*
You’re not getting in.
Sorry.
Not with this guy working.
He knows you on sight. There’s no way he’s buying your bullshit tonight.
It’s the end of the fucking world man. You can tell your story walkin’, Christopher.
*
I’m reading Murakami’s 1Q84 right now. Don’t ruin it for me yet. I am having a hell of a time.
I love how he dresses his characters. I love what he puts in their refrigerators. I love the oddness of the world he creates. Just like this one, only a little bit off.
I’m sure there’s a lot of folks who know better than to read him. I’m not one of them.
just like Gilbert, or McCarthy, or any of those guys I love. They are all fucked up, that’s for sure.
So, sue me.
*
I don’t mean to come across as over-dramatic, but right now I feel like I’m facing the end of things. Dangerous creatures are moving under the surface. I can’t trust the old landmarks.
I am aiming to get undone, is what.
*
When you are swept downstream in a powerful current, you have but few choices. Most of them are bad and will end with you drowned.
Here’s what:
1. Point your feet downstream.
2. Leave go of what you’re holding on to.
3. Keep your eyes open and your mouth shut.
4. When it’s going hard, let go all the more. Get into the center of it, where it is the thickest and fastest moving.
5. don’t resist.
6. When it slows down a little, you might can strike for shore.
7. Don’t be a pussy about it. Light out for the sandy bank like your ass depends upon it, for it most surely does.
8. Get out before you tumble over the falls, or else try to enjoy the ride.
End of lecture.
*
I have acquired a lot of competencies.
There are none of which will save me now.
*
We are all to be undone by this, nor are you to be
the sole exception.
*
sorry.
*
Namaste.
***
When I went white water rafting with my dad he told me that claws would come out of my ass cheeks and grip the seat once we hit the rapids. They didn’t.
I love you.
Rebecca
When I was seven my dad asked me what i wanted to do on the weekend when he had custody of me and my four year old brother.
“Let’s get a box of beer and go to the superslide!”
There wasn’t nothing coming out of my ass to save me, either.
love-
superdummy
This is awesome. 1Q84, I hope you keep us posted on your take on it. I won’t share mine, but I love me some Murakami.
Those rules – when I had a little baby boy, I told him, if you ever fall into the saltchuck, keep your mouth shut.
He fell into the deep and cold and did just that.
Later, I asked him, why he didn’t call for help. He said You told me to keep my mouth shut!
He was 5. He’s alive.
You are too. I’m so glad of that.
love d
I don’t know a saltchuck from a black-necked grebe.
but we did have a chute you’d put the dirty laundry in from upstairs, and it would go shooting down to the basement and pop out by the washing machine down there.
Did i send my baby brother down that chute?
i ain’t gonna say.
but around the same time I jumped into a swimming pool half-filled with greenwater and bullfrogs and waterbugs when that kid slipped down the slope to the deep end and disappeared like a stone.
I remember holding him up to the ladder over my head while my mouth filled up with that vile swampwater and my vision got dim and stars spun around all over like moths.
I remember we laid out on the cement deck heaving and throwing up.
and we never did tell what went on.
love-
scott
Oh, yeah. Been in those rapids, tumbling blindly. #5 was #1 on my particular list…..
I, too, love you!
Allene
Every list needs a good number five.
love-
scott
Nobody here gets out alive, my friend. That’s the consolation, maybe, that we’re all in this together, sharing our safety tips. One of mine is to keep reading beautiful things, your words included. Now I’ve got to add another book to the list, because you have intrigued me.
Whenever I’m thinking survival tips, I always think of that line from Dune, I will bend my body like a reed…. maybe because I’m from a long line of remarkable alcoholics who survived stupid shit that should have killed them, legend has it because the liquor kept them loose. Stiffen up and you’ll break something for sure. So when stress tells me to coil up, I remind myself to bend like a reed.
I like your list too. Adding them to mine. And I had this tangent thought, that your imagery is of the water, which alludes to cleansing and washing away of the bad, of renewal, and I hope you run the rapids and land on soft shores.
With love and hopeful thoughts.
And damn, the eyes on that man in your picture. Where you find them is a wonder, that you show them to us through your eyes an even greater one.
Mel-
I love Dune! I think about that book all the time. I think there are a lot of us around here who do that.
Thanks for your good thoughts, and I’m glad you like the art. His eyes, they are something else.
I thought immediately of Neil Armstrong when I saw that picture. With spaceships.
What do I know?
Not much. And Murakami freaks me out. I’m listening to Faulkner’s “Light in August,” not believing how wild and gruesome it is. Joe Christmas. Have you read it?
I haven’t read any Faulker since high school, and I never did read “Light In August” but I’ll put it on my list. wild and gruesome sounds good to me right now.
And spot on, the Neil Armstrong association.
And yes too, to Murakami freaking me out!
love-
Scott
purged my studio. took 4 weeks. went to make a SoulBook today, and needed most of what i’d thrown out. thought that was pretty ironic. have changed artistic direction and going to take a nap. it’s all undone.
Purging, in my experience, always brings in more good than whatever is lost in the process. I often feel some trepidation at it, but I’m never disappointed.
Not yet, anyway.
Here’s wishing you good luck in the new direction. All undone means you’re free now. Nothing but open road ahead.
yrs-
tearful
My loss of fixed points feels as though we’ve slipped out of orbit, been caught in an ancient star’s dying gravity. With McCarthy as philosophical guide, more of what I see looks like cannibals with broken shopping carts or idealists on doomed crusades into Mexico. And in the midst of it all are the sandy banks and those who wave and wade out to meet us. Your “Doorman” may be my favorite of all your pieces I’ve seen. I love what you notice and how you tell us.
Marylinn-
Thank you so much. McCarthy is such a comfort during hard times, I find.
Thanks for waving from shore yourself!
yrs-
Scott
Wow.
Just Wow.
Sometimes you freak me out! In a good way.
Cheers,
pf
Thanks, PF!