Peeka

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The return of the mem-wah

Some of you who were readers of my Live Journal may remember me posting sections from the memoir I was playing at writing. I've picked it up again. Here is a new section:

There were four of us to a room, curtains drawn around our little space where cards and pictures were taped to my wall and where a wet Carol Alt beckoned from my neighbor’s wall, the poster signed, TO JOSH scrawled across her dark nipples. Josh Anderson was six feet seven inches tall, a high school basketball player from Albany, New York. His bed had to be equipped with an extension for his feet and his wheelchairs custom made. He was seventeen and had broken his neck diving into an ocean wave in Hilton Head, South Carolina. It was not in King Arthur’s court this Yankee found himself. His arms nearly touched the floor when he pushed his chair, his injury less severe than mine. He became, for that time, my best friend, five years older, five years cooler. This living arrangement would be my first college experience, and despite the pain, surgeries, eight hours of physical therapy five days a week, I would love my time there.
A third man, older, in his sixties but robust at the time of his injury, shared our room. He suffered with bed sores and, I think, depression, the one compounding the other, and would have liked, probably, not to be in a room with boys, but on certain days he would call out from his bed to join in the laugh, to stir us up. Our fourth suitemate was Joey Allen, a teenaged boy from Alabama who’d been injured since a child and had come to Shepherd for strengthening. He was where I had yet to go: the awkward middle of adolescence, his voice brittle and wavering.
One day, one evening, after therapy and before dinner, Josh and I were talking, cutting up, he was eating a small packet of trail mix. Dropping it, he leaned slightly over to grab it but lost his balance, tumbling from the chair into the floor and under his bed. I sat still for a moment, having seen it happen in my head just before it did, but Joey pushed his chair into the hall quicker than his weak arms normally pushed him. He called down to the nurses’ desk, to Violet, a large black nurse, who came running.
Meanwhile, under the bed, Josh had his trail mix in hand, eating away, while I laughed in the middle of it all. This was easy, this part of our lives.
The nurses woke us at seven and dressed us in soft clothes. Anything with a seam, that might cause our skin to break down, ulcerate, was forbidden. Breakfast was served in a cafeteria that doubled as our physical therapy room. The mats where we would lie until lunch surrounded us. After lunch, we would return to the mats, to be stretched and strengthened if possible. A stereo played in the background. To this day, anything that was in the top 40 of the summer of 1986 returns me to those mats with a startling immediacy. It was Peter Gabriel that summer. He wanted to be my sledgehammer.
After breakfast, we had mat class, a term that was lost on none of us. Our bodies were remedial cases, able to do little. Some of us could not sit up without becoming dizzy, nauseous; for them, they were gradually acclimated to sitting upright. For others, range of motion: a therapist would straddle one leg while raising the leg perpendicular to the mat, to the patient’s body, while the leg shook, tremored. For me, for a time, there was not much the therapists could do for me. Faint flickers of sensation were returning to me but my muscles were still unresponsive to conscious control. The muscle spasms continually worsened. At night anguished nurses tried to stretch my legs, but nothing helped, not the medicines. It would be two years before the electrical storm of my nervous system would quiet.
So ingrained by doctors and therapists that I’d never move my lower body again, I did not realize that I could. One morning one of the favorite physical therapists, a middle aged man named Steve, who would help dress patients when nurses were understaffed, came to help me. I mentioned to him that I could make my legs spasm. His face grew funny and cautious, his eyebrow inching up his forehead. What do you mean, he asked, his voice now sounding like his face looked.
I had noticed that if I concentrated in certain ways my leg would begin to spasm. In retrospect, it wasn’t purely muscle spasm, clonus, but the first tremblings of control returning. I didn’t recognize it. It seems obvious now. Steve asked me to show him and I did. A sly smile began to play across his face, as I haltingly straightened my right leg at the knee.
Paul-ee, he said, drawing out my name, his delight obvious and still, for a moment longer to me, mysterious.

Check it out

Just so you know:

http://www.blacklawrencepress.com/

The bribery may begin now. Please forget notions of decorum and restraint.

Not the Wizard

but I am off to see my brother today. I haven't been to this particular place before, so I'm anxious. I'll try to post tonight.

Downright

There's a word people should use more often: downright. As in, I'm downright unsure whether the word can be broken down to a meaning that isn't utterly colloquial. Yay for that.

I'm feeling blue. Not downright blue, no, but blue all the same and this seems awfully ungrateful on Thanksgiving. Of course, I'm thankful for so much.

But I can't get around this blue tonight. How different your life can be in a year's time.

Ah, the week is over and school is out and bring on the turkey. No, bring on the dressing/stuffing. That's my favorite part of the Thanksgiving spread. The rest is fine, but I wouldn't miss it. And I don't eat any more on Thanksgiving than I normally do, so that's not an issue, really. Still, looking forward to it all.

***

A lawyer friend spoke to one of my classes today. A bit more intense than usual (job stress), he dropped the word 'shit' a handful of times in an otherwise great talk. I think one girl was a touch offended, but most everyone just snickered. Gah.

***

Where has my secret admirer fled? Back into secrecy, it would seem.

***

I'm having company over tonight. Amazing. Dinner. My walls are so bare. All these years of living like a pauper, in holes, leaves me with a lot of books, even more movies, but nothing to hang on a wall. I need a decoration budget. And a decorator.

I'm thinking I want to have a few prints of the original Universal monster movies: Frankenstein, the Mummy, Dracula. Since grad school, I've kept some kind of beast on the wall, starting with Godzilla. They've been excellent muses. I think I'll continue.

Mot Juste: Pushcart Nominations

I'm pleased to announce the following poems from Mot Juste 1 have been nominated for Pushcart Prizes:

Bob Hicok: "Cleaning House" and "The Visit"
Sophia Kartsonis: "Every Other Day Aubade"
Joel Whitney: "A Concise History of Blue"
Simone Muenche: "Viewing Rain from a Hospital Bed"
Eliot Wilson: "Manhattan Afterwards"

You can read them at:

http://www.motjustepoetry.com

matinee me

Saw The Incredibles today and, indeed, it's an adjective well-chosen. What a fantastic flick, strangely, one of the best superhero movies, one of the best Bond films, anyone is likely to ever see. So much imagination on the screen, it's crazy. It makes me want to see Pixar break into a whole line of adventure films. Also caught The Polar Express the day before, and it's very instructive to compare the lifeless, deadened characters in it to the utterly alive people in The Incredibles. Great, great flick. Can't wait for the dvd.

To be continued

Ok, I'm down to the last two episodes in Buffy, season 2: "Becoming," parts 1 &2. Tomorrow, I'll treat myself. I'll have to write up my thoughts on this first full season, which has always been entertaining, often excellent, and a good handful of times something really special. I've been in a kind of agony over certain plot lines, happenings. Stories! The power they hold.

***

I'm feeling quiet these days. So, talk to me, draw me out, engage me. Poke the monkey with a stick. Tell me something secret.

I really need to get out more

Ok, in the past few months alone I've missed Cher, Hulk Hogan, Leatherface, Gene the Spanker of Wayward Behinds, all here in Chattanooga. And now I've missed this:

http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/afp/20041115/od_afp/afplifestyle_japan_us_041115171239

Didi Menendez, editor of MiPoesias, has been doing portraits of contributors, me among them. Here's mine. 

Where have you gone, Victoria Chang?

Who doesn't miss Victoria? I know I do. So I'm doing something about it. In that grand internet tradition, I created an online petition. Go sign it and ask her back. Pass it on, post it on your own blogs:

http://www.petitiononline.com/ab5421/petition.html

Just a copy of copy

Years ago, and far away, the first Bush president once, when asked about the the then recession, expressed confusion as to what the person was talking about. His attitude was one of genuine bewilderment. Recession? What recession? It's easy for someone with wealth to think like that. I'm saying all this because I bought a TV today for my bedroom; my old one had followed me from Illinois to Georgia to Alabama and back and finally gave up the ghost. Walking around in Best Buy, watching people cart out their 70 inch plasma screen televisions, it's easy to think two million people haven't lost jobs these last four years.

Pass the remote, would you?

***

Feeling good today, even despite the walkthrough consumer gang-bang. Had a good week, finally getting to move into my apartment near campus. This is a good thing. I can walk to class, I can drop in my office any time I like.

The departmental meeting this week was a gas. Take that as you will. We spent an hour debating the wording of a couple of sentences in a document. My mind had jellied by the end. Motions, counter-motions, ammendments. I made my own motion: to change the font. To something 'pretty.' Much laughter, applause. It put a stake through the heart of that bit of madness.

It's a kind of danger to bring together too many ostensibly intelligent, articulate people.

***

The Donnas are my new heroes.

***

Ok, be honest with me: how many of you can say that, in falling in love, Ernest Borgnine played a significant role?

I can.

shore

Check out Suzanne Frischkorn's new blog at:

http://litwindowpane.blogspot.com

Suzanne absolutely bedevils me with her super-powered poetry babe status. Mercy!

By the beard of Zeus

It's miserable out: cold, drizzling rain. Yet I dashed across to the library to check my mail and leave a brief note here. No net in my apartment yet so I'm out of the loop. I'll be back in touch soon enough.

No evening class tonight, which is nice. There's a screening of Anchorman in the student center auditorium tonight, so I'll drop in on that. If only for the Sex Panther scene. And the jazz flute. And....

Will retire tonight with Buffy. Spike is the coolest.

Oh God, I knew this would make the nationwide news

http://cnn.aimtoday.cnn.com/news/story.jsp?&idq=/ff/story/0001%2F20041110%2F0821329064.htm&sc=1120

This is just up the road from me. ;)

Until you hit the ground

Wow, I love The Donnas' new album Gold Medal. Is it so hard to make records this fun/kick-ass? Is it? It is? Crap.

***

Wasn't meaning to implore everyone for wall-hangings, though my thanks to those that offered. I do want to have a party. Which will be a bit. Still living out of boxes. General disarray.

***

Must see The Incredibles.

***

Another Buffy poem, this time in Willow's voice, who I have an outsized crush on. I haven't read this poem yet, as I'm deathly averse to spoilers.

http://misanthropicanthropoid2.blogspot.com/2004/11/willows-apologia_04.html

This means, in any Buffy-related correspondence, keep in mind I'm not quite halfway through season 2. Just watched both parts of What's My Line, in fact.

Classic. 

My apartment is a vast ruin, but will shape up. It's good to finally get things going in there. It's been a long series of delayed delays. Moving yesterday: always fun. The twins, my brothers, were at one point rolling around inside the U-Haul truck, pounding on each other. They're twenty but you wonder. One had called the other "stupid." Hence, the fraccas. I'm excited to finally have a place near campus, to gain some measure of autonomy over my days.

***

Now, to decorating the place. I need lots of prints, posters, etc. Too bare.

***

So, let's have a housewarming party. C'mon!

Just as wicked as it seems

No useful words on the election. I'm not surprised, really. Any hopes I ever had were always balanced on a razor's bright edge, ready to be slit in two. I think that's why I'm not in so much of a funk as others around me appear to be. I'm not apathetic, no; I just am not wounded. At least no more than I was before.

***

Some good news: I'm moving this weekend. If you want my new mailing address, phone number, all that, e-mail me. I'll be emailing some of you.

***

Victoria has shut down her blog, mostly, and this is just sad. She's such a great girl. I hate that mean people have driven her off. Encourage her to come back, send flowers, send chocolate. To her, I mean. Or me too. But definitely her.

***

I've started planning/budgeting for AWP. I think I'll be able to cover everything; I've been saving some money since the summer. Anyone else in that mode? Flying out of Chattanooga to Vancouver is expensive. Atlanta's only 90 minutes from here but I think I'd rather pay up and avoid the hassle.

I'm looking forward to it. I have a lot of old friends to see and new ones to meet. So, look for me. Throw a book or bagel at me.

This too shall pass

shine

QUESTIONS FOR SILENCE

In its first thin tide. In the place
to which it’s come like a stranger.
Where the day is a map
you cannot read, crickets begin
in the warm night to whirr
green songs they could not unlearn
had they minds to grow bored.
The willow tree shudders
as though it were sewn up
with twitching nerves, with wire
bright as new-minted pennies. Where
do you go to gain the ear
of the moon, its ravaged face
lamented by no one? And
what do you tell something so old
it cannot remember
being once part of the world and not the sky?
What would your shadow care
to hear, to come close, to touch
hand to wall the tremor
of a passing train? If it had bones inside it,
you know it would flee.
So what are your words worth
to the hurried traffic,
to everything blurred,
to the ice cream truck
and its sweet patrol,
its song spilling out like a toy,
even in the dark? For all the sunlight
passing from the world
like a thought, who might you sing
to timid sleep? However long
you waited for rain
to rinse you of light’s molten color,
for the elbow of the river
to bend back
to your life, the grass whispers
you waited too long
and all the while it speaks
it grows.

Buffy verse 2

http://misanthropicanthropoid2.blogspot.com/2004/10/ode-to-slayers.html

That full moon shining down on you

What was it Chevy Chase always said on SNL? "I'm Chevy Chase and you're not." Well, I'm not Chevy Chase either, but here's my weekend report. Meacham was one of the most enjoyable one's, for me, at least, in recent memory. Most of this was due to Bradley and Karri being here. We all were undergraduates here together and were in the great poetry program, in the same workshop for three or four years. It was as good as any MFA program and better than most, I'd wager. So we were really close those years, Karri and I especially after Bradley had left for Iowa City. We had similar schedules on the day of our workshop, which was in the evening, so we usually hung out somewhere. It was something I really valued. And, as for Bradley, we were pals, too. It's funny, but his poems, while I was still in high school, were an eye-opener. I visited campus one day, picked up a copy of the student literary mag, and in all the poems there was one that really stood out called "Sugartits." We still laugh about it today, but it was a sign of some larger thing poetry could be, that I knew intuitively, but of course was not being taught in high school. At any rate, we have a long history, the three of us. Bradley's book, The Obvious, is one of the Brenda Hillman selections for New Issues. He read from it Thursday night, tired, with his luggage mistakenly sent to Tallahassee, or some Floridian burg. Even so, the poems were great, despite one person's comically escalating backhanded compliments that stretched through the weekend. The first was meant as constructive criticism but was really kind of dismissive in the final analysis. Realizing how it must've sounded, this person came up later and was going on about how great Bradley's titles were. Ummm. Later, with another realization, the person came up and further compounded matters. It was great. The three of us spent a lot of time together, had lunch and dinner, and really re-connected. I hadn't seen since them since the year before at AWP in Baltimore, where Bradley and Karri live.

I read Saturday afternoon at one in the new, amazingly swank auditorium at the university center. Rick had some bug up his ass about reading times, for some reason. He came up to me and said, "Read four poems. Four. Four poems, I mean it. Everybody last night was under twenty minutes." I'm trying to decide if he wanted a four minute reading; he would be so pissed if I did that. I should have. So I read five poems, all of them shortish. I read:

Elba
Minus
The Cartoonist in Hell
Water
On Being Asked Who is the You in My Poems

So, probably ten minutes in all, but I think I did well. Ed Hirsch offered me a Guggenheim on the spot. I'm kidding. Lots of good feelings afterwards. Susan Thomas did mention me reading up in New York and the possibility of a gig at the Library of Congress. Not that gig. Ted Kooser is on top of that. But doing a reading there might happen. Which would be unbelievably cool.

And speaking of future readings, Saturday night was a snapshot of my general future with reading invitations (should any actually ever materialize). The final party was in a nice house just off campus. Bradley, Karri and I walked over. Of course, it's totally inaccessible. Bradley had a couple of conferences to do with students so Karri and I sat outside under the carport. The weather was really nice but it was just kind of lame. We were going to leave and head back to my place to hang out but it wasn't long before people came out, milling around, hanging out with us. And the reason I say this is a snapshot of future readings is because this is how it'll go. In the past, I've been scheduled to read in an accessible auditorium, had a university transportation system refuse to transport me because I wasn't a student, been booked in inaccessible hotel rooms, and on and on. All this despite my explicit and simple requests. I don't need anything special, except, you know, the option of getting inside.

A life of adventure, mine.

Still, a great weekend. You should've been there.