JC

If I were a carpenter
And you were a lady,
Would you marry me anyway,
Would you have my baby?

Saturday

Congratulations today to C. Dale who is getting married in about six hours. Best wishes to him and Jacob.

***

I think I'll see United 93 today. I meant to yesterday.

***

Do you ever forget poems you've written, even recent ones? I do. Putting poems together for a submission yesterday, I discovered a few poems that had completely slipped my mind.

My mind is going, Dave.

Mystery

Jesus, listening to NPR yesterday depressed me. An older man, a psychologist in Philadelphia who does a radio call-in show, has been a quadriplegiac for some twenty years. He was on to talk about a book he's written, comprised of letters written to his autistic grandson. The impetus for these letters is, when you get down to it, death. Death death death. Because he's a quadriplegiac and they're just dying off all the time. Say boo to one and pow, you've got a rolling corpse on your hands. These letters are, I guess, supposed to be about life and living in that moment we're always supposed to be living in. But, Christ, all he could talk about was his own imminent demise, despite the fact he's lived for twenty years, operates his own practice, does a radio show and newspaper column, and now has written a book. So I'm thinking, maybe you're a little better off than you realize, buddy.

Granted, his injuries were more serious than mine. Even so, he made a telling comment, that he tended towards depression, even before his accident, which was not exactly a bombshell newsflash.


So to Mr. Crippled Frasier of Philadelphia I say, keep on on keeping on. And don't send me your book.

***

Crap, Word has stopped working on my pc. Where are my disks? Who knows.

***

I saw this at the theater the other day and loved it: Wes Anderson's American Express commercial.

File under ... uh?

Eye scream

I went to see a movie today (The Sentinel, not bad, though Eva Longoria as a Secret Service agent is pretty redonkulous) and walking back, taking my usual short cut down a residential street, I began to hear faint, toy-like music drifting towards me. Like chimes, almost, or a music box. I looked over my shoulder just as a yellow van pulled alongside me.

A Good Humor ice cream truck. Van, I mean.

The driver nodded to me. And I nodded to him.

The tune tinkling out of its speakers was "Do Your Ears Hang Low," a song I remember learning very early on in elementary school, complete with a whole set of pantomimes.

Keep in mind my chair's top speed is maybe ten miles per hour, tops. Which is, apparently, about the same speed Good Humor ice cream must be transported at.

So we continued down the street, his song spilling out into the afternoon, in hopes of luring children out for a popsicle or ice cream sandwich. But no one came out.

This continued for several blocks, our speeds perfectly matched, both of us finally pretending the other one was not there, our allotment of nods and waves used up, engaged in the worst race ever.

Froggy

More of this weekend's playlist:

• The Essential Roy Orbison, Roy Orbison
• We Shall Overcome: The Pete Seeger Sessions, Bruce Springsteen
• Stories from the City, Stories from the Sea, PJ Harvey
• Pearl Jam, Pearl Jam (their forthcoming album)
• We're Gonna Hold On, George Jones & Tammy Wynette

***

Roy Orbison is such a perfect instrument. Every song is an opera in miniature.

This new Springsteen album I actually like because it's kind of nuts: he's got like 17 folk musicians playing all at once in this cabin up in New Jersey, so you've got banjos and fiddles and accordions and tubas and harmonicas and guitars and God knows what else and they're all playing like the house is burning down and Bruce is just hollering over the top of it all. It's kind of a glorious racket. And it swings.

My favorite PJ Harvey. Rock.

The new Pearl Jam album, passed on to me in secret. Good.

Lastly, there's no way you can go wrong with George Jones + Tammy Wynette. Sure, sometimes you get the impression these songs weren't printed on vinyl but cheese instead. But it's pretty tasty cheese.

Infamy

This weekend's playlist:

• The Essential Johnny Cash, Johnny Cash
• The Bends, Radiohead
• Blonde on Blonde, Bob Dylan
• Revolver, The Beatles
• Californication, Red Hot Chili Peppers
• A Bigger Bang, The Rolling Stones
• London Calling, The Clash
  

Inside

Ok, yeah, that's Joey Buttafuocco, esq., over there to the right, scowling majestically. It's not me. At least not physically. Spiritually, maybe. If indeed it can be said Mr. Buttafuocco is a spiritual creature, if he has that divine spark. I think he does. Maybe it means I do too.

***

Rain today but a pleasant rain, generally. Running errands, before it began, just before, rushing home, and a young girl shouting to me, "You're going to get drenched."

Yes, probably.

But I made it under an overhang and waited a few minutes for the shower to pass and headed home through the new air.

***

Eating lunch today, I sat behind a young, single mother with her little boy, probably age 7. The mother looked up, surprised to see her ex.

"I can't believe you came over here," she said, looking back down to her food.

And that's all I could hear, at least in the sense of discernible words. They spoke quietly, through obvious hurt, and it was all tone, posture, eye contact, that spoke all.

Sometimes you don't need words at all.

Caffeine

Up early today. Gah.

Just passin' time

I was told this weekend that I'm the most wistful man alive. My impulse was to laugh; but then I thought that was sad. Which would seem to confirm the diagnosis.

Crap.

Everybody to the limit

I just did a review of Sarah Manguso's Siste Viator, which is, in a word, kick-ass. If the review is up to snuff, it'll appear in Diagram. I also plan on writing up Ethan Paquin's The Violence, which I'm excited to read. Possibly after that Ron Slate's book.

I decided to start writing up reviews of whatever new poetry I'm reading, to engage myself with it in different ways. Only good, I think, can come of changing up your usual patterns of reading and thinking, to see things afresh.

What else should I review?

***

I think I'm going to let my old paulguest.net domain expire on the 21st. It was given to me as a gift by a girlfriend when my book came out; one of Eliot's students designed a really great page, but all the files were stored on a U. of Alabama server. There they persisted for a long time but for the last several months the site has been dead, all those files finally deleted.

It was neat to have it, but I don't feel like spending the money to renew it, and perhaps most importantly, I certainly can't afford to have a new site designed.

So I guess I'll let it expire. This blog is probably more useful, anyway.

***

I bought this for my iPod. Here's another video. I will never come anywhere near the abuse that's being dished out in these videos, but all the same I do want to keep mine pristine. The material in this protective covering was designed to protect the leading edge of the military's helicopter blades over in Iraq from sand damage so it's nigh indestructible.

It involves spraying a solution, essentially water with a drop of soft soap, on to the film, which activates its adhesive properties. You then affix one side to the front, another to the back, followed by squeegee-ing out excess water/air bubbles with the edge of a credit card. It's a little tricky to line up but very doable. It's almost completely invisible. The average person would never even see it. It looks great.

***

Heard back from the book review editor at Diagram: my review will run in the upcoming issue. So yay for that.

***

No news on the book front: it's out at several places. I'm trying not to think about it. Instead, I'm working on new poems for a new manuscript, looking forward.

River

Yesterday evening, I played tour guide for friends visiting from out of town, which is always fun. While waiting for them to finish checking in, freshening up, I enjoyed the late afternoon sun, the breeze coming off the river. Before long I noticed a heavy-set, dishevelled woman with a paper cup in her hand approaching me. At first, she was chatty and I thought she might be one of the types of people that's a little bit overly nice but generally pleasant enough. Soon enough, before I even realized it, she was talking about poetry. Which mightily confused me. Did she know me? Was that why she was talking to me? She went on about being a published poet, naming one of the vanity anthologies, and would I like to hear one of her poems for a donation? Aha. I said, no, thanks and walked off, thinking about the ironies of life.

After that, I met up with my company, walked up to the arts district on the Bluff, where the Hunter Museum is, walked across the Walnut Street Bridge just as the day was ending. Warm breeze, sunset, a gorgeous moment. Later, dinner outside. A really nice night.

***

Happy Easter and Passover, everyone.

National

Listen to Ms. Laurel Snyder on NPR, from yesterday:

Keeping Flavors Separate for Seder

anything

NOTHING

Between Buck Owens and Vivaldi what’s left

to listen to but the stars, so I do, dialing

the radio down to indeterminate static,

what I always thought was absence, an aria

of sizzling nothingness. Instead

it’s the Milky Way radiating arrhythmia

all the way back. It’s gossip

of the vacuum. That nothing has never been

truly nothing is why I believe,

even still, in love. Beside two rivers

I have lived nearly all my life

and these beneath one sky

muttering its endless alphabet of sine waves.

Jupiter with its flock of moons

and the stone from which we hope

to squeeze one drop of water,

red Mars pulsing in the blank field of night—

I’ve wanted to leave Earth

behind, gravity’s orphan at last,

but not Earth with its two good seasons and two bad

and not its angel-winged clams

luminous in the mud bed of a river

so distant from me

I can’t remember where

that water is, except that I’ve dreamed it,

except that in it I sank

all the way down.

Bill

How weird and welcome: Bill Knott has a blog.

I love Bill Knott's poems.

Uh, thanks

Today in Radio Shack, buying some new headphones, the older lady waiting on me volunteered that "blueberry cobbler is better than sex."

What this had to do with purchasing headphones, I'm not really certain. And I've never had blueberry cobbler before. But I have had sex.

As I can't verify her assertion, I'm going to have to stick with the sex.

Sorry, Crazy Radio Shack Lady.

Complancies

Even after such tremendously bad weather late Friday night and early Saturday, the morning came bright and blue and cool, scrubbed new. The dogwood petals were scattered all over the ground. A beautiful day, the clouds piled high up in the sky.

***

Some of the break-up stories were almost amusingly horrifying. Animal death in two of them. Egads, people. Is it any wonder we're writers?

***

I'm selling some things on Ebay for my dad, which means fielding several phone calls a day: has anything sold yet? What's the bid up to? Etc. Heaven help me.

***

Jeffrey Bahr is up to bat at Verse Daily with "Diaspora."

Freitag

Another manuscript going out in the mail today, which is kind of exciting, as always. Potential, possibility, the unknown: of course, it's potential for almost certain doom. But that's what we sign up for, right?

***

Should I buy the Apple Extended Warranty plan thing? It's 59.99.

***

Thunderstorms on the way.

Stoopid

Odin

Catching up on Buffycasts while walking to the bank, shopping for paper, thinking about new poems, being solicited (for poems, you filthy ones) twice in one day.

Recipe for a swell day, I think.

***

Further cementing its cool status, Verse Daily features Jeanine Hall Gailey and her killer poem "Femme Fatale."

iPaul

I got my iPod today and oh my, I can barely stand to even peek at it. It's so tiny. The coolest thing I've ever seen. I don't think anyone will ever be able to unseat Apple in the mp3 player market because they got it so unquestionably right from the start: the simplicity and elegance of the click wheel can't be improved upon. It's like reinventing the wheel. Just ain't gonna happen.

I bought a neoprene skin for it today, as these things are notoriously scratch prone; it came with two cute socks to slip it inside for added protection.

The earbuds are no damn good, though. Suprisingly bad.

New music for it: The Flaming Lips' At War with the Mystics, which is amazingly beautiful and cracked all at once. Imagine Paul Simon, not Buck Rogers, in the 25th century. No, wait, do throw some Buck Rogers in the mix: Gil Gerard was the mack in a big way.

***

MSW justly corrects me in the comments below: for the longest time, the question I was asked more than any other was, "You ever seen Silver Bullet?

I haven't been asked that since 1992 or thereabouts, but I was asked so often there for a while it still retains its noble crown of idiocy.

And, yes, I have seen it.

Exotica

Cornshake and I are making plans for a reading tour together. We're going to call it Hyphenated and Handicapped: an Evening with the Exotic. Highlights will include, but not be limited to, the following:

• Strangers praying over me, the laying on of hands, spontaneously, without ever asking if I mind.
• Fumbling interrogations on what I can, you know, feel, by which they mean to ask: can you have sex?
• Asking whoever is with me if I can talk.
• Being patted on the head like an adorable puppy.
• Being asked if I can "catch a wheelie."
• Being asked if I want to race.
• Offers to "supe up" my wheelchair.
• Being asked if I'm that guy that greets you at Wal-Mart.
• Being told it must be nice to not have to walk around in this heat.
• Being asked if I wear underwear.

The readings will be scheduled in places like underwater grottoes, buildings without working elevators, Neptune, Crawford, Xanadu, fetid bogs, Gorilla City, the corner of Fortwood and Fortwood, the Mariana Trench, an undisclosed location, Intercourse, Pennsylvania, and Wal-Mart, where I don't work, ok?

For the other half of the spectacle, read here.

Betsy and this guy. Her owl necklace was a big hit the whole weekend. 

Laurel and the awesome baby Mose caught by surprise at the River Street Deli. 

Two lovely women: Lydia and Sherry. 

I skipped the part

In favor of something less pointless and futile, I deleted the Sunday entry. I'm over it.

***

Betsy and Sherry survived one of the tornadoes that ravaged through the midwest and south over the weekend. About 40 miles from Memphis, the wind was pushing Betsy's car around. They looked up. Betsy described the sky as looking like the belly of a huge black dog with each teat being a descending funnel cloud. They pulled into a gas station where things were being blown about, sucked into the air. One of the pumps was ripped off its bases, spreading gasoline everywhere. Inside, they hid with 25 other people inside a cooler. Emergency services arrived to help a woman who had been injured or trampled. They had to leave the gas station due to the danger of explosion, running to a McDonald's where they waited out the storm.

I'm so thankful they are ok. It sounds like it was terrifying.

***

I took the plunge and ordered myself an iPod. I've been a long time mp3 player early adopter. My first was the Rio 300, which would hold about half an hour's worth of songs. From there I graduated to the Creative Nomad Jukebox, which is still a favorite. Later, I had Intel's ill-fated but pretty cool player. After that, a Creative Zen, which was an iPod level player but ultimately not as easy to use as it should have been. The Dell DJ came with my new pc a couple of years ago and I liked it, but sold it when I needed money last fall. Now that it's spring and I'm not quite so poor, I sprung for a white 30 gig video iPod. I'll need some kind of case or sleeve for it, to protect from scratches. Any suggestions?

***

A few Meacham pics later on.

One last picture from Blacksburg: Friday morning, after an entirely mediocre breakfast buffet, a picture in the courtyard behind the hotel.