Scene from Dr. Mister Cute Wheelchair Man's office:
Student: Dr. Guest! Dr. Guest! You gave me an F!
(Note: many of them insist on calling me Dr.; I've given up on correcting them. Also, imagine thick sludge of Southern: my last name becomes two syllables; 'F' sounds something like 'ayy-eff'.)
Me: I know!
Student: I didn't think you'd give me an F, Dr. Guest!
Me: What did I say I'd give you?
Student: An F!
Me: Well, there you go.
Saturday, September 29, 2007
Wednesday, September 26, 2007
Sunday, September 23, 2007
Did you know?
One quarter of 1% of New York City taxi cabs are wheelchair accessible.
NYT:
Of some 12,779 taxis, only 29 have been equipped to carry wheelchairs. That number would nearly triple in coming months, and another 150 would be added, if the state approves the city's request to increase medallions. Still, the chances of a person with disabilities being able to hail an accessible cab are small. Michael Harris, of the Disabled Riders Coalition, said he had such luck just once, only to get a driver who illegally denied him a ride.
NYT:
Of some 12,779 taxis, only 29 have been equipped to carry wheelchairs. That number would nearly triple in coming months, and another 150 would be added, if the state approves the city's request to increase medallions. Still, the chances of a person with disabilities being able to hail an accessible cab are small. Michael Harris, of the Disabled Riders Coalition, said he had such luck just once, only to get a driver who illegally denied him a ride.
Saturday, September 22, 2007
Wednesday, September 19, 2007
Sunday, September 16, 2007
Kit
AUSTRIA
Easy in a college town to hang Klimt
from your many times repaired wall
or life and easy to think this better,
somehow, than violence or routine
or the kaleidoscopic degradations each waitress
in her kindness prepares
for you. Lord, a long time
I have thought of what more there is
to say. Lord, I have thought
this. Sometimes committed my flesh
to unbearable action
if only to gain speed in retreat.
If only to wake in the dark strangeness
of agreements: falsehoods
and broken words and spasms
of summer. And now a loveliness passes
and it does not matter
of what it is made or when
or living and named and nightly possessed.
Lord, it does not matter
that any of us keep on
but we do. In great numbers,
in harrowing efficiencies,
we cannot do anything but this
persistence that will not go.
I am trying, Lord, to love this world,
however it is fated
to end. Behind the wall a girl
is making love.
Two rooms distant I can hear her
and want to leave
even through the spill of rain.
But I stay because
there is nothing to leave
my mind will not carry with it
in a kind of tortured attentiveness.
I know her name
if only by her business card
given to me like I would have a use for it.
Like I had waited there
for her name. Not
all my life but a devoted time.
What else but her name and her nerves unspooling now
could I wait for? Besides
silence. Or mercy.
Or deafening rain. Her sign to now, now,
Lord, be still.
Easy in a college town to hang Klimt
from your many times repaired wall
or life and easy to think this better,
somehow, than violence or routine
or the kaleidoscopic degradations each waitress
in her kindness prepares
for you. Lord, a long time
I have thought of what more there is
to say. Lord, I have thought
this. Sometimes committed my flesh
to unbearable action
if only to gain speed in retreat.
If only to wake in the dark strangeness
of agreements: falsehoods
and broken words and spasms
of summer. And now a loveliness passes
and it does not matter
of what it is made or when
or living and named and nightly possessed.
Lord, it does not matter
that any of us keep on
but we do. In great numbers,
in harrowing efficiencies,
we cannot do anything but this
persistence that will not go.
I am trying, Lord, to love this world,
however it is fated
to end. Behind the wall a girl
is making love.
Two rooms distant I can hear her
and want to leave
even through the spill of rain.
But I stay because
there is nothing to leave
my mind will not carry with it
in a kind of tortured attentiveness.
I know her name
if only by her business card
given to me like I would have a use for it.
Like I had waited there
for her name. Not
all my life but a devoted time.
What else but her name and her nerves unspooling now
could I wait for? Besides
silence. Or mercy.
Or deafening rain. Her sign to now, now,
Lord, be still.
Saturday, September 15, 2007
Friday, September 14, 2007
Wednesday, September 12, 2007
Last night at the Alleycat
Cute waitress: Oh, do you like the music?
Me: I like it just fine. What about you?
Cute waitress: It's the 60's. Usually I don't like it but tonight I do.
Me: What do you like?
Cute waitress: I really love 80's music. But they don't let me play it.
Me: What about 80's music do you like?
Cute waitress: Well, I especially like 80's punk rock bands.
Me: Oh, really?
Cute waitress: Yeah, you know, bands like Led Zeppelin and Def Leppard.
Me: Def Leppard were pretty great.
Cute waitress: I love their album Hysteria. "Pour Some Sugar on Me" is my favorite.
Me: Oh, absolutely. No doubt.
Cute waitress: Of course, "Rock You Like a Hurricane" was good too.
Me: Yeah, that was a good song.
Me: I like it just fine. What about you?
Cute waitress: It's the 60's. Usually I don't like it but tonight I do.
Me: What do you like?
Cute waitress: I really love 80's music. But they don't let me play it.
Me: What about 80's music do you like?
Cute waitress: Well, I especially like 80's punk rock bands.
Me: Oh, really?
Cute waitress: Yeah, you know, bands like Led Zeppelin and Def Leppard.
Me: Def Leppard were pretty great.
Cute waitress: I love their album Hysteria. "Pour Some Sugar on Me" is my favorite.
Me: Oh, absolutely. No doubt.
Cute waitress: Of course, "Rock You Like a Hurricane" was good too.
Me: Yeah, that was a good song.
Culpa
Ok, so everyone is clamoring for the news. When I mentioned it on Monday, I thought I'd be able to spill the beans within a day or so.
Uh, not so much.
It looks to be a while before I can speak of it here. I'm not teasing or being coy, just doing as requested. Sorry, gang.
Hopefully you'll think it worth the wait.
Uh, not so much.
It looks to be a while before I can speak of it here. I'm not teasing or being coy, just doing as requested. Sorry, gang.
Hopefully you'll think it worth the wait.
Tuesday, September 11, 2007
Only hold
Yesterday was exhausting: up early to make it to an appointment with Human Resources, signing lots of forms, then rushing across campus to get ready to teach when
the call came with the news that I was asked to keep in confidence a while. Hard to believe and mentally taxing. Word and congratulations spread through the department. Then I had to go meet with students. The way it goes.
***
I have a kind of hobby collecting forgotten R&B songs, great ones that are just never played anymore. This weekend a commercial used one I'd never heard before: dark, sultry, steamy, full of self-loathing. Wow, I thought, heading to iTunes to look up the title. Only to discover it was Amy Winehouse. Her song "You Know I'm No Good." Wow is right. I was well aware of her, what she was supposed to sound like, her tabloid life.
But, damn, Back to Black is just about the greatest recreation of Motown I've heard in some ages.
***
Back to work.
the call came with the news that I was asked to keep in confidence a while. Hard to believe and mentally taxing. Word and congratulations spread through the department. Then I had to go meet with students. The way it goes.
***
I have a kind of hobby collecting forgotten R&B songs, great ones that are just never played anymore. This weekend a commercial used one I'd never heard before: dark, sultry, steamy, full of self-loathing. Wow, I thought, heading to iTunes to look up the title. Only to discover it was Amy Winehouse. Her song "You Know I'm No Good." Wow is right. I was well aware of her, what she was supposed to sound like, her tabloid life.
But, damn, Back to Black is just about the greatest recreation of Motown I've heard in some ages.
***
Back to work.
Monday, September 10, 2007
Friday, September 07, 2007
Further
MY SYMPATHIES DEPLETED I
say no, say never, delineate present dumbness down
unto the river or the railroad’s tracks I watch
bend under coal, which is time, isn’t it, this clock
ready to accept fire, I recant, I revolve, repudiate,
firstly impugn, crushing the crippled girl
in the first iterations of her heart, turn her body
all to tear duct, to sullen, to impetuous speed
and trying to feel as broken I stop
all whatevers, codes and retractions and reachings,
clutchings in the darkness of clumsy,
that state, that Arkansas, that flag
my body waving cannot take down, bury, burn,
I stammer the synapses I can
all for some other girl
and her body full of her body
and her nerves and her hidden from me toes unpainted,
a nagging, sweet neglect, tableaux
a word we’d both turn to look up,
but agree was correct, as this solitude is
correct and endless, like a dream
of God, or further brokenness, or the train again,
which teaches me not the blues
or sadness or anything that is frail
and romantic, only that sleep is large
enough to contain all things,
the train’s three in the morning glottal warning,
just as you contained me, your body
in its ways, its allowances, its suffrage
of me within you
which I said to myself was kindness
though I think you thought to save me
from however many understandings there would be,
in knotted rows of time, in no and no
again, refusals and refusals,
withdrawal, implicitness I thought was my death,
but not yet say my singing teeth.
say no, say never, delineate present dumbness down
unto the river or the railroad’s tracks I watch
bend under coal, which is time, isn’t it, this clock
ready to accept fire, I recant, I revolve, repudiate,
firstly impugn, crushing the crippled girl
in the first iterations of her heart, turn her body
all to tear duct, to sullen, to impetuous speed
and trying to feel as broken I stop
all whatevers, codes and retractions and reachings,
clutchings in the darkness of clumsy,
that state, that Arkansas, that flag
my body waving cannot take down, bury, burn,
I stammer the synapses I can
all for some other girl
and her body full of her body
and her nerves and her hidden from me toes unpainted,
a nagging, sweet neglect, tableaux
a word we’d both turn to look up,
but agree was correct, as this solitude is
correct and endless, like a dream
of God, or further brokenness, or the train again,
which teaches me not the blues
or sadness or anything that is frail
and romantic, only that sleep is large
enough to contain all things,
the train’s three in the morning glottal warning,
just as you contained me, your body
in its ways, its allowances, its suffrage
of me within you
which I said to myself was kindness
though I think you thought to save me
from however many understandings there would be,
in knotted rows of time, in no and no
again, refusals and refusals,
withdrawal, implicitness I thought was my death,
but not yet say my singing teeth.
Thursday, September 06, 2007
Fortunes tonight
The best way to get rid of an enemy is to make a friend of him.
You will bring sunshine into someone's life.
You will bring sunshine into someone's life.
Tuesday, September 04, 2007
Got on my dead man's suit
Labor Day was all about incongruity: me tooling around Carrollton in a convertible with my cousin Adam. Shades on. Styling and profiling. Lunch at the pub. Later, drinks on the back porch of my uncle Don's home (my grandfather's brother, making him ... my great uncle?): sweet tea for me, whiskey for them. Trading war stories, wounds, injuries, histories, and the like. A lot of fun but too hot: I came home wiped out, went to bed.
Still, it was nice. I had tried to corral some friends for a get together but that didn't materialize. This was good too.
Still, it was nice. I had tried to corral some friends for a get together but that didn't materialize. This was good too.
Monday, September 03, 2007
Won't you believe in my song?
This morning I walked up to Gallery Row, a nice coffee shop on the square. No classes due to the holiday and the streets were quiet. Inside, I ordered a bagel. It was just me and the girl behind the counter. Music played. Soon the plaintive yearning of Kenny Roger's "Lady" began to fill the place, Kenny's world-weary voice full of longing, like old scotch. I hummed along quietly, until I looked to the girl, her eyes out on the sun enameled world, her lips singing along, wordlessly.
***
This really happened. I had to smile. Especially when the next song was "Endless Love" by Lionel Richie.
***
This really happened. I had to smile. Especially when the next song was "Endless Love" by Lionel Richie.
Saturday, September 01, 2007
Radio nowhere
Yesterday at lunch Melanie said to me, after she had covered her eyes with her hand, shaking her head, "The vortex has returned. And in record time."
She may be right.
She's referring to the vortex of weirdness that often seems to ring me. I should have seen it ramping up. The man offering me a loaf of raisin bread. The retarded boy whistling at me in K-Mart, wanting to know if I sold harmonicas.
In Carbondale, it was ape-shit bonkers most of the time. A hirsute Romanian who only wore zebra-striped jogging pants, fanny packs, and Deion Sanders t-shirts, who was fond of the poetry of Steve Miller ("Who is this man who sings, 'Really love your peaches / Want to shake your tree.' This is poetry, my friend."). A disgraced podiatrist who had lost everything, thriving practice, a pretty wife (he would, in melancholy moments, confide what he missed most about her: "a pair of warm titties in my back"). Crying Chinese women. Workshop pseudo-death threats. Police interrogation. Meetings with university legal counsel. Rodney Jones.
In Tuscaloosa, despite road-side faith healings and weird passive-aggressions from my boss, things were mostly sedate. A great time and place for me as a writer.
Chattanooga was, well, home. Little in the way of strangenesses.
But here we all are in Carrollton, a fine little town where I wake up to find on my walk to school a prison detail cleaning sidewalks for me. Then, days later, the city ripping three blocks of sidewalk out of the ground, pouring concrete for new sidewalks. For me. Low flying planes overhead doing aerial surveying. A guy in an elephant costume riding by on a motorcycle.
An elderly woman establishing some sort of psychic link with me.
A weirdly solicitous student we dubbed Burlsputin, for his unsettling mix of Burl Ives and Rasputin.
One issue I wish I could talk about but in kindness to another I won't.
Becoming this university's enfant terrible in regards to improving access.
Two hours of wracking pain.
One personal attendant quitting. Her replacement calling herself The Sunshine Lady.
She may be right.
She's referring to the vortex of weirdness that often seems to ring me. I should have seen it ramping up. The man offering me a loaf of raisin bread. The retarded boy whistling at me in K-Mart, wanting to know if I sold harmonicas.
In Carbondale, it was ape-shit bonkers most of the time. A hirsute Romanian who only wore zebra-striped jogging pants, fanny packs, and Deion Sanders t-shirts, who was fond of the poetry of Steve Miller ("Who is this man who sings, 'Really love your peaches / Want to shake your tree.' This is poetry, my friend."). A disgraced podiatrist who had lost everything, thriving practice, a pretty wife (he would, in melancholy moments, confide what he missed most about her: "a pair of warm titties in my back"). Crying Chinese women. Workshop pseudo-death threats. Police interrogation. Meetings with university legal counsel. Rodney Jones.
In Tuscaloosa, despite road-side faith healings and weird passive-aggressions from my boss, things were mostly sedate. A great time and place for me as a writer.
Chattanooga was, well, home. Little in the way of strangenesses.
But here we all are in Carrollton, a fine little town where I wake up to find on my walk to school a prison detail cleaning sidewalks for me. Then, days later, the city ripping three blocks of sidewalk out of the ground, pouring concrete for new sidewalks. For me. Low flying planes overhead doing aerial surveying. A guy in an elephant costume riding by on a motorcycle.
An elderly woman establishing some sort of psychic link with me.
A weirdly solicitous student we dubbed Burlsputin, for his unsettling mix of Burl Ives and Rasputin.
One issue I wish I could talk about but in kindness to another I won't.
Becoming this university's enfant terrible in regards to improving access.
Two hours of wracking pain.
One personal attendant quitting. Her replacement calling herself The Sunshine Lady.
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