My new sign.

Never in my whole life had I ever wanted to own a neon sign. But then, one day, I did. True story. Isn't it cute, tho? And how it sits in the fireplace as though it's a fire, isn't that cute, too? It's a bike. I love that it's a bike. So, this is my new sign.

And this was my contribution to Show 'n Tell Club. I have been thinking for awhile about the separate but similar lives my wife and I spent growing up on different sides of southern and northern Michigan. Did you know that we both have memories of the same marionette troupe that came to our elementary schools and that featured a dragon named "Applesauce"? No, how could you have--but, nevertheless, it is true. So this is the beginning of an imagined story of those lives.

This is me, and I think the look on his face captures the little me pretty well.

And this is C, holding still for a quick portrait. This is all I have so far, two pages. I'll probably do a few more and leave the rest in my imagination.

Show 'n' Tell Club, Valentine's Edition

Eric and Clare hosted the Show 'n' Tell Club on Valentine's Day this past weekend, and that means it was a good weekend. And it was romantic, too, from Eric telling us about how much he "loves" the movie Man on Wire, to Catherine reading the embarrassing bits from her journal the summer we met to Sarah Jane's embroidered highlights of life with Wes. Our little b recited something, even. Sometimes he refers to it as his "notes" but lately it has been his "poem." It is about dinosaurs, one of the most profound kinds of love little boys know how to express: Dinosaurs eat other dinosaurs/Dinosaurs stomp their feet/ Dinosaurs eat meat/ Some dinosaurs eat plants.

For their wedding, Marie and David collaborated on this incredible puzzle--the guests found the pieces and then put it together as a group. So we reenacted the assembly part of the wedding ceremony. All of the "guests" in the image, from "Idea Bear" to "the Invisible Man" (not pictured), reside with David and Marie in their home.

b walked up just as we finished putting it together and pronounced "that's a pretty cool puzzle." At 4, he is already a man with an aesthetic sense.

Yes, reading is, of course, awesome, but reading at the same time that you are parenting is something on a different level. It just does not happen that often. This is me finishing A Passage to India, and parenting.

I can't believe I'd never read an E.M. Forster novel, though I did see the movie for this one back in high school. At the time I thought that I would impress the girl I was seeing by choosing this video at the store--demonstrating my sophisticated taste or something. I can't remember if it worked, and I don't remember the movie, either, except that I think it was kind of slow, slower than the original.

But the novel is pretty wonderful. Long live the intrusive narrator.

And here is a valentine-themed comic for our chalkboard wall, the first episode in the adventures of "mouse."

One good thing about having chalkboard paint is that I have finally been able to hang some of the old pictures of my ancestors on the walls. They are sour and surly looking lot, but they're all I have. This guy's eyes follow me all around the room and I can't help feeling like he's trying to get me to pour him a drink.

This picture here is of an old spinster great-aunt of mine who always claimed to have posed for Edward Gorey's book The Gashlycrumb Tinies, or so family lore has it. I wish I knew which letter she was.

So I just read somewhere that chalkboard paint is "out," but we went ahead and put it up anyway and we're glad of it, fashion be darned. Today is a snow day and so I decided to add the elephant from the cover of my copy of A Passage to India. I made sure to draw him high on the wall so the kids' puerile scratchings don't mar him immediately.I mean look at the spelling here, really. Four bars on a capital "E"? I hope she writes them that way for the rest of her life.

The Game of Life

I had an idea today to make a game to play while you are just walking around, living, or whatever, and you would get or lose points for things things that you saw or that happened to you.

So far, the only rule I've thought of is "see a dog in a car: 5 pts."


Right now, my score is 5.

EDIT:

Possible snow: 2 pts.

Jame's Wright's "The Jewel," a surprise paint-job on my car by a student in the school parking lot this morning. The snow got to it before I could get home, though, a bummer; I wanted to drive Wright around town for a bit see if anyone read him at stoplights.

On the driver-side, another student's copy of Li Po's "High in the Mountains, I Fail to Find the Wise Man" (in blue paint) fared even worse. Li Po would have laughed at the thought of the snow erasing his poetry, probably, but then, Li Po would probably be drunk, and likely to laugh at lots of things.

Here is the first poem, to rescue it from the hoary eraser:

The Jewel

There is this cave
In the air behind my body
That nobody is going to touch:
A cloister, a silence
Closing around a blossom of fire.
When I stand upright in the wind
My bones turn to dark emeralds.

--James Wright

The Li Po is awesome, too, but I can't find a cut and past version online. Maybe I'll tap it out later.

crazy cold!

We had the worst ice storm in the last eight years I've lived here on Friday and it sucks. All day I listened to the trees in my yard and in the park across the street fall apart and hit the earth like . . . like tree bombs. They sound louder than you think. But they don't explode like bombs.

We have enough limbs down that the bonfire we have in the spring is going to be the best ever. The city only allows small fires, but they won't let me have chickens either, so I think I get to choose to have at least one of them.

It was windy today, so ice has been flinging off the trees. It's like the trees in Wizard of Oz that throw apples except today they are chucking ice at our windows. Trees!!

But see, not all trees are evil. Lookit this cute Doug Fir behind me. Best tree we've had in a long time. Only $35, which is good for these parts. And look at my hands, too: total blur! I had no idea I was that fast! Really, though, I'm terrible.

Saddest Christmas dog ever. Cath: "Put your ears up, Smokey! Put your ears up!"

And garden Buddha just takes it all in. Nothing fazes him.

Oh, and the house I lived in during law school burned down. Thanks to Travis for sending me the cell phone snap here. Cath hated that place, but it was my last bachelor pad, and I loved it, even though it rained in the bedroom. Seriously. My landlord's house was worse, so I didn't think it was my place to complain. One of the great bathtubs was in there, too. I took a lot of baths in there one summer on account of breaking my wrist during (well, actually before) a mtn bike race, and I always swore "I am going to keep taking baths after my cast comes off" and I haven't taken one since. Maybe it's time to start listing resolutions for 2009 . . .

Yay, my favorite music from this year!

Ok, my ten favorite records that I first heard in 2008:

10. Volume 1, She and Him. One of the cutest videos of the year is for their single off this record. I was surprised just how nice a listen this whole thing is.

9. Let the Blind Lead Those Who Can See but Cannot Feel, Atlas Sound. Even when I am trying to be quiet and calm and push all distracting thoughts out of my mind, the song "Quarantined" from this album is still playing in my head, and that's so cool.

8. Vivian Girls, s/t. I really need to listen to this record more often. It gives me pep. It's only like 30 minutes or whatever, so maybe I could get through it every day, like a yoga routine.

Beach House!

7. Devotion, Beach House. I didn't pick this one up at first because, to be honest, I thought to myself "you only really need one Beach House album." And then I saw them sing a few songs on the "Juan's Basement" show on Pitchfork.tv and realized that you only really need two Beach House albums. Fortunately, they have two albums.

6. For Emma, Forever Ago, Bon Iver. Somewhere I read that this is a 2007 release. But I held out until late 2008 when I was at a party and they just played this album over and over on repeat. By like the fourth time, I said "hey, is this Bon Iver? They're good." That's how quick I am.

The woman who is Grouper. I forget her name.

5. Dragging a Dead Deer up a Hill, Grouper. There are a couple of tracks on here I skip but that's more because the good tracks are so lovely.

Deerhunter

4. Microcastles, Deerhunter. They don't do much of anything that feels new here, but they wear a lot of different hats and look dashing in all of them.

Department of Eagles: record cover of the year

3. In Ear Park, Dept. of Eagles. What a crime that this album is getting almost no attention. I think it's as likable as the Fleet Foxes thing. They need a tie-in on Gossip Girl or something.

2. The Fleet Foxes record, I forget what it's called. It's that record that sounds so good but that you are sure is going to wear out through repeated listens but then doesn't. It's almost a guilty pleasure because so many people like it so easily--I'm used to only liking music that requires some effort to like, but these songs seem too easy. I'm so surprised how little backlash there is against this band--usually there would be a hipster uprising against such sweet-sounding and accessible stuff, but no one has the heart, I guess.

Animal Collective!

1. Merriweather Post Pavilion, Animal Collective. It won't be out until January, and I've only heard three leaked tracks from it, but still. It's so good, it has already dominated 2008 for me. To be honest, I'm putting it here because I'm worried the album is going to be a let-down. The live versions of all the songs are so good and I played them so much this last year, but the leaked songs seem de-fanged or something. But the songs, I can't explain it. It's the closest thing to Loveless I've ever had since Loveless.

Jim Harrison

Handed in my final essay for my class in Surrealism today. I can't think of any two classes I've taken yet that, combined, had as much work: (1) half-hour presentation; (2) 6 page essay on Aime Cesaire; (3) a tiny book of poetry; (4) 13 page essay on Frank Stanford; and (5) 13 page essay on Jim Harrison. That's a lot of weekends of sending the family somewhere fun while I sit in the library. But that was fun, too--just a lonely kind of fun.

Aime Cesaire

For posterity, then, the titles of my written output this semester:

1) Found Mythologies: The Imaginative Unity of Aime Cesaire's "Lost Body"
2) Le Petit Surrealiste: Poesie et les Amusements de Beaute Convulsive Pour l'Enfant Sensible
3) The Blackest Joke: Frank Stanford's Surreal Ontology
4) Surrounding Nothing: Zen Dialogue with the Deep Image in the Poetry of Jim Harrison

Tough class, but so cool that stuff, that Surreal stuff.

When Teachers Party

A small gathering of English teachers (with a few select teachers of other subjects) holding a holiday gathering at one of our city's finer/ only used book stores.

Mr. Jankowski, rising guitar phenom.

Ms. Valencic, not the easiest photo to get.

Ms. Venderly, fitting as much Peru into her head as will fit before December 21.

A New Post

Frank Stanford

Quite a gap between posts there. That's not like me. But I have been busy with a class I'm taking and finishing The Savage Detectives and putting up storm windows and reading my friend Dawn Potter's blog and wondering where all the world's money went and putting up storm windows.

I just finished an essay on Stanford that is okay. I started with a title that came to me when I woke up one recent morning after I had been thinking about it for awhile:

The Blackest Joke: Frank Stanford’s Surreal Ontology

I liked it. I said it to myself while I drove to work. Sometimes when I was shaving. I said it at Catherine like it was a dare. Then, I decided I better figure out what the hell it meant, so I started making up stuff, pretty much. It's amazing how closely critical writing resembles creative writing. I mean, you can only map so much out on an outline and then you have to close your eyes and start typing.

Anyway, The Savage Detectives is so sadly thrilling. It would be book of the year if I kept such ratings. Now for another long book, probably David Copperfield.

Eric Baus at Visiting Writers Series

Local poet Eric Baus returned to town Monday night.

I read his book, The To Sound, all the time. I try to be like that book.

His next book, Tuned Droves, is out soon, and his readings from that were my favorites of the night.

Here, a form of Haiku jujitsu.

I asked him who his favorite English teacher was at Snider H.S. and he said "Randy Rusk and Pam Teagarden." Randy taught me, too, so I thought "yeah, Mr. Rusk. He yelled a lot--in a good way."

Noah Eli Gordon also read, a poet of diverse talents and wit.
He blinked in every picture I took of him, though.

not that drunk driving is funny

but this is.

By request

As I promised someone earlier today, here is James Wright's "Northern Pike." I am now four months into my self-imposed one year waiting period before I tattoo the thing, in some big tattoo font, on my muscular back. The one year wait is to help reduce the likelihood of my regretting the decision, but also because I need the time to make my back muscular.

Northern Pike

All right. Try this,
Then. Every body
I know and care for,
And every body
Else is going
To die in a loneliness
I can't imagine and a pain
I don't know. We had
To go on living. We
Untangled the net, we slit
The body of this fish
Open from the hinge of the tail
To a place beneath the chin
I wish I could sing of.
I would just as soon we let
The living go on living.
An old poet whom we believe in
Said the same thing, and so
We paused among the dark cattails and prayed
For the muskrats,
For the ripples below their tails,
For the little movements that we knew the crawdads were making
under water,
For the right-hand wrist of my cousin who is a policeman.
We prayed for the game warden's blindness.
We prayed for the road home.
We ate the fish.
There must be something very beautiful in my body,
I am so happy.

--James Wright

So, we'll say eight months from today, then. That's a lot of words/ pain, I'm realizing.

Frank Stanford Diary, Part 2

The Chief

So the Chief ended up being so great. If I drove by this place at night and Edward Hopper were riding shotgun with me, he'd almost decide to paint it. "Dude, slow down . . aw, never mind," he'd say. They had shampoo packets, too, which was a bonus, because I had to wash my hair with tiny bar soap at the Motel 6 the night before.

The rest of my diary, then:

9:05 Atlanta Bakery

When there is a table of retired men sitting in a bakery where there are no pancakes, one of them will do all the talking. He is the large one. He will talk to his smaller, fellow retirees about other men they might know, and who have heart trouble and are looking for part-time jobs in their retirement. It is always this way.

9:15 Atlanta Bakery

I want to know, in The Savage Detectives, what happens to Juan Garcia Madero, but the book is not telling me and I am getting distracted. I almost put tea in my coffee just now.

Mathew Henriksen giving directions before the marathon reading of The Battlefield Where the Moon Says I Love You. In the background, you can see trucker hat guy.

9:44 in the upstairs loft at Night Bird Books in Fayetteville, where I have just discovered a new book of Chris Ware sketches that is beautiful but too expensive.

Before I left school yesterday, my friend Wendy said to me "Have fun on your trip! I hope you get to meet your poet-guy." "He's dead," I said. Then she laughed.

10:30 Farmers' market at Fayetteville town square .

Half of the citizenry of Arkansas is dogs. And yet it is still a red state. Not enough dogs.

If you see a three-legged dog, it is good luck. Especially if you have a leg and are looking for a dog.

12:50 Fayetteville public library, first panel discussion.

This guy in a baseball hat on the panel just said the exact same thing I have been thinking about Aime Cesaire and Frank Stanford but assumed I was wrong about. Now I think it's a good idea.
I will write it.

Matt again.

9:30 pm Marathon reading for Battlefield Where the Moon Says I Love You

We are 100 pages into Battlefield, and I have never read this much of it at one time and it's just too crazy. It's the only way this thing should be read. There are about thirty people listening in here and whenever the door opens to the hall outside, you can hear another twenty or so clinking beer bottles and talking about the poor market for PhD's.

I just got to get up on stage and read two pages. They included the part where the circus performer's cat is doused in cognac and lit on fire. I tried to rise to the occasion.

11:17 Getting tired already.

This guy in a trucker cap just got up there. I can't tell if the trucker cap is ironic hipster or sincere, but I wish I could wear hats the way he does. He gave the reading of the night. He sang it almost, in a voice like, I don't know, Michael Stipe or something if he were a public-access TV preacher. He was phenomenal, and a perfect note to end my night on. I'm not doing this all-nighter thing, though I might have if I brought a sleeping bag.

Irv Broughton, film-maker

And that's all I wrote! The travel and lack of decent breakfast was wearing me down, I think. I spent the whole trip home reading The Savage Detectives, but slowly. In the photo above is the guy who made the film that was one of the centerpieces of the conference this weekend. Before I took this picture, we talked IU basketball and Kelvin Sampson and the Ft. Wayne Zollner Pistons for a while. Super guy. Here's to hoping he can get a good version of It Wasn't a Dream, It Was a Flood released in the near future. It's stunning--I keep remembering the looped, hacking laughter of the figure that keeps coming in and out of focus at the beginning. Crazy.