LIKE DIGGING STONES OUT OF THE GROUND

In the sixth night of Natsume Soseki’s Ten Nights’ Dreams, Unkei the Sculptor is carving a Nio, a temple guardian, in front of spectators. Unkei’s sculpting technique is diffident, offhand, unconcerned, yet exquisitely confident. The dreamer wonders how Unkei does this, and is told that Unkei merely digs out the Nio that’s been buried all along in the wood. It’s like digging stones out of the ground, another onlooker says. He cannot make a mistake.

And so what, I wonder, might be hidden inside a page? Or inside this screen? Inside your screen?

What does my Nio look like? What does yours?

What if my Nio is simply the stones themselves? Virtual stones, at that. Virtual stones, for the metaphorical stones, for the metaphysical Nio.

But I like the stones.

I’ll make a small pile of them here. Like gold new potatoes.

And then later I’ll cook them with rasins and cumin and ginger and snap peas and cinnamon.

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SOMETIMES . . .

an irrational, inconsolable loneliness scoops one out with the brisk silver efficiency of a melon-baller until one’s nothing more than a thin, flimsy rind.

Maybe the rain will help?

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RUDE AWAKENING

1.

Kaydids and cicadas busying the night horizon. Dizzy filigree, gritty sandpaper. Hovercrafting sphinx moths a burred hummingbirdish buzz, plundering the long corollas of flowers. Perseids welder’s-torch the sky.

2.

I woke this morning to painters, having scaled my second-floor balcony on their ladders, pounding at my balcony door. I stumbled out of bed, wild-haired, and befuddledly nattered with the sliding-bolt lock for a minute or two, as if attempting to safecrack a bank vault . Sorry to wake you, the Head Pounder in Charge said, not particularly apologetically, once I’d managed to open the door. He looked at me in dubious askancement. In fact, he seemed — I hate to say it — downright judgey. Was it the fact that I was still sound asleep — clearly with full intent of sleeping on in a delicious infinity — at 8:30 a.m.? Or was it the sartorial debacle of my Go Yotes shirt paired with the Santa Claws pajama bottoms featuring lobsters in sleighs wearing santa hats?

3.

Today the first Monarch of the season outside the coffee shop a harried bright scrap of orange cartwheeling into yet another flung-down year. Noontime downtown swells with cars, open-mouthed moving vans line the sidestreets. Ink peppers my day-calendar and my in-box ripens. I am unwilling. I am filled with unfulfilled intentions. I am aswill with incorrigibilities.

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TABULA RASA

How to crack open this brand new blog space? After such an extended blog hiatus, and a decampment to a new blog platform, it seems as if there is simultaneously much too much, and nearly not enough, to say? Plus, how to redefine/reclaim/recoordinate the blog space in the midst of all my (seemingly) incessant FaceBooking, FaceBook Status Updating, and Tweeting? We are all such virtual warblers, lately!

But for today I’ll keep it simple, and stick to some basic news items:

First of all, and it seems impossible that I’ve neglected to mention this on my blog yet, because it’s over-the-moonish news — d’oh! — but my third book! Is coming out this fall! On the Cusp of a Dangerous Year was selected as an Editor’s Choice selection in the Crab Orchard Series in Poetry, and will be published by the wonderful folks at Southern Illinois University Press, who did such a lovely job with my second book! The pub date is currently set for October 1, and the book is now available for preorder at Amazon, et al. You can also check out the listing in the Southern Illinois University Press Fall/Winter 2009 Catalogue (see page 9).

Also? Here I am as Featured Poet #27, at the marvelous online journal, Anti-.

Also? In April, my short story Prodigies appeared in the (also marvelous!) online journal, Stone’s Throw Magazine.

Also? All the windows to my apartment have been Saran-wrapped shut with some sort of cling-wrappish sheeting while a phalanx of painters hack and scrape and paint. Occasionally, they peel back one of the windows and peer inside at me while on their ladders. I’m not sure, in the sealed-in duskiness of my light-deprived apartment, if I should start entering in 4, 8, 15, 16, 43, 42 EXE every 108 minutes into my laptop or not?

Also? One of the painters? Every so often sporadically bursts into song — loudly, tunelessly. Here’s what he sings: My car’s got nothing to prove. (Then hollering) Earl! Yeah, my car’s got nothing to prove.

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UM, HELLO?

It’s been brought to my attention that my blogging has been particularly slackerly as of late and yes, I’m afraid it’s true.

Some of this has been due to the end-of-the-semester maelstrom. Some of this is about being out of town. Some of this is about the holidays — otherwise known as The Season of Despicable Mental Hygiene. Some of this is about being sucked down the blackblack hole that is Crackbook. Some of this is about being preoccupied with meatspace issues. Some of this is about having written myself into a blogging corner in which I’ve abandoned the more casual, conversational posts in favor of drafting, poeming, and conversing with my Japanese Mother to the point that I feel kind of weird/self-conscious about writing the casual, conversational post about nothing.

So, um . . . yeah.

Here’s a partial compilation of what’s been going on with me:

I was totally distracted and forgot to make a New Year’s resolution this year. Is it too late? What should I resolve? Perhaps it should really be something about procrastination? [meta tag] But I’m not ready to make a resolution yet, so will think about it for awhile longer. Perhaps by the Lunar New Year? [ / meta tag]

The Gaslight Lounge in Soo Foo is, just for the record, the consummate blend of kitsch and squalor. I <3 it!

I attempted to throw an Absinthe Party following the departmental X-mas potluck, but as it turned out, everyone became distracted by mezcal instead. Power tools were left behind, which engendered a lot of saucy post-party badinage on Crackbook. Drill eventually exchanged for cupcakes in complex hostage negotiation at Carey’s bar. Absinthe Party? Still on the horizon.

Crashing a wedding at the Eagle’s Lounge with girlfriends will concomitantly lead to such epistemological concerns as whether or not the correct version of the chicken dance involves a do-si-do or no and whether or not Stacy’s mom has got it going on.

During the winter months, I adore acorn squash with a love that is irrational, obsessive, and — quite frankly? — just a little bit unholy.

I spent ten days in residency at the lovely Lied Lodge over X-mas break with wonderful colleagues and students, teaching for the University of Nebraska low-res M.F.A. When I returned home, I discovered that my friend John had left a hibernating Fairy Queen(?) insect in my refrigerator for me in a plastic baggie — wings enfolded down into a clever, compact origami. What could be better than that?

I have been trying to stretch and learn and grow in certain key areas. I have been trying not to let my past blindly dictate my future. I have been trying to arise to challenges that I would not have been able to rise to before. It’s hard. And scary. And painful. But there’s a kind of joyous openness to all of this, too. And I think it might also be, ultimately, very very good for me?

What’s new with you, oh blogosphere???

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IN WHICH I AWAKE TO A BIZARRO TAZO TEA-BAGGING INCIDENT PERPETRATED BY THE CATS

What I Wish I Was Doing this Afternoon:

1. Writing, writing, writing

2. Reading Murakami

3. Confessing all my secrets to the river, and secretly trysting with the sky

4. Sipping absinthe in the bathtub while listening to Thelonious Monk humming in the bright gilded spaces underneath the keys

5. Transgressing

What I Wish I Wasn’t Doing this Afternoon:

1. Preparing an important, but frankly-sort-of-completely-fucking-boring document

2. Grading and commenting, and grading and commenting some more

3. Procrastinating grading and commenting, and grading and commenting some more

4. Self-flagellating in completely tedious/predictable/not-even-vaguely scintillant way re: procrastination of grading and commenting, and grading and commenting some more

5. Resisting transgressing

* * *

Recent Linky-Lou Who’s:

Interview with Superstition Review

Poems in Fall 2008 Issue of diode

Poems in coconut 14

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IMPRINT

Only the day before, air bristling with Japanese beetles, all metallic ping and pinch.

Grasshoppers Jiffy Popping under the sky’s blue aluminum dome.

On the walking path, one of the last of the dog day cicadas stranded on its back and rattling its dry gourd of a body until I righted it. Small mechanical wind-up toy’s stutter and twitch.

All of this rescinded after a single morning’s chilled rain. Leafprints scored into asphalt. An immolation of orange and yellow burnings stilled to silhouetted ash and char.

Imprint of your body fading too quickly from my bed.

Is it an erasure, or is it a swallowing?

Or perhaps the turning of a purse inside out to reveal the silky lining?

Leaves glisten. The drizzle-slick dock shines. Sky an uncertain pearling of abalone.

And yes. I have been turned utterly inside out.

And so I ask you, what other choice is there, if not to give oneself up to the rain–to glisten, shine, and pearl into this very absence, this ache, this lambent and indefinite quiet?

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HAPPY HOUR: BACK TO SCHOOL EDITION

1.
Recipe for SoDakian Martini = Miller Lite + tomato juice + olives. (Do not shake and do not stir. Just swill at will.)

2.
“They Don’t Make Them Like They Used to Any More”:

Gentleman Sitting Catty-Corner: His wife (gesturing to the fellow sitting next to him) had fifteen children! My wife had seven children! I bet neither one of you end up having anything close to that amount of children!

AH: WTF?

Lu: WTF!

3.
“I Had Sort of Planned on a Low-Key Evening — That Is, Until Shots Were Sent Over from the Neighboring Table”:

Lu: OMG! It’s only 6:30, and we’re already doing shots!

AH: OMG! I know! Well . . . at least it’s not a straight shot of bourbon!

Lu: Ha! You know what? I don’t believe Thor Spam (name changed to protect the innocent) can’t remember anything from Cool Breeze’s party last week.

AH: You don’t buy it?

Lu: No. I think he’s being a man-boy.

AH: Hey! We should coin a new term for unacknowledged dipsomania, then! We’ll call it being ThorSpammed!

Lu: Like, OMG! I was so ThorSpammed last night! I can’t remember a thing!

AH: Exactly. And then we can mock him on FaceBook by writing updates along the lines of: “OMG! I was so ThorSpammed last night! I can’t remember a thing!” Would that be mean? Are we Mean Girls?

Lu: Yeah. Kind of. Hee.

AH: Hee.

4.
Time-lapsed rain clouds keep on cruising by like long dark cars with tinted windows, and it remains miraculously cool and sunny and blue. A turkey vulture parabolas the Vermillion water tower, visible behind the worn brick fence. BBQ pinks on the grill and around the corner, there’s the promise of deep-fried dough as the street festival sets up. A law professor dances the polka with his daughter.

5.
Happiness sizzles deep in my pocket like an electric tingle of loose change.

6.
The Public Domain Tunes Band plays a version of The Drunken Hiccups — learned from Knut Jensen, two-fingered fiddler from Centerville. The hiccups are pizzicati, or maybe it’s that the pizzicati are hiccups, pinging out from the midst of all of the rapid-fire intricate fingerwork being executed by The Fabulous Omar . . . and it’s a beautiful evening and fall is coming on, and what could be more fabulous than this?

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FIVE EASY PIECES-DE-MAYO

1.

I saw a young robin the other day attempting to take off with an astonishingly fat rubbery foot-long super-size-me spectacle of an earth worm.

The worm so large it made flight a precarious, tilty, swooping affair.

Good for you! I said to the robin.

2.

I have decided that it’s high time to become officially paranoid about artificial sweeteners.

I want the real thing. Or none at all.

No Splenda, no Nutra-Sweet, no crappitty-crap pink stuff. No fakers, plagiarizers, liars or posers allowed.

Honey is okay. On occasion, I’ll maybe take a little honey.

3.

AH: YAWWWWWNNNNN! Phwaattttz?!?!

Aiko the Kitten: Hee. I just stuck my entire head! In your mouth! While you were yawning!

AH: Why would you do a thing like that?

Aiko the Kitten: Because I can.

4.

Tampopo the Kitten: [Wildly bouncing up and down on the mini-trampoline like a a caffeine-crazed orangutan.] I’m the red-headed stepchild! I’m Lu’s favorite!!!

5.

At night, the sound of the train whistle gets stretched between the bluffs like hand-pulled taffy.

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RESET, RESTART, REBOOT

I’ve needed to keep things very quiet, peaceful, and simple here at Artichoke Heart Headquarters while I build up some scar tissue around some recent personal and professional disappointments.

I feel as if I’ve been trapped on a plane falling out of the sky and the person seated next to me has repeatedly insisted on using my drop-down oxygen mask instead of their own.

It’s been turning me blue.

I tried changing seats a couple of times, but it didn’t seem to help.

And so I’ve been blue, running on not-enough oxygen, and exhausted.

And I’ve locked myself in the lavatory for a little while, alone with the emergency drop-down oxygen mask secreted in the panel over the toilet, until I feel less blue.

And I’m keeping it all very simple:

Writing
Reading
Nesting
Cats
Clean, simple healthy food
Lots of exercise
Plenty of sleep

Put on your own oxygen mask before assisting others.

Waiting for the blue to fade.

Waiting for the ding . . . for the Fasten Seat Belt sign to blink off.

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