Reasons
There's a greasy spoon diner in Hillsdale, out past the all night diner where students are regulars, called Lulus. It's a truck stop that specializes in hamburgers, with a giant neon 'EAT' sign, graffiti in the bathrooms past the pay-to-use showers and plastic trees.
"Why do you have plastic trees?" asked one of girls in our company.
"Because," said the waitress, "they're plastic trees."
And they were.
May 8, 2004
Omen dreaming ghosts
I saw you last night, my friend, at a party. Of course it wasn't you, being you're on the other side of this land made for you and me, but I kept getting angry at this guy because I'd turn to look at you, to laugh with you with our eyes, to say something only you would laugh at, and instead it was just this guy who wasn't you, damn him.
Maybe this is just to say I miss you, that you've been burned so deep in me that I'm always writing you letters in my head. Maybe it means I need you now in a way I haven't since the first, or more than that since back then you weren't this gaping hole of something I’d come to need. Maybe it's just another thought that, indeed, if I died and was offered one memory to live (After Life) I'd choose standing with you on a balcony over a Seattle street crossing watching the way crowds push and drive into lanes and trying to predict patterns in those pretty shopping masses.
But I don't know because last week I saw this girl who lives, I don't know, five thousand miles from here. And I knew her, but not very well. We talked about O'Conner and I encouraged her to be less timid in her writing, and that was it between us. So this is confusing, because I saw you and I saw her and it's not like I think of this girl that often and, you know, if she forgot my name after a while I think I'd just think that figured, because it was that passing sort of relationship.
So maybe it doesn’t mean anything and I’m just a little more loony than normal, a little more likely to pick a face out of a crowd and think I know it, a little more likely to dream weird situations where my friends all appear and have roles. And I’m thinking, "ehhhh, it means nothing."
Then this morning I see a six year old. Blond hair. Blue tee shirt matching his eyes. Smile. He reminds me of someone, a little, but I don't know that many six year olds. Then his mom called him "Danny."
I looked up to answer. I looked at the little boy. And I died.
I don't know if I'm being haunted, or haunting. I don't know if I'm trying to foist some meaning on the world or it's trying to foist it on me.
What do we do with tiding-less omens and interpretation-less dreams?
I saw you last night, my friend, at a party. Of course it wasn't you, being you're on the other side of this land made for you and me, but I kept getting angry at this guy because I'd turn to look at you, to laugh with you with our eyes, to say something only you would laugh at, and instead it was just this guy who wasn't you, damn him.
Maybe this is just to say I miss you, that you've been burned so deep in me that I'm always writing you letters in my head. Maybe it means I need you now in a way I haven't since the first, or more than that since back then you weren't this gaping hole of something I’d come to need. Maybe it's just another thought that, indeed, if I died and was offered one memory to live (After Life) I'd choose standing with you on a balcony over a Seattle street crossing watching the way crowds push and drive into lanes and trying to predict patterns in those pretty shopping masses.
But I don't know because last week I saw this girl who lives, I don't know, five thousand miles from here. And I knew her, but not very well. We talked about O'Conner and I encouraged her to be less timid in her writing, and that was it between us. So this is confusing, because I saw you and I saw her and it's not like I think of this girl that often and, you know, if she forgot my name after a while I think I'd just think that figured, because it was that passing sort of relationship.
So maybe it doesn’t mean anything and I’m just a little more loony than normal, a little more likely to pick a face out of a crowd and think I know it, a little more likely to dream weird situations where my friends all appear and have roles. And I’m thinking, "ehhhh, it means nothing."
Then this morning I see a six year old. Blond hair. Blue tee shirt matching his eyes. Smile. He reminds me of someone, a little, but I don't know that many six year olds. Then his mom called him "Danny."
I looked up to answer. I looked at the little boy. And I died.
I don't know if I'm being haunted, or haunting. I don't know if I'm trying to foist some meaning on the world or it's trying to foist it on me.
What do we do with tiding-less omens and interpretation-less dreams?
May 7, 2004
Thoughts intersecting on community
- Communities are communities because of borders. They are structural, things of form.
- Philosophical practice has always depended on community but some philosophies distrust knowledge that isn't individual.
- All knowledge that is communal is open to being revisited, returned to, re-kneaded. The conversation can always be continued. Communal knowledge is a ground, but never a final foundation.
- Individual knowledge refuses to be considered in a conversation. It is an absolute that cannot be opened to talk for it cannot be reshaped or reiterated but only insisted. Individual knowledge pounds on the table in insistence of being right, neither offering to participate in the un-final act of talking or to allow any other considerations to take place, since the very fact of this communal talking denies the claim of closure which is
- Descartes needed to claim the end of philosophy, yet "The End of Philosophy" (Wittgenstein, Derrida, etc) is the opening to the questioning and conversing without end.
- Deconstructionism tells us that meaning, to be recognized as meaning, must be translatable and retraceable. Texts, e.g., must be communal and the author must be "dead."
- I've lived in two communities, both artificial: first, a Wendell Berry influenced post-hippie and neo-mennonite Christian commune; second, a Russell Kirk liberal arts/great books college of conservatives across the spectrum. In both cases the communities were self-conscious about their attempts at community and (generalizing) they resulted in deep satisfaction and growth mixed with dark inbreeding and nastiess.
- Watching the natural community around me, a black "ghetto" along the train tracks and industrial side of these suburbs outside of Philadelphia, I see the same two sides intermingled, as children grow up together in the streets and parks and everyone knows each other and supports each other, but are blighted by drugs and multiple levels of violence.
- Is this mixture of the wonderful and evil as inseperable as it seems and, how can consider it in attempting to create communities.
- What separates apparently failed blogging communities from successful ones? The former being Hillsdale's LXB or the Reformed Circle, the latter being the New Brutalists, or the neoconservatives. What should a fledgling blogging community like the neocalvinists' consider for their future?
- Individualism, for us, will always be too transparent for full recognition.
- Our viewing of individualism shows it's waning.
- People who came of age in the 80s and 90s, we're told, want to define themselves by their friends where their parents and grandparents would look to economic, ethnic/religious, political or familial definitions.
- Every group of friends I have had has entertained some fantasy of sustainable community.
- Academia looks at movements or schools, but might better call them conversations and communities.
- Art is considered, superficially, to be an personal activity. Something demanding quiet, maybe loneliness. Yet, art thrives in communities.
- Considering community in the canon, we find the concern is constant, the fear of being without community is always with us. When not an overt concern, it is often an underpinning, e.g., Beowulf is under-themed of community: the old king, the great mead hall, the lonely son-of-Cain monster, the return home, the funeral pyre.
- What academic discipline doesn't consider communities?
- The search for community among Christians manifests itself as primitivism opposed to a Christianity centered on an isolating and individualizing church service, and seeking a faith subsisting of a life lived together.
- The search for community among Christians manifests itself as a move toward liturgy, where worship is recognized as a communal and participatory action and the Church is not a thing of tenants and propriety but a body of the living and the dead in the service and worship of Christ.
- Primitivists and liturgists, ostensibly polar, both believe that true faith and doctrine take place within the community that is the Church.
- The recent history of Christian movements is divided between those seeking "a personal faith" and those seeking a tradition.
- The Scripture, textually and historically, is not a thing of private devotions and revelations, but a public book. The Reformation's strength or weakness is found here, for it either made the book available all, saving the bible from clerical gnosticism, or made the book an individual affair, sheering it of its communal openness and limiting it to private exegesis.
- The two primary doctrines of Christianity, the Trinity and the Incarnation, are by nature communal.
- Communities are communities because of borders. They are structural, things of form.
- Philosophical practice has always depended on community but some philosophies distrust knowledge that isn't individual.
- All knowledge that is communal is open to being revisited, returned to, re-kneaded. The conversation can always be continued. Communal knowledge is a ground, but never a final foundation.
- Individual knowledge refuses to be considered in a conversation. It is an absolute that cannot be opened to talk for it cannot be reshaped or reiterated but only insisted. Individual knowledge pounds on the table in insistence of being right, neither offering to participate in the un-final act of talking or to allow any other considerations to take place, since the very fact of this communal talking denies the claim of closure which is
- Descartes needed to claim the end of philosophy, yet "The End of Philosophy" (Wittgenstein, Derrida, etc) is the opening to the questioning and conversing without end.
- Deconstructionism tells us that meaning, to be recognized as meaning, must be translatable and retraceable. Texts, e.g., must be communal and the author must be "dead."
- I've lived in two communities, both artificial: first, a Wendell Berry influenced post-hippie and neo-mennonite Christian commune; second, a Russell Kirk liberal arts/great books college of conservatives across the spectrum. In both cases the communities were self-conscious about their attempts at community and (generalizing) they resulted in deep satisfaction and growth mixed with dark inbreeding and nastiess.
- Watching the natural community around me, a black "ghetto" along the train tracks and industrial side of these suburbs outside of Philadelphia, I see the same two sides intermingled, as children grow up together in the streets and parks and everyone knows each other and supports each other, but are blighted by drugs and multiple levels of violence.
- Is this mixture of the wonderful and evil as inseperable as it seems and, how can consider it in attempting to create communities.
- What separates apparently failed blogging communities from successful ones? The former being Hillsdale's LXB or the Reformed Circle, the latter being the New Brutalists, or the neoconservatives. What should a fledgling blogging community like the neocalvinists' consider for their future?
- Individualism, for us, will always be too transparent for full recognition.
- Our viewing of individualism shows it's waning.
- People who came of age in the 80s and 90s, we're told, want to define themselves by their friends where their parents and grandparents would look to economic, ethnic/religious, political or familial definitions.
- Every group of friends I have had has entertained some fantasy of sustainable community.
- Academia looks at movements or schools, but might better call them conversations and communities.
- Art is considered, superficially, to be an personal activity. Something demanding quiet, maybe loneliness. Yet, art thrives in communities.
- Considering community in the canon, we find the concern is constant, the fear of being without community is always with us. When not an overt concern, it is often an underpinning, e.g., Beowulf is under-themed of community: the old king, the great mead hall, the lonely son-of-Cain monster, the return home, the funeral pyre.
- What academic discipline doesn't consider communities?
- The search for community among Christians manifests itself as primitivism opposed to a Christianity centered on an isolating and individualizing church service, and seeking a faith subsisting of a life lived together.
- The search for community among Christians manifests itself as a move toward liturgy, where worship is recognized as a communal and participatory action and the Church is not a thing of tenants and propriety but a body of the living and the dead in the service and worship of Christ.
- Primitivists and liturgists, ostensibly polar, both believe that true faith and doctrine take place within the community that is the Church.
- The recent history of Christian movements is divided between those seeking "a personal faith" and those seeking a tradition.
- The Scripture, textually and historically, is not a thing of private devotions and revelations, but a public book. The Reformation's strength or weakness is found here, for it either made the book available all, saving the bible from clerical gnosticism, or made the book an individual affair, sheering it of its communal openness and limiting it to private exegesis.
- The two primary doctrines of Christianity, the Trinity and the Incarnation, are by nature communal.
May 5, 2004
May 3, 2004
Trading Snakeoil for Wolftickets, by Gary Jules
OCMS, by Old Crow Medicine Show.
plus, a new Wilco album is due in June and a new Waits album is coming this fall.
OCMS, by Old Crow Medicine Show.
plus, a new Wilco album is due in June and a new Waits album is coming this fall.
Reshaping parentheses
The thing about parentheses is they demarcate a displacement. The bracketed text is what the main text has failed to deny and overcome, failed to edit. It's the subtext making gopher holes, the margins pushing in, the linearity put out of line.
My fist dislike of parentheses was for the artistic ungainliness they admit to. I was a bit like a fascist dictator looking at a disorderly society and wonder why these messes hadn't been forced into the bounds of acceptable and desirable society, a bit like a curriculum planner wondering why these para-texts hadn’t been subsumed or excluded to a standard canon. My first objection was from a fascist aesthetic.
Realizing this, and distancing myself from this, I saw the violence I was foisting on these writings and saw, then, deconstruction's face in this punctuation. Reexammining, I saw my descriptions of distaste take on deconstruction's names and I understood deconstruction again and for the first time.
I understood that deconstruction wasn't the holocaust of authors and the doom of canons but, more, like a descent education, the liberalism that receives texts and traditions only to poke, pry and question, to distort, ply and reshape, to write in the margins and scrawl notes with circles and tangents and parentheses. Seeing bleeding ink where I had thought was only unedited looseness, I recognized it, and realized I'd already been a defender of parentheses in arguing for an ever-expanding canon and that I'd never respected a thinker who never thought with the ragged and misshapen parentheses.
So I wrote about parentheses. Realigned myself on their side. Recognizing they're supposed to make you uncomfortable, that I'll never come to a final peace with the invasion of the margins and the gangly outcroppings of the parentheses.
[the second half of this was pathetic and has been cut]
The thing about parentheses is they demarcate a displacement. The bracketed text is what the main text has failed to deny and overcome, failed to edit. It's the subtext making gopher holes, the margins pushing in, the linearity put out of line.
My fist dislike of parentheses was for the artistic ungainliness they admit to. I was a bit like a fascist dictator looking at a disorderly society and wonder why these messes hadn't been forced into the bounds of acceptable and desirable society, a bit like a curriculum planner wondering why these para-texts hadn’t been subsumed or excluded to a standard canon. My first objection was from a fascist aesthetic.
Realizing this, and distancing myself from this, I saw the violence I was foisting on these writings and saw, then, deconstruction's face in this punctuation. Reexammining, I saw my descriptions of distaste take on deconstruction's names and I understood deconstruction again and for the first time.
I understood that deconstruction wasn't the holocaust of authors and the doom of canons but, more, like a descent education, the liberalism that receives texts and traditions only to poke, pry and question, to distort, ply and reshape, to write in the margins and scrawl notes with circles and tangents and parentheses. Seeing bleeding ink where I had thought was only unedited looseness, I recognized it, and realized I'd already been a defender of parentheses in arguing for an ever-expanding canon and that I'd never respected a thinker who never thought with the ragged and misshapen parentheses.
So I wrote about parentheses. Realigned myself on their side. Recognizing they're supposed to make you uncomfortable, that I'll never come to a final peace with the invasion of the margins and the gangly outcroppings of the parentheses.
[the second half of this was pathetic and has been cut]
May 1, 2004
Let God be dead and every man a liar
A interplay of voices
They ask they ask, but what do they want? The vision of the blind? The revelations of nothing? The riddles of the unhinged?
Spit in my eyes again, o son of man. Perform another peasant parable today we pray. For when the waters parted there was no bottom, no place to stand, no outside, no last appeal, no safe place. Another parable another parable another parable and let us not rest in peace.
This is our banquet of doubt, our ancient tradition without a secret, our bequest of a labyrinth of many rooms.
In agnosia I went again, again to the catacombs of perpetual catechumens who undermined every kabbalah, where martyrs said 'even if it kills me', knowing only the empirical fact of burning flesh and the ever presence of doubt.
We die not for the verifiable but for the doubtful.
Even if he doesn't save us.
Even if he slays us.
Even if he didn't rise.
Did you think the walls of the credible held up any house but my own? It rains through the breach of faith.
A interplay of voices
They ask they ask, but what do they want? The vision of the blind? The revelations of nothing? The riddles of the unhinged?
Spit in my eyes again, o son of man. Perform another peasant parable today we pray. For when the waters parted there was no bottom, no place to stand, no outside, no last appeal, no safe place. Another parable another parable another parable and let us not rest in peace.
This is our banquet of doubt, our ancient tradition without a secret, our bequest of a labyrinth of many rooms.
In agnosia I went again, again to the catacombs of perpetual catechumens who undermined every kabbalah, where martyrs said 'even if it kills me', knowing only the empirical fact of burning flesh and the ever presence of doubt.
We die not for the verifiable but for the doubtful.
Even if he doesn't save us.
Even if he slays us.
Even if he didn't rise.
Did you think the walls of the credible held up any house but my own? It rains through the breach of faith.
Apr 30, 2004
Like the horsemen of the end
I'll have three poems in this year's Light, Hillsdale lit mag: Death, Damnation and Apocalypse.
Make of that what you will.
Update: The Thelonious Death of Music and the Dylan Pox of Rage, Damnation Wrinkles Around the Eyes, If You Can Apocalypse.
I'll have three poems in this year's Light, Hillsdale lit mag: Death, Damnation and Apocalypse.
Make of that what you will.
Update: The Thelonious Death of Music and the Dylan Pox of Rage, Damnation Wrinkles Around the Eyes, If You Can Apocalypse.
Apr 29, 2004
Lying is an art and art is a lie: adventures in bastard stoicism
I told Gail Armstrong's story and got rolling on the floor laughter. But explaining where I got, how I know this person, what a blog is, was really distracting.
Sometimes Occam's razor dictates you just steal the story. That's the difference between Dan Hugger's stories and Dan Hugger's stories when I take them. Sorry about Nietzsche’s mustache, man.
So yesterday this girl comes in wearing a Ramone's shirt except it's hot pink. And I think, "cool" followed by "huh." And then she just treated me like a machine she could feed money and it would dispense gasoline, which was pretty much the kind of day I'd been having, so I thought about what it would be like to run out after her and yell at her. But I dunno what I would have said, I couldn't think past "you're not a punk!" and even that didn't sound right. And I don't know what she should have said either. Which is why I didn't just pretend to have run out and yelled at her.
It's not honesty, it's writer's block.
Once Prizio said I was so obsessed with stories he wanted me to be the Boswell to his Johnson. I don't know where he was going with that, but I'm pretty sure I'd be a terrible biographer, more like Dylan making up wild stories about his youth spent everywhere but where he spent it. But then, I kind of think maybe Prizio was saying he couldn't rewrite himself but maybe I could.
I told Gail Armstrong's story and got rolling on the floor laughter. But explaining where I got, how I know this person, what a blog is, was really distracting.
Sometimes Occam's razor dictates you just steal the story. That's the difference between Dan Hugger's stories and Dan Hugger's stories when I take them. Sorry about Nietzsche’s mustache, man.
So yesterday this girl comes in wearing a Ramone's shirt except it's hot pink. And I think, "cool" followed by "huh." And then she just treated me like a machine she could feed money and it would dispense gasoline, which was pretty much the kind of day I'd been having, so I thought about what it would be like to run out after her and yell at her. But I dunno what I would have said, I couldn't think past "you're not a punk!" and even that didn't sound right. And I don't know what she should have said either. Which is why I didn't just pretend to have run out and yelled at her.
It's not honesty, it's writer's block.
Once Prizio said I was so obsessed with stories he wanted me to be the Boswell to his Johnson. I don't know where he was going with that, but I'm pretty sure I'd be a terrible biographer, more like Dylan making up wild stories about his youth spent everywhere but where he spent it. But then, I kind of think maybe Prizio was saying he couldn't rewrite himself but maybe I could.
Apr 26, 2004
His precious death and mystical body
Christian postmodern theology wants to re-save the Incarnation
"But with the precious blood of Christ, as of a lamb without blemish and without spot: Who verily was foreordained from the foundation of the world, but was manifest in these last times for you."
- 1 Peter 19, 20.
Christ's death was an absolute event, not a moment. This death was not a funny thing that happened on the way to the telos. This is to say, his death cannot be re-acted like Richard III's, or retold like Lincoln's. This sacrifice was an event of a total singularity, an irreducibility and a singularity that can be subsumed neither to history nor memory. This: an event without the variances and partial existences of common historic moments, an unadulterated light wholly different from the shadows of time's span. So, Christ's death cannot be "remembered," but must be re-present-ed, because of and in this absolute singularity, re-present-ed daily upon our earthly altars and re-present-ed before the throne of God from before all that is was and unto forever without end.
We come to the altar, then, not for a play, not for a history lesson, not for a felt board show of wheat and grapes, but for an absolute event re-present-ed in profound singularity and irreducible mystery.
Christian postmodern theology wants to re-save the Incarnation
"But with the precious blood of Christ, as of a lamb without blemish and without spot: Who verily was foreordained from the foundation of the world, but was manifest in these last times for you."
- 1 Peter 19, 20.
Christ's death was an absolute event, not a moment. This death was not a funny thing that happened on the way to the telos. This is to say, his death cannot be re-acted like Richard III's, or retold like Lincoln's. This sacrifice was an event of a total singularity, an irreducibility and a singularity that can be subsumed neither to history nor memory. This: an event without the variances and partial existences of common historic moments, an unadulterated light wholly different from the shadows of time's span. So, Christ's death cannot be "remembered," but must be re-present-ed, because of and in this absolute singularity, re-present-ed daily upon our earthly altars and re-present-ed before the throne of God from before all that is was and unto forever without end.
We come to the altar, then, not for a play, not for a history lesson, not for a felt board show of wheat and grapes, but for an absolute event re-present-ed in profound singularity and irreducible mystery.
Apr 25, 2004
Where did I ask to be a rake and rambling saint?
God knows, whiskey's mostly water
Where are you from? she said with Coptic eyes. (This should be an easy question.)
From nowhere, (my confession): I'm the man from the west with the voice of the forgiven. I've traveled coast-to-coast seven times in three itinerant years. I slept beneath the overhang between the gas staion and that dive of a bar outside Custer's trailer-park town. My parents were neo-Mennonite gypsies and my last home was in Migration, Ohio.
Let me tell you, I'm the priest who laughed at the saints, banished to the wandering desert to mumble, knowing starkly that there are no dharma bums but only winos. Would that we said ascetic where he said junkie. Would that we were ascetics where we were junkies. Would that we junkies said "Ascetic what? And with thy spirit."
And tomorrow, tomorrow, my confession buys a cup of coffee and Saint Christopher's medal.
God knows, whiskey's mostly water
Where are you from? she said with Coptic eyes. (This should be an easy question.)
From nowhere, (my confession): I'm the man from the west with the voice of the forgiven. I've traveled coast-to-coast seven times in three itinerant years. I slept beneath the overhang between the gas staion and that dive of a bar outside Custer's trailer-park town. My parents were neo-Mennonite gypsies and my last home was in Migration, Ohio.
Let me tell you, I'm the priest who laughed at the saints, banished to the wandering desert to mumble, knowing starkly that there are no dharma bums but only winos. Would that we said ascetic where he said junkie. Would that we were ascetics where we were junkies. Would that we junkies said "Ascetic what? And with thy spirit."
And tomorrow, tomorrow, my confession buys a cup of coffee and Saint Christopher's medal.
There are no apologies, we just call them friends
I've got a map of faces pasted on the wall above my wobbly kitchen table here in apt. c rear. If you think your mug might not be up there, send me a photo.
I'm serious, I want your picture.
I've got a map of faces pasted on the wall above my wobbly kitchen table here in apt. c rear. If you think your mug might not be up there, send me a photo.
I'm serious, I want your picture.
Apr 24, 2004
I would like to get my hands on Yizhar Hirschfeld's Semiotics and Church Architecture, Gerard Lukken's book of the same title, and Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians' v.59, no.1.
These Holy Mysteries
Christian postmodern theology wants to re-save the Incarnation and the Trinity
I am suspicious of traditional fideism for its assumption of evidentialism's rationalistic world that bounds by and frames God within reason. Fideism I cannot accept that is a fideism seeing itself as a marginal option in a rationalist world.
A radical fideism is needed, for the ontology and theological-epistemology derived from any other are insufficient and insubstantial.
Christian postmodern theology wants to re-save the Incarnation and the Trinity
I am suspicious of traditional fideism for its assumption of evidentialism's rationalistic world that bounds by and frames God within reason. Fideism I cannot accept that is a fideism seeing itself as a marginal option in a rationalist world.
A radical fideism is needed, for the ontology and theological-epistemology derived from any other are insufficient and insubstantial.
Cassady to my Keroauc
Luke Heyman and his hair
His hair said it all.
We weren't sure what all it was saying, by it had it said. Something about Mexico. Something about foreign films and literary experiments. Something about sneezes and kisses, generosity and friendship, jokes and spontaneity. About not caring; about not trying. About friends covering for you and being there for you and about how no matter how far you go, there's still Ohio.
It was genuine monster-slaying hair.
Luke Heyman and his hair
His hair said it all.
We weren't sure what all it was saying, by it had it said. Something about Mexico. Something about foreign films and literary experiments. Something about sneezes and kisses, generosity and friendship, jokes and spontaneity. About not caring; about not trying. About friends covering for you and being there for you and about how no matter how far you go, there's still Ohio.
It was genuine monster-slaying hair.
Apr 23, 2004
Where the twisted fables roar
I told the fables twisted out
spewing Aesop's intestines
in childhood fantasies races were delayed
while tortoises called their bookies
and hares sold thorns to tourists
where sore-pawed lions roared
only roared
ripping fancy fable flesh
burn this zoo
save the children
vandalism is the only hope for childhood
salvation sweet salvation comes by roaring
blow blow blow it down and grow a jungle
I told the fables twisted out
spewing Aesop's intestines
in childhood fantasies races were delayed
while tortoises called their bookies
and hares sold thorns to tourists
where sore-pawed lions roared
only roared
ripping fancy fable flesh
burn this zoo
save the children
vandalism is the only hope for childhood
salvation sweet salvation comes by roaring
blow blow blow it down and grow a jungle
I'm only bleeding
This woman's yelling at me for not noticing she's sitting at the full serve pump.
Her Mercedes is blocked by a truck, so I can't see her. I'm working at the register selling lottery tickets and the mechanic comes in and tells me she's out there, so I run out and am met half way by this irate rich woman. She's going off - why would I do such a thing, why do I have the full serve pump where I can't see it, what am I trying to pull, who do I think I am, do I realize she's busy?
Lady, I say, Lady, I got nothing to eat at home but rice and Mac & Cheese. How much shit I gotta put up with because I'm poor?
And I just looked at her. Full of socialist revolutions, full of blue-collar soul, full of working class rage.
So she pumped her own gas.
This woman's yelling at me for not noticing she's sitting at the full serve pump.
Her Mercedes is blocked by a truck, so I can't see her. I'm working at the register selling lottery tickets and the mechanic comes in and tells me she's out there, so I run out and am met half way by this irate rich woman. She's going off - why would I do such a thing, why do I have the full serve pump where I can't see it, what am I trying to pull, who do I think I am, do I realize she's busy?
Lady, I say, Lady, I got nothing to eat at home but rice and Mac & Cheese. How much shit I gotta put up with because I'm poor?
And I just looked at her. Full of socialist revolutions, full of blue-collar soul, full of working class rage.
So she pumped her own gas.
Apr 22, 2004
Ambler Letters 1
Correspondance exerts from apt. c rear
At the gas station, I sell lottery tickets. We don't sell cigarettes (management hates tobacco, I say to the customer, but you can buy them at Genardi’s or the Wawa) but sell a lot of lottery. Ask anyone about the gambling and they've got two responses, two stories they can tell about the thing: 1. bookies, mob ties, debts; 2. poverty, more-likely-to-be-hit-by-lightning. Seriously, every movie has the first stereotype and every newspaper report the second. But I'm watching these people buy everyday (the Power Ball's up to 90 million today but if you want it all at once it’ll be 47.6) and it’s terrible and amazing. It's the discarded shells of the Great American Dream and everything that it means to be an American is here, right here: hope tempered by cynicism, belief that the system can be beat with ingenuity, consistency, hard work and luck. All the black women come in with sheets of numbers they want played 50 - 50 for tonight, and then last minute add the number of their favorite niece's birthday because she's a brat, but a lucky brat. Asian men read me their accented numbers. Young white guys - jocks some of them, or little scrawny-wiry guys - who have their lists memorized. There's a long-haired trucker who tells me he's retired and hates it. A Dustan Hoffman look-alike who's a daily and knows everyone's name. There's a guy who can't talk but does anyway, sounding like Donald Duck saying fuck fuck fuck, and believes he's luck-less. An older black man with freckles who thinks if I mess up his ticket that'll be the one that wins. The great American novel has never been written because it’s about lottery and who wants to write about a giant government run roulette wheel with 7 ways of playing and wasn't that already done?
I seem to be attracting a certain type of youth - children of my age who want passionately, desperately, to maintain intellectual honesty and religious devotion and finding them trapped in a desert between the two where they see me mumbling prayers that I might be saved from faith, that I might be given blindness. In the last 3 months I’ve been asked a dozen times the same questions, but I don’t get the feeling of being a leader, someone who’s a figure head or a teacher. I get the feeling they’ll all be better at this then I am and I’m just here a little early. I told a friend the other day in my fantasy world I’m in a Graham Greene novel – a sinner morally impoverished who ends up being a saint anyway. I think I’m being cast as a whiskey monk in the desert.
Blogging is a good form for pushing you to write regularly. Writing’s hard and this hole that demands more material and demands it regularly while pretending to be less serious (and being less pretentious). It’s a good form, too, for allowing one to loosen up and be willing to write poorly. As much as that doesn’t sound like something we want to happen, it’s insanely important. If I’m not willing to splay myself all over paper then I’m not taking the chance that leads to good writing.
I did get the job at the gas station. It's a classic American affair - combination gas station mechanics shop. Boss is named John and owned his own business for 40 years before retiring but got called out of retirement to manage this gas station. The owners give him total control so long as he makes them money. He's kind of cranky, but then in like the middle of four hours of being in a rush and slightly barkish, he'll hit you sideways with a laugh or a joke. The iconic blue-collar father of the 50s. Though, he reminds me for some reason of Skip, this lawn mower mechanic who helped my dad, fixed some of his stuff for free just because. Skip was 'nam vet and had this long red beard which isn't anything like John. I’m assuming it's only the psycho-recollections of the smell of car oil, or perhaps the counter-intuitive relationship between motorcycles and tow trucks. The guy that trained me is a little white haired guy named Joe who was a hot-rodder in his 20s. All sorts of Waits-esque songs have been written about the places this guys been. Worked as a security guard until he got to old for it, and came to the gas station. He's a lottery expert. When a pretty girl buys gas he mentions the scenery. He volunteers for the fire department and every time a fire truck goes by he and John walk out into the parking lot and wave.
How's that for an iconic sight? Two white-haired and oil-stained guys who worked their whole lives and did okay but can't retire and wouldn't know what to do if they did and they’re standing out on the pavement patched with asphalt waving a fire trucks rushing sirens-screaming down a pike named Bethlehem.
Correspondance exerts from apt. c rear
At the gas station, I sell lottery tickets. We don't sell cigarettes (management hates tobacco, I say to the customer, but you can buy them at Genardi’s or the Wawa) but sell a lot of lottery. Ask anyone about the gambling and they've got two responses, two stories they can tell about the thing: 1. bookies, mob ties, debts; 2. poverty, more-likely-to-be-hit-by-lightning. Seriously, every movie has the first stereotype and every newspaper report the second. But I'm watching these people buy everyday (the Power Ball's up to 90 million today but if you want it all at once it’ll be 47.6) and it’s terrible and amazing. It's the discarded shells of the Great American Dream and everything that it means to be an American is here, right here: hope tempered by cynicism, belief that the system can be beat with ingenuity, consistency, hard work and luck. All the black women come in with sheets of numbers they want played 50 - 50 for tonight, and then last minute add the number of their favorite niece's birthday because she's a brat, but a lucky brat. Asian men read me their accented numbers. Young white guys - jocks some of them, or little scrawny-wiry guys - who have their lists memorized. There's a long-haired trucker who tells me he's retired and hates it. A Dustan Hoffman look-alike who's a daily and knows everyone's name. There's a guy who can't talk but does anyway, sounding like Donald Duck saying fuck fuck fuck, and believes he's luck-less. An older black man with freckles who thinks if I mess up his ticket that'll be the one that wins. The great American novel has never been written because it’s about lottery and who wants to write about a giant government run roulette wheel with 7 ways of playing and wasn't that already done?
I seem to be attracting a certain type of youth - children of my age who want passionately, desperately, to maintain intellectual honesty and religious devotion and finding them trapped in a desert between the two where they see me mumbling prayers that I might be saved from faith, that I might be given blindness. In the last 3 months I’ve been asked a dozen times the same questions, but I don’t get the feeling of being a leader, someone who’s a figure head or a teacher. I get the feeling they’ll all be better at this then I am and I’m just here a little early. I told a friend the other day in my fantasy world I’m in a Graham Greene novel – a sinner morally impoverished who ends up being a saint anyway. I think I’m being cast as a whiskey monk in the desert.
Blogging is a good form for pushing you to write regularly. Writing’s hard and this hole that demands more material and demands it regularly while pretending to be less serious (and being less pretentious). It’s a good form, too, for allowing one to loosen up and be willing to write poorly. As much as that doesn’t sound like something we want to happen, it’s insanely important. If I’m not willing to splay myself all over paper then I’m not taking the chance that leads to good writing.
I did get the job at the gas station. It's a classic American affair - combination gas station mechanics shop. Boss is named John and owned his own business for 40 years before retiring but got called out of retirement to manage this gas station. The owners give him total control so long as he makes them money. He's kind of cranky, but then in like the middle of four hours of being in a rush and slightly barkish, he'll hit you sideways with a laugh or a joke. The iconic blue-collar father of the 50s. Though, he reminds me for some reason of Skip, this lawn mower mechanic who helped my dad, fixed some of his stuff for free just because. Skip was 'nam vet and had this long red beard which isn't anything like John. I’m assuming it's only the psycho-recollections of the smell of car oil, or perhaps the counter-intuitive relationship between motorcycles and tow trucks. The guy that trained me is a little white haired guy named Joe who was a hot-rodder in his 20s. All sorts of Waits-esque songs have been written about the places this guys been. Worked as a security guard until he got to old for it, and came to the gas station. He's a lottery expert. When a pretty girl buys gas he mentions the scenery. He volunteers for the fire department and every time a fire truck goes by he and John walk out into the parking lot and wave.
How's that for an iconic sight? Two white-haired and oil-stained guys who worked their whole lives and did okay but can't retire and wouldn't know what to do if they did and they’re standing out on the pavement patched with asphalt waving a fire trucks rushing sirens-screaming down a pike named Bethlehem.
Apr 21, 2004
Apr 19, 2004
Outlaw 5
I might look like Robert Frost but I feel just like Jesse James
* The most overrated American outlaw is Billy the Kid. Most underrated is Pretty Boy Floyd. Floyd killed an armed deputy with a log chain for insulting his wife and used to send whole train cars of food to Depression-poor towns just to piss off a sheriff while Billy was a whiney snot-nosed poser who didn't do anything but hire out to the wrong side and was shot in the back in the dark. I think it’s a thing of names, since every kid wants to be an outlaw and identifies with "kid" but "outlaw" and "pretty boy" appear pretty much antithetical. The alliterated Jesse James keeps up just the right reputation though.
* Noah Greene reviews Black Rebel Motorcycle Club, a band that know how to hate and that I've been wanting to hear since he started listening to them incessantly.
* The six-shooter is outlaw-definitive. Beyond fashion: Iconic.
* I think I'll be the only Hillsdale student who had a trilogy of legendary parties in his honor:
(Part of an ongoing series of a weird legend…)
1. The Silliman-Sato bare knuckle brawl,
2. The documentaried Sillibash '04
3. The in-planning-for-the-Beat Sillibash '05 which will feature Kentucky moonshine and needs to be advertised with this picture and the inscriptions "Come out from behind the eye patch, he screams at pirates riding mopeds" and "He gave the dog a howl and made a pretty face pretty flat."
* We say punk where they say, what?, outlaw. I should write a paper about punk-style as the essence of the American outlaws (the cool, the hipsters).
I might look like Robert Frost but I feel just like Jesse James
* The most overrated American outlaw is Billy the Kid. Most underrated is Pretty Boy Floyd. Floyd killed an armed deputy with a log chain for insulting his wife and used to send whole train cars of food to Depression-poor towns just to piss off a sheriff while Billy was a whiney snot-nosed poser who didn't do anything but hire out to the wrong side and was shot in the back in the dark. I think it’s a thing of names, since every kid wants to be an outlaw and identifies with "kid" but "outlaw" and "pretty boy" appear pretty much antithetical. The alliterated Jesse James keeps up just the right reputation though.
* Noah Greene reviews Black Rebel Motorcycle Club, a band that know how to hate and that I've been wanting to hear since he started listening to them incessantly.
* The six-shooter is outlaw-definitive. Beyond fashion: Iconic.
* I think I'll be the only Hillsdale student who had a trilogy of legendary parties in his honor:
(Part of an ongoing series of a weird legend…)
1. The Silliman-Sato bare knuckle brawl,
2. The documentaried Sillibash '04
3. The in-planning-for-the-Beat Sillibash '05 which will feature Kentucky moonshine and needs to be advertised with this picture and the inscriptions "Come out from behind the eye patch, he screams at pirates riding mopeds" and "He gave the dog a howl and made a pretty face pretty flat."
* We say punk where they say, what?, outlaw. I should write a paper about punk-style as the essence of the American outlaws (the cool, the hipsters).
May whoever live forever
dansilliman: I've decided making Matt Groenng king isn't as cool as giving the title to Google.
DJHugger: well I think the problem is America already has a king: Elvis
dansilliman: anyone who spends his time chillin' with the Martians and eating ribs in Montana is cool, yes, but has abdicated his crown.
dansilliman: I've decided making Matt Groenng king isn't as cool as giving the title to Google.
DJHugger: well I think the problem is America already has a king: Elvis
dansilliman: anyone who spends his time chillin' with the Martians and eating ribs in Montana is cool, yes, but has abdicated his crown.
Aporia for the masses
Once upon a time, in the '90s, regular Americans learned about postmodernism and it was via neither the foisting of lecherous liberal nor the shrill "sky-is-falling"s of cranky old conservatives. They learned something about postmodernism when popular culture discovered air quotes and was, thereby, allowed to speak of and think of irony.
They served their purpose, opened the popular discourse to irony, spawned Seinfeld and made an appearance on Friends, became really annoying (which was the publics' fault) and passed away.
What we need now are air parentheses. It's their time. Let deconstruction (Deconstruction's aporia, deferment, eccentric centers, alterity) enter the popular conscious via air parentheses.
Once upon a time, in the '90s, regular Americans learned about postmodernism and it was via neither the foisting of lecherous liberal nor the shrill "sky-is-falling"s of cranky old conservatives. They learned something about postmodernism when popular culture discovered air quotes and was, thereby, allowed to speak of and think of irony.
They served their purpose, opened the popular discourse to irony, spawned Seinfeld and made an appearance on Friends, became really annoying (which was the publics' fault) and passed away.
What we need now are air parentheses. It's their time. Let deconstruction (Deconstruction's aporia, deferment, eccentric centers, alterity) enter the popular conscious via air parentheses.
Apr 18, 2004
We really haven't talked lately
I had this dream, and I'm standing in front of a cash register, buying something (I don't know what). The point of view pivots 180. Right. In still frames: I'm standing there, then I see myself from the side, then I'm standing behind the cash register.
I'm standing behind the cash register and my hand is stretched out, about to push a button and ring up a sale, but I'm hesitating. The commentary track groans, "Do I have to work my dreams?" and my hand hesitates.
Suddenly I go psycho. I grab a paper bag, flip it open, jump up on the counter and attack the customer. I bag his head jumping down onto him, and just start whaling on him. I'm punching his head and kicking him. He's laying there curled up and I'm beating him.
And I think, "What happens if he dies?" I'm dispassionate about it but, you know, still thinking this qestion mark about the whole situation.
Thinking about it this morning, I'm pretty sure I was killing myself.
I had this dream, and I'm standing in front of a cash register, buying something (I don't know what). The point of view pivots 180. Right. In still frames: I'm standing there, then I see myself from the side, then I'm standing behind the cash register.
I'm standing behind the cash register and my hand is stretched out, about to push a button and ring up a sale, but I'm hesitating. The commentary track groans, "Do I have to work my dreams?" and my hand hesitates.
Suddenly I go psycho. I grab a paper bag, flip it open, jump up on the counter and attack the customer. I bag his head jumping down onto him, and just start whaling on him. I'm punching his head and kicking him. He's laying there curled up and I'm beating him.
And I think, "What happens if he dies?" I'm dispassionate about it but, you know, still thinking this qestion mark about the whole situation.
Thinking about it this morning, I'm pretty sure I was killing myself.
Apr 17, 2004
The memories' summary
When I think of Hillsdale I'm filled with hatred and with love. And, in a weird way I can't figure out, those two are inseperable. I hate Hillsdale and I love it. But that’s only one emotion, sort of. My memories of the place are indivisible intertwinings of the darkest of dark times and these illuminated moments of victory and accomplishment. The place came close to killing me, which I say seriously, and it gave me salvation.
I have no idea if I’m going back.
When I think of Hillsdale I'm filled with hatred and with love. And, in a weird way I can't figure out, those two are inseperable. I hate Hillsdale and I love it. But that’s only one emotion, sort of. My memories of the place are indivisible intertwinings of the darkest of dark times and these illuminated moments of victory and accomplishment. The place came close to killing me, which I say seriously, and it gave me salvation.
I have no idea if I’m going back.
Nearest book, pg 23, sentence 5: "Like him (Christ) it (the Church) is both visable and invisable and its raison d'etre is to mediate his saving love to humankind."
The Study of Liturgy, edited by Jones, Wainwright, Yarnold and Bradshaw.
The Study of Liturgy, edited by Jones, Wainwright, Yarnold and Bradshaw.
Apr 15, 2004
When it pours
It rained for four days. Four days of rain without violence. I would have preferred violence but it just pattered a steady so-steady-it'll-surely-never-end rain for days.
And the middle-aged women drove up to the full serve pump with their model 2005 cars still showing off the first coat of wax that's beading up the rain and rolling it down to the pavement. I stood in the rain that's been raining for days, slanting in under the pump's overhang, to fill the tank up with Premium at all-but-$2 a gallon.
Their receipts drip a little when I handed them in through the open inch of the wet window. Thank you, I said, water dripping off my nose, and they drove away.
It was raining for four days and after that it might as well be 40 and the water rises from puddles to oceans and the street we live on floods with the water washing over the edges of the potholes and into pools where the asphalt is uneven and up onto the sidewalk's cracking and the dirty lawns dead from the winter.
"I'm glad the apartment's set up a few steps," my roommate said. He calls the weather "Scottish" but that makes it sound pleasent.
"I sent out a raven to see if there's any dry land left and to bring back a few groceries," I said, "but he just flew into the wet and said: 'nevermore.'"
We laughed, and wondered if there was water in the basement.
After four days of rain, I woke up this morning to look at a blue sky befuddled and surprised.
It rained for four days. Four days of rain without violence. I would have preferred violence but it just pattered a steady so-steady-it'll-surely-never-end rain for days.
And the middle-aged women drove up to the full serve pump with their model 2005 cars still showing off the first coat of wax that's beading up the rain and rolling it down to the pavement. I stood in the rain that's been raining for days, slanting in under the pump's overhang, to fill the tank up with Premium at all-but-$2 a gallon.
Their receipts drip a little when I handed them in through the open inch of the wet window. Thank you, I said, water dripping off my nose, and they drove away.
It was raining for four days and after that it might as well be 40 and the water rises from puddles to oceans and the street we live on floods with the water washing over the edges of the potholes and into pools where the asphalt is uneven and up onto the sidewalk's cracking and the dirty lawns dead from the winter.
"I'm glad the apartment's set up a few steps," my roommate said. He calls the weather "Scottish" but that makes it sound pleasent.
"I sent out a raven to see if there's any dry land left and to bring back a few groceries," I said, "but he just flew into the wet and said: 'nevermore.'"
We laughed, and wondered if there was water in the basement.
After four days of rain, I woke up this morning to look at a blue sky befuddled and surprised.
They left us and were gone
When they quit writing, the good ones, you wait and wait thinking – no, they can’t have stopped. They were addicted. It was what they did. But they've stopped. And maybe they utter a single word once in a while making you sit up like the faithful dog of a dead master, thinking maybe they've come back. Thinking maybe they've found their voice again, maybe, maybe.
But no. We're the generation of mini Salingers.
And all you can do is re-read what they've already given you. Go back in the archives to the beginnings before anyone read them and watch them experiment towards becoming what you enjoyed so damningly much.
When they quit writing, the good ones, you wait and wait thinking – no, they can’t have stopped. They were addicted. It was what they did. But they've stopped. And maybe they utter a single word once in a while making you sit up like the faithful dog of a dead master, thinking maybe they've come back. Thinking maybe they've found their voice again, maybe, maybe.
But no. We're the generation of mini Salingers.
And all you can do is re-read what they've already given you. Go back in the archives to the beginnings before anyone read them and watch them experiment towards becoming what you enjoyed so damningly much.
Apr 14, 2004
Two quirks
I snort
And realize I sound like my father who never laughed but always heaved with it silently, as if it could not escape but only convulse.
"What?"
But it's only Wittgenstein's joke or Mann's irony, not funny in any capital sense, and they just look at me oddly for laughing aloud while I read.
I snort
And realize I sound like my father who never laughed but always heaved with it silently, as if it could not escape but only convulse.
"What?"
But it's only Wittgenstein's joke or Mann's irony, not funny in any capital sense, and they just look at me oddly for laughing aloud while I read.
Apr 13, 2004
Circumventions
dansilliman: I need to post a story about the gas station
ValerieSilliman: Good.
dansilliman: so that I can let people know I'm working there without saying "I am now working at a gas station."
dansilliman: I refuse to bow before the boring
ValerieSilliman: Bravo!
dansilliman: yeah, but sometimes it bothers people when they're the boring
ValerieSilliman: Well, then they ought to be bothered.
dansilliman: well, you asked me where I got a prayer I posted for Christmas or thanksgiving (I don't remember)
dansilliman: and Prizio watched me read your comment and close it without responding. "Aren't you going to tell her where you found it," he says
ValerieSilliman: What? You never told me this story! I hate you.
dansilliman: but no, because that was boring. If I could find an interesting answer or maybe a story, then I'd tell her
ValerieSilliman: no, you're lazy. LAZY!
dansilliman: but just to say "I was poking around on google and I found it" no, that's deeply disturbingly boring
dansilliman: not worth my time to tell and not worth reading
dansilliman: so I said nothing
ValerieSilliman: You could have made up a story
dansilliman: that's true
dansilliman: but I prefer exaggerations to made up stuff
ValerieSilliman: Of course, I completely don't remember the poem.
dansilliman: well, maybe I made up this story
dansilliman: I need to post a story about the gas station
ValerieSilliman: Good.
dansilliman: so that I can let people know I'm working there without saying "I am now working at a gas station."
dansilliman: I refuse to bow before the boring
ValerieSilliman: Bravo!
dansilliman: yeah, but sometimes it bothers people when they're the boring
ValerieSilliman: Well, then they ought to be bothered.
dansilliman: well, you asked me where I got a prayer I posted for Christmas or thanksgiving (I don't remember)
dansilliman: and Prizio watched me read your comment and close it without responding. "Aren't you going to tell her where you found it," he says
ValerieSilliman: What? You never told me this story! I hate you.
dansilliman: but no, because that was boring. If I could find an interesting answer or maybe a story, then I'd tell her
ValerieSilliman: no, you're lazy. LAZY!
dansilliman: but just to say "I was poking around on google and I found it" no, that's deeply disturbingly boring
dansilliman: not worth my time to tell and not worth reading
dansilliman: so I said nothing
ValerieSilliman: You could have made up a story
dansilliman: that's true
dansilliman: but I prefer exaggerations to made up stuff
ValerieSilliman: Of course, I completely don't remember the poem.
dansilliman: well, maybe I made up this story
Apr 12, 2004
A moment of absurdist thought at an Easter dinner
An organ stuck in a Manhattan elevator. Forever. Filling half the apartment’s elevator. The tenants occasionally touch a key, tentatively, except old and hobbling Mr. Thompson who lives up stairs and likes to pull out the stops and pound out Bach while he rides the organ up to his apartment. It’s a clumsy rendition but the echo in there’s pretty good and he plays loud enough to wake the cats from their sunny window sills, leaving the felines grumpily arch-backed for the rest of the day. No one remembers how it got in there and they half suspect the elevator was built around the upright monster. And even the uncle who is angry at his brother-in-law for not helping him move the thing and is egging towards a family fight is telling me he doesn’t know what happened but “It was just stuck: wouldn’t go in and wouldn’t come out.”
Maybe the whole thing is the missing piece to a mysterious murder or maybe to a strange Easter dinner I just had. It’s hard to say. But it was pretty funny at the time.
An organ stuck in a Manhattan elevator. Forever. Filling half the apartment’s elevator. The tenants occasionally touch a key, tentatively, except old and hobbling Mr. Thompson who lives up stairs and likes to pull out the stops and pound out Bach while he rides the organ up to his apartment. It’s a clumsy rendition but the echo in there’s pretty good and he plays loud enough to wake the cats from their sunny window sills, leaving the felines grumpily arch-backed for the rest of the day. No one remembers how it got in there and they half suspect the elevator was built around the upright monster. And even the uncle who is angry at his brother-in-law for not helping him move the thing and is egging towards a family fight is telling me he doesn’t know what happened but “It was just stuck: wouldn’t go in and wouldn’t come out.”
Maybe the whole thing is the missing piece to a mysterious murder or maybe to a strange Easter dinner I just had. It’s hard to say. But it was pretty funny at the time.
Apr 11, 2004
Writing projects for the Ambler year:
- A fuller development of linguistic parallelism.
- A consideration of Spinozan theology in light of Trinitarian ontology and postmodern theology.
- A literary working out of apocalyptism.
- Further thought and articulation on the role of doubt in faith and the importance of the death/absence of God.
- A fuller development of linguistic parallelism.
- A consideration of Spinozan theology in light of Trinitarian ontology and postmodern theology.
- A literary working out of apocalyptism.
- Further thought and articulation on the role of doubt in faith and the importance of the death/absence of God.
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