Re: Birth: An Anniversary

I woke this morning, mildly surprised to remember it was my birthday, that today it happened to fall on a Saturday, an actual day of the week, and on January 30th, a date which, like most others, occurs only once a year.

What a coincidence, I thought, that I should be born twenty-nine years ago on this day, and that I would be here twenty-nine years later when this day just happened to happen again.

I almost felt as if I should celebrate it...

* * *

Happy Birthday also to my daughter’s mom, who was born only a few hours before I was. I'll give her a call. Oh, she just texted me: Happy Birthday, Demitrius...

* * *

Other things that happened on this day in history:

Richard Brautigan was born in 1935.

The Beatles, in 1969, made their last public performance on the roof of Abbey Road Studios.

In 1948, Mahatma Gandhi was assassinated by right-wing Hindu extremists for his efforts to bring peace to India by going on a hunger strike.

In 1956, Martin Luther King Jr.’s home was bombed.

Franklin D. Roosevelt was born in 1882.

In 1968, the Vietnam TET Offensive began.

Adolf Hitler, in 1933, leader of the National Socialist German Workers Party (Nazi Party), became chancellor of Germany.

In a somewhat related event, Ronald Reagan was inaugurated in 1981 (the year I was born).

Horribly, in 1939, Hitler calls for the extermination of all Jews.

Unfortunately, Dick Cheney was born in 1941.

Parliamentary elections take place in Iraq in 2005.

* * *

Lots of other crazy things happened, too. I think about all these events, all the events I'm unaware of, all history spanning its own length like stretching its arms out after sitting at a desk all day, wanting to do nothing else but go home and go to bed. I forget who said it, but it's been said by several different people in several different ways: "It's good that there's time; it keeps everything from happeneing all at once."

Lines

The smallest shadows all sleep like salamanders under dust like rocks we lift quietly, searching with tiny microscopes, microscopes too small to look through…

The horizon went limp as a popped bicycle chain, the world now inventing your footprints across it, the sky, thinking rain, but not saying a word...

With age as amputation, future as prosthetic, youth is a phantom limb...

The heartbeat sprouts from a flatline’s soil—the farmer keeps careful watch over the coming harvest…

Apology: This must be some new area of study...

Hint: The biggest secret is, you already know everything...

Toward Practicing Theory

This is what we know: We want to know why because, in theory, there are potentially definitive conclusions we could reach in any given field through a method of logic and reasoning which could potentially make sense to and / or benefit those of us who wish to learn, to know, to feel we have and are progressing toward a better understanding of ourselves and our place in the universe.

But any question’s answer might not be worth the lesson, as more questions often arise and the theory itself evolves as our perception of time shrinks into itself like an accordion toward its inevitable conclusion, and that awful sound of shrieking air. Knowing is not as important as imagining we could know, or knowing we know things we believe we know despite evidence, which is nothing but a what.

Why is unanswerable, and that’s precisely why we ask it.

Also, I'm full of shit...

Review of J.A. Tyler's 'Inconceivable Wilson'

I read and wrote a review of J.A. Tyler’s debut novella, Inconceivable Wilson, and it’s now up at Gold Wake Press. I enjoyed this story a lot, and I feel others will, too. Scrambler Books is awesome, and also has a forthcoming volume of poetry by none other than Shane Jones…

New Story in LITnIMAGE

The Winter 2010 issue of LITnIMAGE is up, and it’s full of goods by Greg Gerke, David Erlewine, Tom Mahony, Nora Nadjarian, Glenn Vanstrum, Jared Ward, Kate Wyer, and a story of mine called “Interpreting Their Genitals” (thanks again, Roland…). I'm big happy to see my work appear in such good company. I always feel that way, really...

In other news, I got my copy of the MLP {First Year} Anthology. I'm digging work by Shane Jones, Jimmy Chen, Charles Lennox ("A Field of Colors" is still one of my favorite works ever), Brandi Wells, Sam Pink, Kendra Grant Malone, Ken Baumann, Peter Markus, Molly Gaudry (really dug into We Take Me Apart. Great work, Molly...), Lily Hoang, Eugene Lim, Jac Jemc, Kim Chinquee, Matthew Savoca, Blake Butler, and so many others. I preordered this back when I had money. I'm big happy I spent it on this...

Three Quick Things

I have a new Immortal… in Buffalo Artvoice today (big thanks, Greg…) called “Laundry Day.”

Unscroll IV is live, containing work by Kat Dixon, J.A. Tyler, David Peak, Dan Nowak, a poem by me, Adrienne J. Odasso, and photography by Melissa Upfold.

I just found out my manuscript, “Snowing Fireflies,” is a finalist for the Folded Word chapbook series. I guess I’ll know by February 15th, if not sooner, about the final decision. Big thanks, Jessi and Gigi…

With an Unquiet Darkly

I’ve been working my story, “Milk Like a Melted Ghost,” into a novel. It’s been kind of hard, because I’m not really feeling writing right now. I’m in a slump, or something. Still it seems to be coming along. It’s much different than my other fiction, though, with twisted syntax, a language shifted, a more poeticized prose, so I think that’s a fun thing for me to do. J.A. Tyler said he thinks it’s the best thing I've written yet. Big thanks, J...

I’ve been trying to send novels places more. Today, I sent a novella I just finished called The Quarantine Ceremony to Melville House. More than likely, nothing. I sent The Immortals Act Their Age to Black Lawrence and Graywolf. More than likely, nothing. I sent Lepers and Mannequins to Replacement Press, Dalkey Archive, Dzanc. More than likely... Soft Skull rejected it. Melville House and Publishing Genius also rejected it, though both had very nice and encouragingly long responses about it, so I very much appreciate Susan Culver’s and Adam Robinson’s time and kindness.

I’ve got this really good query letter written for Lepers and Mannequins, I think, describing the novel, and I sometimes think it’s better than the novel itself. Maybe that’s good, though, to hook editors, or something. It’s all like:

Lepers and Mannequins is about a leper colony warring with a tribe of mannequins over spare parts they need to put themselves back together. It is a humorously sad and absurdist allegory packed with socio-political subtext, not only about the human condition but what humans so conditioned are willing to sacrifice in exchange for what they believe they value most.

The novel’s two protagonists, Jaundice (a female mannequin) and Quall (a male leper), are in love in the midst of this war, recalling Romeo and Juliet. They both face the task of coming to terms not only with aggression from their friends and family toward the opposing side in the wake of a coming leper attack on the mannequins, but with their doubt in one another, ultimately mirroring doubt in themselves.

Written in sparse sentences, each its own paragraph, the novel attempts to show, in often humorous ways, how disconnected people are from each other because of underlying issues like personal and cultural identity, love, sex, dominance and ownership, but especially from themselves, both figuratively (as Jaundice narrates the novel in third person, occasionally slipping into first person to show that even she is detaching herself from the narrative, yet trying to come to terms with it) and literally (with lepers losing limbs all over, often due, despite their disease, to their own devices and incompetence).

Through magical realism, satire and metaphor, the novel seeks to uncover how humans tend to objectify other humans for their own purposes, including women, but mostly just people they don’t know or understand. In this latter sense, the novel also deals with the very human concern of war, and the possession of finite natural resources (in the novel, those resources being spare parts/limbs), and how humans on any side of any conflict must, by necessity, project the enemy as always plastic, two-dimensional, mannequin-like, because, if those fighting actually thought of the enemy as human, it would be harder to follow through with their actions. The fact that humans in the novel rebuild themselves using mannequin parts shows how, through striving at any cost to maintain their humanity and their identity, they ultimately lose it. I feel this is the mannequin metaphor, and suggests the mannequins in the novel were themselves once human...

Or something. It's way too long, maybe.

Otherwise, I haven’t been submitting much. I spend most of my time staring at the computer screen, refreshing my email, waiting for word from various journals or presses I’ve not heard back from. There’s probably less than I think there are. I stopped keeping track long ago of where I submit things. I’ve never used Duotrope. I used to just write submissions down in notebooks and cross them off when I got rejected, or circled them and drew smiley faces next to them if they were accepted.

I’ve been listening to The Beatles a lot. Sometimes I get all their songs stuck in my head at once. I’ve been listening to Debussy and Respighi lots, too...

Here’s a poem I wrote:

With an Unquiet Darkly You Answer My Smile

With an unquiet darkly you answer my smile, a child of our withered leaves, startled and lapsing through the forest to be afraid of.

As to have felt was a sense and shadow fading, to fall off the inevitable and to your breathing, to all the sound of your hands, distant view of your silence, your voice and aftermath, criterion of presence, your feel toward.

Every light of that voice, a child—as if your mind does not depend on it.

School is for Always

"You’re so stupid, Beeny…" You wonder why when people keep telling me things I already know...

New 'Immortal' in Metazen / Other Goods

Frank Hinton was kind enough to accept a chapter from The Immortals Act Their Age called “Corporate Ladder,” and it’s now up at Metazen. Thanks again, Frank…

Also, “Ruined” by Mel Bosworth is hilariously sad...

Smokelong Quarterly 27 is up, featuring work by Brandi Wells, Sean Lovelace, Peter Demarco, Andrew Roe, James Tadd Adcox, and many others...

Mud Luscious 10 is up, featuring work from Audri Sousa, Andrew Borgstrom, Zachary C. Bush, Adam Moorad, David Erlewine, Howie Good, and others...

The new Diagram is up, featuring work by the wonderful Roxane Gay, Ben Mirov, Douglas Basford, and many others...

The new Emprise Review is up, featuring work from Louis Krug, Nels Hanson, Ben Loory, Andre Roe, and others...

Oprah Read This is awesome, featuring work by Mel Bosworth, xTx, Nathan Tyree, Kevin Sampsell, Caleb Ross, and others...

Robot Melon 10 is up, featuring work by Jac Jemc, Wagner Israel Cilio, Howie Good, Tammy Ho Lai-ming, Nicole Elizabeth, Adam Showalter, Juliet Cook, Christy Call, Mark Cunningham, and others...

The new elimae is up with work by J. Michael Wahlgren, Greg Gerke, Howie Good, Carol Novak, Meg Pokrass, Edward Mullany, and many others...

Unscroll is now open for submissions for volume 4. Send one poem or work of prose to submit@goldwakepress.org. Word...

Oil on Canvas

Jackson

Pollack

was

less

an

artist

than

a

psychic

predicting

the

Exxon

Valdez

disaster

—or

the

captain

of

that

ship,

Joseph

Hazelwood,

drinking

all

night,

wanted

to

pay

tribute

to

his

favorite

painter,

crashing

bigger

that

same

way.