A Puzzle

Sally was sitting on the back porch, putting together a new puzzle her mother had just bought for her. She liked puzzles very much, even though she put them together rather distractedly. Her mother was hovering nearby, busying herself with watering the plants and cleaning the porch. Sally was nearly done with the puzzle when, as happens, she got distracted. She saw a very strange creature hopping around the backyard, dancing through the rose garden. The creature was so bright that Sally had to squint her eyes just to look at it. She puzzled for a moment then said to herself,

"Oh! I know, I know, that's Love hopping around there, that's what. I know because Love likes to dance, like Jenny and I do sometimes when the radio's on."

Satisfied, she looked back down to what she was doing, but got distracted again and called out,

"Mommy, mommy! Look over there! Do you see?"

Her mother was turned away, tending to a flowerbed adjacent the kitchen. Without turning around, she replied,

"That's lovely, honey."

Sonata With Some Furniture

Old hands with well-worn veins lit a cigar in 1948. It was a little cigar, kept in a box in a drawer of a dresser. Outside it was raining. Some time before, the hands were folded on the windowsill when they saw a dresser in the street. Some time after, the hands were holding, lifting, setting the dresser down by the open window. Then, that cigar, kept in a box in a drawer of the dresser. The hands reached, held, rolled it across the palm. Once to the lips and down again. Tossed around here and there, every finger got a touch. Now again to the lips and held between.

A long time before, the hands had been laughing at something funny and chanced to see a chair in the street. They lifted, took, set it down in the kitchen, but, the legs were uneven. Into the cabinet, snatch the matches, set them under the left forward leg. There, that's alright.

The hands, now, outstretched, found the chair and leg with matches underneath. Holding them in hand, the hands poised one finger at the matchbook-end and pushed: bright red everywhere as the other end slides out. The left reaches in. The right watches on.

Pressed to the surface, the long silence before, the match is struck.

e.r./or

A woman was walking alone. Everything was going alright until she turned pale and collapsed. It was a big and busy street, but, strange to say, she had been the only person walking. Everyone else (and there were many others), had just been standing around. When the woman fell most of them were alarmed, but, some of them weren't. A group of the alarmed people quickly ushered her to the emergency room.

An old man was seated comfortably, perhaps permanently, on a bench nearby. As the scene unfolded before him he thought that the woman, from the look of her, might be deathly ill, the poor thing.

Once inside the hospital the party was directed to a small room at the end of a long hallway to await the coming of the doctor. The sick woman was lying wearily on a table while the others stood, nearly shoulder to shoulder, timidly excusing themselves to each other for the discomfort.

This soon gave way to more bold and forward conversation. It was generally agreed that the woman was gravely ill, and, what's more, there was suspicion that the same thing could befall them at any moment, if it hadn't already. This fear made it impossible for them to look at each other. Fixing on the walls, ceiling and floor they spoke:

“This woman is sick!”

“What's wrong with her?”

“Ouch, my foot!”

“This is ridiculous!”

“Where the doctor?”

Suddenly the man who had just trampled his neighbor's foot stood on a stool by the table, apparently with the intention of taking the situation in hand. He was perspiring heavily, but, as it were, with dignity. With an impressive voice he addressed the ceiling:

"People! Quiet! We're all uncomfortable, but with her -"

he broke off but immediately recovered himself,

" - with her the situation is worse, much worse. While we wait for the doctor, and, of course, he has to be coming soon, we should do our best to get to the bottom of this. I say we owe it to ourselves to do so."

The crowd murmured.

“We owe it to ourselves?”

“What does it mean?”

“We're next.”

“This is ridiculous!”

“Where's the doctor?”

All at once the room fell silent. Steps were heard echoing in the hallway. Everyone in the room held their breath. Closer, louder. They shut their eyes, listening intently. Closer still. The steps were resounding in their temples. The man on the stool jumped down and rushed to the door, pressing his eye to the keyhole. He saw nothing. He turned away and listened. The steps paused, continued, grew faint, and disappeared.

One of the crowd, a big fat man who had once confided to a friend, “you know, I have perfect vision; when I was a child they said I had perfect vision, and I still have it,” lowered his head and began sobbing gently.

Every once in a while someone hushed the room, thinking they heard the steps again. One man said it was only mice in the walls, nothing more. Another suggested it was someone bringing flowers to their loved ones who were sick and dying, and at least it's good that no one was bringing flowers to them yet.

The woman, meanwhile, had almost completely escaped their attention. They began fussing over themselves, adjusting their clothes and clearing their throats. One man raised a probing hand to his head and felt around for a long time.

“Everything has to be right -”

“- for when he comes.”

“If it's not -”

“- then he won't.”

“Everything has to be right.”

Only one man was absent from this chorus – the single advocate of the dying woman. He was standing on the stool again imploring the crowd to help her. Suddenly an idea occurred to him, an idea which he had been dreading. With a shaking voice he asked,

“Maybe – do you think – one of us –”

he shuddered and grew pale,

“ – can one of us be the doctor?”

The crowd gasped in horror. Everyone instantly turned and stared at him with flashing eyes. Suddenly one man struck him, then another and another, until he was severely beaten. They picked him up, very alarmed at his condition, and placed him on the table next to the sick woman for when the doctor comes.

Erroneous Monk

The cherry blossoms were in full bloom when the foreigner left on a pilgrimage. He walked for a long time, through many seasons, and when he came upon an old temple he was met with the unhappy news that the beloved master there had just died. Although he was exhausted, the foreigner expressed his wish to pay his respects, and was escorted to a shrine set up in honor of the master in the main hall. All of the monks and high priests had assembled in the hall for mourning. The foreigner was now before the shrine and bowed deeply to the floor in prostration. He remained there for several hours.

"Look at the devotion of the foreigner!" whispered the others, "We bowed for but a few minutes and he remains motionless for hours. Truly, he is enlightened. Let us construct a shrine in his honor."

Soon after the foreigner slowly got up, feeling very refreshed and happy and immediately set out again to continue his pilgrimage.

A Clear and Present Manger: The Role of Religion in American Politics

God's gone slummin' here in America, cruising the aisles of the House of Representatives for a vessel to inspire to act in His name and it's forever changed the complexion of our politics, this we know. But why? Why has God left us for the mean streets of D.C., prostituting His divine will for this bill, that proposition?

The clear answer is that he's only lurking around there 'cause He's not getting what He needs at home. That's usually the case, isn't it? His home, of course, is in the hearts of men, and his foray into the political arena is a symptom of our domestic neglect.

That's right folks, blame yourselves.

This age actually promises to be very fruitful in a way, insofar as it relentlessly saturates us with everything that is without, so as to lead us back within, where everything exists in perfect splendor -

you know, like a kingdom.

New Year's Letter

Dear 2009:

iHate sexy.

Please, stop bringing it back. Take my girlfriend (please), who's plenty sexy, but for good measure feels compelled to smatter her work, her life, indeed, with it as a kind of personal edge-cum-business utility, which is rather like putting one of these in one of these.

It's the world we live in, she would say, and she would be right. This year, though, after idling the foregoing years in darkness, I've finally hit upon the answer: live in a different world! Become expert in the constructions of yurts and live with a nomadic tribe in the outskirts of Mongolia. Find a corner of the earth where Steve Jobs, Justin Timberlake, et al. fall a distant second to a lactating Yak.

Oops. What's this? A Greek chorus, hmm? Well, let's hear what they have to say -

But it is the sacred and the profane!
They must exist together.
They are complementary.
You must embrace the one to fully embrace the other.

- well that is true, isn't it? Damn Greeks. There's a problem, though. Today, what passes for sacred (nationalism, religious dogma, ambition, bigdreams, money, the social contract I never signed) isn't really sacred at all and what passes for the profane (Britney Spears, E! Television, Hollywood, Carl's Jr. hamburgers, Mardi Gras) sure as hell ain't profane.

To have things like these form your constellation of that which is sacred and that which is profane is to do nothing other than be a dead human being. And not in a good way.

C'mon, let's go milk some Yaks, who's in?

Happy New Year.

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.