EmptyHighway

I received this email/letter from my sister a few days before her birthday this year. I submitted it for McSweeney's Van Zorn Prize, alas, I received word this morning it did not make the cut. Nevertheless it is a hell-of-a-read.

The reason I haven’t called

Dear Brother,

...Well, you see; the rodeo is in town and so is the carnival with them. Oh, what fun! What fun! All the rides! The animals! The happy families everywhere!

But alas, our gleeful outing took a misfortunate turn when one of the unwitting though adequately trained carney-folk who was operating my ride on the highly touted Slam!-O-Matic carriage was distracted by a passing woman with arms full of fluffy pink cotton candy heaven on her way back to the petting rodeo pen where all her 15 children were eagerly awaiting their daily nourishment; it seems that suddenly one of the stiletto heels on her cowboy boots got wedged right firmly in a day-old cow pie, and before she could yell "S---!" she was on her way

But the carney man was watching, thankfully, and immediately lurched into action. He swiftly balanced his cigarette down on the control box, careful to let the ash end point out, glanced at his shoelaces to be sure they were out of the way, and with a great flourish of his long, curly hair, he made a death-defying leap off the Slam!-O-Matic platform and landed squarely in front of the cow pie and the endangered woman, catching her by the fringe of her leather mini-skirt with one burly hand and deftly capturing the enormous cotton candy poofball in the other as it came floating down along it's sweet parabolic trajectory--thus averting a near sticky and stinky disaster.

Incidentally, the woman had excellent reflexes herself--that was just one tough cow pie--for in the midst of all this tripping and catching and leaping and lurching, her own smoldering bud had been displaced from her painted lips and had gone sailing up, up, up into the air as if it would never be seen again--but with a flash of ankle motion and agility supported by the efforts of the kind carney man, she was miraculously able to glance up at just the right moment, and time the falling of the burning cigarette above her such that she could flick her second two toes slightly apart out of her open-toed cowboy boots, and voila!, snatched that burning cigarette out of the air between them, pausing just for a moment to ash, and then breathing a great sigh of relief. What a moment.

Well, meanwhile, I was watching through my slatted bars atop the whirling Slam!-O-Matic, when I guess in his initial leap to the rescue, our hero accidentally kicked the accelerator lever with his steel-toed boot and I began tumbling faster and faster in my cage, all the while hanging on, but fighting gravitational pulls in all imaginable directions, but still straining to witness the incredible rescue that was taking place three stories below---

All I remember is that my hair got caught in one of the hinges on the door, and as I was craning my neck to see below and look for the release lever, the Slam!-O-Matic made a final tremendous lurch into high gear, and 'WHHOOSH', my head was suddenly wedged between the bars, which were now pushed past my ears and getting very painful...I must have been screaming at this point, because people on the ground were looking up and pointing and a couple of them made quick-ducking maneuvers that I guessed were in response to the woman's cigarette flying through the crowd along with all that cotton candy.

I couldn't hear anything they were saying down there, and I began to feel faint from all the whooshing of the ride. Then as it made one more violent brush along the ground, and I was only inches from the fray on the ground amidst the cow pies and fringe and stilettos and cigarettes, my vision cleared momentarily and I saw on the ground beneath the crowd, two trampled-looking halves of caramel-coated pretzel! But as the carriage yanked me up and away again, I noticed that the pretzels were bleeding. And so was my head! Oh my god.

MY EARS!!!!

Yes, yes... No, noo!!!!!

No wonder I couldn't hear anything! And no wonder my head was no longer stuck between the bars as I clanged around the metal cage at 80 mph---my ears had been shorn off between the bars!

Well, not much else to tell, except that I obviously lived and got home and all that; but my ears were just too beaten and crumpled to be of any further use. I am on the organ waiting list for external ears, but it's not looking good.

So anyway, that's why I haven't called. I can't! I have no ears!

Hope all is well with you,

Love,

Jen

Posted by wayne at 12:20 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

File this under:Books I've read, but haven't bought. (If you read "The Believer" you get the picture, if you don't , then you should.)

This past christmas (little c) we celebrated by visiting my Mom down in Maryland. There, we met up with my sister and her amoroso Gary, and spent a few hours away from the fair town of Myersville in the looming, ankle torturing, cement pillar to American Bureaucracy, D.C.

It's fair to say we were glad to be in the Maryland /Beltway area, and stir crazy all the same. So we spent a few hours browsing the "local" bookstore, borders or barnes & noble, who can tell them apart? Anyways, I got sucked into looking at hundreds of books as usual, yet managed not to purchase one.

Gary walked in… a man on a mission; he had mentioned this author he wanted me to read, Edward Abbey. He said, "He's definitely chauvinistic and a misogynist, but if you can look past that and hang in there... you'll love it...really. That book made me cry."

Weigh that with the fact that Gary is a self-proclaimed outdoorsman and looks a wee bit like the late Governor of Minnesota and I thought; of course I'll read it. And so, 4 months later, between reading about 5 other books and many other reading materials, I finished.

Some might think that taking 4 months to read a book must not bode well for the book, well, maybe that is true for you. For me (I read The Brothers Karamazov, by Dostoevsky in about a year and a half) its small change. Not only am I a slow reader, and probably a wee bit dyslexic, but I can't ever read or concentrate on just one thing. My mind wanders. So, my focus does as well.

Back to "The Fools Progress"...I hated this book. I hated it so much that I fell in love with it. Despite all of Henry Holyoak Lightcap's name dropping of philosophers and writers, his philandering, his ceaseless unabashed collision with the world; he was the anti-hero that spoke only truths. I loved him, because, despite all the things he did and I "disagree" with, I've also done them. Done them in my mind and in my heart, and sometimes in reality time and again. Abbey's fearless portrayal of this man, his family, and his train wreck of a life, never relents truth.

Someday, I may read this again. I think I should read it when I'm much older. Gary told me a little back-story, which I've yet to verify, that this is a semi-autobiographical novel, and I won't give away the story, but I can see it.

Holyoak's meandering observations of our world and our country, seared into my brain as I read them. His narrations drew me into this disaster of a man minute by minute and day by day. Hence, every month I would need my fix of Henry Holyoak Lightcap, and you may too.

There comes a time, or times, when some of us need to throw some of the euphemisms away and just speak what we're thinking. Some of us do it often enough, like me, and I think that's why Gary handed me this novel. If there is one truth that one can glean, despite the challenges and despite all the rap the world will throw at you and you will throw at yourself, there is something that makes you individual, and no one can ever take that away. You simply give it back with no questions asked when the time comes and love it or leave it while your here.

There is a place for Edward Abbey...next to me in my uncle's "Ol' Blue" 1972 Ford F150, somewhere out there...maybe around 1982...maybe just yesterday.

Thanks Gary, and I think you can send me back "Sacrament" now. :)

Posted by wayne at 10:08 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

I intend to say something about this soon. Chastise me if I don't and if you care, and if I have failed to post something about it. I finished this two weeks ago and highly recommend it. More to come later. Matt Harlan, if you read this. You really need to read this.

This book brought my appreciation back for public libraries. You see, as many who read this knows, I am a book monster. I, like Nick Hornby, buy more books than I read and read more books than I've bought. But for some reason or other, over the past 10-15 years I spend most of my time looking at books in bookstores. Even at the lowest point in my income and when my pocketbook has grown wafer thin empty, one's liable to find me spending another 6$ on a book, that I'll read sometime in the next 5 years.

But heh, I'm a bit of a bibliophile (thanks Sarah)book-a-phile, so what does it matter really? Well, I've discovered it matters a great deal to my bottom-line of paying all my debts etc. So, now whenever I go into a bookstore I go armed with pen & paper, or I borrow some from the proprietors. And walk through the store making lists. I'm sure many of you have discovered this years ago, but humor me, and also hang in there eventually I'll say something more about this book.

Tracie is a list-maniac. She makes lists of things we have to do tomorrow, things to pack, grocery lists, lists of things she can do better, lists of favorite bands, etc. And I noticed she actually uses the damn things. Whenever I make a list I have a tendency to write things down and then, set the list on a park bench and walk off. Or, write out my grocery list and leave it on the kitchen table.

Real useful…Well, We frequent several bookstores in the Boston area, but a few weeks ago, actually a month ago to the day) we were in one of our favorite bookstores in Brookline, MA. Brookline Booksmith. Sounds innocuous enough right? Ah, then you my friend have never walked into that bookstore off a fresh paycheck and walked out with a hefty bag full of books. As I have.

So, to combat my tendency for rampant and belligerent consumption of books, I decided to take things into my own hands and always ask for pen and paper, whenever empty handed in stores of this ilk. So, I wrote and I wrote, and I wrote. And Lethem's Fortress of Solitude landed, squarely in the top 5 of the list.

A couple of days later, I meandered into the looming, unfriendly, architectural disaster, of the Copley branch of the Boston Public Library. And less than two weeks later I was back, handing the book back; this after a many year hiatus from libraries I'm back into the fold of loyal public library visitors, and it's saving me at least a couple of hundred dollars every few months (or it will, although I have to admit I spent about $40 just last week at the aforementioned consumer trap).

About Lethem's book. I think I enjoyed it mostly because I can relate to the kids experiences, albeit I didn't grow up at the exact timeframe or under the same context. Many of the same fears and guilt of being a white kid in a place and time of change and confrontation with the blank-awareness that you are X race and someone else is Y race began. A time when "a white boy in the open"="an opportunity to have some fun", brought a world of fear and angst up close and personal to create a new perspective on the world. One that turns the external facing gaze a little bit more inward a little bit less frequently when trying to understand the world around you and puts you up close and personal in one another´s shoes.

The setting and characters march along with brittle and furious melodious pace, and force you to come face-to-face with your own trials and tribulations and step back with all seriousness and laugh at the joy of it all. If you haven't read it, you should.

Posted by wayne at 11:40 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack

It's out. I've had it for several weeks. I finished reading it and now I hear it comes in many colors.

The binding and design appeals to my bibliophile side.

Please get it, read it, and comment. All I can say is..."The Specialist" by Alison Smith.

Posted by wayne at 11:48 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack

I've recently started reading The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying, by Sogyal Rinpoche. Strange that it has taken me so long to get to reading this? When I attended the workshop this past summer (on art and creativity) we departed with a several pages of recommended books to read, this was on the list that the Bert and Bernadette provided (they lead the energy work part of the workshop).

Having only read 30+ pages I am by no means an authority on the book, but I strongly recommend that you read it. Sogyal Rinpoche breathes life into death and insight into our modern fears and inability or seeming lack of interest towards understanding or seriously thinking about death. Often, in recent years, I've been challenged by my own piece-meal understanding of death, and this book has startled me again into recognizing that I've slipped into a fairly mundane habit cycle and I can easily embrace life and death and begin living a more full and balanced life by seeking a deeper understanding of the impermanence of life and the stability of change. Change endures, despite our protestations. Silly me, silly us, to think we are individually that important.

At the workshop in Italy this past summer, I managed to live by these principals to some degree (unbeknownst to me). Or rather, I at least worried less about the mundane matters that tend to consume our lives back in the States (or any other part of the "civilized word").

There, I watched these 2 etching ink bags for hours, days, and weeks in our humble, productive, etching studio. At the time I thought I was learning to paint them, when in reality I was just learning to have attention on something, as completely and wholly as I was able. Albeit, I look back and I was quite an amatuer at it and probably will be as long as my practice doesn't match my time spent on other things. The funniest part of learning to pay attention to something, was that I completely failed to understand those objects. I stared intently at them, (and as Rose pointed out in my critique) I failed to pay attention to everything else. Hence, I didn't really even understand until this moment, that if you don't try and pay attention to the whole or at least give attention to the interdependance of the bags on me, and the environment and vice versa, then you'll never understand the bags.

My hope is stronger now. For one thing this book, and the workshop teaches me, change is constant. And as Gandhi once said, "You must become the change you seek in the world." Of course it can't happen today, but I can start today with me, one day at a time. One moment at a time.

I have become desperately tired of not being creative or productive enough this year (beyond the typing). While, I have indeed grown in knowledge, in other less timeless endeavors as painting or printmaking or drawing (in my case computer geekdom), I still feel an emptiness. Fortunately, this evening, after turning to the book, I was reminded that these feelings of emptiness are related to feelings of impermanence in this life. And henc, feelings I must seek to understand if I am to fully enjoy life.

If everything is impermanence, then everything is what we call "empty," which means lacking any lasting, stable, and inherent existence: and all things, when seen and understood in their true relation, are not independent but interdependent with all other things. The Buddha compared the universe to a vast net woven of a countless variety of brilliant jewels, each with a countless number of facets. Each jewel reflects in itself every other jewel in the net and is, in fact, one with every jewel.
-Sogyal Rinpoche, The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying p. 37

Of course this is me reading a book, and only in the beginnings at that, the ...becoming the change you seek... part is the challenge. The challenge for me has been to not idealize the workshop, and practice what I have begun to learn. Only in the practice will I begin to understand. I think this is part of that practice, but my hands are idle when it comes to painting or drawing, or assembling, or whatever it takes to express in physical form snippets of what I understand to be bit and pieces of my moments of life before death.

My dear friends Tracie, Justin, and Elizabeth (and about 15 others) are gearing up for the second workshop this summer, or rather they're gearing up to continue the hard work they've done all year, and become the change they seek.

I wish I could join them, I have the heart, I just forgot to do the planning and work, and set aside the savings required to get there. Albeit I won't idealize it, and I'll try and have my own personal workshop here, for the next...uh... I don't know, say 80 years maybe. But I'll start small, with the next 3 months. We'll see and i'll keep you up to date. I hope you'll do the same for me. Good night, or rather good morning, and I've lost an hour thanks to daylight savings.

Posted by wayne at 01:24 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack