Goodbye Franklin

Observational notes from a town visit

The Confederate Army memorial is surrounded by half empty buildings from a dozen decades ago and others selling vintage things, family department stores as they once were, and the gap along Main is now a pocket garden, Antebellum dresses are next door in the window, paint scrapings and lace. Up the hill are a few tired houses, a curving driveway going towards nothing in particular out of view next to a pedestrian crossing sign and another which demarks BUS441. I go down now, pass the berm with its trees and flowing plants, right at the light, and cross the street. Here is the VFW hall, a windowless cat store with a fluttering flag of airbrushed kitties outside making faint noise in its shadow; it blocks the sidewalk at head height. The ubiquitous family appliance store, Ingles, hot parking lots, occasionally a tree that is old and large—its canopies sweep up the wind—are all scenes from the periphery of this busted sidewalk. There are odd corners where nothing stands but mowed grass and some perennials. A realtor’s hut with a shiny Hummer and sunflowers outside. The backs of the buildings on Main along the diverted and split one-way highway. Everybody here has a sign in the window, some gentlemen are setting out antiques. Where do these power lines go besides into the canopy? And why are there streetlights here? It is nice outside; warm with no humidity. Drafting services, radio towers, police parking lot, Latino men walking down the highway. That lazy sound of cars. Bright teals and reds and yellow beiges. Shiny cars parked along shady trees, in the center of a town that doesn’t seem to bother. Everywhere is a nowhere. For Rent, For Sale, Now Open. Air conditioners and one-way delivery drives. Inexpensive clothing; billboards. Well drilling, Ruby City. Everything in need of a trim, a touch-up, rebuilding, alignment. Some things are freshly painted. Odd background bird calls. The Sapphire Inn down the hill in the distance. Music is coming from the cars and leaves are falling.

Pot Diet

I like brothy soup

To save money and kill time, which I have too much of, I've started eating from a pot. I am a soup man; most of my life, I have been a soup man. The pot diet involves a spoon, a bowl, and a pot. In the pot I make soup by combining anything that is available in my cupboard and fridge. Lately, this has been clams and onions and spinach and milk with some other things also. Mostly, it's delicious. Spending two hours a night making a brothy soup (broth and I are in love. We are lovers) is probably the best way I could spend my time in boring Vail. Colorado, though, isn't so bad.

February 26

A poem

This vast earth carries the burden
of countless scabs buried in its skin.
Here I am in a premature spring
scraping them from the surface
in gravel fields and flowerbeds
with a disposition for fracturing.
I put my ear to the till
left wondering, what world is this
where magma and tempering water
spring forth from its crust?

Dopamine

Personality profile

Michelle had me take a personality type test at chemistry.com.

The results are below. Text in blue is pretty much true. Text in green is circumstantial. Text in red is pretty much not true:


EXPLORER/Director

ABOUT YOUR PERSONALITY TYPE

You are very curious and you love adventure, either or both intellectual and physical. So when you get interested in something, you can become extremely focused on it, sometimes to the exclusion of all around you. You pursue your interests thoroughly, too, often with originality and exactitude.

You are adaptable, competitive and a problem-solver, as well as skeptical, tough minded and determined. Because you have a lot of energy and tend to be enthusiastic about your theories and projects, you can be very persuasive. You are eager to make an impact on those around you, too, as well as in the wider world.

You are irreverent and highly independent. So you can be oblivious to authority figures, as well as to rules, schedules and social customs. And although you enjoy people and can be charming and humorous, you are not interested in routine social engagements or anyone whom you regard as boring. Instead, you seek stimulating and focused conversations; and you are comfortable being by yourself, pursuing your own many interests.

Of all twelve (primary/secondary) types, you are also the most sexual-because both dopamine and testosterone stimulate the sex drive.

IN LOVE AND RELATIONSHIPS

As an Explorer, you look out not in; you are foremost interested in the world around you. So you are attracted to a mate who is also intellectually and physically adventurous and interested in dissecting this complex, tangible universe. You particularly like imaginative and theoretical people, a "mind mate." And you like a partner who is sexual, because you regard sex as an important aspect of a relationship. You have nerves of steel and thrive on the edge. You are also decisive and direct. So you are unconsciously drawn to those who can balance out your highly independent and tough-minded spirit--those who are novelty seeking, yet compassionate, verbal, intuitive, trusting, flexible and emotionally expressive.

RELATING TO OTHERS

You like to have good conversations on important topics; so people tend to admire you for your knowledge and innovativeness. You shy away from emotional or self-revealing conversations, however; introspection leaves you cold. Instead, you derive intimacy from doing things with friends or a partner. So you make an exciting, although at times aloof, companion.

THINGS TO BE AWARE OF

* You can be highly emotionally contained, even pretending that you are fine when you are in deep psychological or physical pain.
* You become impatient with cautious people or wordy conversations.
* You can become so wrapped up in your own interests that you spend too little time with your partner.

SPARK FACTOR

You tend to naturally gravitate to EXPLORER/negotiators.

A Chat with Jennifer

From last spring


me: what should i do when i graduate?

Jen: Travel the world, sample exotic foods and wine, recite poetry to beautiful women, skydive, buy a small plot of land with a vineyard.

me: that sounds about right
it’s a cash problem
i'm no trust fund baby

Jen: Make lots of money. Get rich quick. Then do the above.

me: how do i get rich quick?

Jen: Um, become a pimp.
Sell illegal drugs.
Start gambling.

me: actually, you know what occurred to me today?

Jen: What occurred to you today?

me: i won't really survive at all financially unless i get married.
no joke.

Jen: To a trust fund baby?

me: no, anybody at all.
who has an income

Jen: So not anybody at all?
You couldn't marry me because I don't have an income.

me: but you will, right?
before too long?
plus you're already married. which saddens me :(

Jen: Someday, perhaps. Before too long? Not sure.
Already married, no, but plan to be, hopefully sooner than later.

me: so what the fuck am i supposed to do now

Jen: Since I'm not marrying you?

me: yeah, since you're not marrying me.
i never thought I’d need to get married out of pragmatism.

Jen: You use the f-word too much.

me: that's once.
and it was for emphasis.

Jen: That's once too many.

me: it sounded good in my head.

Jen: It looks bad on chat.

me: sorry.

Jen: And sounds bad in my head.

me: sorry.
ahh, sorry.

Jen: No worries. I love Jesus, so I forgive you.
So you need to find some hot mama with an income.

me: yeah.
who is tolerable.

Jen: Tolerable? How do you mean?

me: who isn't annoying

Jen: Hmm, you're being a little picky, aren't you?

me: wanting to marry somebody who isn't annoying is picky?

Jen: First she's gotta have an income. Then she's got to not be annoying.
I'm sure you have other criteria as well.

me: yeah, but they are pragmatic criteria.
i mean, both of the above are pragmatic.
my other criteria are probably similar.

Jen: No other pragmatic criteria?

me: like, can't have psychosic allergies and isn't awkward around trees.
i don't really ask for much in any part of life.

Jen: Awkward around trees? Are there people who are awkward around trees?

me: yeah.
especially when there are lots of them.
such as in a forest.

Jen: What - are they scared of them? Do they not look at them? Are they afraid to get within a certain number of feet?

me: i don't know. ask them.
my point is, marriage is utterly abstract to me and isn't something i'm really after.
so to realize that, pragmatically, i should get married puts a large burden upon me.

Jen: Are there no single architects in the world?

me: architects are ugly and inept.
i am a case in point.

Jen: You are neither.

me: architects are scary people who believe in fantasies
such as the virtual future
and deconstructivism

Jen: But if they are ugly and inept, then there should be lots of single ones in the world.
How do they afford to be so?

me: there are plenty of single ones and they're degenerate. they can't afford it.
they don't make any money.

Jen: Hmm, when do you graduate?

me: next january
i wish i didn't have any student debt.
then i could be the person i need to be.

Jen: You and me both!

Toro

Poem regarding Enric Miralles
if it weren't obscured by other things in the world
what we would see over the water
is a bull thrashing from the shore
pulled to the tesselated surface of the sea,
confined to limbs and horns.
its points are gathered from the burning bodies
of spheres, distended along empty lines,
rationally void, light years between them.
here on the sea, we measure the myth
with hands, and bows, and the moving tides.

Palinisms

Bless her little heart

Sarah Palin:

"I say, you know, when is enough enough of taxpayer dollars being thrown into this bill out there?" she asked. "This next one of the Democrats being proposed should be very, very concerning to all Americans because to me it sends a message that $700 billion bailout, maybe that was just the tip of the iceberg. No, you know, we were told when we've got to be believing if we have enough elected officials who are going to be standing strong on fiscal conservative principles and free enterprise and we have to believe that there are enough of those elected officials to say, 'No, OK, that's enough.'"

Notes on an Unletter

Time capsule

Going through notebooks this weekend from my first year at Harvard, I found this written in one of the pages:


The Velocities of Wind and Rain

1. Justice. A quotidian photograph indicates the voluntary judgments we make for each other, rending barriers in otherwise tactile places of interaction. The arm from Daniel versus the shoulder from Kate.

2. A story: a person who becomes a puppet is an undenotated inverse Pinnochio theme. Wag the dog. A boy turned into a puppet. Rumpelstiltskin--what do we do faced with incredible burdens of injustice? A king who loved his gold so much he loaded it onto his lassy. A girl who loved her faith in silence so much that she cut out her companions tongue, burned him with silence out of her own misunderstanding.

3. Tangibility and sensation (Kant). Descending music notes, wind velocity v. rain velocity.

lunarsee

http://www.nasa.gov/multimedia/nasatv/on_demand_video.html?param=http://mfile.akamai.com/18565/wmv/etouchsyst2.download.akamai.com/18355/wm.nasa-global/ccvideos/GSFC_20080801a_aug1eclipse.asx&_id=143289&_title=Aug.%201%20Eclipse%20Sequence&_tnimage=264818main_aug1eclipse_100x75.jpg

the out there or the total here?

this line by rilke came up in my final review:
the heaviness, give it back to the weight of the earth.
they asked why'd you do it? what brought you to this?
it's a nice line.
i would speculate that most people can relate to heaviness. a humid walk on a southern night will make this apparent. when you think about not just the thickness of the air but the things that cause all the sounds around you--the flora, the bugs--it becomes recognizable that the stuff of our senses is mass-ive; massivley mass-ive. the tress are thick, the underbrush is heavy. it belongs to the earth. so give it back.

i didn't get around to writing my annual record this april. i've always called it Premay because May is a hinge in my life and has been since being in college. May is limbo. this year i had a job and school to think about until june but in truth after final review comes and goes everything else is frosting. nobody gets rid of the frosting so you could make it out of infused fish guts and with a little sugar you'd be alright. people eat frosting because it's fluffy and they think it's the cake of the cake. frosting is not the cake of the cake. anyhow, my intention here is not to use metaphors. rilke, i believe, wasn't writing metaphorically. aside from that, i resolved a few times this past semester to give up metaphors as a way of communication. muncey said it right, however, when she saw this as a mechanism to communicate the truth and not a strategy of avoidance. but you just can't count on others to get this all the time. this reminds me of a friend from high school who said that the only person you can count on for love is god. how true.

if it was the mid-90s and i lived in los angeles i would write here: "so cometh the point." seeing that this is the Hay and we're closing in on another decade that won't happen. get a garage for heaven's sakes, folks. put a guitar in it and draw evening tatooes on your arms and freak the fuck out. befriend the bums since, as dave hickey puts it, they might steal your television but they won't tell you the same story twice." a dream of eden is better than utopia. the quality of a work of art is the amount of sublimation we take out of it. these are all hickyisms. so is this: that crazy bitch in the audi drives you up on the curve...now you're conscious. you can taste your spit; you can think about your children; you can smell the grass...and when you do finally get to work you complain. to no end.

here are notes from a best man speech for andrew:
didn't like each other at firest (this is the way all such speeches begin)
disposition for the practice of dumbfoundedness
the cure
homemade coffee
the wagon
it became cluttered with the mechanisms of a low-rider's worldview
never a shotgun, always a slingshot
lives in a world of cuts on a cutting board,
tapwater,
curled book covers,
fumes,
elbows in relation to windows,
good hip-hop,
light,
sounds of being still
a mountain philosopher, as i explain it, whereas i am a valley philosopher
he just don't smell like vinegar
whereas others say cookie, cookie, cookie andrew says eat the void

and later that weekend, notes on things seen/felt in o'hare waiting for a flight back to boston:
do you like the person you are right now sitting waiting for a plane?
harvard has made for weakness, the hairs standing on the neck--survive.
where are the folks with the core (chicago? ann arbor? the west?)
i need to be a good man
am i eating the void? (the answer is yes)
i need to work from the ground
document the mundane
tell her she is silly
i'm pissed off by the former's lack of fortitude
also:
my hair in the sun at wednesday's pinup gave me the sense of the south (this shit shimmered like gasoline and it was bright brown and red and translucent)
in cambridge, mack talked to us with the lights off int he lounge and the door opened to sounds from outside where it was warm and the wind smelled like spring
was i hopped up on valium when andrew picked me up at o'hare? whatever the case, we had coffee waiting for flights at a diner by the airport
the next morning i walked between apartments with untied shoes and a hoody and boxers and the sun was too fucking bright to have my eyes open and it was bitterly, bitterly cold. (hickey: now you're conscious)
piss cloud in the backyard, search for gent's root beer, persEverance, drinks, stars outside, empty house that feels abandoned but it's the love nest instead, smell of cabin, cigarettes, Andrew pissing on the lawn, double-shot craving to supplement the ale, stories, stories, stories, stories, stories

and stories, and stories,

andrew was in the sacristy being quiet. i told him to stand straight so i could take his portrait.
and sparklers. the next morning i picked them up from the street.

and now back away from the notes. this is the conflict: the out there v. the total here.

Postgraduate

What to do after graduation



Requirements:
room for dog
room for a truck
trees
access to water
porch(es)
hill or moraine
old things
music
salvage around
things to document
room to cook
place for a fire
smokehouse
decent coffee
local myth
some sort of past
graffiti
soccer field
bikes
taco bus
wind
river
bookstore
crickets


Activities:
dusk
walking
soccer
ultimate
the blues
gardens for beer
public old space
college
and more

Precedents/Possibilities:
Center for Documentary Studies
Appalshop
Design Corps
the government/the foreign service

Manifesto:
this will be my next posting.

Dave Hickey

Interview

Dave Hickey came to Harvard this week and imbued us wisdom on the fifth floor on a somewhat warm rainy day. A good time, this guy. Lecturing the next day in the big aud, I witnessed the finest, most well-crafted cussing I have ever encountered. A dearly needed morsel of fun in our bunker o' 'crete. The paramount moment of his lecture? Probably when he observed, discussing the unspoken burdens of getting paid as a professor versus as a magazine writer: "If I tell Vanity Fair that I have trouble deciding how much money to spend on heroine and how much to spend on Arab boys they don't give a shit!"

Read his interview in the Believer

Dave Hickey: I'll see you on the sixth tray.

# Peeps.

Sound

After life

I'm beginning to think that the most interesting sensory capacity we have is for sound. What is it about the sound of small things, such as setting a watch on a table top, that make objects seem like they are massive, fantastic worlds? I remember napping in a Chicago hotel one afternoon in spring. Because the weather was warm, I opened the window and could hear what you might call the constant sweeping sound of the city outside (like passing air) that lets you "hear" your way up the grided streets, out to the lake, out to the prairies maybe, in between buildings...
Measuring a silence in the room provides a middle scale. Waking from a nap, hearing the drapes blow in a breeze, picking up your watch from the night stand. Then set it down again, and it resonates with an afterthought. What Bergson attributes to the space of keeping count in duration would in this case be the echo of the world-in-sound unleased all up in your brain, bouncing around. I'm beginning to think that sounds, the most mundane, unremarkable sounds, have the ability to cast hypnosis.

No quantum veils

My body and yours are
little and more than
the vast and infinitesimal
suspended in fluid
we are not bound up
in gravity and dark energies
in quantum veils
but in the reaching out of
one vessel to one other
in them,
souls, bodies, bodies in bodies,
organs, minds
you flushed through me
sweeping the tiniest
of beings in creation

Fall into Winter

Why do people forget what they once believed?

Maybe the only good book I've read for any of my classes at Harvard is E.B. White's One Man's Meat. It was good enough to show its cover juxtaposed to the burning rubble of suburban riots in Paris to provoke a concept of why our houses are important during my final presentation in the housing studio last year. My friend Andrew, a mountain philosopher living on the prairie, has brought this up before but I read it in White's book as well. Both pointed out one of the most poignant truths of the living world as observed by Darwin in his landmark study of earth worms and their ways and means:

"I was thus led to conclude that all vegetable mould over the whole country has passed many times through, and will again pass many times through, the intestinal canals of worms."

This is to say, the earth is moving all the time, worm-bite by worm-bite. If we could take a time-lapse video of a section of the ground, we would see it shift and swirl and fluctuate and move in indeterminant directions according to the ingestion and redepositings of earthworms. So too do roots push the earth one way or another, and digging moles, digging voles, burrowing things, nesting critters, the compressions of the feet of we surface dwellers with our Newtons of force-in-step.

So the point of moving the earth isn't to heave it. I too wish to move the earth, in fact it's something that I long for. My earth is all the dimensions of a vital world, in three, four, twelve, and many more that are fictional. It is our nature to become so acquainted with the soil of being human as human beings that we ingest it and pass it off, one way or another (though I am surely speaking more metaphorically here) and to provoke the shifting but re-establishing of its stuffiness. This is a strange thing to do, and it's strange to think about. White also observed:

"Try to tell a child even the simplest truths about planetary, cosmical, or spiritual things, and you hear strange echoes in your own head. 'Can this be me?' a voice keeps asking, 'can this be me?'"

I take this to be the essence of whatever pulses through the mind before one utters "I believe that..." The most essential things are often some of the silliest. You must be a fool to ingest and a sage to redeposit. What then am I talking about? I'm not quite sure but it has to do with a confession I have. If faith moves mountains, then I would like to glutton myself upon it. I have been timid, afraid, witholding, and now I'm desperate for the courage to put myself at risk. I wrote somebody who means a great deal to me earlier this semester that risks were worth it and then failed to live up to this very conviction--the same conviction which says that faith moves mountains, our world is in constant motion, re-creation is always and everywhere, and that we must give our world to those among us in our lives.

Noel

November Again

On the Everyday Reasons for Preservation

Don't say it's nostalgia

This is a nice speech about historic preservation given recently by Garrison Keillor at the annual conference of the National Trust for Historic Preservation in St. Paul.

http://minnesota.publicradio.org/display/web/2007/10/05/midday2/

Bird

A diagram

This is how I think about life:

Phone Conversation

Overheard at the table next to me at 1369

guy:
hello?
hey.
what's up.
yeah.
good.
yeah.
okay.
cool.
sure.
definately.
nice.
okay.
alright.
cool.
bye.

Not ten hours after I wrote the last entry I see this article on Yahoo News:

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070802/ap_on_re_us/bridge_safety