ahead of his time

Richard Yates had true courage to write the truth no matter how painful or unpopular, to live the truth no matter how short lived, to expose the hypocrises of the American Dream.

zipcode art

curious how grants are so lopsided, favoring counties.
aside from the obvious fact that the county designates
funding, why should it matter where the artist comes
from? what happened to the art? that's what i want to know.

anonymity

"Names no longer apply and he can't find a satisfactory substitute. All the limits and expectations and experiential bullshit people bring to nomenclature, like the attitude copped when they hear the name of their first lover, their estranged mother, their crazy aunt or their incorrigible ex-husband. No one is truly different because name, rank, profession are always reminiscent of someone else’s identity, someone else’s station in life. You are only true to yourself, he thinks, that is, if you’re capable of it."

best friend

“If he really thinks about it, he doesn’t exactly hate Mark. It isn’t in his vocabulary to hate a man he loved so much for so long. While he might have the impulse to kill him, he doesn’t harbor the kind of animosity that inspires violence. It comes from some other place, that unknowing place where chaos presides and hangs in the air, waiting to explode."

the deeper resonances

In retrospect he finds it hard to believe he was actually capable of giving life... remote the more he thinks about it. The life force that seems to come of its own accord, free of premeditation or constraints. He wishes it was infectious, her vitality, her confidence, her devotion but knows she's paying a price she can’t afford. If anything, he has to give her more. He has to find a way.

The End?

In his eighty years Martin Mercier had never experienced anything like this. In his eighty years he had never acquiesced. No matter what came his way he always expected it. “Le jeu, c’est fini,” he muttered to himself but when he looked at his failing wife Narcisse, he thought, les jeux…her life and his. With their fiftieth anniversary imminent he envisioned the waltz, the pirouette dizzying, her body so close it was indistinguishable from his. Unable to imagine life without her he felt the futile quest of the human spirit an absurd necessity he could now relinquish. As he peered into those chestnut eyes through the dark, endless tunnels that turned back on themselves, his fear returned, one he could not subdue through any amount of logic or discourse. The brain, he decided, was a painful organ, thoughts slicing through it like the jagged edge of a knife. Better to get past all this, better to move beyond it. He sipped from the fluted glass, the effervescence a deceptive reminder of what he would leave behind. The tightness in his chest made his breathing labored and the sweat of his palms made the pills soggy. His wife, on the other hand, was feeling no pain. On the morphine drip she’d been hallucinating a hot, white light surrounding her, evaporating like fog, through which swallows arced and banked off cliffs while the sea below crashed against the rocks with a virulence.
Martin twisted the empty packet of Gaulois, threw it on the floor and opened another. Chain smoking was a luxury he could now afford. “Just think, Narcisse…” He was grinning when he said this. “They will have to clean up this mess.” The ashes, the butts, the spilled champagne, the broken glass from the vial he emptied… By they he wasn’t sure who he meant. Who would be the first to find them? He didn’t want to think about it but he hoped it wouldn’t be the kids. He couldn’t imagine; it was too perverse.

Yes, his children would have to forgive but in time they would come to understand what happened. Especially Dylan, the costume designer. He envisioned the folds of Edwardian dress gathered and stitched for the adaptation of Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Oval Portrait”--a painter so obsessed with the portrait of his wife he literally steals the life from her. Remembering the nature of the work made him shy away from gazing upon his dying wife’s face for fear he would hasten the end. At this point he simply couldn’t bear it.

Electro Shock

"There’s all this electromagnetic current," Gracie explains. "The kind you can test with devices that make skin contact. You know, like EEGs and EKGs and that sort of thing, but what I want to know is where does all that energy go when a person dies, the field around the body, the one that intersects and surrounds us, the vibrational field…”

She says, "People didn’t vacate lower Manhattan because of the toxic residue. They didn’t vacate out of fear. They vacated because of the massive amount of electromagnetism unleashed into the atmosphere by 3,000 dying and deceased people.”

that flawless image

Vanessa is probably better off without him, deeper in love with the prospect that he suffered a tragic demise, like the fate of all great artists who never enjoy recognition or the fruits of their labor while they're still alive. Yes, he decides, death brings with it all the benefits promised but undelivered in life. All the myths… pure, unadulterated happiness, unconditional love, charged flashes of memory altered subconsciously to make within the survivor’s mind a permanent place for that flawless image that never truly existed. And of course the ultimate advantage to the deceased, total liberation from the constraints of ordinary life.

unable to resist

"Instincts don’t fail you, honey." His mother’s refrain, as if she’d observed what transpired and is once again offering too much advice. These instincts spell trouble, what kind of trouble he isn’t sure but all the same he knows if he doesn’t protect himself no telling what will happen. A cackling seagull distracts him, circling the rooftops, dipping and diving as if silvery fish flicker in and out of the surf. As he reaches the next intersection he sees a heaping pile of paper, plastic and spilled Chinese takeout where more gulls have gathered to pick through the refuse. Prix fixe. Unable to resist, he approaches the next bin like a hungry account executive on his way to a power lunch. Nothing like a half eaten perfectly encased sandwich of mozzarella, arugula and sun dried tomatoes. He can’t help noticing the contenders, meals barely touched, the ones he would rescue from the garbage before they’re shipped off to the landfill, ones which rejuvenated his undernourished body when he has nothing but a cardboard box, holey tennis shoes and too much time on his hands. He has to stop looking through the trash.

momentum not momentous

boy. all i had to do was hit return twice and my title became my subject and my post. that's how it is these days. momentum. all about gaining it. weird thing is, i'd like to gain momentum in my work, find that sweep across the horizon, ride the comet trail, the crest of the wave where the sensation of the ride is what it's all about, not the place you arrive. happy new year, y''all.

excerpt from September 10th

The crack of ice reverberates like a dissonant intruder moving through the loft-like space. Pacing the site line from the euro kitchen back to the drawing table seems like the longest walk of the century, his only solace in the smooth jolt of transparent liquor diminishing from his water glass.

excerpt from unfinished novel

You'll know why I never finished it when you read this excerpt:

I have a hot, white love. Hot because it burns right through me. White because it's blinding. Each time she walks into the room I turn away with disgust. I know what's going to happen next. Sometimes I imagine The Retaliation. I shove a rag into her mouth. Tape it shut. Tie her wrists and legs. It is fear I want to give her like wrapping paper on a birthday present. It is the fear.

My room is kind of ordinary I guess. Double bed, old bedspread of cowboys and Indians. Posters plastered to the wall. The Unabomber, Johnny Cash, BB King, Theresa Russell and Charles Manson with that nurse. Underneath my mattress are all the magazines and the knife I bought at a pawn shop last week. On my turquoise dresser there's my wallet on a chain I usually hook to my belt, my hair gel, a comb and a little bowl of hard candy my mother always fills. Without thinking I'll take a piece then spit it out because it's so disgusting it makes me want to puke. Shit, man, what's her problem?!

In the corner on my night table is The Shrine. A lock of hair. A piece of rotten fruit. And a fingernail. Infinity plus Wound equals Sacrifice. I'm waiting to take the belt she uses. I want to work that one in.

the lie he perpetrates

He looks up marveling at the light as it casts a hue over the neighboring high rise and notices how color is light, a kind of visual intelligence that is stratified and deepens in intensity when the physics are right. Could anyone possibly understand this, he wonders, then admits he doesn’t know fuck about anything, that his wish to be non-existent is not some self-fulfilling prophecy but a last resort. He finds himself down near World Trade, choking on the toxic stew of fried building materials and watching people stare through the holes in the large round cutouts of plywood surrounding the carnage. Tourists are taking snapshots of their loved ones with the devastation, like a famous ruin in the background, reduced to a roadside attraction as if the event had not really happened, the unthinkable, not in a neighborhood near you.

finished or abandoned?

Paul Valery once said that "a poem is never finished, only abandoned." That's how I feel every time I'm approaching the end of a work. I'm not talking about editing; I'm a brutal editor.

Toward the end the work takes on a life of its own and it's out of the writer's hands. Anything you attempt seems false and unworthy and you wait patiently, attentively, for your character to emerge.

Five novels later, the end is still an illusion and if I attempt to defy the process, like a convict I'm engaged in forced labor and it's painfully apparent.

the low down

Thinking about the open vortices he designed to cool the compound for the money changer, Brian misses the door to the Greek coffee shop and decides to catch the next one two blocks down. When he walks in, at the corner booth, he sees his sister Gracie, her disheveled hair an indication she’d been up all night.

"Remember ‘The United States of Euphoria: Life on the Edge of Time?’” Gracie, at age 15, doing hallucinogens with her best friend and recording it for posterity in the form of an essay she handed into English class. At the time he believed her fascination with drugs would pass but it was the beginning of a life long addiction for which she would pay, time and again. He reaches out and this time she lets him touch her hand before she withdraws it. Scrambled eggs save the day, that and a glass of orange juice.