Crush my calm you cassavetes
I was sitting tight so quiet quiet
In the dark till the lights came up my heart
— Fugazi, “Cassavetes”
GOPHER INCIDENT
J and M made me laugh like the monocle de mon oncle n the Gopher alcove. We chatted in earnest about the unwritable book and the literary urge to fuck around and find out being no less urgent as the world burns. This is how friendship works between writers: we converse through various texts while wrangling quotations and interpretations as if the world depended on it. As if we, too, depend on it. The as-if is our solace and our shared joy. We refuse the world we are given. We argue over the other ways it could be. We blow up the given to realize the otherwise. We entreat our readers to imagine more— and urgently. We fear dying before the book that escapes us, the book that will free us, the text that will loosen the compulsion or obsession to write. We covet the pure products of pears and apricots. We ode them for blowing our minds. When we leave each other, we return to the world where literature, art, philosophy, humanities, and words don’t 'really matter’ — or matter instrumentally. But these moments are called upon in nights of despair, and we remember that we are not alone. Not entirely alone. Not utterly so.
Took walks and listened to music and scribbled things. Did not see any unicorns but thought about what a gem the Minutemen offered for teaching writing craft during neo-fascism for discussions about how the verb ‘acts upon; the noun, etc… The state, the church, the plans, the waste, the dead, what's the verb behind it all? The do, the how, the why, the where, the when, the what, can these words find the truth?
Make me think (take my head)
Sit me down
Fix a drink
— Archive “Take My Head”
PIGEON BREAK
A different M sits on the sun-slathered stairwell for introverts outside the convivial outdoor cafe area. I don’t recognize him while climbing to the top, in search of yesterday’s pigeons whom I hope to meet again. After I sit down, M comes up the stairs and introduces himself, apologizing —-as we all apologize, afraid to disturb each other— and the pleasure of putting a face to a name becomes mine. As he introduces himself, the warm goo of Los Angeles’ smoggy sun conspires with M to bring me the pleasure associated with meeting writers one admires at a literary conference. They are your interlocutors, your peers, and he has a fiction collection coming out from Dzanc in February. You are elated for him, and for yourself, as a reader. This is all you want: more literary forms that stray from the conventional. His ‘win’ is yours. The pie is never zero sum if you love reading as much as you love writing. You can’t wait for his book. The conversation drifts to the heartbreaking news of John Domini’s sudden death while traveling through Morocco with his wife. Both of us speak of his kindness and generosity as a critic, writer, memoirist, and human being —- before going silent, for it is unthinkable. Always unthinkable, even to those of us who imagine everything. It is never possible to fully accept that a human being who was still dreaming the future can be gone.
Sheer opportunity determines love, coincidence, local patriotism, and murder.
— Günther Ander
MY PSEUDO PET
The part where a free crocodile named Gorky from Deep Vellum wound up on my forehead. Literature is thriving! Literature is dying! Long live literature! I highly encourage all text-based mammals to join the Deep Vellum Book Club because you will love it and you don’t have to manifest a croc on thine forehead at all. That sort of bad behavior was bequeathed us by the New Critics and the neo-New Critics, who can afford to act badly because the author’s life has no bearing on the text (which is decidedly Anglo-Saxon since New Crit can’t develop a neutral and yet definitive reading when diacritics and brooches appear.
WITH MY LITTLE EYE
I saw some things. Here’s the part where I list them with no intervening apparatus. AZ was wearing a Minor Lit brooch! Okay, it was actually a pin on his lapel “but we cannot do decadence without getting hardcore about brooches,” I thought to myself while imagining AZ’s pin into a brooch without his knowledge or consent. I saw a blur of a tall, cool guy wearing all black whose name was surely Romeo right before we both screamed and I ran over and he picked me up like we were in a really bad Poets Reunite scene from a movie no director would ever screen. It made me so happy. The Malarkey table was wonderful and I gabbed with two writers whom I have been dying to meet and yet—- I did not die! We just chatted even though I had been dying to meet them and no one died at all which is always a miracle. JK made me laugh and we talked about simultaneous orgasms at the top of our vocal range in the cafeteria that served cold waffle fries. Not once did we descend to our ‘inside voices’ and it was a gift to hug OL who has the best bob in poetry and translation. RA HAS NOT CHANGED A BIT AND EVERY TIME WE GAB AT 100 MPS IN BROKEN ROMANIAN THE WORLD GLISTENS AND LOVES ITSELF MOMENTARILY. There was no good food to be had on site so many of us went off-site and hit up the taco trucks or got drinks with maraschino cherries in them. I spoke to exactly 23 of the 189 people I hoped so much to hug which is nothing to boast about at all. I hugged Jill and signed books and we chatted about listening to Tin Tin on audio to improve French language skills. Jad and Dina warmed my whole heart; it was as if they put leg warmers on my aorta and I was elated to chat with them, however briefly. Same for Len and Robert: tiny explosions inside my ribcage. An excess of laughter and foolishness. I am leaving so many humans and encounters out of my little eye list . . .
FIRST SIGNING
Just before I started signing the first copes of My Heresies; LA and Kristen took photos and once could not ask for a more beautiful signing experience. Thank you to the many humans who showed up and purchased books and introduced themselves and brought so much joy into my day. Absolutely gobsmacked to meet fellow Romanian writers.
On the bus, okay, don't say "hi" then
Your tongue, your transfer
— The Replacements, “On the Bus”
THE SMOKE ALARM
On the second night, likely as a result of laughing too much earlier, I am roused from a strange dream by a fire alarm blaring through the hotel loudspeaker. The clock reads 5:18 am (or 5:33, my memories argue amongst themselves like in-laws) and the uncanny part is that the interrupted dream is about fire, which is to say, I dreamt one of the usual Joan of Arc variations that has visited me since childhood. Some parts are the same: the feeling of my hands being tied to a hard thing behind my back, and something atop my head that I can’t read—-something that all the people watching can read and know about me which I cannot learn, lacking hands. Again, that feeling of staring through very hot streams of orange and blue, trying to discern a friend in the masses of people standing and watching. This time, however, it is especially difficult to see through the flames and smoke. My eyes sting. I keep blinking. If I try to speak, smoke fills my lungs and I choke, cough, gasp. There is a familiar figure in the front. I focus on him and squinting in an effort to see his eyes. “I’m sorry,” I whisper. “I’m sorry for this spectacle.” Everything stings now—-my calves, my arms— and I accept that there is no way he can hear me. After cursing briefly, likely for the last time in my life, I apologize to the book I will never finish, a creature that is as real to me as the books I have finished. Particularly the books I burned. No one is as alive to me as the books I burned to cinder. But now, I am burning (again) and the fire alarm beeps. It goes off again but there is no smoke. K seems to sleeping and I debate whether to wake her. I lay there and stare at the ceiling, surveying my options. We are on the 14th floor, an even number, a number divisible by two and therefore very unlucky, if my past has any bearing on the present. A man’s voice announces that the fire alarm was a “mistake” without specifying the nature of this mistake so I stare at the ceiling a bit longer and try to imagine the mistake, itself.
My favorite skyscraper in downtown L.A. Imagine the skill and effort it took to tag these walls so perfectly. Cheers to the creators of this anti-Chambers of Commerce collaborative mural! Cheers to the birds who live in the eaves! Cheers to the pigeons who congress there!
READINGS & STACKS
I can’t even detail the Asterism Reading and Midwestern Prose Reading here. I simply cannot. They were fabulous and I will do so later— in a post where I also share the books that required me to leave behind a few shirts and socks. It comes to my attention that I have shared almost nothing of what happened of the past five days. A whirlwind. Still reeling from the kindness and love and generosity of my peers. . . and moving towards the things that keep me up at night.
