finishing and starting up

[last year, in the coat check, he wrote:]

A book is not a worthy investment of your time and energy unless its final words send chills joyriding your nervous system. These words don't have to sum things up, they need not be eloquent metaphors or intricate symbols. They can be any words at all, as long as they are the right ones - the ones that bring the totality of the novel rushing back to wash over you as you consummate the act of completion. You read them, and all the arrhythmic stop-and-start moments you've spent exploring the world between the covers builds back up out of fragments riddled with interruptions to become a beautiful, significant whole. You don't always achieve some sort of "deeper understanding," sometimes you don't even feel fulfilled, but the words tell you that the story ended the only way it should have. The words, they wring you out like a sponge swollen with fiction and images. Only you don't drip your learnings into any sink, down any drain, they just pour back into you from different angles, arranged in different formations, like a piece of wood shattering into millions of splinters and reforming wholly renewed, identical on the outside but completely reconfigured on the inside.

The right words make it hard to put the book down. You push your forehead up against its cover and you brush the pages against your lips, letting them flutter against you as you breathe in their scent. You hold it close, then far, seeing it from all perspectives. And finally, knowing full well that there are more mysteries to be unearthed within its bindings, you slip it back on to a shelf somewhere, letting it fade back into the scenery of names and titles that pepper your room, allowing someone else and their ideas to step into the limelight.

There is time, until then, time that fills you up like a blank space, a cinematic moment of blackness when only the ghosts of the silhouettes of the seats in the theater are left drifting across your eyeballs. The words don't let you forget so quickly, move on too soon. That silhouette drags across your vision like the flash from a camera that's just taken a picture of you - and in a way every book you read that has this effect is like a picture of yourself. It takes you outside yourself, and gives you an extraneous vehicle through which to discover yourself in new ways.

Books and photography, they are a-temporal forms of art. Painting and sculpture, too. Unlike music or film, which move to the beating drums of ticking seconds, minutes and hours, books are a self-contained reality. No two people can read the book the ame way, at the same pace, lingering on the same sentences, drawing in deep breaths at all the same subtle moments. Music, movies, they morph time similarly for all spectators but a novel is timeless. it is a floating story.

---

[this year, in the coat check, he wrote:]

Of course, there is the alternate thrill of cracking the spine of a brand new adventure. The inside cover of this book, The Slynx, is a shade of green that invites meadow visions in stark contrast to the barren wasteland that graces the cover, a weed-strewn Mad Max landscape that seems ready to be greeted by the rustling roll of tumbleweed at any moment. Smoggy skies on one side, leaf pigment on the other. What the hell is IN here?!

faces in the tablecloth

putting myself places
breaking myself up
scattering my molecules
gathering the fruit
expenditures, logistics,
no real strategy of which to speak
scraping coal with fingernails
polishing the loot,
inspect it with a lazy lens
send it nowhere fast
keeping time with steady breathing
ins and outs to frame the
in-betweens where everything does happen
so fast, too slow, this is a
race that no one wins.
i get ahead, i fall behind
there's only one real finish
and a set of staggered
goals
kinship
creation
connection
collision
conception
love, all kinds
faces in the tablecloth remind me
anyone can freeze.

fedora thoughts.

"tonight's the night,
tonight's the night."

I want to wear a hat. I want to dress myself in alternate illusions.

Words linger on the horizon of my mind and I turn the cerebral world to my liking, letting the inner sun creep around the bend and illuminate those things that hide from me in dark places. I'm making strides. I'm taking down fear. I'm not running away from it, or sidestepping it. I'm facing it and moving, passing, right on through it. And when it is gone past, only I shall remain.

Funny. I just spent seven and a half hours coat checking for the who's who of the NYC fashion scene, riffing on them for being such superficial fucks and yet here I sit, admiring my reflection in a subway mirror with the Brooklyn skyline as a backdrop, contemplating how to construct a persona for myself, thinking that now that I have some money I'd like to spend it on new clothing to help recreate myself. But hey. It's a form of expression. It's the face you put out to the world, but also - it's a costume. And you can become what you make of yourself.

I exist in a state of narrative lunacy. If there's one thing that acid did to my mind, it was teach it that each point...and by point, I mean, really, everything. Kind of the mathematical definition of a point, which is really just an abstract an idea. You are a point. I am a point. Time is a point. Life is a point. Death is a point. Lobster is a point. You dig? So what it taught me is that each point, is a window to every other point. And that you can tap into various points and receive worlds of wild information from them. I think I've always done this though, and that's my narrative lunacy that I speak of. I think I've always touched into various points of the world and pulled stories out of them.

I say I have no fiction, I say I'm not making stories. Well maybe I'm not writing them. But I'm certainly creating them. You see, I struggle. Because my father and I used to walk the streets, and I'd listen to him talking about various people. People on the street, faces in the crowd, who he thought we were standing high above even though our feet tread the very same pavement as theirs. He used to talk about people like he knew them in and out. Psychiatrists, what else do you expect sometimes? He'd see a person and think he knew their life story. But it always came from an angle with a motive. For some reason, he had to find a reason to put everyone below him.

Me, I see people, and I write their life stories. It's happening every moment. Every single face is a point that I travel through. And I see their life, all of it, tiny details, moments as a toddler, favorite toys, a father slapping them across the face, a mother fucking a strange man with the bedroom door wide open, wide open Kansas skies while driving across the country, corduroy pants on tiny legs, L.A. Lights, the funeral they went to after their friend shot up too much heroin. I feel like I can see it all sometime. The good, the bad. The things that created every crease in their beautiful, terrible faces. LSD has a way of making you feel like you're god and I suppose I'm always straddling this divide between myself and my father, and what my experiences (LSD, and otherwise) have taught me, rushing like a river between my outstretched trembling legs.

I try not to let myself think I know these people for sure. But it seems like each tiny fragment, each moment, opens up into a fractal universe that communicates some sort of truth to me. I wouldn't speak it to them, because as soon as these thoughts are catalyzed into language they complicate endlessly, proliferate unbearably...So I don't let myself think I actually know who these people are or what they've done. I'm not God, I'm just a god, just like each of them is a god, all of us acting very ungodly towards one another.

But there's fiction there. And I create it.

There's a woman who seems to live in my subway stop. She's tall, thin, black, and obviously has her fair share of drug problems. She's a skeleton with her ashy skin pulled taut over her frame, dressed in rags, sitting on a suitcase. Always reeking of urine. When I first moved here I looked at her with scorn - why, i thought, why must you stink up my subway stop perpetually with urine? There's a McDonald's nearby. Couldn't you just piss there?

Then one day it was raining terribly, a fierce torrential downpour. I'd been doing well, as I have been lately, and even though she never, ever asks anybody for money, I saw an empty cup near her and decided to put three dollars in and tell herself to get some soup when the rain cleared up. When I put the money in, she snapped towards me a little, her hood falling back. Her eyes, wild, straining, lost - god only knows where she was just then, not in the 7th Ave. stop with me, there, then - pierced into mine.

"I'll sit here if i want to! Don't you tell me what to do! I don't wanna go! I don't wanna do that! Don't tell me! I want to stay here!"

There was a child in her voice. And now I can't look at her in any way but as a child who never grew up because something simply terrible happened to her. I wonder if she even remembers exactly what it is. I wonder if she can even talk about it, or if she's just stuck there. Tonight, she wasn't wearing shoes. It was less than twenty degrees in that station. I wanted to tell her put her shoes on, lest she catch death of cold. But I felt that was her trip - rebellion against logic, against parental suggestions such as keeping oneself warm. I don't know. Do I know her? Do I understand her? At all? Or am I just creating a fiction for her that is the easiest for me to understand?

i met a kid once.

his name was corey. i met him in the woods in the summer of 2005, among a bunch of hippies having a good time, we camped, we got our fair share of psychedelically intoxicated. he was a big lovable teddy bear. i have fond memories of a brief weekend spent with him, when i escaped from the city for a good time jaunt. it was a good time. i remember his hug like it was yesterday, and it was about 2 and a half years ago. i had brought a bunch of music - i gave it all to him to keep. he remembered that. we'd see each other around the message board we met through, how everyone met that arrived at that wondrous gathering...life goes on. people go in different directions. up, down, that's not for me to decide. it's all sideways til someone loses an eye. corey lost more than that. on new year's eve he lost his life. he'd been fucking around with the Horse and we all knew it was gonna get him in trouble, but you can't make someone stop from 3,000 miles away over the internet. you can just tell them to stay safe and that you love them, even though you barely know them - but goddamnit, when you connect with people, "knowing" them in the way we so highly value in our personal lives, well, it doesn't seem so goddamn important. all you need to know is what you shared. however momentary.

bye corey. you were a lot of fun to hang out with that weekend and a shining presence of positivity on the boards. i really won't forget you. ever. i just wish you'd been smarter than to mix the wrong things and overdose on the birth of a new year. i feel like this is my year to shine, to rise, and i'm sad you can't be here on this earth to turn things around with me. i think we're all gonna turn things around, for the species, for the planet. i'm hopeful. i'm a less than cautious optimist. i throw caution to the wind and scream out, fuck yes. see ya corey. i thought i was writing this poem about myself, and about looking for love. then in the middle of the night tonight i realized i was writing it for you. your screenname was Dreamer. yeah, i am too. but i'm gonna chase mine here on this earth, not down a needle, not down a vein, not to the next phase of existence. my dreams are here for me. see ya corey - i'll see you in The Big Dream. this fucking sucks, you being dead. i barely knew you, but i'll miss you.


so tell me, dreamer
what will you do
if serendipity turns
its back to you?
you've read the novels,
heard the music of chance,
and your mind is awake
to the synchronous dance
of the patterns and threads
in the fabric of breath;
but what if the end
doesn't match your intent?
it's just a hop and a skip
from a leap of faith
down the oubliette.....

(gone, but not forgotten)

the universe is built for our minds to hold
our memories bring you back into the fold
the door never closes
death is nothing but a hallway
to another crowded room
where a flurry of voices carry choral tunes
and through the pinpoint
we drift to you
and bring you back around the fire
singing songs til dawn arises;
this heavy life does make us tired..

Is something missing?

(print above: something's missing, by bre zack)


either something's truly missing
or i've become fixated
on this picture i've created
in my head

maybe i'm chasing symmetry
too closely for true comfort
and my dreams are like projectors
but the movie never ends;

it flushes through my eyelids
and becomes the rain that falls
on prospect park..
the actress is a silhouette
with tresses in a purple dress
who dances in the dark...
and under moonlight's yawning breath
we twist away the twilight hours,
poodle skirts turned loose on dancefloors dj'ed by dick clark;

this is the mirage of my daydream cinema
and when the eyelids flutter open
the reels don't stop spinning, they just
throw a soft hallucination out on to the world;

fractal visions
of a
heart
that's split in two
but always
one

slowly then
i'll realize
that love can be
idealized but only if i
love myself before all others
instead of chasing pop-up dreams
like instructions in a children's book

so i just sit here in this chair
and next to me there's only air
where i think somebody once was loving me

and i can see
the dotted line where she once sat by me
the words are clearly printed - cut here
fold here
color the numbers
but something's still missing

one day
i'll meet somebody
who'll fold for me
like origami
(mm, but doesn't that just sound too easy?)

Who the Hell Does Orson Scott Card Think He Is?

I guess this story starts with Netflix. I am notoriously bad at returning things. Books, movies, you name it. The way I see it, I support libraries by paying more late fees than your average borrower. I also watch a lot of movies. I have late fees at most video rental establishments. I just set up an account, rent some movies, and then a few weeks after they're due, return them to the drop box in the dead of night and never go back. Netflix is the obvious solution to my problem, so I got it. I freaking love Netflix.

About a month ago, I had two Netflix DVDs sitting at home. I'd already watched them, I just can't be bothered to put them in the mail. You know how it is. Anyway, we wanted to watch something new, so I walked down the street and set up an account at Hollywood video. I got the movies, and actually returned them on time. Every time I went there, I noticed this Xbox game called Advent Rising sitting there in the "Nobody will rent me, please buy me instead" discount rack. Each time I passed it, I made a mental note to pick it up and give it a try. I was familiar with it, but I don't like to pay full price for games I'm not really excited about.

The reason I wanted to try Advent Rising is because it was written by Orson Scott Card. Now, mister Card and I don't really get along. Which is to say, I think he's a blowhard with a ridiculous vision of the world who wrote a seriously good science fiction book (Ender's Game). I'm really interested in the branching out of video game culture and I thought this game could be really interesting.

I read Ender's Game as a pimply little fledgling geek and then re-read it a year ago. It held up pretty well. Steal it or borrow it from your local library. Don't buy it, though. Card doesn't deserve to get paid any more than he already has because I'm sure they paid him to write Advent Rising and he doesn't deserve another cent.

This game is utter trash.

It's a half-assed Halo rip-off that doesn't have an original line of code in its entire design. It has this gun and super-powers style of play that is implemented so horribly you're better off just picking one or the other and neglecting the rest. The game Second Sight did this really well, but Advent Rising managed to bungle it beyond repair.

The worst part is that the back of the case listed controls for when you're on foot, in a vehicle, in a turret, and in a space ship, leading me to believe that this would be a game with some depth, or at the very least variety. The game opens and you have to pilot a shuttle into a hangar. The space graphics are really good, and the control is fun. I liked it a lot. You land the shuttle and the story continues and then YOU NEVER PILOT A SPACE SHIP AGAIN. The only good part about this game lasts ten seconds. Sometimes you drive an alien tank which is too powerful to be fun and sometimes you get to use a jeep-like vehicle that is almost identical to the Halo Warthog (which, as Halo players will know, is extremely boring in a one-player situation).

But I'm not here to complain about the design. I'm here to call Card out for his atrocious writing. The main character is a smart-mouthed, cocky pilot (like we've never seen that character before) who gets caught up in an alien invasion. The aliens in question have searched long and far for the human race, afraid of their power. They are called... you are not going to believe this... the Seekers.

The Seekers? Come on, Card. I can hear him now, "Oh man. I forgot to name these evil dudes. Oh. Think, Orson, think. Uh... Um... They're seeking humanity... I'll call them the Seekers! YES! I am so great!"

"I wrote Ender's Game!"

Card shamelessly steals his ideas from other sci-fi stories. When humanity first meets the friendly aliens who try to save them from the Seekers, they are given little slugs that crawl into their ears and translate everything they hear (Hitchhikers Guide). The humans, however, use a computer program called the Universal Translator (Star Trek).

I'm really not sure why they decided to pay someone to write this game. Anyone could have written it. No character besides the main character lives long enough to be developed at all. At least one major character dies in every level.

Card, you are a hack. Ender's Game is great, don't get me wrong. You must have blown a few neurons coming up with that one, though, because your work after that has been utter crap. From sci-fi to politics, you've managed to make yourself look silly whenever you turn your thoughts into words. Stick to World Watch (or is it War Watch? I can't keep track) or keep your unoriginal and inconsistent blathering to yourself.

What's up now, Card?

Police on my Back or Election Wrap-up Article

You may think it's strange for someone like me, who thinks the entire election was a farce, to volunteer my time with the Campus Vote Coalition. You would be right. I had no intention of doing it, I was coerced. I had a few free hours, so I couldn't really say no. As much as I didn't want to do it, it does look good on resumes, and gives me double-bitching privileges. I voted, and I volunteered my time to the election, you will listen to me whine about politicians.

Basically, the Coalition's goal was to get as many students to the polls as possible. A noble aim, for sure. In the months leading up to the election, they helped students register to vote, and on Tuesday, called those who registered with them to remind them to vote, and answer any questions.

Now, I am not a member of this group, but I decided to help out anyway. I made some calls and ate some free pizza. The pizza was cold.

Before I continue, I'll have to explain a little bit about how this whole procedure worked. Anyone living on campus voted at one of two centrally located polling stations. Not very confusing. If they had any questions, it was as easy as "Where do you live? Okay, you vote here." No big deal. The problem is that in the University of Pittsburgh, there is a massive housing shortage. Many students live in a place known as South Oakland. It's like a college town ghetto, a keg on every porch, a loud party every night, the rivers run with Pabst Blue Ribbon and bong water. There were several locations where South Oakland residents might vote, but none of them were on campus.

In order to aid us in contacting these South Oakland residents and getting them to the polls, volunteers were sent to the South Oakland polling stations to check our lists against their lists. That way, we only had to call those we know had not yet voted.

This seemed a little odd to me, but if I had to say "I'm just calling to remind you that today is election day and the polls close at 8PM. Do you have any questions?" one more time, I was going to chew off my hand, so I could no longer dial the numbers and would be excused. Fortunately, I was sent to help check the lists. A member of the Student Vote Coalition, we'll call him Furious Kingfisher, was in charge of the operation, I was just the help. I assumed, and still just assume, that the Coalition had thought through all the legal issues and whatnot, so I decided to just go with the flow.

We arrived at the polling place, a fire hall/senior citizen's center, and walked in. We had trouble right off the bat, as we were expecting to be given the lists with no problem. Earlier that day, other volunteers were sent to do the same thing, and had no difficulty. Trying to appease us with just the total number of voters, the workers there were rather hostile to the idea of giving us the list. Now, it sounded a little strange to me as well, but voting records (that is, the list of people who have voted, not party affiliation or actual vote) are public records, and I certainly don't know anything about election day protocol.

I knew this guy was going to be trouble as soon as he stepped in the room. He was about 5'6'', and pretty hefty. He was wearing a black sweater with a small label stuck to it reading "Election Judge." He had extremely thick glasses and spoke in a high voice.

"You can't have those lists!" he shouted as he waddled over. Waddling in such a way that suggested he was ready to fight someone. I'm still trying to figure out his motivation. Maybe he was just a hard-ass, and wanted to flex his muscles as election judge. Perhaps he suspected us of partisan vote-getting tactics. (A sticky situation, to be honest. While we never asked party affiliation, and it played no part whatsoever in our efforts, we all know which major party is helped by college voter turnout.) It's also possible he was just acting the crotchety old jerk that he is.

We argued for a while, then called our superiors, and they argued with him on the phone. When it became clear that we were not going to get those lists, Furious got a little, well, furious. I believe his exact words were, "This is fucking bullshit! You're trying to disenfranchise these voters!" To which the judge responded,

"I'm calling the police!"

We figured that was the best time to make our exit. We eventually found out that we were supposed to get the lists from another polling station in the same building. The workers there were quite helpful. We never did see the judge again, although we could hear him from the second polling station and planned an escape route should he burst through the door, officers in tow.

I realize my posts have been rather political lately, but what can I do? When you've got your finger on the pulse of American culture, you have to call in the crash cart. I'd like to wrap up my Election 2006 coverage with some final thoughts on the Pennsylvania races.

Governor Ed Rendell (D) over Lynn Swann (R): Rendell is a politician, so I don't trust him as far as I can throw him, but I don't find him to be downright evil. Swann, on the other hand would have been a bad choice. He won a few Super Bowls for the legendary Pittsburgh Steelers team of yore, and was clearly running on that name recognition. Rendell, at least has some good ideas. He helped bring a high-tech wind power manufacturing plant to my hometown of Ebensburg. I never thought Ebensburg would have a high-tech anything. IPods break down when you drive through. Whenever I open my laptop within city limits, it's inexplicably running Windows ME. We could do worse than Ed Rendell.

Bob Casey Jr. (D, sort of) over Senator Rick Santorum (R for religion): My thoughts on this race are already documented here, so I won't go into details. At least we're no longer represented by Santorum. Fade away, you crazy asshole.

Jason Altmire (D) over Representative Melissa Hart (R): My chief regret with this race is that Hart didn't freak out. After the AP called the election for Altmire, the local news guy at Hart's headquarters asked her if she would concede. She started whining about receiving no results from some little district somewhere, and she looked pretty pissed off. Unfortunately, ten minutes later, she conceded. I had really hoped someone would fail to step down gracefully. Otherwise, why bother having all that live coverage?

There it is, PA has done their part to balance the federal government. I didn't do my part, of course, but I was hoping things would work out this way. At least now, the government can stop running our lives and get back to fighting amongst themselves. That just about does it for me. The 2006 midterm elections are over. This is Crippled Vulture signing off.