April 2010
37 posts
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No Chance Meeting
He watched her go by that day for the first time in years. She seemed smaller somehow than she was in his memories, but in his memories she was a body, singular unto herself: a simultaneous series of impressions superimposed upon one another. She sips coffee in a sundress, squinting against the bright fall afternoon; she plays Monopoly with him and his nephew and tries to sneak crisp $500 bills...
Never let anyone take your memory from you. If you were friends once, you are friends for all time; if you were lovers once, you are lovers for all time. When they say no, it was not so, I never loved you— trust your memory. Never let anyone take your memory from you.
storiesfromaghost-deactivated20 asked: Thank you for being so excellent and inspiring.
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The Lesser Souls
We are surrounded by too many ghosts.
In the fields the ghosts of flowers drying and dead. Grasses withered and trampled underfoot. In the forests, the specters of aged oaks, beeches and elms converge and whisper with one another. The rutted paths they pace, freed in the afterlife to roam hill and dale alike. They speak to their seedlings. They tell them softly of the winters to come and the...
One thing I will never do is ask you to recommend me, because if you didn’t think to do it yourself, what good is it?
I feel I have to say this, but in so saying, I have suggested the idea of recommending me, which defeats the purpose of saying it.
This is why I am posting it late at night: so while I have said it, hopefully no one at all will read it.
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There Is No Gift
Writing is a craft. Not a gift. There is no magic. There are only words in an order chosen, at first hurried, then inspired, then finally necessary. Did you think it was different?
In the world entire there are a countless number of things you could write, could you only stoop to paper and pen, to inkribbon, to keys and screen. In the writing you will lose what you thought to record and if you...
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submachine:
Mount Carmel - Still Listening
I’ve...
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“He could remember everything of her save her scent. Seated in a theatre with her...”
– Cormac McCarthy, The Road.
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“Everyone must leave something in the room or left behind when he dies, my...”
– Ray Bradbury, Fahrenheit 451.
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The next person I see quote Nicholas fucking Sparks in order to express their romantic feelings— that person I will kill.
I’m all for romance novels. Just go read a real one. A Farewell to Arms, anybody? Love in the Time of Cholera? Get an education, for Chrissake.
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“You will be required to do wrong no matter where you go. It is the basic...”
– Philip K. Dick, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep.
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Is this adulthood?
Her body is lithe, yielding, soft in the right places, firm in the right places. You can pick her up with one arm and you did. You could trace figure eights, or the symbol for infinity, on her bare breast— and you did.
Her flesh is still young and her mind is wanton, in the best way that you know. Her hair swirls around her head heedlessly. Her sighs are quiet. Your fingers...
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In celebration of hitting 101 followers today, I’ll lay down a favorite quote from high school:
If people bring so much courage to this world the world has to kill them to break them, so of course it kills them. The world breaks every one and afterward many are strong at the broken places. But those that will not break it kills. It kills the very good, and the very gentle, and the very...
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My daddy he’s a handsome devil He’s...
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Hum Degrees
submachine:
hollow trees crack like tooth picks in the fingers of an angry god. many unknown words can’t spill their ink now that your lover won’t return.
painisfodder-deactivated2011101 asked: You're awesome. Just thought I'd drop you a line to say that. I love the things you write about. It adds to my perspective. It would be a blast if you could drop by and read my writing, too. If you have nothing better to do, that is, and if you like the poetry and ramblings of a closet nerd. Have a great day and keep em coming. :)
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“What makes Iago evil? some people ask. I never ask.”
– Joan Didion, Play It As It Lays.
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“I was a Flower of the mountain yes when I put the rose in my hair like the...”
– James Joyce, Ulysses.
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“When I remember that dizzy summer, that dull, stupid, lovely, dire summer, it...”
– Michael Chabon, The Mysteries of Pittsburgh.
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“Yellower was her head than the flower of the broom, whiter was her flesh than...”
– The Mabinogion’s “Culhwch and Olwen,” 1989 Jones & Jones translation.
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“Many a man may look respectable, and yet be able to hide at will behind a spiral...”
– P.G. Wodehouse, Sunset at Blandings.
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She had a curious way of standing, feet wide and hips cocked, like a gunslinger, like a Colt Peacemaker was strapped low to her thigh, like her femininity was a deadly weapon. He had the feeling when she smiled, a slow drawing of her lips that was lopsided and sure, that she was gauging his reaction, that she viewed him over a smoking barrel. When he had gone to bed, it was only then he felt the...
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“The sky above the port was the color of television, tuned to a dead channel.”
– William Gibson, Neuromancer.
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submachine: Challenge— Who Am I? →
In the book I recently reviewed, Acquainted with the Night, I ran across something I had to do myself. Towards the end of the book it is revealed that Alex, a senior in high school who struggles with extreme bipolar disorder, has written for his senior paper a piece entitled: Who Am I? …
My friend submachine has written a great, fascinating self-portrait of his youth and adolescence...
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Excerpt from "A Road Called Ocean" II
He slept with a mother last night: he knew it when he saw the red and white marks that interlocked and wrapped around her stomach. She didn’t say anything about a child and when he woke in the morning, right arm burning where her head lay across it, he thought about it.
There are pictures he didn’t notice, her and her son. Her hair is brown and intemperately wavy where it lays fanned...
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Guernica Interview with Alice Walker →
This interview with Alice Walker, most renowned for her book The Color Purple, struck several very bad notes with me, specifically regards her comparison of Tibet and Palestine. This analogy illustrates the sort of dangerous naivete that is cultivated in many academic circles, particularly in the literature of empowerment, towards the details and history of ethnic conflict. The Tibetan and...
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“Nature’s first green is gold,
Her hardest hue to hold.
Her early leafs a...”
– Nothing Gold Can Stay, Robert Frost (via submachine)
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“…and it’s a story that might bore you but you don’t have to...”
– Bret Easton Ellis, The Rules of Attraction.
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“He stepped down, trying not to look long at her, as if she were the sun, yet he...”
– Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina.
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“Let me never fall into the vulgar mistake of dreaming that I am persecuted...”
– Ralph Waldo Emerson, in his journals.
Now that “Beneath Us” is out of the way, expect a few more missions to be filled in the coming days.
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Beneath Us
The pavement is black and smooth and shining after the rain, the day after my twenty-fourth birthday. I can hear the ocean a couple of blocks to the east and something about the continuing hiss of waves in the night is putting me on edge. Alana keeps asking me whether or not the sushi here is any good and even though it is I can’t seem to say anything that will satisfy her. She listens each...
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Sub Pop recently previewed a track from Blitzen...
Still recovering from many hospital visits. I have a very long piece for you tomorrow.
