And but we didn’t have papers
we had weed but not papers.
So we rolled it up into what we called ‘the funnel’
Which was just e-z wider
With enough pot for like five joints in it
Like rolled into like a cone-shaped thing.

And we bite off the end of it but you had to hold it up like this
And then the pot would burn down the middle.
So we’re out there smoking it like this and passing it around this circle
And we got busted.

We got caught.

So for punishment they made us take our sea bags
Instead of going to training
And just carry this 80-lb bag on your shoulder
Around what they call a ‘quadrangle’
Which is like uh
At graduation they had
You know that’s where you drilled to practice marching formation.
But around the edge was like a track where we ran around
And we . . .
What they did is when we you first started they made us run around
And they timed us.
Almost everybody improved because a lot of them
Were like junkies off the street and stuff
That got eating regular and sleeping regular
And all that.
Just made us more healthy I guess.

But anyway they made us march around this thing with the 80-lb thing
On our back for 24 hours nonstop.
The ones that stopped they got put back into a different company
Couple weeks behind in the training.
NO FOOD?
Oh no, we didn’t stop for anything. Day and night.
YOU MADE IT?
Yeah.
WOW.

But when I finished it was like
Uh I don’t know
Like 3 in the morning or something
So then I just went to my bed and I didn’t get undressed or anything
I just fell on the bed and then they . . .
Next thing I knew they were blowing the whistle to get out of bed
Get out in formation
5 in the morning or whatever
Time to wake up and go
It wasn’t easy.

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But the only one that I remembered enough to try and reference in conversation a few days after reading his interview is Lish’s take on what a writer tries to do with the opening sentence.

He says, “Well the opening is to get the thing opened, to overcome the inertia of silence, indifference. Whatever means convince you you have achieved this effect ordain what follows.”

He then clarifies that by silence he means “The silence that precedes the writer beginning to write,” as opposed to the silence that precedes the reader beginning to read.

A little later, Lish gets giddy when asked about the FORWARD to his new book, COLLECTED FICTIONS.

He says, “Wow, that bit, it’s nuts! What the deuce was I up to? Yet, let it not become hypertrophic in me, but I have been taken with the feeling that the preface discloses, however opaque, what’s truest of me. I produced it as fast as I could write it and concluded, queerly, I’d stand by it no matter what. Apart from its drift as reference, there’s words in there I’m not certain are to be found anywhere else.”

And I grew curious about the FORWARD. I wanted to read at least the FORWARD, if nothing else. I found it online at OR BOOKS.

And then I did a little ctrl c + ctrl v for ease of passage:

FORWARD

By Gordon Lish

Fine, fine—now here’s a trope for you.

To fetch groceries, to collect rations, to supply the place with vittles, unless it be deemed better spelt victuals, I do not have to but indeed do choose to make my arthritic, rachitic grudge down a steep hill and thereafter to groan my way back up the steepness steeper still, what remains of my proprium all the while suffering ever more keenly the impudent yearage step by hideous step, whereas, please be so good as to be listening to me, I could just as well carry out my commerce among the aisles of a spankingly swell food-o-rama no more distant from my door and, more’s the madness, reachable via a byway latitudinous to a fault.

But I go down, down, down, up, up, up.

You hear?

Now down, now up—to and from where the grisly shelves are stocked with little in the line of the recognizable, to and from where the ether within is never not vicious with infection and disinfectant, to and from where the personnel (am I kidding?—personnel, personnel?) would even on Easter sooner spit in your face than to face it in a faint-hearted experiment in decency.

Go know.

But look at me, look at me!—I went and I went, dark purchases mounting against the load-bearing walls of my household trip upon ghastly trip.

So there for the nonce is the figure of the day, your author having hence satisfied himself of his having hinted at the amentia of what founded the variously deformed fundaments of the stories (am I kidding?—stories, stories?) all arranged for you in the very sequence of their sequentiality ahead.

I, I, I was the maker of them.

Once.

Long ago.

When the literateur’s swindle was no less the rage.

So now to quit now.

Ah, but curse, curse the volition!—too much paid for the profit, too much told for the gain.

::photo by Shelton Walsmith, 2006::

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Where should I begin? Well, for one, today I got two bar stools for ten bucks at a garage sale. So they wouldn’t tear up the carpet, I cut slits in 8 tennis balls and plugged them on 8 rusty chrome legs. I’m sitting on these walkers now, and I’m happy to be sitting on them.

I also walked into a head shop and found a flier that caught my eye because it seemed to make some kind of sense. I don’t think the writers of this flier would mind if I do a little plagiarizing.

Side:

TAX HEMP!

HEMP for MEDICINE

HEMP for the

ENVIRONMENT

Re-Legalize Hemp

If hemp were re-legalized and taxed at the same rate as pipe tobacco, over 1/2 a billion dollars could be raised annually for Texas schools. If it were taxed at the same rate as cigarettes (which pose the greatest health hazard to most Texans) over a billion dollars could be raised.

Hemp relieves the side effects or symptoms of glaucoma, AIDS, cancer, chemotherapy, migraine, muscular dystrophy, PMS, asthma, and other medical problems.

Hemp plants could replace all fossil fuel and their by-products, reducing pollution. One acre of hemp produces the same amount of paper as four acres of trees, four times a year, at 1/4 the cost of wood pulp paper and with 1/5 the pollution.

Flip Side:

WHO NEEDS A BAILOUT?

TAX HEMP

MAKE JOBS

A legally regulated hemp crop would yield billions of dollars in tax revenue.

A new hemp industry would replace thousands of jobs being lost today in the wood pulp industry and in other agricultural & industrial occupations, saving thousands of acres of U.S. forests and forests around the world.

Over 300,000 Americans a years are arrested for marijuana possession, at a cost of $840,000,000 to taxpayers.

Texas prison costs are skyrocketing because we jail nonviolent hemp offenders. Once-productive citizens become wards of the state, sometimes along with their families.

Hemp is the Number One $$ crop in California, Oregon, Washington, Hawaii, Missouri, and North Carolina and the Number Two $$ crop in Texas. Hemp has been safely used by humans for thousands of years, for fiber, fuel, food and medicine.

And there are only two sides two this flier. It’s lime green, like my 8 tennis balls, which I’m liking more every second. Oh yeah, this flier was made by the TEXAS HEMP CAMPAIGN, known in some quarters as the THC.

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“My ex-wife asked me to bring her some weed. I saved until I could get her the good stuff. I paid a lot for it, which was hard for me because of gas, and I had to take time off work to make the trip to Ohio.”

You’re leaning against the balcony railing, three stories high over the swimming pool. Last night it stormed. Lightning shorted the floodlight outside your window. You were grateful for the cut. It made your room darker.

“Going through North Carolina everyone was driving 75, 80 up this one hill, and at the top of the hill the speed limit changed to 55. Everyone let off the gas, but gravity kept them moving, you know, and at the bottom of the hill there were like 15 cops just waiting to pull you over. Every other car got stopped.”

You fix the straw hat so that it sits slanted down from the crown of your head. The sun peeps from behind a hole in the cloud cover and shines your chest. You look at the tangle of hairs. Rune shaped.

“They saw my Florida plates and pulled me over. I got out of the car and they checked me for hidden knives. Then they told me that if I was honest with them they’d let me off easy, but I had to tell them if there were any drugs in the car.”

You watch a girl open the gate to the swimming pool. She’s candy wrapped in a lavender towel. She slips off her thong sandals and walks down white steps and wades towards the diving board.

“So, I told them there was some weed in a sock on the bottom of my duffel bag in the trunk. I told them I was taking it to my ex-wife in Ohio. They understood. The cops put me in handcuffs and brought out their sniffing dogs. They started barking at my bag. The cops asked if I had any other drugs in the car, any cocaine. I told them no. They wrote me a ticket for speeding down the hill and interstate transportation and let me go. It was like a couple hundred bucks, but I could pay it by mail when I got back to Miami. I didn’t have to go to court or anything.”

You sip on a glass of lukewarm water and marvel at how the girl grabs onto the diving board and pulls half her body out of the water. You see the pipes in her arms contracting.

“Then there was the time when we were living in Miami, and we got a call saying that my little brother was in the hospital in Kissimmee. He had a brain aneurysm.”

You don’t hear the gate open. You don’t see a gray brindled pit bull skyrocket into the swimming pool with a galactic splash. But when you do see, you don’t know what’s happening, and the girl is tiring from pulling half her body in and out of the water.

“My mom asked which car was the fastest. We got on the highway and I got clocked doing 102. The cop asked me what’s the deal, you were going 102. And I told him that my little brother was in bad shape. I told him about getting my mom to the hospital. And he understood. But he had to scribble out a ticket. He said if you keep on driving that fast you might never get to the hospital.”

You see her arms shaking when the pit bull reaches her side of the swimming pool. It could be hers. You look around for an owner with a leash, but the grounds are desolate.

“After he finished scribbling out his ticket, he told us to follow him five exits down the highway. He started pushing a 100 and we followed right behind him to the exit. It was a good thing because I didn’t know the way to the hospital. If you just explain what you’re doing, they’ll understand. They’re human, too.”

You watch the pit bull pawing the girl. You aren’t sure if it’s hers until she screams. You think about how much more geometrical the painting would be if blood were less dense than water, like oil. Then you nod your head, and the man standing next to you on the balcony sips on his third espresso and says

“They’re human, too. You just have to let them know why you’re doing what you’re doing.”

::photo by bridget::

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Even though the bill has passed, most of the work is yet to be complete. Many of the eventual rules and bureaucracy will rely on interpretation, and the Washington lobbying houses of financial organizations who rely on a laissez-faire environment will spend millions of dollars on an outcome that best serves them. The main lobbying arm of the life insurance industry, The American Council of Life Insurers, is already diligently working on gaining special treatment when the laws are finally interpreted. “The nation must rely on the expertise and professionalism of the agencies to implement H.R. 4173 in a way that honors its underlying spirit of reform, but does not hamper well-functioning markets.” Said Frank Keating, the President of the ACLI.

It doesn’t stop at the ACLI, however. Individual life insurance companies are jockeying the new regulatory agencies to help draw the distinction between regulation of the insurance industry as a whole, and regulation of life insurance, which is a completely different issue according to John Calagna of Met Life: “We remain committed to staying actively involved in discussions with regulators to help avoid any unintended, adverse impact on the life insurance industry,” Calagna says.

The insurance industry is just one piece of the pie, too. Brokerage firms are rallying around their own lobbying groups for special consideration in the new regulations. Morgan Stanley, Goldman Sachs, J.P. Morgan, et al. are all part of a cabal of firms spending exorbitantly on lobbying in Washington. One example: Goldman Sachs spent 40% more on lobbying last quarter than it did last year – much of which is attributable to a stepped-up campaign against financial reform.

The sad truth is, as an American, you shouldn’t feel comforted by financial reform. It’s influenced by too many dollars to be effective at fixing the root of the problem. What you can do, however, is speak out against these efforts to ‘rig the game.’ In April of this year Rolling Stone Magazine did just that, by publishing a scathing look at the dark side of Goldman Sachs. One can always have hope in the salvation of journalism.

Sources

• Rolling Stone Magazine [for a summary of Goldman Sachs]
• Prospect Magazine [for image]
• Library of Congress [summary of H.R. 4173]

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“In case I have a seizure don’t touch me or keep me from moving. Let my body beat how it wants.”

“Like a skyscraper sways in the wind?”

“No. If you keep my arm from seizing, or my head, you could permanently take away any movement in that part of my body. By stopping me from convulsing freely, you’re not letting my brain work how it thinks it should work and it could un-learn.”

“I see.”

“If I start seizing keep time. Anywhere from 2-3 minutes and I don’t have to go to the hospital. But if I seize for like 5 minutes, that’s more brain damage, which I don’t need. You can call an ambulance then, but try to get them to take me to the VA hospital because it’s free then, and they have my record on file. I keep a separate wallet on me with all my medical data. Here’s my VA card.”

“I’ve seen this blue card before. My stepfather has one.”

“If I start seizing try to take a video, or take a series of photos, because then my doctor can prescribe the medicine I need and take me off what I don’t. Like if I’m frothing from the mouth, or my eyes roll back, that’s useful information.”

“Should I keep your head safe?”

“Use your judgement. If I’m beating the ground real hard, maybe slip a towel under my head. Don’t use a pillow. And don’t touch my head.”

“OK.”

::photo by christopher sly::

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I’ve visited both. I’ve sat silently inside their cold mouths and, in both spaces, felt a pang of gratitude for finally being spit out into warm air.

Rothko Chapel:

Tending, (Blue):

But these spaces aren’t cold in the same way that climate-controlled homes of suburbia are cold. In fact, Tending, (Blue) is open-aired. James Turrell, the artist, considered it a skyspace.

I walked through these frosty glass doors and down a purple-lit hall that funnelled me into an inner sanctum with canted stone walls making up the 4 sides of a square. The walls also served as a bench. I sat down and leaned back and looked up through a smaller square-cutout in the ceiling:

Beyond this aperture, the sky:

James Turrell intended this piece to be slowly digested. He has a problem with the idea that people spend a few seconds in front of a masterpiece hanging in a museum and then move on to another work. Turrell wants his art to be lived.

And, to that extent, he succeeded magnificently in Tending, (Blue). I sat on that stone bench longer than I’ve looked at most art. And I had some deep thoughts.

DEEP THOUGHTS: What happens when it rains or snows in Dallas? How often do they clean this place? What would my scream sound like beyond the aperture? If the walls were narrower, there would be a time of day when the sun would shine directly onto the floor, mercilessly. Isn’t there a form of torture where people are forced to sit under the venomous sun in a confined space, without respite, until their skin boils? It would be nice to be here at night with my girl. Is the angle right? Have they ever had concerts in here? I imagine a violin would sound pretty. Or are the acoustics not that great? Me and my girl and a cherry violin.

But not even the company of this last thought could keep my brain from feeling deep isolation. Melancholy flooded the chamber. I looked around at all of the bare rock and didn’t like the way I couldn’t breathe. There was something unclear about Turrell’s art. Something like a big fat WHY?

This place felt cultish. This place felt too extreme for balance. I teetered. I rubbed my arms to kindle warmth.

Then I got up and got on with the rest of my life.

Before visiting Tending, (Blue), I visited Rothko Chapel several times. I grew up with an inexplicable affinity for Mark Rothko:

His colors gave me color. I don’t think I ever got much out of his artwork other than a sense of color and emotion and how the two are inextricably linked and can clash like warm and cold fronts in the weather system.

At the very least, Rothko, give me some color! Don’t take color away from me, like you do inside Rothko Chapel:

This is Mark Rothko’s idea of non-denominational art. Massive black canvases with a muted color hue. I applaud the eyes who can see anything other than depression in this dreadfully cold space.

I forced myself to sit down on one of the benches. I tried to give the space a chance to communicate. I looked up at the oculus and had some deep thoughts.

DEEP THOUGHTS: The use of natural light is pretty neat. I like the way it’s splayed into 8 beams. An octagon: the shape of a stop sign. It’s as if this hunk of concrete were saying, Light, stop! But Light won’t listen. Light does what it wants. Light is protean. It is shapeshifting. It is divine. And what about that gigantic black painting in front of me? And what about that other gigantic black painting? And what about that gigantic black painting over there? Is Rothko trying to tell me something? Do all people who come here to meditate or pray or worship before these canvases realize that true Light comes from the sun and not manmade creations? Is Rothko forcing me to follow the only true Light there is instead of some manmade religion or art?

Then I got terribly cold. I rubbed my arms to kindle warmth. I tied my shoelace and hurried outside.

The Russian abstract painter died a year before the completion of Rothko Chapel. He committed suicide in his kitchen. A response to deep-seeded depression.

::2nd, 4th, and 5th photos pilfered from Diorama Sky::

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YouTube says:

This film interpretation of the Alfredo Triff song conjures memories of lost love and unbearable desire within an eternal night on the crowded and lonely streets of Miami.

Shot in Wynwood, Calle Ocho and South Beach, featuring contemporary troubador singer Roberto Poveda. “Delirio” is a critically acclaimed song from the 2007-released album “Boleros Perdidos” by Alfredo Triff.

I miss Miami. I miss the blue skies and the salinity. I miss shaving off most of my hair–and without taking a shower–running into the ocean and scrubbing my bare head clean. I miss searching for perfect seashells. I miss looking at life while shoulder-high in seawater.

The tropics.

If you’re there, don’t ever leave.

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These are my legs.
They just finished moving
from one apartment to another,
in the same complex.

People say that onsite moves are the hardest.
Back then, I couldn’t agree or disagree
because I didn’t know one way
or another.

But now I know that
onsite moves mean less packing,
but more trips back
and forth.

Onsite moves mean less planning,
but more counting
flights of stairs
and footsteps.

A roundtrip from our old place
to our new place equaled
5 flights of stairs up, 5 flights down
and 400 footsteps.

I made this trip for ten hours,
nonstop, carrying clunky furniture
to start, and boxes in the middle,
and miscellany in the end.

These legs wearied as I
reminded myself that this
weariness is what it means
to be human.

These legs are my body.
These legs are my humanity.
These legs are as old as me.
These are not my legs.

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No one seems to mind me even though I take up one seat and half a table,

and I purchase nothing.

The people behind the counter never see my face.

I walk through a side door cloaked in a hat and sunglasses.

Then I sit down, take off my hat and sunglasses, and flip open my laptop.

I logon to their free Wi-Fi and do all kinds of shit on the internet.

Sometimes I write a few emails. But most of the time I stick to doing shit.

Invisibly.

The air conditioner dries any moisture on my body. The pores on my face shrink until

they’re barely visible.

An emaciated kid walks by my table. He stands in front of the counter and scratches his stick arm.

His nails are long and toxic.

He asks for a cup. He only wants a water.

I watch him walk over to the soda machine and fill his cup with geometrical ice

and coke.

“Excuse me!” belts a tiny woman from behind the counter. “You asked for water. If you want coke you’ll have to pay one-dollar-eight-cents.”

The emaciated kid is nonplussed. His bottom lip hangs ajar, chunkily.

He scratches his stick arm and slowly puts down the cup and waits for the next customer to place an order.

Then he slowly walks out the door.

Invisibly.

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