For me the most important thread of this story is when I think of my friends who have had to either deal directly with the side effects of chemo therapy, or who have had to attend to their closest loved ones in same. I thank my friend Ellen Parker for having provided such a wonderful text for me to play with.
Home Pharmacy by Ellen Parker
She has found that taking these drugs improves her mood, but negatively impacts her vision.
You didn't use "impacts" as a verb, did you? And you didn't modify it with "negatively," did you?
Me? No. It was her. She.
That ugly nasty disgusting dumbfacedirtysexy annoying loser smelly fastbitch.
She's not that ugly. She's not that fast.
She has found that drinking coffee might shoot a panic attack. Annoying janes in the shoulder. Racing joints. Quivering buds.
That's no panic attack. That's drunk chronic ganja hunger.
What's this toke about blunted vision?
Yeh. She asked her ob-gyn, who goes, Weird. (Doctortweedledeedumb.) He's like, You better get that hitchicken checked.
Instead, she out to lunch. Baked restaurant fattysandwich and chips joint. Eatstarving. Then, mary jane, yellow chewy molasses, just two fast.
Encore the myocardial infarction. Foolin! It's the syndrome. There are grubs for that. Just throw me the money.
Are you just throwing up any old shit you can?
Tryna out-macdonald ronaldtastycheese.
Her eyes pulse. You see, she can't.
Blunt: she's going blind. Said with a two-year-old accent: Mad!
Greensexbitch, you are not facing this ... this ... nugget? What? Hunger: lunch dinner taco. Bet you can't quit. I never fuckass said high could my <3.
Don't you think ronald mcdonald is baked?
Cannibis?
No, you can't.
It would be better if she could.
~
Ellen Parker is editor of FRiGG.
Wednesday, December 23, 2009
Monday, December 14, 2009
vid: Find the Wheel, by Martin Heavisides
Find the Wheel by Martin Heavisides
Frequently when writers tell stories in unconventional ways--which may be defined as "ways a particular reader is uncomfortable or unfamiliar with"--they are accused of trying to reinvent the wheel. My reply to this has always been:
Telling a story is a completely different kettle of fish from reinventing the wheel. They're horses of a different stripe, and so's a zebra. Some scientists maintain an ostrich is a giraffe of a different neck but I'm not altogether persuaded this reasoning is sound. We're on safer ground I'd say, maintaining that the correct shape of a wheel, for maximum effectiveness, is round and the same might be said, in a way, of the palindrome. But is palindromic invariably the correct shape of a story? It would certainly cut down the size of the slush piles.
Very few fish, while we're on the subject, are round, and to the best of my knowledge at least, no Kentucky Derby winners. Tigers aren't especially round, nor are they horses of a different stripe, though I suppose there are some who might disagree. To convince themselves that this is wrong, I recommend they try saddling a Siamese. (There are obvious arguments against saddling a tiger.) Then again I've never been accused of trying to reinvent the tiger--why is that do you suppose?
Not that I'm looking to take on the project. I don't think I have a single idea that would be a real improvement on the current design, and anyway it's inadvisable for me--I always get too close to my work.
People are rarely round, especially in North--wait a minute, I'd better rethink that one.
Trees embody roundness as a dynamic component of their form, maybe I could reinvent the tree. What would a story look like if it looked like a tree? It's true that a printed book has leaves. . .
Maybe I could reinvent the shaggy dog. True, a certain number of readers are allergic, but who imagines it's possible to please everybody? Did you ever hear of a book with a sold out print run of six billion copies, or even close?
I'm not sure what my point is--then again if this is a wheel, why should it have a point? Actually it would have an infinite number of points (doesn't sound possible I know, but it's true--an infinite number, count 'em up yourself if you don't believe me). That sounds like a lot of points but none of them is the point, since they can't be (successively or predecessively) distinguished from each other. So, fine, I have no point--I should presume to reinvent the wheel? Make it square with clearcut corners that each come to a point, that would cut down on functionality some. But does a story have a function? Have to think about that one. Organize a multi-participant debate. Does anybody know who you'd contact to. . . ?
Saturday, December 12, 2009
vid: Writer's Workshop Along Bird Cemetery Road
In the barn studio below the amazing skylight the names were put in a large galvanized hopper and churned around.
A one-man aviary band Jeffrey cranked the curved handle on the reclaimed writer’s desk and some of them came down like sounds of wind or car horns, rude expletives or to mimic the crazy cawing from above. The names dislodged then rattled then spun down around a copper spring-tubing as with a timeless still where they slowly echoed down; in the shiver of small quills they left trail marks, as they revealed a more pure essence.
Other names got jammed at the top. They formed boldly arched natural bridges against gray metal skies; they were as dark bouillon cubes contaminated with moisture that stuck them together. No vibration of the writer’s mechanism could break them free.
Jeffrey cranked hard he blew the call. Caw. Caw. Caw.
As he cranked his name changed shape with their names and he became Jeff. Less black birds encircled in flight above the skylight and above the clattered pace of wooden gears. He thought of a windmill near the seaside and the dream of rye flour. The light of day that is special.
From our muffled station behind a sliding door we could hear the sound of cracking and cawing into a more centered sentience with the pressure of his hand against the gritty lever where he worked in the antiquities room. Then it was Jay, then it was just… and a list of small hearts which were previously homogenized with a kitchen cleaver in separate identities became like a nude perfume.
It leaked, spilled and flowed to etch identities to the desk, then rivulets down the oak legs then onto the pine floor where it mixed with dust-of-radon and congealed bird's blood, or boat varnish and copper flakes that smelled musky with a hint of greenish organic form.
As sun set the now fluid bird names eared themselves into the structure of the barn walls where all that night to next century they confused spiders and black crickets with their cackled noises.
Thursday, November 26, 2009
Swamp Lily Lament in Shape of a Box
Swamp Lily Lament in Shape of a Box, Video, Audio Reading, Text <<<< GO HERE NOW! In December of 2005 as a member of the Preservation Trades Network I visited in a working mode (meaning w/ work boots, hard hat, hands and heart at the ready) both Bay St. Louis, MI and Lower 9th Ward, New Orleans.
In Bay St. Louis we got involved w/ salvage of an 18 c timber frame structure that was discovered in the wreckage. The structure, the oldest in the area, to be re-installed in a public location as a testimony to the endurance of the community. What we saw and heard from the people there was pretty intense.
In Lower 9th Ward we stood near to where the levee broke. It was one of those experiences where you look around and the situation begins to sink in as to what had gone on there... and I broke down and cried. We subsequently became involved in Holy Cross, the very southern end of Lower 9th Ward, the older section that had survived -- on slightly higher ground -- better than the more familiar upper portion. Brad Pitt came later to the upper area and his activities have brought a lot of attention to that place while there is an immense amount of day-to-day activity that the country and news media has for the most part overlooked or forgotten about in the Gulf area recovery that continues.
Holy Cross is a traditional African American community. One of our first activities was to help the local Baptist Church to replace their wooden floor... so that there was a place for what there was left of the neighborhood to gather.
We then went on from there to hold our annual traditional trades conference (timber framers, stone masons, carpenters, slate roofers, plasterers etc.) in 2006 on site in which we worked a great deal with property owners both on fixing their 'shotguns', but also to give them a non-Home Depot sense of the value of their buildings, and a renewed sense of hope. Older and traditional ways of building directly connect into sustainability in a manner that our contemporary building industry actively works against.
We have continued working in Holy Cross with a program of yearly field schools in which students are able to go to Holy Cross and experience hands-on traditional trades work on the restoration of houses in the neighborhood.
But what it all comes down to is that the buildings are a catalyst for an interface with the people that live there, that try to live there, that are fighting to in some way bring their lives back together. This short story from my friend Donna D Vitucci really brings home the human.Swamp Lily Lament in Shape of a Box, Video, Audio Reading, Text
Sunday, November 22, 2009
New Home of the Happy Lion
There is a story here. From Ohio to Barre, VT to Rhode Island to Old Westbury Gardens, Long Island to Mastic Beach to the front yard for patination by weather (and curiosity of neighbors and visitors) to the in-progress kitchen suspended across from the wood stove, in the winter reading area now resides the happy lion, carved by Deborah Mills.
Celebrate Thanksgiving thru Comix
My friend Arthur Bicknell (Ithaca HS 1969) composed a comix about T-day when he was 12 years old. A friend of his in cleaning out boxes from his mother's attic ran across this delightful artifact. Arthur has given me permission to reproduce it for your pleasure and delight.
A portion of our family came over not on the Mayflower but possibly on the next boat to follow. They came from Northern England via Holland to New Amsterdam, where they then along with the Montgomery family cross pollinated their way up the Hudson to eventually end up in the Finger Lakes Region of NY State. As Arthur says, the storks must have cried for us too.
Another portion was Seneca, had been here in the USA for a while.
Another portion, the latecomers were from Germany, France, Ireland, Scotland and who knows what else.
WHEN YOU CLICK ON EACH IMAGE IT WILL COME UP IN A LARGER SCREEN so that you can read it.
cover
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
A portion of our family came over not on the Mayflower but possibly on the next boat to follow. They came from Northern England via Holland to New Amsterdam, where they then along with the Montgomery family cross pollinated their way up the Hudson to eventually end up in the Finger Lakes Region of NY State. As Arthur says, the storks must have cried for us too.
Another portion was Seneca, had been here in the USA for a while.
Another portion, the latecomers were from Germany, France, Ireland, Scotland and who knows what else.
WHEN YOU CLICK ON EACH IMAGE IT WILL COME UP IN A LARGER SCREEN so that you can read it.
cover
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20SOS Gab & Eti
I wrote a serial e-mail story several years ago.
Gabriel and Etidorpha Orgrease were brother and sister. They are friends of the narrator. Their father Buck had brought home a fiberglass portable toilet with a hole in the side and Gab & Eti started out their life by my hiding their identity and sending out an e-mail to a list of 600 historic preservation practitioners with a request for advice on how best to restore the monumental artifact. This actually did happen, I did send this e-mail, it is not a fiction.
It all started when I was riding on a train from Chicago to New York so that I could ride through Horseshoe Curve. At the time this train ride was one of those pressing ambitions of my life.
This first e-mail caused several things to happen in short order. My poor mother got all sorts of weird e-mails and she had no clue why, seeing as I had disguised myself behind her e-mail address and not got around to tell her. She no longer uses her computer for anything, and I mean anything. A small band of people were delighted. A very large mass of people were outraged, and nasty. It seemed that 599 people on the list did not want to ever get any e-mails about anything even though they had subscribed to the list where nobody was supposed to say anything. The preservation they intended was the preservation of blank.
It was rough. Essentially if you are a young person in debt for having gone and got a Masters degree in fixing old buildings, and you can’t find a decent job, you will be very far above the mundane and vernacular study of outhouses. There are people with very heavy career investments in the religion of ancestor worship and they cannot truck any folderol in the midst of their well oiled world. In short as the e-mail series continued it gained fans, and it gained enemies.
The enemies and the fans both helped to encourage the project to continue. It did wander on for close to two years, with every week or few weeks or whatever a new e-mail that came along to play out the adventures of our two characters... and their dog Altuna.
The fans of the series would write in suggestions as to what the characters could be up to next... there was a lot of interest in shopping for shoes as I remember. It is one thing for characters to earn a living but readers seem to really want to read about characters that go shopping for weird stuff. I would meet readers in the real world, in the course of business (fixing old buildings) and they would talk about the characters. There was always a desire to know, “What next?”
The enemies of the series wrote death threats. Leastways they wanted the characters, and the series, dead. There is no telling how far unpleasantness that starts with words will go before there are shots in the night and burning Greek-Revival columns in our yards, let alone problems with freak flags.
The original has 42 installments, each section within the confine of a one to one-and-a-half page screen on a computer (eventually we sided with the anti-scroll down contingent) and people would have to wait days and weeks for more.
This all occurred on a listserv, a dynamic community exchange, an e-mail system that allowed broadcast, and feedback, and that was originated in part to sustain the life of the story, and also it established a worldwide community of histo presto deviants that has lasted in near daily contact with each other for 13 years now (give or take a few stragglers and lurkers).
In the grasp of an existential crisis I took on the name of one of my characters, Gabriel Orgrease and made it as my own a writer’s pseudonym. It is a name that I have worked steady and diligent to promote and brand as a distinct identity, as my real name has been previously used up in the market of books by a hack author that I need not mention here.
Well, this puts me in something of a fix if I want to do anything with the story, and I have decided that I do want to do something with it, like publish it as a book (a novella). For the longest time (10 years) I thought, well, this is fun but it is a bunch of crap... I have gotten far enough away from the heart of the mess to see it with new eyes and I am laughing. I like to share laughter, it is a very true and gut emotion and we need a whole lot more of it in our lives.
So, my problem is that in order to be the author [Gabriel Orgrease] and the friend of the brother and sister (and not the brother of the sister the author and the friend and the black dog too), I have to change the names of the characters. Henceforth they will be named Perveril and Etidorpha Farmsworth. In short, what has been known as SOS Gab & Eti will now be titled SOS Perv & Eti.
I anticipate and welcome heated and pungent argument. I am not inclined to put it up to a vote. I know that for some loyal fans and friends this will be a monumental change... but keep in mind your limited edition t-shirts will be worth more next week than they are today.
SOS Perv & Eti 1.3
"An ointment made of the juice, oil, and a little wax, is singularly good to rub cold and benumbed members." -- Nicholas Culpeper.
In line with the current topic we are reminded that a character in Ken Kesey's book Sometimes a Great Lotion (desperate in need at this point in the narrative) used pages torn out of the Tibetan Book of the Dead in practice of her daily constitution. Thank God that Old George did not, as far as GWSH (George Washington Shat Here) will confirm, likewise find himself compressed too often to rely upon signed paperwork that lay convenient at hand to assuage his constitution. Otherwise the population of Boston would probably still be stuck with soggy tea leaves, which, as I have heard rumored, causes one to remain consistently flushed and stiff in demeanor and is only moderated by a late-night flagon of Jamaican spiced-rum. Probably just another one of those bothersome urban myths to be Scoped.
Plugged up or otherwise defective plumbing is not of much good to a democracy and I would think the political scientists of academe would do well to contemplate the historical significance of single occupancy structures. There could be a whole new international movement, S. O. S. (Save Our Structures).
"We call a shack a shack and not a structure." -- Mies van der Rohe.
There are always detractors from any noble movements, and when they come down too abundantly, all conveniences have their inconveniences.
I'd be curious to know where Marco Polo stopped off in his travels. Bad enough he described a rhinoceros if he had also described a loo with a Ling Luk Loo busy in it. We might think it was a Saturn rocket prognosticated by the Tings, or the Tangs, or all those terra cotta guys, something slightly orange this way comes. I would not in the least be shocked, as with so many other claims of cultural superiority, to find that the Chinese are thousands of years ahead of the West in development of specific compost (humanure) black-art technology. There has to be a text on the feng shui of one-holer jakes. I can just imagine things like, "Do not place door of mouse in dragon mouth.", or, “Better a lizard in the well than a poot in the toot," 更好的蜥蜴以及在比poot的嘟嘟聲。,“Better than poot lizards, as well as the beep beep sound.” You know, those sort of thingies that seem to lose all sense in Google translation but sound kool and mysterious just the same.
To be continued... on the bus, again... well, almost on the bus, cross your legs and hold it...
Gabriel and Etidorpha Orgrease were brother and sister. They are friends of the narrator. Their father Buck had brought home a fiberglass portable toilet with a hole in the side and Gab & Eti started out their life by my hiding their identity and sending out an e-mail to a list of 600 historic preservation practitioners with a request for advice on how best to restore the monumental artifact. This actually did happen, I did send this e-mail, it is not a fiction.
It all started when I was riding on a train from Chicago to New York so that I could ride through Horseshoe Curve. At the time this train ride was one of those pressing ambitions of my life.
This first e-mail caused several things to happen in short order. My poor mother got all sorts of weird e-mails and she had no clue why, seeing as I had disguised myself behind her e-mail address and not got around to tell her. She no longer uses her computer for anything, and I mean anything. A small band of people were delighted. A very large mass of people were outraged, and nasty. It seemed that 599 people on the list did not want to ever get any e-mails about anything even though they had subscribed to the list where nobody was supposed to say anything. The preservation they intended was the preservation of blank.
It was rough. Essentially if you are a young person in debt for having gone and got a Masters degree in fixing old buildings, and you can’t find a decent job, you will be very far above the mundane and vernacular study of outhouses. There are people with very heavy career investments in the religion of ancestor worship and they cannot truck any folderol in the midst of their well oiled world. In short as the e-mail series continued it gained fans, and it gained enemies.
The enemies and the fans both helped to encourage the project to continue. It did wander on for close to two years, with every week or few weeks or whatever a new e-mail that came along to play out the adventures of our two characters... and their dog Altuna.
The fans of the series would write in suggestions as to what the characters could be up to next... there was a lot of interest in shopping for shoes as I remember. It is one thing for characters to earn a living but readers seem to really want to read about characters that go shopping for weird stuff. I would meet readers in the real world, in the course of business (fixing old buildings) and they would talk about the characters. There was always a desire to know, “What next?”
The enemies of the series wrote death threats. Leastways they wanted the characters, and the series, dead. There is no telling how far unpleasantness that starts with words will go before there are shots in the night and burning Greek-Revival columns in our yards, let alone problems with freak flags.
The original has 42 installments, each section within the confine of a one to one-and-a-half page screen on a computer (eventually we sided with the anti-scroll down contingent) and people would have to wait days and weeks for more.
This all occurred on a listserv, a dynamic community exchange, an e-mail system that allowed broadcast, and feedback, and that was originated in part to sustain the life of the story, and also it established a worldwide community of histo presto deviants that has lasted in near daily contact with each other for 13 years now (give or take a few stragglers and lurkers).
In the grasp of an existential crisis I took on the name of one of my characters, Gabriel Orgrease and made it as my own a writer’s pseudonym. It is a name that I have worked steady and diligent to promote and brand as a distinct identity, as my real name has been previously used up in the market of books by a hack author that I need not mention here.
Well, this puts me in something of a fix if I want to do anything with the story, and I have decided that I do want to do something with it, like publish it as a book (a novella). For the longest time (10 years) I thought, well, this is fun but it is a bunch of crap... I have gotten far enough away from the heart of the mess to see it with new eyes and I am laughing. I like to share laughter, it is a very true and gut emotion and we need a whole lot more of it in our lives.
So, my problem is that in order to be the author [Gabriel Orgrease] and the friend of the brother and sister (and not the brother of the sister the author and the friend and the black dog too), I have to change the names of the characters. Henceforth they will be named Perveril and Etidorpha Farmsworth. In short, what has been known as SOS Gab & Eti will now be titled SOS Perv & Eti.
I anticipate and welcome heated and pungent argument. I am not inclined to put it up to a vote. I know that for some loyal fans and friends this will be a monumental change... but keep in mind your limited edition t-shirts will be worth more next week than they are today.
SOS Perv & Eti 1.3
"An ointment made of the juice, oil, and a little wax, is singularly good to rub cold and benumbed members." -- Nicholas Culpeper.
In line with the current topic we are reminded that a character in Ken Kesey's book Sometimes a Great Lotion (desperate in need at this point in the narrative) used pages torn out of the Tibetan Book of the Dead in practice of her daily constitution. Thank God that Old George did not, as far as GWSH (George Washington Shat Here) will confirm, likewise find himself compressed too often to rely upon signed paperwork that lay convenient at hand to assuage his constitution. Otherwise the population of Boston would probably still be stuck with soggy tea leaves, which, as I have heard rumored, causes one to remain consistently flushed and stiff in demeanor and is only moderated by a late-night flagon of Jamaican spiced-rum. Probably just another one of those bothersome urban myths to be Scoped.
Plugged up or otherwise defective plumbing is not of much good to a democracy and I would think the political scientists of academe would do well to contemplate the historical significance of single occupancy structures. There could be a whole new international movement, S. O. S. (Save Our Structures).
"We call a shack a shack and not a structure." -- Mies van der Rohe.
There are always detractors from any noble movements, and when they come down too abundantly, all conveniences have their inconveniences.
I'd be curious to know where Marco Polo stopped off in his travels. Bad enough he described a rhinoceros if he had also described a loo with a Ling Luk Loo busy in it. We might think it was a Saturn rocket prognosticated by the Tings, or the Tangs, or all those terra cotta guys, something slightly orange this way comes. I would not in the least be shocked, as with so many other claims of cultural superiority, to find that the Chinese are thousands of years ahead of the West in development of specific compost (humanure) black-art technology. There has to be a text on the feng shui of one-holer jakes. I can just imagine things like, "Do not place door of mouse in dragon mouth.", or, “Better a lizard in the well than a poot in the toot," 更好的蜥蜴以及在比poot的嘟嘟聲。,“Better than poot lizards, as well as the beep beep sound.” You know, those sort of thingies that seem to lose all sense in Google translation but sound kool and mysterious just the same.
To be continued... on the bus, again... well, almost on the bus, cross your legs and hold it...
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