yesterday i was right

It is snowing – which I think is sort of refreshing, seeing as it’s almost June – and yes, I am sore. Upon rereading the extended treatment of e. vs. w. Montana, suburbs, small towns, and the rez below, it became crystal clear that the whole effort really kind of falls flat on its well-intended face. I’ll put that on sleep deprivation and a surfeit of digressive attention disorder.

The snow has stopped, and now the sun is out, and I shall return to doing the work I get paid to do.

tomorrow i will be sore.

many things to report.

first, it's good to see this guy back at it. to those of you whom i have promised call-and-response communication via email or letter, all apologies. also you, individual, to whom i pledged feedback on your 3rd person fictional travel memoir, i ask for your patience. i have been traveling.

1) Eastern Montana is a state of mind. The mountain ranges in the rearview mirror give rise to the feeling that elevated thoughts and moods must be self-manufactured, rather than refracted from the landscape. I hiked up a hill/mountain today, I wheezed up it, sweated, huffed, made peace with two deer who couldn't see me once I stopped moving and couldn't smell me with the prevailing wind, and I whooped once I got to the top of this hill/mountain. From its summit, the Pintlar/Anaconda range looked it could be caressed. Spring has arrived. The deer I encountered, with whom I exchanged meaningful glances and reflective gestures (ears pushed forward, mouth chewing grass, big dark eyes waiting for me to move), can go as high as need be now that the snow melt on this particular hill/mountain has passed. The rivers are up, the birds are singing, the little baby calves are frolicking, the dead carcasses of various are growing ranker (more rank? someone please advise) by the day . . . you know the deal: spring grants a certain focus to things.
But eastern Montana, on the other hand, is scrub grass and pronghorn, long stretches of road that enhance the solitude of being in a car by offering up no other cars, and of course the meandering hills that roll up and down and always remind me of a piece of toilet paper folded loosely on itself.
This is why I went east this weekend (Labre = La-bray.) I am now employed here, at this school, which is located just off the Northern Cheyenne reservation and come into being before the reservation was "created." Say what you will about injustice and good intentions paving the road to hell, this concept of "reservation" is right up there with the most ignoble ideas we humans have foisted upon each other. Anyway . . .

2) The Rez.
I am no expert, but the ennui and suburban navel-gazing, the comfort and green grass security, the utter sameness (which is an illusion - all suburbs are different, they just recall those stale "desperate housewives" "the corrections" "American Beauty" evocations in my mind that made me think that a local hardcore band called Floodplain was the nearest thing to salvation my sixteen year old, lust-filled heart could grasp) of much of Middle America is not a myth when applied to subdivision suburbs, but holds no descriptive purchase when applied to the old dying towns that live, and will eventually die, in the same region. Each town is its own thing, comprised of constitutive characteristics that elide first gazes because of their very Heidegerrian thingness.
To me, though, for reasons that have varied historically, the idiosyncrasy of small towns has only become real and apparent. I like cities, and I like small towns: I like living in small towns long enough to walk in a bar and have a bottle of Budweiser put down in front of me, because that's what I drink, and the person the bar knows this. I like (well, fuck - I'll quit waxing faux poetic about this, because the point is that I'm done with small towns for now - I am moving on to the Rez, a more complex social aggregate whose very ontological fabric is other to me) well I like a change here and there. And so I go, not quite sure what the fuck is going to happen and knowing for certain that I need to stop cussing, keep the beard closely cropped, and stay out of bars for the time being unless I want my tires slashed or worse. There are cars piled up outside of trailers, tepees, and of course the viewer is prejudiced, magnifying things that do not matter in the long run and ignoring the very vital, very realized factoids that pyramid together for the purpose of ascendance.
These are all good changes, not made out of desperation but reflection conducted within a distinct awareness that I am swinging at something I cannot see, hoping to connect. Believe what you will, of course, about fate and destiny and the machinations of intestinal fortitude rendered in stark relief within the malleable surface on which your eyes feast: we do make choices, and we do face consequences, but in certain instances we make choices blind, in good faith and opaque light. So. That is the news. Thank you and goodnight.

sentiment/sediment

Things for which I’m thankful:

Bass lines

Rim shots

Pith (rhetorically and relating to fruit)

Reestablishing communicative channels

Private handshakes (but not if based on membership in honorific clubs like fraternities, Elks Club, Rotary International, etc.)

Paintings, good representational ones

Paintings, made-by-children ones

Children, if borrowed not created

The words “anathema” and “acclaim” (also: “obtrude,” “abstemious,” “demonstrable,” etc.)

ESPN Classic

Cheese and mustard sandwiches with a Coke and potato chips

The Beatitudes

Rocking out

Lodgepole on windy days

Being able to repeat myself

Cross-court forehands

Drawing a 7-iron into a tucked pin, with a stiff wind in one’s face

Drag bunts

Alliteration in moderation

Rivers

A hypothetical formative experiences that may befall you this weekend, plus other stuff

1. Perhaps you are going home, wherever home may be. In going home you will jumpstart the process exhuming old, unworked-out feelings about origins, identity, and where in the world you are supposed to place yourself. You will test Thomas Wolfe’s contention that there is no home to which anyone may ever return. You could be flying, or driving, attending a funeral or going to visit the children of your sister/brother/good friend, interviewing for a job or simply taking a break to revisit whatever it is you once left. You may see your nemesis and/or your first love and find that hatred fades but love persists, often as a dull throbbing ache/thirst/yearning/need. Maybe you, like me, do not know what to think about where you come from, and a host of conflicted, visceral, self-wrestling notions about your return, the imminence of which is really the only reason you started this trajectory of thoughts and immersed into memory. But you will be there, and your being-there is an opportunity, so why aren’t you packed? That’s the other thing: the actual traveling, with the airports, blue haired ladies, black guys who drive the carts for people whose bodies are no longer dependable and laugh big belly laughs, etc. I would go for the window seat.

So I don’t know what you did, but I did go home, I did face inner conflict, and I did get the window seat. What a coincidence. I also got a job offer, which complicates things and simplifies them at the same time. I have a tendency to pass over a job offer if it’s more attractive than a different job offer, and I know not why. But you could give less than a shit about this, and because I salute you for that, I shall progress.

Airports and buses supply the best evidence as to why cell phones should be banned and why driving without a time constraint remains my favorite mode of travel across these greater United States. Of course time was limited, so every slick operator in a suit and flipphone subjected me to his (or her – in which case substitute pantsuit for suit) sales pitch vis a vis the public space that we shared together. Commerce must be difficult.

I’m way late in the game, but the books music conversation, topics intermittently engaged:

1) I like when Lil Kim says “Wifey” on that Biggie song. Or Jay-Z song, whichever. Specificity is overrated.

2) I like the 22 twos Jay-z song off of Reasonable Doubt? I have reasonable doubts as to whether that’s the right album.

3) Neutral Milk Hotel: yes yes and yes. One of the few albums I own that I can honestly and unself-consciously proclaim that it is Art in an era of artifice, whatever that means.

4) Essays: Borges on Whitman. EB White on Thoreau. Wendell Berry’s “Standing By Words.” Dennis Johnson v. Bill Vollmann on living “off the grid” (see Johnson’s Seek and Vollman’s Rising Up/Down). Emerson’s “Fate.” An untitled essay by Diedrich Bonhoeffer.

5) Fiction: Aleksander Hemon “Question of Bruno.” “Cloudsplitter” Russell Banks. “14 Stories” Stephen Dixon. James Welch “The Indian Lawyer” Revisiting: lorrie moore. Tibor Fischer. “Winter of Our Discontent” I re-re-read Paul Beatty’s White Boy Shuffle this weekend (thank you insomnia), and it bears up to re-re-reading.

6) Poets: Snyder, Gary. Alexie, Sherman. Stein, Gertrude. Collection of Japanese death poetry from way back when, when it was considered quid pro quo to write a poem on one’s death bed or before committing ritual suicide, which is a little wishy washy but contains some gems.

7) Miscellaneous: books I want - new biography of John Brown. CDs I want: the new typical cats, which is kind of old now. Buy them for me.

8) Instrumental: there’s one Don Cabellero song that makes me want to throw myself into a wall, in a good way. Cello concertos and piano concertos make me feel sophisticated; Scriabin and red wine are a salve. DJ Shadow: yes, yes, and yes. Old school though mostly.

9) I listen to Dr. Dre’s the next episode at least three times a week at work.

10) The Mammals do that retro-hillbilly bluegrass shit, and do it well.

The Coup’s Party Music is seventeen stars out of six possible. I don’t even want to get into how good it is.

marginalia

1) news:

riding horses across America with God alongside, in order to benefit Paraguayans

2) the banal:

it's snowing. big white flakes tumble down and blanket the green grass and flowers April showers cultivated. i used to think talking about the weather was passe, something the people in my town did because issues of substance eluded their comprehension, but now I know weather is a subject of conversation b/c there is so much to say. other observations that will fail to titillate:
a) garrison keillor's voice no longer aggravates, nor does his person and the thoughts that emanate from the mind it houses.
b) i went to church this sunday and did not scoff at the sooth-saying sermonizing. i did not sing, and will not, i believe, ever, but i did laugh with and make faces at the little boy two pews ahead of me.

3) Decency is the new aspiration. (And that's all there is to it: no gloss, no take-back, no undercutting)

4) that old saw about increasing metabolism, being less tired through exercise cuts cleanly through a lot of bullshit.

I'm off to abandon myself to snow.


Slobodan Tallguy, or this guy, if either of you read this, we need to start thinking about collaboration re: impending matrimony of Fence Builder.

how not giving a fuck perpetuates not having anything about which to give a fuck

I went to a job fair recently. I had 40 resumes in my bag to hand out to school administrators whose human resources smiles almost sent me running fast in the other direction. Rather than run, I resorted to a dignified saunter. The first day I stayed for about a half hour before making the hour and a half drive back home. Three hours on the road for one half hour pacing amongst tables housing an administrator with little posters and presentations advertising the respective features of the administrator's school: this is pretty much how tolerant I am of self-pimpery. "Networking" to me is synonymous with getting into a car and driving it into a wall at say thirty miles an hour, backing up, and doing the same until self or vehicle is no longer capable of continuing.

My ego is as big as anyone's, as is my penchant for seeking vengeance on those who prove me to be less than equal to the proportions in which I am cast in my mind's eye. But in formal settings, when suits and ties are present, my loquacious-when-I-wanna-be self becomes averse to responses that stray beyond the monosyllabic and later I tend to lash out at unsuspecting, uninvolved service-industry employees to whom I end up profusely apologizing. The second day I lasted three hours, visited ten schools out of a possible one hundred and something, and spent most of my downtime reading Sonnets to Orpheus as others in line exchanged strategic advice that sounded more like attempts at sabotage. The conversations with the administrators I did approach went fine, but the entire project evinced the sense in which my not being independently wealthy, in combination with my tendency to expect the world to hand me whatever I want, tends to not work very well.



My point in bringing this up is the numerous instances in which "fuck it" has been my fallback response to situations that call for grace, magnanimity, and effort, with a dash of fakery thrown in for good measure. So instead of traversing through a crowd of jobseekers and dancing the self-promotion dance, which may open a door I would like to enter, I circle around the edges of the pack trying to make sense of the motivations some of these people must construct for themselves and occasionally thinking up hypothetical motivations for myself that fail to stimulate anything resembling intestinal fortitude. I submit that I am not so much lazy as self-destructively ambivalent. I know, I know - poor me, poor college-educated white male transcendent subject me, to whom many gifts were bestowed and from whom "society" and individual gift-givers received not so much as a thank you in response.


I don't mean to register a complaint here, because the fault - if "fault" is applicable, and I think it is not - belongs to me, nor do I mean to register unhappiness or distress. I guess more than anything I'm curious as to whether others do cost-benefit analyses and come to the conclusion that low-key low-pay is better than hectic high-pay self-compromise. That's even too generous - I'm not even curious about others. I'm completely absorbed with my own propensity to shelve a concerted plan of attack in favor of spontaneous acceptance of some option that happened to open up. School is the outlier here, because for whatever reason I could always summon enough gumption to put forth what needed to be put forth.

"A man is rich in proportion to the number of things he can afford to let alone." Two cheers for that. Or maybe I'm just looking to put a little gloss on an otherwise ceaselessly dull habit I have cultivated.

[SIDENOTE, A TOUCH MORE POSITIVE: This little job fair was at a college, and walking around campus avoiding the other attendees reminded me of the fundamental exquisiteness of the female form. Gay guys, straight girls: how can you like men? How is it possible to choose men over women? These women, these college-age women fucking SLAYED me. I live out in the boonies, and it is a rare occasion for me to lay eyes on a female form upon which my eyes have not yet laid, so that may have something to do with it, but early spring across the campuses of America must be just about the best time and place to sit back and take in the various tableaus. I came to the occasion armed with an altogether appreciative attitude, not lascivious intent, for I adore, I do not objectify. Big ups to creative ponytails, big thick chunky shoes, men's dress shirts (on girls), and sustained eye contact over chest high book shelves.]