Sketch: Three Sentences

I

After thirty years of loneliness, the dreamer packed up his belongings and spent his savings on a house in the countryside, far away from most civilization with a luxury bed and breakfast as its intent, and so he set about this new life of pastoral simplicity, through eight months he renovated this hermitage by himself.

II

Yet as the second guest did not show, as instead the cobwebs fattened on the corners of the chipped eaves, he resigned himself to simply keeping the hotel functional, that is, he sought to feed it whichever capital-producing patrons might stay; he booked the degenerates, the molestors, the errant truckers and local vagrants; he contracted a neon sign to steer passers to the front door with good cheer.

III

That is, when the hotel was at last full he set it ablaze, giving berth to the gas-filled tubes for fear they might pop.

Sketch: The Berlin Coloratura

This happened several years ago, on one of my stays in Berlin while I was there on adjunct work, attached to the University of __ on research that had me from morning to night in the library with only enough recovery time to scrub the dust from my fingertips, which is to say I needed my sleep on this particular stay, in fact I was sorely despondent when I did not get my sleep and in fact would not get my sleep throughout the majority of the trip because, from the first day, there cracked above the car noise the sound of a caloratura, that is it was a soprano’s voice, I know that, her notes like acrid darts disrupting through the night my needed sleep, she sang only during the after hours, Die Zauberflöte or maybe as Cunegonde—my American palate, retarded as it was with the preference for musicals, could still tell she was not Wagnerian—these notes would sway from pitch to pitch, sweetly at first, within a week they had stopped being sweetly, as the first Saturday hit they had switched from being a sweet bird call to a more panicked piercing, as it was always the same song, with no variation the song came through the same, day and night, finely defined notes like layers of rich perfume and just as saturating, in my boarder’s room I had first pulled the blinds then the shades then erected a wall of books to damper the sonority, but of course it didn’t hold, and instead I’d been enraged moreso than inconvenienced so that by the time it stopped, I was delirious, by the time the nights returned to the lapping of the passing cars and discharging bus doors, my rage had settled to a shallow lowing; I became more rested, my research on Language and Destiny had at last cohered, and I thought no more of this woman as the sunlight stopped its daily ridicule, I thought no more of her until I found out she had died mid-aria, in fact she had spent her 80-year-old frame on the very last run and then slumped over, and exhausted, parted, this 80-year-old woman and former vocal teacher had died in a whisper, and although I didn’t recall it I suspected my own ill thoughts had been the culprit, that is I had wished her dead and now she was dead and if thoughts could sharpen into return salvo, then the peculiar vitriol that my thoughts had taken would have been cause, but it didn’t cause it, because of the absurdity of such a notion, no matter how much I wished it I couldn’t have caused it, thoughts don’t load into slings, I would remind myself, it was only an old woman, I would say, in her waning years this old woman was simply looking for solace, I would repeat, it was just another action I'd come to hate, I would confess.

White Room Transcript: The Book Tour

Q: But you've mentioned that the internet has made us all the interrogator.
A: [...]

Q: But that's because of the ease by which the material can be come by, by which I mean it's research.
A: [...]

Q: But doesn't that suggest that information itself has become a form of currency? But of course I mean it always has been one.
A: [...]

Q: But that doesn't me we can't all have some control-
A: [...]

Q: But what I was going to say before you broke in was that can't we all have some control over the flow of that information, at the heart?
A: [...]

Q: Because we can't just choose between the latter and the former.
A: [...]

Q: By former, I mean the withdrawing of capital, in the same way a fencer may withhold his strike.
A: [...]

Q: But in its place you've only seemed to replace it with anxiety.
A: [...]

Q: By which I see you're ceding my point.
A: [...]

Q: But I wanted to talk to you about the upbringing that brought you to be here.
A: [...]

Q: I would say I found those to be the most fascinating sections of the book.
A: [...]

Q: By fascinating, I meant that it was so obvious your parents were an early foil in your life.
A: [...]

Q: But I'm not sure why it's not relevant.
A: [...]

Q: And you didn't carry the anxiety from the rafting experience?
A: [...]

Q: But I would assume the drift would carry back to the dock.
A: [...]

Q: But didn't you say you had been paddling upstream? 
A: [...]

Q: And instead that informed the remainder of your 20 years afterwards, being adrift with the banks out of reach.
A: [...]

Q: But I would assume it did inform the remainder of your 20 years.
A: [...]

Q: What if you hadn't gotten back to the dock at that point?
A: [...]

Q: Back to the cruelty of your mother, the stone-faced lashing of your father.
A: [...]

Q: But my research said otherwise, that you didn't get back to the bank at that point.
A: [...]

Q: But what would have informed the 20 years, if you hadn't surfaced?
A: [...]

Q: Because I wouldn't have such supply to source my questions.

Sketch: Snow and Tusk

At the same dinner reception I happened on a professional speaker, a man who had gained a certain amount of notoriety and amassed a comfortable fortune applying the philosophy of becoming to the world of advanced technology. In fact the reception was held in part in his honor. By the time he and his assistant arrived we well into our cordials, and as he removed his coat he let it be known he was through with his speaking engagements. He then joined us for a cordial of his own. Of course, his revelation had left us all with pause, and so finally he explained that after doing this for several years, the speaker had realized that it was impossible to separate himself from the speech, the speech that he had given over the course of several hundred engagements, that instead of the constantly shifting becoming that was its theme, he felt the speech cast in tones more rote, and that he had started to resemble his speech, that same roteness, if that's at all possible. I’d found, said the speaker, that if it were so easy to rest on static through simple consistency, then that put his entire thesis under question, the speaker added. The reception drew quiet from that point, in fact the only sound was the undulating of the sherry in the slowly draining glasses, until one of the guests had asked him what the speaker had been doing since then. A study of white, the speaker said. He exclaimed that for all the colors, the range of variations grows smaller and more entrenched until you only have black, a single color form for which the eye only picks up one shade. He intended to look at it from the other side, to look at the shade that had inspired the snow, stained the tusk and created the Death, the destroyer of all worlds, and for what it was also worth the color that, regardless of whether it hued a more pink or yellow or a puce-like green, the eye and mind, the sense-making apparatus as it were, was always resolving it back to the same shade, that of white. The speaker had not re-entered my thoughts until about a week ago, when I saw his obituary in the Times and its mention, in passing, that for the last twenty years he had been fighting an macular degeneration, and in fact by the time he died was completely blind.

Remainders, or the empty vessels

Sketch: Dinner Party

I was at a dinner reception several years ago when I found myself next to a documentary videographer. A lifelong pacifist, he shot primarily industrial films, videos meant to prevent accidents when working around the gauges and digitized monitoring systems that represented the bulk of contemporary machinery. As the night went on, he told me about some of his earlier works, about his first forays in the industry, about the make-up effects he cut his teeth with, the false noses and prosthetics that dominated film, at least for a period. Soon enough we ended up talking about one film for which he had remembered a particularly bout of exhaustion, the exhaustion coming about for one scene which required the extras to eat human flesh. Although specifically he made sure to point out this was not a film about zombies, nor was it going to be real human flesh, but rather an early post-colonial work primarily shot in the rain forest, primarily focusing on the aborignals and the rampant beliefs both that cannibalism was widespread and that this type of savagery somehow alleviated the savagery of what was then international (he specified white, western) intervention. They had finally settled on cold cuts for the sequence, sliced roast beef and pre-cooked sausages for their visual look, and bathed each in a combination of dyed-red corn syrup and mustard powder for the color. But the extras, a good half of them, could not keep it down, so much so that on several of the rehearsal takes they would keep buckets to the side, so much was the overall simulation of the take that the extras had had a hard time keeping the prop down. He had worked and worked on the recipe, trying to figure out exactly how to make it the most palatable, or at least to remove the mental association of the fiction with the reality, even reminding the cast fruitlessly that most of the items had rather come from a catering truck, until at last they had devised a way to burn incense just off the screen, positioning it so that the smoke would not be caught on camera but still close enough so that the actors would have a floral association which in turn would help with to complete the dissociation. And it worked, the documentary videographer said. In fact, the incense was so important to the finishing of the production, that it had been given a credit in the final roll. Fascinated, I asked him if he could remember what the scent was. But he was at a loss for words: he couldn’t immediately recall.

Sketch: The Broadway Beacon

One day, as I was digging my way through even more coursework, this time in a seaside town along the Maryland eastern shore, some locals told me the story of two boys, twins, who had stopped going to school and began building a tower from anything they could find and re-use, old rakes and broom handles and wooden deck chairs and planks from doors and broken ladders and the blue-hued tops of desks, they built this day and night until one day it was too tall for their ladders, in fact, too tall for any ladder, and so they erected scaffolding, then stitched together a tarp using the same general model—these two boys who were previously only remarkable for their shared stupidity—and after the tarp was included one could almost see the spire from space, or so the twins had insisted, and yet because of their ambitious plans, they had also completely run out of supplies, the tower stopping midway through the next level so that the last post from a neighbor’s fence stood naked, its splinters hard and bristling from the afternoon winds, and in fact the winds themselves had become a menace, as with every gust the structure moaned and creaked and whistled throughout the cul de sac.

When a retired insurance adjuster happened upon the structure, he was immediately filled with thoughts of making it an attraction, of removing the tarp for all eyes to behold the grandeur after paying the appropriate admission; he bought it outright, he went to work on a name, first the “Pikesville Pylon” then the “Recycled Tower of Babel” then the “Backyard Broadway Beacon”–not that it was anywhere near a Broadway, but rather he felt the name added a certain strength and panache, so enormous were his thoughts that he had already christened it the Eighth Wonder and placed ads as far as his pension would allow, he had booked radio time and local news and a photographer to record, and in a sixty mile radius had papered all available billboard space because the adjuster was dead set on making this thing a sensation, he had plans made to have it gilded, or if not gilded, then at least strung with lights—meanwhile the rains had wilted the ground and the twins had vacated the house and along with the rest of the neighborhood, now gushing its residents, none of them waiting for the sheer slope of the tower to collapse under the weight of all this bluster.

As the story goes, on the day the last one left, the tower did.

Sketch: Cat Names

It wasn’t until the day after my grandfather’s funeral that I remembered this story, having nothing to do with his death but rather the infection that had laid me low, at rest in my bed in cold sweats. While traveling, on a bus because it was all my youthful budget would allow, I met a man who had just been let out from prison. He had served his sentence, that his time was up and so was moving to Portland for a fresh start. This was around 2001, before the coffee and preciousness had formed a film like a fine soot. He was arrested for stealing a pair of sneakers, although when he really thought about it he was caught because he had been smoking a joint a few blocks from the store, and the police had only found the sneakers as a matter of happenstance. While he had been in prison, he had had infrequent visitations from a woman he had been seeing, when I say infrequent visitations really I mean that she had regularly visited every three weeks, but this seemed like an eternity in their elongating interims, because the man wished back for a taste of home. After about five months, she altogether stopped, or at least, the gap grew first to four weeks, then to six, then she altogether disappeared. He had become coarser throughout, and he chalked it up to that. After about four months had passed between the visits, he received a letter from this estranged paramour, initially stumbling but then quickly shifting to apologetic. She said she had wanted to stay in touch, but in the interim it had become too painful, that she had had a miscarriage shortly after the sentencing had come through, and that with the subsequent internment she had felt it was inappropriate to pile onto his situation, that it was fine anyway because she had decided to abort regardless, and that she had only decided to come clean, to clear her conscience, as it were, because around the same time, the cat had run off only to be found dead, hit by a car, an old Pontiac that released black fumes when the pedal was depressed, the letter went on about how her decision fraught but felt to be the right thing, and that now they should both focus on moving forward with their lives and forgetting. He relayed this story to me, only stopping to give me the cat’s name, specifically Chevy, specifically a name he had always had misgivings about because he'd never liked his original Chevy and thought it might have led to exactly such an untimely end, and to show me the tattoo he’d had installed while incarcerated. As the morning began to break and we pulled into the Portland station to separate, he asked me if I had any money for his next leg. In the idling bus, while the other passengers pushed past to get out of the confines, I gave him the twenty dollars I had on hand and wished him luck.

On the revelation of the Ostmark Bell

Apparently, it wasn't just hyperbole:

The bishops...will be followed--with measured tread, as they say--by the Gauleiters, the SS officers, and the members of the Blood Order. And these will be followed by the National Socialist Catholic population, I thought. And the music will be played by our National Socialist Catholic band. The National Socialist salvos will be fired, and the National Socialist bells will toll. And if we're in luck, our National Socialist sun will shine throughout the ceremony, and if we're out of luck we'll be drenched by the National Socialist rain.

[From Thomas Bernhard's, Extinction, trans. by David McLintock, after the narrator Franz-Josef Murau sees the guest list for the funeral of his parents--who were Nazi supporters through the aftermath of World War II--and brother, at the family estate of Wolfsegg, in Austria.]

The Hans piece, part one

I'm still in the throes of revising, but here's the first section. Because I'm angry, because I have things to prove, I might post more. But it won't be complete, and I would really like readers for when it's done. Drop me a line.


This is the running joke--i.e., the Hans Story--that has existed between Sophie and me for quite a few months. It exists after the break, and it's coming to a close (and p.s, enjoy):

Sketches, May 9 - In the tone of Bernhard

On the 14th of August, already suffering from a pulmonary infection that the doctor had said might not be remediable, I joined my ex-mentor for a trip along the Dardanelles, by sea, in fact, against my doctor's wishes and much too soon for any such engagement or activity, but keeping this in mind although weakened from the same infection I joined him at a disregard for any spreading, for he had required my attention and had required such attention immediately on the 14th with no wavering. It had been too long, he had told me with a stern coolness, asking if I had been keeping up with my reading of Kant, and as much as I wished to lie I had felt invigorated too much to be in his presence and told him I had not, and without any disappointment over the fact of my neglect he had instead set a table inside the sailing vessel we were about to embark on. I had steeled myself for this discussion of Kant, for his disappointment over my not having kept up with Kant, as my ex-mentor had on his last lesson been preparing me for his discussion on Kant, on Kant's sublime and how it relates to the overall full fleshing of Kant's very specific aesthetics, of how the sublime was at the heart of his aesthetics, and thus at the heart of all aesthetics after him, how the sensation of  beauty either mechanistic or awesome was at the base the starting point for a discussion of all learned discussions on the subject of beauty after Kant, but instead he asked me where I was now living, and as I coughed once, for the sea air tickled too harshly the base of the infection, I realized instead that his scorn was about to be placed elsewhere.

Sketches, May 8 - In the tone of Markson

They showed up on a boat, as I have said, a rowboat--or maybe a dinghy--as I recall the method of conveyance was not nearly as important as its conveyees, the boy hamfisted, the girl peeling from a sun-induced rosacea, as the spinnaker flapped useless against a feckless breeze.

She was 12, he was her brother and thus older.

As it was, I had lost track of the days, or weeks, I had been adrift, and the wind stayed quiet in the channel.

Or maybe it wasn't a channel, and maybe I'd simply lost my own sense of location through the grand mush of days, undefined.

Do you have water? he asked first and I said no, Can we come aboard? he asked next, and they boarded my yacht anyway.

I say my only because, by that point, I couldn't remember if the vessel was mine, or if I was simply renting, which is to say that in the grand mush (why do I pick that phrase?), it had long been forgotten the general pretense under which the money changing hands had entirely meant.

The man I handed the wad to--friend, foe, countryman?--smelled of cigarettes and coppertone, but he was lean, and would probably live longer than I, I recalled.

Which is to say that only my bad luck would keep me from not living much longer. Bad luck being my code for pessimism and an overawareness of my physical predicament.

Our house burnt down, the boy said, or maybe he said it was their houseboat, the boy said they had been adrift for days, although they were close to land, and although the fire had not completely destroyed their previous vessel, only scarred it. It's an inevitability, the boy said, that a fire on a vessel surrounded by water would not last too long, what with the air being saturated as it is, the boy added.

The girl, who now seemed less pre-pubescent but at least 17 but gawky, clung to his shirt sleeve like a cloved pineapple, although she did not in fact touch him, although in fact she maintained a wary distance from the two of us the entire time.

Suffice it to say I did not even understand their dynamic, nor did I understand why I let them on the boat, at least while they were still dripping.

Why had I not mentioned they were still dripping, that they boarded the sailing yacht by in fact swimming over, that they hooked over the side like a pair of pirates, that the side was in fact tilted not from the wind but for the own incompetence at ballast.

We did not exchange names. Or we did, and their names were Aguirre and Finn.

Where are you going? the boy asked. About that water, the boy asked. Do you have any food? the boy asked. Do you have any pot, water, beer? the boy asked. I reminded them I had none of the above as a nonsensical matter of fact, the truth of which we both acknowledged simultaneously.

Had I mentioned I'd lost the land myself? That when I had seen it, it seemed to only exist as patches of swamp grass and crowded woods and horseflies, although every bit of that seems to be nonsensical as well, although it's the truth.

There were hikers and runners, although I watched them only as silhouettes, as I lay under the harsh sun, grilling.

Which would account for the lost time, the mush, me being sundrenched , not in my best mental element while I attempted to keep track.

I'm floating, I would have responded, as the boy rummaged through my coolers to find nothing but pooled melted ice. There's a mountain of gold at the end of this channel, the boy said, or if not of gold, then at the very least enlightenment, the boy said.

The girl, as they say, was nary a peep, only for show, not for interaction.

I set sail on a moonless lark, I said, as I waited for the end of days, I said, as I fidgeted for the end to come, I said, as I became entranced by your same-said legend, I said. Which is to say I know about the mountain of Gold, which is to say I'm searching for it. Which is to say you're adrift, he said, I would not say you're incorrect, I added.

He had exhausted his last tick, he had found the beer and opened half. A man at the end of his rope, he said. To excuse the metaphor, although you're not particularly useful, he added. One can rage against the wind, he added, but it doesn't change the fact that it's the wind, he said.

[end of sketch, time to work]

And so we punk

[Ed. note: The following was written for the NPR project Three Minute Fiction after research uncovered that the winner of this installment would receive publication in The Paris Review as well as being read on All Things Considered. Essentially an experiment in microfiction, the task was to create something that could be read in three minutes, about 600 words, on a topic of the guest judge's choosing. This time, a President, any, fictional or otherwise. After the cut is my offering, already submitted but with no real chance of consideration as it will undoubtedly fail the earnestness test that seems a prerequisite for an audience with NPR. It is also a borderline story, more akin to the non-fictions of Donald Barthelme. The piece is called "The President Takes a Sick Day. Enjoy.]

Experiments in Film Reductionism

It's a dirty secret that the most frequently visited posts on this blog are the ones that feature my thoughts on film: White Ribbon, Tree of Life, Drive. Which is sad, because I've realized that I'm not a very good film reviewer. Either those thoughts are slight, in passing, or just a one-off that essentially means nothing to anyone anywhere. As a nascent cinephile, I find this disheartening.

So I attempted to remedy this via exercise. The film: Trollhunter.

The clip:

The text:

When we’re first introduced to our hero – the character Hans and the troll hunter of the film’s title – he is unloading hunting supplies from the back of his SUV. As played by Otto Jespersen, he appears world-weary, serious. He brushes off the three film students’ attempt to interview him and, blandly picking up a hand-axe that seems vaguely medieval, closes the door to his dilapidated trailer. It isn’t until the students follow him to a remote forest – in the middle of a hunt, no less – that Hans opens up to them.

By all accounts, the 2010 Norwegian film Troll Hunter should not work. Centering on the trio and their attempted documentary on bear hunting, they end up on the trail of a mysterious poacher (Hans), only to discover it’s not bears he’s hunting. Shot in the vérité style of found footage from the students’ hard drives, the production stinks of the low budget trappings of The Blair Witch Project. What’s more, it is more interested in the crags and rocks of Norway’s fjords and mountains than the shocks and horrors of its mythical, titular beast. Even when the trolls are on the screen, the action tends to the procedural rather than the dark fantasy one would associate with killing them.

But thinking about it this way is to miss the point. First off, with its emphasis on the character at its center and its focus on the ins-and-outs of day-to-day troll extermination, the film is more akin to another example of the mockumentary/found-footage genre: Man Bites Dog. And like that film, it is a remarkable character study and dark comedy, with bureaucracy and the murky world of beast population control replacing the ennui and debilitating hubris of the 1992 Belgian cult classic.

This is in no small part thanks to Jespersen. With his gut puffed out and scraggly, unkempt beard framing his graven face, he carries himself through the film with a plodding deliberateness. His trailer is draped with pelts of trolls, and he keeps a UV light because he “can’t sleep in the dark.” Behind vacant, cobalt eyes, he evinces a moral and mental anguish. He is a man defeated, who is attempting to retain some shred of his humanity. If there is one thing that holds the general absurdity of this film together – and make no mistake, grand swaths of this film can seem the stuff of pulp juvenilia – it is the gravity of the naturalistic performance he puts forth.
As for the rest of the film, several trolls appear, animals and people die. Which is to say this film could have collapsed into far-fetched inanity. But the direction of André Øvredal never allows it, instead managing a tone that is at times naturalistic, at times frenetic, at times deadpan comedic, but never out of step with the action happening on screen.

Is Troll Hunter a better film than either of those mentioned? I’ve always felt the initial shock and immediacy of the Blair Witch presentation saved it being completely superficial. Troll Hunter has at its core something much more genuine and far-reaching. However, it doesn’t hit the levels of subversion of Man Bites Dog, although it does make a stab at it. But even if not as successful, it’s strong performance and assured direction make Troll Hunter a delight to watch and a worthy consideration for cult movie aficionados.

The verdict: This would need an extra set of eyes and an editor. If this weren't something of an experiment, I'd have included more examples from the other two respective films, maybe some more specific discussion of especially why Man Bites Dog is both so subversive, and, at least in my sophomoric recalling of it, effective. But I also don't own either film. So forgive me for not expanding.

Greatly Exaggerated

The problem with spending this much time away from posting is that it is, much like a distant, lapsed friendship, always difficult to find the point to start. Do we talk photo shoots, Stanley Cups, Arthur Danto? Or maybe the TV show Werewolf, finding the right lump charcoal, replacing the turntable I left back in SF? And what exactly is it with my obsession over learning Hungarian anyway?

Life, as they say, gets in the way. Between moving, co-habitating, the supreme exhaustion in working a graveyard schedule and trying to still find time to write my own stuff, not to mention the resulting despondency from having two teams lose in their respective championship games on the same day, these all matter. And they have gotten in the way, as it were. But this is not to say I have not been either missing you or forgotten you, faithful readers. It is to say that more posts will be forthcoming.

I'm planning a photo dump of some of the material I've shot in the interim months. And I'll post up one or two pieces I wrote for no reason whatsoever other than I wanted to write them. And the full breakdown of Werewolf (I was not kidding) and why it desperately needs to be rebooted, BSG-style. Also a few book reviews, maybe another film when it's been shot/edited. These will all come.


But for now, I'll have to tide you over with a pair of podcasts I've become absolutely enamored with: The Partially Examined Life and Bookfight.

As some of you may be aware, I enjoy philosophy. I'm terrible at it, but a good conversation about metaphysics, ethics, aesthetics, these all exhaust me. Inspire me, but exhaust me nonetheless. This is where TPEL fits. Four former philosophy graduate students basically do a book club format of a different reading per month, and the conversations can tend to the long (I believe they have had only one that's been less than one hour), but tonally, they nail it with a mix of humor, insight, and a lot of rage at the text.

As for Bookfight, it seems to be weekly, with two editors from the lit mag Barrelhouse breaking down a different book in a nearly weekly discussion. The nice thing: they rage as well. They hold nothing back, they let their joys or their disappointments or their resentments out, and meanwhile have one of the better discussions about craft I've heard in a podcast.

But really, they rage. When appropriate. And that's a good thing.

Anyway, I'm saluting all the readers who have maxed out their allotment of patience waiting for installments. Stay tuned.

Two American Traditions

Owing to the fact that I'm an Army brat, allow me to indulge in two very American traditions. Football and the Armed Service.

The football season is winding down now, coming upon two huge contests between the 49ers vs. the Giants and the Ravens vs. Patriots. And if you're a homesick soldier roasting in the desert of Kuwait, pining for the roar of a TV and the brews being passed to and fro while everybody yells at the vacuity of the commercials in between?

You make a video, of course. And post it online.

So courtesy of the 113th Sustainment Brigade currently stationed at Camp Arifjan, Kuwait, a National Guard unit out of North Carolina overseeing and assisting the drawdown in the Iraq and Afghanistan theaters, we bring you this, the videos, in order of winners to losers in each game (ordering my own):

New York Giants at San Francisco 49ers:








Baltimore Ravens at New England Patriots:








(Ed. note: Excuse my selective curating, but it would be completely un-American of me to not indulge in that other American pasttime: false confidence masquerading as blowhardery. I am not a communist.)

A Return to Charm City

If this was home, I had lost my frame of reference.

The Jones Falls still roared alongside, but above it were new buildings of glass and concrete, I assume erected as a visible showing of progress. They blocked the twin overpasses -- my only landmarks upon embarking from Penn Station, and so it was after ten years away, standing on the crest of this hill in the city of Baltimore, with the line of taxis idling curbside and right in front, I was struck that I had no concept of north or south.

On my last trip I flew from San Francisco to BWI (now BWI Thurgood Marshall), visiting an old high school friend. She lived in Fells Point in a converted warehouse, and of her apartment all I distinctly remember is the empty carpeted foyer and the fact that it was almost permanently frigid, apparently the contractors not understanding the finer necessities of insulation when it comes to old, airy concrete structures on the dock. I don't believe we ventured out more than three times over the visit, once to refresh our supply of tequila, once to take a road trip to NYC. The city was icy, and on the third trip out (drinks, dinner, showing off), we got a small dust of snow, none of which stuck to the stones that constituted the street.

In hindsight I should have seen her living situation as an indicator of the changes happening. But I was dumb, a naif, and still enamored with the company and the city I was then living in. So those buildings may have been there. My cardinal orientation may have already been compromised.

Ten years later, Sophie emerged from the station and we hailed a car. As we drove down St. Paul, I regained my sense of direction and, with it, a niggling feeling of familiarity.

* * *

Before I overstate: Was this home?

Videos, in wet socks

I'm going to keep this brief as I'm currently standing (sitting) in a half gallon of NYC's vaunted public water, borrowing as I am from an old Army trick for breaking in jump boots.

Yes, I stood in the shower with new leather boots on. Not jump boots.

And now I'm reliving the punchline to the old Army trick: I get to wear them, my feet soggy, sopping, until the shrink and fit is molded perfectly to my feet. Apparently the method involves keeping them on throughout a full day. Thus, forgive what I write here.

* * *

Exhibit 1. Having now finished the Krasznahorkai, and being completely lost as to what my next literary expedition should be, I turned to the place where all discerning readers go: Youtube.

randomly generated moments of reflectivity

I am writing this with a bit of a cough, so please excuse this and my relative lack of coherence, if it happens. A three-dots post:

One. With the death of Patrice O'Neal, I'm remembering my only story involving the guy. (Great comedian, btw, in the few places I saw him -- he was the flamer on Arrested Development, although I remember him as a regular on the earliest iteration of Politically Incorrect and Comedy Central Roasts.

Subjects, or the Mailbag

1. Crazy girls gone wilder. [Ed. note: The writer of this blog does not condone the exploitation of the mentally disaffected, nor should they be used in a suggested reboot of a once-ballyhooed reality series "Survivor: Lizzie Borden All-Stars."]

2. Scare people with your tool today. [Ed. note: The assumption and accusation that he in any way resembles Michael Myers or O.J. Simpson or Freddie Kreuger or Leatherface, et al., is a complete fabrication and should respectfully be struck wholely and completely from the public record.]

3. She will surely pounce on you. [Ed. note: The writer loves letters from the SPCA, owing to the warm fuzzy he receives from the usually included photo kittens: one tuxedo and one russian blue.]

4. Singer-Songwriter Competition, Win Your Transaction and More. [Ed. note: This was immediately deleted due to the likelihood that the content would be of an adult nature.]

* * *

My first lost post. I had started it around Labor Day, today I let it go. Read it, but understand it's not complete. 

The theme: Aspirations. 

The setting: The Berkshires, Labor Day weekend. 

Where I lost it: the aspiration to not exist. 

Is it safe for work?: Yes.

Tangent: In which the writer tries to draw a parallel between the works of Sol LeWitt and John Cage. The term aleatoric is mentioned (quite a bit). The loss of identity, the abnegation of identity, the hubris brought about by the fact the artist might have touched or otherwise been involved with the piece of art is questioned - and those particular concepts of identity, post-human and post-artist - are brought up. The idea that post-art - as wrought by conceptual art - is the world of design (which we're in) and marketing campaigns (which we're also in) is also broached. The notion that these are wrong for the ongoing continuation of the human species is included. That we abnegate, allow others to make our sense of taste; that we deny the glory of ugh anger love beauty. That's in the piece. That we're in the new Dark Ages. Not as much (but it's hinted at oh so slightly).

Summary: Geof is an abnegation; we are in the dark ages; go fetch your zombie hat before you die. And Cormac McCarthy was right. 

Or something like that.

* * * 

Did I mention I saw Drive last week? So exciting. Although to be fair and granted, the film had its problems all up and down the map (map read as the Character of Ryan Gosling's the driver), but as a noir flick it was immaculately shot and needs to be seen on a big screen. When given a full character, the performances were tight. 

The end.

Or Fin.

Or...