| THIS IS A READ-ONLY ARCHIVE FROM THE SORABJI.COM MESSAGE BOARDS (1995-2016). |
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The wind whipped here in southern california last night. I thought you might like to hear about it...... In between Jim Morrison's rants and the Doors' timeless lub lubs twang twangs, i heard her, she danced on the roof and tapped at me on the windows. The air vents in the bathrooms spat pine needles, bits of leaves and other crap from the roof. She found her way in and out of those old stove pipe air vents the ventilate humans foulest of scents (debateable of course). She brought in her crisp, cool, oil-gas-fire-skunk-urban tainted scent....it was a welcomed replacement. Crawling into bed, screwdriver as a night cap, politically incorrect on the tube...i heard her beat my windows with more furor. She whipped the palm tress outside, i Sscurried to the sliding glass door to see her might, as the sounds intensified, i saw the strong and sturdy pal tree across the way bend and fold and bow to her like jester to king......i tempted myself to get my camera, for the neighborhood and city lights from my hilltop perch gave way to an incredible sight. My vision was as crisp as the air, long exposures might be intersting consdiering all of the movement of light. Lights flickered from afar becasue of the intercepting brnaches of trees, also vicitim to her might. Nonetheless, standing naked, in front of my door/window, i realized i should just go to bed, tonight was not the night. Crawling back into bed, i cut the tv, listened with awe at her might still rampaging outside. The cats seemed a little unnerved, but otherwise happy to cuddle as normal......I decided that the cold and empty bed was not so cold and empty. The windows breathed a cold breath. The dance she was doing and noise she was making could have passed for my lover's nocturnal audiable emmissions. The cats fuzzy fur, mazzy star luring me to sleep.......my skin itched. The air is dry, and my head is heavy. Have you ever thought how a warm bath is like the womb we unconcsiously miss? |
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Whenever people talk about the wind I am reminded about a Calvin & Hobbes cartoon, where calvins dad tells him that wind is caused by trees sneezing. HAHAHAHAHHA god that makes me laugh! I can't wait till I have kids that I can torment with stupid answers to their questions. |
1) atop of the Eiffel Tower, i was going to propose up there but when i stepped out of the enclosed area, i said i was out of my mind, so I did it below 2) on a random street in brooklyn last new years, we were walking and a block of bldgs had been demolished so it was a straight shot to the river, the wind coming off the river was so intense and so cold, my friend warned as we entered the block but i had no idea what was really in store. |
Story! Every year of my life we've gone to the same guy to get our christmas tree. He's an old guy with an accent I can't place. Every year he saws off the end of the tree and tells us he's straightening it for us, and every year we get it home and it has to be held up with string. One year this guy wasn't here early enough, so we went to someone else. Some guy who looked like Carrot Top. His tree was great! It was straight! We didn't need string! My mother said to me "What about the other guy?" and I told her that it wasn't our fault if we betrayed him, because he wasn't here. She asked me where he was, and I told her he'd fallen under the ice one day while he was ice fishing. He was now frozen underwater, waiting for winter to thaw him out. He'd be back next year. So my mother borrwed from "Back to the Future" and now refers to the original tree guy as the Fish Under the Sea Guy. Isn't she something? They're so cute when they're that age. |
There is a suburb in chch where almost everyone decorates their house with lights american style. Half of chch goes there to check it out each year. It's a tourist attraction! I think the trend was started by some homesick expats from the states who wanted to give their neighbours a thrill. Theres always a couple of grinches who don't decorate their houses, but they look really dumb next to all the flash decorations on either side. Hardly anyone decorates with outside lights on this side of town. But we have 140 lights on our little tree this year. Even the Angel on the top has a candle that lights up. |
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fuckers. except you agatha. it was a mercy killing, i'm sure. |
these lights make me so happy, i sleep withthe colored lights on, it's nice to wake up around three or four for the usually piss and see them in my semiconscious state. they make me feel warm know what i mean? |
i don't generally send christmas cards either (sometime, i'll go into how much i despise mass-market greeting cards) & i don't use live trees. but i'm just funny that way. using live trees, to me, is right up there w/ killing roses to prove to your significant other that you can buy them useless shit on VD (valentine's day). but, of course, i've already belabored this point elsewhere on the site. the most stupid, pointless xmas tree killing i've ever witnessed was carried out by a bunch of sorority chicks. they acquired this humongous, very expensive tree. a veritable colossus of a christmas tree. they decorated it, used it for approximately two hours & then threw it in a back alley to rot--decorations, lights & all. that's the only live xmas tree i've ever had. i adopted it. but it barely fit into my apartment, & my cat kept insisting on sitting in the top of the tree like some kind of scruffy ornament. every now & then, the cat would heave. deck the halls w/ boughs of hairballs. i'm getting ready to mail 2 of the 3 presents i'm handing out this holiday season. my freakin' folks get the double package. the remaining package goes out to this anarchist buddy of mine down in little rock. i figure that if she's going to take over the city by armed force & create a command post in a bunker downtown, she's going to need the perfect hat to wear, hence my thoughtful gift. maybe i'm being a bit hypocritical about the whole xmas tree thing. i, too, have decorated plant life for the holidays. i had a cactus. then again, it just kind of peacefully co-existed in my flat w/ me. i didn't kill it or anything. however, i did humiliate it w/ a wide array of holiday decorations (xmas, 4th of july, various saints' feast days, wyatt earp's death day, the anniversary of the invention of shredded wheat), but cacti are known to be rather forgiving souls. anyway, sebastian, my poor cactus, roomed w/ me for years, but finally died of natural causes. alas. |
I hope that means I'm exempted |
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ho ho ho heh heh heh |
I also think Nate just said that to be a butthead. (no offense) It took my sister and I fifteen minutes to put the tree up in the stand. A new record! This is the first year the tree has been put up without any help from my brothers, and it's also the first year (excluding the year we failed to go to the Fish Under the Sea Guy) that we didn't need string to hold it up! Woohoo!!! And on the Crazy Gee side, I put all the lights up all by myself and it took me only three hours. I'm a Freak about lights! Perfect lights. Nothing could ever make me Not have a christmas tree. |
if i buy a black rhino head to hang in my den, does it matter if i killed it or someone else did? killing things purely for the decorative value of their carcas is disgusting. this is my view. i've convinced everyone in my family to either buy fake trees or, in the case of my parents, they bought a small potted tree which they will sink into the earth when it out grows it's duty. |
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I guess xmas isn't my favorite time of year. |
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but i do have some groovy pink tinsel here. i oughtta do something w/ it. like slowly strangling my upstairs neighbor, perhaps. i was just awakened by some friends of jesus. a gaggle of jehovah's witlesses came pounding on my door a while ago (my heartfelt apologies to any JWs, mormons or members of other proselytizing religious groups here--i respect your right to your religion--but i also feel a certain homicidal sentiment regarding door-to-door conversion attempts. go worship your lord. sing hallelujah until the cows come home. but DON'T wake me up & try to convince me to join you). makes me wish, sometimes, that i had a fucking bazooka. or perhaps a flame thrower. then the very next religious zealot who came banging on my door could very well find her goddamn head encased in a warping, whitehot ball of flame. death. the gift that keeps on giving. |
The Jehovah's Witnesses come to our door every week because my dad has made friends with them. My dad is a very mysterious man. He doesn't have any other friends, except his colleagues at work. Who knows what he and the Witnesses talk about? I think maybe he feels sorry for them. I think it's kind of him to talk to them instead of saying "go away, I'm a Satanist" like my mother says when she's the one who opens the door. |
People come around just to see his creation each year. But last year he didn't feel like doing it, so I said I'd do it myself, and I thought I'd do like a stripped-down, down-home, rustic version. So I just did a little of the mountainside effect, and I went into the field behind my house and got all kinds of dried wild plants to drape around the mountainside. So the whole thing was very simple and brown. Everyone hated it! They would tell me so right to my face, which I thought was kind of insulting, because i put work into it. Ingrates. |
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when i was living down near the louisiana line, sometimes people would put nativity displays in the swamps. you could smell the fucking swamp gas. it was horrible. christ among the alligators. sometimes, santa images would show up nearby, jammed between some cypress trees. somehow, the pitiful nativity scenes floating on the stagnant water moved me. it touched my heart so much that i just had to rip them off. but i'd return them. that's just the sort of kind-hearted schmuck that i am. the only xmas types of poems i've ever written all go back to those delta scenes. i like my christmas w/ a side order of gut-wrenching pathos. while other snotty, ingrateful little bastards around the country get fancy, hundred-buck toys for christmas, delta kids can often be seen running outside nearly naked in the cold, lucky to get a fucking pat on the head for the holidays. about a decade ago, i ran into some of these kids whose bellies were actually bloated by malnutrition. now, there's some christmas spirit for you. anyway, in addition to pilfering various jesi, i also stole a bigass statue of st. francis of assisi once. but that's another story. |
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that's also the function of the baby jesi in nativity scenes. they're meant to be stolen & held for ransom. it's a holiday tradition. |
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die hop-sing die! |
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I've even bought all my presents - except one for the grump which I am getting on the weekend. |
Some of you people are so "cool" it makes me want to throw up. |
at least you're not a vegetarian. then i'd have to smack you around with my dick and call you a hypocrite. figuratively speaking, of course. |
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It's not fake tree's that bother me. It's people who act like they're such hot freaking stuff because they have fake trees. They're the kind of people who like the bright pink kind with silver needles. I really like the idea of a potted tree, though. You could use the same tree every year. That would be really nice. Where did your folks get it? |
it's pretty easy to get trees around here. |
So tacky. I wonder what happened to it? |
This year I bought a Santa pen on a string that I could use when I was at work and didn't have any pockets. Two bucks! |
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but I'd already gotten a hold of the brautigan and I read it anyway. I didn't like it as much as I'd wanted to. all the cool kids like richard brautigan. my 11th grade english teacher, with whom I was in love, was a friend of brautigan's and recommended "trout fishing in america" to me. this summer my paris friend gave me an old edition of "in watermelon sugar." and I've sometimes wondered which book mark thomas is reading in the picture (a collected works, I think). the two stories I remember from "tokyo montana express": - a dog abandoner has to put up with a load of shit. - california prisoners are fed well, and california poets go hungry. duh? right now I'm reading "babbitt" by sinclair lewis. he writes like I do. the same boring, obvious stuff over and over and over and over again. |
"in watermelon sugar" is a book i keep coming back to. like lewis' books, i'll actually go for years w/o reading them--but then one day, i eventually come back & rediscover them. other books i'll occasionally rediscover are kerouac's "desolation angels" (i know, i know--kerouac is critically passe, lacking in craft, blah blah blah--but i still happen to like his stuff in very occasional doses) & lawrence durrell's "the black book" (as well as his alexandria quartet). there are also some volumes of french surrealist poetry to which i return. the truth is, i actually read so little that it's frightening. i don't have as much time on my hands as i used to. the novel i'm getting into the most, presently, is the one i'm writing. it's lowbrow, gut-level & horrifying. it's the literary equivalent of a wino pissing in a back alley. i make no claims of excellence, or even competence. but at least my own writing has an author i can understand. i can pick the hell out of her brain, which is one of the basic underlying agendas of writing in the first place. as a writer, i'm frighteningly unskilled. i'm also not an overly educated person. but i've just always been obsessed w/ telling a story about life the way i've lived it. actually, i often wish that i had lewis' ability to take small situations & transform them into a microcosm of society at large. when lewis' characters begin unraveling, it can become a brilliant indictment of twentieth century american culture. nobody, before or since, has been able to deconstruct the great american dumbshit like lewis. but his powers as a writer largely diminished following the release of his major novels ("main street", "elmer gantry", "arrowsmith", "babbit", etc). brautigan is much more surrealistic & subtle. his criticism would seem to be more aimed toward generalized patterns of dualistic, concrete-sequential thinking than about societal institutions at large--or at least that's the feeling i walked away w/ during my cursory readings of "in watermelon sugar". i'm writing about books. holy christ. as if i know my ass from a hole in the ground. pardon this crazy intrusion. i'll go back to babbling about my underwear or something soon. |
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the opposite with lewis. on pages 12 and 13, at breakfast time, babbitt discusses with his wife how he eats light lunches each day. by that time, it's already clear that he's a hypocrite and that everything he says is a lie. because lewis spells it out in almost every paragraph. but just in case the reader had forgetten, at lunch time lewis reminds: That morning he had advocated lighter lunches and now he ordered nothing but English mutton chop, radishes, peas. deep-dish apple pie, a bit of cheese, and a pot of coffee with cream, adding as he did invariably, "And uh -- Oh, and you might give me an order of French fried potatoes." When the chop came he vigorously peppered and salted it. He always peppered and salted his meat, and vigorously, before tasting it. I'm on page 77. I've read the first six chapters, which are all about what a shitty guy babbitt is and how contemptuous he is of his whole miserable family. I was thinking about quitting the book, but the last paragraph of chapter six suggests that babbitt may change or something may actually happen. He returned to the living-room but before he settled down he smoothed his wife's hair, and she glanced up, happy and somewhat surprised. |
yes, teachers hate cliff's notes. yes, they're ground out a dime a dozen by supremely bored grad students at U. of nebraska. but they're easy pickings, in terms of harvesting basic ideas. surprisingly fine-tuned inferences can be made from the glaringly obvious information found between those black-&-yellow covers. in terms of school-assigned literature, nobody has to actually read anything anymore. look up criticism online & steal, steal, steal (i wish to god the internet had been a reality when i was in school--although nobody's saying the quality of online criticism's all that great, since any random jackass can post their half-baked opinions). anyway, it's shocking to think about all the "A" papers i cranked out in school w/o ever once reading the book in question. that's because it's fairly easy to find out what school of criticism your instructor is into. learn the buzzwords of that critical style & watch the "A"s roll in. whether you're dealing w/ a marxist, a new critic, a deconstructionist, a feminist or whatever, it's fairly easy to pick their brains & tell them exactly what they want to hear. funneled through the appropriate critical filter, "babbitt" can have any agenda under the sun & it doesn't have to bear any relationship whatsoever to anything that sinclair lewis might've been thinking when he wrote the novel. i once considered writing a paper on homoerotic undertones in lewis' writing (hint: homoerotica in ANYTHING is a good start toward an "A" paper). but in lewis' case, there are several clues that the guy, although outwardly quite straight, had some decidedly warped ideas about his fellow males (can be seen better in "arrowsmith" than "babbitt"). anyhow, plow your way through "babbitt", or better still, look up criticism & let other people do it for you. the sooner you're done w/ it, the sooner you can kick back & read stuff you actually like. |
and I don't believe you that you didn't once read the book in question. although nothing you say should surprise me. is it true? I'm not reading "babbitt" for a class. I picked it up because it was cheap and I remember that an ex-boyfriend really liked it. I think I have to read don delillo's "white noise" next because it's already been on loan from a friend for a few weeks. |
but i really DID crank out a hell of a lot of papers w/o reading the book in question. that's the absoloute truth. it wasn't so much out of obstinance, but simply due to a sheer lack of time. when i'm working, taking 20+ class hours & still trying to conduct some semblance of a private life & THEN some freak of an instructor tells me, on friday, to have "moby dick" read by monday, well, it just ain't happening (wow, i think i'll read six books over the weekend, write three massive papers, study my ass off for the astronomy test, work the graveyard shift, take care of the groceries & laundry, entertain whatever visitors stop by & maybe, just maybe, squeeze in a quick screw for the increasingly surly, neglected lover...well, thank god for cliff's notes). it eventually started getting ridiculous. i KNEW, as the assignments came in, that i couldn't read the damn book. it was simply impossible. so i'd spend inordinate amounts of time in the library looking up criticism on all the books i was supposed to be reading. by reading a basic plot summary & then making some sort of verbal collage out of the reviews & other material, i'd come up w/ commentary about the book that always seemed to pass muster. several of my teachers told me privately that i was brilliant. but i'm not brilliant. i'm merely the living goddess of bullshit. come to think of it, i didn't read "babbitt" for a class, either. i read it while crashing at a friend's house for a few days. i read that book & then i read some james joyce. on the whole, i liked "babitt" better...although people seem a bit more impressed if you say that you like joyce. |
especially The Abortion Romance, and Tokyo -Montana Express. he is so gratifying, he rewards you with words and imagery that dance around in your head like a BAND OF GYPSIES.... |
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And I could never get through any of Burrough's books, even though I love listening to him read his stuff out loud (on disc, of course - Things are unfortunaetly not so weird that his restless spirit appears out of the mirror and starts reciting excerpts from Naked Lunch). |
I read them both seven years later on a long sojourn in central america. I finished "moby dick" early on, "v" got lugged to guatemala, and "ulysses" made it all the way to nicaragua and ended up coming back home with me. I have like 100 pages left. when it's good, it's very very good, but when it's bad it's tortuous. |
I hate the fact that there is a book I can't bring myself to finish! |
for some odd reason, i get derailed every time i try reading henry miller. even though i have friends who regard "tropic of cancer" as holy writ, i just haven't been able to plow through it yet. wish i had some burroughs around here to read. being a dolt, i lent out my various copies & naturally haven't seen them again. this always happens w/ burroughs, for some reason. loaning out a burroughs book might as well be considered giving it away outright, because it'll never be returned. this teenage boy i knew stole my entire burroughs collection. the silly little bastard later developed a bi streak & decided to offer up his virginity to burroughs. so he started obsessively writing letters to him (not a good thing to do w/ a classic paranoia case like burroughs). then he moved into burroughs' neighborhood & actually got to speak w/ the great man several times. but burroughs always had some other pretty boy on his arm, so the loss of virginity never did quite work out. |
OK, put yourself in that kid's shoes. you're young & beautiful (which he definitely was). now, what are you going to do? attempt losing your cherry to a guy old enough to be god's granddad, that's what. is there a celebrity you've ever been so enamoured of that you'd consider sleeping w/ him or her, even if the celeb in question is pushing 100? have you ever made it w/ (or had a savage crush on) someone far older or younger than yourself? |
okay, so he's only in his thirtys. That doesn't exactly count as "far older" but he's the one. He's the celeb I'd swoon for. Unfortunatly, I hear he's shy, so he probably wouldn't invite me to swoon. When I was a little girl I had a massive crush on Commander Tom. He's some weather guy on new york news now, I think. Does anybody know who I'm talking about? I used to kiss the TV screen goodbye when he was on in the mornings before I left for school. |
captain kangaroo, who else? not the imposter they've got now, but the real one. it wasn't a lust kind of thing, though. i mean, what kind of deranged mofo would stroke off over captain kangaroo? i can't even imagine mrs. kangaroo entertaining lewd thoughts about him (now, cap'n crunch...well, that's another story. that guy's probably a pervert from way back, but captain kangaroo is pure). sure, captain kangaroo had kids, but i think he bought them or something. weird quasi-related memory: when i got old enough to start screwing around, i used to regularly purchase condoms. i learned quickly that i could never trust guys to be packing rubbers, so i'd just buy them myself. believe me, you get a lot of fucked-up looks from checkout clerks when you're in junior high school & slap down an economy-sized pack of trojans w/ your bubblegum. anyway, i found a pharmacy that had them cheaper than anyplace in town. but i couldn't buy the condoms there. why? because the guy working the pharmacy register looked precisely like captain kangaroo. now, i may be a glaring freak, but even i have limits. i am NOT going to purchase rubbers from captain kangaroo. ditto for K-Y jelly. i just couldn't fucking bring myself to do it. heaven knows i tried. i'd stand there looking at the items i wanted, but couldn't bear to drag them up to the register. to make it all the worse, captain kangaroo would stand there behind his register & fucking SMILE at me. it was completely unnerving. in short, captain kangaroo nearly derailed my sex life. but i still love him, anyway. |
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