble at all.

Emphasis here is on "past life." I don't know what it is, but for the last month or so I just can't seem to get a decent night's sleep. I either wake up every twenty minutes or wake up after two or three hours and stay awake. Tonight, I feel into bed at 1 am and was up for good at 4. WTF? What am I doing? Sometimes--like tonight--my body is tired, but my brain is just roiling, but sometimes I'm not even worried/excited/plotting/tense. Sometimes my head is quiet but my body just won't stay tired enough to sleep.

Those who've been caught in insomnia's half-nelson before probably think I'm just whiny or naive. But this feels so weird. This doesn't feel like me at all. When I find myself just--awake, night after night, I almost feel like I'm in someone else's body. Occasionally it makes me freak out about my health, and I just roam my room in my underwear, asking silent questions while I pick things up and put them down again.

Am I eating the wrong foods (quite possibly)? Have I started drinking too much (almost certainly)? Am I not getting enough exercise (definitely)? Is this some weird, hormonal, sexual thing (just what the fuck would that be)?

I don't know. But I don't think I like insomnia. I may still be the me that can float off in front of the TV, on top of someone's leg, and in the doctor's waiting room, but I've lost my cardinal ability--the taken-for-granted privilege of being able to drop into deep and restful slumber. The kind with REMs. The kind that, you know, knits up the raveled sleeve of care, repairing whatever damage the day has done. And I really miss it.

Hot or Not Defines My Human Worth

2006-12-03T21:30:00.000-08:00

As of right-this-moment, I am hotter than 68% of women who have pictures posted on hotornot.com. I put my picture up as little more than a joke to myself, but, when I was only hotter than 42% of women (this was an hour ago, not that I'm checking) I felt...offense.

Strangers had decided I wasn't cute! I immediately browsed my files for a hotter photo of myself and swapped my faux-hawk shot for this picture where I have really, really red lips and my face is turned in such a way that the camera suggests I have a profile.

All told, I've spent about 55 minutes, now, monkeying with the internet in an attempt to make myself look more attractive to people I don't give a fig about and will never meet.

This does not seem healthy. Why doesn't grad school assign more homework?

The Late Night Villanelle

2006-12-01T03:57:00.000-08:00

Guess what comes of a Thursday night hopped up and full of caffeine, my friends? That's right, a villanelle--otherwise known as writing done in the world's most difficult poetic form. Inspired by love, sponsored by Diet Coke.

Becky Adams
My Lover's Actions

My love is a magnolia tree
dripping scent,
and full of bees

who settle down among its leaves
like campers in an airy tent.
My love, like a magnolia tree

is blind and deaf. It can't see
or hear the messages it's sent,
except through humming of the bees

who come for what it breathes.
To accurately represent
my love as a magnolia tree

is to impart the tragedy
of needing to depend
on bees,

on anything that stings and feeds
off beauty's stupid innocence.
My love is a magnolia tree,
flowering and full of bees.

Dear God, Why?

2006-11-29T22:01:00.000-08:00

Dear God,

Though I have sometimes postulated that you, perhaps, do not exist, I still think it is rather cruel of you to send cockroaches to my bathroom sink. After all, though I allow Stephen Colbert to make fun of your believers, I rarely mock them myself (at least, not to their faces). Also, I went to church that time with Megan Tanner when we were in the fifth grade and I feel that ought to count for something. Especially since I wore my best Dalmation sweater.

Love,
Becky

Injury, Love, Turkey

2006-11-20T19:24:00.000-08:00

I may have just irreparably ruptured the thigh muscle I pulled Saturday night. I've been babying the injury all day, but tonight it hit me that no one--not even my dog--was home, and that it might be a long time before I had this kind of solitude again. So I turned the CD player up insanely loud and sprang all over the apartment singing like a crack-head at a rock concert. I did the Egyptian. I did the twist. I head-banged and played some mean-mad air guitar. I did that weird ska step and smashed into the breakfast bar while skidding across the linoleum in my socks.

My vocal cords will heal. The neighbors who might have passed by the kitchen window and seen me gyrating in my bra will also (probably) heal. My leg might not. I might have to hobble around on a House-like cane for the rest of my earthly days.

But God--if a body can't sometimes spaz dance alone to the Decemberist's "July, July," what's left in the world? Not a goddamn thing worth having, is my take. Times like this--when you're taken with joy for no reason and there's no one around to tell you you're making an ass of yourself and destroy that perfect, initial moment when you're making an ass of yourself--are what I might be most thankful for this year.

Happy turkey day, everybody.

Biting the Bullet

2006-11-17T23:50:00.000-08:00

So, after a month or so of looking for next year's housing and having nothing but lousy experiences, touring A2 apartments that are all a)teeny, b)dumpy, c)vastly, ridiculously, over-archingly expensive, d)did I mention teeny? and e)surely I've mentioned squalid? I have had enough.

No more flesh-gouging landlords shall toss casually over their shoulders "Oh, by the way, my wife and I have decided to raise the rent for next year--we'd been thinking Barely Affordable, but now we're completely behind Not Even With Two Good Jobs and a Sugar Daddy."

No more men in ball caps shall walk me through 300 square feet of rotting carpet and Bacardi-stained linoleum to tell me, with a self-important air, that "this is a very desirable campus unit."

I will no longer consider forking over every penny of my grandmother's hospice money for a "cozy efficiency" in a "quaint bungalow" on the "highly sought-after" Westside. I will not be placated by rumors that the filthy, mold-eaten kitchen will be "completely remodeled" before move-in or by the fact that I can lean out of the rotten, warped window casing of the cigar-box-sized bedroom and spit onto Main St.

I am leaving the Big Rock Candy Mountain. I am taking my money with me. Together, we are eloping with a forbidden love.

Think of me (and my money) as Billy Joel's Virginia, falling into the burly arms of a man who Runs With a Dangerous Crowd. A laughing man. A man who knows what it means to rent a decent motherfucking house for SLIGHTLY LESS THAN EVERY GODDAMNED DROP OF YOUR LIFESBLOOD PLUS TAX.

Yes, folks, it's true: I'm moving to Ypsilanti.

For those of you sure that such a move is tantamount to falling off the end of a squared-off globe, never fear; you can visit me anytime you like just by driving toward (and then past) the giant penis tower. If you're scared to do this but would still like to communicate, send me an e-mail--Ypsilanti is likely to develop connections to that new-fangled "Information Superhighway" any month. Even better, build me a care package and mail it to the Armed Services. I'm pretty sure there are still allied drop zones around Frog Island.

No, Ypsilanti, for all the hard knocks he's taken in a world that may be Separate but is never Equal, isn't bitter. Ypsilanti will laugh his raspy, cigarette-addled laugh and cough the phlegm of brotherhood into the bottom of his whiskey glass when you mince up. He'll give you Ann Arborites a hearty slap on your white-collared backs, and after you've picked yourselves up off the Tap Room floor he'll even buy you a good dinner (and maybe a peanut butter shake) over at the Chick Inn, just to show there's no hard feelings.

Ypsilanti is a good egg, even if he did try to send me to Detroit that time. Know why? 'Cause Ypsilanti is cheap.

Just as every good man should be.

Global Orgasm

2006-11-16T14:24:00.000-08:00

A friend sent me a link today to the Global Orgasm, a project attempting to achieve (or at least, push toward) world peace by harnessing all the positive energy created by near-simultaneous human orgasms. Bizarre, certainly. But sort of sweet. Sex for peace? Why not try it--sounds much more pleasant than Occupation.

I couldn't resist a quick, reactionary poem about the project. Here 'tis:

Becky Adams
Sex for Peace: The Global Orgasm Project

On the day of the Winter Solstice
December 22, 2006
people around the world
are going to lay down together
and make love for peace.

Everywhere there are
Friends of the Common Good
Friends of Harmony and Trust
people will be knocking
and entering into each other.

The world, they say, has become
an urban lot snowed over—
one big, aluminum-sided bungalow
standing between our peace
and the hushed, oncoming dusk.

On December 22 we will be lamps
plugged in to the shared power
of the human orgasm
and we will send the light
bat-burning through our house.

Also, rather incidentally: if anybody knows of any poems about Paul Revere besides Longfellows' ever-famous "Listen my children, and you shall hear.." bit, let me know. I'm doing research.

Robert Lowell

2006-11-14T21:22:00.000-08:00

Apparently operating under the delusion these days that I'm a poet.
(Tell this to my workshop leaders. It will thrill them.)

Walked home from the SF reading group tonight with a new volume of Robert Lowell (Life Studies and For the Union Dead), a book I will admit I slavishly purchased because Phil talks about the guy with some regularity and I no longer wish to feel myself an ignoramus. After a quick glance through the poems, I can tell I'm going to like the guy. Good bread-and-nails winter reading, I think. Steel. Grit. Humanity.

This is Robert Lowell (though that very well might be Lyle Lovett's hair). What a dish! Poets know that all they have to do is publish a chapbook or two to get the girls.

What it Would Take

2006-11-12T09:22:00.000-08:00

First draft of two (very) new poems. I don't know if I like them yet. Also, for reasons I don't quite understand, Blogger refuses to recognize the subtleties of format "Lover's Philosophy" ought to display. Why???

Very blah outside today. I'm melancholy without any real excuse...somebody call me. Anybody. Seriously. Save me, at least for a few moments, from this Sunday-afternoon funk.

Becky Adams
What it Would Take

Fourteen guys with big hacksaws and chainsaws
and a snarling teenager with a butterfly knife
and seventeen German Shepherds with no training
collared in bulging chains whose stamped steel links
I could eat dinner through,
coming at me in the dusk that is worse than dark
because it distorts the light like a fogged-up
bathroom mirror rubbed with a wet towel
or those teeny eighteenth-century window panes,
could probably convince me to start seeing
someone else. Barring their maiming/cutting/jostling/
angry words/bony teeth/physical obliteration,
I own you. You’re mine, baby.

___________

Becky Adams
Lover’s Philosophy

If you believe in Boston, in England,
in all places I have never been,
then what is left for me

but to trust you
always, and implicitly, so that you may
say to me anything

—the moon is a great tightening
of the galactic larynx—

and I will have to believe,

or to trust you never, and reject
you inherently

—I love you, I want you,
I think you have a beautiful mind.

MFA Soccer

2006-10-20T14:56:00.000-07:00

With a turnout of about twelve, I'm going to call today's MFA soccer match a success. Granted, I'm the worst player in the group, and granted, yes, that Peter's gross finger-dislocation and Cyan's possibly-broken nose did dampened the old European zeal, briefly, and granted that team white-shirt (my team, surprise-surprise) lost by about eight bazillion points, but still! Fun! Running around and kicking, and all that!

But seriously. I was terribly nervous by the time I arrived at World Wide Sports--I'm awful at soccer--but the first person I bumped into was Peter and he did his best to put me at ease. No need to worry, either, because even the people I'd never met before today (which was most of them) were very kind about my obvious physical handicaps. I plan to play again, even though I'm sure a number would rather I not. I like the spirit of everyone bringing white and red shirts and yelling out at random intervals, "does your side need a seventh? Okay, then, just let me change." A come-together, all-in-the-spirit-of-play attitude, that.

I really ought to practice, though. Anything I could do to improve would be a kindness.

Spinach

2006-10-08T21:02:00.000-07:00

Okay, I got a haircut. Actually, I got all of them cut, and the mullet is no more. Nobody seems to have noticed the change but at least I feel better about my place in this decade.

What's up with the spinach scare? Are a number of restaurants really taking spinach off the menu? Jesus, people, spinach is probably the safest now that it will ever be---about eight million watchdog groups (or at least, eight million people working for one or two watchdog groups) are now staring spinach down in great, natural, man v spinach contests. Daring spinach to become a threat. Just daring it.

And spinach is backing down, because the heat is on. There will never be a safer time to eat spinach than right now, when the national crop has been tested a bazillion times.

In the spirit of my point, I ought to check my e-mail on a computer with a Dell battery while spinning in a Firestone tire swing and eating a big ol' rabbity spinach salad. But I'm not. Know why? 'Cause I'm a little scared.

And that's why, no matter the intellectual debate, no matter the grey cells' cooing and reassurance, the spinach farmers are totally fucked this year.

Mean(s) Morning

2006-10-05T11:46:00.000-07:00

Halfway through my day with David Means (a workshop, a lunch, a walk, a tea, a reading, and a signing) everything is absolutely swimming along. The guy is friendly and funny. He thinks I'm funny. He's as easy to talk to as if I'd known him for years and is absolutely unpretentious. Also, the weather today is GORGEOUS which adds a vitality to being outside and circling through events.

All in all, this day-long date is turning out awesome. I'm glad now that when my alarm went off half an hour late this morning and I woke up tired and hung over I still got my shit together and went to Means' workshop. I take back most of what I said about time with authors not doing much for an MFA student--this morning has been a big breath of air and a reassuring clap on the back. Good for the writer's spirit.

Promise

2006-09-28T07:12:00.000-07:00

Today I woke up and the morning felt as full of promise as one of those early summer days when I was a kid. Haven't felt that kind of joy about meeting the day in a long, long time.

Maybe this means things are getting better? Or maybe the weather is just SMOKIN' today. Go outside and feel that sun!

Like the Butterfly Bursts From its Cocoon...

2006-09-20T12:38:00.000-07:00

...so do I, too, smush aside the gelatinous goo that doth clothe my voluptuous, vibrant person and emerge freshcheeked and slimy into the light of radiant day.

Updating! For the first time in months!

I had a rollicking summer of many ups and downs (got drunk in the river, read a lot of Robert Service, hiked the Tetons, was nearly eaten by a bear, got lost in the woods, turned 22, etc). Now I'm having a first-term-of-grad-school full of ups and downs, and I think everything's going to turn out well. I'm working on a new story that shows some promise and the dog is no longer bouncing around my heels like a crack-addled Chihuahua. Saw a severe librarianwalking some Mexican hairless dogs the day before yesterday. What's not to love about this life?

Here's a poem for my return to the internet. It's a first draft and not very good. But fuck you guys, okay? It's fine.

Retrophilia
Becky Adams

If this were a Bela Lugosi movie
you and I would wear white white

pancake and stare deep back
beyond the camera into the shadows

of the catwalk.
Low voices and eerie

lighting, a dab of technicolor here
and there, an old woman’s handkerchief

at your neck, and I could slit
the bag-blood of your throat

with my mouth
and flee

in a series of fading stills
while you bled, and died,

and slid slowly down the castle door.

Camp Davis, Baby!

2006-05-31T11:16:00.000-07:00

Folks,

In a day or two, I'm off to Wyoming for the summer to hike around and clean bathrooms. Unless the spiders eat me, I will be receiving mail. Since our internet access is spotty and shared, and cell phones black out in our valley, for the greatest part of the summer I will be receiving ONLY mail. Feel free to write me e-mail, just understand that I may not get back to you for awhile. CERTAINLY send real mail--it will be the hub of my communications, and, quite frankly, existence. Here is my address:

Becky "Where'd you leave those tacos?" Adams
c/o Camp Davis
13405 S. Bryan Flat Rd.
Jackson WY 83001

I will be there between June 17 and August 12. Don't expect anything to reach me until about a week and a half after you send it.

I'm really, dreadfully, going to miss all of you--so much!!!!!! Jon, have fun in France. Ross and his idiot consort, recall me fondly when your new friend comes over to eat all your food, drink all your Coke, and swim in your pool. Cliff, don't find a new favorite student. Sara, get that job in South Africa. Margaret, try not to regret promising to live with my tiny dog. Rohin, don't you dare move to NYC before we go to the Aut Bar in August. Everyone else I love, kiss each other for me! Then write. And keep writing. Everyone who writes me will get at least one letter back.

John Spencer

2006-05-21T19:03:00.000-07:00

I've been thinking a lot lately about John Spencer, a wonderful actor who died at the age of 58 this past December. Celebrity gossip is not something I'm very interested in, and I don't tend to follow the lives and times of very many actors or actresses. But I had a real respect for Spencer, who always impressed me as a driven and talented man. Like Anthony Hopkins or Richard Harris, Spencer was an actor's actor---a professional; someone, according to his colleagues, to be respected and counted on.

I have no desire to be an actress and I hope very much that I won't pass on as young as 58. But I hope that when I do die, people will say the same kinds of things about me that were said about Spencer. He did for people. He opened his heart and worked quietly and well. Not too bad a legacy, is it?

LAND

2006-05-20T22:00:00.000-07:00

Live deliberately
Apply yourself (may become "Act out")
No decisions from fear
Do no harm

My CUVWEBS. "Land," a word both secure and inspiring, a rock and a-roving, creating the best and worst elements of the American Dream, but a vital component of that dream nonetheless. We want it, we sweat for it, we protect it with our lives. Land.

Bite-sized Update

2006-05-20T09:23:00.000-07:00

Those of you who visit this sight with any frequency may have noticed that the housing pictures are down. That, my friends, is because I have FINALLY found someplace to live! 829 Brown Street, an unassuming apartment in a quiet residential area, will be my home three months from now. We're painting, I'm bringing Columbo, the bathroom is huge. There will be room to cook pies and set up at least two bookshelves in my bedroom. Life? Not so bad.

The Davinci Code? Rocked my socks. Ian stole every scene he was in. I'm so glad the movie lived up to my high anticipation, because last night was certainly a celebratory occasion.

In other news, I'm writing my own version of Clifford's CUVWEBS. Anyone who knows what I'm talking about should feel free to join me so we can get together and test our mantras on each other. I think mine will only be four letters instead of seven, but that's alright. I'm younger and am only trying self-wisdom on like a big hat.

MFA, Here I Come!

2006-05-03T00:03:00.000-07:00

I AM IN GRAD SCHOOL!

The MFA program at UM just turned my rejection on its ear and invited me in for two years, complete scholarships, a gradership, summer stipends, and a graduate teaching assistantship.

And this on the heels of my winning the Virginia L. Voss Memorial Honors Award--dear, dear God.

I've died. I've died and gone to a thoroughly undeserved world of recognition and grad school! Woo hoo!!!!!

A Michigan MFA, baby! I'm in the cohort!!!!!

Memorizing Poems

2006-04-21T01:09:00.000-07:00

Here are two wonderful poems I memorized tonight:

William Wordsworth
The World is Too Much With Us

The world is too much with us; late and soon,
Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers:
Little we see in nature that is ours;
We have given our hearts away, a sordid boon!
This Sea that bares her bosom to the moon;
The Winds that will be howling at all hours
And are up-gathered now like sleeping flowers;
For this, for every thing, we are out of tune;
It moves us not—Great God! I'd rather be
A Pagan suckled in a creed outworn;
So might I, standing on this pleasant lea,
Have glimpses that would make me less forlorn
Have sight of Proteus coming from the sea,
Or hear old Triton blow his wreathed horn.

Edwin Arlington Robinson
Richard Cory

Whenever Richard Cory went down town,
We people on the pavement looked at him;
He was a gentleman from sole to crown,
Clean favoured, and imperially slim.
And he was always quietly arrayed,
And he was always human when he talked;
But still he fluttered pulses when he said
"Good morning," and he glittered when he walked.
And he was rich—yes, richer than a king,
And admirably schooled in every grace;
In fine, we thought that he was everything
To make us wish that we were in his place.
So on we worked, and waited for the light,
And went without the meat, and cursed the bread,
And Richard Cory, one calm summer night,
Went home and put a bullet through his head.

Recitation is a fucking art. If you're really serious about it, you just realize one day that you're creating a kind of internal portfolio, and you love that. I need to add to mine. Right now I can recite:

Kubla Khan, Samuel Taylor Coleridge
After Apple Picking, Robert Frost
Fire and Ice, Robert Frost
Ozymandias, Percy Shelley
The World is Too Much With Us, William Wordsworth
Richard Cory, Edwin Arlington Robinson
Ye White Antarctic Birds of Upper 57th Street, Lisa Jarnot
Bad Morning, Langston Hughes

I used to know Robert Frost's Into My Own as well—it probably wouldn't be too hard to retrieve that one. Really, you just need to say them to yourself (as long as there's an obvious rhythm to them) over and over and you hold on to the language much longer than you'd expect. Next on my list are:

Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night, Dylan Thomas
It is a Beauteous Evening, Calm and Free, William Wordsworth
The Tyger, William Blake

Anyone have any suggestions to add? Any they know and love to rattle off to a captive audience?

2006-04-18T18:01:00.000-07:00

I have a faux hawk.

The fauk has so far been described as:

"ballsy" (Angie)

"Eddie Izzard-like" (J-Bakes)

"fighting poodle-esque" (Clifford)

and "nice" (Mark)

I have been told both "it's...unique" and "it looks good on you!"

I love it, I gotta say. The fauk and I will be looking for housing next week. Together.

I Avoided Ruination Day

2006-04-14T22:28:00.000-07:00

Tigers Stomped the Indians, Freddie Krueger did not get me.

Today felt like the first day of summer.

I'm thinking of a new haircut.

Time Capsules Rule

2006-04-13T20:07:00.000-07:00

So, I finished my portfolio for my 417 class 5 days early. And in the twenty-seconds I took off to celebrate, I thought,

"why the fuck have I never put together an honest-to-God time capsule?"

So I'm taking that project on. Anyone with any advice about how to construct or populate the capsule should leave me a comment, because I'd appreciate the input. This is for all of us, you know. So we can remember this great era.

Here's what I'm thinking of including so far:

--current news clippings
--journal entries bearing on life goals, thoughts on issues, etc. Submissions welcome.
--photos. Ditto the submissions thing.
--a really good book or two, signed
--art
--a few trendy knick-knacks
--a 2006 dollar
--a tape of a day in the life, voices from today, etc. recorded on my big ol' tape recorder

This bears further thought, certainly. Where will I bury the capsule, for one thing? I need to be able to come back for it in twenty-years or so, and I should tell others where it's at in case I die...

Guy Sums it Up

2006-04-12T17:20:00.000-07:00

There are a few lines from a Guy Clark (Austin, TX songwriter) song called "Dublin Blues" that I think sum up the bittersweet end of college very well:
...
so forgive me all my anger
forgive me all my faults
there's no need to forgive me
for thinking what I thought.

The mix is relatively morbid in my head right now. Everywhere I go I see the end of things, even with a new and exciting life just up ahead. A natural attitude, but still. I feel like I could look into a baby's face these days and right in the middle of being awed at all that raw potential see a death rictus superimpose itself over those features. This change of life feeling is one I think I'm too young to have experienced with any potency before.

What I wonder now is, do people feel this way constantly after the age of, say, seventy? I'm not sure I could stomach it. This quiet sadness just sort of spreads across the world. Maybe that's the real reason old people are slow and stooped. From carrying this knowledge that everything, everything ends. Everything.

Christ. I really need to go see a film or something, don't I?

Bad Monday

2006-04-03T15:45:00.000-07:00

I'm so depressed today. I fulfilled none of my obligations and pecked away half-heartedly at my thesis. I accomplished nothing, got another fucking parking ticket I can't pay, and feel, in general, as if absolutely nobody gives a shit. Christ. I want out this foxhole before I get hit by a shell, you know? I really hate everyone and everything around today, including myself.

e.e. imitation

2006-04-02T16:48:00.000-07:00

Because I should be writing my thesis:

Becky Adams
e.e. bears out the nuclear age

a fat good cloth, a painful new
he hopes will bring him less to feel
(unless the air beneath the earth)—
come closing in on watered birth

and stream to stream the every flow
soaked gray hands of factored steel
no side to mention, no grieving talk
(though hearts can grow to barely walk)

and this they gave in solemn jest,
nobody thinking rod or creel
nobody dirty moving nice
or ripping store in hope of rice

they drank their swigs and also moon
made open farmer sing and sing
come fleshly born in copper coil
and pavement end in glistening oil

anyone lived in a pretty how town

2006-04-02T16:24:00.000-07:00

This is a beautiful poem I just rediscovered.

E.E. Cummings
anyone lived in a pretty how town

anyone lived in a pretty how town
(with up so floating many bells down)
spring summer autumn winter
he sang his didn't he danced his did


Women and men(both little and small)
cared for anyone not at all
they sowed their isn't they reaped their same
sun moon stars rain


children guessed(but only a few
and down they forgot as up they grew
autumn winter spring summer)
that noone loved him more by more


when by now and tree by leaf
she laughed his joy she cried his grief
bird by snow and stir by still
anyone's any was all to her


someones married their everyones
laughed their cryings and did their dance
(sleep wake hope and then)they
said their nevers they slept their dream


stars rain sun moon
(and only the snow can begin to explain
how children are apt to forget to remember
with up so floating many bells down)


one day anyone died i guess
(and noone stooped to kiss his face)
busy folk buried them side by side
little by little and was by was


all by all and deep by deep
and more by more they dream their sleep
noone and anyone earth by april
wish by spirit and if by yes.


Women and men(both dong and ding)
summer autumn winter spring
reaped their sowing and went their came
sun moon stars rain

All Kinds of Newness, Including, But Not Limited To, "Solomon Homestead, 1852"

2006-03-31T18:16:00.000-08:00

So.

My life is madcap, mad-dash, and madderhorn (please excuse spelling in light of tiny joke). I am so amazing, in fact, that everyone should want to be like me. I go exciting places, listen to revolutionary music, and pull wild-and-crazy stunts. Today I ate all the BBQ meatballs at the art gallery's alumni event. Tomorrow, who knows?

Since it's clear to me that everyone reading this is now panting to know my fashion, so that they can assume my identity and demeanor as quickly as possible, I have given you a picture of my shirt. Not just any shirt. A mad-cool, bright yellow, Assault Raven shirt. A Dardanelles shirt.

Exactly how, you may ask, did you, Becky, get your pink paws on such fantastic fiber?

The answer? I know the band, folks. But don't worry. Just because you, too, cannot sport such awesome duds is no reason to kill yourself. If you did you wouldn't ever get to read the new poem I've penned just for YOU, and that would be a crime against humanity.

*Ahem*

Becky Adams
Solomon Homestead, 1852

Your father sat up all night until it was over
and then wrote to your sister, sure now
that you would stick to life, and drank
the sweetest cup of coffee he had ever tasted.
Down the hall

your mother kept a vigil of her own, spun
her fleece and worked the new yarn
through her hands like prayer,
twisting in the dawn the string
that bound you to your life.
Out in the barn

your brother bumped between the cows,
their dark backs moved to lighten
with the sun, and crouched there
on a shiny, three-legged stool,
the heartbeat in his hands all pink
and warm, the milk drawn out in streamers
toward the pail.

Reading Rainbow

2006-03-25T23:45:00.000-08:00

What an excellent day!

Thanks to everyone who came to my reading and made it an event to remember-- Ross, Jon, Jon F., Rohin, Sara, my family, Phil, Eric, etc. etc. I love you guys.

Also, dinner. Holy shit. Pacific Rim, I love you too. As well as all those who gave wonderful gifts!

And what better way to follow up a reading where you popped plosive "p"s into a mic and clapped to simulate Russian language in nautical Stepford Wife attire than the throw on some flannel and toss darts with pals at the Ypsi-Arbor Bowl? On a Rock-Paper-Scissors finale, I papered my way to victory.

Tonight felt like my birthday. Only awesomer.

Timing is Everything

2006-03-25T10:22:00.000-08:00

I have timed myself. In case you were wondering, "Poland, 1952" takes 17 minutes to read. That leaves 3 minutes for introduction and gratitude.

I can do it. But the poetry I'll have to pass on. Dagnabit! One lousy poem, I mean, come on. Two minutes on the outside, ya know?

I'm still excited.

Update, Ab Wars

2006-03-24T21:55:00.000-08:00

I have been a whirlwind of gestating activity, including a trip to and from Wyoming with a night-long layover in Georgia (two free plane tickets out of that!) and completion of a 40 page manuscript. Yes, the sex story. It needs a complete rewrite as it is currently an embarassment, but this I can handle. It was getting the damn thing done in the first place that was the real challenge.

Has anyone else been feeling bulky lately? It may just be the fact that my final reading for the subcon is coming up, but I've been a bit clumsy in the way of the Mammoth recently. To keep from sitting around eating potato chips and bitching, I've implemented a contest (with the help of Jon) to improve myself. It is:

Ab Wars '06

Synopsis:
Each competitor will take a before picture of their abdomen and post it for public viewing. Then, after a month of work-out, each will post an after shot. The competitors will be judged against their overall improvement (that is, the battle is individual and not inter-ab) by a trusted panel of judges (read: housemates). All photos must be current.

Rules:
Start and end dates (March 25 and April 25, respectively) are absolute and non-negotiable. No amount of argument or whining will shift them.

The only acceptable methods of ab slimming are dieting and sit-ups. No weights or specialized gym equipment are to be involved. This is not a contest of socio-economic class, you fat cats.

Any competitor caught "cheating" (taking supplements, using stairmaster, etc.) will be immediately removed from Ab Wars and their photo torn from the board.

Any competitor caught bribing judges will be removed from Ab Wars and immediately noogied. "Human decency" (refraining from smack-down, giving occasional rides to class, sharing food) is not considered bribe.

"Sexual favors" are bribe.

Prize:
To be determined.

May the best belly win!

Emerson

2006-03-11T23:46:00.000-08:00

Oh, yeah: accepted to Emerson.

Yay! (Though I so can't afford to even think of going there.)

Rainbow House

2006-03-11T21:13:00.000-08:00

Benefit work tonight was fucking awesome. Lots of fancy outfits and delicious catered food. Event was held in an antique store with a bunch of beautiful, restored light fixtures hanging from every imaginable surface and we tended a rather nicely equipped bar behind the oak desk in the lobby.

Was there a chocolate fondue fountain? Oh yeah. Did Aric win the scooter he bid on with Rohin's name? Oh no. Did Rohin and I still have a great time mingling with a bunch of extremely nice gay and lesbian people, including Justin's kickass mom, that just wanted us all to enjoy ourselves? Hell yes. Esther got drunk and took pictures with everyone. Some drunk woman named Susan slapped my ass. Aric and I got mildly hammered and discussed everything from grad school to the Ann Arbor party system. My polka dot party dress was a hit. Some man named Kevin put a flower in my hair. I drank a lot of Pinot Gris.

Gay parties are way more fun than straight parties. At least the $85 a head ones.

MFA Nonsense

2006-03-09T23:52:00.000-08:00

The following lines are a short excerpt from an article published by the magazine _The Writer_ in Jan 05, an article by someone named Linda Formichelli entitled "Making the MFA Cut." While the info-bites themselves are nothing new, and (unfortunately, in my opinion) actually the right advice if you want to be accepted to almost any reputable program, check OUT her juxtaposing:

"Generally, we'd advise applicants to avoid genres (i.e. science fiction, romance, epic poems, etc.) and to choose work that represents their best efforts," Rodman says. We look for mastery of basic skills, ambition and an awareness of audience."

Does anyone else find the implications here offensive? I mean, Christ-- what are Arthur C., Charlotte B., John M.? Chittering idiots barely able to control their own pens?

The world can be a cold place.

It Was Brad's Warm Mississippi Accent, I Think, That Did It

2006-03-08T01:08:00.000-08:00

The two fiction-workshop professors from Wyoming keep calling me, which is diabolically clever because I really like these people and I'm beginning to feel very invested in their school LONG BEFORE I OUGHT TO.

They're so nice! Really personable and frank and encouraging!

Dammit.

Post Secret

2006-03-04T23:56:00.000-08:00

Jon got this book from his brother for his birthday that's full of anonymous handmade postcards, each with one true secret written on them. People sent them to a man named Frank as part of an anonymous art collective, the Post Secret project.

Since Post Secret is still collecting, Jon and I sat down to create postcards of our own. I made two. One is pathetic, one is vindictive and shameful.

The one I'm still thinking of is so much of both those qualities that I'm going to wait to make and mail it until I'm alone. Funny how you don't consider yourself a person of many secrets until you think of just a few---then they well up all around you and you realize just how much of who and what you are you hide from others (and yourself).

Post Secret

School Update

2006-03-04T14:02:00.000-08:00

Quick grad school update (and timetable), both for self and interested parties.

2/15/06:
Cornell = rejected

2/24/06:
UM = waitlist

3/3/06:
U Wyoming = ACCEPTED!

3/4/06:
U Iowa = rejected

NYU = ?

Emerson = ?

God, This is So Fucked Up

2006-03-01T10:49:00.000-08:00

I was working today on my latest story, this weird piece about a man who escapes from fears of being a good husband/father/provider by way of pornographic dreams. The dreams become more and more graphic and disturbing and eventually overtake him. Reality blends with "fantasy" and he can no longer function. Makes some sense, right?

Only thing is, I have to write so much sick sex for this. At first it was was a little unnerving but sort of fun. But now it's just frightening. There is some porn on the internet that makes me want to go upstairs and eat lunch just so I'll have something to throw up when I look at it, and won't get dry heaves. Man, I will never be able to write that shit down. This story is going to be so, so tame compared to some of what I (wish I never) saw. I am so over any and all research for this story. I just no longer give a flying you-know whether it's realistic or not.

God. The world is FUCKED UP.

Waitlist Wonders

2006-03-01T08:56:00.000-08:00

UM has waitlisted me for their graduate creative writing program.

500-600 applicants to my choice program?
8-12 openings?

I'm feeling pretty damn good about this. Especially since I was told I am in the top 10% of the waitlist, and that UM has accepted students of my current standing in the past.

Hurrah! Beers for me, anyone? (Just kidding. But really. Beer is good.)

No Blind Pig

2006-02-18T23:08:00.000-08:00

Man, tonight was one of those terrible days where seven or so events are going on at once, and you want to attend all of them, but you have to chose one. Jon's birthday trumped all others, and Pizza House was fun (if a bit awkward), but that doesn't mean I don't feel bad. I really wanted to see The Dardanelles play the Blind Pig, 'cause I haven't been to nearly enough of Sam's band's gigs. And I really need to see Columbo. 'Cause, he's my fucking dog.

Damn it. This is a Saturday night funk for sure.

Cornell: What I'll Never Have

2006-02-18T15:48:00.000-08:00

Cornell Doesn't Want Me. Like, Really.

2006-02-17T22:13:00.000-08:00

Well, my first-choice grad school got my rejection in the mail so fast the stamp was still spinning.

I guess those daydreams of strolling the gorges in Ithaca, NY, with Columbo are over.

A Little Bela

2006-02-15T23:26:00.000-08:00

Man, check out that guy in the green plaid shirt. It's like Bela is a really nice table spread or something. "Honey, that's it! Don't. move. a single fork. It's absolutely perfect!"

Also, in case you were wondering, that big-floating-head chick looks so fucking scary because half her face isn't hers. Don't believe me? Cover the left half of her face with your hand. Then cover the right half. Two completely different women!

I really wish Hollywood still hired artists for its movie posters.

It's Late, and I Question God

2006-02-15T00:05:00.000-08:00

You know, having thought about the whole quandry for at least an hour now, I've come to the rather definitive conclusion that the theory of a loving God is completely negated by the presence here on planet Earth of not only one, by dozens of species of Assassin spider. I mean, there is just no way. No way that someone who loves us as much as this new "Western religion" wants us to believe the Lord does could foist upon us such ungodly terrors as A______ s_____. Old Testament God? That mean ol' drunk-daddy-on-one-hell-of-a-binge God? Perhaps. Church of England God? Lutheran God? Reform Judaism God? No way.

Now, I know what some of my more religious (and/or rational) friends might be thinking. "But Becky, without some miseries in life, we never learn to appreciate our happiness. And besides, you hate spiders, and A_____ s_____s exist solely to eat other arachnids. They're not a horrific manifestation of pure evil, they're actually doing you some good!"

To these poor folks, obviously so hellaciously frightened by the overwhelming logic of my argument and their resulting new atheistic convictions that they've slipped into some kind of trance-like denial, I can say only this: "spit on that!"

First of all, I was much happier before I learned about the existence of the arachnoid Ubermensch (therefore debunking the idea that I need knowledge of misery in order to appreciate my satiated state). Secondly, there are plenty of things in life that combat evil through the use of...evil. A-Bombs, for one. I mean, Asian Nazis are bad, but smoldering radioactive craters, mutilated masses, and atomic "shadows" are arguably worse. A_____ s_____s might eat spiders, but that doesn't make them "good." If your average little jumping wall spider bottoms out as Lucifer 1.0, I'd venture to say that the A______ s_____ rises to AntiChrist XP. With Intel Celeron processing.

Thus, no God. Digest this sad truth any way you like, but please understand: it is very real. Remember---A______ s_____s really exist, and they're not likely to disappear while we sleep the way they would if divine mercy and heavenly grace were actualities.

Be Mine

2006-02-14T19:28:00.000-08:00

So, it's Valentine's Day. And yes, I got absolutely ZERO valentines. And if I hadn't wheedled a poor sick friend, I would've eaten dinner alone. And I spent the evening -- yes, Valentine's evening -- watching a crappy Cronenburg flick full of perverse sexual maneuvers with the more pathetic remnants of my film class. BUT--

--life is not so bad. For one thing, there's my health. I have that. Also, I am not dead. I have that too. My sick friend was kind enough to purchase gifts for me, gifts I do not deserve but appreciate none the less. They are:

1.) a real honest-to-God-look-Ma-I'm-just-like-Stephen-King mini-corder, complete with batteries and tapes,

2.) a stuffed puppy reminiscent of my absent furry friend,

3.) one not-wilted rose.

Also, I have candy. Also, I am not dead.

I must remember that when the fact that I am either too unlovely or too fucked-up in the head to date anyone sticks in my throat. To the steak-y chunk of my self-pity I administer the Heimlich maneuver of a reality check and, inso doing, clear of obstruction the great esophagus of my daily life.

All humour aside, happy Valentine's Day, friends. I love you guys lots lots lots, and am oh-so-lucky to have you beside me in the college trenches.

Wait--did somebody just hear Ted Lavender scream?

Sendak Research

2006-02-14T01:25:00.000-08:00

The bright, untroubled surface of Academia's incestuous self-love pool glitters in my eyes tonight like the lake-bound, sentient oil slick which dissolves and consumes four unfortunate college students in Stephen King's cautionary, tell-folks-where-you're-headed-of-a-Friday-evening tale, "The Raft."

"Soon," this libidinous beast whispers, "soon, Becky, if you stick to the right track, you too can be putting out essays in PMLA in March that another professor will be referencing in The Michigan Quarterly Review come April, so that when you're citing his dirivitive article in The Journal of Evolutionary Psychology come July, his colleague will have time to add your second piece to the bibliography of her tangentially related work coming out in December in The Hollins Critic.

But only if you're good, Becky, and only if you eat all your green beans."

To this sick whisperer, I say only "fuck no!" I've enjoyed this second shot at Sendak research for the essay I hope to publish with Clifford, I really have. The two articles UM actually had full-text access to were very interesting. I even took down some quotes for my own personal pleasure.

But you've got to draw the line somewhere, and I wash my hands right now of all the back-patting cross-references. Like Lyle Lovett says of redneck-ness, academic citation "has got to be a disease; you get some on your fingers and it just crawls right up your sleeve." Book and article titles swapped back and forth like Daryl Strawberry rookie cards. Uh-unh. No way. I'm out. Send me a copy of Bridget Jones and drop a little flag into my fruity drink, 'cause I'm on a l-ooooong mental vacation after tonight.

A vacation, goddammit, for one! You leech-y colleagues can climb right out of that suitcase and slink along to the next blood meal. I mean it. Go. Now!

My Dream

2006-02-12T23:09:00.000-08:00

Tonight, instead of doing my pyramid-piles of homework, I decided to clean the bathroom. And that should tell you something about the pleasure level of this reading, because our bathroom hasn't been cleaned--I mean really cleaned, not just lightly dusted or major spills wiped up--in anywhere from three to six months.

Months.

Needless to say, Bathroom Clean '06 was both protracted and pretty fucking disgusting. I'm also a little worried my housemates and I are all aging rapidly in reverse, since we seem to be losing pubic hair at the rate of a bushel a day.

Oh man. That image was almost too gross even for me.

Anyway, the point is that the bathroom's done, all sparkly, and I get to shower in it first. Hurray! No more paint chips embedded in the feet when walking between tub and toilet, no more mysterious sticky spots, no more beard hairs clogging the sink and drifting with malevolent purpose toward my toothbrush, no more wooly dust blanketing every surface like gray, senile snow. All because I had a dream, a dream that one day my four little housemates would live in a world where they would not be judged by the creepy-filth of their bathroom, but by the content of their characters.

I had a dream.

Some Real Writing

2006-02-10T15:06:00.000-08:00

A revision of the only story I've ever put up here, All You Ghosts Again Beware.

Rebecca Adams
All You Ghosts Again Beware

Two deer are picking their way down our sloped and crackling November lawn when she says it. I can see them through the sliding glass door in the breakfast nook, smooth sides rippling as they dodge roots and frozen clumps of Kentucky Blue. The sky is an uncompromising gray. I was shocked at their appearance against the dark pines, so close to the house and the squirrel-noisy bird feeder on its green metal post, but they move without any indication that they’re aware of me at all. The younger of the two, a buck just budding antlers, stops to smell the gravel edge of the drive. I’m still trying to figure out whether they’ll cross when she startles me away from the glass.

“Harlan?”

I turn. Lacey is skimming wheat bagels out of the toaster with two fingers, waiting a moment and then buttering them over a paper towel. “Harlan, Mrs. Keillor’s little boy died last week.”

“Oh my God!”

“She actually called a few days ago, but you were having so much trouble with the Kettlewells’ boat house I thought sharing might not be kind.”

“Well, thank you,” I say, remembering briefly the horror of trying to reshingle the rotting fruit-crate the Kettlewells store their ancient Ski-doos in. “But what happened? Was there an accident?”

Emily Keillor is the young blind woman Lacey reads to on Wednesday nights. The arrangement started as a favor to one of the other manicurists at the Mane Attraction, whose husband is apparently Mrs. Keillor’s cousin’s stepbrother, but has blossomed into something Lacey does for herself. I’ve never actually met the woman or her child, but Lacey has told enough stories through the eight months or so she that and Mrs. Keillor have been friends to make me feel personally affected by her tragedy. I run a hand through the head of hair that’s still dark, though the ends are curling in silver, and the short beard I keep trimmed for my care-taking clients. Lacey shakes her red curls, puts two more bagel-halves in the toaster.

“It’s horrible. He was playing on the jungle gym at school and he just slipped and broke his neck. I guess at first the playground aide didn’t even know he was dead, just thought he’d been knocked out. She went to turn him over and his eyes were all open and full of sand.” Her back is to me now, the shoulders of her sweater bobbing as she works.

“That’s awful.”

“Emily still can’t get ahold of her husband to tell him what’s happened. He’s somewhere out in the Rockies, I guess, taking his yearly “sabbatical.” Emily says he leaves his cell phone and his wallet in the car and then hikes out into the mountains for ten days. Can you imagine? His son dead almost a week and he doesn’t even know.”

“I don’t even want to think about it,” I say. I pick up one of Lacey’s bagels and put it down again. The small kitchen glows around us, pots bubbling on the stove, water glasses already on the table, full and gleaming. Suddenly the clear winter light and the smell of our cooking food seem terrible, hurtful.

I don’t ask Lacey how she knows all the details of the boy’s death. If Emily Keillor hasn’t told them to her—and it’s likely at least that she hasn’t shared the eyes-full-of-sand thing, not after a week, and maybe not at all—there are six or ten regular customers of the Mane who have probably been more than prepared for some gossip-worthy tragedy. With so few year-round residents of Blue Sands, WI, (Population, according to our Welcome sign: 2,320) there’s usually little to titillate the public ear until May or June, when the summer people start flooding back into the shingled cottages that ring our lake. A dip in school funding or new rumors of vandalism perpetrated against Mr. Cooley’s infamous greenhouse full of marijuana bushes (a place much discussed and never seen) is about as racy as autumn gets around here this time of year. Two Octobers ago, when the roof of one of the cottages I watch blew down on me during a squall, talk of my near-death experience didn’t subside for nearly a month.

“I just assumed our readings were cancelled till further notice,” Lacey says, turning down the heat on the potatoes, “but Mrs. Keillor called this afternoon and asked me to come tomorrow as planned.” She pauses. “Actually, she asked both of us.”

“Both of us?” I slide an iron hot pad with “San Francisco” glazed on it in slanted cursive under a dish of green beans. The air over the beans goes wavy with their heat. “But she doesn’t even know me.”

“Well, it’s not as if I don’t rave a bit about you.” Lacey takes the steel pan of potatoes over to the sink and starts churning through them with the beveled masher. Her action startles a couple of cardinals, bright in their winter plumage, away from the nearly empty bird feeder. They flap away into the pines like fallen leaves rising on a breeze. “Anyway, I think she just needs some people to be with her right now. People who...well, people, I think, who don’t have any kids. She must think terrible thoughts when she’s alone.”

“Well, yeah, but doesn’t she have any—” I almost say “friends,” realize it sounds like a critique of Lacey, and settle on “family.” “Doesn’t she have any family like that to stay with her?” The idea of having to lift in the company of a stranger the lids of boxes Lacey and I have been opening and shutting for years isn’t very appealing.

“Her brother will come, I suppose. But he lives in Phoenix, and I gather they’re not very close. Her parents are dead. I don’t know about anyone else. I guess I don’t really know all that much about her family. But she just lost her son, Harlan. I think we should go if she wants us to.”

“Okay.” I put my hands on Lacey’s small hips, squeeze. She’s like a deer herself today, smooth and fawn-colored. She’s got a little Celtic cross on a gold chain around her neck and a mole under her right ear. The neck of her sweater is cut low enough to suggest the tops of her clear, buffy breasts. My hands move up to her waist. We’ve been married for seven years and I want seventy more.

“We’re running out of daylight,” Lacey says. She puts a Jim Croce album in the little CD player we keep on the kitchen counter and angles the player toward the table. She waits a moment, pushes “random.” “Let’s eat while it’s still nice and bright.”

We sit down and chew our food through “Operator,” “Time in a Bottle,” and “Photographs and Memories.” I don’t remember ever hearing the CD player select so many songs from the same CD twice. The sound of Croce’s desire is sad and sweet, and eventually our conversation fades out under his narrative need. When we sit down I’m hungry, but by the time we start clearing away the plates, everything I’ve eaten has settled in me alien as wind-blown soil. Lacey and I lay still beside each other in bed that night, and when I dream I see the two of us, young, watching a group of faceless children run along the lakeshore. One of them, a boy with dark, dark hair, runs toward us with a white, wind-scoured mussel shell and evaporates just before he reaches my outstretched arms. Lacey misses my disappointed cry, too busy watching the rest of the children scatter into the swelling waves. By the time she turns back to me all of the children are gone. The moon is framing my half of the bed and I am awake in the quiet of our bedroom, clock ticking quietly on the night-stand, Lacey fast asleep.

The next afternoon Lacey comes bumping down our rutted drive at a quarter to three and finds me out back, chopping sections of one of our three dead oak trees into firewood.

“Howdy, stranger.” She slips in behind me and throws her hands over my face. I pretend to be shocked, lift the axe threateningly. She’s wearing fuzzy green hand-warmers that shed yarn fibers into my eyes. As I’m picking them out, she tells me about calling Mrs. Keillor this morning.

“The entire house was absolutely silent,” she says. “I’m telling you, Harlan, if you’d ever spoken to this woman on the phone before, you’d know how out of character that is. She’s always got 89.X in the background, or a shrieking kettle, or Inside the Actor’s Studio. I’ve never been able to hear her so well. And she just says, “Okay,” when I tell her we’re coming, and hangs up. Nothing else at all. It was so sad.”

“Well, she is sad,” I say.

“I know, but there’s a big difference between being sad and being so sad you don’t even try to hide it,” Lacey says. “I don’t know how to explain it. I’ve never been that...sorrowful. I don’t think you can ever feel that much sorrow without having kids, and losing them.”

“I’d be like that if I lost you,” I say, hugging her into my arm. Lacey pulls away and leans against my back, blows away a puff of down that’s slipped from a hole in her quilted vest.

“No, you wouldn’t. No offense, Harlan, you just wouldn’t. I wouldn’t be if you died. I mean, I’d miss you all the time, and it would be horrible, but I wouldn’t be...defeated. Not as bad as if we had a baby, and...” She trails off. The non-existent baby sits between us like so many long and difficult conversations we just aren’t strong enough to have today. I can feel my old ache like a migraine, starting deep behind my eyes. Lacey looks away. “Anyway, it was upsetting.”

By the time I’ve washed my face and put on a clean collared shirt and Lacey has traded her down shell for a subdued sweater jacket, both of us are thoroughly depressed. We leave Lacey’s rust-feathered pick-up in the driveway and take my Jeep to town instead. The Jeep is quieter, has a smoother ride, and sometimes the heat works properly. Today it doesn’t. Lacey bunches her hands inside her sweater’s kangaroo pocket and I hunch deeper into my Packer’s jacket. We pass a few fields and a long stretch of brown woods without saying anything. Occasionally we catch a glimpse of the lake, dark and sparkling, chopping the afternoon light into thin slivers and swallowing them.

“The reflections look like French fries,” Lacey remarks finally, witnessing this motion.

“Fish and chips out there, then,” I say. The joke falls flat, and I feel a little guilty for trying to introduce a note of levity. A few more miles of silence.

“I’m glad I didn’t know him,” Lacey comes out with suddenly. “I know that makes me sound like a terrible person. He was always at daycare when I came over. Mrs. Keillor had these pictures up—for other people, I guess, all these pictures in heavy frames of him swimming and playing and drinking from a snaky hose. That’s as close as I got.”

From the tears I hear in her voice, even photographs were too close. I can’t help feeling a tiny, selfish pang. “What was his name?”

“Elliot.” Lacey’s eyes are looking far beyond the windshield. She doesn’t offer anything else.

“I’m glad we’re going over,” I say. “Maybe we’ll be some help.”

“Yeah.” We grow silent again. I try to concentrate only on my driving but I can’t stop thinking about our own situation, about Elliot, about Lacey. A scenario off balance, dismayed, lacking children and cluttered with adults. An image of the boy from last night fills my head, transfixed now by a snake with a fist-sized head that weaves dangerously over a manicured lawn.

Ten minutes later Mrs. Keillor herself ushers us into a small sitting room so far from what I expect of a blind woman that for a moment I literally stop in my tracks. Two tasseled accent rugs explode in riotous color to either side of the entry. On each rug sits a three-foot stone gargoyle, snarling a griffin grin into the shins of passerby. The carpet is soft and springy and the deep color of May grass. Pictures in varnished wood frames are everywhere—on the mantel, over the radiator, clotted together on iron accent tables and the bamboo coffee table. There’s even a collection of antique men’s monocles matted on velvet. Lacey has alluded to the Keillors’ eccentric tastes in her stories, but no story could bring to life the reality of all this. I put out a finger and poke a taxidermied eider duck forever in flight against the left wall.

“There’s coffee in the kitchen,” Mrs. Keillor says. The woman herself does not fit at all into the boisterous vivacity of her living room. Her voice is so quiet I’m afraid I’ll lose it in all the colors and textures her home presents. Her chin-length black hair is stick-straight and very fine, soft looking as the hair on a horse’s flank. She can’t weigh any more than Lacey even though she’s nearly a foot taller, and her hips jut like competing prows from either side of her black jeans. As she walks it seems that it’s the memory of her hips tugging her in each direction that gets her through without a spill, her faded and off-focus eyes vestigial and blank.

Lacey and I follow her back to a breakfast nook the size of a modest walk-in closet and wait on some cushioned wooden chairs while she pours three cups of coffee, black, and sets them on a tray. To watch Emily Keillor maneuver through her crowded home you’d never know she was blind. She slides her fingers along the edge of tabletop before resting her tray and that’s it. No cane, no dog, no Marco-Polo calls, no zombie-like shuffle with fluttering fingers—everything I thought I knew about blind people quietly implodes. I sip my coffee. Lacey puts a hand over Mrs. Keillor’s.

“Harlan and I just wanted you to know how sorry we are about Elliot,” she says. “If there’s anything at all we can do...”

“Thank you.” The way Mrs. Keillor keeps her pain bobbing in front of our sight is disconcerting; I’m used to the sighted trying to train that emotion on their shoes, or their hands, or out the screen door. Her eyes are puffy and tired-looking. She squeezes Lacey’s hand and my wife smiles, even though the other woman can’t see her. I think they are both about to cry and I don’t have any idea what I should be doing about it. The coffee cup I’ve been given is thin as snow-crust and probably antique. If Lacey starts weeping I’m afraid my fingers will puncture its smooth surface as certainly as boots on moon dust and then I will have done something irreparable to a grieving woman.

“You have a beautiful home,” I say, painfully aware of my status as an absolute stranger, “It’s very cinematic.” I can’t believe how acutely idiotic I sound. What am I talking about? Lacey gives me a look.

“How are you holding up?” She asks quietly, but Mrs. Keillor doesn’t answer. Instead she runs her fingertips against the grain of the table and stops where two joined slats of wood don’t meet quite evenly. She pushes her index finger along the ridge as if sanding it down to buttery uniformity, repeats the motion.

“We don’t have to talk about him if it’s too hurtful now,” I say, gripping my cup with borderline pressure, “only if that’s what you’d like. We don’t mind just sitting here if that’s what you need.” The finger moves back and forth again, then stops.

“I...no.” Mrs. Keillor shakes her head. “No. It’s too quiet here as it is. You’re nice, Harlan, but no.” She touches her neck, stares at some point far beyond us. “It’s strange. I thought that once you two were here, I would be so uncomfortable. I almost uninvited you. But now that you’re actually sitting in the room...I don’t know. I don’t really know what I’m doing. God, I wish his father were here.” She puts her hands over her face, leans onto the table. The gesture is so pitiably defeated that I have a wild and ridiculous urge to run into the woods and hew down some logs to build her a house. When the moment inevitably passes, I just feel hopelessly sad.

“Oh, Emily.” Lacey says. “I’m just so sorry.”

“That’s alright.” Mrs. Keillor brings her hands together at her chin, then folds them neatly on the table. “Maybe it would be good to talk about him.”

“That’s fine,” Lacey says, reaching over to squeeze my hand. Her small, inclusive gesture is touching. “We’ll listen.”

We do. It’s surreal at first, sitting in the over-stuffed home of someone I don’t know, drinking Maxwell House and listening to her tell the story of her child’s life and death, but after awhile it’s like a radio program you’re fascinated by and want to call in to. My fear that at any moment Mrs. Keillor will turn like a summer storm, raging or weeping or icing over at some unintended but entirely inappropriate inference leached from my stock of rapidly depleting comfort phrases, softens. Lacey and I actually find ourselves smiling over her funnier stories. The time that Elliot rode a pony at the zoo and fell into a pile of dung, sparing himself a broken arm. The day that Elliot and his father took their metal detector to the beach and discovered a “Roman coin” that turned out to be a New York City subway token from 1909. The Sunday her son tried in vain to teach her to belch the opening bars of her favorite song, Patsy Cline’s “Crazy.” Our awkward pauses and double starts grow fewer and farther between. Twilight rises in the little window above the sink.

Once we’ve all taken a break to pee and have traded coffee cups for wine glasses and a decent Riesling, Lacey says something that stops my heart.

“Elliot’s so vivid in your stories, it’s like he’s still here. I wish I had that much.” The ghost child finds me again, settles heavy on my chest, so close I’m breathing its air. Mrs. Keillor smiles wetly in Lacey’s general direction.

“That’s the nicest thing anyone has said to me this week.” The two women hold hands. Lamplight has rounded into a puddle on the center of the table, illuminating the wine bottle, threading down the stems of our glasses, glittering in Lacey’s hammered-gold earrings. Outside everything is dark, but reality intrudes only a little here.

I try to imagine a young boy living out his life amidst the concrete statues and fibrous artworks and reflections of his own experience. I decide that the sort of child I’m coming to believe he was would have either deeply loved or absolutely hated the texture and clutter of his family’s home, and, because I’m beginning to like Emily Keillor very much, I settle on love. I wonder about Mr. Keillor, walking through the Rockies, still picturing two souls waiting for him at the end of the journey. Does he have any kind of inkling that something is wrong? It doesn’t matter right now, really. What matters is that we are here, and we are helping, and after seven years, Lacey...well, my pulse is high. She might. I’ll leave it there, for now.

Mrs. Keillor is talking to my wife. I walk to the sink and run a glass of water, the window above a pane of navy glass. Outside on the chilly hills, deer are kneeling for the night. The lake is icing over, foxes are slipping from their dens. By the time Lacey and I head for our own house, the lake will be indistinguishable from the sky. Leaves may be skating across the frosted surface then, dancing under dark wind for the end of autumn, the end of falling, the beginning of a crisp new something.

Virtue of the Day: 6

2006-02-09T22:02:00.000-08:00

Loyalty.

Coretta Scott King

2006-02-06T18:18:00.000-08:00

Man, Coretta Scott King is dead! Repeat my post on Rosa Parks ad nauseum.

African American history is, like, toast.

It's really weird to see the dying off of the civil-rights era...all the marching and sitting and stuff just feels like such timely history that it's hard to imagine those women no longer visible figure-heads for a movement that's just not as over (or, unfortunately, as accomplished) as people would like to think.

Like the AIDS epidemic. All that hoo-hah runnin' about in the mid-90's, when gay men in America were falling into their cornflakes and collapsing in their porno houses. Now that the Tom Hanks movie's been made and won its Oscars and those self-help-y kids books (including such classic lines as "Mommy, can I get AIDS from sharing graham-crackers with sick little Jimmy?") have all made their way to the Salvation Army and AIDS has quietly slipped away to Africa (where the black history comes from, incidentally) you just don't hear a thing about it. Except, every great once in awhile, in the "liberal media," where solemn-lipped newscasters remind us that it's one of the great world problems our current conservative regime is sticking its fingers in its ears and humming loudly to avoid.

Like the oil crisis.

Like the levees.

Bringing us back to the idea of ignoring black people, and thus the Civil Rights Movement, and thus Coretta Scott King. Who is dead. You can, however, kiss her goodbye in Atlanta if you'd like. She's the first African-American (and the first woman) to lie in state at the capitol. Breaking social boundaries even in death! Even you Gloomier Guses out there have to admit that that's a little inspiring.

I hope that someone accidentally drops a pencil into my hand at my wake, triggering some kind of postmortum muscle spasm that causes me to write my name or something. Authoring, even in death! Hells yeah.

Accomplishments, Such

2006-02-03T18:01:00.000-08:00

I have:

-- done my laundry
-- finished the mini comic
-- one letter to mail (Margaret)
-- a library fine
-- $55 in city of Ann Arbor parking tickets
-- a lack of tiny dog
-- received a poetry request (Darg)
-- been to the thrift store
-- offended a prestigious university (Emerson)
-- given a gift (Clifford)
-- not written my new story
-- not finished my Hopwoods submissions
-- run into an old friend (Edgar)
-- a photo-romance script
-- a new tape recorder
-- my health
-- a mocking self-doubt
-- an appetite
-- $273 dollars to my name

Man, is life good or bad? I can't tell.

Oyabaka Dog Mom Album

2006-01-31T21:59:00.000-08:00

Sleeping while I wash my sheets.

Just generally looking cute.

Happy after I threw him into Lake Huron.

I really, really miss the pup.

I know, I know, this is just pathetic. But after Landlord Showdown '06, the score is Navin: 1, Agrocrag: 1. With the help of my attorney mother (you see how this grows sadder and sadder? MY MOM was my secret weapon) we managed to wipe out $140 of the bogus fees he'd decided, on the fly, to charge us. But no more puppy for me. Goddammit! I hate. Hate everyone. Hate everyone that ever thought "compromise" made anyone was happy, because a compromise just means that everybody takes their ball and goes home and there's no game for anybody. Nobody! Nobody's got game!

But anyway, thinly-veiled bitterness aside, here's to you, puppy buddy. I'll come visit soon. I'll bring your toys.

One Red Paperclip!

2006-01-31T19:36:00.000-08:00

Holy Mary Mother of GOD. Check this guy out. Holy shit. He is so fantastic. This guy is the kind of creative I always wanted, and was too lazy/sane/poor, to be. Oh my.

Kyle MacDonald:
One Red Paperclip

He is also Canadian!

This makes two Canadian Kyles in my rolodex.

Little Slim and the Sky-decker Frankenfurters

2006-01-31T12:41:00.000-08:00

Four lines to a song I made up on the way to Conor O'Neills' trivia Monday last night:

The four of us in felt fedoras
Belting out the words to the Hallelujah chorus
Most of the drive was through the Hiawatha Forest
Teenage years are glory, glorious.

I've decided they're going to be part of a song by the band "Little Slim and the Sky-decker Frankenfurters"and I'm going to use them in my new story.

Camp David...er, Davis

2006-01-25T10:38:00.000-08:00

So, I might have the perfect summer job.

Sounds like the director of Camp Davis is going to hire, Kasey, Angie and I to come work as cooks out in a beautiful mountain valley near Jackson Hole, Wyoming. The job runs from early June to mid August and pays 9 bucks an hour. We have afternoons and late evenings off. Columbo is invited. Geology students--perhaps cute, and male--will abound. Drinking is allowed.

Since when did I do anything so awesome that my karma is flowing in this sweet?

Mrs. President

2006-01-23T17:05:00.000-08:00

Today, a day of running, jumping, climbing trees and finally forcing myself to get into the swing of classes (i.e., write important dates on the calendar, finish buying books, find folders, etc.), I feel very accomplished. Minutes are out, Choke has been returned, exams are on the calendar, I know when the Hopwoods are, I'm planning meetings with my second readers, I know when Maisie's coming over, and I have outlined my Valentine's Day mini-comic. Hint: it ain't purty.

Had a dream a few nights ago inspired by some information Ross gave me about Cherish. Dreamed that I was a crummy intern at some Fortune 500 level company, and when I walked in from a four-day weekend one Tuesday I found that they had made me President of the firm. My boss had just become my underling. I was terrified. I protested, telling them that I was twenty-two (I was in the dream, okay?) and had no idea how to run a business, but they insisted I take the position. Everyone, it seemed, believed in me except me. But I was no idiot. Eventually I accepted my presidency -- and my presidential salary -- and in true new office bitch fashion, took my old boss shoe shopping. Of course, this is me we're talking about, so we were looking at hiking boots and the same orange slip-ons I already own, all in that great outdoorsy shoe store in East Lansing that has a tank with a puffer fish swimming around in it. Playmakers. That's it. So we hung out at Playmakers and I tried to avoid my many daunting responsibilities.

Craziness. Also, I get a new dog tomorrow. "With an "A"'s" dog. I still really miss my 'Bumbo, but hey -- Maisie will be fun, and a good distraction.

Dog Longing

2006-01-16T22:17:00.000-08:00

I miss my worthless canine.

Sigh.

Navel gazing

2006-01-10T20:13:00.000-08:00

So, some things that are on my mind. I need to vomit them out, if only to cock my head and stare for awhile and then move on without speaking.

1) Why didn't I tell Kirk any interesting things about myself? That I love to bird, play a terrible but rambunctious harmonica, am about to publish an essay I coauthored with Clifford, am in a great research group, knit well, draw comics, and can barely whistle but am able to carry a tune? Why oh why was I slightly pushy and more than slightly boring?

2) Why am I sad when things are going well for me? Because they are going well, and I am sad. I feel like I've lost my niche. My last semester here, and I have so few classes, so much independent work...I miss the camraderie of tapping my pen against my teeth, surrounded by a hundred other students braced against the same lecture. Attentions wandering together, doodles being doodled on a hundred pads...

3) I really miss Spals. It was so nice to see him over break, and made up for my disappointment that he never returned my autumn letter. He remembered the news I wrote him, so at least I know he read it. Our interactions now are those of equals, discussing political and social issues as two affectionate and respectful adults. Eeps! I'm grown up.

4) Where is my life going?

5) I love that film class, and I even enjoyed _Night of the Living Dead_, which I used to find boring. Is this because the professor reminds me a bit of Stephen King, though more attractive? Or because horror flicks are fabulous? Or both?

6) I feel like I never see any of my friends, even though my head knows that idea is just not true. And I get aggravated with the tiny dog, even though I can't stand the thought of leaving him at my parents even for a few weeks. I am neurotic these days, and unpleaseable. Why is this?

Spock Sings!

2006-01-07T21:39:00.000-08:00

So, the consideration of this purchase is what I did with my Saturday night, following a late night Star Trek trivia chat with Haap. Apparently, my knowledge of Kirk's previous commander's name (Christopher Pike) "wowwed" him. But look how incredibly young the Vulcan lad is in this photograph! Wouldn't you too want to know just everything about him?

. . .

And to think that I saw a wonderful, educational film earlier in the evening, too. For shame! Wrist slaps to myself.

Good Night, and Good Luck

2006-01-07T21:00:00.000-08:00

Dear America,

The moment I walked into the room--I have to admit this--I was inexplicably drawn to you. Despite your chain smoking and the worry lines pulsing at the edge of your hairline I couldn't help but admire your carriage and persistance. I'm not always sure you're running off the right side of the coin, but what the hell. I'll take you for a spin, because I think you've got it in you to be great. Even if you're not great yet. You're working harder than anybody else in the business and you've got that much going for you at least, as well as those soulful eyes and the war-wrangling, Wellesian voice. Don't weep. I'll get you home and we'll walk in together.

Love,
the Truth

Wrap It Up and Send it Off

2006-01-06T23:22:00.000-08:00

So, here's to kicking 2005 out the door and ushering in a beautifully hearty new blond likely to be more fun (to quote an old e-mail) than "a fannypack full of ferrets." The passing of a dead year is a ready-made time of reflection, and I can't help but grin, cringe, and shake my fist as I think of everything I'll recall when I think of 2005 as an oldie in a rocker.

This time last year I lived with three different roommates, owned no Columbo, wasn't yet in the Creative Writing subcon, didn't know Edgar, had my natural haircolor, spoke of New Orleans, Jerry Orbach, John Spencer, and Molly in the present tense, had never experienced a housefire first-hand, had only one hole in my right ear's cartilage, was fifteen pounds lighter, hadn't yet begun my project with Clifford (who did not yet have grandchildren), had never been to Vegas, had never seen Joe Ely or Guy Clark in concert, wasn't yet GEP co-project manager, was still working at University Catering, didn't give a flying fuck about grad school, and was wondering just how the last semester of my junior year would turn out.

I was me then, and also not me. I was a familiar but different person. Some years we grow (or, I suppose, go slip-sliding away) so much more than in others; as far as personal development goes, on a scale of 1 to 10 I suppose 2005 was about a 6.5 for me. 2002, with all the highschool to college transitioning, was an 8.o. What about other folks?

2005-12-16T11:00:00.000-08:00

Today I leave Ann Arbor, tomorrow I'm on a plane for Las Vegas. To the city of sin in the season of Jesus!

*does a little dance, makes a little noise*

Virtue of the Day: 5

2005-12-14T21:44:00.000-08:00

Dependability.

Deadlines, Oh, Deadlines

2005-12-14T19:32:00.000-08:00

THE POETRY PORTFOLIO IS IN. Now, the fiction portfolio. Then the Statement of Purpose.

My brain is bleeding.

...

So of course I'm planning the essay I'm going to write for the Hopwoods this year. Big clue: it involves birds.

Bet you're not all that surprised.

haiku sequence --

I am much too fat
to be any bird except
a great gray owl

or, perhaps, penguin.
Everybody loves penguins
because they are cute

and because they are
narrated by Freeman;
I must be the owl.

Dreams

2005-12-12T22:39:00.000-08:00

I've been having all these strange dreams lately where I am a fragile young man with a terminal illness. My nose begins to bleed while I'm in class or out birding or talking to Edgar or some such routine thing, and I collapse near death. I look a little like a crow with a broken spine, and cinematic focus spins out away from my crumpled body, twisted on its back, surrounded by a ring of dropped papers or loose clothing and frightened, healthy companions. My awareness of life's beautiful, aching frailty is heightened almost unbearably and then I fade into unconsciousness. Sometimes Edgar is holding my head, tearing as if with cold. He's trying to call me back, but I'm so far away my own lost blood and flagging strength cease to concern me. My hands are like bleached bone, my eyes and wet and huge in my illness-ravaged skull.

Then I wake up.

Christmas Cards

2005-12-12T17:37:00.000-08:00

Well, Francis, if you're reading this, that was a lovely Christmas card. Thank you.

I have finished all my own Christmas cards. Into the mail tomorrow, I say! I have also:

-- lost my scarf. Doh!
-- mailed two grad school writing samples
-- decorated for the holidays
-- forgotten to call Kasey for two days in a row
-- eaten an entire bag of Pocky
-- washed my clothes. (Huzzah!)
-- finished my only exam

Now, if only I can keep my foolish dog from barking, I will have accomplished something. Tomorrow the two of us are going out to Bird Hills for some walking and...well, birding. I mean, doesn't that one go unspoken in such a place? Also, we -- if by "we" I mean "I" -- are going to see Big Bad Voodoo Daddy swing it down.

Salem Landfill

2005-12-10T20:14:00.000-08:00

Birding at the Salem Landfill today with Ross and Jon B. was absolutely fabulous -- good excuse for Jon to get out with his camera, good excuse for me to stare avidly at avian amigos pecking at piles of half-recyclable refuse. Ross and I wore ridiculous hats. We all wore three or eight layers. Our little trio parked in a snowbank and tromped around a small mountain, dodging garbage trucks, for as long as we could stand the piercing winds and sub-zero temperatures, taking turns with Ross's gloves and my binoculars. Some pictures are above, and the list of birds we were able to identify from the black, black cloud of hundreds we couldn't get very close to because of the trucks is below.

Onyx Landfill
Salem County
12/10/05
10:15 a.m.

American Crow
Glaucous Gull
Herring Gull
Horned Lark
Mourning Dove
Northern Cardinal
Red-tailed Hawk
Ring-billed Gull
Rock Dove

All You Ghosts Again Beware

2005-12-05T20:59:00.000-08:00

Since this blog is ostensibly an open prairie for my writing to trek across, admiring the view and the birds and the like, I should probably post some fiction. Here's the first draft (and rather embarassingly first draft-y it is, too) of a story about a couple and a blind woman that I call "All You Ghosts Again Beware." Could include it as a linky thing, but really--- where's the fun in that? I'm'una put it all right-here-right-now-in-your-face, and if you don't like that, get your own damn blog. Oh, and please don't steal my work, anonymous web-faces. Please. It's not at all nice.

Becky Adams
All You Ghosts Again Beware

Two deer are picking their way down our sloped and crackling November lawn when she says it. I can see them through the sliding glass door in the breakfast nook, sueded sides rippling as they dodge roots and unforgiving clumps of Kentucky Blue. The sky is an uncompromising gray. Their moist black noses and soft white rumps create a fitting antithesis—I was shocked at their appearance against the dark pines, so close to the house and the squirrel-noisy bird feeder on its green metal post, but when their slender flanks cross out of the line of my vision, it will be as it always is with deer. The moment their bodies absent, like white sails drifting toward a distant, glittering horizon, will be a matter of inner contention, something I will still be debating when she startles me away from the glass.

“Harlan?”

I turn. Lacey is skimming wheat bagels out of the toaster with two fingers, waiting a moment and then buttering them over a paper towel. “Harlan, Mrs. Keillor’s little boy died last week.”

“Oh my God. What happened? Was there an accident?” Mrs. Keillor is the young blind woman Lacey reads to on Wednesday nights. The arrangement started as a favor to one of the other manicurists at the Mane Attraction, whose husband is apparently Mrs. Keillor’s cousin’s step-brother, but has blossomed into something Lacey does for herself. I’ve never met the woman or her child, but Lacey has told enough stories through the year or so she that and Mrs. Keillor have been friends to make me feel personally affected by her tragedy. I run a hand through the head of hair that is still dark, though the ends are curling in silver, and the short beard I keep trimmed for my care-taking clients. Lacey shakes her red curls, puts two more bagels in the toaster.

“It’s horrible. He was playing on the jungle gym at school and he just slipped and broke his neck. I guess at first the playground aide didn’t even know he was dead, just thought he’d been knocked out. She went to turn him over and his eyes were all open and full of sand.” Her back is to me now, the shoulders of her sweater bobbing as she works.

“That’s awful.”

“Mrs. Keillor still can’t get a hold of her husband to tell him what’s happened. He’s in Europe, I guess, making deliveries for his shipping company. Can you imagine? His son dead a week and he doesn’t even know.”

“I don’t even want to think about it,” I say. I pick up one of Lacey’s bagels and put it down again. The small kitchen glows around us, pots bubbling on the stove, water glasses already on the table, full and gleaming. Suddenly the clear winter light and the domesticity of the scene seem terrible, hurtful.

I don’t ask Lacey how she knows all the details of the boy’s death. If Mrs. Keillor hasn’t told her—and it’s likely at least that she hasn’t shared the eyes full of sand, thing, not after a week, and maybe not at all—there are six or ten regular customers of the Mane who have probably been more than prepared for some gossip-worthy tragedy. With so few year-round residents of Blue Sands, WI, there’s usually little to titillate the public ear until May or June, when the summer people start flooding back into the shingled cottages that ring our lake. A dip in school funding or new evidence of the long-term aphid damage to Mr. Cooley’s former honorable-mention tea rose bushes is about as racy as autumn gets around here this time of year. Two Octobers ago, when the roof of one of the cottages I watch blew down on me during a squall, talk of my near-death experience didn’t subside for nearly a month.

“I just assumed our readings were cancelled till further notice,” Lacey says, turning down the heat on the potatoes, “but Mrs. Keillor called this afternoon and asked me to come tomorrow as planned.” She pauses. “Actually, she asked both of us.”

“Both of us?” I slide an iron hot pad with “San Francisco” glazed on it in slanted cursive under a dish of green beans. The air over the beans goes wavy with their heat. “But she doesn’t even know me.”

“Well, you don’t think I’ve never mentioned you, do you?” Lacey takes the steel pan of potatoes over to the sink and starts churning through them with the beveled masher. Her action startles a couple of cardinals, bright in their winter plumage, away from the nearly empty bird feeder. They flap away into the pines like fallen leaves rising on a breeze. “Anyway, I think she just needs someone to be with her right now. She must think terrible thoughts when she’s alone.”

“Well, yeah, but doesn’t she have any—” I almost say “friends,” realize it sounds like a critique of Lacey, and settle on “family.” “Doesn’t she have any family to stay with her?”

“I don’t know, really. I don’t know that much about her. But she just lost her son, Harlan. I think we should go if she wants us to.”

“Okay.” I put my hands on Lacey’s small hips, squeeze. She’s like a deer herself today, smooth and fawn-colored. She’s got a little Celtic cross on a gold chain around her neck and a mole under her ear. The neck of her sweater is cut low enough to suggest the tops of her clear, buffy breasts. My hands move up to her waist. We’ve been married for seven years and I want seventy more.

“We’re running out of daylight,” Lacey says. She puts a Jim Croce album in the little CD player we keep on the kitchen counter and angles the player toward the table. She waits a moment, pushes “random.” “Let’s eat while it’s still nice and bright.”

We sit down and chew our food through “Operator,” “Time in a Bottle,” and “Photographs and Memories.” I don’t remember ever hearing the CD player select so many songs from the same CD twice. The sound of Croce’s desire is sad and sweet, and eventually our conversation fades out under his narrative need. When we sit down I’m hungry, but by the time we start clearing away the plates, everything I’ve eaten has settled in me alien as wind-blown soil. Lacey and I lay still beside each other in bed that night, and when I dream I see a boy without a face staring at me from an artist’s unfinished canvas, propped on an easel in the middle of our bedroom.

The next afternoon Lacey comes bumping down our rutted drive at a quarter to three and finds me out back, chopping sections of one of our three dead oak trees into firewood.

“Howdy, stranger.” She slips in behind me and throws her hands over my face. I pretend to be shocked, lift the axe threateningly. She’s wearing fuzzy green hand-warmers that shed yarn fibers into my eyes. As I’m picking them out, she tells me about calling Mrs. Keillor this morning.

“The entire house was absolutely silent,” she says. “I’m telling you, Harlan, if you’d ever spoken to this woman on the phone before, you’d know how out of character that is. She’s always got a radio in the background, or a shrieking kettle, or Inside the Actor’s Studio. I’ve never been able to hear her so well. And she just says, “Okay,” when I tell her we’re coming, and hangs up. Nothing else at all. It was so sad.”

“Well, she is sad,” I say.

“I know, but there’s a big difference between being sad and being so sad you don’t even try to hide it,” Lacey says. “I don’t know how to explain it. I’ve never been that...sorrowful. I don’t think you can ever feel that much sorrow without having kids, and losing them.”

“I’d be like that if I lost you,” I say, hugging her into my arm. Lacey leans against my back, blows away a puff of down that’s slipped from a hole in her quilted vest.

“No, you wouldn’t. No offense, Harlan, you just wouldn’t. I wouldn’t be if you died. I mean, I’d miss you all the time, and it would be horrible, but I wouldn’t be...defeated. Not as bad as if we had a baby, and...” She trails off. The non-existent baby sits between us like a long and difficult conversation we aren’t strong enough to have today. “Anyway, it was upsetting.”

By the time I’ve washed my face and put on a clean collared shirt and Lacey has traded her down shell for a subdued sweater jacket, both of us are thoroughly depressed. It’s that ghostly child that’s done it. We leave Lacey’s rust-feathered pick-up in the driveway and take my Jeep to town instead. The Jeep is quieter, has a smoother ride, and sometimes the heat works properly. Today it doesn’t. Lacey bunches her hands inside her sweater’s kangaroo pocket and I hunch deeper into my Packer’s jacket. We pass a few fields and a long stretch of brown woods without saying anything. Occasionally we catch a glimpse of the lake, dark and sparkling, chopping the afternoon light into thin slivers and swallowing them.

“The reflections look like French fries,” Lacey remarks finally, witnessing this motion.

“Fish and chips out there, then,” I say. The joke falls flat, and a feel a little guilty for trying to introduce a note of levity. A few more miles of silence.

“I’m glad I didn’t know him,” Lacey comes out with suddenly. “I know that makes me sound like a terrible person. He was always at daycare when I came over. Mrs. Keillor had these pictures up—for other people, I guess, all these pictures in heavy frames of him swimming and playing and drinking from the hose. That’s as close as I got.”

From the tears I hear in her voice, even photographs were too close. “What was his name?”

“Eric.” Lacey’s eyes are looking far beyond the windshield. She doesn’t offer anything else.

“I’m glad we’re going over,” I say. “Maybe we’ll be a little help.”

“Yeah.” We grow silent again. I try to concentrate only on my driving but I can’t stop the ghost baby Lacey bore from becoming a little child with no face, tilting its head toward the green coils of a snake whose fist-sized head is weaving dangerously over a manicured lawn.

Ten minutes later it’s Mrs. Keillor herself who ushers us into a small sitting room so far from what I expect of a blind woman that for a moment I literally stop in my tracks. Two tasseled accent rugs explode in riotous color to either side of the entry. On each rug sits a two-foot stone gargoyle, snarling a Griffin grin into the shins of passerby. The carpet is soft and springy and the deep color of May grass. Pictures in varnished wood frames are everywhere—on the mantel, over the radiator, clotted together on iron accent tables and the bamboo coffee table. Lacey has alluded to the Keillors’ eccentric tastes in her stories, but has never come close to the reality of all this. I put out a finger and poke a taxidermied eider duck forever in flight against the left wall.

“There’s coffee in the kitchen,” Mrs. Keillor says. The woman herself does not fit at all into the boisterous vivacity of her living room. Her voice is so quiet I’m afraid I’ll lose it in all the colors and textures her home represents. Her chin-length black hair is stick-straight and very fine, soft looking as the hair on a horse’s flank. She can’t weigh any more than Lacey even though she’s nearly a foot taller, and her hips jut like competing prows from either side of her black jeans. As she walks it seems that it’s the memory of her hips tugging her in each direction that gets her through without a spill, her faded and off-focus eyes vestigial as a tail bone.

Lacey and I follow her back to a breakfast nook the size of a modest walk-in closet and wait on some cushioned wooden chairs while she pours three cups of coffee, black, and sets them on a tray. To watch Mrs. Keillor maneuver through her crowded home you’d never know she was blind. She slides her fingers along the edge of tabletop before resting her tray and that’s it. No cane, no dog, no Marco-Polo calls, no zombie-like shuffle with fluttering fingers—everything I thought I knew about blind people explodes. I sip my coffee. Lacey puts a hand over Mrs. Keillor’s.

“Harlan and I just wanted you to know how sorry we are about Eric,” she says. “If there’s anything at all we can do...”

“Thank you.” The way Mrs. Keillor keeps her pain bobbing in front of our sight is disconcerting; I’m used to the sighted trying to train that emotion on their shoes, or their hands, or out the screen door. She squeezes Lacey’s hand and my wife smiles, even though the other woman can’t see her. I think they are both about to cry and I don’t have any idea what I should be doing about it. The coffee cup I’ve been given is thin as snow-crust and probably antique. If Lacey starts weeping I’m afraid my fingers will puncture its smooth surface as certainly as boots on moon dust and then I will have done something irreparable to a grieving woman.

“We don’t want to talk about him if it’s too hurtful now,” I say, painfully aware of my status as an absolute stranger, “only if that’s what you’d like. We don’t mind just sitting here if that’s what you need.”

“You’re nice, Harlan, but no. It’s strange. I thought that once you two were here, I would be so uncomfortable. I almost uninvited you. But now that you’re actually sitting here...I’ve been feeling so bad. I want to talk about him for awhile.”

“That’s fine,” Lacey says. “We’ll listen.”

We do. It’s surreal at first, sitting in the over-stuffed home of someone I don’t know, drinking Maxwell House and listening to her tell the story of her child’s life and death, but after awhile its like a radio program you’re fascinated by and want to call in to. Lacey and I find ourselves smiling with her over her boy’s sweet misconceptions and obnoxious tantrums, his triumphs at school, his kindnesses at home. Twilight rises in the little window above the sink.

Once we’ve all taken a break to pee and have traded coffee cups for wine glasses and a decent Riesling, Lacey says something that stops my heart.

“He’s so vivid in your stories, it’s like he’s still here. I wish I had that much.” The ghost child finds me again, settles heavy on my chest, so close I’m breathing its air. Mrs. Keillor smiles wetly in Lacey’s general direction.

“That’s the nicest thing anyone has said to me this week.” The two women hold hands. Lamplight has rounded into a puddle on the center of the table, illuminating the wine bottle, threading down the stems of our glasses, glittering in Lacey’s hammered-gold earrings. Outside everything is dark, but reality intrudes only a little here.

I try to imagine a young boy living out his life amidst the concrete statues and fibrous artworks and reflections of his own experience. I decide he would’ve either loved or hated the texture and clutter of his family’s home, and, because I’m beginning to like Mrs. Keillor very much, I settle on love. I wonder about Mr. Keillor, insulated in travel, still picturing two souls waiting for him at the end of the journey. Doesn’t he have a cell phone? It doesn’t matter, really. What matters is that we are here, and we are helping, and after seven years, Lacey...well, my pulse is high. She might. I’ll leave it there, for now.

Mrs. Keillor is talking to my wife. I walk to the sink and run a glass of water, the window above a pane of navy glass. Outside on the chilly hills, deer are kneeling for the night. The lake is icing over, foxes are slipping from their dens. By the time Lacey and I head for our own house, leaves may be skating across the frosted surface, dancing under dark wind for the end of autumn, the end of falling, the beginning of a crisp new something.

Franzen and I Chat

2005-12-01T19:33:00.000-08:00

Today--and I'm nearly sick with this, I'm so excited--I spent almost two hours in one-on-one conversation with Jonathan Franzen. JONATHAN FRANZEN SPOKE TO ME. AT LENGTH. Even though much of that time was spent with he, Eileen Pollack, Julian Levinson, and Nick Delbanco trying to convince me that it would be a bad idea for me to go straight to graduate school, I could only enjoy myself. Jonathan Franzen was talking to me seriously, like I was a human being. And we discussed birds! And he signed my beloved copy of his essays, with personal information! And he even referenced me in the reading he gave at 5 pm today, as I am the person who didn't know about smog emission stickers until he told me.

(Do you know what smog stickers are? Apparently every other state in the Union except for maybe Tennessee has enacted a law that every driver must have their car checked annually to see if it's emitting too many pollutants. If it is, they can't drive it anymore. No big brain needed to see why Michigan, anxious slut to the auto industry, hasn't gotten on board with this.)

Also, he told me during the course of our discussion that I was noticeably more mature than one of the talented students he remembers from his days of workshop teaching. And that, ladies and gentleman, coming from your ever ever ever favorite essayist, can just about make your day.

And make my day it did. Oh lord, I'm really geeked to write right now! In fact, I will. I'm out.

Slow Food

2005-11-30T22:47:00.000-08:00

Wrote both these poems tonight within five minutes of each other. Weird, because I kind of like both of them. How often does that happen? My inner fences must be down due to lack of sleep and constant academic angst. And those low fences must translate to decent poetry.

Becky Adams
Grandparents

They die, we pack up their correspondence
and give away their alarm clocks. We store their
file cabinets in the garage and paste their photos
into our albums. Or we store their albums.
We never speak about them or we discuss
them constantly, willfully, with anger.
As if we all have to have loved them more.
As if they rode away on a white ass
to Jerusalem and martyrdom, instead of
wilting like white cabbage in hospital beds
with their names and numbers
tattooed in blue bands on their wrists.

Slow Food

Takes her forever to get to the table,
swinging hips into friends, slinging arms
across shoulders of young men,
pressing old professors into scented
hugs. By the time she slips in beside me
her eyes are shining. Everything
like old times.

We order and spin shining cutlery
under mood lighting and laugh
about whatever comes to mind,
our jobs, this party, our president’s
follies. Tonight she is so beautiful,
cushioned by the breath
of all who love her.

Month from now she’ll be ash
in the Adriatic, but I can’t worry
that bone under the table tonight.
I’ll lose now, lose this linen feeling,
lose this woman snorting water
when I tell the joke that ends
in inner prayer: Oh God, thank you
for slow food.

First Lines

2005-11-30T07:30:00.000-08:00

First line of the piece of fiction currently being banged-together in the workshop of my mind:

"Here's the story of my parents the way it never happened..."

First line of the poem I'm snipping up like a paper snowflake:

"Thanksgiving now, according to the clock"

First line of the letter I just wrote to an absent friend:

"Miss you miss you miss you in the snowing!"

First line delivered to the little dog this morning:

"Dude, it's ugly early for this."

Virtue of the Day: 4

2005-11-29T16:27:00.000-08:00

Diligence.

Holy shit! SO much to do. At least I have the first draft of this poem:

Becky Adams
Driving to Marquette

Thanksgiving now, according to the clock,
and we're only twelve miles out of Naubinway.
Blizzard snow scrubs out the pines,
the road, the other cars, the white reflectors
meant to guide us in these crap conditions --

(I write a haiku for the white reflectors:
how fucking stupid
to post those white reflectors
here in the U.P.)

and a wendigo is howling for our souls.
I can't see anything but flying snow
zip-whipping at the car and feel like Captain Kirk
piloting the Enterprise at warp-speed
through a space-time rift. My best friend
is asleep. The phone is out. I wonder
if the Munising police, who stopped us fifteen miles
or so ago to tell us that our creeping Suburu
was a hazard to the ambulance,
(which wasn't out)
and weaving over the line,
(which wasn't visible)
and moving through a blizzard,
(which we knew)
are following. The dark is darkly white. The white
is whitely dark. I wonder if the sky back home
is wet and gray above my sleeping family.

Questions for "The System"

2005-11-22T00:27:00.000-08:00

Why is it that when we're harried, overworked, or under deep stress, the first things we drop always seem to be the things we do for ourselves? I suppose this is some kind of cultural Catholic guilt at work, but fuck -- we need to treat ourselves at least half as well as we treat others, if we want to keep up the energy and enthusiasim for all that dependability.

I speak to this because I realized tonight that I'm missing a lot from my life that I used to find time for. The cowboy-comic-on-playing-cards idea I had to abandon in the interests of time; same with the "Mitosis: a Postmodern Interpretation" play, the story about the magician, all the backed-up data entry for GEP, literary submissions, old SF novels, birding altogether, late-night-talks for the most part, and anything resembling a board or video game. Whether they be creative endeavor or mere recreation, I miss those activities. I miss the parts of me that were self-employed. Why is the business of Becky failing?

Because the business of The-Rest-of-the-World has asserted a monopoly on time. Well, fuck you, Tick-Tock Man. Grad school aps I've got to do, and timely, or the only one I'm shooting in the foot is myself. That junk is pretty non-negotiable. But all the rest of "it?" Scrap. I'm gonna take me out on more jaunts like tonight, and lounge around a well-stocked table with some great people, shooting the shit. Assignments, you can all visit Hell for awhile. I'm busy.

Virtue of the Day: 3

2005-11-15T02:46:00.000-08:00

Generosity.

Uck! I Am So Tired

2005-11-15T02:28:00.000-08:00

Uck! I am so tired. But I need to blog. Also, I need to post book reviews. Also, I need to take the necessary forms to the Reference Letter Filing people, so that when my reference letters start to trickle in, they won't go straight to the G-A-R-B-A-G-E because I'm not in the system! Also, I need to finish knitting my scarf because it is a-fucking-mother-one cold. I have, currently:

One puppy
One unfinished poetry assignment
Two wet socks lying across my shelving unit
One angsty rat
Seven used tissues cluttering the desk
The sniffles
Some vicious but receding virus
A date on Monday
God on my side. I swear!

Now to bed, to hopefully dream up the story about the guy in Disneyland I've been trying to write ever since that Henry Ford Museum conference I went to last week with Jon and Sara. The symposium was one big ad for Disneyland, but interesting. And that museum kicks -- well, somebody's booty. The Dymaxion house of the pseudo-future! Trains! Plastic moldables! I want to go back very badly to see Greenfield village. I did not appreciate as a child that Robert Frost's house is there. Before Christmas, there will be lights. I'll go then.

I really wish I had remembered to mail Margaret's package today. The letter inside is sorely out of date -- why am I such a bad friend? Why oh why? If I didn't know better, I would say God is not on my side.

Epoch

2005-11-10T18:04:00.000-08:00

EPOCH (Cornell University's Literary Magazine) has rejected the three poems I sent them, which I expected. But, I also received a hand-written note from the editor, which I did not expect.

Her note:
"However, please try again, and do pursue writing --- think about MFA programs (if you aren't already). We especially admired "Upon Giving My Brother Directions..."

EPOCH is really a very prestigious literary mag---what an exciting little nugget!

Virtue of the Day: 2

2005-11-09T21:02:00.000-08:00

Continuity.

Edgar's Song

2005-11-08T23:06:00.000-08:00

I love someone I'll call Edgar. I've written a poem to him, and included this snapshot of my hometown because...well, just because.

Becky Adams
Love Song Out to Edgar

Love, oh love
loud out of tune
to a quarter moon
rich as a silver
spoon,

high as a crow
on a creosote-covered pole,

telephone signal like a blue spark
in the oven-cluster dark.

Water rushing
over and over
some wet rocks,

artists hunched
over canvases
in canvas smocks,

lay down words
like sorting out the flies
around a ginger beer.

One there,
two here,

a handful of the bright red bugs
I saw on a mountain trail
spell:

stay awhile stay
you are my holy
holy
grail.

Jon Franzen birds!

2005-11-08T17:33:00.000-08:00

So, when my friend Pam first advanced to me the idea that most birders were well-to-do white people driving to remote locations in their DVD-equipped SUVs and adjusting the lenses of their expensive cameras with polar-tech-encased arms, I pooh-poohed her. Now that I'm paying attention to who seems to share my fascination for tromping around in woodland scrub after Northern flickers and Ruby-crowned kinglets, I'm discovering that their may be something to Pam's criticism.

In a way, this class-concentration is not unexpected. Who has the leisure time, financial freedom, and enough education to pursue, observe, and delight in cataloguing our various avian species? But there has always been something rebellious for me in the stalking of a white-breasted nuthatch, or sudden discovery that Cedar Waxwings have nested in the sawed-off oak by my bedroom window. Something clandestine is captured in such a voyeuristic act, something larger and more beautiful than our everyday glimpses of the world. Something outside of the pounding ceaselessness of the mundane, divorced from our economic and social realities. I guess I was foolish enough to believe that, like the birds themselves, we as human beings could use birdwatching as a vehicle to break away from the class-conscious clay of which we are all born. But how could we? Like the Golem, we always seem to discover that our desires can never escape our origins.

I want to rock and draw all night, and party every day

2005-11-06T23:46:00.000-08:00

Things I want to make:

shawl for Angie ( I have the most gorgeous yarn)
handwarmers for Kasey
calendar for Mom
advent calendar for me
mini-books for Dad, Eric

So many projects! SO little freakin' time! Maybe if I quit school, give up on graduate work, and simply devote my life to the creation of crazy comic and bookish items? Then I will be fulfilled, if starved and rib-y?

Also, I need to learn to draw cowboys!

Virtue of the Day:1

2005-11-06T11:20:00.000-08:00

Curiousity.

Frankenmuth

2005-11-05T02:12:00.000-08:00

Clearly making an effort.

You know it's Bavaria by the awnings, of course.

I bet Jesus liked confetti cake best.

As any native Michigander might've guessed, the three pictures above (all I remembered to take) represent a glorious day spent traversing Michigan's "Little Bavaria!" (c) --- a sojourn that was expensive and tiring a worth every penny. So nice to create some time for good friends, enjoy the kitsch of a town as bizarre as Frankenmuth, and drop hard-earned bucks on haughty comestibles. No homework, no errands, no workplace hoo-hah. Highlights of our insular day:

Mickey D's, old-timey-Bavarian style.

Poking around in the Bronners' advent calendars, trying to decide if we'd be able to construct our own particle board model, and, if so, whether we'd actually have the time.

Chateau Leelanau wine tasting.

Cheese Haus 8 year Cheddar, Havarti, and delicious spreads.

Shuffling along toward the sausage shop in the rain, cramped under one umbrella, moving at the speed of incapacitated zombies, in the dark, at the edge of the bridge, while I spoke to Kasey on the phone.

Zehnders!

Gas pump tour out in Jon's dad's building.

Miraculously, the tiny dog did NOT have an accident during the fourteen hours he was left alone in my room. Boo yah. My puppy is clearly the best ever constructed, despite his poorly manufactured surface coating.

Secrets, Vaginas, Killbot

2005-11-04T01:55:00.000-08:00

So, my secret journal has been found. For a moment tonight, that knowledge freaked me out...until I realized that the whole reason for this blog's being secret was to test myself and whether I could sustain some mildly intelligent writing in an area where it wouldn't be buoyed or "spun" by the comments of others. And dammit, I think I can. So to you (and you know who you are) I'm flattered that you found me. Prop up your feet, drop a post or two, stay awhile. And feel free to come back!

My long discussion with Sara today re: The Vagina Monologues has got me thinking about womens' issues and racial rights in a steamed-up, all-of-a-passion way I haven't manifested in awhile. That extrospection is kind of nice and probably pretty important, so I'm going to post the letter here that I wrote to this year's Vagina director---a student who has decided to cast only women of color in the production.

Lauren ——— ,

As a white woman who tries very hard to take a diverse and sensitive world view, and truly believes that all women share a common bond, whether the media wants us to think that way or not, I find myself in a very awkward position with The Vagina Monologues this year. I will not be attending the play, but not because I disagree with you personally or the message you are trying to send by staging an all-women-of-color production. I could not agree more that minority women have been under-represented or completely absent from Vagina's stage for far too long.

Your race-based directive decision has forced me to look back at the play I’ve attended in the past—a play whose stage was graced mainly by white women, telling white women’s stories—and reject it as much too limited, disgracefully weighted toward the Caucasian viewpoint. I could never again attend in good conscience such a performance.

Unfortunately, that same decision has also left me unable to attend in good conscience this year. You’ve eliminated my voice in order to strengthen the voice of others, and I can't support such an action. I would not have felt "tokenized" by a switching of roles—traditionally white monologues given to women of color, and the often negative roles traditionally acted by minorities narrated by white women—in fact, I would’ve found such a move perhaps even more socially thought-provoking than the route you’ve chosen to take. But to eliminate the white voice—my voice—completely, in a play your own actions have helped me hold to a higher standard, a standard that truly includes all women, is disrespectful, dismissive, and causes divisions in a group where the existing divisions should be healed, not widened.

Women need to forge and strengthen a universal connection to all women, not just the ones in similar pigeon-holes. I’m sorry I cannot support your production, because I do support the idea that minority women should—and very much need—to be heard. But I exist. And this production, in order to make a point, has erased me.

Respectfully,
Rebecca Adams

Saw ruminations

2005-11-02T00:43:00.000-08:00

Just went to see Saw II, which I will admit scared the living fuck out of me. Less because of the death, more because of the shared pain of the father's fear. The knowledge of death. Driving home I was listening to Eminem at top volume, something I almost never do, and trying to figure out what it would be like to have cancer. Inoperable, untreatable cancer. Cancer that kills you. Kills you, no matter what. Kills.

The thought is terrifying. The only thing worse, I think, is having a spring-loaded death mask strapped to your head that will only be released when you slice away your own eye and pry a key out of your head.

Christ.

Speaking of He whom one very popular religion tells me would love to save my soul, and of death, when will I ever really be able to believe in God? Tomorrow? Never? Only at the end, in the last half second before a bus obliterates my skull? In times of really deep crisis I talk to God, (okay, I plead with God, and maybe they're not the same thing) but in between I can't find that ability in myself except in a weird, unspoken, almost unconsidered way. And I don't think that really counts, because it's rarely a practice I find myself able or willing to continue for long.

The thing about being agnostic is that your label isn't a "real" category the way "atheist" or "Catholic" is. If you're an atheist, you have a belief -- and that belief is that there is no God. Catholics believe God exists, and sometimes that notion sustains them. Since no one can prove conclusively that God either exists or doesn't, both groups are essentially faith-based. But agnostics...we just float in between. Does God or doesn't he? No idea. Not willing to rule out either side. We have no faith in anything spritual, anything past this world, we're simply waiting bodies in a holding tank. Someday the tank's walls will rupture and we'll fall wet and naked into dark graves, or new bodies, or Hell. Maybe. But then again...

...who knows?

Driftwood

2005-10-30T10:38:00.000-08:00

This poem I just rediscovered in Fifty Years of American Poetry seems very appropriate for Halloween. So, to Devil's Night!

Witter Bynner
Driftwood

Come, warm your hands
From the cold wind of time.
I have built here under the moon,
A many-colored fire
With fragments of wood
That have been part of a tree
And part of a ship.

Were leaves more real,
Or driven nails,
Or fingers of builders,
Than these burning violets?
Come, warm your hands
From the cold wind of time.
There's a fire under the moon.

Edwards on Campus

2005-10-28T13:54:00.000-07:00

Okay, so maybe the world isn't perfect and can't be perfect but goddamn it, even with that attitude I can't help feeling something has gone terribly wrong. Maybe John Kerry wasn't the most charismatic candidate in the world, and maybe John Edwards had more charisma than experience. But--and this is a big but-- I voted for them because I believed, and still do, that they actually wanted to help people. I do not feel this way about the greedy, selfish, self-righteous little weasel currently spouting flimsy promises from his seat in the White House he stole eight years ago. This country needs desperately to change if it's going to hold its ideals up to the world without being laughed at, and at least John-squared would've tried to enact some of the important legislation Bush seems determined to thwart.

And John Edwards spoke very inspirationally about poverty today. I have a picture of the two of us on my phone.

Recommendations #1

2005-10-27T22:39:00.000-07:00

I need to read and respond to 2 graphic novels per week for my ART/DES 300 class, and it seems silly not to archive that information here for later reference. So, 7 weeks of comix:

1. 9/6 - 9/13

Truer Than True Romance
Jeanne Martinet, 2001

Martinet has taken ten of the silly romances that masquearaded as comics for girls from the late fifties through the late seventies and turned them into hilarious spoofs, leaving the artwork untouched and replacing the text with contemporary satire. Thus, the old story "In Favor of Love" becomes "My Heart Said Yes, But My Therapist Said No!" In between individual stories are parodies of advice columns and, in one case, a list of what all the ridiculous symbols that appear in romance comics (single tears, seagulls, blue faces) "really mean." Everything about this book is funny, even if you haven't read a lot of the original romance comics (which I hadn't when I was gifted the book long ago, but have now). Funnier with that background, though, and a pretty well-done critique of helpless heroines and people obsessed with relationships.

Clyde Fans, Book 1
Seth, 2004

I love this book and can't wait for the next installment. The narrative of two brothers, Abe and Simon--the first an aggressive, successful businessman and the second a sensitive intellectual who can't make a sale to save his life--is given in an extended flashback framed by the narration of a much older Abe. The story's a cliffhanger, and that's irritating since Book 2 doesn't yet exist, but Seth's blue, black, and off-white illustrations are perfect for the tale of the Clydes. Their hues recall old advertisements, as do the spare lines and stylized figures. Nice writing, too, very clear and an interesting tutorial on sales and salesmanship.

2. 9/13 - 9/20

One Hundred Demons
Lynda Barry, 2002

Very successful, in my opinion, semi-autobiographical tale (mostly) about Barry's childhood; by turns hilarious, sad, and unsettling. I really like the vibrant collages that precede each of the color-coded chapters, and I love the art. Barry uses brushes, bright color, distortion, and little-to-no shading to produce work that feels like a very artful childish scrawl. Appropriate to her flashback subject matter and a nice foil to the huge, very adult issues she occasionally raises (sexual molestation, suicide, domestic abuse, etc.) Barry has got a sense of humor and a very clear bullshit detector. Also, the back of the book is a photo tutorial on inking with big Asian brushes. Neato!

Danger Girl, the Ultimate Collection
J. Scott Campbell & Andy Hartnell, 2001

After Barry this book feels a little bit like slumming, but it shouldn't. J. Scott Campbell's crisp, expressive artwork is beautiful even if he is "mainstream." Danger Girl is a very cinematic secret-agent story/satire, and Campbell's spit-thin, booby women and chiseled-chin men are entirely appropriate. The mini-series follows five women who operate as secret agents under Deuce, their aging-but-virile supervisor. They stand opposed to a militant Neo-Nazi group that's trying to steal nice, museum-quality stuff so they can take over the world with nice stuff's magic power. Along the way the girls pick up the narcissistic Johnny, a free-agent who wants to get into the pants of Abbey, our heroine. Think Charlie's Angels meets Raiders of the Lost Ark meets James Bond. Lots of fun, this one, but not too deep.

3. 9/20 - 9/27

Maus, I & II
Art Spiegelman, 1973, 1986

My God. This is probably the most powerful graphic novel I've ever read. Spiegelman's choice to keep the whole collection black and white and liney is just right--reminds us that we are indeed dealing with history, and doesn't distract from or overwhelm the terrible, hard-line reality of the plight of the protagonists (Spiegelman's parents). At first I was thrown by the depiction of Jews as mice, Poles as pigs, Americans as dogs, French as frogs, and Germans as cats, but soon I hardly noticed the bestial roles and by the end of the second book I found the symbolism not only clever but necessary. The Holocaust is too viscerally horrible to view for 136 pages when "real" people are staring you in the face, first of all. I needed the distance mice and cats allowed. Also, that Spiegelman used animals meant I couldn't internalize the story as something that happened to "those two people" and leave it at that.

The framework narrative--Spiegelman's strained realtionship with his now-aged father over the course of many years--balances the books nicely. We see not only the ravages of the Holocaust, but its ripple-effects on the second generation of survivors. Sad, sad, sad book, but fabulously crafted (lots of complex, wonderful little panels) and incredibly gripping. I read all night and then chainsmoked four cigarettes. And I don't even smoke.

4. 9/27 - 10/4

Watchmen
Alan Moore & Dave Gibbons, 1987

If you like superheroes or detectives or gritty street tales or complicated conspiracies or atomic accidents or unreliable narrators or good guys getting the girl or gosh-darn-it, just good ol' intelligent writing, Watchmen is the best of the best of the best. It's huge--at least 250 pages in standard comic book format, and each page crammed with uniformly small panels--but the story is so marvelously clever, the art so bright and the whole thing so rich with symbols and parallels and metaphor and the like that you could read it a hundred times and learn something new with each read. Gibbons clearly knows the superhero genre, but doesn't draw large-chested women and flat-stomached men--the closest thing Watchmen has to a hero is a plump guy in his late thirties or early forties who's terrified of both the violence around him and his budding affair with the almost-heroine. As to basic plot, the book presupposes a world in which superheroes (some with powers, some without) actually exist/existed, and the story's focal point is the murder of The Comedian, a troubling superhero (or anti-superhero, depending on how you look at him) and the creepy Rorschach's obsession with it. But there's a lot, lot more.

Squee's Wonderful Big, Giant Book of Unspeakable Horrors
Jhonen Vasquez, 1998

Scratchy, scribbly, nightmarish little gory drawings (there's brushwork, too) by the creator of Johnny the Homicidal Maniac and Invader Zim. I prefer Vasquez's Johnny comics to the Squee collection (Squee is Johnny's young neighbor, and the book bearing his name is a spin-off of that earlier 7 comic series) because I think the Johnny stories were stronger. But the art is still creepy and unpredictable, and I like the scenes of poor, good-hearted little Squee trying to maintain faith in his abusively negligent druggie parents. The "meanwhiles" are fun--short intermissions between the Squee stories, they're usually bizarre and always self-contained--but some of their lay-outs grow tedious quickly, and I don't like the computer shading at all. Johnen's pen-only panels are much more interesting, especially because of the authorial asides and teeny narrative boxes scrawled into the margins.

5. 10/4 - 10/11

Birth of a Nation
Aaron McGruder, Reginald Hudlin & Kyle Baker, 2004

Strangely enough, most of this was written by the creator of the popular comic strip The Boondocks, but drawn by Baker, whom I've never heard of. I like the story a lot--East St. Louis, screwed by shady election day poll practices, secedes to create the country of Blackland--and the cartoony art, which I didn't like at first, grows on me. But there's no dialogue at all in any of the page panels; all text is at the bottom of the pictures, like in a television-inspired photo narrative. Odd. Odder still, the text sometimes comes straight from the characters themselves and is sometimes delivered by a third person narrator, and I find that practice very jarring. This book is sometimes funny, sometimes inspriing, and deserves at least one read. I'm not going to grab it, though, if the house is on fire and I can only take one graphic novel out with me--those "stage direction" moments really bug me.

6. 10/11 - 10/18

Blood Song
Eric Drooker, 2002

Last week I reviewed a book with no text in the panels; this novel has no text at all. The story of an Asian girl who flees with her dog to a strange city after her family is murdered by soldiers who invade their village is more than a little surreal at times. Vibrancy of color is carefully controlled; most of the book is drawn in charcoal blues and whites with black brushwork. Only the occasional "quick" image--a bird, butterfly, drop of blood or note of song--will appear in deep green or purple or red. If you're not careful, this book can blow by very fast, but it's worth slowing down to figure out why Drooker draws what and how he does. My only complaint is that the end of the novel is too predictable. Otherwise, it's a rather wise and entertaining work. I like the dog best. He looks exactly like my dog.

Amphigorey
Edward Gorey, 1972

Most of the work in this book was published elsewhere, and it's much more a gathering-together than any kind of cohesive single novel. I love Gorey's anemic hatching, though, and this book creates a nice opportunity to see some of his harder-to-find works in print. Before I read Amphigorey, I'd never seen, for example, "The Bug Book," which is the only story included that's in color. Neat. Even panels that seem innocuous have a quality, in Gorey, that leaves them teetering on the edge of really frightening. It's all the tiny black lines, that Victorian sense of ghosts and understatement and repression. Like Lewis Carroll, Gorey is a very effective manipulator of nonsense.

7. 10/18 - 10/25

McSweeney's Quarterly Concern, Issue 13
ed. Chris Ware, 2004

Wow. Wow! This now-famous Chris Ware comic's issue of McSweeney's is a great sampler of lots of big names (and names that should be big) in contemporary cartooning. Lynda Barry, Jeffrey Brown, Joe Matt, Mark Newgarden, Ware himself...there were only a few artists I didn't like, only a few stories that didn't grab me. This is a really excellent book to start with if you're new to graphic novels or simply want to study a lot of different cartooning styles. Not to mention that the dust jacket is a big, beautiful poster/comic strip drawn by Ware, who is brilliant. There are even some articles, for the lit crit kids!

Jimmy Corrigan, the Smartest Kid in the World
Chris Ware, 2000

A lot of Chris Ware's work feels as much like architecture as art--there's a uniform shaping, a careful squaring of the squares and rounding of the rounds--that looks like it was done with drafting equipment. I don't mean that as a criticism; it's an incredibly unique style and oddly compelling. Jimmy Corrigan is very, very depressing, though. Jimmy is a hopeless man in a hopeless world with hopeless social inequities. I loved how the story was told, the color and the structure, but I wasn't always sure exactly what was happening. Much of this confusion stemmed from the fact that though the book is full of flashbacks from as long ago as early childhood and as recently as yesterday, Jimmy wears the same clothes and looks roughly the same age in nearly every scene. And what exactly is his age? Again, unclear. He looks quite old but some of the dialogue contradicts that...weird. Weird, weird, weird. I like this book a lot. The little connect-the-tabs pages are particularly great. But it's all a big thick mindfuck sandwich.

More recommendations next week!

Columbo's Gone

2005-10-27T18:20:00.000-07:00

I miss this guy. Had to take him to Wacousta for a few days because of so many landlord visits...strange how they bug the hell out of you, then you miss them terribly when they leave.

Wood Song

2005-10-26T02:35:00.000-07:00

Becky Adams
Wood Song

Past the ducks, past that bullshit fence
past the waterline and the treeline
and the alpine zone, we can be coffee-drinkers.
Tree-huggers. Forest-pissers. Alone.

I want to mark every trail like a dog
out to the rock and back, up to the rim and back,
each step a dune-slide from the ultimate goal.
You want river fords and scraped stone
and and to see a wild bat, high as wind,
dusty as coal.

Felted blanket between our shivering feet,
we scan the clouds and the fog
and the weird shadows and then
the clouds' weird shadows until we see
our first bird circling below us, making
switch-backs in the sky. Flying raisin.

That we two are together, arguing, singing,
shitting in the woods and lying about it,
breaking and fixing equipment daily,
makes us worthy now, expeditioneers.
The camp stove speaks to me like Lumiere.

If caribou, I think I might have peed, but
you can't have it all and now we're near home
with stands of sugar maple, sunroof down
and the two of us freezing. Risk-takers.
Pot-scratchers. Bug-freakers. Seers.

What's Wrong With Me?

2005-10-26T01:31:00.000-07:00

Everything in my life seems alternately beautiful, intense,--almost too vivid, too incredible to bear--and then becomes depressing and repulsive a few minutes later. My poems are bad and my fiction can't be born and I'm behind in every single one of my classes and tonight I watched a Mandy Moore movie and I would've cried if Jon hadn't come in at the fucking climactic moment. I just want to be alone and sometimes I hate him so much I feel like I'm actually burning with resentment and revulsion. But he's my friend, and sometimes I care deeply about him too. I get so mad so often and then it burns away like oil on water, leaving the water behind untouched so that the spill and the flames can occur again and again and again. I don't even know what I'm saying, but I'm freezing. And it's late and I have so much work due tomorrow and I haven't done any of it. Any of it. Ugh. I miss Columbo's little furry presence. Couldn't self-obsess as much when I had a tiny dog to entertain.

Goodbye, Rosa

2005-10-25T19:49:00.000-07:00

Rosa Parks has kicked the bucket! My God. I'm a person now who has lived in the post-Parks era. I'm not being flippant about this, it really freaks me out--I mean, I know that celebrities and historical figures die, and that Rosa Parks was old even before I was born, but now she's DEAD.

All the books I read in school said things at the end like "Rosa Parks currently lives in Detroit with her dog hush-and-hush," and her being in the present tense like that made her stand out for me in a very positive way. A "living change" sort of way. Rosa Parks was the figure who made me see that the Civil Rights movement was still going forward; she was both history and reality and through her I was able to discover that one was simply the product of the other.

But now she's dead. The next generation's little kids will learn about Rosa Parks the same way they learn about George Washington and Irving Berlin, as a person from that "other" period, that dusty garage full of cardboard cut-outs and connect-the-paper-tabs revolutions, History.

Falling Apart

2005-10-25T13:55:00.000-07:00

Seems that I go through these cycles lately where everything will be fine for a week or so, then collapse utterly. The week of collapse is triggered by some event--currently, an art project I'm both frustrated with and increasingly behind on--that has me worried. Eventually, my creative and academic ennui becomes almost a spiteful kick in my own ribs. I wake late, shower infrequently, stop going to class (or attend with little to none of the homework completed) and generally feel like an abject failure. During this phase I stop studying anything and instead watch a lot of Rohin's bad TV.

This whole depressed period generally continues until I'm afraid people are going to start asking questions. Then I try to pull my act together. Sometimes I can, and sometimes I can't. When I can't, the cycle elongates, though with decreased risk. That is to say, I still feel upset and unsatisfied with my person, my efforts, and my life, but I go to class and do most of the work. This continues for another week or so, until the final completion of some project or assignment lifts some of the worry from my mind. Then I feel all right again.

This just cannot be healthy. But it's not really clinical depression, either, even though it involves some of the same symptoms. It's just...God, I think it's that deep down I don't think I'm all that I could or should be. Whatever the hell that means. And it's really, really, bothering me that I very infrequently find myself writing anything but bullshit poetry. No fiction has come out of this brain in almost a year. A fucking year. It makes me want to howl and throw things and chew typewriter keys and smash in computer screens and deck every mincing word any writing instructor has given me throughout college. Why was writing so much easier, so much more fun, in highschool? Is it because I wasn't terrified/obsessed with producing "good," publishable work? I don't know. Maybe. But FUCK this. If I can't get it together in any area of my life, how can I ever pursue a writing career?

Fall Color

2005-10-24T12:30:00.000-07:00

Some color I saw around my place yesterday, after a rain

Hadas Imitation

2005-10-23T01:57:00.000-07:00

My late-night Hadas imitation:

Becky Adams
Fairy Tale, Come November

My dog tears across the neighbor's lawn
like wool yarn spinning
in Sleeping Beauty's castle

gleaming honey and rich dark nut
of the whirring wheel
under winter light

barking as if to say wake up wake up
we're here now
everything's all right.

First Entry, October Cats

2005-10-23T01:13:00.000-07:00

Hard to believe that I've finally recognized the superior power of the internet and submitted myself, but here I am. Much as I love my old black Moleskine, I can't upload pictures or make sweet, sweet cut-n-paste love to the physical page. Four legs good, two legs bad. And the world moves on.

As it's the end of October, I thought this beautiful poem very appropriate for my first entry. After all, it combines three of my great loves--literature, cuisine, and cats---in one small and very effective space.

Rachel Hadas
October Cats

One is the color of graham crackers and milk;
cornbread with butter and honey;
a stack of pancakes drenched with maple syrup;
peaches and cream (is anybody hungry?).
The other's tiger markings, gray and white,
are lit like alabaster from within;
foxy, rosy, ruddy; dusky blush.
Who would have thought we were so famished for
the tawny, the caressable? No longer
now splayed out along the floor for coolness,
they reconfigure for the coming season
into shapes of meatloaf, tugboat, owl.