klondike kate

shakey with beans

scrunched up napkin
walnuts and pecans
plus spinach clipped in chopsticks.

.38 special

even though it's one year gone, he still talks about it. i want to say to him that there's other things, that at forty-one, come on, he ought to be able to get on with it. but he can't. he's a wreck. pisces. it's like they're asking for it.

anyway, what's a friend's responsibility after a certain age? i mean, i have my own debacles to manage. but the dude is losing his shit.

folding laundry?

no thanks, i can't handle that stuff.

i shouldn't. it keeps me in the house.

it would make me vomit.

maybe you didn't know how to do it. were you swallowing it?

i don't remember. probably.

coincidental jam jar

that world beyond droll

...i'll go if you pay for my ticket.

how about you buy your ticket and if you decide you like it there, i'll reimburse you twice over.

so obviously you know it'll suck. in which case, i really fail to see why i would go.

well, look at it like it's a gamble. you like to gamble?

sure. but not on bad bets. although, what's to stop me from just saying i like it there, even if i don't?

you're telling me you're of such weak moral character that you'd dissemble for $100? like some swindling mudlark?

fine, big words. does ricky jay know you're stealing his act?

guilty. so what do you say?

let me get this straight: i buy my ticket. i tell you i like the place. you pay me back double. and no polygraph. no wonder reno killed you.

think about it this way: if you get there and it doesn't knock you out of your dirty grey sneakers, then $1000 or 1000 times $1000 won't ever change the fact that ____ ____ _____ because obviously you're ______ ____ ______ __-____ ______ of the morlocks. I'm speaking to you as a friend.

i have no idea what you're talking about.

so you're in?

the kindness of fists

believe me! i tell you i have
only best intentions.

but the results are killing me.
are there any other choices?
those with means see meanness,
complacency that deserves no pity

ask me to the hot show
you can't understand
my antipathy, you think
i am maladjusted. de-looped.

this isn't so. there is
more at play than you know.

but what choice is there for
an average fellow?
just to shake and stir in
locked closets. to endure
accusations, a-poetic arrows.

nope. better beaten by knuckles
than dithered among soft,
mediocre pacifists.

from a motel 6

she's listening to schubert on the tv. sonata in 'd', she tells me.

how do you know that, i ask?

because it tells you on the screen.

what's your favourite tv radio station?

channel 476. it's the nature station. it's just the sound of thunderstorms and birds and wind and things.

the sound of things. i like it.

now i'm listening to a partitas. i don't even know what that is.

how do you spell it?

partitas.

gambling with cats (plus wells)

i swear i need to get duke some valium. he's licking at his fur so hard there are bald spots. i think he's got massive anxiety.

cats are a crapshoot. hey, did i loan you The Time Machine?

No. ... wait a minute, you have a time machine?

aimless through bushes

please give up (you're no good)

I know I saw you today.

I don’t care if

I wish ...

stars aren’t exactly available

these days.

gathering concern

just before sunset, sunshine finally shows up. almost three hours late. alone.

she slides in across from me at the picnic table and roots around in her purse; all pastey and shakey curtained by liquored-out hair.

'so, where is he?' i finally have to ask.

'not coming.'

'not coming. this is unbelievable.'

she gives me the sideways death stare.

'what went wrong?'

'you don't want to know. light?'

no. i quit.'

'i liked you better when you smoked.'

'what's the difference?'

'all the eye contact.'

'you know, there's an envelope to all this. to their patience.' i try to make it even-handed, 'everyone is aware you're under pressure sunshine, but there is gathering concern...'

no reaction unless you count the predictable stonewall. a heavy silence crept over the deserted parkette. mastering my panic ins't one of my strengths and she knows it. i crack as per usual.

'we're fucked now, you realize that? it's complete calamity. are you registering this sun? please, tell me what you think my options are.'

'yes!' flourishing a found match she ignites her 100. 'don't be so dire siggie. it makes you unattractive. life is a comedy remember? you used to say that.'

'please, just tell me what went wrong. tell me something i can tell them.'

she laughs. 'tell them it was food poisoning.'

sunrise seven ago

(world of darkness)

"Damned reborn from the Thousand Hells, the Kuei-jin dance a razor's edge between enlightenment and the powers of the Demon. At the dawn of the Sixth Age, will these vampires redeem the world or feast upon it as it dies?"

ground and pound

i mean, who wants to be beaten to the brink of death?

it's not who wants to be beaten, it's those that want to beat.

but someone has to be the loser...

but the great thing about it, about those guys, is that no one ever believes that they're going to be the loser.

that's sort of the sadness of the whole thing. ugh, it's barbaric. men are such animals.

ha. women aren't?

we don't beat each other to the brink of death for entertainment.

no, you starve yourselves to the brink of fashion.

E.B. has a girl to set you up with.

no.

(be calm) how involved are you?

god, the corners i bang into i deserve.

if you can't write it, you don't know it.

i don't think that's true. what if you can say it?

[redacted]

you can really edit things to death.

yeah, nothing is ever complete.

so you retract the premise?

no, i deserve my pain.

bundling (board or otherwise)

i'm on the trail of the bundling board. what is it? why is it? what greater significance might it have? was it victorian? quite likely colonial. i first heard it mentioned on deadwood. i could google it. but i'm taking a break from looking things up. i'm not against learning. i'm against faux learnin'. whatever the fuck that means. jesus, the quality of my thought is diminishing as i think about it. i should maybe stick to linking to smarter things.

so, a bundling board, basically a wooden slat, was used to physically separate two people laying together in the same bed. when seth bullock's wife -- previously married to his brother, who was killed [fighting the comancheros in Texas] -- arrives in deadwood he installed a bundling board along the median of their bed. she says to him at the end of episode 14 that she removed it. this further complicates seth's burgeoning relationship with alma garrett, a recovering opium addict whose claim he reconnoitered. ha.

bundling (no board) as a practice was the convention used by unmarrieds when no other option but sharing one bed was available to them. it simply means to sleep together with all your clothes on. this i think would be a perfect abstinence campaign these days. not that i'm for it, abstinence. or against it. i suppose you can make a case for anything. i just mean that bundling would be fine angle to take. old is new again, right?

malevolent rubble

this morning i was walking to work when a chunk of cement fell from the sky and landed right in front of me. i could taste the dust it was that close. i felt it whoosh by my head an instant before it crashed down on the sidewalk and for that split second i thought it was a bird dive bombing me. but then the crack sounded and the fragmented bits scattered around and i totally got all shaky and, once across the steet, i had to lean underneath a shop doorway to pull myself together. was it an ambush? i heard no rustling on the rooftops above. there were no dodgey silhouettes. was it just failing architecture? i don't know. but coupled with the dog that attacked me two weeks ago, i'm terrified of what's gonna happen next. things come in threes, right?

amended, april 12: i fully suck. basically i should have just fucking said: today, a chuck of concrete fell from above, narrowly missing caving in my skull, and crashed onto the pavement in front of my nearest foot. that's it. that would have sufficed. fucking over-writers. hate them, hate myself. ha.

the lethargists

one afternoon, back in '88, I was smoking outside the school's cafeteria when a couple of kids wearing burgundy berets and fu-manchus* sauntered up to me. i expected they were trying to score some hash. i'd been empty since f.w.'d got pinched six weeks previous and was ready to put them off. instead they said, 'are you benny craft?' I was and still am, so i nodded and they said, 'some of us are meeting tonight at the kingsway billiards. we think you should come by.'

i had no idea who these cats were. Jameson Collegiate Institute held about 800 kids, not including the evening adult courses. i knew most of them either from river parties, classes or my extracurriculars, but these ones i'd never seen. i said, 'who are you guys?'.

'i'm thurston and this is siggie.' the speaker was the shorter of the two and the prescription intensity of his buddy holly spectacles presented a frightening, owlish cast. siggie was a real tall knob. like if larry bird was a grocery store bag boy instead of an all-star nba genius. neither of them once took their hands out of their overcoat pockets.

'do we know each other?' i asked, as it dawned they might be [xxxxxx].

'i doubt it,' thurston said and his partner shrugged an ambivalent. 'Just be there. Nine o'clock.' They turned and crossed away over the football field. I smoked the rest of my navy cut and watched them take the tracks across the river.

'what was that all about?' my lab partner becky locks spoke to me through lighting up a smoke.

'don't know. something about meeting at the pool hall tonight. you know those guys?'

she exhaled, 'never seen them before. i don't think they go here.'


*only the berets were burgundy. the fu-manchus were normal colours.

titles are easy

this isn't how it happened:

she exhales and says, i'm very close to spitting in Pat's eye. If I didn't already. Pat looks at me and says: women are like the [self-censored], man. did i ever tell you that?

yes you have, i say. it's good we're among friends. pat's presentation has humour, but it's dangerous. he pitches his cigarette and the rest of us do the same. some old boogie woogie is playing as we come back inside.

there's two of them hipsters at the end of the bar. they're in the middle of him lobbying her for a new beginning. he's pushing his porkpie cap back on his head, like he's fed up. she catches me looking at her and sends it right back at me. i was in a richer place than usual tonight and even there, people have drinking problems.

meanwhile, Pat's arrayed a slew of booze against any possibility of a functional tomorrow. I know he's got no money and i look this at honey and she mouths, i only gave him bar scotch.

then he tries to tip his tip-out. she pushes it back to him. everyone promises each other how great they are.

all these fucking human tragedies, she says to me in particular, and bangs down a round of carbombs. what am i supposed to do with love like this?

pajanners logo

calamity jones

you sure how to fuck shit up for yourself, don't you?

seems that way.

what excites me the most about your self-destruction bent is how creative you are about it. you're like the ricky jay of disaster.

thanks. that means alot.

well, be seeing you.

yeah. see you.

terminate the pan

...the problem of other minds

we're both at work on the phone, talking low, when she asks, 'how do other people's minds operate?'

'i don't know,' i say. 'you should ask the Philosopher that question.'

'i mean, how many containers of thought can your mind hold? at the same time? do you ever think about that?'

The Meridian's display says we're going on 53 minutes. I want to say, of course i think about that. I think about shit like that all the time and it's totally driving me crazy. i want to say how sometimes i almost know everything. but i know she'd recognize it as hollingshead, who said it better than i ever will. i honestly think i'm going insane these days.

i say, 'i think i'm going insane.'

'you know what our problem is?' she tells me, 'it's that we consistently confuse our gifts for limits.'

'isn't that just another way of saying we want what we don't have?'

'i'm making us an appointment with the astrologist, okay?'

'what about the tenth planet? have they incorporated that yet? am i still a pisces? what good can come from astrology anyways?' i sound more desperate than i thought i was.

'oh shit,' she says. 'i got another call. call you later.'

(it's like saying) neils bohr was good with numbers

i keep hearing that heart song in my head, magic man. and though it's got nothing to do with magic, i'm obstinately using it as the soundtrack for my imaginary conjuring career. naturally, when one makes a statement like that,.

trying hard to avoid lifting more lines from Larry David...

the truth is, i'm not really qualified to write or talk about very much at all. there is a modern phenomenon, or maybe pandemic is the better word, in play. it's the idea that if you've read something, perhaps a critical review of a concert or a biopic of a well-regarded writer or painter, there is a tendency to pass this knowledge off as though you actually gained it through some direct experience with the subject itself.

see the ornette coleman review...

so what do i say about ricky jay? obsession does not beget coherence; it tends to further obscure the subject. drowning in proximity or whatever. my learning is like sunshine through rippled windows.

picsces: our blessing and curse. instant understanding and empathy. the ability to free associate. no idea or concept or emotion exists as a constant for us. BUT, we find it impossible to stop time long enough to completely encompass and codify our ideas. this lack is an ultimate frustration. so we lash out. keep trying to make nothing into something.

(ricky jay!)

.

the favourable lie

ok. today's the day i break out the clubs for 2006. as i mentioned at the end of last season, this year my in game focus will be to become a wedge assassin around the green. i will have NO FEAR! i'm sick of giving up strokes because i yip my pitches and chips. it feels like when you realize you've locked your keys in the car.

also, I have set the following goals, though not neccessarily as ordered:

1) control the rage.
2) practice relentlessy.
3) break 100.
4) reduce handicap by 6 strokes.
5) predictable fade.
6) get lessons.
7) shotmaking.

man, can't you just feel the excitment!?