Silver

I check my email 17 times a day, the five, six, and dash keys of my laptop are broken, I rarely pay attention, my body experiences sensations like an anemone. 

A couple days ago someone texted me that there is a praying mantis crouched inside of them. Once a day I notice a baseball sized rock crouched inside of me. 

Sometimes, at work, I go to the bathroom and make excruciating faces at the wall, open my mouth as big as possible, scrunch everything, curl my neck back and forth. I take my tips (doled out in cash) and buy ice cream sandwiches and beer at Derby Mart.

I feel serpentine and wicked moving through a crowd. 

I am noticeably bad at writing anything true. Thinking anything true. 

I am neurotic (at times) and completely exploding (at other times). 

The house is much too cold, the floors much too dirty, my circulation much too poor to play the piano. I have thought this for many years.

Tomorrow morning before noon I will play something new and shiny. I will grin grin grin, my teeth silverware, yes you can use them, yes I will wash them in the sink. 

I stare at videos and images and blinking lights and old photos of semi strangers and dig a deep hole and walk down into the hole and decide the hole is nice and not so bad maybe I’ll live there for a bit. 

I read palms and songs and weather patterns for proof, proof of something excellent and heartbreaking. 

I am an emotionally practical person.

Last night I dreamt of a symphony hall filled with dogs, silent.

I make vows of silence, usually on days like today where it rains sideways. I say nothing important, I listen to the rats fucking in my heater vent. I eavesdrop on all my roommates.

Later, I will wash my hands backwards and upside down. Take an asprin. Lay awake as silence pans through and around me.

I am a satellite dish on my bed, silver oh so silver

O Arthur O Arthur let down your hair O Jenny O Jenny play me a tune

Sitting back in this cavern I am the puniest acrobatic monkey in the troupe. I’m the wheezing whistling old accordion resting in the chair,,, pull me pull me! dear god do something!

I feel neither genuine nor vulgar, the rounded paper lantern diffusing the sparkly lightbulb.

I am only golden in the scrolls of the prince in the high tower

O arthur o Arthur let down your hair

I am only shining when perched on your flute

O Jenny o Jenny play me a tune

When I read aloud my story in April, most of them are on their laptops, looking at a vat of emails or playing sodoku or doing something important. I think about jellyfish in the waves, jellyfish caught dead and stranded on a shoreline, boys with buckteeth, fish with long hair and wings. When I read aloud my story in November I am crouched in some dripping corner of my brain, prodding at my budding wisdom teeth with my tongue. Taste of metal I bite the spoon the knife the fork the hand the denim fold of my pants at the kneecap. 

I think about punching someone in the face and how the phrase "punchable face" is violently insulting and how I wish I had an arm like Babe Ruth. I could punch you in the face and twist your ears back and forth! I want to make you a stew big and bubbling! Give you a strand of my hair and say "here, is this what you wished for?" Want to make something so beautiful and booming that it is undeniably so, undeniably beautiful and booming.

I turn east and let it flood my sockets

Green basins or marbles

I am rendered a (collapsible giraffe)

Everyone is listening to the trains version of ‘lovers rock’

The screeching pressure of it meeting the bay in the deep aquatic tunnel

Looking at pictures of people unfolding, hearing stories over and over, I feel like a bulldozer, or a construction crane, or the wing of a heron. I'd like to set this stuff in pudding or jello. Lemon lime, cherry, strawberry delight.       

The Smallest Organism

The ten inch eye ball of a giant squid and a Coors banquet tall can. 

Generous, sentimental, trumpet and sax squeakingpulling themselves outof the squatted speaker. The giant spider hunched in the snake cage, my roommates monotone drole while cooking dinner, a vee cut tee shirt. 

Today I learned that my friend learned (from a cross word puzzle) that squids have eyes the size of dinner plates (bout 10 inches). Until that moment I thought that giant squids were figments of myth and lore, like moby dick. I've never read moby dick and I mentally interchange the large white whale with a large red squid. Both are phallic in a way, both are like sausages I've eaten at my grandmothers in the Bavarian countryside. Weisswurst (white sausage) like the whale is boiled and the skin peeled back. Frankfurter Würstchen, like the squid, are redish and long, dangling their extremities into vast space. Reading back over this, the phallic theme continues in the moby dick title. Perhaps that's a bit obvious. Asked my friends around the table if they've read it and they say no and also they've heard it's boring. 

My housemates are talking about the ethics of shitting in my bathroom. 

My housemates are looking at craigslist missed connections, are drinking coors tall cans (yellow and shining), are sitting on each others laps, drawing dragons and new hairstyles. 

My housemates are cooking up a big steak, rendering beef tallow, wearing my clothes, staining my lightswitches soot grey.

My housemates are giant squids with eyes the size of dinner plates.

My favorite youtube video is of the Magnapinna Squid attacking the camera. (go look that up)

An old professor sent me an email with the tagline "EARTH HAS A NEW MINI MOON!" Apparently it won't stick around for very long. So, look up into the sky and pretend that piece of dust on your glasses is a mini moon and say 'hello' and 'thank you'. I wish I could be earths new mini moon.

My new favorite website that I enjoy browsing while sitting in the front row of class is an ASCII archive. Their amoeba section is pretty lack luster but they have this nice piece below: 

_____.______ <-- amoeba

_____!______ <-- amoeba with cooker hat

_____.|_____ <-- amoeba trying to climb the fence

___.......__ <-- queue of amebas

_____*______ <-- amoeba with flower costume

_____.z_____ <-- sleeping ameoba

____________ <-- invisible amoeba

_____o______ <-- bodybuilding ameoba

_____O______ <-- bodybuilding ameoba on steroids

_____o.o____ <-- ameoba with glasses

_____.-.____ <-- two ameobas carrying a log

_____.>_____ <-- ameoba with a boomerang

_____.-_____ <-- ameoba with a rifle

_____.______ <-- amoeba covered with ashes

_____'______ <-- super amoeba

____(.)_____ <-- trapped amoeba

3===D__.____ <-- amoeba in the wrong place

_____$._____ <-- rich amoeba

_____.._____ <-- Ameobas having a conversation

_____?______ <-- amoeba carrying a hook 

_____.}_____ <-- ameoba with a bow and arrow

      .

_____o=o____ <-- ameoba skateboarding

 ::::::::::

 ::::::::::

_::::::::::_ <-- ameobas in a parade

Could an amoeba carrying a hook capture a moby dick or giant squid? Does the amoeba with a rifle enjoy a coors tall can on a hot southern night? Are the amoebas having a conversation about shitting in my bathroom? Do amoebas have mini moons? Do amoebas wish they were mini moons? Do amoebas cook and eat steak? Do amoebas slam the door? Do amoebas think moby dick is boring? 

Horse Race

 Horse Race

Underperforming at the derby this evening … The race track, coiled to strike. Dust a furious furious beating ‒ against a hollow chest. / The stallions, overdressed and underperforming / braided to high hell / candy cane striped and a bloated winner / gets the blue ribbon / The jockeys amped up on steroid pipe dream / scarred red from whiskey back rooms / colts perched, up in the saddle / The feed is poisoned, bets are fucked / ‘Don’t look a gift horse in the mouth’ / the teeth are rotting / pruned for high water / chomp clomp clap / at the failure / chomp clomp clap / at the indolent lethargic foot dragging creature / BAM / shoots the lame horse / BAM / kills the broken footed / slack jawed ‒ the capable beast / BAM / screeching / down the stretch they come / foals / dogs / iron maidens.

In the desert an early spring, a sleeping giant

 In an estranged valley, papercut between the Sierras and an indulgent coastline, I found a Giant.

 /// 

In my hotel room the air conditioner hums until I feel like a stranded fish, my eye sockets hollowed and gills all dried out. I choke and gasp on the sanitized air. In front of the window hang three layers of curtains, a fortified wall against any morning light, but no protection against the drone of the freeway. Laying in bed beside the red letter alarm clock I feel as though I am a hard chestnut rolled up in a green coat or lying in a metal bowl on the counter. 

Evening pulls across the basin quickly, throwing its shoulders over the mountains and swallowing the parched land. Before it gets too dark I walk out to the dusty strip of land behind my hotel. The ground here is dotted with crushed cans, cigarette butts, and clovers. I drag my heels around in the dirt until I find a spot with more give, where the ground seems to press down a little. Brushing away the larger rocks and trash I uncover the edge of a face. A forehead, so high and pink, the size of a car. 

Back in my room, my friend sends me a photo of a piece of hail the size of a ping pong ball. In the photo the ice chunk lays in her hand, some of it beginning to melt and pool in the cracks and lines of her palm. Looking at this picture is like looking at pictures of tenderness or violence- I feel my body react without explanation. 

That night I dream of an early spring, and in the southern dust - a sleeping Giant, cradled by sulfur and sediment. A forehead, so high and pink, like an anvil. Strike now. 

When I wake up, my face is wet. 

Two days pass without incident or note.

 The third night, something prods me awake at 3am and holds me in silent terror until daybreak. 

That evening I return to the dirt patch. The light folds in the late sky like one of those red foil fortune telling fish. Fortune indicates: the light is fickle and jealous. It scuttles across the dirt like a small creature, glinting off of passing cars and winking until its final retreat to the horizon. Of the land splayed before me, I march through the refuse, back to the soft spot. The dirt puckers where it meets itself, leaving an opening through which I glimpse the skin of the Giant. Despite it being winter, the days have been hot and onerous. I wonder how the body changes under differing duress - sun punishing the Giants back and poisoning the fish. 

That night, I dream of an early spring and that the Giant is the size of a ping pong ball. The Giant lays in my hand, beginning to melt and pool in the cracks and lines of my palm. In the dream, its voice is slow-moving, rolling over me like oil. Tenderness and violence. 

The Giant tells me,

    “Even if your heart is a gash as big as a boulder, even if you tell me that your love is a gash as big as a boulder, I know that it is a small river stone. Smoothed, rendered practical in its own way. The stone is not yawning enough. It does not eat the path open. It has no entropy.” 

The Giant continues, 

    “There is something that will hold you like the dirt hugs dried bones underground. I watch video games and tv shows by peering into the neighborhood living rooms. This has no entropy, like the river stone. I am like the dirt holding the dried bones underground.” 

Despite the multi layered curtain system, a thin blade of light falls across the bed in the morning and wakes me. My face is wet. In the lines of my palm - a puddle. As if a piece of hail the size of a ping pong ball had melted there overnight

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Bathroom Portals

I happened across two excellent bathrooms. 

The only photos I took today were of these bathrooms. 

Two stand alone photos of two stand out bathrooms.

An excellent bathroom should meet some of these standards: 

> fairly clean, like clean enough I can move around freely without fearing the cheese touch

> original ambiance, I appreciate when a bathroom maintains an individual personality separate from the establishment it resides in 

> stocked w/ tp 

> mirror 

> toilet

> no line 

Even more ideally, a bathroom is a solo room, not a stall. 

For context, I encountered these bathrooms in substandard circumstances. I wasn't visiting them for use of the toilet. I just needed a couple minutes of recuperation and quiet time. They served me well.

Bathroom 1: I was standing around in a lobby(?) with a bunch of other people waiting for something (?) or someone (?). It was incredibly loud and hot and I was bored. So, I open an unmarked door and there I am. Face to face with a charming window and tiled walls. The air in there is noticeably cooler and less frantic than in the lobby. I stand for a couple minutes, looking at/out/into the window, wash my hand with cold water, do some stretches, and snap this pic:

I'm convinced this window is a portal. Where to? I don't know.

Then someone jiggles the door handle. My time there had come to an end.         

The next bathroom experience is incredibly serendipitous.

Bathroom 2: I take a little trip to the loo in an attempt to escape another hot, loud, boring situation. I swing open the door and am greeted with this huge photo of a baby named Luise and a stuffed animal mobile hanging from the ceiling. The lighting is incredibly warm and welcoming, it feels like entering a womb. I do some jumping jacks and hang my head upside down for a little. 

Suddenly, Wicked Game by Chris Isaak plays on the speakers. 

No, I don't wanna fall in love (this world is only gonna break your heart)

WHAT! This is CRAZY!  I think to myself. 

For context: The song follows me into the most mundane situations. 

In the airport, Chris Isaak's voice croons as I wait in the security line. 

The world was on fire and no one could save me but you

It plays on car radios, idling at traffic lights.

It's strange what desire will make foolish people do

In the waiting area of the pharmacy. 

What a wicked game you play, to make me feel this way

In a Berlin coffee shop. 

I never dreamed that I'd meet somebody like you

And now, in some bathroom in a random restaurant in Germany.

(This world is only gonna break your heart)

 

Chris Isaak is haunting me. 

(He's not dead)

As Wicked Game plays in this bathroom, a huge portal to a seventh dimension opens. 

I dance a little jig in the seventh dimension. 

When the song ends I exit the bathroom. 

✰

P.S. My band also happens to do a cover of Wicked Game

Here's us playing it live: 

Would Bach approve of synths?

For an ideal experience listen to this while reading:

One of my favorite recordings of all time is Glenn Gould playing the Goldberg variations from Bach (the 1981 version!!!). Each variation on its own is utterly delightful; however, when listened to in its entirety the Variations are a whip smart demonstration of the piano’s dexterity, nuance, and beauty. My favorite section is the Aria and first variation. The Aria nearly brings me to tears every time I listen. One of my favorite aspects of the recording is that you can hear Gould singing along to the piano, his chair creaking with the crescendos. The Aria melts into Variation 1, which is undoubtedly a headbanger.

Gould's annotated score

Gould always sat on particular high back wood chair when playing piano. He hunches over the keys, nose nearly touching them. It's a strange look. His father sawed the chairs legs shorter to compliment the height of a piano. There is an entire paper dedicated to an analysis of the squeaks of the chair.

//////////////////

I’m writing this on a train to Berlin while listening to the recording in question. It’s easy to imagine Bach in the passing pastoral landscape, composing for the trickling streams and cows in the field. It's easy to imagine Gould seated beside me in an old wood chair, humming along. 

I have this fantasy of getting a MicroKorg and playing some

of the variations on there. I’m curious if the tenderness of a variation like the Aria is transferable to an electronic instrument. Bach originally wrote the Goldberg variations for harpsichord, which Gould disregarded  Also, Variation 5 would be so fun to learn how to play and transpose onto a synth. I found a good eBay deal on a MicroKorg from Bulgaria... I'll keep you posted on my acquisition.

Here is an awesome version played on an modular synth: 

Someone has left a plea in the comments of that video:

'"Please don’t mix with good thing 

Or bad thing

That’s not God’s will

Please erase this one

Please God tell me so"'

Poetic.

Gould himself loved the Moog synthesizer and Wendy Carlos' Switched On Bach (an album recorded on a Moog synthesizer). I'm no music scholar, but I think Bach would have loved synthesizers as well. Why not?

P.S. If your classical music interest is piqued go give Grieg's Piano Concerto in A minor, Op. 16 - II. Adagio
a listen. The first time I heard this piece I was sitting on the couch with my Oma watching a live broadcast of the Munich Philharmonic. She hummed along the whole time, somehow knowing every note and it's intonation. It was supremely touching. It reminded me of Gould's humming. 

Here is a Berliner Philharmonic recording:

 

✰