Me falta tiempo para celebrar tus cabellos.
I don’t have time enough to celebrate your hair.

-Pablo Neruda, Sonnet XIV from 100 Love Sonnets

 

Why did I not die? More miserable than man ever was before, why did I not sink into forgetfulness and rest? Death snatches away many blooming children, the only hopes of their doating parents: how many brides and lovers have been one day in the bloom of health and hope, and the next a prey for worms and the decay of the tomb! Of what materials was I made, that I could thus resist so many shocks, which, like the turning of the wheel, continually renewed the torture?

-Frankenstein, by Mary Shelley

 

Fundacion Valparaiso, Mojacar, Almeria, Spain
June 23, 2011

Dear —

I am at my great wooden slab of a writing desk in paradise, looking out over a hump of mountain crowned with lights, and I don’t know where to begin, so I don’t know where to end and I don’t want to end or begin or figure out which is which and why or how. Today, dropping through the thick layer of clouds, a hoop skirt of sunshine opened like the bones of a parasol but offered no shade. Tonight is summer solstice. A change in season. There will be a bonfire on the beach and free sardines (gran sardinada!), live music and booze and “treats for kids.” Noche de San Juan. Equinocio – the equinox. People will throw what they want to cast off into the fire, little sins or sadnesses scribbled onto slips of paper and scooped up in the blaze. I have nothing to burn and everything to lose. I am not in the mood for fiestas. I’d like to avoid ritual. I don’t want to sip the ocean air or feel sand scratch between my toes. I want time to stop. Flames, stop. Water, stop. Sun and moon and stars, just quit it. Carefully crafted narrative finally fractures, which means that what is today is no longer tomorrow is yesterday and was never and is beyond and was before and is and is not. What is behind is already in front or perhaps to the side or underneath or nowhere at all. Dates blend. Nothing belongs to no place and lives inside no body.

 

Kafka said that “writing a letter is actually an intercourse with ghosts and by no means just with the ghost of the addressee but also with one’s own ghost, which secretly evolves inside the letter one is writing or even in a whole series of letters, where one letter corroborates another and can refer to it as witness.” This book is a love letter. It is very earnest in that way, very Alpha and Omega. But I am afraid to witness, afraid of dividing lines I am afraid of punctuation

 

Walking into Mojacar pueblo a dog trots past with a fly attached to his nose; he tries, in vain, to shake it off and eat it. It flies up and lands, flies up and lands. This requires his full attention and makes him too hot to bark. “Are you one of those dogs that barks all night?” I ask. He bites the air. If I could catch the fly I’d feed it to him. A thumbprint of gray is pressed to the end of his nose, like an accident of paint, a tiny flag of age waiting to flutter further and faster up his face. “Perro?” I ask the Spanish dog, trying to recall the lesson about animals from high school Spanish class. Yo me llamo Emilia is all I get. Hace much calor. Hola! Wind lifts dust from the road; it swirls in eddies behind me as if I’m being followed. Not by the dog, he’s disappeared behind the gate. The staccato chatter of crickets is interrupted by a little van moving down the road cut into the soft mountain like a finger sliding carefully through a mound of frosting so nobody will know that the cake has been plundered before the party begins, before the candles are pushed in and lit. The van is a child’s toy blurting a message from a single crackling loudspeaker: uno nino cinco anos. Two hours later, walking in the other direction, the same van going the other way, bearing the same message: uno nino cinco anos. I know the translation but what does it mean I am afraid to ask the question

 

Where I’m writing from there is only one phone box, in the hallway beneath the echoing rooms. If I call you, and you are eating lunch, I will cry and everyone will hear me and if you are not eating lunch I will also cry and I have a song for you

 

Today, 5,000 miles away, Ronan is alive

 

In April 1920, Kafka wrote to Milena Jesenska: It occurs to me that I really can’t remember your face in any precise detail. Only the way you walked away through the tables in the café, your figure, your dress, that I still see. This was a P.S. He loved her

 

The evil eye cannot find you during siesta. Your eyes are closed and it is forced to find someone who is awake, stupid nasty roving stinky old dripping eye I fear you. The wind relays softly through the trees like a skinny, fragrant monkey. The day dozes, drops its head. I need a witch to poke the eye out with a witch stick. People who run into fires are not brave; they have no other choice. Oh where are you

 

Milena’s letters to Kafka did not survive fire and censor so she walks through his but without a voice he answers still

 

The streets in Mojacar were built deliberately twisted; it helps the wind move more efficiently, cooling streets, tempers, dogs, and now sun-burned tourists from Northern Europe. I hear the goats now (cabritas!) their tiny goat bells softly tinkling the way they’d talk if they had words instead of weary bleats. Every hour, on the hour, the bells ring out from some unseen cathedral. 10987654321 seconds later another cathedral telling a different time rings out the “new” new hour. Which one is the real one which time is the real time come quickly

 

It couldn’t look better, the doctor said after the final ultrasound, all those tests. Why

 

Fireworks explode over the hills outside my window, over the empty luxury hotel full of abandoned furniture and half built rooms. A limp and distant pop pop boom. People and lizards are living in the hills. A man runs into a shop to buy bread at the “Crises” price of 1 Euro; it’s a crisis, it says so on the bag. A dog stops barking. A baby sleeps. A door slams in the wind. An empty drawing table on a sun-drenched porch. Someone says, “I want to talk to you” in Spanish behind a screen door. “Urgent,” they say. The bells are ringing they are stuck

 

How far does your leg go up and how long does your son have to live? I need a lantern or a candle something hurry

 

I forage for food at night in the kitchen when everyone is asleep. The only face I want to see is yours

 

Kafka was an insomniac. Writing to Max Brod: After a series of dreams, I had this one: A child wearing a little shirt was sitting to my left (I couldn’t remember whether it was my own child or not, but this did not bother me). Not a little child but a little shirt he couldn’t sleep heavy pains in my heart he said

 

In the darkness I am groping for your hand, your eyes, sweet belly, smooth flat back of the neck a thin stem

 

Far away my baby is still alive his life a swiftly departing dream. Rones Bones, little king of my own bones I love the handful of earth you are (Neruda). The bells ring out on the unseen hill. Cars curve around the mountains, another finger tracing the sweet road, another long, shallow dent. Mojacar dogs bark all night. Spanish poodles patrol the mountainside terraces teeth bared tails wagging

 

The world we live in is a world where you live also are you ready to begin your baby day are you ready now

 

Today I am going home. Tomorrow I am dreaming. Vice-versa and reverse

 

In Germany they said that in Almeria, Spain, where I’m writing from, the cucumbers are rotten with disease and not even good for goats but we ate them cucumber psychosis they said and the women kept coming, each day, to cook our meals in ceramic pots the color of earth and wash our clothes and scrub bright coins of blood from my underwear. All day long doors and windows slam shut beneath me. The house is full of empty rooms. Green bugs with intricate Elizabethan wings fight roughneck flies on the windowsill and win. A spider the size of my palm runs across the roof as if to say Good luck! The birds at night don’t sing, they ask questions the goats are okay

 

Wait I will not leave the edge of this day closing sleep sleep sleep

 

Dead flies drop into corners swept of dust oh Victor why didn’t you write a book why couldn’t you love him, your wretch, your it, your boy

 

Simone Weil was right: When a contradiction is impossible to resolve except by a lie, then we know it is really a door. These words are a lie these words are a door

 

This is not an argument with God or about God or for God

 

This is a love letter it is for you

 

It’s not a scary monster my dad explains when the book warns us about the one on the last page. I am five years old. Should we read about him? He has big eyes and soft fuzzy fur like a bear, a nice bear. He’s a sweet monster and he wants to be your friend. I nod okay and he continues. I like him I say at the end of the book

 

The bells bring in the animals but not all of them some were burned in the fire goats and also horses trapped in their barns. Thousands of almond trees and olives whole hillsides of nutty oil burning screams

 

This is the song: As I was walking down Twiddally dum street, I saw a monster with fifty-seven feet, he had big blue eyes and his ears were on his nose, he had eight big ears and fifty seven toes. He was weird. He had a purple beard. He had snakes. Wrapped up in cho-co-late cakes. He had hair. Worse than Tony Blair. He chewed gum. With his thumb.

 

Bliss, see also “euphoria, happiness, joy.” Summer has arrived. The trees wear soft lace undergarments of spider webs and I miss you. My room is a long corridor of wind. At night I leave the key inside the lock just in case

 

A one-word myth: Now. Another word: No. Up up up

 

A book from childhood: there is a monster at the end of this book so if it’s only a monster that would be good news that would be okay no ordinary creation you are my baby not enough time my beloved I won’t land your eyes your face my son your feet not yet your hair your fingers and toes mine and the wine glass is empty the wine is too and the bells are stuck ringing ringing ringing off the cord like dogs off the leash and gone gone gone Frankenstein go back to the beginning I run to you handful of earth which is the end and I’ll never touch ground fast as I can go you are mine there is not enough time for you and me even when I forget I promise not fast enough I will not take root I will be remembering believe it please wait see I am loose I am flying and the bells ring and ring and ring and they don’t stop ring-

 

 

(The Merry-Go-Round is Beginning to Taunt Me[1])

 

1. Author As [not circus] Dog Trainer (Cris)

You can’t lie to a dog. Or you can’t lie badly. While training dogs, you need to be “telling” them, with both body-language and voice, that they are the center of the universe to you, and that what they do for you—and what you’re doing together—makes you happier, and means more to you, than anything else in the world. They can tell if you’re lying. If you’re unconsciously communicating to them that you’re disappointed or upset because you’re thinking about something else, something offstage—whether your life’s true dilemma or your most current disappointment—they take it on as stress. To dogs, it’s all about them. So the trainer has to be able to convince the dog of that, whether it’s true in the trainer’s larger life or not. Problem is, the dog can usually tell. A good trainer doesn’t have “a larger life.” It’s never “just a dog” and therefore easy to lie to.

Is an audience at a reading “just an audience at a reading,” and easier to lie to than a dog? If your true, or larger feelings, infringe on the party atmosphere, on your cheerful gratefulness that you have a book published and an audience to read to, will they also decide your angst is all about them and therefore have no interest in whether the book itself is worthwhile, interesting, important, or even possibly entertaining?

After finishing a series of readings for my 15^th book, I received this advice:

Be fun, vivacious, personable and amusing. Be substantial and invested, but leave them smiling. Everyone wants to be where the party is. If folks are kind enough to make a party atmosphere around your book [by attending a reading], then let people have a good fucking time at the party, and be happy and grateful for that.

I responded: “I wonder if being a fun-chameleon is really the way to give a book a better chance at some modicum of success. I mean, why can’t some of us have a different personality? And if I’ve lost some of my burn and zeal, I think I’ve had some of my corners worn down (to the bone, it feels) in an indie-press career spanning 20 years now. Has it come to this: I really need to act like a cheerleader?”

My advisor:

The reason I’ve given you any advice at all about how to “act,” which is presumptuous of anyone to tell someone else, much less a newer writer to tell a more experienced writer, is that a lot of people we know mutually have remarked to me over the past couple of years on how negative, depressed, anxious or bitter you have seemed. Taken individually, this doesn’t mean anything except that the person saying it may be judgmental or just wants to gossip. But taken collectively when I’ve heard it from 5 or 6 people, especially when I know some of these people really like you and aren’t just trying to be assholes, this is why I’ve given you the advice I have about not coming across as negative.

And when a couple of the occasions after which people remarked stuff like this to me were not “private” occasions, but after seeing you at someone else’s reading or sitting with you at a group table or something like that, this is why I thought I should mention it.

This is not surprising—you’ve had a few really hard years. The thing with [your last publisher] was very hurtful. . . albeit if none of the huge unearthing of issues in your life had taken place, it’s possible you would not have taken career things as hard. But, I mean, for a while you were clinically depressed. I know it’s very hard to give a shit about literary stuff, or to have optimism or “illusions,” when one’s personal life and psyche have been in an uproar.

I don’t mean you should act like a bubbly 25 year old. I don’t even mean to act differently than you have for the bulk of your career. I just mean that, whatever you have been willing to “put out there” over the past few years in terms of your mood or personal disillusionments / insecurities, I would recommend that you don’t put that out there anymore when promoting the book. And in case you were not “willing” to put it out there, but rather unaware that you were doing so, I guess I was trying to just give a subtle hint.

The subject here, then, is author as entertainer, as life-of-the-party (or life of the it’s-all-about-me-but-I-care-about-you party); as friendly, funny pal everyone will want to hang with; as popular girl (or guy) in the high-school halls with a peer group that now includes 3 or 4 different generations. Those pensive, faraway, or serious-thinker author photos had better also disclose someone ready with a hilarious quip for any occasion, the teasing nature of a camp counselor, the gracious vivacity of the party’s host, the beguiling animation of a really good tour guide. The subject here is a popularity contest.

The voices here will have to be anonymous.

All of the people I’ve spoken with are writers I admire, and friends, people I care about to one degree or another. If I disagree with anything they’ve said, I’m not here to embarrass or out them. They’ve caused me to think. I like that. If I have to think about my inability to be personally popular … it’s not their fault that’s my reality. Not their fault that I feel like an actor who joined a serious theatre group (even if only cast in bit parts) and over the years the company morphed into a circus without her realizing.

 

2. #AuthorFail (Davis)

If dogs teach us anything, it’s that our trusty domestic companions have come a long way from their wolf-roots. As my oldest daughter Athena says, “I’m evolving now, and it doesn’t hurt a bit.” Sure, even the toy breeds probably have the pack instinct and yearn to howl at the moon. Perhaps miniature pinschers everywhere wait their chance to turn on their benevolent masters and caretakers—us. This is why I’ve always been a cat person, and even though I had to put my long-time super cat, Cassie, to sleep some months ago, filmmaker John Waters reminded me recently that, “your cat hates you!”

Sure, Cris, we’re up against the wall as authors-of-a-certain-generation who can’t live 24-hours-per day on social networking sites and blogs and within the too-incestuous miasma of small-press book promotion that churns and churns and never stops but for the most part has the collective yelp of the chickapoo of whatever else these cross-bred former-wolves might now be called. Can you hear the French onomatopoeia for the dog bark: “jappe jappe”? Esperanto: “boj, boj.”

Sadly, or perhaps not-so-sadly, much small press/indie authorship serves within a matrix of production-for-producers. We write books that other small-word writers read or pretend to read or never read and never pretend to read and we review and cross-promote each other with a vehemence that makes Gregor Mendel seem like a pea-pod dabbler and we conspiratorially make like nothing untoward may be happening or better yet we call it “community building” and we really mean it—we do—this is more than rhetoric—but most of us also really do mean this in the same double breath that we’d like to break through the indie ceiling and cash a big check from a New York publisher even though we realize that path is almost never sustainable and almost never going to happen without a goodly amount of aesthetic give-and-take or take-and-take. Or just take. Let’s look at two types of writers in this matrix:

1) The Modern Romantic (MR): The type of writer who secretly (or not-so-secretly) craves a “wider” audience, and for whom—and this is essential—it is not enough to wish for demonstrable authorial “success.” Rather, the MR sees his or her exile to the small press world as either

a) A temporary state of affairs, or

b) A great indignity foisted upon her by a entropic universe concerned only with the marketability of books, a universe with little room for a new author to break into the pack, an author whose work is undervalued yet “better” that whatsoever appears on the spring list, will toil for an unspecified period below the surface of Manhattan’s wide Sargasso Sea.

Deep sighing breath. Get centered.

Namaste.

The MR author has also, unsurprisingly, been found guilty of some Kafka-esque sin, which given only the possible zyzzygy of lucky break, talent, and perseverance, might still upend the cruel fates. (There is a bit of good ‘ol Yankee boostrapism at work in this one.)

Of course, a certain version of the MR had some success at first with a book from a major label or a well-regarded minor literary press (Milkweed, Greywolf). Now, books later, this MR toils in the rear of the wolfpack, where her books are poorly copyedited, under-marketed, and forever relegated to the footnotes of a literary topography that has long since shifted its tectonic plates.

Where to spot the MR: You can find the MR in a writer’s colony or garret or subway car or coffee shop writing her way out of the world in the possession of a dog whose been kicked and left for dead and buried and whose book is pulped after a year in a warehouse and who goes back now, tail between legs, to the minor league small press world where she grows increasingly embittered[2] as the newer generation of MFA-bred cross-promoters “like” each others Facebook links until Facebook wets itself into some collective virtual orgasm where even Mark Zuckerberg gets his share of vicarious click-thrills.

2) The Young Turk (YT, and yes, the archaic term is meant ironically): This latter group, while certainly possessing some traits of the MR—and after all, how could any American writer schooled in an MFA or Ph.D. writing program not to some extent internalize the ideas of genius, authenticity, and old-style creationism internally programmed into the system?—also represent a new genus of the literary scene[3].

Defining characteristics: The YT lives online, perhaps not to the extent of the zapped-into-the-screen absurdity of Jeff Bridges in Tron, but the YT sees writing-as-networking, using new-media as an extension of the page, networking to the point where networking disappears and becomes something else: “living.” The YT has at least 1500 Facebook “friends,” can expect “likes” or comments in the dozens for postings on the order of “I’ve just had lunch” or “It’s on” or “Just finished writing a short story” and “The universe,” ad infinitum. The YT probably writes for a collaborative literary site such as BigOther, HTMLgiant, The Rumpus, The Nervous Breakdown (yes, I write for two of these), etc; the YT carries a smart phone and is live tweeting while reading this article; the YT’s website is miminalist and sharp, easy to navigate and positively airy (compared to the accomplishment-thick website of the MR, redolent in garish colors); the YT will respond to emails anytime of the day and generally until 2-3 am; the YT, despite being a publishing writer for less than three years, knows more people than the MR: the YT has published 100 or so creative pieces in journals edited by other YTs (whereas the MR has published 12 stories over her long career, and only in the “best” lit mags); the YT enjoys going to AWP and participates in bar readings that last 7 hours with a cast of thousands (each reader has 38 seconds to perform); the YT would love to teach or get a tenure-track academic job, and some do), while the others look to break into this work, which many MR’s have long-ago conquered only to be then defeated by the byzantine minutiae of administrative politics, committee meetings straight out of Dante, and a loathing of student papers that makes 1984’s Winston’s rat-fear seem like a soft phobia on the order of disliking wax beans.

 

3. The Ante is What? OK, I’m In (Cris)

Troubled by events where I felt overshadowed by not just humor, but something bigger than humor, I had various email exchanges with other writers. Some noteworthy comments and responses:

#1 But if you’re reading with 4 other people, it helps to stand out.

#2 … if we want to stand out, we have to stand out. Plain and simple. The work itself matters first, of course, but the quality or distinction of the work won’t “sell” the work, necessarily. So maybe just maybe, the …  public perception of a certain image or persona or personality or crazy multipronged marketing party-plan that’s somehow both honest and original could do the job. And that means something about it has to be radically different from the pack. That’s partly why I’m all into the transmedia/freakshow angle for [TITLE OF BOOK].

#3 This is offensive. It means that a group reading isn’t about experiencing different voices, different aesthetics. It means that it’s about competition, of one-upping, of being the “best of the bunch.” Which translates into book sales.

 Me: Like in high school, whether we knew it or not, whether we were aware of it or not, or whether we actually received the advice directly or not, there was an underlying understanding that boys wouldn’t like girls who were pensive and smart or who looked serious and intellectual, or worse yet, somber, gloomy, reclusive, or a snob (i.e. shy). Back then, I got labeled “the sad girl.” Is this like that? The bubbly, effervescent girls will succeed as writers too?

#4 Vivacious for girls, yes; however, for guys one option is the smarty-pantsiosity that becomes the know-betterism—a kind of unequal equal of muscle. I try to be clever and fun and instructive and usually end up also being fairly emotional (two of the poems I’ll read are about suicided friends of mine, and another is for my dead sister—though none is angsty). I have seen you be amused if not amusing at events here, but I want to know your thoughts on giving oneself permission to not be so amusing or clever and smarty-pants-ish.

How could I hope to express anything about this better than #4? (So … would I want to read with him? Well, I did once. Almost 3 decades ago. I’ll get to that. )

 

4. Are we even playing cards? Doesn’t matter. (Davis)

Some of my (recent) shameless reading gimmicks: A 100-foot rope threaded through the audience and clipped to my belt and then you-the-audience pull me pull me pull me and I pull back while I read; forgetting the rope and so asking audience members—six eager writing students—to push me or try to steal my text as I read and they chase me and I run and jump around the room; strobe lights set to the alpha-wave frequency and you listen with eyes closed while I read and, hopefully. you see stuff; shouting; dressing as a mime to read from my novel BLANK, a largely blank novel; pouring water all over Lidia Yuknavitch with you, Cris, as you and Lidia did the same to me; using Google Earth to geo-locate texts during a “Neighborhoods” Chicago Reading at the Chicago Cultural Center.

The last two, Cris, were more or less your ideas.[4] This proves that you are willing to jump into this strange pool of standing-out self promotion even if you want to be the quiet Svengali in the background and let others figure out how to do it, but that’s not exactly true because you even brought the pool to our reading with Lidia and a tarp to protect the floor of the gallery and this was damn thoughtful and then you laughed with everyone and you were in on the joke and you so thoughtfully left the pool at a bus stop in Chicago.

We went out for drinks and dessert afterward with the organizers of the Red Rover series and some of audience members—including the couple who drove over 100 miles to see us dump water on each other—and we basked in the afterglow of the deed itself and sounded pleased when we heard about the photos and the videos and the way this would not be merely an afterglow but have an afterlife beyond this table, this story, these people—and so live on forever and ever amen.

How would the pure MR respond to such tasteless gimmickry? With disdain (perhaps tinged with jealousy.)

How would the YT respond? By exploiting the event online in a much-more-effective manner than either of us are capable of doing.

Let’s take the example of the videos and photos of the Red Rover water-experiment.

Before the event: Jen Karmin and Laura Goldstein, the Red Rover organizers, insert us into the schedule and prepare their email announcement. I don’t know about you or Lidia, but I invite a few Chicago folks.

The event itself: You and Lidia meet at a coffee shop in Bucktown and I’m not sure I can even make the thing because my father, in his firth-year of advanced brain cancer, sits thick with a bacterial infection in the hospital. The day before, he shakes for a four-hour period in an advanced fever state. He tells my mother in a fit of delirium, “It’s because of Kennedy and Castro. That’s why I’m sick…” He takes a turn for the non-feverish and I truck down to Chicago from a northern suburb.

The three of us meet, laugh, and plan out the general water pattern of the event. We are three deeply wounded people. Maybe. Or not. We go out to dinner and talk more about mutual acquaintances in the avant-writing world. We leave for the event, and I arrive five minutes later, since we are only three blocks away. You drive with Lidia and somehow get lost and I panic and call and text both of you over and over while assuring the kind organizers that you are both on your way. I stand outside the venue, a nondescript third-floor walk up gallery space in Wicker Park, and discover you, standing in a trance state, lost, holding the kiddie pool. We move into the space and lose our breath walking up the stairs. We do the water thing.

We submerge ourselves.

After the event: Aside from the aforementioned dinner, there is documentation. A series of photos and a few videos appear on Facebook. People comment and then it all fades away.

What else have we done with this? Nothing. We are failed YTs.

Except in this essay.

We live forever now.

 

 5. Will You Do It For 10-Cents?

Whadda-ya Think I Am?

We’ve Already Established That, Now We’re Haggling Over a Price[5] (Cris)

Either it started to rub off on me, literary Darwinism took hold, or I’m turning into a conceptual reader (or book-promotion werewolf) and just don’t know it. I had some unfortunate (or advantageous, depending on who you’re asking) big ideas. Honest, I was joking. I was trying to survive.

In one, four writers from the Chicago area were going to stand on various places on a city map, drawn or projected onto the floor, and read pieces depicting some aura of their corner of the city. Whew, good thing no one could figure out how to draw the map. I’m from California and didn’t have anything to read from the exurbs of Chicagoland where I now live, and yet the bright idea was mine.

In another recent event, three of us are supposed to read from books that by some means involve water, while sitting in a filled plastic child’s wading pool. This possibly brings body image into the competitive mix, as in: if you’re not funny, maybe you look good in a speedo. Or maybe we’ll reduce this idea to squirt guns (supplied to the audience). I have to remind myself, stop having these reckless ideas. The water imagery in Waterbaby was never meant to be funny, irreverent or snarky. It was supposed to be Alice Munro’s “gray, deep, baleful, magnificent sea.” (Is this like disgraced former Illinois governor Rod Blagojevich comparing himself to Gandhi?[6] Dan Quayle comparing himself to JFK?[7] I’ll say it first, Mazza, you’re no Alice Munro.) But is this idea akin to having Rosanne Barr read (perform) Alice Munro?

No, my fellow readers at these events are not caricatures, not clowns (at least not yet), not avatars. We meet before events to have (usually) sushi or Thai food, laugh over past events where the audience numbered one or two (and one of those had wandered into the wrong room then left after the first reader), then each of us turn our backs halfway to call home and tell someone there we love them. Real people with pathos, needs, fears and hope. Or is it hope and fears. Or is it just plain anxiety?

 

6.  Will You Do It For Nothing? Then you’ve already won! (Davis)

A farm boy follows a rainbow to its end within a ancient forest, and finds, to his delight, a small leprechaun with red-hair stuffed under his garnet-green hat. The leprechaun guards—no surprises—an overflowing pot of gold, fat with bullion.

I’m taking the gold, says the boy, because I found you here, at the end of everything.

Right is right. Take whatever you can carry, me boyo.

The boy stuffs his pockets with bullion, tucks in his shirt and proceeds to dump coins down his collar. He’s lousy with the stuff. And the gold weighs him down with an absurd flourish. Jupiter gravity. Pancake flat.

Too greedy, me boyo. Leave some gold here. Yer’ sure to be rich still with just a few pieces of me coin.

Your whole pot-o-gold is mine by rights, and I’ll get a wheelbarrow to take all the gold.

Listen to me, boyo, take what you can now, and you’ll be happy fat rich.

The boy wants it all, though, and convinces the magic leprechaun to tie a green ribbon around the tree so he can find the gold and the leprechaun again.

There, around an ancient oak, the leprechaun stands, misty eyed, as the boy tromps out the gate of the forest toward his small farm, away from the faded rainbow.

The stakes are so low in the world of the small press that they are at the same time absurdly high. In the same way that one can be so far to the left that she can come out on the right. In the way that the singer can be so avant, so non-authoritative, so Duchamp-like in her contortions and arabesques and willful un-marketability, that she comes out with the scarlet A: Author.

Author.

Author.

 

7. Not funny or all that clever, but maybe the original smarty-pantsiosity: a brief history of my readings (Cris)

So, that reading I referred to, almost 30 years ago. It was my first reading, paired with two poets, two of us graduate students, one a talented undergrad (now a published avant-garde poet). I chose a story where a forestry worker, sexually abused by a dirt-biker who’s ripping up the wilderness serenity, responds with frenzied superhuman anger, dams up the river and watches as the stranded fish “waited for someone to put them back into the water.” I chose to supplement my reading with a simultaneous slide show of tranquil home photographs of my siblings, as children, fishing in our beloved Sierras. My two peers simply read their work. What did they think of my show-offy special effects? Perhaps they were secretly glad that the slide projector jammed and several of the pictures only showed up halfway on the screen.

Six years later I was writer-in-residence at a public university in Tennessee, and began my reading there with a story about a dog-trainer’s obsessive interest in a Marine taking dog-obedience classes from her, and I read dressed in a student’s cammo Army fatigues. For the story that followed, I shed the uniform right there on stage, down to the black leggings and T-shirt I’d worn underneath. Amusing or clever—that can be debated—but smarty-pants-ish in a very literal way. At least I was reading alone, but still two decades ago, I had the notion that the event should be something beyond the words I had written read aloud.

After that I became more of a “straight reader,” (as well as the straight man for whomever was reading with me) except when I toured for my 1998 novel, Dog People, and perched my obedience-trial champion Shetland sheepdog on a director’s chair beside me. No tricks: all she did was sit there without attempting to leave. This encouraged many questions from the audience: mostly about how to get dogs to behave better at home. If I’d been touring with a dog-training manual, I might have become the dog-whisperer before Cesar Millan got there first. (Make no mistake, he deserves his title, a superior trainer, and never lies to his dogs, although he hides the electric collar and transmitter from the TV camera).

In the late ‘90s a group of writers associated with independent, innovative presses planned to read together to celebrate Banned Books Week. I thought we discussed what we would read: material that might have been banned in previous eras. So the reading happened, and I read a very short story titled “Hesitation,” from my collection Former Virgin. I vaguely noticed that other pieces being read didn’t seem to fit the “would have been banned in previous eras” theme. After the reading, the authors sat in the reading space, in chairs around the perimeter, and the audience circulated, bringing books to be signed, asking questions, expressing their pleasure or appreciation for the piece an author had read. Not one soul talked to me or brought a book to be signed. When anyone came to talk to the writer I was sitting beside, they did not look at me. To this day I don’t understand what happened or what code I broke.

 

8. The Code (or Writing as Data) (Davis)

Winded, the boy returns to his farm and keeps away from the questioning looks of his older brother whipping a scythe through a handful of wheat. The boy makes for the barn. In his eye, the barn may be already on fire; he must be of fleet-foot.

Pulling the wheelbarrow from the corner and dumping its load of fresh, steaming cow dung onto a pile of ragged hey, the boy runs back across the field and past his brother whose eye tears in the wind. The boy streams past the farmhouse and back into the entrance to the woods and through the path he just came pushing the wheelbarrow over knotted roots. He becomes a mouse returning through a lab maze to exactly, precisely, the spot where the leprechaun should be. There, as planned, hangs the green ribbon around the oak.

A fat, emerald bow.

Come out, leprechaun, I’m back with the wheelbarrow and aim to take your entire pot-of-gold.

The boy searches around the tree. No leprechaun.

He falls to knees, crying, traces of shit steaming from the wheelbarrow.

Every tree in the forest, were he to look up from his sorrow, stands marked with a garnet knot.

The pot-of-gold is not so much the book or the book deal, of course, as the sustainable “career” within the industry, also called the book business. Authors who operate in even a vaguely innovative or indie forest become conditioned to desire the pot of gold, but the trouble is their inability to locate or agree upon the nature of the “rainbow” the “ribbon” the “leprechaun” or the “gold.”

For the Modern Romantic, the rainbow spectrum meanders circuitously through thickets and brambles and glens and patches of poison sumac and the tortuous ambiguities of the writing life—the isolation, the static of non-writing life always threatening to interfere with and perhaps inflect or overwhelm the act of artistic creation—this leads toward not so much wealth as the frustration of losing the impossible to pinpoint pot-of-gold.

For the Young Turk, the path is to forget the forest and the leprechaun and the pot-of-gold and simply recreate new versions of these things, each moment, on Facebook and Twitter and in the data-sphere where it’s not so much about the object itself as it is about the discussion surrounding the object. For many YTs, there is no object at all in the sense that the MR supposes.

The pot-of-gold is simply the story’s method of recreating itself.

 

9. The literalized metaphor (Cris)

I once gave an unremarkable reading at a small conference for experimental fiction. I believe it had a fancier name than that. I sat in attendance for some of the “papers” also being presented. One was in the form of critifiction,[8] which at the time I understood to be literary criticism written in the form of narrative using familiar techniques of fiction (dialogue, character, conflict) etc. The same presenter would, in the next year or so, do a critifictional piece on one of my novels, with a literary critic narrator who has just been diagnosed with cancer while teaching this novel, so the critifictional narrative parallels his personal conflicts with class discussions on the novel. (The same critic died from cancer about 6 years later). The other presentation I remember was called “Writing on the Body,” and while I realized the meaning of the word “on” would be tooled, I was amusedly surprised (not aghast) that the mode of presentation included posing an undergraduate female on a dais, undressing her, and writing on her body. Another literalized metaphor in action. As is frequently my experience, I didn’t understand the philosophy or theory being illustrated with the literalized metaphor, but I do, these many years later, still remember the presentation. So perhaps this is the allegory for some of the “readings” I have helped plan and am still am facing pending participation. I remember she had a dog there, but don’t remember which novel she was reading from. I remember she was sitting in a pool of water but don’t remember the title of the novel.

 

10. The de-literalized metaphor/ the end of the book (Davis)

We don’t remember much of the past, really, and even less details from a reading we might attend. Ten years out from the best reading we’ve ever experienced—the most effective literary tour-de-force, gimmick free—will we recall the name of the book, the name of the author, a line that turned us on and for a moment cut into the stream of our wandering mind? On some level, the act of reading functions within the same paradox: reading Kierkegaard’s Fear and Trembling is no different than reading a well-crafted summary of Fear and Trembling once the endless march of time has steamrolled over the old-growth forest.

Certainly, the best books that stay with us—for me, recently, Steve Tomasula’s VAS: An Opera in Flatland, or Proust’s A La Recherché du Temps Perdu, which I recently finished for the second time—being two of the most memorable—becomes books that become experiences. Books that interface with our lives and our obsessions in some way that moves beyond the books themselves.

Tomasula’s, the more recent, epitomizes a move toward the non-book. VAS gestures to the network rather than the stream. This is a roman-glitch rather than roman-fleuve. To enter into discussion with VAS is to let go of your notions of the book almost completely.

Proust, the elder, by sheer virtue of its length and the time-commitment it takes to finish the damn thing, stands out in the way that we encounter a Modernist idea of mastery. We read such texts from start to finish and invest ourselves in their procession because we have no choice but to on some level internalize their aspects in order to finish. If you’ve just moved through Heidegger’s Being and Time or Joyce’s Ulysses or insert-title-of-massive-tome here…well, if you can’t get with the thing on some level then it’s been a colossal waste of your life. Sucker. It doesn’t matter if you’ve understood Heidegger or Joyce or read very word or skimmed or let your mind wander or whatever. You’ve finished. You mastered in. You’ve found a leprechaun. Congratulations!

Just try to find him again.

 

10. What If I Was Sitting in a Pool of Metaphoric Quicksand? (Cris)

This whole contemplation began when I was given the semi-solicited advice[9] I quoted at the start, including: “I know it’s very hard to give a shit about literary stuff, or to have optimism or ‘illusions,’ when one’s personal life and psyche have been in an uproar.”

Part of my “failure” to properly pursue promotion for my 2009 collection of fictions was a personal crisis and the darkness that lingered. I had a new book, yet I spent an inordinate amount of time lying on the floor of my study, not caring about anything.[10] I knew I had to do better in 2011. But among other personal dilemmas the literary world doesn’t care about, it seems my own life also caused me to not properly pay sufficient attention to others’ private lives. If this seems paradoxical, it’s because it is.

Author book-promotion includes (but is not limited to), readings—of course—but also class visits, interviews, blog appearances, book blurbs, writing reviews, etc., which we (most of us) earnestly try to keep from seeming to be quid-pro-quo[11].

We all know we’re supposed to contribute, heavily, to the publicity of our books. But the word self-promotion is still nasty. Some group blog sites have rules for posts: no self-promotion. We filter the most egregious self-promoters off our Facebook feeds. We don’t admit this. We’re caught in the middle, pretending not to be talking about our books while we’re talking about them. We don’t admit this. Whereas it used to be a book itself might create an “industry buzz” (often with the help of an agent or publisher), now instead the key is to “build a platform,” and spend time networking. We don’t admit this. And we’re all networking among other people networking for the same purpose—and, if lucky (no, it’s not luck, but we don’t admit what it really is), will become an internet or blogosphere darling, or will say or do something that goes viral. The marriage of these euphemisms would be: book publicity now requires that one become an internet virus. [12]

… or a trained bear.

San Diego Zoo, circa 1970: Chester is an Alaskan brown bear. He lives in a formerly progressive enclosure (without bars), with a pool for cooling off, a tree trunk (chained to the ground) for scratching or rolling around, and a cave if he absolutely positively had to go hide somewhere. But Chester didn’t hide because the tour buses came around every 20 minutes or so. The bus stops alongside Chester’s enclosure, and Chester is already ambling toward center stage, while the straight-man bus-driver begins the shtick.

Driver: Here we have our Alaskan brown bear, also known as a Kodiak brown bear or grizzly bear. Hello there Chester, can you show your guests how big an Alaskan brown bear is?

Chester stands on his hind feet, just on the other side of his moat.

Driver: The largest subspecies of the brown bear, Alaskan brown bears grow up to 1700 pounds, due to their rich diet of salmon. Give a San Diego Zoo greeting to these fine guests.

Chester raises his paw.

Driver: Brown bears also live inland, mostly in the Rocky Mountains, where their habitat has shrunk due to pressure from vacationeers and huntering. Chester, show us where you put the hunter.

Chester pats his stomach.

Now, the driver, at the same time he revs the engine to move on, frisbees a slice of wonderbread into the enclosure. Chester returns to all four feet, ambles to the bread and eats it. If the spectators are lucky, the bread may have landed in the middle of the pool, so Chester would slide in, suck the soggy dough into his mouth, then leave the water.

I remember Chester, that he was a Kodiak brown bear, a different, larger species than black bears. I remember that the San Diego Zoo pioneered cageless enclosures and Chester’s was one of the originals. I live in a society and culture where I remember these things because Chester put the hunter in his tummy then went to eat a slice of wonder bread.

 

11. Sounds Bytes that Speak to and Around the Key Questions of This Reading Experience. (Davis)

1. William S. Burroughs: Language is a virus.
2. Davis Schneiderman: Language is a virus.
3. The author-as-quipper must speak in the form of gregariousness that takes content to be a secondary function.
4. Content only works in so much as it serves the larger form of the communicative function.
5. Here. At a reading. Online…The message remains the same: look at the clever way in which I am participating in this game of authorship.
6. It’s not so much notice me, notice me, notice me, as look how competently I speak within the rules of the available speech act.
7. The source of the agon is that the rules are changing: time was, pre-internet, when the sole publicity duties of the author consisted of personal appearances at readings—and, thus, the events became one-of-a-kind moments, with little cyber-baggage to inflect the performance space.
8. Now, the event itself is secondary to its continued contextualization in the cyber-realm, and so, since everyone and anyone can comment and participate in these streams, each author who participates, even at the entry level in the game, begins to bark and bark and bark.
9. Put another way, it’s not the bark-as-message but bark-as-bark.
10. Bow wow.

 12. Of Course Eventually, Davis, You Quote Burroughs and I Don’t Understand (Cris)

 Instead I’ll quote Laura Miller of Salon.com:

People become writers because they’re introverted or awkward in personal encounters and have poured everything they want to say to the world into their work. What usually gets lost in the perpetual refrain about authors becoming their own marketers is that there’s no particular connection between writing talent and a gift for self-promotion.

I majored in journalism and never spent a day as a journalist because I didn’t want to go out and talk to people. I have spent more than a few days in a row, on more than a few occasions, without getting dressed and leaving the house—because I didn’t “have to,” so why would I want to? I decided to live almost 50 miles away from the campus in downtown Chicago where I teach. I have started four sentences in a row with “I” because I am sitting alone in my study and have not talked to another soul in-person today. I want to hug Laura Miller for understanding.

And yet, it won’t bail a teacup of the tide of change that occurred (and continues) my first book appeared in 1989 and People magazine called me to ask for a photo for a review (which never ran).

Despite my apparently hypocritical history in this matrix of production-for-producers, where the emphasis is “on being a writer, not the writing itself,”[13] I am sad … and tired.

 

Chester RIP

May your species live in natural dignity.  It’s too late for mine.

 

 

Credits:

Photo of Davis bound and gagged courtesy of Andi Olsen.

Photo of the “water reading” by Melanie Page

Photo of Cris Mazza reading with her dog by James Comunale

Photo of Chester by Cris Mazza

 

Cris Mazza has authored sixteen books, most recently Various Men Who Knew Us as Girls, a novel.  Her other fiction titles include Waterbaby, Trickle-Down Timeline, and Is It Sexual Harassment Yet?  In 1995 & 1996, Mazza was co-editor for the original Chick-Lit anthologies: Chick-Lit: Postfeminist Fiction, and Chick-Lit 2: No Chick Vics.  In 2006, her essay “Who’s Laughing Now: Chick Lit and the Perversion of a Genre,” explaining the co-opting and corrosion of the title, appeared in Poets & Writers Magazine.  In addition to fiction, Mazza also has published a memoir, Indigenous: Growing Up Californian, and has another hybrid memoir, Something Wrong With Her, forthcoming from Jadid Ibis Press.  A native of Southern California, Mazza grew up in San Diego County.  She currently lives 50 miles west of Chicago and is a professor in the Program for Writers at the University of Illinois at Chicago.  She can be found online at www.cris-mazza.com.

 

Davis Schneiderman‘s bio is below.

 

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You’re So Hot I Want to Eat Your Underwear

Right when we got into the store I realized I forgot my phone in the car. On my way back to the car I noticed a good looking woman getting out of her car which was parked next to mine. She opened her trunk and started shuffling things around, her perfume moving through the parking lot. By the time you’ve reach my advanced age there’s no reason to gawk when you see something pleasant. You’ve seen thousands of good looking women in your day.

It’s not a big deal.

Not anymore.

I was walking behind her when I noticed this old feller sitting in his truck that had a faded NRA sticker on his back window. He saw the woman and his eyes bugged out of his head. He wasn’t discrete and ran his ancient eyes up and down her body. When she got to the side of his truck he used his side mirror to get some more. When she got to the other side of his truck he used the passenger side mirror to get even more. He still wasn’t satisfied and got out of his truck, lifted the hood, and acted like he was fiddle-faddling with the engine so he could watch her enter the store. The fucker shook his head in amazement and licked his lips.

No lie.

He licked his lips.

It was both sick and terribly sad.

I wanted to blow his dick off with a shotgun. I wanted to light an M-80 and tape it to his jerk-off hand. I found my friend who was looking at a painting with a pig jumping into a lake. I told her what I saw.

“Really?” she said, looking at me like if I lost my mind. “Poor old man. He probably has some bitchy wrinkled wife at home. If that’s the case you can’t blame him, right? Don’t get too disgusted, babe. That’s gonna be your ass in a few years.”

Nino’s Shit Pie

I like watching food shows. After spending too many years in the restaurant business I came to appreciate the art of cooking. At one point I even contemplated going to culinary school, but the thought of being around packs of bitchy whiny “chefs” for even ten minutes depressed me. So, I ditched the idea and got an English degree. Can’t say it was a better decision. I was still surrounded by bitchy whiny people. The only difference was I didn’t reek of poached eggs and sea bass when the day was done. I reeked of Kafka and Goblin Markets.

The last year I’ve watched a lot of TV. NATGEO. A&E. ESPN. The History Channel. The Food Network. The Travel Channel. I’m hooked on the Travel Channel. I’ve seen everything it dishes out at least twice.

I’ve watched hours of Bizarre Foods with Andrew Zimmern. Zimmern spans the globe eating things most people won’t. Frog hearts. Lamb eyeballs. Balls. Brains. Bugs. Porcupine. Lizards. Tuna sperm. Spiders and snake dick just to name a few. If you can stomach watching Andrew pop disgusting or “exotic” food in his gaping mouth (he actually does “pop” the food in his mouth and smacks when he chews), and the sight of a fat bald American wearing pastel-colored shirts then this show’s for you.

I’m a big fan of Anthony Bourdain’s No Reservations. He’s a lush, a jackass, and a pretty good writer. It seems to me that people either love or hate him. He doesn’t wear pastel-colored shirts, but sports equally ugly button shirts, wiry gray hair, scuffed boots, and a lone earring in his left ear. Really, Bourdain? One earring in your left ear? Are we still doing the left-ear-I’m-straight thing? Jesus Christ. Throw that shit away. Or give it to your niece.

I don’t care much for Rachel Ray. Too cheesy. When she hits the tube I tune into ESPN and watch the always bitter Skip Bayless defend white athletes and stir it up on First and Ten.

I like Samantha Brown, but I don’t watch her show much. I think it’s because she looks like a girl I once dated. The apparent differences are that Samantha has a pleasant disposition, smiles, travels the world, and doesn’t have a thing for wearing fuck me boots.

I’ve seen every episode of Man v. Food. Yeah, I know, the show is stupid. But I like stupid entertainment. The reasons why I like Mike Myers films are the same reasons why I can sit through hours watching Adam Richman eating giant burritos and burgers. I’ve seen him go from a husky dude from New York to a bloated dude from New York. According to Wikipedia he exercises twice a day while on the road. I doubt it. If you like cheap surface entertainment then check out Man v. Food. It’s awesome.

There are other shows.

Food Wars (hosted by a pretty girl named Camille Ford).

Carnivore Chronicles.

Hot Dog Paradise.

Bacon Paradise.

So on and so forth.

One day I saw a special on pizza. It was called Pizza Paradise. The show went across the country showcasing the best pizza in the land. Now, I don’t come from N.Y or Chicago so pizza is just pizza to me. Meat, cheese, and sauce slapped on some cardboard. Chuck on some veggies for some color and there you go: pizza.

So I was floored when some tacky jerk-off named Nino Selimaj of Nino’s Bellissima sold a 12-inch pizza that costs $1,000. Yes, you heard right: $1,000! But you won’t get greasy Italian meats and diced veggies on this pizza. Lord no. This silly asshole plops down caviar and thinly sliced lobster on his pizza. But wait! Not only do you have the luxury of shelling out $1,000 and sinking your choppers into what appears to be a really shitty-tasting pizza, but Nino himself (decked out in a suit, oily slicked back hair, and tanned wrists wrapped in mafia gold) will deliver his pizza to you in person!

Oh, joy.

Really, Nino? Will you do that for me?

Fuck.

To say that life is absurd is a common thing and a seemingly-radical declaration. Instead, absurdism proves a surrender. There is nothing absurd about this world. Everything has been designed with the utmost precision. That design, reasonable yet criminal, may very well be experienced as absurd, and that absurdity can be located in the blueprints, scripts and testaments. But to accept this projected absurdity as reality is to literally lay down our arms, destroy our weapons, and self-amputate our limbs, until we cannot even write in our defense.

Let us look at this “absurd” world. Capitalism has been deemed eternally victorious, but what is the nature of that victory? Most Americans know a small percentage of the U.S. population controls the majority of U.S. wealth and power. What about the planet? What has globalization done for the world? According to a study of global wealth distribution published by Zero Hedge, “Figures for mid-2010 indicate that 24.2 million adults are above the threshold for dollar millionaires. While they make up less than 1% of the global adult population, they own more than a third of global household wealth.”

Again the one percent. A global aristocracy, a gilded class, long past the death of communism, or so it believes. It cannot be predicted how long the trend towards malaise will prevent the “average person” from reacting to such undisguised exploitation. The only mask capitalism wears is that of “democracy,” which the latest American election has proven worse than a failed comedy: It’s not even so unfunny as to be funny. Capitalism is an endless succession of failed sequels to such failed comedies. As in film, only a few directors can be held accountable: approximately one percent of the world’s population. Yet people stream to the sequels like salmon, driven in a quasi-biological manner. Their “world” and their actions in that “world” are the result of the most intelligent design.

We “live” amongst the props and sets of a constantly-projected series of farces. This projected “world” may seem “absurd” to us, but the directors are realists. Further, there is nothing they love more than for their projections to be interpreted as “absurd.” This renders those projections impenetrable and beyond attack, for how can one understand or attack the absurd? Camus provided the answer. Unfortunately, only his suicide was absurd, and how well his death served the realists. Otherwise, the films are taken at face value: “This is how the world is.” In that case, absurdism gives way to “acceptance” of “life” as it “is,” a “spiritual” reaffirmation of the fantasy presented to us as reality. In burning such incense, we smelt nonsense into “sense,” call it “faith,” and, if feeling Tertullianesque, “Credo quia absurdum.”

In this projection we live, “absurdity” is a seductive description of “life,” but “life” is not the same as life. All we know is “life.” Capitalism creates “life” as we know it. The creation of that “life” is utterly reasonable: It serves the interests of those who create it. Our “lives” are the product of creative design, and that creative design embraces money but will also accept worship. We must grasp that our “lives” cannot be understood even as “lives” until we understand that we “live” on a set, under a director’s command, acting according to scripted plots and utterly-predictable narratives that we have interpreted as “real life.” In comparison to that “real life,” how hollow our “lives” seem. Whichever reaction we experience, a kind of environmental film becomes the life to our “life.” To understand the difference between “life” and life, one must accept what Alain Badious states: “It is not the film that is the real: it is the cinema.” The cinema with its stains of butter and chocolate raisins. That is real. That is life. Why would we want it?

When we realize we don’t, we seek a solution. Typically, we think something must be wrong with us. We experience sudden-onset anxiety attacks and depression. These are symptoms of awareness, repressions realized but unbearable in their realization. We visit a psychiatrist and return to our “lives” with renewed hope that we will one day go to film school, become a director and join the one percent. Alternatively, our medications fail and we surrender to the notion that life is “absurd.” In the former case, we have been “saved,” and in the latter case we have been “damned.” Thus has Christianity been absorbed by capitalism. Heaven is for producers, hell for surplus labor. Yet heaven and hell are but two more projected fantasies. The “saved” have been drugged back into the endurable delusion called “life,” while the damned have come close to realizing that “life” is not life but understandably cannot bear to think that all their suffering has been caused not by a wrathful yet ultimately-forgiving god but rather upon entirely-reasonable people with entirely-reasonable goals.

The problem is clear. Wants and needs, once “fulfilled,” do not fulfill our wants and needs; we have been scripted to act as though we want what we are wanted and need what we are needed to need. Fulfilling invented wants and needs has become the entirety of everyday “life.” That “life” is nothing but consumption and excretion, with “spring cleaning” our annual festival of product disposal…to make room for more products.

We are not yet culpable. We act according to script, but the script is presented as though holy. That is why Christianity, willingly or not, serves capitalism so well. As Henri Lefebvre wrote, “More ambitious, more remote than the means, the aim is to change life, lucidly to recreate life. This is the exact opposite of the aim and the essence of religion.” Capitalism itself is a religion based upon faith in the “invisible hand” of the marketplace. But the hand is visible. The hand is human. One percent of the population has such a hand in our affairs…yes, even our love affairs, dominated by expectations we absorb without even knowing it. The capitalist faith, like all others, is merely the Klieg light that enshrouds the true goal: social control. But if one accesses the testament, its editing and proofreading become obvious. The “invisible hand” of “God” is entirely visible and human as it continuously revises our new global faith.

How then shall we live rather than “live”? That is the question of our times for all but one percent of the population. They, too, may “live” rather than live, but they do so with the pleasures of power and the means of escaping their own sickening cinema. Look about you. What do you see? I see desolation on the march, the return of the homeless, another sequel. I see the avenues even in New York City begin to resemble avenues in any other city, with the exception of Broadway, prettier cinemas yet sordid nonetheless with their “musicals” sheered of anything that might be called music except by the deaf. The state in which I “live” — for I, too, cannot be said to live — is Florida, a statewide resort and bloodless concentration camp for the retired, otherwise dotted with the usual closing businesses, except, oddly, mattress stores. Never have I seen so many mattress stores. Apparently, many have chosen to sleep away their “existences” here. They don’t miss much.

Better to dream, etc., but no, not to dream: We have too many dreams. REM long ago bled into our waking hours. Instead of dreaming upon dreams, we must penetrate the dreamworld presented to us as reality. This is our project. We must locate the reality behind the mist of projections, and then we must change it. We must destroy the cameras, sets, screens, and, yes, directors. Our everyday lives, as Lefebvre so often states, must become wondrous in themselves, so that we no longer need purchase wonders that reveal their true nature upon opening the box that contains them: Pandora’s Box.

Bruce Chatwin held that there are two categories of writers, “the ones who ‘dig in’ and the ones who move.” He observed: “There are writers who can only function ‘at home’, with the right chair, the shelves of dictionaries and encyclopaedias, and now perhaps the word processor. And there are those, like myself, who are paralyzed by ‘home’, for whom home is synonymous with the proverbial writer’s block, and who believe naïvely that all would be well if only they were somewhere else.” I like this notion, but have no opinion about its veracity. I do, however, hold that when I read Chatwin I can detect the shuffle of his restless feet traversing ancient causeways, just as, when I read Melville, I smell salt air.

One would think that we might better know the writers who “dig in” than those who “move.” That is to say, we can picture them at their desks, in their studies, working. Proust’s cork-lined room and the bed in which he composed his masterpiece affords one an imaginative notion of the writer’s interior world, if not the creative effort itself. Once, while in London, traipsing around Bloomsbury, I sought out Virginia Woolf’s home. The expected brass plate confirmed the find. But the house is not open to the public, and is now converted office space. I was reduced to peering in through a barred street window. There were fax machines and furniture, a woman in a beige sweater pounding away on a computer and the flurry of activity one associates with commerce. I tried to imagine Mrs. Woolf there but failed–a “dug in” writer who slipped through my fingers. The failure was particularly poignant in that she had so famously observed, “A woman is to have money and a room of her own if she is to write fiction.” Likewise, I once made an effort to find Gertrude Stein’s Paris house, her salon at 27 rue de Fleurus, the place shared with Alice B. Tolkas. Stein called Alice “Pussy” and Gertrude was “Lovey.” Also not open to the public. There is that awful scene in A Moveable Feast, where the young Hemingway, standing in the foyer of Miss Stein’s house, overhears her upstairs: “Then Miss Stein’s voice came pleading and begging, saying, ‘Don’t, pussy. Don’t. Don’t. Please don’t. I’ll do anything, pussy, but please don’t do it. Please don’t. Please don’t, pussy.’” She was dead eighteen years when Hemingway’s memoir of Paris and being hungry was published–”But this is how Paris was in the early days when we were very poor and very happy.” Of his writing, Miss Stein said, “Hemingway’s remarks are not literature.” I did not so much think of that passage while standing at the front door, as feel the lapsed presence of so many with such promise, Gertrude’s lost generation. Hemingway, likewise, is nowhere to be found at his Key West home, despite its well-preserved museum condition. I suspect his spirit has been trampled by the hoards of tourists over the years. Papa too was plagued by their presence and had bricks shipped from Baltimore, where they’d been taken up from newly paved streets, to construct a wall around the place, protecting his privacy.

I went to Prague seeking Kafka, but he too had disappeared. The City of a Thousand Spires, however, remained true to a fashion and I gave myself to its dark alleys and endless cobblestone streets while intoning the spirit of the writer–”Prague doesn’t let go.”– who, perhaps more than any other, ushered us into the modern era. Though Prague invites an exercise of such transmutations, to this pilgrim the city is more given to music. Smetana and Dvorak are easier to find than the man of The Castle. I do not think this unusual as music, once released abides ripe in the atmosphere, whereas the written word must be sought out.

The spirit of Joyce is to be found in Dublin, though ironically he wrote in self-exile. Thoreau’s cabin at Walden is lost to history, but Emerson’s house in Concord remains and it is easy to imagine the great man dug in, to use Chatwin’s phrase, surrounded by his books and working intently.

All this is a way of working round back to Chatwin’s observation, that there are writers who dig in and writers who move. I did not find the writers I sought. The men and women who had dug in did not remain, but for the Sage of Concord. Even in my home town of Portland, Maine, the spirit of Longfellow is not found at his restored museum-home, but rather at the outlook at Portland Head, Cape Elizabeth, where he would sit and watch the restless ocean break over the granite coast.

The peripatetic writers, the ones who “move,” should elude us, their scent long ago gone extinguished. But instead, perhaps for this very reason, because they did not dig in, they are more ready instruments of the imagination. While traveling through India I came to rest in the village Rohet, in the state of Rajasthan. It was in the garden after a hot day of travel that I sat to rest and opened my Lonely Plant Guide to Rajasthan. Rohet warrants just one short paragraph in the current guide. It is devoted to a brief description of Rohet Garh, a 350 year-old manor, now a heritage hotel. And in that single paragraph one sentence lit me afire. To wit, “Bruce Chatwin wrote The Songlines here.” Parenthetically, the guide offered the room number: 15. I was staying at hotel Rohet Garh. I looked across the garden. A peacock posed against a hedge. Behind the hedge, there were stairs and at the top of the stairs room number fifteen.

I used to find Chatwin a difficult go. I took In Patagonia with me the first time I went to, well, to Patagonia. And although I read it, it did not come easily. I re-read it on a return trip two years later and like many good books it gave up a bit more the next time round. I find his style now welcoming and accessible, lending credence to my observation that there are right times and wrong times to pursue an author.

Chatwin is an interesting study. Known not only for his writing, Chatwin is Chatwin because of the life he carved out and promoted. Like Hemingway, Chatwin was known as much for his peripatetic life as his writing. I find this appealing beyond resistance, as I not so much read a book, as co-construct the reading experience with the writer’s existence. I know this is an inappropriate approach to a “text” in some circles and therefore I do not travel in those circles. That the writing life is as much a curiosity to me as the text is edifying, is a connection I reinforce, not deconstruct.

Room fifteen was occupied the day I arrived. I kept my eye on it and the next morning it was open for cleaning and empty of guests. I crept up the stairs and went in as the maid was changing the bed. It was larger than my room and more elegant and I imagined spending time here, months even. The sun shone in through a large three-paned window. I could do this, I thought, thoroughly kidding myself. I could stay here and forget the world and write and be productive, happy even. “I adore it here,” Chatwin wrote of Rohet. “Lunch yesterday, for example, consisted of a light little bustard curry, a puree of peas, another of aubergine and coriander, yoghurt and a kind of whole-meal bread the size of a potato and baked in ashes. A sadhu with a knotted beard down to his kneecaps has occupied the shrine a stone’s throw from my balcony; and after a few puffs of his ganja I found myself reciting, in Sanskrit, some stanzas of the Bhagavad Gita. I work away for eight hours at a stretch, go for cycle rides in the cool of the evening, and come back to Proust.” I wonder if he was reading Proust in French? As I say, the writer’s life is a great curiosity to me.

“A cool blue study overlooking the garden,” Chatwin wrote to a friend about room fifteen. “A saloon with ancestral portraits. Bedroom giving out onto the terrace. Unbelievably beautiful girls who come with hot water, with real coffee, with papayas, with a mango milkshake. In short, I’m really feeling quite contented. The cold and cough has been hard to shake off. A dry cough always is. But thanks to an ayurvedic cough preparation, it really does seem to be on the wane.”

Chatwin was ill during this stay in India. He would die three years later from complications due to HIV. Songlines was finished north of here, near the Nepal border. I asked the manager if there was anyone around who might remember Chatwin’s stay. “That would be the owner,” he said. The Thakur, I presumed, the Rajasthani gentleman of the Champawat clan, the family upon whom the fiefdom of Rohet had been bestowed in 1622. Regrettably, the gentleman never appeared.

Seeking Chatwin’s footsteps I visited a nearby Bishnoi village the next morning. It was early and the sun was still low on the horizon. The village walls were painted blue. A morning religious ritual, with opium as the instrument of sacrament, was beginning–again. The village elders had already enjoyed one righteous ceremony that morning and were anticipating the next. They ushered me around a wall and begged me to sit. An elder with a short gray beard, welcomed me, pressing his palms together. He had glassy, red-rimmed eyes and sported a Cheshire cat grin. Opium is not smoked here. It is drunk, prepared like coffee. Water is filtered through it, turning it a brown-amber; then it is pored into the palm of the elder. An assistant dips his finger into the liquid and flecks it into the air as an offering to Shiva. The repository palm, brimming with the tea-colored intoxicant, is offered to the pious participants who slurp it from the outstretched hand. It is consumed in a heady ritual, a holy wine, blood of the ubiquitous gods. Repeat as desired. Chatwin was an enthusiastic cultural participant. He sought experience. I encouraged my imagination and pictured him here, in his charismatic splendor, getting high with the locals, returning to his blue room and reading Proust, head spinning. When it came round to my place in the circle, I put away my hesitation—that would be specifically, not the drink, but the vessel, the rust-stained palm of my host—and joined in communion. It takes, I was informed, a couple months before the full benefit of the practice can be appreciated. Benefit? “Why yes. Just look at him,” Rahul, my guide said, pointing to the officiating elder. “He is seventy-two years old.” The man sat cross-legged in his stoned glory looking not a day over sixty. “Opium keeps you young. But of course it is addictive and that is a problem.”

Pascal, in a particularly gloomy mood, said, “All of humanity’s problems stem from man’s inability to sit quietly in a room alone.” I disagree. It is (sometimes) not a problem to leave one’s room, to move. I seek experiences that afford me a connection to things I deem important–connections manifesting a notion of value and worth. Sometimes those experiences are made in my room, reading–but the deeper pathways are created when we move, I believe. That is probably why I seek out the haunts of writers, not just their work, reading being so personally profound an experience. Pursuing the path of those who have gone before affords me a degree of justification in my own pursuits. Chatwin has a line in The Songlines that captures this idea, I think. “My reason for coming to Australia was to try to learn for myself, and not from other men’s books…” It is in the world that experience thickens, making life more savory, like adding a roux to a sauce.

Yes, the world can be presented in the books we read and write from our dug in places. Both moving and digging in afford one the opportunity to learn for one’s self, in fact, to connect. Indeed, I reflect sometimes that if we understood better the connectedness of existence to the world, regardless of how it is garnered, we might all be gods, omniscient and mindful, mixing with the immortals. To this point, I recall reading that with a day of breathing we likely inhale a molecule that had been exhaled by Napoleon—therein lies the proof that we are indeed surrounded, that we walk and we sit among the living and the dead.

Andy Johnson introduced me to Dorothy last year.

Dorothy and I have recently become good friends.

She asked me if I wanted to try speed dating and I agreed.

“At the least, it’ll be an adventure,” she said.

“Or a decent TNB post,” I replied.

On Monday, it was an idea to chuckle at.

On Tuesday, I told her my feet were getting cold and I wasn’t so sure.

But she had already bought her ticket by that point and there was no possible out for me.

Wednesday was pure back-n-forth torture, on both behalves.

“Allright, we’ll go,” she said, “but if it’s lame, we’re outta there.”

Dorothy’s feet got really cold on day of the event (Thursday).

Part of this was due in part to the fact that the bar was named Nietzsche.

In theory, this is a good name for a bar.

In practice, it’s one of those pretentious, “hip” names that signifies nothing in relation to the actual bar.

The front glass of the windows read Nietzsche: Art and Drinks.

If you’re going to try and be creative in naming a bar, name it after a character or concept created by said person and maybe throw some kind of title in front of it:

Baron Übermensch

Señor Zarathustra

It carries much more allure despite the fact that more people will definitely not get it.

Not too far from this bar is another one named Kafka.

(Sigh.)

Dorothy told me that she had used Friendster in the past and thought it was a worthwhile service.

Inside the bar, we were greeted by Robert, the suspicious, British host of the event who insisted on calling himself Roberto.

He handed us our sheets.

He explained how it works:

“Each sex gets a sheet with the other sexes’ names on it. The men will be the movers and the women will be the sitters. After your seven minutes are up, mark a YES, NO or MAYBE next to their name. If you mark a YES and she marks a YES, then you will be put in contact with each other. If either party marks a NO, then no info is exchanged—regardless of what the other person put. If you both mark MAYBE and/or YESes, then the info is offered and you are able to contact each other. Any questions?”

“Where do we get our free drink ticket?”

There were 15 men and 12 women and, as a result, I had to sit the first two rounds out.

Roberto introduced me to a man-eating, blond German tree who just happened to be there supporting her friends but not participating.

She was an interpreter that spoke grammatically perfect Spanish with a portly accent.

She’d been in Spain for 18 years.

“¿De qué parte eres de los Estados Unidos? “ she asked me.

“Ohio.”

She said her son was studying in Missouri.

I looked down at my watch.

I don’t wear a watch.

Without doubt, there was a palpable feeling of desperation in the air.

People smiled excessively as if to cover up their nervousness.

Some people drank quickly in order to loosen up.

Others sat and stood around trying to appear interesting or interested in their papers.

My first four women were Spanish, Spanish, British and American, in that order.

The conversations sort of aimlessly began and wandered accordingly.

One was an English teacher who looked about 10 years shy of her golden years, another was a translator and another had just graduated from Santa Barbara and had been here for two months.

“Why did you move here?” she asked me.

I gave her standard answer # 2: “I had a tough time with the political climate.”

She looked at me hard, her face expressionless.

“I mean I really just wanted to get outside of the cultural American bubble for a while, you know – the media, the reality TV, etc and see it from the outside–maybe get a new perspective on things.”

“I know what you mean,” she said nodding in agreement, “That’s kinda why I came here as well. I was like, ‘I gotta see what else is, like, you know, out there.’”

For some stupid reason I added, “And now that the Dems have just won back congress, maybe they’ll have enough cojones to impeach that bastard before his term is up.”

Her silence strengthened her stare.

I wasn’t sure which side of the fence she was on, nor which nerve I hit.

(She could’ve been a sensitive Democrat.)

Roberto patted me on the back, “We’re going to take a 15 minute intermission.”

Dorothy and I reconvened for catch-up and a quick assessment.

According to Dorothy, all of the Spanish men there were in I.T.

The one guy who she was considering giving a MAYBE had a bad case of halitosis and was probably 10 years her senior.

She also had this sneaky suspicion that he was the one guy on the website who was married and was looking to have multiple, NSA affairs.

The other anomaly was that their website said this going to be 25-40 night.

I had already spoken with a woman who was definitely in her 50s and the Santa Barbarian could not have been more than 23.

Up to that point, we both chalked up nothing but MAYBEs and NOs.

“Have you asked them your question yet?” she inquired.

“No but I will after the break. Let me try it out on you first. If you could meet two people in the history of the world – living or dead – who would they be and why?”

Dorothy got camera shy and didn’t realize that the video on my camera only allows her 30 seconds to answer.

Her first reply included many uhhs, ummms, let’s sees and other dithering without answering the question at all.

After explaining the 30-second rule, she was able (just barely) to finish the question in time.

She answered Susan Lori Parks and Khedoori.

(After sending both videos to Dorothy for approval, she decided both of them were horrible and implored me not to post them–which I obliged.)

Little did I know that my first answers were the best ones I would hear all night.

Back to flash dating:

A Spanish Paleontologist who (literally) had sharp teeth chose Tolkien and the film adaptation but not much by Peter Jackson’s bizarre take on dinosaurs in King Kong.

She said she’d also like to meet Jesus Christ.

Two British women, both English teachers, picked Hitler as one of their choices.

One of them also chose Jesus Christ.

A heavy-smoking blonde Swede who rumbled when she coughed thought it would be great to meet Hitler and George W. Bush.

An Ecuadorian American woman who managed a division of Sotheby’s delivered some acerbic wit wasn’t afraid to use English expletives freely.

She said she’d like to meet Hugo Chavez and Picasso.

This one got a YES from me in spite of there being no physical sparks.

Finally, a Spanish woman–the cutest of all the participants, was my final seven minute slice.

We exchanged the obligatory euro double-cheek kiss and sat down.

She spoke perfect English.

“I lived in New York for five years and London for two, both times working in art.”

“Where do you work?”

“Sotheby’s”

“So you know the Ecuadorian American woman?”

“She’s my boss.”

I pulled out my camera.

“OK, so do you mind if I record you answering a question I’ve asked some of my other dates here tonight?”

“You’re not serious are you?”

Yes I was.

“Put that away.”

Then I fired the question at her.

“Oh, umm, that’s a good question. Well…I’d have to say that I would probably like to meet…Hitler and Jesus Christ.”

This was now, officially, a pattern.

I tried to act interested.

“Yeah, OK, I can see that. You must’ve read the DaVinci Code?”

“Yes. I loved it.”

This was not a good sign.

“Hmm,” I said, “If I were to meet Jesus I’d definitely want to know if he hooked up with Mary Magdalene and had a kid – among other things.”

“I’m Catholic.”

“Well…then I’d think you’d especially want to know the answer to that question.”

That was it.

I tanked it.

Couldn’t help myself nor could I bring myself to say anything else.

Maybe it was the relentless spirit of Nietzsche tunnelling through me.

Or the awkwardness of the whole event.

But two things are for sure:

There is little doubt politics or religion should never be discussed on the first date.

There is even less doubt that either subject should be breached within a seven-minute time span.

She got a NO on my sheet and I assume she gave me a bold NO on hers.

That was it, no more dates.

I had gone through 12 women, asked the question six times with Jesus and Hitler getting top honors.

We walked home.

Dorothy said she was exhausted, that the act of speed dating was exhausting.

“But you know, I think doing something like this is good for us—to be placed in a social position that makes us nervous because we are humbled. Do you know what I mean?”

YES.

“We tend to think pretty highly of ourselves and to be thrown into a situation where we have to meet a lot of other people in a short period of time and tell them what we think is most representative of us in that time—that’s a good thing. But I don’t think I’ll do it again. Do you?”

NO.

She wrote me an email the next day, further explaining her position on humility in speed dating.

“Part of the humility of speed dating is sitting down and waiting. The man comes calling, the lady awaiting her suitors- it exaggerates the contrivance of the whole thing. The lady gets to pick, but the man gets to move, not a lot of progress in 100 years really.”

Also in my inbox were three emails from the speed dating service.

Each one listed an email of the women who checked the appropriate boxes.

At the bottom of each one it read, “Are you going to waste one second waiting to email this person – your potential soulmate?”

MAYBE.