Genealogy

to be perched high in wet clouds with
they behind, themselves the vessel

and I:

"Land!"

My Own Dear Terror

I sat alone on a park bench
(very alert quite alone I was)
holding a shotgun,

waiting. for

The menace, my own
dear terror there
beyond the horizon

you see and

In a second, any second,
there it would be:

swimming languid circles
quite without
appetite or purpose

and you see

In a second, any second,
here it would come:

instantly, absently, with a
wild mouth and the world's
malice on its tongue.

In this way, this is how
it would come,

and for me.

Ian Says: Topple the Doppelgänger

Do you find yourself constantly finding yourself?

Do your socks routinely disappear with no explanation?

If so, you may have a Doppelgänger. There are certain measures to be taken in a certainly measured manner, and deliberations to be followed through deliberately, in order to rid yourself of yourself:

1. Abandon mirrors with reckless abandon. Without you, you will be lost.

2. Try not to talk to yourself. If yourself talks to you, nod and remain silent until you've stopped talking.

3. Neglect your dress, and frequently wear shoes absent socks. This will confuse and weaken your Doppelgänger.

If these steps are followed with sufficient zeal you will find success. One must apply oneself, especially in matters concerning one's selves.

Good luck to you.

(and to you).

Turgenev the Tables

So, here I am, 15,000 or so words into NaNoWriMo when an old romance between myself and a certain Russian author of the 19th century (who happens to be the critical whipping boy of literature professors everywhere, but who has securely won this author's heart) is suddenly rekindled. Before my steadily flowing narrative about a man and a hill - a sickly but determined love-child of Kafka and the Diamond Sutra - knew what hit it, I was leaping up the stairs to my bookshelf to draw, nay, to embrace, my volume of Turgenev's Diary of a Superfluous Man.

By way of answer to the question posed by that admirable work, I resolved then and there to write my own work in the same format, illuminating the opposite reaches of the heart than were explored by Turgenev with his superfluous man. So, dear readers, I give you:

Diary of a Mellifluous Man

August 21

Today the doctor told me, “You're dying.” Feeling rather exposed at this revelation, I retorted, “Well - so are you.” Then he told me that he was giving me two weeks to live. I told him that if the situation were reversed, I would have been more charitable. We shook hands. Very grim business. His solemnity was infectious. I couldn't help but imitate his manner. For anyone looking on it may well have seemed that I was consoling him. A very courteous affair.

The stale light of the office was reflected in his shoes. It's a peculiar thing to stare at a man's shoes, but as a dying man is presumably allowed some extra latitude, I excused myself from his parting words and stared at them. They were solemn, too. Maybe they gave the doctor my two weeks for him to give me. The brown leather was very clean. Disarmingly clean. There's something about excessive cleanliness that is disturbing – there's a touch of malice in it. My own shoes are shot to hell, and I was relieved at that moment to be in them, whether they belonged to a dying man or not.

NaNoWriMo

That's National Novel Writing Month to you. It's that time of the year again, when writers everywhere hogtie their inner editor and rattle off 50,000 words in 30 days.

Your humble author counts himself among the participants and will update you, the reader, as to his progress in word count and substance, by way of quantified data and excerpts.

Day 1: 2,050

Dawn approached and the mouth of the valley opened a welcoming expanse, the soft earth underfoot a sweet relief from the punishing rock. In the distance the sound of civilization could be heard, mastering nature with adolescent awkwardness. To view life being lived from a distance is a somewhat morbid affair. There is always something of dying in living, and a farmer's hoe can seem to be digging a grave at least as much as digging a home for food. Or the infant's cry, which echoed through the valley, must after all be mourning something. Perhaps it was having been born in the first place. We who are alive are in receipt of the most gracious consolation prize in the universe.

Liebesträume

A big round red belly
glowing hot like iron
moving up and down
and up and down in a
molten slumber, much
at love with the noise of
beginning, smiling warmly
a peaceful mouth with
resting feet propped
wine dropped within reach

the red dirt under.

Hunger moves the feet, (modest steps
for a modest treat ) - some
dusty fruit, but inside
warm and well, a clean
bite now and back to rest

our fine prey is fell.

The bright moon spills out
across an earthen floor and
we are illumined.

You Don't Know Erasmus From Your Elbow

"Ms. Stamp!"

"Hello, dear."

"Have you used your stamp today, Ms. Stamp?"

"No, dear."

As research librarians go, Ms. Stamp rested comfortably and definitively at the very top, where no other could hope to approach. She was fastidiousness transcended, the non plus ultra of researchists, a veritable god of library science. Ms. Stamp was also rather gloriously unattractive, being so unfortunately shaped as to be reminiscent of an unhealthy pear. She carried her body after the manner of Christ carrying the cross, and every aspect of her physiognomy was, and would always remain, woefully unsung.

I often wondered where she went after the library closed - it seemed more plausible that she simply curled up among a pile of unsorted books, with a small ill-fitting blanket, rather than suffer the long walk home on some poor cracked sidewalk, offering no narrative at all, with each step meaning less and less until finally she arrived home, or, that is to say, nowhere.

"Ms. Stamp?"

She raised her head a few perfectly amiable degrees, revealing an uncommonly graceful neck, while keeping her eyes lowered on the desk below.

"How do you find Erasmus?"

"3rd floor, 2nd row left from the elevator," came the response, softly, anonymously, eyes still on the desk.

"No, no -" I said, fixing abstractly on a box of pencils, "I mean, what do you think of him?"

Time, we can all agree, is a thing noted primarily for its constancy, even in places like libraries, where silence and stillness and things untouched - Russian transliteration tables, Ms. Stamp - all conspire to make time more tenuous, to soften its inevitability. With that modest disclaimer I'm going to advance the rather immodest and no less embarrassing claim that, when Ms. Stamp lifted her eyes from the desk to address me, time stopped altogether.

Instead of her telling me what she thought of Erasmus, she looked at me and I knew I was looking back at him- looking at his gaunt cheeks, lined over long years of placating popes and bishops and defending his love of moderation, softly resisting Luther's love of immoderation, nursing a Utopian dream where only Latin, Greek and Hebrew were spoken, all - Ms. Stamp wasn't a librarian, no, nor did she suffer some mal-shaped body or a loveless existence, she was filled beyond capacity with love, and her voice, while unspoken, was that of a choir, endlessly numerous, singing the body of all humanity!

Love, O, I'm in love! Ms. Stamp! She who admires nothing, loves nothing, knows nothing, is everything! Darling dear, I devote myself to thee, my blood, my service, my soul!

" - Oh, I don't remember - how nice that you're interested in him, though! Is this for school? I had to do a paper on him once, and it was such a bore, but - oh, but I'm sure you'll just love him. Go on, we close in 15 minutes."

Ian Says: On Handling Shrouds

If one handles a shroud by professional circumstance or in a simply incidental capacity, it should be noted that during such time as when the shroud is in transit, when it has achieved movement, it often happens during those seconds that the shroud, by virtue of its newfound inertia, lets slip a few words edge-wise, often relating fragments of stories of when it was previously in transit and sometimes even imparting quite poetical crumbs of knowing, such as how behind every silver lining is a cloud, or how the hare, as it limps trembling through the frozen grass, dreams of making it big in the big city, all the while being dreamt by Keats who knew how and when to say yes to no - the makings of a Man of Achievement.

(if, then, you ever have occasion to handle a shroud,
listen well and without, as muscles do nerves
walk a soul along the open road)

Fresh Fruit

There is fresh fruit, though (thank you but no -)
I shouldn't think that fruit for me,
as one who eats not regularly or with appetite
(and besides -) my own hands are held
by the tree and not yet ripe for picking
or for carriage (yet still -) falls the apple
and this without me, yes

still falls the apple (and this without me)

When There's a Will There's a Way

The hall was narrow, just perceptibly so, in such a way that a tense man might walk more comfortably than a man at ease. A turn to the left yielded little and the right perhaps even less, although it was difficult to be certain; a fortunate turn to the right was possible or still more a fortunate turn to the left - the intersections were so spectacularly numerous - and at each stood a chair which sat a man, who would foretell the traveler of the imminent hope or despair awaiting he who turned left or right, according to his will.

"Sir," said a traveler addressing a man seated at the fork, "I've been walking longer than I can remember. I need to arrive soon. Please tell me the way."

"Dear traveler," answered the seated man, who was remarkably slight and pale, "you must choose a path according to your will, which leads to either hope or despair."

"I know this!" the traveler snapped, "each time I've been told the same thing. You must tell me which leads to hope, or I shall not move from here."

"Left."

"Thank you, Sir! Finally comes grace after all this struggle. Thank you again. I shall go to the left."

The traveler resolved to set off when -

"Right."

At length the traveler argued and fought with the seated man to understand but nothing came of it and finally he collapsed on the floor, losing his senses altogether and lay dying in utter exhaustion.

Whereupon the seated man calmly picked up the traveler, revived him with food and water, placed him in the chair -

and walked off, aimlessly.

Syrup and Salinger

If you're going to be 90 years old and living in New England,
you will require certain regular provisions, to say nothing of the
fact that (if you're going to be 90 years old and living in New England)
you won't let any crazy young cowboy - probably 2 years dropped out
of college with sweaty palms - acquire said provisions in your stead,
especially when you're damn well capable of getting them yourself.

With this in mind, I spent the last two weeks staking out the maple syrup
aisle (yes, there's a whole aisle; welcome to New England) at a Cornish,
N.H. general store waiting for a certain Jerome David Salinger to shuffle
in so that I might ambush him. Here is the conversation that followed:

"Jerry? Hello. I -"

"Christ. Please -"

"Oh, let's drop all that, buddy. I only meant to ask
you about maple syrup. I have my pancakes all ready
at home - fluffy as can be - only I find myself
without the most important -"

"Thompson's."

"Sorry?"

"I like Thompson's."

"That's lovely. Just lovely. Thompson's it is. I'm
sure you have it stocked to the rafters. Through
the ceiling, even. Thompson's to the sky, I say."

"Cold."

"What is?"

"Your pancakes."

At this, the venerable author turned to me for the first
time, likely in an effort to lend some finality to his
dismissal, and took care to deliver his words with
the kind of autumnal indifference which would normally
have sent any and all young optimism straight to the
check out line, but I had other ideas.

"That's not at all true, Jerry, no, quite wrong - my
best girl is keeping them warm for me while I'm out.
Can you imagine? She's at home warming my pancakes."

"Married?"

"Hell no! I'm scared to death of her and she is of
me, too; that's our great bond, our charm - we
both think the other might be more talented than
ourselves, and that's just too damn dangerous a
prospect to let loose and have run around where
you can't keep tabs on it."

"High romance."

"Take it easy, Jerry, there's more to it than that.
I was just making maple syrup talk, that's all.
Listen, I want to ask you a serious question, a
question about life - and you'd be a sorry
damn excuse for a recluse if you didn't answer -
I want to ask you if you've found a way out of
all this damn suffering, or even if you haven't
maybe you have the problem figured, and you
might be able to tell me a thing or two about it."

The old man turned his hand basket (which had not
accumulated any contents) upside-down and sat on it,
letting out an immoderately heavy sigh on the descent,
a production which I gratuitously imitated, but took
my seat directly on the floor instead and deposited
my feet, with undue deliberation, left on white,
right on black.

"The problem is birth. Having been born is a hell of
an imposition, spiritually speaking, as well as being
just plain presumptuous in a general sense, like getting
stuck with the bill when your party, endlessly numerous,
disappears at the last minute, leaving you in irrevocable
debt; which is why the more incorporeally fastidious of us
regard death with some appreciable gratitude and longing."

"Cause it pays the bill?"

"Sometimes. Usually interest is accumulated over the course
of a life, which keeps you at the table."

"What if you don't eat? I mean, what if you make it so that
they have nothing to bill you for, you know?"

"It doesn't work - if you don't eat you get thirsty, or
you knock over a vase, or you insult the chef."

"So what do you do?"

"Nothing. God loves nothing more than anything else.
It tickles the hell out of Him, you know."

"But -"

"You just have to learn to eat and do nothing at the same time."

"But -"

"Practice on your pancakes, kid. Good-bye."

Man's Grandeur

White.

"Truce, truce!"

Grey.

"Truce?"

White.

"Never!"

Exercise

Early one morning I woke up suddenly
with the thought that I should go jogging.

Then, I remembered that I don't jog.

At that moment it occurred to me that
I had just jogged my memory.

[there is hope for the world]

there is hope for the world
and it consists mainly in
that motorcyclists might be
thinking modest thoughts as
they pass loudly by.

Going For A Walk

It has been said: "These boots are made for walkin'."

Well, dear readers, that's just what they'll do -

On the morning of 6 September I will set off on a walk up the California coast. Sand. Shore. Jellyfish, one hopes. I will walk for approximately 100 miles and at the end I will come face to face with -? My true Self? Pretty girls? Perhaps both. What is certain is that, shall I live on, the experience will be documented and inquiring minds satiated. Until then -

(and if the weight of that then is too much, well, don't worry)

- then is also until.

Fre-e-mail

Observe your author
quite without his
syntactic armor
addressing his
girlfriend

(who, so far as we can tell, prefers to remain [deer-ly, doe-fully] anonymous)

in a stream
-of-
consciousness
e-mail
(fre-e-mail)
written this, the
evening of 3. Sept 2008:

thanks again for talking to me and encouraging me to take care of myself with a warm shower and a warm cup of tea and a warm book to read. my thanks to you for that. I'm a funny person to get involved with, as you know by now - by the way, this is a fre-e-mail in the most young and virginal tradition as was conceived, not altogether un-immaculately, by yours truly and fondly this afternoon - let me say that I say that flowers are nice when they can show you their smell in a chaste little gesture that's too little for any (cummings alert! shit! i slip into his too---for any--every---un---) routine like moe's hand finds it way, surely, handily, to the back of curly's head. what was I saying? you're a fine girl, in the last analysis. I'd like to you to hum more when you're looking in the refrigerator for something you forgot you needed on your cereal but that it couldn't in any spare sense of splendor do without. i want you to know that i guarantee victory. i guarantee triumph. before God, i guarantee it. it's a promise an apple tree outside our old house made to me when i contemplated the axe resting at its base. it whispered something unintelligible through the leaves, "what?" but i'll never stop forgetting myself under that tree. i get sad often, like old people do. wrinkles are prominent under my skin. i love you and thank you for the love you give me and your beet red heart from which roots stretch out ligaments moving fingers that tend to gardens.

Conversation Between Sight, Seeing & Seen

Sight: Would you look at that!

Seeing: [sighing] Looking....

Sight: What do you see?

Seeing: One moment.

Seen: What? Where?

Sight: Well?

Seeing: [pauses] Have you spoken to hearing lately?

Sight: Why? He never listens.

Seen: Oh! A tree?

Seeing: Typical. Any word from smell?

Sight: Please. Turns up her nose at everyone.

Seen: a....bird?

Seeing: Tell me about it.

Sight: And how she goes on!

Seen: Is it a lake? A lake!

Seeing: If she could only hear herself!

Sight: Not with the way he listens.

Seeing: Eh. She has no vision anyway.

The Jellyfish Dream

Heir Kafka, give us a beach, won't you? And don't skimp on the existential expansiveness this time.

That's it.

Monsieur Seurat? I was thinking of something pointillistic for the landscape. Could you -

Great, thanks.

Senior Neruda, I don't want to tell you how to do your job, but that sea foam could be a bit more surreal.

Perfecto.

Everything in place? Well then -

A dead jellyfish washed up at my feet, lying there in fine repose as a home-coming traveler does collect himself before the door. I had a look down at this soundless, stillful fellow and rather expected him to make introductions, seeing as how we were alone together on this beach of my dreams, but, no - this was a stubborn and final jellyfish, death notwithstanding.

To the left and right the vista extended farther than the eye could see, and, if one could travel out past that point - this is impossible, impossible - but if one could then one would only discover another infinite stretch of sand and shore. Resignedly, I hung my head and was met again by the imploring presence of the dead jellyfish washed up at my feet.

I rose to the occasion with the most penetratingly quizzical expression in my repertoire.

Reveal your secrets, my gelatinous friend.
Heap upon me all your whys and wherefores.
Enlighten me.

Suddenly I heard a familiar voice declaim simply,

"That is a jellyfish."

I nodded in assent but at the same time a dream a butterfly was dreaming in another place rose quietly-steadily from my toes to my voice and said,

"That is not a jellyfish."

Whereupon the whole world, as jellyfish, stood writhing at my feet in ecstasy, as something that self-evidently both is and is not, in stunning, lovely, equal parts. I smilingly watched the languid fingers of the rising tide swallow the jellyfish and myself, giving me reluctant passage back to the waking world.

Juvenal Delinquency

There was a time, just a few, heartrending generations ago, when the youth of the civilized world would chant, not without a touch of monastic nostalgia,

amō, amāre, amāvī, amātum -

and thereby dedicate themselves to a scholarly fraternity to whose agency we owe the very structure of our western minds.

No longer.

The past is overwhelmed by an implacable present, a march of the now with each step measured in new reward and quickly forgotten in turn.

Antiquity? Antiquated.

The generations of more recent vintage, insulated in their connectedness, have no memory for the past, contentedly occupied with courting their own adolescent sense of irony. Which begs the question:

when the past is utterly forgotten, root and branch, and watchmen of the new generation take up their charge in the world,

Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?

The Dolphin Swims with Porpoise

My dear, sweet, devoted readership! After having our offices here at Three Rolls and a Pretzel virtually inundated with different blog requests, we've decided to settle roundly on the quite indisputably intriguing question of purpose:

what is it, and from whence; what of its hows and its nows, to say nothing of its brown cows ostensibly bereft of purpose but whoso are, in fact, perfectly molten with imperative, cheesy or otherwise.

To begin, purpose is born at birth, a myriad different mechanisms, old with memory, lying in wait in quite perfect silence for the moment to sound. Nerves and muscles more, ten thousand gestures scrambling to be heard in the race that time began.

And they're off!

Continuing, then, at a brisk trot, we have purpose squinting uncomfortably in the light of consciousness, hugging the darkness before being duly appropriated by the intruder, debased to such lowly stations as: "I didn't do it on purpose!"

Humiliated, it recedes back into the nerves and muscles, back into its native darkness while consciousness looks for it unrelentingly but without repenting for its first, and, if you really want to hear it, original, sin.

So it is, then, that we look everywhere it is not, allowing a perfectly ridiculous, harmless-ful thing like the world to dictate our purpose in a delirious attempt to recover it outside of ourselves.

Repent, oh ye of the world, repent, and let purpose find you again.

Consumer Captivity

On what should have been a perfectly harmless trip to a perhaps less than harmless electronics purveyor in search of, admittedly, more or less harmful beeping and flashing "lifestyle enhancements" - how else are we to better ourselves? - I nearly came to mortal grief at the checkout line when I found myself, hostage-style, being assaulted by the artistic stylings of that creature fallen from God's own breast, Rihanna, who was lip synching her little heart out in pleather-bound glory.

De gustibus non est disputandum, you know, but to oppress the already somewhat sullen, shuffling masses dutifully fulfilling their consumer destinies with such disaffectionate, ill-conceived excrement-in-sound strikes me rather more than vaguely of adding insult to injury.

As I find myself rather inexplicably arrived in this world in which Rihanna is given to us in HD and in surround sound, I hope to impress upon my checkout line comrades that despite this excess of diversion, this lonely crusade against aloneness, the sweet, gentle, sensual hand of death is coming, thank God -

- and if you have your wits about you, you'll set the table.