Wednesday, December 31, 2008

14. Insurrection

I avoided my body whenever possible and felt queasy if I went near it, like an illness I just had to live with. Who needs a body, I decided, if you can have a library instead? I thought it was brave and honest to remove myself from circulation, to stamp myself Discard.

Sex, of course, paid no attention to any of this nonsense: bounded right along, puts its paws on my chest and began to slobber. The bears at the zoo began losing hair in places, jimmying the locks, shoving their shorts to the floor, and letting themselves out of their cages.

Monday, December 29, 2008

13. Departure

The cats got leukemia and died one after another. Ninety-three slowed down, his belly bloated. I sat with him, fed with sardines, and he purred until he died. A boy should have a dog, my father said, and got me a golden retriever from the pound, a bright generous creature who stayed three days. On the third day it darted across the road and, even though I screamed at it to stay, ran back toward me and was killed by a car. Without animals, the house was uninhabitable. I said I wanted to go away to school. My father had been in that house fifty years; he didn't want to stay there either. He sold it to my brother and later I heard he'd told people, "There was just no way to live there after the dog died."

Friday, December 26, 2008

12. Heart

I believed the farm had a heart. I had found it. In the middle of the swamp the beavers had made, there was thin finger of land that jutted out with tall grass, pricker bushes and saplings. At the tip of it was a stand of bamboo grass with plumes that stayed golden in winter. This was the heart of the farm. It wasn't easy to access but I went there sometimes, if I needed to pray about something important. One afternoon I walked into the swamp and discovered that my father -- because he was a dangerous lunatic -- had taken out the tractor and mowed the spit of land. I did not investigate further but ran home yelling. That night I had a dream that the tractor had stopped just in time and left the golden feathery heart of the farm intact. The next day I walked further into the swamp and discovered that this was true. I extracted a promise from my father to never mow again. I still sometimes call home to check.

Wednesday, December 24, 2008

11. Brother

My brother was ten years older than I was. He went away to school, and then to jail; he became a far right reactionary, and through it all he drank. But there was a time, while our mother was still alive, when no one loved the world as much as my brother did. The farmhouse was a zoo. Snakes my brother caught at the well, frogs from the pond; an injured owl lived in his bedroom closet.

Nothing compared to the day he walked down the hill to the house, shouting out my name, calling me to come and see. My mother saw. "God, be careful" and even my father was amazed. I was allowed to look and, with one careful finger, to stroke the wet fur. My brother was famous forever after as the boy who stuck his hand in the pond and pulled out a beaver.

Monday, December 22, 2008

10. Experiments

The cats were all female -- the only tom cat a visiting stray. Thus every cat had the same grandfather, father and husband. The kittens were increasingly strange. When two were born deformed and died I christened them Orpheus and Icarus and buried them in a tube sock. I was lucky, I think, to have been taught mythology at school.

Friday, December 19, 2008

9. Ninety-three

Ninety-three was most beloved of the cats -- we named him after the interstate my brother found him on. He'd lost his tail, one foot was on backwards, and another was off to the side. He had a peculiar cock-eyed cat grin and couldn't ever quite get his mouth to close. Ninety-three's purr was like an outboard motor. He loved everyone. Many nights I was halfway into the demons' mouths, when Ninety-three hobbled amiably through the doorway to rescue me, grinning in his odd cat way, which meant, "Do not be afraid."

Wednesday, December 17, 2008

8. Cats

Tragedy earned me sympathy: I saved up all the sympathy I earned, supplemented with paternal guilt, and spent it all on cats. A long line of cats, from the Humane Society at first, then the strays and kittens came. (Many cats were required; the farm was bisected by a brutal road.) My father worked, he fell in love, he was important in the town. Many nights I was alone, the farmhouse had fourteen rooms, and the only rooms safe were rooms with cats in them. At night I ran from room to room through the dark with a cat in my arms.

Monday, December 15, 2008

7. Comforter

I remember my mother beneath her green velveteen comforter, her tired and pale face as she studied me in the darkened bedroom. "Don't be like me," she said. "Learn to ride a bicycle. Learn to swim." My father borrowed my toy stethoscope, the night she said her heart felt funny. She died on the operating table. I was seven. Because children were not allowed in hospital rooms, I sat in the lobby and read illustrated Bible stories.

Friday, December 12, 2008

6. Feet

When I was a very small child, my feet had conversations. My hands talked too, of course, but weren't so interesting -- they were too nearby. My right foot was a gregarious bully, making plans and talking television -- an all-American boy foot. My left foot, the crippled one, was quieter. He let the right foot do most of the talking and when he did speak, he apologized. He was a crippled foot and expected everything he said to be mistaken.

Still, he wasn't really so helpless -- or so agreeable. Never mind that he was more or less frozen and resembled a hoof. His leg, it's true, was not as long as the other. Still, he reached the ground and that is the number one qualification for a foot. He had his own resources. Already he was a specialist in mythology. Sometimes he performed in Bible stories and always he trembled when he heard the words: and the angels stirred David's heart with courage.

Wednesday, December 10, 2008

5. Destiny

The way some children know, at a tender age, that they will be a doctor or a painter -- in that same way I knew, at the age of four, that I was ugly. I was fitted for bifocals -- I had a lazy eye -- and I remember the shame I felt to be an ugly boy. My ugliness was the plot of nightmares. An evil old man with greasy gray hair waited for me on the stairs and chased me through black corridors. If he caught me, he'd tickle me and his touch would make me ugly, even uglier than now. Here was the thing: I was acceptable, barely acceptable, by just a fraction of a hair. If I became point-zero-five percent more ugly, I'd be cast out.

The first time I lost a fingernail, I didn't know they grew back. I looked at that black fingernail and thought, "That's it for me. I'm a goner."

Monday, December 08, 2008

4. Nature

A thousand times I was told to go outdoors but I was an inside child and did not want to go. I wanted to read my books. Nature, I was told, would make me strong. I was dubious. Nature had made me what I was already -- a crippled boy, my left leg withered beneath the knee and, instead of a foot, a crumpled hoof. Many times I had been told that my mother and I had nearly died the day that I was born. That was nature. Nature was not nearly as wholesome or straightforward as people claimed.

Friday, December 05, 2008

3. Surprise

I worried the trash bag under the Christmas tree meant I had been bad. My mother laughed. "We were out of paper, honey. And I was tired." In the trash bag was a gorgeous stuffed bear, not like a toy, but like a real bear, a Kodiak, with realistic mottled fur. Later, I heard my parents fight about the bear. She'd spent more than a hundred dollars. She'd driven all the way to Maine. Still, I can't blame my mother for going to so much trouble, just for some silly bear, that Christmas that was the model of a perfect Christmas ever after, the last Christmas she was alive.

Wednesday, December 03, 2008

2. Bears

When I was six, I lay in a sunbeam on a gold sofa and dreamt of bears. I wanted to get into the cage with them. To bury myself in fur, and be held between dark heavy paws. Each afternoon I slept an hour that way, folded into bears.

Monday, December 01, 2008

1. Apple Tree

When I was eight, my father dug a hole in the backyard, filled it with cement, and planted a dead apple tree. I was supposed to climb on that tree and become healthy and strong -- a real boy. Never mind that the backyard was full of living trees: maple, beech, crabapple, black walnut, pine. Never mind the hundred acres of pear and apple orchards. My father had stripped off all the bark and all little branches. (It must have been a jungle gym he had in mind.) For years that skeleton tree stood in the middle of the backyard. I was careful to never go near it.

Tuesday, November 25, 2008

THE OUT-OF-MINDERS : a short introduction

There exist a group of people (never mind how many -- they themselves have no idea and anyway do not wish to be counted) devoted to being forgotten. To vanish, they believe, is the flower, the firework, of an ideal life. They aim to live entirely, to die and leave no residue, not on the earth or in the mind.

In the public imagination, the Out-of-Minders are known almost entirely for their pronounced aversion to trash. Their horror and aversion upon being offered, say, a plastic lid, may seem to us extreme. A styrofoam cup, a plastic spoon, a swizzle stick, is a stake driven deep in the thick hide of the future. To an Out-of-Minder, every object is in danger of becoming a monument.

Out-of-Minders regret the attention given to recent events at nuclear processing facilities at which Out-of-Minders, arrested for protesting, were unable to present government-recognized identification* and purported, furthermore, to have forgotten not only their Social Security Numbers, but also their names at birth. They are sorry for police headaches and hope the incidents will be swiftly forgotten.

To know the Out-of-Minders only for their attitudes toward trash and waste however, is like knowing Digambara Jains only for their face masks and fly whisks. Behind these beliefs is perhaps a complex philosophy of beliefs, motives or ideas -- though it is true that no Out-of-Minder will admit to this.

Out of Minders wish to disappear entirely after death -- and in the meantime keep a low profile. They eschew interviews, awards, accolades, titles. (There are rumors some Out-of-Minders pursue higher education and may even receive advanced degrees--but no Out-of-Minder can be found who will confess to doing so.) Seeking anonymity, Out-of-Minders use flimsy aliases, quickly switching from one to another lest they become known or, as they say, "solidified". There is nothing they fear so much as becoming important.

Refusing awards and burning certificates, Out-of-Minders do not wish to be given credit for anything. Not infrequently they are caught trying to pawn off their best achievements on others. An Out-of-Minder painter signed his work 'anonymous' -- until he became known for it -- and thereafter signed his paintings Bertrand Russell, Charlotte Web, or Miro.

The few Out-of-Minders who can be coaxed to speak give names so flimsy and generic they are hardly names at all -- Brian Williams, John Mack, Cate May** -- and insist, furthermore, that they do not speak in any way officially, but only for themselves. These Out-of-Minders emphasize their beliefs should not be mistaken for nihilism or an ideology of disconnection. Not seeking to "make their mark", not wishing to succeed, they focus instead on the cultivation of a small number of close personal friendships. They desire to be known, fully and idiosyncratically, by a small circle of people and for that knowledge to be obliterated upon the death of the last friend in their circle.

Research into the Out-of-Minder movement has proven uniquely frustrating. The Out-of-Minders delight in providing false or nonsensical information. Thus the highly embarrassing recent 'expose' in which were written statements such as "pineapples are routinely worshipped" or "auto-fellatio is that for which we earnestly strive". Used in their presence, the phrase 'Out-of-Minder Movement' may produce screams of hilarity, horror, or derision. Whole dissertations on the Out-of-Minders have been written and then have mysteriously disappeared, often with their authors, who had lost interest in receiving a PhD, or no longer had a name to pin it on. The few snippets which have been published are buried in magazines read by virtually no one.

The Out-of-Minders themselves, when intermittently located, refuse to give any indication of whether they now number in the tens of thousands, or if they are like members of a dying language, who aim to say a few more words amongst themselves and then fall silent forever.

In unguarded moments, the Out-of-Minders seem to find us, who seek names and accolades, as frustrating as we find them. Clearly it annoys them to explain, for the twentieth time, that, yes, they really do want to be entirely forgotten, and that losing everything is the best thing that could happen.
_____________

* Cereal box tops and soup labels were deemed unacceptable forms of I.D., even for a man named 'Turkey Noodle'.

* * A web search on these names produces absolutely no useful information whatsoever. All you learn is that Cate may or, then again, Cate might not.

(Madrid, 11.24.08)

My Immortality

Aspiring fools of words -- and I am one -- dream of artful editions of 500, with an elegant typeface and covers handmade on the letterpress. To be read by sophisticated contemplative people -- as well as a few nice-looking barbarians who maybe didn't actually read the book, but are anyway willing to sleep with the author. Money and fame are unnecessary, thank you, I would just like to communicate, connect and in some small way matter.

Still, I wonder what this imagination is worth, when it is so slow to catch up with the current situation. When Shakespeare has been forgotten a thousand years, the plastic coffee lids through which I sipped while I thought all my deep thoughts will continue to poison birds, to break down further in the ocean, but they will never become nothing.

There is no longer any doubt that I will have, even after my death, significant influence. The fifteen or so transcontinental flights I took, while obtaining an MFA, will continue to make a modest, but deeply felt, contribution to the atmosphere. How much difference is there really, on the scale of conspicuous luxury, between MFA and SUV? There are days I feel like a perfectly ornamental human being.

My endless book purchases help support small presses and unheralded writers. But, considering the gas, I've contributed much more generously to jihad and the brutality against women.

It is likely that our trash will outlast our best ideas, to say nothing of what we consider our venial and mortal sins. How can we possibly fast-forward our moral imaginations fast enough to recognize that failures in recycling may be more serious than coveting the neighbor's ass? I doubt any bar fight I ever get myself into will ever do the harm of one trans-Pacific flight.

I write because I don't want to die without the world knowing how I loved it. I mean to witness and to praise -- and meanwhile I play my part in poisoning the world. I hoped to be remembered. Well then, very good: if I think all my plastic, and give it the name "soul", I can be confident that I am, indeed, immortal after all.

(Madrid, 11.25.08)

Note:

Many more stories and essays are available. (Posts to this blog seem more likely to embarrass colleagues and horrify family members than to actually to make their way out to the world. Thus I've limited posts!) If you'd like to read more -- please send a note to guttersnipedas@yahoo.com and I will be delighted to send more work along.

Peace,

G.S. Das

Tuesday, August 05, 2008

Holy Books of Guttersnipe Das: Tatyana Tolstaya


(Tatyana Tolstaya, portrait by Akemi Shinohara)


Tatyana Tolstaya
White Walls
New York Review of Books, 2007


If the literary style genie were to suddenly appear--he’s bare-chested, muscled and tattooed like the rest of the genies, but wears spectacles and travels amid a flock of white index cards--I would say to that genie, “I want to be a queer Tatyana Tolstaya.” She is the grand enchantress of the More Is More School, firing off one inspired rant after another. Her characters launch diatribes on why women should have fur tails, or teeth that receive radio signals. Plot matters less than the gleeful generous fireworks of language. Or the plot is the only plot that matters, namely, ‘I’m going to find some meaning and/or delight in this world’.

For more than a year now I’ve been attached to this book; every month I reread a few stories in hopes that they will prove contagious. Most of the stories in magazines seem so stilted and mannerly in comparison, like a respectable dinner party with white wine and filet of sole and the whole time you’re sitting there wishing it would finish already, so you could go out and carouse. Carouse and cavort is what Tolstaya’s stories do--they are parties with dancing and fireworks. The New York Review of Books Classics series has rescued a lot of important books (check out: Walser, Desani, Chaudhuri, Pintorelli, Krudy) but this is one of the very best. And read Tolstaya’s novel The Slynx too, but read this one first.

Wednesday, July 23, 2008

Guttersnipe Culture Watch

August 2008

We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars. Oscar Wilde.

Let it not be said that I never made noise on behalf of the books and artists I love.

1. Bobbie Louise Hawkins has a new book, Absolutely Eden, available from Small Press Distribution. This book adapts pieces from her celebrated one-woman shows 'Life As We Know It" and "Take Love, For Instance".

2. Danielle Dutton has a small and graceful book, Attempts at a Life, from Tarpaulin Sky Press. Gorgeous, inventive and daring. We'd expect no less.

3. Gary Young has a new book of prose poems Pleasure. A pleasure, indeed! New readers should still begin, I think, with his earlier masterpiece, No Other Life.

4. At the moment, Lucia Berlin's 3 brilliant books of stories are available from Amazon.com. They appear to be waffling in and out of print. The Library of America ought to issue these stories on acid-free Bible paper with silk bookmarks. Until they come to their senses, you'd better grab what you can. Begin with So Long. If that one isn't available buy Homesick or Where We Live Now.

5. Two books of Kenneth Patchen's brilliant picture poems, We Meet and The Walking-Away World are being re-issued in fancy combined volumes. And we say, it's about damn time.

6. Have you seen all the recent work of Tokyo artist and illustrator Akemi Shinohara? Visit her website and check out some of the portraits, as well as posters and illustrations.

7. The best reading discovery I've made this year is Sunflower by Gyula Krudy, an early 20th century Hungarian writer. There's just nothing like it.

8. I would like to here go on the record as saying that Salman Rushdie's new book The Enchantress of Florence shows that the master is again at the height of his powers. While it may be that Rushdie's own mama does not love the man as much as we do, Fury and Shalimar the Clown did not produce as many screams of ecstasy as his previous work. (However, I have been known to become hostile and aggressive toward anyone who disparages The Ground Beneath Her Feet. I've seldom, if ever, had such a good time reading a book. Imaginary goats!)

9. Kevin Coffee has opened a new bookstore, Oasis Books, in Lafayette, Colorado. Kevin Coffee is part of the family that hauled me in out of the gutter in the mid-nineties--without whom I would have been one dearly departed guttersnipe. I am hoping this bookstore will be a grand success, so that I may some day have a job.

But maybe that's not such a good idea, because it occurs to me that I have stolen books, at least a few, from every bookstore where I have ever worked. (I'm very moral, really I am, except when confronted by things I really want.) In my defense, I also spent at least half of my wages on books and, I believe, increased bookstore sales overall by thrusting books upon unsuspecting customers. In my defense, I only earned $5.25. That said, why don't you purchase your books from Tattered Cover and Barbara's Bookstore, thereby reducing my karmic debt?



Do you know artists and writers who demand trumpeting? Who is on your list of People Who Ought to Be Famous ? Send an email to guttersnipedas@yahoo.com. Review copies happily accepted. We aren't so wealthy. And you'll keep us from theft.

Monday, July 21, 2008

Flowers Are the Plants' Bad Habits


The hope is that if I could just trim back my addictions--which is to say, 85% of my personality and hours--something new and green might sprout from the stump of my bad habits. More bad habits presumably. But, if I kept chopping them back, day after day, if became very good at being uncomfortable and doing nothing about it, who knows, I might even burst into flower--

but who knows, perhaps flowers are the plants' bad habits? Put your ear to the ground and you can hear the green leaves apologizing, blushing clear to their roots, I am so sorry--I just couldn't help myself, I don't know what it is, something about me no doubt, every year I swear I won't and then--May comes, the sun, all those cute bees--I can't control myself, I send up shoots, I bud and--even though this time I swore I wouldn't--I bloom.

Just try acting innocent when you're covered in petals!

Disgusting, isn't it? Making a spectacle of myself, so much energy for a few days of frippery and the hangover lasts the rest of the year. Just think what I could accomplish if I put all that energy into greenery, christ, I'd cover hectares! Instead I bloom, as I have bloomed for thirty million years. Oh, the vanity, the vanity! When am I ever going to evolve?

Friday, July 18, 2008


Illustration by Akemi Shinohara

Mary Ascending Into Heaven / Colfax Avenue, Denver, Colorado
Originally for the Story: A Life of Bright
(If you're reading the story, remember to click through and start at #1.)

Monday, July 14, 2008

Maddalena penitente
(The Penitent Magdalene)


(second draft)

For the last five weeks here in Florence, I’ve studied Art History at the British Institute, attending lectures and visiting churches among the fresh blooms of upper-class British womanhood, faultlessly gorgeous, designer-clad, twenty year olds adding Florence, adding art, to their pedigrees. This rite of passage has changed little since EM Forster was here: Miss Lucy Honeychurch now shows her navel.

Among such flowers I feel hairy, middle-aged, and depraved. Obviously some miscalculation has been made, as if I went out to the local leather bar -- for Bondage Night -- but wound up here instead, at The Museum of the Works of the Duomo.

This was where we toured yesterday, admiring the work of Arnolfo diCambio, the Cathedral’s first architect, as well as Ghiberti’s Doors of Paradise and Michelangelo’s last sculpture, which he tried to destroy with a hammer.

The lecturers at the British Institute are admirably serious. Even if they suspect we might be better served by tips on glossy hair and strong nails, they persist in untangling the Medici family tree, and explaining the lost wax technique, and why Vasari matters, and exactly what Mannerism is.

Over the last month I have not been educated so much as converted. For the Renaissance I now display frightening zeal. Previously at the Uffizi I was only interested in determining which naked Jesus was the hottest. Now even the countless Virgin altar pieces are compelling and I always want to see another church, another fresco, another sculpture Michelangelo didn’t finish, another sketch Leonardo didn’t paint even though he got paid for it.

That said, it was possible that, by Week Five, I’d become somewhat inured to masterpieces. After all, you can’t by a quart of milk without seeing one, and you’re likely to see half a dozen or more as you frantically search out a toilet you don’t have to pay for. Even an old Cimabue is easier to find than a decent pizza in Florence, this city of masterpieces, over which has been superimposed a god-awful tourist trap.

Our tour leader explained that the Museum was a particularly fine place to see the work of Donatello. Now, I have a soft spot for Donatello, who was apparently half-mad and hopelessly disorganized, and who sculpted male nudes with entirely more enthusiasm than the 15th century was really ready for. Dutifully, I admired some lovely works in marble; I admit I was only half paying attention -- my legs hurt, I thought it must be time for beer -- as I was lead into another room and the tour leader said, “There’s lots of Donatello here but this seems to be the one people remember.”

At the center of the room was a statue made of wood: a gaunt Magdalene with her hands joined in front of her, fingertips just touching. She looked like hell. Like a crack whore with sunken cheeks, like a junky with filthy matted hair. I have seen many Magdalenes, but this one was appallingly familiar: she could have been one of my hustling friends, whispering to the john -- twenty bucks, you can do anything -- one of my friends on meth or almost dead of AIDS.
For this five weeks of marble and gold had not prepared me. I found myself crying in a crowd of rich daughters, lucky girls who were not for sale, who washed their hair every day. Decorous young women, they looked away; they hurried on to the reliquaries.

I eyed the guard slumped in the corner. I wanted his job. I wanted to sit, as long as I lived, a vigil with Magdalene, and make sure no harm ever came to her. The guide had said that the statue was terribly fragile, and had been badly damaged by the Flood of 1966 when it was buried in mud and shit. Very well, I thought, let me stay here with Magdalene.

Someone else would look after Michelangelo’s musclebound David. Someone else would protect the over-powering Jesus on the ceiling of the Baptistery and Gianbologna’s fine bronze birds nesting upstairs at the Bargello. I would stay here, in a side room at the Museum of the Works of the Duomo. I would look after the Penitent Magdalene. This was an image I’d looked for all my life. Now, we recognized each other.

In my early twenties, I lived in Denver, Colorado, on Colfax Avenue, where the great basilica sits amid pawn shops and payday loans and terminal bars. I am not a Christian but I used to drop by the basilica to pray to the Mother whenever I was off to do something exceptionally foolhardy, whether because I was adventurous or just needed the money.

Outside the basilica in Denver is a bronze statue of Mary ascending to Heaven. She looks to be about 15, a perfect doll. She looks like she could star in a musical. The benches around Mary were always occupied by sleeping homeless people. I always thought, how much more useful it would be, if Mary were shown ascending into Heaven as a grief-stricken ravaged hag, a woman who’d attended the murder of her son. How were all of us, so profoundly damaged, ever supposed to relate to a woman who got off scot-free?

And here was Mary Magdalene, the greatest sinner, our guide reminded us, usually shown fleshy and beautifully dressed. Now she was almost a skeleton, covered either by a camel skin or by her own hair grown long in the desert. And Magdalene had been redeemed -- the guide emphasized this. This Magdalene was meant to be the object of praise and veneration, not a chronicle of failure, not a pious warning. This was Magdalene set free.


I would be standing there still, except I was afraid of making a scene and haven’t figured out yet how to get a job upstairs at the Museum of the Works of the Duomo. For starters, my Italian’s gonna have to get a lot better. And probably I’d fail the background check, as would Magdalene herself, so she’d better hope that no one checks.

In the meantime, I see her here on the streets of Florence, as Donatello must have seen her, Magdalene among the junkies who huddle at the end of Borgo Pinti, or the sex addicts at the Florence Baths, in all of us buried in ravenous hungers and the steep price paid for them. Magdalene, among us.





Wednesday, July 09, 2008

"The man with the sky blue eyes invites everyone to keep on working, fabricating, jointly creating: we are all of us dreamers by nature, after all, brothers under the sign of the trowel, destined to be master builders."

Bruno Schulz, "The Republic of Dreams"

On Trying to Make Less Noise


Recently I’ve been experimenting. I imagine that every thought makes a sound. Rehearsed conversation is like rain on a tin roof and self-justification like a squeaky old cassette. Lustful crotch-watching makes a snuffling sound. Resentment, of course, is loud. Fury toward oblivious waddling tourists here in the narrow streets of Florence produces barking.

And I say to myself, “Now, dear guttersnipe, on your way to the library, try to be as quiet as you can.”

I aim to see how gentle and unobtrusive I can be, so that the cobblestones will receive no injury from my feet, so that I may pass unnoticed. I aim to be instantly forgotten. I try to walk so as to make no sound and leave no trace.

I am lucky, of course, that my thoughts do not make sound. Otherwise I would be immediately arrested for lewd lascivious irritating enervating disruptive dangerous conduct.

Actually I would throw myself into the arms of the police. I am all the time longing to do so. Have you seen the police here in Florence? Ohmigod. It is impossible for them to actually do anything because lithe young female tourists are constantly asking them to pose for photos. I am jealous of this. The only way I can get their attention is by getting myself arrested. Yes and I would beg, “Please, officer, don’t use too much force. But a little force is okay! No handcuffs, please. Just hold me.”

A moment, please, whilst I regain my composure.

As I was saying, it’s a good thing my thoughts do not make noise. My mind is that of a drug dealer who smuggles a stolen subwoofer into a stolen ambulance and uses both bass and siren to make his rounds. Yes, my mind is at the same time both Boom Boom and Woo Woo.

There is something very strange about the sirens of ambulances here in Italy: their tune is unmistakably victorious, like the bells that ring as coins pour from the machine in Vegas. These are good Catholic ambulances, firmly of the opinion that the next world is better than this one.

“This is my day!” these ambulances seem to say, as if in hope that the mind will be silenced with death and there won’t be this nonstop deafening cacophonic hubbub, all the time barking and snuffling, muttering and shouting, all day and all night blaring both Boom Boom and Woo Woo.

AT HOME WITH THE PUMPKIN KING

Below are all the existing parts of At Home With the Pumpkin King slightly revised, in more or less the correct order, with two new sections.

FATHER.

(from At Home With The Pumpkin King)

Our mother was the fount of tolerance, our father the test case. Reputedly charming in his youth, or at least good-looking, he’d gone mad, tragically, sometime around the birth of his children. He imagined himself some kind of petty king. His house was a castle, his family only subjects, and he was the lord of his domain, as well as some kind of imperial arbiter on matters of good taste and decorum.

He spoke only in pronouncements, which invariably began “it is obvious that. . .”, “it is needless to say. . .”, “it is unassailable how. . .” and, his favorite, “any idiot would know. . .” My lunatic father was certain he was the only non-idiot left in the world. This was natural, of course, since my father saw himself as privy to all manner of secret information, all of which was about as real as the Loch Ness Monster’s birthday cake, its waterproof blue frosting, its underwater candles.

Since becoming an adult, I have met many people who had fathers similar to mine and suffered. This seems to me both crazy and stupid. Our aunt talked to leprechauns, our father imagined he was in charge. We fed and ignored them both. It did not occur to us to suffer.

The first time your beloved granny imagines you are her English maid, you correct her and feel horrified. After ten times you get used to it. After twenty times you say, “Shall I get you a spot of tea and some scones, mum?”

We did not need to follow his orders, he forgot them. Anyway, it did not matter what we did, he was perpetually aggrieved, the victim of a world of idiots. He made his own unfathomable connections. In the morning he demanded geraniums. In the evening he lamented our deplorable lack of nationalism.

Once my father left the room, there was no pretense that his ravings had any connection whatsoever to reality. We were inconvenienced but not harmed. I firmly recommend this strategy to the American family.

Also, it helped that my father was a pumpkin farmer. Not exactly anesthesiology. Not even as complicated as grapes or strawberries. If he wanted to be the Pumpkin King, let him.

My father decided to have a secret affair. Of course everyone knew. The farm had hired a secretary for pumpkin season, a local aerobics instructor who never seemed at home with herself unless she was clobbering space to Flashdance. Reduced to regular speed she was timid and anxious to please.

How cunningly they plotted. They met for lunch; they hid in the office, in the salesroom, in the pumpkin patch and, once, behind a bin of Blue Hubbard squash. He stayed out late and told Mother he feared for frost.

Our mother was neither hysterical nor stoic. She saw herself not as a woman wronged, but, rather, as a woman propitiously granted free daycare. When he did not come home for lunch, she threw his tomato sandwiches in the trash. We ate food full of the spices he could not digest: ham with hot mustard, curried potato salad, pickled hot peppers.

Taking cues from our mother, my brothers and I remained calm. We did not hate the aerobics instructor. Nonetheless, we matter-of-factly decided, as children will, that she must die. Karl wanted to kill Father as well, but we were concerned that he might yet retain some sentimental value for Mother.

Duncan and Thom wanted to inculcate her spandex with a neurotoxin absorbed through the skin, I favored lethal injection, and Karl, machine gun fire. We were American children, remember. We trusted all these options would be locally available.

In the end murder was blessedly unnecessary. Our father tired of his jumpy lover. He got bored. We read it in his face: to tell the truth, with all due humility, when it came right down to it, to the brass tacks, she just wasn’t good enough for him. Despite her muscular thighs, her green pumpkin buttocks, she was an idiot, like all the idiots who tormented our father, that savant.

And so, his tomato sandwiches reinstated, Father returned to lunch at home. A new lecture series was inaugurated on the necessity of self-restraint. We boys should expect to be visited by temptation. And we oughtn’t feel ashamed--it had happened to him too, when he was a boy. Were we listening? We nodded reverentially to our father, the Pumpkin King. When we felt, uh, you know, overwhelmed by urges, we ought to substitute some wholesome activity, such as swimming, especially in very cold water.

MOTHER.

(from At Home With the Pumpkin King)

My mother was an extremely unusual person. She lived in reality. Lord knows how she ever got a taste for it. Obviously not from my father. Sometimes I worry she must have been lonely, all day in reality, by herself. But then the loneliness was also real, and so she must have liked it.

If anyone tried to commiserate with her about our lunatic father, she would cheerfully announce that soon they would both be dead and therefore why not be nice to him? Spilt milk, fine lines, nocturnal emissions, shattered glass, all gave her a particular satisfaction. Here was reality, behaving as it should.

There was a time, I admit, when I thought her cold*. Other children’s mothers waited afternoons on the doorstep for the bus to arrive. I saw other children scooped up and praised. Even my father, when delusion was going well, would wax rapturous about his four sons, though generally he forgot which of us was good at what.

My mother, on the other hand, did not praise or condemn. She was only interested. Honors in Social Studies, failures in geometry, got much the same reception. She’d nod, ask a few questions and that would be it.

We worried about her. She was awfully isolated, wasn’t she? We thought she must be depressed. My father lectured her on the importance of being involved in the community. He himself was terribly involved, to the despair of many. He built bicycle paths as commanded by God in Heaven, who did not recognize that land could be held by private individuals.

Our mother, he decided, should likewise become involved. She ought to help out at school. All her children agreed. We wanted her to be one of the shiny, enthusiastic mothers of the Parent Teacher Association.

How difficult it must have been to balance sometimes, even for one anchored in reality: on one side, love, and, on the other, sanity. She joined. She attended meeting and field trips, saved popsicle sticks and soup labels.

It wasn’t long before the rumors reached our ears. The other mothers told the other children and they reported to us: our mother was a sociopath. She was incapable of being shocked by budget cuts, enraged by Phys Ed teachers, or delighted by art involving macaroni. She had no passion for bake sales. She cooperated but, still, she was unnerving. It was delicately suggested she stay home.

“I was told I am not a team player,” she explained.

The other mothers looked upon us with sympathy forever after: our mother was a PTA apostate.

But this was nothing, really, compared to the trouble she got in at church. We all thought it would be lovely to have a mother who went to church. We hoped she might learn, as the other church mothers had, to bake Black Forest cupcakes and smile with sweet resignation. She seemed amenable to God and even to the afterlife, though whenever we asked her about it she looked at us as if we’d phrased our questions slightly wrong.

If, in her presence, anyone became pushy about theological or metaphysical matters she would leave to the table and stir whatever was on the stove, remarking, half to herself, “Consciousness has many interesting properties.”

For a number of weeks she dutifully attended Bible Study, the Pastoral Search Committee, and Lady Lamplighters. On Sunday morning we accompanied her proudly to church and paid no notice of anyone but her, in her good but practical denim skirt, her gentle milk white face, and the sterling silver owl she wore everywhere. We did not bother trying to understand the sermon. This was her department: Mother was in charge of God.

I admit I don’t know exactly what happened. There was an extraordinary amount of tumult at church to which Mother was somehow connected. For example, the very nice man who directed the choir, and the very nice man who played organ, suddenly moved in together and gave birth to a beautiful Vietnamese girl whom they named Claire, after our mother.

Other people were not so appreciative. Bible Study took a violent turn. The Lady Lamplighters turned militant, and the church as a whole seemed headed for schism. A big meeting was held in the high school auditorium where it was decided -- if I may summarize -- that the church must either reinvestigate its deeply held beliefs, question its assumptions, revamp its politics, rethink its role in the community, or kindly request that my mother choose some other denomination.

Thereafter my mother stayed home. One of the few times I saw her show irritation was when a visitor pressed her to explain exactly what had occurred.

“All I did,” she insisted “was ask a few very obvious questions.”

* My mother’s predilection for reality was not, alas, inherited by me. I take after my father.


GRANDMOTHER.

(from At Home With the Pumpkin King)

Suicide is a tradition in my family. Of course it is not required. Nonetheless we pretty much abide by it. My father’s mother killed herself on Leap Year Day. (We also possess a doomed fondness for theatrics.) Unfortunately she was caught in the Leap Year Effect, still little understood in 1964, and got persephone’d into the situation she’s in now, three-quarters dead, or nine months of the year. The other three months she spends with us.

March 1st she appears at the door, fresh from death, in her gray cloak smelling like the wet sheep of the afterlife, and her pockets full of candy skulls. My darlings, she says, and one by one picks us up and enfolds us in her cloak so that we will not be so afraid when death comes for us.

Grandmother seems very much to enjoy her time with us. All day she sits in the same corner, humming a song I can never remember when she’s not around.

My father remains formal; he’s never gotten used to having his mother around. The gunshot had seemed so irreparable. Now she only has a small scar on her temple, though she gets headaches sometimes and my mother makes chamomile tea. Apparently suicide is not something you just get over, especially not when it’s your own.

Grandmother doesn’t often speak about death. She spends enough time there as it is. Sometimes she admits it is dreary. Of course it is different for her--she’s still commuting. She’d like to move to a different neighborhood, but first she must finish here.

“There are things that need looking after,” she says and smiles upon her four grandsons: the one who cares only for books, the one who loves dirty pictures, the one who only does right and resents it, and the one who is always drunk, as she was, in her first life.

She admits she is not sure what comes after death. Death is all she’s seen so far. But nonetheless she expects we’ll visit her, not in the dreary suburb of death where she is now, but in the life after. “I intend to race camels,” she said. All of us laughed; she wasn’t kidding.

“You are so lovable,” she says “And at the same time full of poison.” She claps her hands. “Come sit with Granny, my dears. I am the anti-venom.”

To one grandson she says, “Forgive” and, to another “Buckle up!” How stern she looks when she orders me, “Do not remain on the periphery of life!”

There is no question that my drunk brother is her favorite. I remember him as he was then, a boy, his forest full of birds still visible, the forest he would clear-cut and then tar over.

In her chair in the corner, she holds him, rubs his back and coos to him until he begins quietly to vomit. In her white tea cup she catches this and cheerfully she drinks it.

My father leaves the room and all the grandsons cry and only my mother remains at the stove. My sad-eyed grandmother continues calmly to sip her teacup of vomited poison. The scar on her temple, her elderly throat, turn blue as a late summer evening.

She does not allow the cup to be pried from her hand. She says, “I am your granny from death, my dears, and this is what I am here for.”

HOUSEKEEPING.

(from At Home With the Pumpkin King)

Our farmhouse had a number of staircases, between three and five, and twelve rooms, or three times as many, depending on whether you were scouting beds for relatives, renting out, dusting, hunting for Easter eggs or searching for your car keys at the last possible moment.

The critic in the corner -- see him there, he holds his hand over his mouth because his breath is bad -- he says, “Here we are indulging in magical realism.”

Magical realism my ass*. Anyone who has ever tried to clean such a house will know that I am only telling the truth in the simplest way. And, if I am over-sensitive, it is only because this is how my excellent mother met her end -- at least I think she did -- cleaning this impossible house.

It it conceivable there may have been, in my mother’s vast and comprehensive sanity, a small gap marked ‘housekeeping’. She believed even lunch ought to be accompanied by appetizer and dessert; she regarded the accumulation of dust as a personal failure. She never once allowed herself beans from a can, a jar of sauerkraut.

‘She makes everything herself.’ we say, to praise our mother. But this is a sentence which ought to be reserved for goddesses. Instead we shackle mortal women with it. Little wonder they get tired.

Our mother moved endlessly through the house, sweeping, dusting, washing up, trying to reach every corner, trying to finish before it was time to begin again. A reasonable woman, she expected a reasonable house. But the house, please remember, was from my father’s side of the family and thus prone to fits and manias and, most of all, to frequent self-inflation. Just when she was catching up, the house would sprout another corner, another closet, or even an entire bathroom with a claw-foot tub and a toilet with a unique perspective on the Civil War.

When we got up, when we went to bed, Mother was cleaning, on her hands and knees, or up on a ladder, straining to reach into the corner and vanquish the last bit of dust. But, like a flock of pigeons, the dust only left one place to land on another, surrounding her always, an inch from the tip of her feather duster. I believe the dust loved her, in keeping with the habit it had learned when it was skin of ours.

Meanwhile the roof leaked, a little here and a little there; the horsehair beneath the carpets got wet and stank like a stable. Lustful knick-knacks fucked and gave birth. The pineapples she’d stenciled fell off the vine and rotted sweetly in corners. The daisies in her wallpaper all died.
To every setback she responded with more energy, more bleach, more lemon-scented polish. My father’s helpfulness can be predicted. One day he insisted the drawer went: forks, knives and spoons. The next day, as any idiot knows, it’s knives, forks and spoons. Most of the time he was the kind of guy who’d leave around coffee cans full of his urine but suddenly he’d want to know--why aren’t the spices alphabetized?

My mother remained proud throughout her battles with our mad implacable house, but perhaps the family madness touched her then, through the gap marked ‘housekeeping’. Who makes their own sauerkraut? What’s wrong with store-bought bread?

One night we arrived home to find a note on the table: Dinner in freezer. Scrubbing North Wing guest bath. Back later.

In the freezer our meals were neatly labeled. In the pantry were three pies: a pumpkin, a pecan, a cherry with a lattice crust.

I am ashamed to say we ate for nearly a week before Duncan asked, “What part is the North Wing anyway?”

Karl slammed his glass on the table. “Don’t you get it? She’s gone.”

Father said, “Your mother has never had a sense of direction. She doesn’t mean ‘North’, she means ‘South‘.”

First in teams, then one by one, we searched the house but none of us were able to find her. Really it is astonishing, it is astronomical, how many rooms a house has when your mother is gone.

At the base of the attic stairs we found her silver owl necklace, her wedding ring, a rag and a can of extra-strength Comet. We assumed she’d chosen to end her life and deposit her body in one of the trunks in the attic. A number of our ancestors have done this**.

We lived as best we could, our mad father and his four sons. We grieved and persevered and sometimes, without warning, one of us would stumble upon a room that was absolutely perfectly clean.

Duncan said, “It’s a big old house. Maybe we’re just missing her.” He was already drinking then or else he never would have said something so ludicrous.

Still, there were questions none of us were willing to ask as we sat together at the kitchen table, waiting for Father to scrape another omelet out of the pan. Not one of us, for example, ever asked, “If all of us are sitting here, who is moving furniture and slamming doors upstairs?” We did not question. We sat silently and we ate in tears.


* We ought to mount an anti-discrimination campaign, don’t you think, to call to task those for whom the world is flat and mute, who must therefore look enviously upon our world and call it “magical”. Imagine what we could accomplish, if every levitating aunt just once spoke up?

** This also explains why, despite many stated intentions, no one ever gets around to cleaning the attic.

BROTHERS.

(from At Home With the Pumpkin King)

Is it true other people have childhoods and then become different and are called adults? This progression was never observed in my family. Obviously my father was never an adult--unless the word be synonym for madness. By the age of 8, probably sooner, my brothers and I were pretty much as we are now--bookish, drunk, horny, resentful. The first grudge, beer, novel, dirty picture we recognized as if it were the 10,000th. We did not begin; we continued.

WHAT I MEAN.

(from At Home With the Pumpkin King)

Do you know? This thing. Waiting sometimes on the stairs, curled up in the mailbox, or in the eyes of strangers walking toward me. Mostly it’s inside which is, I suppose, why it’s so difficult. A constriction in the throat, an ache in the gut. The usual words: feeling, mood are hopelessly insufficient, even misleading. You might as well call the Emperor mister. Yes, and uranium’s that spunky stuff. This edgy anxiety underlying everything, yes, this anxious ineffable tortoise. For me, that tortoise is a dull gray cloud. At its very worst I can almost see it: it has rusty spots the color of dried blood and coils around my head like barbed wire.

The anxious ineffable tortoise, which is also an evil blood-stained cloud, has two voices. Both speak at once. An urgent whisper: something must be done, time’s running out, something must be done at once. The other voice pleads But what? But what? And never pauses for an answer to the question. Both voice hammer down at once, the panic and the confusion together. (The playing of two songs at once has been known to reduce me to hysteria.) The voices don’t stop, my gut turns to stone, my voice, if it can be heard at all, sounds like a castrato three hills away.

In the morning sometimes I am left alone, but in the afternoon it is almost always there, that demon tortoise, that cloud of panicked confusion. In the evening, well, there are books. There’s beer.

Do you know what I mean? You do, don’t you? Some people say they know, they had it once at 3am. Some people say, “You can get a prescription for that.” Some people say, “Everybody knows that.” Some people switch to another chair. Some people say they don’t know but from the way they clutch their G&T it’s obvious they do.

All four sons have got it, my brothers and I. Our father says it’s genetic. He says he got it from his mother and passed it down. My mother says “it’s always the obvious that nobody notices” and says we ought to get to know it.

We do not. What we have instead are strategies.

THE SAME WORD FOR PENIS AND PROBLEM.

(from At Home With the Pumpkin King)

About my brother Thom it is best to say as little as possible. Almost anything that can be said about Thom is obscene. And why talk about him, when he talks so much about himself? Oh no, my brother Thom is not shy, not even when we wish he would be, when anyone else would be at least discreet, but not our Thom, not even at the dinner table or near surveillance cameras, not on the Sabbath, not even on his dates in court.

No, Thom always has to pipe up and insist that the panicked tortoise does takes off, the anxious cloud evaporates, whenever he’s in the middle of an orgy.

Thom! Not any orgy, of course. It has to be first-rate, inclusive of all orifices, not neglecting the nipples, with him doing everything and everything being done to him, with no fewer than 5 people in all genders and everyone has to be hot or well-hung or there has to be something about them anyway--then, Thom says, that tortoise entirely vanishes.

Such occasions are difficult to arrange. (Forgive me when I tell you things you already know.) There are complications always. Conservative wives come home early. No, no, that’s not lubricant, that’s mousse! Gunshots are fired. Someone shouts Ride ‘em cowboy! and so-and-so, you know, cannot stop giggling. And what’s the chance a number of cocks will perform as required at once? Still, Thom swears it has been known to happen, that perfect orgy, and he swears that he was happy, then.

In between perfect orgies, Thom spends three to five years in chat-rooms, dead bored and buried in self-disgust, exaggerating the size of his prick by two inches at least.

I am sorry if I have said too much. My propriety’s been blasted by living too long with Thom. Our appalling Thom: obscenity for all occasions. I myself am perverse only by association.
Of course I have penis problems of my own. (Somewhere--don’t you think--there’s got to be a culture that uses one same word for penis and for problem.) Unlike Thom, whose penis only garners fines, doctor’s appointments and internet appearances, my penis makes me money. My penis has made me a rich man. Yes, I am living the American Dream.

Not the old American Dream. The new one.

I wanted to be a success. Of course I did. I wanted to strive, to achieve. Then I discovered I’d have to work. Forty hours a week or more. Which seems excessive. And wasteful. Is life so long that we can afford to spend so much time working? Especially those of us who like to read.
My life was over, I thought. No chance for it--I had to work. Then opportunity knocked. I needed a new doorknob, so I went to the local home goods store, which of course was bigger than Greenland on an old map. And I was trying to choose the best doorknob. Of the thirty-nine available doorknobs. I was tired and distracted. What do I know about doorknobs? What in my life has prepared me for choices of this magnitude?

It was then that I was visited by a very American miracle.

A miracle which was the marvelous and improbable conjunction of the stars above and certain events down below: a superstore, a speeding forklift, a selection of doorknobs, a clerk on Ativan, and tired, distracted, near-sighted me.

I went into HomePlus with five dollars. After seven weeks in the hospital I came out with a slight but persistent limp and a penis that does function, no matter how odd it looks, and 1.75 million dollars to support myself in idleness and non-achievement. America! Never mind blindness and amputation: there’s no jury in America that won’t approve a million dollars extra for a penis injury.

You may want to keep this in mind.

As I was saying, we all have our strategies. Let’s continue this discussion and I promise I won’t mention penises again for several pages.

SON OF THE PUMPKIN KING.

(from At Home With the Pumpkin King)

Of the four brothers, only Karl took self-restraint as a serious option. (When the rest of us appeared restrained, we were just storing up.) Karl breathed deeply until the urge to do that thing passed, and calm was restored--or the next mad urge arrived. We heard him in the corner sometimes, breathing like a horse.

When dull anxiety arrived Karl didn’t drink or jack off. He didn’t even read tales of the Arctic. He just stayed there, remaining alert and uncomfortable, like a 12 hour guard at a summer festival in a polyester faux-fur gorilla suit. Incredible. Herculean, even. Naturally he was somewhat irritable. At night he wore teeth guards. His neck was not something he used. Anyone could see he was thinking, “I’m going to sit right here until the urge to do that thing passes.” And it did pass. But mostly it stayed.

* * *

Karl was actually Karl Jr., which is another thing which ought to be illegal. Everyone ought to receive a name of their own to use, to burnish or to soil, as they choose. Whereas Karl got a name our father was already using. Our father who had zero concept of sharing. No wonder they did not get along, those two big men with the same small name.

* * *

Karl’s voice was always kind and always soft, but the way he looked at me always made me feel like I reminded him of something terrible which, try as he might, he just couldn’t forget.

Karl never did anything wrong, as far as I know. He might even have been a saint, if a new variety of saint could be minted, one with zero forgiveness.

I make him sound harsh. He did not mean to be. I suspect he was incapable of forgetting. His mind was like exceptional historical mud, which is found to carry the imprint of a woman fleeing, three-point-two million years ago and even her panic remains visible there, on the in-step. Likewise Karl could not forget the chocolate I refused to share with him but then left to mold, or Duncan’s attempt at hard cider which ended in such a comprehensive and sticky explosion, or Thom’s theft and humiliating exhibition of Karl’s entire soft porn collection, which really was downright virtuous, at least compared to what the rest of us were looking at. All this along with a lifetime’s worth of snide remarks, small incidents, hurts intended or un--, embarrassments, humiliations.

Still, none of these harms compared to the damage done by Karl’s principal madness, his crucial mistake: Father was real to him. The rest of us dismissed Father as mad and paid little notice of his manias and petty rages. Karl, however, was unable to do this: Father must be proven wrong, Father must be confronted, Father must be obeyed. Karl thus charted his days by the ever-shifting map of our father’s madness.

Father thought Karl ought to go to school for computers, that was where the money was. And Karl should improve his posture. And show more respect and more independence. And be more spontaneous!

Then, with the rest of us, Karl would discuss--was Father right or wrong, should he obey or disobey, or would it be better to compromise? But Karl never seemed to understand that Father was a loony as a cuckoo bird.

Needless to say, Karl’s respect and concern made Father drastically worse. He seldom had a good word to say about poor Karl, his troubled son. The rest of us generally spoke to Father as if he were a Black Labrador Retriever. We were kind but firm and when he was causing a problem we put him outside. Thom, especially, was not above swatting Father with a newspaper when he got out of hand and seemed liable to soil the furniture. Father respected this and ceased to criticize us: even our court dates were only evidence of ’high-spiritedness’. But Karl, who gave importance to our father’s every word, Karl was really a problem.

Father decided that Karl was uppity, going to school for computers. What was wrong with working with working on a pumpkin farm? Did he look down on his father’s honest labor, the sweat of his brow? Father thought Karl ought to quit school and come to work on the farm.
And Karl agreed, which caused even our placid Mother to turn pale.

Pumpkin farming is of course an outrageous bit of larceny which makes even Christmas tree plantations seem honorable in comparison. Untold numbers of city people are conned into believing that, because it is a holiday, it is reasonable to pay thirty-five dollars for a squash. The scribes of ancient scriptures would have added it to the list of prohibited occupations had they but known: the whores, the usurers, the arms-dealers, the pumpkin farmers.

Our father of course thought nothing in the world was finer than being a pumpkin farmer. Also, it was quite a low-impact profession. He paid high school boys to hoe; in the Fall he sat behind the money box.

Not that Karl could take it easy, oh no, Karl must make an effort. Suddenly the pumpkin flowers could not be pollinated without Karl’s help and every sprig of ragweed was a reflection of his bad attitude. Soon Karl was spending all day out in the field, twisting the pumpkins on their vines, making sure they ’ripened equally on both sides’. He seemed to believe it was all some rite of passage, after which he would, once and for all, gain Father’s respect.

Karl was so earnest and so easily hurt. We did not know how to tell him that, yes, it was a rite of passage, but only to being a loony cuckoo-bird.

The Blue Hubbard acquired a scaly fungus, the acorn squash grew lopsided. The pumpkins, unaccustomed to so much attention, became self-conscious, started making mistakes.

One brilliant afternoon in the Fall, we heard shouting and found Karl and Father in Field #3, heaving pumpkins at each other, the small sweet ones which are so good for pie. Pumpkin guts were everywhere and the air was full of the smell of freshly cracked pumpkin, which is so shamefully intimate.

Karl and Father declared they could not work together, which was the first sane thing we’d heard out of either one of them for months. Our mother gathered up the shards of busted pumpkin, skinned them, boiled them down. Karl moved out, then back in, then out again, as all of us did, continually, for so many years. Karl arrived for holidays on time, he brought flowers or wine, he never raised his voice, but we could see from how he looked at us that he had not forgotten, and that he did not forgive us, not for anything.

Monday, June 16, 2008

Carrying Capacity (Song)

Other people can hold a two-ton truck full of the world, or at least fill the back of their pick-up full. Many could astound a waitress, balancing six plates full of the world. Even those who are not so graceful can manage a backpack full, a basket. Me, I hold out my cupped hands and already I am overwhelmed, must rush back to my silent room. How it is I can hold so little and love so much?

Saturday, June 07, 2008

Holy Books of Guttersnipe Das: Bruno Schulz

Bruno Schulz,
The Street of Crocodiles and Other Stories,
Translated by Celina Wieniewska, Penguin reprint, 2008

If I could cancel one murder and save one life from history, I'd save Bruno Schulz, killed by the Nazis in 1942. If I could save one lost book, I'd save Schulz's Messiah. I can't. At least there is this book of treasures, Schulz's collected works. Actually, two books are included here: Street of Crocodiles and Sanatorium Under the Sign of The Hourglass.


The first, Schulz's masterpiece, is only 100 pages long. I could never choose a favorite book, but this is the one I reread most often. Any attempt by me to descibe its contents is a mockery. Reading it is like peering into a strange, dark painting: a mad father, a bewitching sister, a dark corner where something never before seen grows (almost) to life. This book may only take you a day to read but I promise you it will be a illumined and unforgettable day.


Sanatorium, which I think was written earlier, seems in part a workshop for what Crocodiles would become, but this is appropriate for Schulz: he is the master of describing life half-created: the life of mannequins, mad relatives, stuffed birds.


My only practical advice is: allow yourself to skim the surreal novella "Spring" if you get bogged down in it the first time you try. Just make sure you don't miss the rest of the stories!


There is nothing else like this book--and this one book is all there is. I envy anyone reading it for the first time.

Friday, June 06, 2008

Annual Genitals



As per your request, the instructions:

On January 1st you arrive in a new world with new genitals and a year to figure out what to do with them. (And what not to do, though this is less crucial.) Sometimes just finding your genitals is a hassle. And there it was, on your head, all along. What you mistook for an ear!

Other genitals must be strapped down, especially when driving. Or pruned vigorously.
Then you must find your partner’s genitals, also orifices, which may or may not be like your own, and find artful and absurd ways to jam them together.

Be mindful--a year is all you have. Expect ridiculous contortions. And taboos. Like the time you shook hands at an interview and were immediately arrested. Like having to wear a hat down there.

You may find in yourself a new sympathy for the fumbling of adolescents, for the jealousy of elms. You may be frustrated for months until the day you turn on the vacuum cleaner and are catapulted at once into ecstasy.

Sudden growths, sudden shrinkages. Odd liquids. I’m afraid there will be no further instructions, no helpful charts of the slots, tabs and protuberances. Remember, this is supposed to be fun.

Meanwhile, also, you’ve arrived in an entirely new world. But never mind--you have genitals to discover!

Thursday, June 05, 2008

Y2K

One of my good friends (he doesn’t exist) is an expert on Y2K. He knows everything about the disaster which did not happen. He worries about it all the time. It might still happen. Which reminds me of my friends (real this time) who worry they might still seroconvert because of sex they had years ago. This is true 21st century luxury living--to take refuge in the disasters which did not happen and ignore those umpteen and imminent.

History Can Happen To You

Monica says, “You think it’s easy to live with so much history? When they removed the cobblestones of Piazza Signoria they found an entirely new city. For three years they blocked it off while they decided what to do. Finally they covered it up again. Too much trouble.

“But history is something that can happen to a person. My house was being built and I got a call: there was a problem. What now? I said. They’d found an Etruscan kiln beneath my house. Enormous thing. For three months I had men digging in my backyard with tiny spoons. They want to cover my backyard in plexiglass, light it up from beneath and give tours. I’d make a lot of money. Of course the government will never get around to it.

“Still, when I park my bicycle I like to think of what is under there. I’d like to be able to see it. I would have the most wonderful parties, looking down at the ancient times in my backyard.

“On the last day two hundred people came and sat in my back yard. I sat in my upstairs window watching them. Very nice, I thought. But give me back my house.

“Of course they made a book about it, the history I’m living with. Then they came and covered it back up with dirt. Now I get special tax breaks and in return I must plant no trees. Small plants only, nothing with roots.”

Honors

When I struggle with the gorgeous and disgruntled citizens of Firenze, I remind myself: these people are descendants of the people who drove out Dante! It is an honor to be here. I stand absolutely no chance.

Friday, May 30, 2008

Or So We Are Hoping:

“God chooses what human nature discards and human prudence neglects, out of which he works his wonders and reveals himself to all souls who believe that is where they will find him.”

Fr. Jean-Pierre de Caussade
Abandonment to Divine Providence

Finally I Had It All Worked Out

On the first day at the monastery in Taize, Brother Pedro explained the book of Genesis. He told us all about the irony of creation, about God’s irony, about our participation in that irony. Wow, I thought, maybe I can relate to Christianity after all. I have often thought that God must have a wicked sense of irony. Brother Pedro explained that we just needed to find our place in God’s irony. Sitting there on my folding metal chair, I thought I had a whole worldview pretty well worked out.

Then I realized that Brother Pedro was from Madrid and what he was saying was harmony. He was talking all about God’s harmony, of which there are not so many examples, it seems to me, as of God’s irony.

Thank You

For about an hour after talking to you, I am suspended in a very unusual cloud: a cumulonimbus of good choices. In that hour, I run around and try to make as many good choices as I can, tie things down, tape the windows, before the thunderheads move in, before the crazy people come back.

Wednesday, May 28, 2008

“As for Dante, there is not a single fact of human experience, from the lowly to the sublime, that cannot find a place in his Comedy.” (xxvi, Esolen, Inferno)

Forest Ranger

A man in Cairo calls Tokyo for phone sex.

“Hey, is this Ben? We’re out deep in the forest, Ben.”

Way out in the woods. Miles from anyone.”

“Heavy underbrush, briars, just a narrow path tickling its way through.”

“There’s a stream we hear. And birds.”

“A little breeze but still too hot to wear a shirt.”

And so on from these civilized and stranded boys, who, before even imaginary fucks, must first resume the world, return the green, a stream where they can tug off their pants and swim. A whole forest, restored, before one can snarl,

“I’m the forest ranger and you, mister, have pitched a tent with no permit.”

T-Shirt

Some days I am supposed to be sturdy I find that there is almost nothing to me. Recognizably male but inexcusably flimsy, like the cheap undershirts my father used to wear until they were translucent, which one day tore like an omelet.

Other people, meanwhile, are so much there.

Owls

Have I mentioned someone is here with me? My husband.

Anyone who reads those words must necessarily feel a pang of sympathy for him. Poverino!

Certainly he is first-rate, has chosen me the way my brother used to rescue baby owls and attempt to nurse them back to health in a cardboard box.

A hopeless endeavor, but still admirable, don’t you think?

Loons

It is suspicious, I admit, the pleasure I felt when I broke the news to him that loons do not in fact mate for life. It’s true that the two same loons are often seen together but--DNA testing proves--that loyal bird is not the father. The loons have been sleeping around.

“Don’t think that proves anything,” he says. And so I sit loyally at home tonight, adopting the faithful guise of loons.

Comedy, Translated and Defined

On page 167 of his translation of Inferno, Anthony Esolen gives the following definition: “A comedy is a song written in the humble style wherein the main character begins in grief and trouble and ends in happiness.”

Wonderful, isn’t it? Who wouldn’t wish to be scooped up in such a Commedia?

But this Esolen, though he aims to be helpful, can be both pushy and pious. I had a boyfriend once just like him. This boyfriend used to get me in the car and start playing cassettes of motivational speakers. At certain points, he’d pause the tape and say, “See? See? That’s what you’re doing wrong.”

This is exactly how Esolen uses his commentaries on Dante. Everything Dante says he uses for some heavy-handed moral point he wants to make.

On the other hand, it seems very appropriate to argue over Dante, who was, after all, the world’s most artful picker of fights. Not once in the one hundred cantos of his Commedia does he say “Why can’t we just get along?”

There’s something to be said for an argumentative version. So I read Mandelbaum for beauty, Hollander for the notes, and Esolen for arguments.

Monday, May 26, 2008

Brain Surgery

Last night a man questioned me about the odd bald patches on back of my head. Very gently he asked, “Did you have some sort of operation?”

I told him the truth--what a missed opportunity! Henceforth, I will lie. I will quietly and matter-of-factly admit that I have had Major Invasive Brain Surgery. (How large should I say the tumor was? Enormous, undoubtedly. Biggest they ever saw!)

And, when I have stepped from the room, one person will say to another, “Now I understand completely.” “Me, too,” says the other. “Sure he’s odd, but give him a break. He’s had Major Invasive Brain Surgery!"

Everyone will be relieved. Especially me. At last I make total sense.

Sunday, May 25, 2008

Beginning (Standard)

I wanted to write an advice column. But then I thought: there is nothing I do well.

I do dumb things. At dumb things I am quite good. You could even say I am a master. As far as foolishness goes.

And, as perhaps you have already discovered, sometimes foolishness can go very far indeed.

Saturday, May 24, 2008

Beginning (Devotional)

Oh Bhagavan, oh beginning-less and endless Paramapujimapa. Many respectful pranams, candles, clouds of smoke, cookies in crinkly packages, piles of oranges, et cetera.

Gentle reader: on this path there is no error into which this devotee dog has not fallen, no ditch of iniquity unvisited, no spot of shine untarnished.

Nevertheless this worthless das, this miserable slave, has, by the abiding grace of the Mother In Charge of the Universe, been suffered to persist!

Therefore, oh earnest seeker, oh venerable sister, oh brother, I will speak as I can of the tangles and the briars on this path, that there might be fewer thorns to pierce your beautiful feet.

Friday, May 23, 2008

Welcome to Firenze

From the outside it looks small, one room, postcards and olive oil, but from the back another room extends, canned goods mostly, frozen fish. From there a corridor, portraits showing hairstyles which may be available and then more rooms: party supplies, keys and shoe repair, erotic novelties, live fish.

What sort of shop is this anyway? What did the sign say? A little courtyard with overgrown roses leads to a very narrow corridor. A man coming the other way mutters, shoves past scowling. Maybe you shouldn’t be here at all.

When the next man comes you make yourself as small as you can. He winks and grins so gorgeously, so lasciviously, you just about lose consciousness.

What kind of place is this anyway? Do you need a ticket, a hard hat, a condom? One room leads inexorably, improbably, to the next. What was it you were looking for? Meanwhile, here is another room --

Thursday, May 22, 2008

Monica Hates Giotto

“I hate Giotto,” says Monica, when we are alone in her shop. “You’re not supposed to say that. And I know he changed everything, perspective, et cetera--but I hate him. I had him for nine months in high school. Do you have any idea how hard it is to be an Italian high school student? History! Two thousand five hundred years of history--though of course of modern times nothing is said. Twice a day at least they must tell you that the best times were seven hundred years before you were born. If you are unlucky you get a teacher who wants to do a whole year of Dante. Not just six months--a year. Or Leopardi, the most depressing writer ever. I know you say you like these things--but imagine you are in high school. Imagine it is Spring!

"Your teacher announces, ‘And now we will study Giaccomo Leopardi’ and you think, ‘That is it. I am going to kill him.’

"As for me, I keep my own opinions. Of course I sell whatever calendars but if the customer asks me a question I am like, ‘Giotto, who?’"

Wednesday, May 21, 2008

# ?

OK, I am 35 and here is Italy and this is -- what, life number five?

Tuesday, April 01, 2008

Swish

Recently, God spoke to me again.

(You've got to give God credit: she really does her level-best to make things simple for me.)

"Do you work," God said "And don't swallow poison."

To which I replied, "Of course I won't swallow it. But is it okay if I swish it around in my mouth?"

Friday, March 21, 2008

The small demon who commands me to write essays has become increasingly difficult to manage.

Therefore, it is no longer possible to type up what I write each day.

Please stay tuned in the next few weeks for at least four more essays: "Evaporative Acts", "Compassion Runs Amok", "Hunger Looks So Fun, At First" and "How to Live a Life of Vice", as well as revised versions of the essays already here.

Why am I writing all this? The little demon refuses to say why. Thank you for your patience and please stay tuned.

Tuesday, March 11, 2008

Tokyo gone, the glass doors open to Bangkok and I feel at once the world rush to comfort me--heavy midnight air, bottle of Tiger, bored waiter, Chinese broccoli with preserved pork, boy security--all assurances that life persists, real touch look life, persists, persisted even while I was away in Tokyo.

Tuesday, February 26, 2008

Holy Books of Guttersnipe Das

Michel de Montaigne, The Complete Works

Six months ago, I got into the habit of losing my mind. No day passed without some evidence of madness: depression, compulsion, mania, panic. Nothing helped--least of all the gray city where I live. One morning while reading this book, I felt my mind click back into place and I knew I would be all right. Since then, the Essays have been, for me, a touchstone of sanity. There is something about their boundaryless curiosity, their open admission of human frailty and mess, that pulls me back every time. It's a book of ideas that never forgets about blood, sweat and semen. Every day I sit with it there is some useful treasure. Today I was grateful to be reminded, "It is not victory if it does not end the war."

Or how about: "No quality embraces us purely and universally. If it did not seem crazy to talk to oneself, there is not a day I would not be heard growling at myself, 'Confounded fool!' And yet I do not intend for that to be my definition."

I distrust Montaigne's opinions on women and God--but to be right about mankind and life on Earth is a lot. As heavy as it is, this big book is always in my bag. Spend some time with it--it will help you stay sane.

Tuesday, February 19, 2008



Family Travel 12, illustration by Akemi Shinohara

Read Family Travel

(please click to the second page and begin with Family Travel / 1)

Willow: a small true story

When he was fourteeen he went skinny-dipping at the farm pond, guarded by an enormous willow tree, whose delicate green branches reached almost to the surface of water which was as warm and dark as coffee.

As warm as the water was on top, his feet kicked up a chill, which rose to nuzzle him under the balls and, though he liked to be naked in the water more than anything, he always kept moving and thrashing for fear a small mouth bass might dart up and nip the tip of his dick off.

Better to be careful. So he swam on his back and admired the tree. The willow, he was convinced, was an extremely important personage. In charge of the farm at least and possibly much of the state of New Hampshire. The willow told him its secret name. And, unlike a ruling man, the willow was generous and never in a hurry.

He believed this the way fourteen year old American boys believe, in a small room in their brains, a small room surrounded by scorn, but in that small room still believing.

Eventually the boy tugged his pants on, grew a beard, and became disappointed. The willow, meanwhile, became increasingly active and involved on the local level, hosting barbecues and church events, presiding over the ceremonies of Eagle Scouts.

The young man worked in cities where he could step outside and not see a single thing that was green or alive and the only thing not covered in cement was the Moon.

The young man was careful: he thought, contemplated, considered, weighed all the options, and over and over again, he chose wrong.

The willow began to officiate at weddings. Meetings were held beneath the tree and it was often on the news, shown with local and state politicians and dignitaries. Sometimes, at home in his gray city, the young man even caught the willow on TV. As the tallest member of the assembled party, the tree stood in back but there was no question that it was the power in charge, with its dark curving trunk and its sensitive leaves.

The young man was cautious and reasonable. He did what he thought he was supposed to do. He did not distinguish himself or destroy himself. He did not become happy.

He was stunned the day a flyer reached him in the mail, showing the willow tree and a certain junior senator who was running for president and might, to everyone’s astonishment, actually win.

The photo, he supposed, was a sort of endorsement, on the force of which this young senator might attain the presidency.

In his gray city the man who was no longer young understood. He’d been careful and still he’d been wrong. He had been a reasonable man: he moved cautiously from one disappointment to the next.

He was wrong about everything, he saw now, except for his most childish, absurd, and ridiculous notions, none of which would ever do him any good, but which had turned out, in some astonishing way, to be absolutely correct.

Friday, February 15, 2008

Owl.

The Prizes for Turning 100


Within the 23 wards of Tokyo, a small prize is offered to residents aged 100. Of course this is not such an uncommon occurrence anymore, and so there is a system, a pre-printed letter and full-color pamphlet mailed to residents aged 99.

Residents aged 99 may choose from the following:
a) a gold vest
b) a gold cushion
c) a vase
d) a statue of an owl

Nanako admitted that her mother didn’t really like any of the choices but, since there wasn’t a box for saying ‘I am 99 and have all the presents I need, thank you’, both mother and daughter considered that a vase was the least of evils.

(To tell the truth, Nanako’s mother did express some curiosity about the owl statue, but acquiesced readily enough when Nanako gently directed her otherwise.)

Unfortunately, Nanako’s mother died shortly thereafter, a few months shy of her 100th birthday. Nanako wondered if she ought to write to the city, but never got around to it.

Nonetheless, she soon received a letter from the municipal offices informing her that the city had learned of her mother’s death (and therefore sent its most heartfelt condolences in this time of grief) and notice that the prize must, regrettably, be cancelled.

Sorry, no vase. The city, the letter admitted, could not afford to send prizes to survivors of residents aged only 99 and a half.