That Feelings

(Thanks Bob Massey and Joe Gross for this picture -- and thanks to the universe that made it possible.)

I don't use my fingers for this anymore, really.

But it gets to be that hour and

In Florida a Marine was helping his girlfriend sell a necklace on Craigslist and ended up shot, plugging the wounds with his fingers to save his own life.

And there is a volcano making a new island in the Red Sea.

And celebrities are making all kinds of horrible fashion choices.

This is how the year is going out, people, and it is arbitrary.

2012 will not be the Year of the Arbitrary so help me God we have an election people.

The complete list of film sub-genres.
War on general purpose computing.
India's way
The Saturday Profile
Polarized Iraq
Neil himself saying things that involve Neil

Some things have existed for all time and other things haven't.

Let 2012 be the Year of Perspectives

Let 2012 be the Year of Perspective, too

Let 2012 be 366 days long and full of good sleep and good food

At least enough food, eaten at regular intervals

No binge-ing of any kind (how do you really spell that?)

I'm here, you're not
And then you're here and I'm not and that's the magic you see when you look real closely

There is a point when I'm here and you're here, but I think 2012 will be the Year of We Don't Care About These Little Things

There are still littler things that are important and there are very big things that are important and I'm sorry that this will be a year of no easy rules of thumb, no sunscreen, no chicken soup, none of the things from kindergarten or rainbows or short simple phrases

It's gonna be one of those years and I'm going to get some new boots for it.

This Is a Fog Area and They Mean It

Clouds that weigh tons

Clouds that look like cloud sausages

The nation speaks, builds signs, buys gas

And the clouds move on from east to west

They drift north

They get caught in jet streams

Planes crisscross our path at unexpected intervals

They are massive

They restore the principles that made us the greatest nation on Earth

Spending ticks up and interest rates hold steady

We go from town to town in search of music or magic or scenic overlooks

We go from town to town in search of gas and lodging

We go from town to town in search of food while more law enforcemet officials are being shot at and shot

They won't take my blood anymore

That's stupid

Here are my receipts. Here's my taxable income. Make me something special.

Will it smell like strawberries?

Will there be flowers?

Fireworks?

Here comes 2012, doing its best to make everyone proud

Location:West Haven,United States

You're Next

Your next meal

Hour after excess excess makes

You're next up for judgement

There is nothing great about this room save the space between people

We stand at the center of a problem and see problems as far as the eye can see

Look in your heart, what do you see?

Look in the garage, what do you see?

Look in the fridge, there's a leftover ham -- we'll all eat well tonight.

Tucked in later

Tuckered

Thank yous everywhere

Goodbyes

Another year of this and we're heading south

It's a good plan

Location:Bebe Ct,Centreville,United States

Keep It Set

Go and go and go and go.

Go and go and go.

Hello lovely facility and and and.

+++

How far forward?

Subway stops, lunch, walking, purchases and happiness and gifts, more subway stops, dropping things off, more subways stops, dinner, movie, taxi, sleeping, showering.

I hear you both.

We're in the middle of it.

Someone invents slogans.

Someone decorates trees.

Someone else burns trees.

Still others burn trees to celebrate success at war, or birth, or co-opting the local take on victory for a birth a thousand miles, a thousand years, and many months away.

That's something else.

+++

They caught up with the tree.

They dreamed the most boring dreams because they lived in the future.

But the fish never slept and were visited with waking dreams of glory and maple-flavored cotton candy.

Castles made of gorilla glass; gorillas made one piece at a time; peace on Earth and underwater prismatic rain forests.

You couldn't see your hand two feet in front of your face and then you can see for miles.

They were wonderful fish living in wonderful times.

Location:Starr St,,United States

Thumb-typing Your Way to Healthy Eyes

Who's your mastery?

What's your last, best damage? Or chainsaw? Or spoon?

How are you doing over there with your evolving sense of self?

I'm me.

And then I'm me. And so on.

I have all these great pictures to stitch together into fantastic panoramas and domestic oddities but it keeps crashing when I go to save them.

I should update the OS on this thing, I'm just afraid of whatever time-consuming hiccup I'll hit.

It's all about time and then I'm me again -- but not all over.

I need to be doing this more often.

I have a backlog.

I need to tell you about the songs Sweatpants once covered.

I need to tell you about iPhone voice control and how tools train us even while we train them and how learning's always a two-way street.

I need to tell you about how male spiders are just the way female spiders talk to one another over generations.

I need to tell you about clothes I'm getting rid of, places I'm going and want to go, this sabbatical I want to plan, my birthday, what my daughter is up to, more San Francisco and some New York.

Being overwhelmed by so many things; sunlight; lunar eclipses; the God particle; the super-organism that once comprised all the life on Earth and how I think it's still that way, really; the speed of light problem.

What do you need?

There's time.

Why don't you come over.

We'll have a drink.

I want to show you all these books I'm gonna read.

Location:Union Dr,College Park,United States

Bears, Safe Houses, How We Pass the Time

Who's your mastery?

M_'s story of being on vacation with her Aunt, Uncle, and cousin. Getting separated from them. Waiting with a store clerk while they called over the intercom.

Following song lyrics in the booklet while the CD plays.

Usually disappointed when I learn the actual lyrics.

The unlearning

Location:Henry St,Baltimore,United States

Cooperation Is Appreciated and/or Futile

Doing like 82% of smartphone owners.

That's not so great (sounding).

Other groups all over the news.

On our way to trying to figure out clusters and other economic systems.

Non-contiguous everything.

Massive living things.

Really massive living things.

A sturdy backing still means a lot around here.

A trade and a wrapper and the future of salt.

The future is salt.

The future is nitrogen.

The future is mostly water with some trace elements.

And then the future is clay and ash and lots and lots of hydrogen.

Always lots of hydrogen.

One is the most common random number.

The future-er gets further and further and then farther.

It'll all be neutrinos, we've talked about it before.

But twice they are moving faster than light some say.

Well then some and others others say that begs chicken-egg questions,

But you say they're wrong.

You know ladders go up and ladders go down.

And if you lay a ladder on the ground it'll go north or south or wherever the fuck you want it to go.

Crazy, I know.

Just don't make it hurt.

Everybody.

Slowly now.

Temperate.

Heading to gray and ever after.

Location:W Pratt St,Baltimore,United States

Between Us and First Class, The Thinnest Curtain

Some songs remain the same.

Maybe four-ish years ago I read a bunch of Cloud Atlas-and-earlier David Mitchell alternating books with Murakami and it's all mixed up in my head.

My favorites moments of each stay separate, the egg glowing in their hands... being able to see stars from the bottom of the well during daytime... the flaying in Manchuria.

I have a thing for flaying in stories and I guess that's probably a little gross.

But who has the goatman and the stories in the RV?

Yakuza plots crossing back and forth.

In Palo Alto I half-fell down some unlit stairs (a small set -- maybe four steps) and caught myself with the back of my hand against a concrete wall leaving three scrapes on my knuckles where I caught myself.

They are well-scabbed and on their way to gone now.

I didn't know the stairs were there.

In Palo Alto I banged my leg against a handle that stuck out of the desk in my room and got a pretty nasty bruise.

That's almost gone now.

Heading into Palo Alto, I got a wicked headache in the descent. A real skull-splitter up front.

My heads feeling good right now.

When we land it'll be Baltimore, middle of the night and I'll be all congested and blowing my nose will make me dizzy and my ears pop.

Happens everytime I fly.

The cocktail is an American invention, I hear. I'm proud of that.

Vodka came to America by way of the Moscow Mule, San Francisco. Try one some time.

If you already have. I know! Crazy.

Soda with bitters at the end of a good vacation.

Sleeping in your own bed at the end of a good vacation.

Just a little more cheese at the end of a good vacation.

Seeing your daughter at the end of a good vacation.

The news is still there, though I hear the Supercommittee is done.

Pepper spray and all kinds of shit.

But I'm not quite back yet.

Gonna head upstate for a little bit.

Location:In the air between SLC and BWI

How It All Happens So Quickly

We talk about how incentives change behavior.

We talk about being able to tell you speed or location.

We tell you about the invention of the spoon, or oil paint, or the computer and how they changed what we did with our mouths and hands and eyes and stomachs and so on.

This Tuesday in San Francisco is one of those on a much smaller and right here scale.

I had the opportunity to tell you this was written from the Friends of Dorothy Travel Service or the Masonic Center or something less exciting and yet just as less true, Huntington Park. This new app asks me to pick a location from a short list instead of just telling me -- I went with the neighborhood.

It didn't give my hotel as a choice. And it certainly didn't have my room number, or the chair by the window in that room.

It didn't have this place I'm at where I wish I was here a few more days (so much great food to be eaten) even while I'm hoping for no problems as we race eastward shortly to make it to a ceremony at my daughter's school tomorrow.

...and then a sushi boat dinner with her, or adventure sushi, or maybe we can find a boat-based adventure sushi like Margaret and I saw in Chinatown a couple days ago.

Embrace tourism.

Embrassez those you love.

Chinese donuts stuffed with red beans? Embrassez them, too.

Or lotus bean-filled pancakes? Embrassez.

Steep steep hills, up or down, by car or by foot? Embrassez, even if they make you a little queasy.

Rush hour traffic to the Bay Bridge? Fuck it. Embrassez that, too. It's vacation and you have cell phones and they'll understand why you're late and certainly you can find a good radio station in the Bay Area.

If we were trying to make a plane, it'd be a different story.

But now it's almost 7am and this has gone worthless.

You didn't pay for it in any real way, though.

Maybe you'll never be back.

That bruise? It's pretty much gone.

I Could Use Some Telepath Friends

I just found the oddest bruise on my thigh. It's all mottled... one of those polka-dotted ones -- a base of that aged blood-seep yellow-brown with red-pink dots. Almost like the dots you see on ostrich leather?

It is ostritch leather, right? The dotted kind of leather you see on cowboy boots some times.

I like it when ridiculous and ridiculously good keep switching places. If I catch myself catching it, it always makes me think of electrons not really being in orderly orbits at all.

But hopping back and forth, and really somewhere in between and there's not really a word for it.

But then not that either, and more like clouds of percentages all the way to the edges of the universe.

Some joke about going broad here.

Some joke about pieces of me moving through pieces of you, even if it is years from now.

So many years even that I'm dead and the information churns on.

Like -- and I mean the joke about the pieces, not the dead part -- that Donne poem where his blood mixes with his date's in a flea that's bitten them both, so -- you know -- they might as well fuck.

That John Donne. He had a way with words.

I have a way with memory and reality though -- and it's likely that it wasn't even Donne.

And I know he didn't say "fuck," though that poem is aching for an update.

And that update belongs in a scene in a play that maybe feels a bit like Rent.

And that scene itself, I guess would be echoing that "let's do it for our country" scene from Grease in the bomb shelter.

Was that Grease 2? The movie.

Michelle Pfieffer. Seeing visions of her she-thinks-he's-dead Australian hottie in white leather.

She's dressed as a season. Winter?I can almost see it.

And she's lost the thread of the song all the other girls are singing and she's staring off at the boy who isn't there.

San Francisco surely steeped into me quickly.

Somewhere Kevin Killian is waking up or heading to brunch and he feels a disturbance in the force.

And he's peering into the astral plane (because I'm pretty sure he can do that) and he's telepathing at me, "Jamie you're doing this all wrong."

"I mean, shit, who cares about Michelle Pfieffer."

If I could telepath back at him I'd apologize and then cover my tracks by asking him if Pfeiffer to Cameron Diaz to the Olssen Twins looked like someone working through drafts of something to him.

Does to me.

And then more of the not caring about these starlets.

But more with the telepathing, he could just read that off the surface of my brain.

And if I was lucky he'd drop some suggestions for dim sum places while he was in there.

Telepaths don't need Yelp.

And on good days, their friends don't need it either.


--
Ed note: Did this just come around to being dedicated to Chris Toll? I thought I was heading toward telling you about remembering the first lists I ever wrote... and how I realized this list thing that I talk about sometimes and chide myself for at others goes way farther back than I thought. Further? Farther? I'll write all that this week sometime.

Ed note 2: I haven't thought / read about Killian's work in ages (more than 10 years I bet), and I'm surely going to let a San Francisco bookstore help me with that today. I'm willing published copies of his celebrity plays into existence right now if they don't exist already somewhere. Listen up universe. I'm willing.

Location:Touchard St,San Francisco,United States

The Smells of the Cincinnati Airport

Haven't done this early-morning-commute-by-air thing in quite a while.

This is the "with rain" version.

Memories of the "with snow" version coming into Lansing the day after a blizzard.

Memories of the "with in the middle of reading a Harry Potter hardcover on the shuttle from terminal to terminal (Dallas?) in a wicked storm" version.

Little bits and pieces that have gotten so bitten and pieced like sugar does in coffee.

I'm not platinum. I'm not gold.

Garlic.

Roaster chicken.
Fresh. The fresh and the green.
Plastic against a heating element.
The guy at the Sunglasses Hut.

I'm heading to San Francisco and I'm surrounded by people heading to San Francisco.

It's Boots Season.

It's You See It Everywhere Season.

Who wouldn't like a little more time? That's no way to separate.

Memories of borders and all the things I want to get done or get going in the next six months.

Visions of the get-got, tasting the get-gotten and how good that'll be.

One, two, three.

Let's do this thing, k?

I Once Tried to Figure Out a Written Version of Crashing the One

Coughing, sniffling, skating, skimming.

Treading, getting, keeping, holding.

If and or but.

On by with without.

Before I'm through I'll change the size.

So we can all get better.

Get it better.

I mean, read it better.

The tense will change. You'll turn the perspectives round.

I was in a conversation about Rubik's Cubes this weekend hot on the heels of one on the supercommittee.

No shit. And at a birthday party.

I had coffee with milk.

The DMV closed before I could get there, only it was the MVA because this is Maryland.

Later, my team would lose.

Earlier, I don't remember what I was up to.

I didn't sleep well.

My stomachs was aching.

But the weather

It was gorgeous out.

I've got some travel coming.

[UPDATED: Photo updated... It got crunched and became illegible when posted from the phone... New blog app time for my phone?]

Location:Penn St,Baltimore,United States

That Happened

A flows into B and so on

A bunch of students at Penn State

A bunch of ex-students on Wall Street

A bunch of ex-cons on work release programs

Cons stacked up with seldom a pro in sight

Words and things are funny that's why

Rhetoric and right has been on my mind all year

More than that

It is natural for a person to have trust issues surrounding an alien lifeform

What do they eat?

I just now realized that Breaking Bad was a play on "breaking bread." I wish I had the time to get into that show.

I'm checking out Walking Dead which is so obviously Lost-yearning at moments with less talented writers. I hope it wasn't a mistake.

Sunk cost vs. Season Two

Return on investment vs. cocktail chatter-bound opportunities

The Ask vs. this Fall's fashion

I'm echoing Justin all over the place lately. Or maybe aping. And other tines I think on aping him aping me

Ape, chameleon, interloper, in-betweener, legion, legionnaire (sp?), father, inspiree, wide-eyed keeper, official wister, clutcher, boyfriend, friend, absentee something, checker, striver, try-er, complainer. I see hundreds of glasses half full, but I'm not always thirsty. (Self portrait at 37)

The reflex is a lonely number that pales against the wall.
Ay-yie yie yie yie yie-yie-yie
Try not to lose it
It's waiting in the dark

Enter moose and bears and the new band

Enter that new chapters are odd as paragraphs and words and things

There are things you won't unsee
There are things you won't unlearn
There are things you won't forgive

But those automated responses can be de-automated, dissembled, and re-automated from the ground up.

Liking coffee
Coming to like tequila again

Getting past nausea

It's in every ball joint

So lace 'em up and let's go punch them in the nose.

Har har!

Location:Portland St,Baltimore,United States

And We Do

Some of the greatest titles ever _______

Late nights and the clothes you choose

Always transit with time and space splitting the difference

Getting right with not having to be right

Getting right with not wanting to be right

When good's enemy comes to town, who sets the terms?

When better's peers head into court, who stands last?

There's a hill and a crown, where do you sit?

There's water, the future, payments, and decisions to be made.

There are all kinds of shoes and little conversations and victories.

There are hexagons. More than you can count.

There's evening. Fall. Trains. Waiting. More trains.

Confidant steps.
Confidant haircut.

Something hoped for.

Forward, everybody. Can't you taste it?

Location:Union Dr,College Park,United States

Good night, Mr. Frazier

The Evil that Men and Women Who Are Character in Movies Do

That's my daughter and I and our costumes (admittedly mine is a little slight and hers is more than a little awesome) and a stick I found while we were out.

The stick made it much more of a costume. I mean, look at that shit! It doesn't even fit in the frame.

A different kind of four more years, and there's one of them.

And now Halloween is eight minutes behind me (and counting).

I'm going to listen to some Feist tomorrow I think. Oooooh! Evil!
(And I thought this first -- when it was still Halloween -- and wrote this first, though I think it was already not-Halloween.)

And watched Paranormal Activity 2 when it was still Halloween and maybe as much for the rave reviews of 3 reminding me how much I loved the first.

Well more like box office figures.

I haven't read any reviews.

And I opened and then closed a story about 3's deleted scenes being even scarier than what's in the movie.

It warned me of spoilers straight off.

It warned me off.

Who doesn't love American? The language and the dialects I mean.

Tomorrow to the shop again.

It's like every line should end in "Ooooh! Evil!"

I might go back and fix that.

Relativity. Light speed. Alternatives and fission. Sexual amoebas? Really? Really.

Countdown to the end of this and the beginning of next.

Moving my stuff out of the practice space felt like Sweatpants was really open.

Suck.

Better not be.

I'll bite you in your face.

Evil! Evil! Evil! Evil'
Ha lemme-be! Ha lemme-be!
Ha! Ha! Ha!
Tabouleh is good!
Tabouleh is great!
Tabooouleh!
Run-it back!
Run-it back!
Run-it back!
Run-it back!

(This monkey goes to heaven.)

Location:Penn St,Baltimore,United States

A Repeated Paler Sense of You

[Fleet St to Easter Ave]
And a repeated paler sense of me,
But I'd rather stick with it if you don't mind.

I know; I know you don't.
I just thought it might sound nice.

Stilted seventies,
Stilted swingin' 60s before that,

And a whole lot more.

[Day later, miles away, Melvin Street]
Mental note, this would work better with pictures.

This is like Shakespeare saying fuck you to the continent and isn't that why he was made King?

What's the kindest thing you did this week?

Someone dyed there hair blond and before you know it they're crying?

Are you finished with that?

Shedding "everywhere."

You wake up with the tip of your tongue a little odd, and it's gonna be half of what you think about all day.

There's white, green, stripes, sun, less football, driving, eating, more driving, coffee, redirection.

There are stripes?

Location:S Howard St,Baltimore,United States

And They Are Amused

Tired in Odenton but slogging the miles.

There is this thing and then a smaller paler version of the thing and then paler still.

We arrive, we watch our step, we consider doing it all again.

All is a trap.

Perfect is a bear trap.

Gold is an element.

Beta is a letter.

My shoes are made for people who need black leather shoes that'll last.

Golden is a state and a state of mind and likely a jam band.

I've always thought a lot about aerodynamics, but I think more and more often about value these days.

It's a more is more thing, don't wear it out.

It's Thursday.

I'll be heading to California soon.

Don't set your watch.

Do not play Monopoly at McDonalds.

Put the Internet down and go enjoy something

With your mouth.

Location:Patuxent Rd,Odenton,United States

You Keep Your Mao in There

I just heard a funny one about baby octupi in Chinatown

But I picked up my little Mao in a train station. His head comes off along with the shortest bit of neck. I'm not sure what you're supposed to put inside.

Maybe spare allergy medecine?

Diamonds?

Something awesome on microfilm?

Microfiche. Microfish. Microphone. Microscope. Microscopic. Hypertropic. Never necrotic. Tick tick tick tick BOOM! We're dynamite.

20 becomes 19
Death becomes her

This vivid, heart-stopping nightmare where I'm writing words on a concrete circle with water and there are all these occulty scary things, but they aren't scary. It's a blond girl at the bottom of the stairs and gross is just blooming on her at the edges of her eyes, her joints. And I can't not look and I can't move and soon I can't breathe.

This wholly other dream from 14 or 15 years ago that I still remember. I'm a bench facing the checkout counters at the 17th Street Safeway (in DC). Maybe the most peaceful thing I've ever known.

Lots and lots of train rides.

Almost to eleven.

Numbers everwhere.
Physics everywhere.
Pieces of us everywhere.
Lightspeed everywhere.
Apparantly repetition everywhere.

Sorry about that.

I better get this up before my battery dies. Cuz it will.

Something about robots, the future, sunrises, smoke.

Location:Piney Orchard Pkwy,Odenton,United States

And a Fine Hello to You

Attention, commuters!

A fine hello to you.

Would you like a cup of coffee?

Water?

"In this world of people there is only you and I."

New Brunswick, Edison, watch the gap while boarding the train, shoe shine, can you afford to pay privately, walking quickly, walking, black shoes, white shoes, sneakers, white sneakers, black flats, black workshoes, black shoes, white sneakers, brown shoes, black heels, black shoes.

You usually do afternoon coffee?

Wherever it's found.

There is a public address system. It is addressing the public, here at the Trenton train station, with sweet R&B sounds from another year.

R&B makes me think of Philly most times.

African accents make me think of America -- probably all those years in DC.

And then I sneeze and suddenly I have a bloody nose and I'm pretty sick of the bloody noses but who goes to a doctor for that kind of silly bullshit.

Yeah, I'm pretty sure that everyone at the Trenton train station thinks the skinny white guy in the suit with the bloody nose has been doing too much coke.

That's the thing, this mobile technology stuff is amazing -- even when you totally waste it.

Location:Walnut Ave,Trenton,United States

Twombly While Fighting Something While Philly

Some things just turn out better on video. Thanks Kim and Debrah for the great night of Baltimore in Philly at their General Idea reading series. And to Adam, Justin, Stephanie, Les, Joe, Chris, Chris, and Chris, and Rupert (did I remember everyone?) -- it was a few moons ago. And thanks Kim for the video, too.

Here's the same poem, in writing.

Why I Pay My Taxes

I was raised right (enough).

Incentivized public transportation.

Tackling big problems even if slowly.

The amazing things that can be done with concrete and steel and sweat when you want it bad enough.

Putting your shoulder into something.

Lift and converge is how my government would do it.

Investments in fractured cultures seems random at times and I wouldn't have it any other way.

Sometimes you need to drop a big "my bad" on the world -- who do you expect to do that?

Lots of counting and measuring and right things in right places.

Miles and miles of 95 that I've travelled hundreds of times at every time of day, under any weather condition (I saw a tornado from 95 once and promptly accelerated to a quite illegal 100 mph), awake and nearly asleep but still driving, and fast asleep in the back seat.

Coffee. I'm pretty sure taxes make that possible.

The line of military and civil servant paychecks cashed by Perezes past and and extended family and surely Perezes to come. Marines, firefighters, cops, paramedics.

Ft McHenry and the National
Mall.

The Washington Monuments in Baltimore and DC.

The Key Bridge.
The Brooklyn Bridge.
Golden Gate Park.

You.

Me.

Get on with it.

Location:Sharps Ct,Fallston,United States

That Happens

Funny how that happens.

Funny how today and tomorrow and here and gone.

Funny how he thinks it's one photon everywhere all the time.

And then there are the constants of this space we're in... With its ups and its downs.

Clinch, clutch, clutch hitter, babysit, kindergarten, the War, war, I am the warrior, because the night, try harder.

Like, You're good. Get better.

Like, Dewey wins!

Like a new shiny bike.

There is rust and then there is the Rust Belt.

There is industry and then there is the Bible Belt.

There is profit and then there is the black belt and the pirate and a priest all walking into a bar.

When we scaled the walls we were met with another wall.

When we scaled the mountain we were met with your God and he was a pretty agreeable chap.

You should've been there.
We all levelled up.
It was wicked cool.

Location:Portland St,Baltimore,United States

The Things I See

in America
As I'm walking around everyday.

As I'm flying over land and sea.

Handbills.
Post-it notes.

Good times.

Location:New Hampshire Ave,Silver Spring,United States

I'm on the Bay

...and I like this life.

Location:Hoopers Neck Rd,,United States

The Road, Today

Whenever I talk to people about how much I loved Cormac McCarthy's "The Road" I talk about how he pulled together all these tried and true storylines, plot moments, and happenings from a long tradition of post-apocolyptic literature / film, BUT did it with so much style, so much emotion (under the surface), pitch perfections, pacing, etc. to lift it from a ho-hum collage of things I'd read before to amazing.

And in those conversations, I eventually come around to the sparseness of the story and  how it reads like allegory to me. And how through the whole story-on-the-surface there is a second story for me. This second story is the story of a father who has lost his wife and is just trying to survive the everyday life of bringing up a child on his own and all the attendant fears of child-raising turned to 11. So much fear that "finding meaning" in his new life is out the window and then some -- that The Road is this depressed-and-scared mind's halluncination of "just making it" in today's world. One of the brilliances (not a word, but a word I need) of the book is that the sparseness creates a canvas for projecting your own fears and fears onto this archetypal story of loss, fear, and hope. And yes, I've just provided you a key to a recurring nightmare of mine -- I'll share the details of that actual not-fun-dream sometime (over a drink).

But I'm writing this post, because it sounds like this second-story-in-the-story just happened. Instead of it being a depressed man's view of the world around him after a post-wife's-suicide mental breakdown... this guy actually picked up his life, his young son, and headed into the woods to survive.

Five year's later... the father dies and the son wanders back to civilization...

Holy shit.

I'm sure if the father kept a diary, it would be read shockingly similar.

What I Could Tell You

What could I say that would make any sense?

Yes, you may.

The space that connects two rooms.
The space that isn't the threshhold.

Hearth, window, doorway, foyer, modern times.
Great room, breakfast nook, closet, contemporary times.

A time of prosperity after the War.
A time for interviews.

Chrono-everything
Synchro-everything

The man of beautiful knots is resting easy.

The man of focus-grouped greetings tucks into a deserved feast.

The man with a wandering eye is picking up tickets at Will Call.

The man of unbroken testimony is considering a move to decaf.

At least I know I'm free.

Location:Penn St,Baltimore,United States

I Hab, Fake It, Make Model

Difficulties

Time with people you know
And people
And tired

Time, The Nature of

Time, Feels Like the First

Time, Feels Like the Very First

More people you know along with people new to you
How do you think they feel?

Years pass.

Hair is shorter and then longer.

Sneakers are puffy and then square-toed and then flatter and then puffy again.

I love the sneakers I got in Philly.
I love some green in a sneaker
Or some orange.

Designers. Oh, designers.

Homer Simpson. That's pretty damn brilliant.

I have a piece of Ethiopia.
I have a piece of France.
I am a piece of America.

Like entropy for chocolate.
Like elephants
Like luge
Like the robots are at it again and it ain't even gonna rain today.

A little view makes a line less straight.

Again and again
Like a hairpin
Like a dog-leg

Bunkers and water hazards and sand traps all take day labor.

I now know acts of nature.

A really big spider ready for a rather reasonable lunch

And then there's a place to sit.

No, take it.

Please

Be with you. And also with you.

Location:Penn St,Baltimore,United States

It's a Big World Out There

For serious.



---

I'm thinking about the title of that great Charles Simic book, "The World Doesn't End" -- sometime I read that as a threat, other times as a positive outlook -- and at times like this it cycles back and forth between the two and so many shades in between. Like when you learn the electrons aren't going between the shells, but are in all of them, all the time (sorta).

---

This got started by coming across Mark Leidner's poetry over at HTML Giant...

And then stumbling into pieces on the whole BlazeVOX thing I'd successfully avoided until 2:30am on a Friday (avoided because I didn't want it to be my business --complicated, ugly, sad the state of all things -- just things I didn't need to cross paths with)...

And I only ended up there because after reading Mark's poems I'd wanted to watch his video interview about collage and it wouldn't load so I started to wander...

But having finished reading some of the BlazeVOX drama (hey Justin, your comments on some blog about it were good -- sorry you went through all that, but also I think we are all sorry for a lot of people involved in all this, including Gatza) and having all the reasons I'd avoided it confirmed, I really needed a piece of GOOD so then I had to get a copy of that Leidner interview, cuz the poem with the secret agent and the Scarsfaces was that good and so how could the interview not be the mental breath mint I needed. Get thee to YouTube then young man, and this thee's search there turned up a motherlode of Leitner's stuff including a bizarre photocollage over a Beach Boys track that was good stuff.

And I looked and there were a half a dozen or more videos from Mark, and I got to holding in my head that there are thousands of people like Mark -- good writers doing good different things, video collages, text-to-video cartoons, and a hundred other things. And not just writers... Photographers and artists filling Flickr and Facebook and blogs around every cornerwith strange and beautiful things. And people that would never call themselves writers or photographers or artists doing the same -- and so many people striking so much gold.

And I'm not naive, also so much crap in between and all around.

Piles and piles of good and bad and better and worse and shit.

And I get to thinking about an illustration of the world and how big and connected it is (or can be) that I use in conversation every now and again:

If just one person in one million can give you a funny, then in America alone you can get a funny a day for the whole year.

Numbers are staggering.
The world is staggering.

I still don't like Pet Sounds (though I return to it every handful of years thinking my tastes will just change at some point -- hell, I used to hate orange juice).

Reader, go check out Mark Leidner's work.

Jamie, go to bed, silly boy.

This is a blog post.

Location:Dover St,Baltimore,United States

I AM Ready For Some Football

Thanks for stopping by.

Reminder this, reminder that.

When you're not tired, what are you?
When you're not exhausted, where are you?

Remaindered shoes

We spell colors in black, around here, and we value your opinions

Ever-forward motion and growth and some day learning that if you can go to the right then there must be some way to go to the left, if going is your thing

Light doesn't go, it decides

Seeming vs. sounds good vs. being

That feels right when that is right

Wherefore must've once meant something other than just "why," but it's been lost on me and/or to history.

In a sci-fi coming-of-age story, there are always stars.
In a British coming-of-age story there is always the Church.
In an American coming-of-age story there is always blood, and often guns.

There are still drunk drivers.
There is still heart disease.
There is still rope.

I'm working my way south.

Overpasses, ties, trees, inclement weather, stone walls, grass, brick buildings, letters, puddles, chain link, exposed roots.

Almost Baltimore.

Location:Schuylkill River Trail,Philadelphia,United States

Camden Line Now

I know what I'm looking for and I know when you aren't.

5 Great Meals in Under 30 Minutes is no way to live your life.

And I'm still caught up on fake plastic trees... What are they made of?
Most people guess rubber, but I'm guessing most things we call rubber are plastic, too.

How are you doing with all the violence lately?
How are you doing with all the acts of God?

Do militant atheists ask that their insurance policies be changed re references to acts of God?
Or do they just go to court on coverage in earthquakes and throw down on the differences between acts of tectonic plates and who is this God guy in my policy anyway?

Courts are funny enough.

I still wear my Baltimore juror badge on the inside of my red jacket. I'll show you if you ask.

It's more a sticker than badge.

If you had a citizen badge, would you wear it?

Have you seen Starship Troopers?

When was the last time you referenced Nazis in conversation?
I did recently, and I was serious.
I get a pass because I read the Diary of Anne Frank earlier this summer.
And yeah, I know that's not its real title (I just read it this summer, remember) but that's what everybody calls it, and its real title is in Dutch or something anyway.
I finished it on a Sunday morning and cried before anyone else in the house was up.
August was wild like that.

It's still August.

I wish I got a little sun-fat this summer, myself, but didn't make it to the pool as much as I was hoping.
The sunburn is still showing on my feet.
I should get that looked at some time.

Let Fall be for looming.
Let Fall be for doing.

Let Fall be for surveying and pointing and going and counting and going again and again and cooking and getting things in place to be getting things done.

Let Fall be for accounting and forgiving and getting better and better.

Let Fall be for asking forgiveness and learning and grace and gracefulness.

Let Fall be for new jackets and new shoes and favorite sweaters and love.

Let Fall be for trying and trying and always more trying.

September is my favorite month.
Look the fuck out.

Location:Junction Dr,,United States

Green Line More Now

I guess my blog is my microblog until I figure out how to fix my Tweetdeck account entanglement issues, huh?

Falcons away!

Location:Lehigh Rd,College Park,United States

Green Line Now

By the time I write this, I'll be far from here.

I've been trying to get into the mind of a glider, a bird of prey, the Pacific Ocean, salt, and the Sun.

Humans and giant reptiles cross paths in Hollywood.

Humans and giant humans cross paths in sports arenas in many major metropolitan areas.

Metropolitans dream of October and look forward to April.

I grew up outside Boston and outside DC. And then inside DC and all kinds of places.

People used to not get along very well, so they created the telegraph, telephones, guns, and Facebook.

It's amazing what you can accomplish with a digging tool when you apply yourself.

Seriously, does Tinker Bell ever just die? I think it was Joe who wondered this aloud at me.

This is your best work.
Everyday. Forever.

This is your best work.
Green line. August's end approaching.

This is your best work.
Granary floor. Sun-fat bees.

Toes.

Hello.
How are you?

Location:Lehigh Rd,College Park,United States

More Lost Falcon

I've been up to a lot that isn't writing lately. This is what I've been up to that is.

The Second Lost Falcon

Follow here? The 2nd Lost Falcon

Started with this: "Contact Lost with Hypersonic Glider After Launch"

I need to gussy up the profile with a pic and bio and such (but I can't seem to do that from the mobile site -- headsup Twitter developers). UPDATE: Gussied enough now. Not sure if this will be a fruitful something or just a one-night midnight something, but when I read this news headline earlier today, I couldn't help but think of all the things that might have happened to the second Falcon... It was that word "anomaly" in the article... It made me think of aliens and adventure and loneliness.

Limbo (literally), mistakes, and the unforgivingness of social media / Twitter. But surely something wholly different tomorrow and then the next day and then the next (if alive at all).


And pardon the affectations on the image... I wanted to see what this iPad-based Photoshop could do (snap verdict: not much). Hopefully I can make everything clearer when I get some time at my laptop for it. UPDATE: Good enough now, I hope.

Location:Pacific Ocean?

And Then They Took the Train

I've told my daughter that all my favorite stories end with everyone dying and she thinks it's funny stuff.

She explains this to her friends.

I tell her that's how Hamlet ends, and MacBeth, and Othello.

She sings "toil, toil," but knows it from a song in a Harry Potter movie.

She's into Harry Potter this summer, and that makes me happy.

I'm looking forward to going to the pool more.
Who doesn't like all those in-and-around the pool scenes from the Graduate?
Can you imagine for a second what Robert Redford would've been like.

All wrong.

It's writing every day,
Like harvesting crops, but every day,
Like not smoking every day.

Butter, horses, cake every day.
A cat, dinner, coffee, sunshine every day.
Air, heat, pillows, mistakes every day.

I obviously wasn't kidding about the lists.
Conjuagation is one I should bring back.
Repetition does me well, too.

Breathing.

Boxes and boxes, ceiling fan, dots and stripes, progress, horrible television... really, really bad stuff. Sleep.

And then everybody dies.

Location:W Redwood St,Baltimore,United States

Debt Ceiling, Debt Ceiling, Excellent!

I have this great photo to add to this -- it's my iPad kinda kerchunking (or "lee junking" some would say) when I was messing around on this gallery website with all the sizing and re-sizing and moving the view around. Is it there yet?

There are so many things wrong with that sentence and it got me thinking about the debt ceiling.

But that's not really true, 'cuz the title came first and I was already thinking about it.

Not seriously thinking about it.

Just on my mind the way something is after you've heard radio pieces about it daily for a couple weeks and Matt Sesow's Gang of Six painting, and somebody talking about how non-plussing the Gang is as far as gangs go.

And the Warriors come out to play.
And the softball players come out to play.
And soon the Senators will come out to play.

There will be working all weekend and record heat and moving and time at the swimming pool.
There will be good cold drinks and difficult compromises and entertainment, too.
There will be sleep and unboxing and most likely some nosebleeds.

What do you think of lists in American literature since 1970 or so. I mean it's fucking everywhere and we're tuned to it's gorgeous. Is it cheating? Cheap? Crutch? The cool kids version of throwing in something about grandma? The cornerstone of the American Poet Voice (definitely all capitals on that phrase)?

I don't know.

I like me a good list, and I guess I'm deciding to not be ashamed of that.

I've been using lists like a motherfucker since at least the fourth grade, but I certainly kicked it up a notch in 1994 or so.

I think it was a combination of Robinson Crusoe and "The Things They Carried." Probably some Carver in there, too.

You can never go wrong blaming him.

I wish "listing" was the word for "making lists" because, "I've been listing like a motherfucker since the fourth grade" sounds way better.

I bet we could make that happen.
We have iPads and we're moving.

Location:Walnut Ave,Takoma Park,United States

Red Line, Red Line, Excellent (2)

I'm not there anymore.

Drained. Striped sheets. Air conditioning.

Pauses on pauses on perspiration. On purpose.

No purple pants this time.
No hexagonal tiles or there and there this time.

What do you call it when tiles are brick red?
The what do you call a New York strip in New York cliché.
The dog ate my homework only it's a computer and I didn't save my shit right cliché.
The hit by lightning at such a young age cliché.
The getting old isn't exciting but it's golden like the sun off rooftops in late Fall and my oh my cliché.

I don't have much to work but there'll be some kind of pool party come Sunday, so help me God.

Hang in there.

Location:N Charles St,Baltimore,United States

Red Line to Takoma, Exhausted Again

You have your New York Avenues and your foregrounds,
Your transfer points to Greyhound,
Your priority seating, and slouching to a halt.

I have my too-heavy bag and my other bag too,
My mussed up hair,
My ambling ways,
And, of course, my B Machine in the drawer.

Sunlight's catching the corner of a cloud and it's kinda bad-ass.
The everyday bad-ass that's all around.

That cloud.
That graffiti with a popsicle-looking P.
Lights streaming by in a tunnel out the corner of my eye.
Anything seen through trees while in motion, though the sun, most of all.

The sun most of all.
The sun most of all.

Those trees?
They will prey on your flesh when you're gone.

Location:G Pl NW,Washington D.C.,United States

I'm on the Red Line without Cell Service

But I can type this and upload it later.

Location: Belle Grove Rd,,United States

+++

Found this hiding in my cell phone the other day (when I was exhausted). I have no idea when I wrote it -- but obviously I was feeling a little conceptual. It turned out to be a little gift to myself -- a time-capsuled joke of sorts.
I smiled, it worked. Conceptual whatever (blogging, art, journalism, etc.) is certainly a guilty pleasure of mine.

Exhausted and almost home

Sleep is in my future,
But I guess unscheduled track maintenance is my nearer future.

My future is in my future and in that, is in the way of my future.

Step back doors closing is the opposite of the sound of my exhaustion.

A train station is opposite a hill
Where laws are born
And some hopes die
And nothing about an angel's wings.

Sometimes you light a candle when a young man is killed,
Though fewer young men are killed than die every day in these great United States.

Location:Metropolitan Branch Trail,Washington D.C.,United States

'Are there bands playing here tonight?'

Who can you trust?
Who do you trust?

When you waste, it's about how quickly you pick back up.

I want spelling to mean something.
I want spelling to be mindful.

XOXY destroyed all of his work.

The future of islands vs. Rhode Island vs. the rest of the world doesn't have a clue.

Your standard catastrophe.
Your standard Georgia.
Your standard vibrations.
Your standard boys and standard beaches and standard ways it will all go.

Confirmations of success have been know to be misleading.
Success has been known.

The good house vs. the wrong house
And it's all going wrong.

No sunburns this weekend but plenty of sweat and sweating.

Tantrums, evaporation, promises, broken promises or just plain let downs or fall shorts, falling plus fallen, weightlessness and weight. Talk of illustrations of entanglement rather than talk of entanglement which would be the talk of everything.

Everything. All at once. Forever.


Try is all you ask of you.

Future islands of big futures
Packed in a moment.

(Everything. All at Once. Forever.)

This move.
This sick move together.
This all time.
This audacity, my best audacity.


There were deer in the backyard, don't they?

This is what is magic is wordless is meets is wordy is now is just click is falling is don't forget it.



+++


My morning got going slower than I wanted or needed -- and I jumped it out of not-so-good track by listening to this great piece / interview with Bob O'Brien. He's great people. I need to figure out how to break the ongoing scheduling conflict between his reading series (Worm) and my date-night with my daughter. Life is full of such things.


I just started writing as I listened to that piece -- you'll see all kinds of quotes and echoes above (if you listen) and echoes of my weekend (if you were part of it). And the title is a quote of a quote from Bob's interview and set up one of those moments in life that we've all had or hope to have.


And so the day picks up and goes.

Good Night, Mr. Twombly.

You're work is so lovely and incredible and fragile and dope.

Seriously.

"cy twombly" you are my new favorite Google Image search, and while that will pass, you will always be one of my favorite museum attractions.

When I'm rich, I'll have a house with a big-ass room that has a massive Cy Twombly on one wall and a severe Frank Stella lines thing on the other. Sol Lewitt -- he gets all the hallways.

New life goal: become rich.

I will miss things (sometimes).

I will miss somethings sometimes.

I will walk on roads, but more often on sidewalks.

I will walk in fields again someday, I'm sure of it.

+++

There will be open-mouthed laughter sometimes.

There will be hamburgers and cheese burgers and more.

There will be swimming – be it pool or stream or ocean.

+++

Science. Art. Happiness. Fear. Math. Inside and outside. More math and crazy math.

All these things.

+++

I'm going to write my way through this cheesey sentimental something if that's what it is. I have no idea what's on the other side.

This is a partial recovery of what was written the other night and feared lost when things got all glitchy. It's that last bit "Science. Art..." that was much longer and maybe I'll find the time to rebuild it along the way. Maybe tonight.

A Real Beast

The real beast of this blog-inflected writing I’m doing is when you lose everything to a glitch.

It happened via app strangeness earlier this year (I’d be able to link to a post about it if I wasn’t all glitched).

This time, I saw it coming and got smart to it… I quickly grabbed a CTRL+C of the text.

But then I came over here to grab the email address I can use to post to my blog and of course I grabbed that with a CTRL+C, thereby wiping out the writing I’d “saved.”

Brilliant.

Some mistakes are made once.

Some searches that did not give me the answers I needed:

“how to access previous cut and copies”

“how to access old copied text in windows”

“anyway to access old copied things ctrl+c”

Some mistakes are made more than once.

The wiped out writing closed with a  note that I was going to write through this cheesey sentimental something.

It was called, “I miss things (sometimes).”

It was pretty good.

"And They Are Equal in Your Eyes"

There is a world that is love.
There is a world that is competing.
There is a world that is why do you do this to yourself.

There is a world of crying at last.
There is a world of hurt -- and everyone's heard of that world.
There is a world of maps.

There is a world of you and a better you, still.
There is a world of just hoping not too many people get hurt along the way because you realize there are necessary evils.
There is a world of like and don't like woven into a basket that is part of the world that is love.

There is a world where you can get what you want if only you had the courage to want.
There is a world of courage.
There is a world where you belong but that isn't the only world where you belong.

There is a world where I hate to watch you do this to yourself.
There is a world where all you can do is watch, and this is the powerless world and the anxious world.
There is a world of illusion that is fast-friends with a world of delusion and they've been known to trade clothes.

There is a world where you try new things and I am amazement.
There is a world where boundaries dissolve and yes and no and you and I and competing and love and new and new are entangled in the best ways.
There is a world of honesty and the world of honest error.

Today, let there only be the world where you try.

---

The quote is from Andrew Cuomo in this excellent New York Times article, Behind N.Y. Gay Marriage, an Unlikely Mix of Forces, that got me going after a failed go at writing earlier this morning. What a week -- this Times pieces lensed it somehow, or maybe just opened the floodgates.

---

There is a world of penguins, too. That's part of all this somehow, and here's one of the penguins, courtesy of my daughter.

Good Night, Mr. Clemons.

We played Bruce last night and had a great time with it -- were you already gone by 5:30pm?

Did You Forget How Awesome Wikipedia Is?

Take for example...

Homunculi in alchemy

In Carl Jung's studies of alchemy, he believed the first record of a homunculus in alchemical literature appeared in the Visions of Zosimos, written in the third century AD, although the actual word "homunculus" was never used. In the visions, Zosimos mentions encountering a man who impales himself with a sword, and then undergoes "unendurable torment", his eyes become blood, he spews forth his flesh, and changes into "the opposite of himself, into a mutilated anthroparion (a Greek alchemical concept of a being somewhat similar to a golem but possessing a sense of will and intelligence), and he tore his flesh with his own teeth, and sank into himself", which is a rather grotesque personification of the ouroboros, the dragon that bites its own tail, which represents the dyophysite nature in alchemy: the balance of two principles. Zosimos later encounters several other homunculi, named as the Brazen Man, the Leaden Man, and so forth. Commonly, the homunculi "submit themselves to unendurable torment" and undergo alchemical transformation. Zosimos made no mention of actually creating an artificial human, but rather used the concept of personifying inanimate metals to further explore alchemy.^[1]

In Islamic alchemy, Takwin (Arabic: تكوين‎) was a goal of certain Muslim alchemists, notably Jabir ibn Hayyan (later known as Geber in Europe). In the alchemical context, Takwin refers to the artificial creation of life in the laboratory, up to and including human life.

There are also variants cited by other alchemists. One such variant involved the use of the mandrake. Popular belief held that this plant grew where semen ejaculated by hanged men (during the last convulsive spasms before death) fell to the ground, and its roots vaguely resemble a human form to varying degrees. The root was to be picked before dawn on a Friday morning by a black dog, then washed and "fed" with milk and honey and, in some prescriptions, blood, whereupon it would fully develop into a miniature human which would guard and protect its owner. Yet a third method, cited by Dr. David Christianus at the University of Giessen during the 18th century, was to take an egg laid by a black hen, poke a tiny hole through the shell, replace a bean-sized portion of the white with human semen, seal the opening with virgin parchment, and bury the egg in dung on the first day of the March lunar cycle. A miniature humanoid would emerge from the egg after thirty days, which would help and protect its creator in return for a steady diet of lavender seeds and earthworms.

You can't touch this.

This is why we must all work together.

Every Day Seems a Little Closer Going Faster (after Mike Young... though I didn't know it when I was getting into it)

I tried today, a number of times.

There were many good things going on.

Winning isn't everything. (Thanks guys. You do cool stuff.)

You know, sometimes you are going to just plain fail. And I don't mean in the meme FAIL way or the near meme, "fail faster," way. I mean straight up, flat out fail. It's going to happen.

And when it does, if you look up the walkthrough online, you just won't feel so good when you start over.

But sometimes you are in it for the story, and that's cool, too. That's how I felt with Limbo. I just couldn't figure out those last few bits of gravity back and forth, but I didn't feel worst for it.

That might be the only time I didn't feel worse for a walkthrough.

Things are so different now.

I keep talking about how a Snickers bar used to have a little phone number on it for you to call if you weren't satisfied. And that was like it for normal people.

People like me, I mean.

You're going to lose your temper.
You're going to say things you regret.
You're going to do things you wish you hadn't done, large and small.
You're going to learn to swim, though, too.
You're going to break someone's heart.
You're heart's going to be broken.
You're going to grow up.
You're going to say that's the last time, but it won't be the last time.
You're going to look at yourself in the mirror and you're eyes are going to feel dark and you're going to be all, Really, Jamie? Really?
You're going to care for someone so deeply that you'll let go of things that you once thought defined you.
You are going to do some wild things.
You're going to have bad ideas along the way.
Please please please never stop having those bad ideas. I love them.
And I love you.
You're going to going to going to gone.
You're going to alternate between taking names first and kicking ass first, but not consistently and that might frustrate some people.
You're going to fail, remember that.
You're going to be afraid.
It's not whether you close your eyes or not, it's which direction you step in when you're eyes are closed.
You'll step to it.
It's not that you've found yourself on the floor again, it's that you're getting up.
I see you getting up.
Close your eyes.

You'll see.

Close your eyes.

95 Kingdoms

Kingdom of Heaven
Kingdom of Earth
Kingdom of the Sea
Kingdom of the Dead

Kingdom of Mirth
Kingdom of Power
Kingdom of Honesty
Kingdom of Truth

Crystal Kingdom
Kingdom of the Night
The True Kingdom
The Forgotten Kingdom

The Forlorn Kingdom
The Purloined Kingdom
The Scarlet Kingdom
Sanctuary

You want to say that you've seen the bottom, and it's a family having a birthday in the café at Ikea, but then you realize the one on the bottom is you looking at them and thinking that.

Thank god that was about 2 years ago, though, and now my life is filled with awesome like this. Believe.

The bottom gives you something solid to push up off.

But I don't think I'll ever go to Ikea alone again.

Write every day. Right every day. Wright every day.

And/or park like a devil. Seriously, I've had some ridiculous parking karma of late. Go Old Man Echo!

Tune in next month for, "Sleep every day. Sleep every day. Sleep every day."

Yesterday I spent time in Takoma Park (MD), Washington (DC), Trenton (NJ), Princeton (NJ), Newark (NJ), and finally ended my day in Boston (MA), but not before reading an article about quantum behaviors in the macroscopic world that included a note on space and time being secondary characteristics of reality -- basically side effects of some deeper "real stuff" that emerge through decoherence ("information leak"). From entanglement (my favorite) to synchronicity (my other favorite).

Here's the piece I was reading... Living In the Quantum World, Vlatko Vedral.

Dear Words, you are on notice. I'm gonna write the shit outta some of you real soon.

Put those hands in the air, people!

Life's Good Things (Excerpt)

Listening to Crystal Cat over a pizza dinner, my daughter (8) told me she needs to meet Dan Deacon so he can teach her how to do "the high voice thing" on a microphone.

The transcendental experience of a Google Image Search for "ugly fish."

The quiet talent that is Timothy Willis Sanders. If you live near Austin, you should grab a drink with him. If you run a press, you should publish him. If you are him, you should write more and more.

This summer's crop of baseball themed summer beers (see Victory Summer Love).

***

We can't unfold.

What the hell is wrong?

I've got my Ray Bans on.

I've got my spray tan on.

I was born James and stayed James all of a few hours.

I love the morning.

Science. When you are really doing it, you know you'll make something important enough to be proven wrong someday
Just like records will be broken or
Records will be replaced by CDs will be replaced by

Gravity's gotta get got, is what I'm saying.

The constants are getting got, right?

This will never happen again, but the Doll House lives on.

We've built our business model on the fact that every day, somewhere in the world, there is a culture turning modern for the first time.

***

Writing an old fashioned "blog is short for web log, don't you know it" post.

Voodoo Sonnet

XXX
XXX
XXX
XXX

XXX
XXX
XXX
XXX

XXX
XXX
XXX
XXX

XXX
XXX

---

I was on jury duty in Baltimore yesterday, and for the first time actually ended up serving on a jury. It was a relatively simple case, but even a simple case isn't simple I guess. I'll have more to say about it -- maybe over drinks rather than here.

Anyway, during one of the "counsel and judge chats" when the white machine noise is going and we're supposed to actively not listen to what the parties are discussing, I was doodling to pass the time and suddenly I was doodling triple Xs.

I started thinking of Marie Laveau's crypt in New Orleans, St. Louis Cemetery #1 -- which I visited years ago in Katrina's aftermath. And then I was thinking about New Orleans in general. And then, covering things with Xs. Lots of things.

And I was thinking about how the Xs would work with syllable counts... should a Voodoo Haiku be
XXX XX
XXX XXX X
XXX XX

or

XXX
XXX
XXX

Would it have to do with pronouncing "X"? Is there any meaning to the "X" when it isn't part of "XXX"? What other forms would mean something -- in the way "sonnet" means something (and actually means so much to me) or "haiku" means something (certainly, though less than "sonnet" for me)?

There you have it. And I'll certainly think about it more someday. And maybe when I get back to New Orleans, I can scrawl it on Laveau's crypt. Or if you are closer, you could.

Submission 2 (for Joe Young)

I wrote a poem called "Submission."

Submission

I wrote a flash fiction piece called "Submission."

I'm Allowed to Be Happy with Me

My friend, partner, and not-often-enough collaborator Justin Sirois is curating Everyday Genius for the month of May. He decided people should write responses to animated GIFs and post the work with the inspiring GIFs. That good idea is manifesting some serious shit-white-hot from writers you should know and will love.

Anyway... I was honored and fortunate to be invited to contribute. And here's the GIF Justin sent me to work with...

...and I HATED IT TO ALL HELL. I was pissed when I first saw it. But I sat with it. And sat with it. And reminded myself that Justin was pushing me. And hated him for pushing me like this. But I also knew that anger and that hate were all an important key. And then something happened... and here's that something, it's called "Hey There Tiger Retract" ...and I'm honestly proud of it and maybe a little scared of it (it's "horror poetry" I guess? so a little scared is natural).

Thanks, J. You knew I needed a push at a time when I was afraid I was too busy to grow. (Obviously I'm not too busy to be a little sappy.)

Now everyone, go check out Everyday Genius (everyday).

We Do More Work by 9am

Weirton, WV is getting older and I wonder if the New York Times is the last to call that state W. Va.

Samar Hassan and iconic war photography and dark days looking back, looking forward.

Google innards and retail opportunities and fair play questions. When you get struck by lightning it's not because you did something bad. Maybe you did something stupid. Or maybe you were just minding your own business.

Night after night of comic zombie onslaughts.

Day after day of little blue people harvesting regular-sized vegetables. Easter brought flowers and I love getting flowers.

Videogames in museums, arcades in basements, more videogames, and designers rush in where other designers once were.

Google all of this for more info.
And then funny faces in wedding photos,
And then do an image search for ugly fish,
And then check out my friends and search for all of them and all the wonderful things they are up to.

Adam Good asked the world how you would describe Neutral Milk Hotel's Aeroplanes Over the Sea (sorry I don't have italics at the ready right now) -- and that's the kind of morning it is.

I was going to say, "emotional," and thought that wasn't helpful or wasn't hitting enough nails on enough heads.

So I didn't say anything.

When I say say, I mean type and I mean there.
When I say the world, I mean everyone that Adam tried to friend that friended him back and all the folks that invited him first, too. And that can be enough.

Abe Lincoln said you can please all of the people some of the time.

Bill Clinton said you can please some of the people some of the time.

Jimmy Carter said there is a big world out there go find it.

Barrack Obama said we can all put bad habits behind us.

Harry S. Truman didn't say anything, because he is a dog and everyone knows dogs can't talk.
I wanted to name him President Jimmy Carter, but was vetoed.

Life is funny that way, because we just call him Truman these days and the older he gets the more he looks like Truman Capote.

The older Capote, not the younger Capote who was pretty dashing in pictures I've seen online.

Our Truman is funny looking and funny and I'm guessing he's pretty happy about life.
He's got that going for him.

Do you see this day that's shaping up, Truman?
There will be food and water and sunshine and if we're lucky there will be a giant pink poodle and a beaded elephant.
Caterpillars and giant fake caterpillars and things shaped like flying saucers.
Things that float on water.
Things that roll on streets.
Baltimore is going to treat us today, Truman.
The world is going to treat us.

The real world.

Location:Takoma Park, MD, United States

I'm Buying the Purity Ring Record as Soon as I Can Clear My Head a Bit

On the way home I overheard someone say, "There's an empty space in my heart where the weak stay weak." By someone I mean Thom Yorke, and by overheard I mean I was listening to Radiohead.

And by overheard somone say, I mean that's what I heard and who knows if that's what was said.

String together stances.

If this was Twitter I'd say #writesomethingeveryday and then expect it to fall apart in one to three days.

I have this line to write about trying to leave my doubts on the jetway
And about hurling faster and faster
Or maybe faster and further and faster

And I think it's a song
I mean it's kinda about things I've seen and been through or thought,
It's also kinda about sounding good and maybe it does something for you
But it's not my life or something.

Over here in my life I've been wondering about court transcribers and what do they do when they hit a real doozey of a homophone. I mean it's the official record. They need to get to the bottom of that kind of thing right?

I mean, has someone's defense in a perjury case ever rested on whether they'd actually said "bare" or "bear" in previous testimony?

And I guess the same goes for homonyms every once in a while. Who is in charge of this stuff?

In some splintered universe I've just set to plotting and then writing one of the worst court thrillers of all time.

But in that universe do more Americans have affordable health care?
Have more Presidents felt the need to share their birth certificates? And in that splintered universe does it make anyone else think about Coriolanus not wanting to show his scars.
I don't even remember if he eventually did.

This shit's for real, people.
Google it. All of it.

And then you'll have everything and you'll feel the Earth's rotation slow beneath your feet (or your bottom if you are sitting) and the days will stretch longer and you'll have the time to listen to that Purity Ring record and you'll do a load of laundry and you'll have a really great cat that makes you happy in the way a great cat can and you'll wonder what you're going to make for dinner tonight. Pasta? It's getting pretty warm, maybe grill some chicken?

Hell when has a BLT ever steered you wrong?