A day gone by

Coffee with friends in the morning, then the gym, home, lunch, errands then the beach, Casey Key north. The shore there is buried in crushed shells. Hard walking but we went a few miles up then back. Storm surge is eating the beach, undercutting banks and trees, piling sand on stairs protected by red "Private - Keep Out" signs. Incoming tide this afternoon. It was a bit rough and seaweedy but warm and I stayed in for a long time standing up to my neck, facing the Gulf's western edge, rising and sinking in waves that mirrored the sky...mercurial blue, white, silver waves reflecting the blue and billowy white cloud sky above the horizon which disappeared every time a surge fused them, sea and sky, making the world suddenly austere and slightly threatening.

Another torn page

I posted a new excerpt at my poetry blog, anna sadhorse. I realize calling it an excerpt is pretty vague. Excerpt from what? At this point, it's nothing more than a page torn from the little black notebook I always carry. I hesitate to call it a poem. Maybe it's a bit from the autobiography I plan to write someday.

New Madhuban

Going through papers on my desk this afternoon, I came across some things I wrote years ago that I'd been thinking about, and forgetting to, do something with. As you might guess, I wrote it during a particularly difficult time in my life. Anyway, I'm posting an excerpt here and at Anna Sadhorse.

New Madhuban
West Virginia


this forest,    
planted for a loaf of bread
and a dollar a day, 
is a solemn place
the hill it has taken possession of
drops sharply
to a holler     too steep for pasture
a place where small skeletons   slowly turn to stone
this is a good place to be alone

the sun seldom finds entry to this grove
is a stranger here     off his path  
from a world that does not exist
his probing beams
only deepen the darkness
and threaten to ignite the brittle trees

one may only be here carefully    
this forest has no need of company
birds know it   they do not nest
or sing among its spiney branches
there is no undergrowth   
nothing pierces the needle mat

and the pines themselves
have shed their lower branches
becoming heartless    
pitch steeped trunks with shattered limbs
they offer no place to rest
who comes here must stand alone
who comes here to dream must dream
indifferent as the dead


asha
West Virginia, 1975 - Excerpt from Sunday Feast

Trees were planted in this area during America's Great Depression of the 1930's as part the New Deal.

Red-eye

1:30 A.M.
Reluctantly the metal beast shudders up and above a sudden spill of sleepless iridescence, lagoons of gold, pockets of blaze, sprawling tendrils of light trailing off to coals glowing in the dark then a few scattered embers then they also vanish and there, traversing the interstellar night, the edge of our planet and her lovely moon who is, at the moment, gazing at her reflection on my window. Hello Moon. But before she can answer our reverie is interrupted by the arrival of the steward bearing peanuts.

________________________________________

I found this entry in one of my notebooks the other day. I wrote a while ago and totally forgot about it until now. Don't be surprised if it has changed if you happen to drop by and read it again later. That's how things go around here.

Jean-Paul Sartre Cookbook

Marty Smith

.
Credit goes to M. Lee for digging up this article posted by Paul Vincent Spade, Professor of Philosophy at Indiana University. I did a little research on its author Marty Smith. Seems he's currently playing guitar for the Portland band Slutty Hearts. The Free Agent, one of Portland's many fine but unfortunately now defunct alternative newspapers, published it in 1987 and Utne Reader, now Utne, republished it in 1993. Maybe to appreciate it you have to be a depressive type like me but I think it's hilarious.

The Jean-Paul Sartre Cookbook

Submissions Update,12.11

To date, of the six poems I submitted in October, two have been rejected (with comments), two remain unanswered (I'm assuming rejected) and two were accepted. After the first of the year, I'll send out more. 

'Road's Eye View', a poem I wrote in Mexico a few years ago, was recently accepted by Sein und Werden for publication in their January online issue dedicated to Futurism. Sein und Werden features work that is "experimental, non-genre, erotica, horror, philosophical, noir, crime, hard-boiled, surreal" so cool. The deep night voices from that seaside swamp found roost.

A Dog's Tale

If you haven't done it already, do yourself a favor and read Mark Twain's short story, A Dog's Tale.

My father was a St. Bernard, my mother was a collie, but I am a Presbyterian. This is what my mother told me, I do not know these nice distinctions myself. To me they are only fine large words meaning nothing.  more here

Writer wanted

Matt Doig wrote this ad for the Sarasota Herald-Tribune and, yes, it's a real ad in a real newspaper. It's been making the rounds but I'm reposting just in case you missed it. And no, I don't know if the job's still open. We will be staying in Florida this summer near Sarasota so I especially like the last paragraph and plan to at least do a drive by of the paper. My kind of people.

We want to add some talent to the Sarasota Herald-Tribune investigative team. Every serious candidate should have a proven track record of conceiving, reporting and writing stellar investigative pieces that provoke change. However, our ideal candidate has also cursed out an editor, had spokespeople hang up on them in anger and threatened to resign at least once because some fool wanted to screw around with their perfect lede.

We do a mix of quick hit investigative work when events call for it and mini-projects that might run for a few days. But every year we like to put together a project way too ambitious for a paper our size because we dream that one day Walt Bogdanich will have to say: “I can’t believe the Sarasota Whatever-Tribune cost me my 20^th Pulitzer.” As many of you already know, those kinds of projects can be hellish, soul-sucking, doubt-inducing affairs. But if you’re the type of sicko who likes holing up in a tiny, closed  office with reporters of questionable hygiene to build databases from scratch by hand-entering thousands of pages of documents to take on powerful people and institutions that wish you were dead, all for the glorious reward of having readers pick up the paper and glance at your potential prize-winning epic as they flip their way to the Jumble… well, if that sounds like journalism Heaven, then you’re our kind of sicko.

For those unaware of Florida’s reputation, it’s arguably the best news state in the country and not just because of the great public records laws. We have all kinds of corruption, violence and scumbaggery. The 9/11 terrorists trained here. Bush read My Pet Goat here. Our elections are colossal clusterfucks. Our new governor once ran a health care company that got hit with a record fine because of rampant Medicare fraud. We have hurricanes, wildfires, tar balls, bedbugs, diseased citrus trees and an entire town overrun by giant roaches (only one of those things is made up). And we have Disney World and beaches, so bring the whole family.

Send questions, or a resume/cover letter/links to clips to my email address below. If you already have your dream job, please pass this along to someone whose skills you covet. Thanks.

Matthew Doig

Sarasota Herald-Tribune
1741 Main St.
Sarasota FL, 34236
(941) 361-4903
matthew.doig@heraldtribune.com

---

Another cure for writer's block

Deadlines. So says Laura Miller in her recent article posted at Salon. We knew it all along, right? If  you have to, you will. So, I have given myself 10 minutes to write this post. Damn. I just wasted about three of those minutes fiddling around finding albums to copy to my player and several more re-reading Miller's article. I am down to one minute. ONE MINUTE. Deadlines and decoy projects.

That's what every blocked writer really needs: something more significant they should be doing instead, an earth-shaking, life-changing project you're stealing time from to work on this little novel. Or the great novel you ought to be drafting while you knock off your memoir just for fun. Granted, inventing such a decoy project and convincing yourself that you may actually get around to it someday requires a bold and sustained act of imagination. But that's what writers do, isn't it -- make stuff up?

My "decoy project": is blogging. How fucked is that?

Time to move on

Professor William Strunk Jr.

Some time ago I got tired of living under the tyranny of Strunk & White's Elements of Style and sent my copy packing to the secondhand store. In case you are unfamiliar with it, this tiny book is a terse manual long considered by many educators and writers as the final word in rules of word usage and the principles of writing style. So this morning I was interested when I found a link at ArtsJournal to this article by Adam Haslett. For starters, Haslett notes that the work is "spoken in the voice of unquestioned authority in a world where that no longer exists".

"Though never explicitly political, The Elements of Style is unmistakably a product of its time. Its calls for “vigour” and “toughness” in language, its analogy of sentences to smoothly functioning machines, its distrust of vernacular and foreign language phrases all conform to that disciplined, buttoned-down and most self-assured stretch of the American century from the armistice through the height of the cold war. A time before race riots, feminism and the collapse of the gold standard. It is a book full of sound advice addressed to a class of all-male Ivy-Leaguers wearing neckties and with neatly parted hair." source

Don't get me wrong. I believe we have all benefited by the good professor's dictates. I will be wary of adjectives to my dying day, although mostly because of their egregious misuse by bad poets, but I have an unabashed fondness for the well done run-on sentence. Perhaps this is because I am given to a perpetual adolescent rebellion. Nevertheless, I have no interest in novelty for its own sake. I just do not agree with Strunk's overarching rule: “Prefer the standard to the offbeat” although, as Haslett notes, Hemingway managed to successfully blend the two.

Still, a word about Strunk's famous dictum: "

Omit needless words".  Of course, I too am always on the lookout for flabby writing but I also agree with Haslett's conclusion that:

"This rule leads young writers to be cautious and dull; minimalist style becomes minimalist thought, and that is a problem."

How far into uncharted territory can any rule book or map take me? I realize it's tacky to quote oneself but a line from one of my own poems comes to mind... "The glass breaks and I am gone." I don't know about you but, for me, that's the point.

When words slip away

In the course of dying from a rare affliction which will first rob him of language, art critic and artist Tom Lubbock recently published excerpts from his memoir of the experience in the Guardian. It is well worth reading and, especially, I think, if you are a writer. Over the course of his disease he reverts to pure poetry, the first and last link, the voice of the soul.

Postscript:
Tom Lubbock died 9 January 2011. His obituary was published in the Guardian UK. If you do nothing else, read the end, Tom's final words.

Poetry: lost & found

I was dinking around online this morning, yeah searching for myself. So what? Who hasn't? Geeze.... the voices in my head are so rude! Anyway, I came up with this. I had not only forgotten I'd written it, I'd forgotten about the blog I posted it on (IndieWriters) and the google group of the same name. Well, I actually haven't forgotten about the google group of the same name. It just made for better sentence flow to add that. I haven't forgotten about the group but I never go there. But I'm not giving it up. It's a good and appropriate name, one I thoroughly identify with but it joins a host of other online entities I have launched and abandoned, space junk, ephemeral moons sharing my orbit. In my mind's eye they are covered with glittering space dust, a pretty sight out here where earth night fades into deep space.

Excerpt from an unfinished, unnamed collection

Reconstruction

One word, one sentence at a time I will reconstruct the story. I've written it before on countless scraps of paper. One word, one sentence at a time I will reconstruct the story. Forgive me. It is composed of a seemingly endless succession of beginnings. The original order of the words has been lost. I rely on you to supply the details. One word, one sentence at a time I will reconstruct the story. Forgive me. The original has been lost but I promise to stay true to its drift. That is not a matter of memory. It is a matter of being. One world at, one word at a time. Forgive me. The original version of this story does not exist. One word, one sentence at a time, this is its drift. This is the drift. The notes are scattered. No. Not scattered. The notes were never collected. Jotted. Scribbled. On scraps, in notebooks, on flaps. They have never been collected. They have seldom been re-read. Or read. The words, disjointed, have been set down and abandon. No, not abandon. There is much thinking between them, the phrases, the paragraph and elimination of words. And ideas. "Why?" I am telling a story. Build the house. Paint it later. And later still introduce the particulars. Each letter reverberates but ... I digress.

asha

Rant revisited

Cartoon by Gary Larson


Last week I went on a rant about the old saying, "write about what you know", blasting people who cling to the idea as though it were their salvation, stray and be lost forevah. Anyway, once again I overdid it because I did not give much of a nod to the times when sticking to what you know results in smoking hot writing so I'm back, hashing it out. It's what we do out here along the language barrier, hash things out. And I don't expect this will be the end of it either but then ending it is not the point, is it?

The point is, can I say that? The point is... I doubt anyone who has given it half a thought believes that subject is any more than a place to start. Otherwise, why bother? It's what you do with it that matters, and more importantly, what you let it do to you, where you let it take you that makes the difference.

And not to belabor the point but, on the flip side, those of us who think that rules are made to be broken need to keep in mind that there are no guarantees breaking them will automatically lead to extraordinary writing.

But back to the thing about sticking to what you know...

Here's a guy who has put it together. He writes about what he knows and kicks ass. He is a teacher/performance poet who bills himself as the man who "wants to create one thousand new teachers". I found his video at a Reno Spoken Views site but I don't know if he ever read here in Reno. My friend, if you haven't heard Taylor Mali before, you are in for a treat...

Spoken Views

Here are a few photos from the Spoken Views event in Reno the other night. I read just fine. I know how to deliver a line. I don't shirk. I don't mumble. It's just that lowering the page and talking directly to the audience freaks me out. Always has and I've been doing this for years. Reading in public almost invariability increases my sense of isolation. I'm a very shy person. People who know me might argue that but, in fact, I am seldom comfortable in public.

So this time I picked a poem that has two voices and promised myself I'd ask someone to read with me. The regulars at Spoken Views are very competent performers. Many, I reasoned, can easily do a cold read so maybe I can just ask for a volunteer at the beginning of my set? That way I don't have to actually talk to anyone beforehand. I've only been once before, and I'm older than most, but what the hell? They claim they welcome "readers from all walks of life, young & old". I decided to take 'm at their word.

As it went, the kid sitting next to me struck up a conversation before the show started. It was his first time at Spoken Views and, though he wrote poetry, he'd never read in public. I asked if he'd like to read with me. It seemed like the right thing to do. He said "sure". That's him in the tangerine colored shirt. Gabino. Really nice guy.

In all, I read three poems. Gabino joined me for the final one. He did great. A real champ. I still pretty much panicked once I got on stage but I doubt anyone noticed and guarantee no one cared. Of course, I obsessed well into the next day about how I could have better introduced our little one minute ad hoc multi-voiced experiment. Next time...

Stardate -312451.7040525113, Bird Park update

I have a terrible habit of rewriting posts after I publish them. I had to start this one just to pull myself off of the last. No wonder a novel takes years. And while I'm on the subject, thanks to those who responded to my mumblings about needing readers for my "manuscript" though, to be accurate, I was more thinking out loud than recruiting. I am not anywhere near letting other people read that gaggle of words, but I will keep your generous offers in mind should I ever manage to develop the thing past blobhood. I find it invaluable to hear my writing through different ears.

In other news, Mr. Lee saw Baby Q. and his parents yesterday. That's the little fellow who nearly drown about a week ago. I guess he can now fly now. Wonderful. There is a young quail couple in the park as I write this but I don't see a baby with them. I hope he's still okay. It's a treat having a family around as quail don't hang out in the Bird Park much during July. Seems this place is more their spring fling single's bar than nursery. A huge group mixes it up here then but disappear when things get serious. Too bad. Quail are the most fun to watch.


But, even without them, the Bird Park is plenty busy. There's the chummy pool party pigeon set, nimble melodious red wing blackbirds, shrewd daring starlings, tiny cute sparrows, hilariously cantankerous finches, sundry drop-ins and lots of swank skiddish magpie and a big family of noisy spindle-legged juvenile crows, plus mom and maybe dad, who are very cool in an edgy kind of way. The young ones hop and dash after their parents chortling and squawking for handouts and, when they get the brush, chase each other. Crows are smart and long-lived so I'm thinking the parents are probably card carrying members of the Park scene. Makes sense as they are unusually tolerant of me, sometimes simply hoping up on the fence when I come out. One fellow in particular greets me with a lot of sweet talk. It doesn't take much to get a treat and he knows it.

The biggest change is that Snooky, the scrawny blue-eyed Siamese who recently adopted our next door neighbor Dwayne, has claimed the lonely shade of the quail's abandoned lilac bushes bar as her own. She's not a punk like the two little gangstas who hunt here but try telling that to the birds. She chills the mood. Snooky appeared this spring after Clarance the Bastard (and I mean Bastard with the greatest affection) died in his arms. And Dwayne is dying so what should I do? Chase off his one bright light in a smoke gray twilight? Snooky is welcome.

Stardate calculator

You can't edit a blank page

I need a reader. This spring I finally dug up and printed out my now four-year-old NaNoWriMo manuscript and am currently halfway through the first read. Other than being determined to make the required word count, having had no expectations from the start is a good thing. The fact that I can read it at all is encouraging but it's a slow go. Thus far, I have managed only two sessions, months apart. I am surprised to find that it amuses me. This morning one particular section had me laughing out loud. Why can't that be enough? I said from the beginning that there would be no plot but, now that the manuscript exists, it needs one. Why does this all have to be so goddamn complicated? I read the funny part to Mr. Lee this morning but he wants a story goddammit. I'll read it when it has one. He's not a first draft kind of guy. That fucker would red pen a suicide note.


So I am half way through the first read and won't inflict it on anyone at the moment, but I need a reader. Okay. Okay. So that reader will have the same response as Mr. Lee, but WTF?! I have assembled 50,000, 12 pt. words on 197 double spaced, one inch margin pages. What else do you want from me? Blood? I know. A plot. And there is one, buried throughout the manuscript, like a dismembered body. Yes. Yes. I must sew my Frankenstein together but what the hell? That's work. Anyway, somewhere along the line I am going to need a reader, not a teacher, a reader. Doesn't every writer get a reader? I need a sounding board, someone to complete the loop between the ears, self to self, heart to head, someone who can help piece together the map of the story, the one I wrote in invisible ink, tore into tiny pieces and ate. Anyway, it's too soon for a reader. Just thinking out loud.

Reno, Spoken Views

I am staying in Reno tonight after reading at Spoken Views monthly open mic. I heard some really good work. It was better than Berkeley and more energetic. I'm glad I finally went.

Poetry express

I read at the Poetry Express open mic on Monday night. It's held at the Priya Restaurant on San Pablo Ave, a little hole in the wall with a friendly staff and really tasty, cheap Indian food. Poetry Express is another of Berkeley's many groups. They are not only good poets but nice people. I am so glad I finally made it to the Bay Area to check out the scene. (thanks universe et al) The facilitator also invited me to be a feature reader at some future event but we set no date. Whether or not either of these invitations actually pan out, it's great to meet people who are not only doing things themselves, but also like my work.

Berkeley graffiti

Cruel world but there's always NaNoWriMo if you don't feel bad enough already

I had laugh at the photo my daughter emailed me yesterday. So much for the new toy I sent Owen the dog. I guess it lasted about a day. Cruel world. The santa bear I gave him for Christmas lasted a week.

The big news around here is that the other day I finally printed out the manuscript I wrote a few years ago during NaNoWriMo. I finished it a day or two before the Nov. 30th deadline, or more accurately I belly crawled past the required 50,000 word finish line, called it good, encrypted it and emailed it to the NaNo word counter bot who counted it in about two seconds then shot back my NaNoWriMo "winner" badge, sort of like receiving a gold metal in the "special" Olympics. I then filed the manuscript and that was that. I never read it and tried not to think about it.

However, I thought I might have lost it during a recent computer upgrade so the other day, out of curiosity, I went looking. The shame over writing such total crap has kind of faded. Time heals. And there it was. It seemed harmless enough so I released it from it's digital limbo. It lives incarnate in the world as black ink on white paper. It looks impressive, especially printed out in 12 pt. Courier, double spaced with 1" margins, 197 pages of .... well ... words. I started reading it and kind of like some of it, although it is shamelessly about nothing. Uncle Monkey, Ugly Bear and Clarence are dubious.


Other than that, I'm headed up to the lake this morning. Some writer friends, also NaNoWriMo gold medalists, put together a weekend retreat. I planned on going last night but got to the base of the Sierra and was turned back by the flashing red CHAINS REQUIRED sign. I'm sure most people forged on, chains or no, but I did not. Okay. Gotta go.

Cheap Wine & Poetry

"We should never have named what we buried. We know now it wasn't love." ~ Richard Hugo from Graves.

Last night I attended a reading at Seattle's Richard Hugo House, a Cheap Beer & Prose event hosted by Cheap Wine & Poetry, to quote their blog, "Seattle’s biggest, coolest, hippest reading series." There was a huge turnout. I went alone but met some really nice people who invited me to join them at their table. One had come to read poetry at the open mic following the main event. As it turned out, I read as well. It's wonderful reading to people who actually listen. By the way, the Hugo House is a great place. Next time you are in Seattle, check it out.