Karmagument

KARMAGUMENT

This is what happens when I get drunk. I mean direly and exquisitely drunk and I am walking home alone after the bars close, along Broadway, left turn at 8th Avenue, and across the long bridge that swoops over the railroad tracks and above the former offices of Sears. Most people don’t like that bridge, it’s too long, too deserted, and the bicyclists will kill you, it’s true, because no one expects someone to be walking, not in the middle of nowhere, not at 3a.m., but I love that bridge and it seems to me that it goes clear across the sky. What do I do when I am walking home drunk across the sky? I argue with karma. Not with a person, not with a god. I argue with the law, with the law to end all laws. Sure, it’s a mad thing to do. But, you know how it is. Must be the liquor gets my courage up. I really let the law of karma have it. Blam! I don’t stop until karma’s shaking in its boots. I announce to the air, to the moon, to the street, to the bridge, that I am entirely FED UP with anyone getting what they deserve. Whamo! Which, as you no doubt have noticed, is not even what happens. Who gets what they deserve? When did you last see a elementary school teacher ascend into Heaven? When did you see a PR man for Big Oil disappear in a flash into a fiery pit? At best you receive a voucher good for justice in the invisible world, or so we are told. Why are you getting your ass kicked now? Because you fucked up big-time in Mesopotamia. Like that lesson is going to do you any good. Like you’re going to learn anything from that. It’s all about as useful as kicking the cat for shitting in the fireplace last week. Ka-POW! I’ve got the shit scared out of karma now! I throw a few punches in the air, just for good measure. I am walking home after six drinks with the outlaws and I am ready to award the outlaws everything. For a lifetime of bad behavior, mister, for sexy drunken lawlessness, here is your home beside the golf course, radiant good health, and an insatiable poolboy. In every desperate moment of my life, who has been there for me? The outlaws, always the outlaws. Blessed be the outlaws. You will know that I have been put in charge of the universe when aged hustlers receive better benefits than former members of Congress. Make no mistake. I got a serious chip on my shoulder. I’m a man with a venomous grudge. (Don’t blame the liquor for this, please. I’m just as pissed when I’m sober. The liquor simply augments my dazzling eloquence.) I am opposed, officially and on principle, to Respectable People whom I have throughout my life found to be reliably reprehensible and, above all, useless. It has been one of the largest and most unexpected lessons of my life, the reliable awfulness of Respectable People. Blindness you can count on. If you define respectable as an adjective meaning useless in emergencies, you will never be disappointed. Oh but they give money! Yes, as a means of not dirtying their hands. Don’t ask me to kiss their asses for it. Respectable People are above all fastidious. They are fastidious and they are busy. They are so very busy. They are busy because they are tremendously important. Too busy to dirty their hands! Busy, busy, busy believing in a fair, clean, decent profitable world, the primary function of which is to keep them comfortable and to tell them, over and over again, what decent and upstanding, nice, nice, nice people they are. Do you imagine you could actually interfere with that? With the messy details of your actual life? Go ahead and try! Whereas your friend of a certain age, with bottle red hair, too many bad lovers and too many cheap drinks, will prove a hundred times more helpful when trouble shows up. She knows trouble, oh yes she does. As opposed to the well-to-do Protestants, who are busy all the time pretending there’s no shit and no fan. Karma quivering in terror, drops the calculator and flees, spreadsheets fluttering out behind. A stampede of Respectable People follows, muttering to themselves what nice nice people they are. The outlaws whistle cheerfully in their wake and go are collecting piles of luxury cosmetics and department store charge cards. The vast majority of what gets called virtue is actually a simple lack of opportunity, initiative and imagination. I hereby command that we stop calling good what is only habitual and safe. What are Respectable People actually doing? They are gnawing their way through everything. They ought not be rich Presbyterians and luxury Buddhists. If they really prize honesty above all, as they are forever saying they do, they ought to worship the termites and the locusts. It’s a wonder the bridge doesn’t fall down, I’m telling you! Because I am mighty impressive when I get going on karma. I’m in tip-top form. I’m downright inspired and with good reason: it’s been quite a night at the bar, a tip-top night, which doesn’t mean the liquor was top-shelf. It certainly wasn’t. Why do people go to respectable bars? Respectable is something I can do on my own, alone, at home. Swooping upon me and my dollar beer, here is Jim, father of four, five foot six but don’t mess with him. Jim delivers a high-speed lecture on race that culminates in a surprise invitation. Turning around, he drops his pants and shows me his round smooth black ass, which even non-mystics would recognize at once as divine. Here, too, is Brian, a day laborer: he's willing to love me but warns he will need 48 hours to get hard. Brian is very drunk but obviously grasps the current situation better than I do. To Jim he announces, “Baby, I would rob a bank for you.” Dana’s a lesbian skinhead and the first thing she does, when she finds me in the corner reading Chinese Zen scriptures from the 11th century, is buy me another cocktail. Then she buys herself one. Then she goes to the toilet to throw up. Was that cocktail tallied? The one she bought me? Will she receive full credit for it? I want that karma to ripen now. Lesbian angels and an Alka-Selzer for Dana and now, in this life. Out of nowhere, Tracy the aesthetician says, “If you keep this in your pocket, it will help your sadness go away.” And she hands me a stone she says was called an Apache’s tear. I’d never met her before. She said she worked in Hollywood but it was making her crazy. Tact seized me in the nick of time and I didn’t ask her if she’d been doing porn. I’m not making any of this up. I got the rock right here, you want to see it? Don’t wait up for some Lutheran to give you a rock! Respectable People spend their evenings tallying reason why they mustn’t become involved. Tracy sees the sadness and right away she’s got a rock for it. Tracy’s 34 and she looks 17. Listen up karma, I want that beauty to go right on. This woman gave me a rock. I know I’m not the first to mention this but, it’s not justice if you have to wait for it, like a bus at the curb or a check in the mail. Tomorrow I will be someone else and so will Tracy. Ever notice how the people giving to the homeless are almost always the people who know they could be homeless next week? The Respectable People don’t give, or they give but look away, or they say, Oh he will just spend it on liquor! Karmically speaking, shouldn’t every bottle of chardonnay in the Respectable People’s homes spontaneously explode at that moment? I demand those bottles explode. BOOM! Bang! Ka-POW! Karma do your goddamned job. Be inexorable already, like you’re all the time boasting you are. Here and now where we can see it. If not, we’ve got Grace waiting in the wings. Grace is ready to take over at any time. I hereby command the chardonnay of Respectable People to explode! If that doesn’t work, I'm happy to smash those bottles myself. More than happy.   

Right Under Their Noses

Right Under Their Noses

Way up on Colfax after a night at the baths, the bus won’t come.  I watch a very large black woman in sweatpants, her hair in a scarf, cross the street at the light and meet a young black man on a bicycle.  Off they go on a side street and eight minutes later they’re back.  If I could, just once in my life, leave the baths at a decent hour, there are regular buses and I wouldn’t have to wait around forever, staring down an empty Colfax, hoping the lights in the distance are the lights that I need.  

The young man on the bicycle pedals off past me now, muttering under his breath, high in one way or another.  The woman walks very slowly up to the bench where I’m sitting.  She’s got a bit of a saunter, a bit of a limp.  When she gets to the bench she lets herself down slowly and says to me, “Can I ask you a question and you are going to be brutally honest with me?”

“Yes, ma’am,” I say.

“Do you think, if I go back home and change clothes and put down my long pretty hair that I can still go and sell it downtown?”

“With a spirit like yours?  I reckon you’re unstoppable.”  This isn’t sarcasm.  I’m earnest.  I’m so earnest people think I’m sarcastic, but I’m actually not.  Then I explain that maybe my opinion isn’t worth much, since I am not within the target audience.

She vetoes that idea immediately.  “Oh, no.  You are exactly who I want to talk to.  Someone with style.”  Then she decides that, even though she is still hot enough, she’s still going to stay where she’s at, this stretch between Monaco and the liquor store, because she likes it here.

“I love Colfax,” she says.  “I had my heyday on Colfax.  But that was maybe twenty years ago now.”

“Exactly the same as me!” I say.  Now we acknowledge each other as close personal friends.  Our heyday may have been twenty years ago, but we still got it, you bet your socks we do.

Her name is Jessica and she works this stretch of road most nights, little quiet but she likes it, doesn’t want all the circus and competition of being out on Havana.  She’s been on a bender real bad, gained a hundred pounds, she’s a mean bitch on gin and she doesn’t claim otherwise.

Tonight hasn’t been a good night but usually she does well.  “And the kids like me!  Twenny, twenny five.  They like thick girls.  They high on somethin’, they want mamma to comfort them and then some.”

One problem she has is that, while she has plenty of customers, her customers don’t have near enough money.  “They can pay with drugs, but I need some bread besides.  Always a little bread.  Gin’s still the best thing for me and gin costs bread.”

I say, “Excuse me, can I ask a personal question?”  She says I can.

“What do you do with the guys who don’t have cars?  Like that guy just now on the bicycle.  Where do you go?”

Jessica says, “The thing is to do it right under their noses.  Don’t creep off and hide.  Cops come looking for you.  You do it right under their noses.  Right under their noses they don’t look!”

She points to the cars on the used car lot.  “See all them cars?  Not all of them is locked.  Easy to use.  A little danger makes the prick hard.  If they be quick about it, so much the better.”   

Jessica explains a bit of her philosophy.  “I make ‘em pay for everything.  These kids got money.  Why should I pay for the condom?  I had one man the other day, he had drugs in every pocket and so many hunnerd dollar bills I couldn’t count ‘em all.  And I know why he likes thick girls.  Man got a dick like a telephone pole.  ‘Course he want me to be impressed or something but surprise, surprise, what I like is normal.”  She points to a place at the top of her neck.  “This far is far enough.  It aint got to go no farther than that.”

By now we can finally see the bus in the distance, the lights that are finally the lights of the bus.  We swear eternal friendship, we promise each other that we still got it, how could anyone not love us, since we are so overwhelmingly lovable and hot besides?

The bus arrives.  I’m getting on.  She’s not.  “My name is Sarah,” she says.  And shakes my hand.

How to Ruin a Day

How to Ruin a Day


A ruined day’s a grueling march, a slog with glass in both feet, a torture I look back on and say, “Wait.  Today was actually fine.  No tragedies, no emergencies, not even any major hassles.  No lasting harm, no serious losses.  Even the weather was good.  No real trouble except that I had to keep poking the day with a stick, poking and poking till the day and I both bled.

A ruined day is not a bad day.  Bad days just happen, from time to time or very often, as you already know.  For example, if you find out your beloved aunt died a month before, but you didn’t matter enough for anyone to tell you, and now the only person around to comfort you is your estranged husband’s new boyfriend.  That is a bad day.

Bad days are fairly straight-forward.  Basically you just have to survive and avoid biting, screaming and crying, as well as suicide and homicide, life’s two great temptations.  A bad day is not your fault.  Grace is indicative of spiritual muscle, but even if you cuss and wail, nobody really blames you.

Whereas, a ruined day is a perfectly good day I went ahead and spoiled, spat on and stomped to death.  Because (for example) today was the day I decided to become successful -- spiritually, practically, and in bed.

Dammit, even after it was clear I’d never be a pragmatic winner, even after it was very obvious that I was toast of nothing, I had to keep hammering away at the “in bed” part.  I couldn’t have just gone to the Peach Festival.  I couldn’t have just watched the squirrels.  Oh, no -- I had to be a winner in, you know, all the ways I decided I had to be -- in a profoundly spiritual way, and also for the good of all mankind and also like a porn star, you know, overall.  Pope Francis with a ten inch penis and, if that wasn’t the way it worked out, well, I was going to war.

I ruined a day.  There was nothing wrong with the day, but I ruined it.  And I’m not even talking about an plodding, employed, citified, file-cabinet-kind-of-a-day, but a truly first-rate day -- with trees, squirrels, cats, cherry juice -- to say nothing of the Peach Festival, which I missed.  I could have just eaten peaches but, no, I had to be somebody,  and I had to be somebody today.

It’s a very terrible thing to ruin a day.  Like a dog it just looks back at you mournfully, as if to ask how you could ever possibly do such a thing to such a perfectly good dog of a day.  It’s inexcusable, it’s excruciating.  I mean, seriously, how many green-leafed, idle, pain-free, fully-abled days could possibly be left?  I ruined one.  I couldn’t let it be.  I had to make it something.  Like a parent who vetoes every outfit the kid wants to wear, until finally the kid bursts into tears and shouts, Never mind!  I’ll stay home!, goes into her room and slams the door so hard the whole house shakes.

It’s a terrible thing, to ruin a day.  I must learn to let the day be.

What Makes Use

What Makes Use

What interests me most is whatever it is that immediately sets about making use of everything.  That which uses everything, even shame.

If I had not been ashamed I would still have left the house in order. But, to be honest, if I hadn’t been acutely self-nauseated from three hours of porn the night previous, I would not have crawled beneath the counter to scrub the baseboards, nor washed the fire extinguisher, nor scoured the cats’ dishes -- and those things really did need to be done.

If I’d woken up clear-headed and on time, with a heart like a meadow instead of a swamp, what would I have done?  I might have written a real story, with setting and plot and (gasp) other people, all in the style of Raymond Carver, with nods toward the other men of my generation making strides in fiction, all of whom are also named Jonathan.

As a heart like a meadow wasn’t really an option, not this morning, not generally, the fire extinguisher was made immaculate.

I am a person who is interested in everything, not as everything, but only as one very small thing at a time.  And above all I am interested in what makes use of everything.  A kind of relentless undercurrent, all the time making use, making use.  I stop just shy of the word benevolent.  Because it appears to be beyond human scale, that all- the-time streaming attention, that which makes use.

If I can’t say what it is -- what’s it like?  Like an all-encompassing, stop-at-nothing version of those mad cooking shows people love nowadays.  Here is a persimmon, brown bread in a can, freshly chopped chives, cauliflower, white eggplant, cocoa powder, two Toulouse goose eggs, corn tortillas and an abundance of tripe.  Please create a family-friendly entree and appetizer!  You have use of a professional kitchen.  The lights are surgically bright.  The panel of experts will do nothing but gasp and wince at your every move.  You have twenty minutes!  Have a good time!  Everyone is waiting for something delicious.  (Everyone hates tripe.)

Here is a middle-aged man with one leg, promising (formerly) except that he chose (as most men choose) the wrong person to believe.  At ease in ten countries and at home in none, with three areas of education (all equally unprofitable) and three venues of toxic habit (all equally ruinous), few human connections, an unpleasant personality and bad teeth -- now please, get a life!

The light is bright, the clock ticking, the experts wincing.  It is reasonable, sensible and true to say, “There is nothing that can be done with persimmons and tripe”.  We can say that and we do say it.  We say it and say it.  We may even sit for awhile, immobile on the floor of the kitchen, glaring at the studio audience.  It’s UNFAIR.  What sadistic chef could have selected such preposterous and doomed ingredients?

And yet.  All the time beneath the refusal, mine and yours, something is setting out, getting to work, making use -- even as you issue a formal statement to say absolutely not, under no circumstances.  It is unstoppable.  Something is all the time making use.  Making use of everything and anything.  Even making use of you, you and your ludicrous circumstances.

Something is forever making use.  Collaborating instinctively with what is here.  The plane hits turbulence and the mother of four says, “Wheee!  A roller coaster!”  Poets in Portland write poems about rain.  Parents of direly ill children become instantaneous specialists.  Zucchini pickles.  Solar power.  Yet it is more than necessity, much more than common sense.  What is it that puts limitation to such good use, what puts misery to work?

This force is everywhere at work, though perhaps it is unusually apparent in my case, devoted as I am to making art which consists solely of Dumb Things I’ve Done Recently.  On the very off-chance there is ever a Selected Works, people will be able to pick it up, shake their heads in wonder and exclaim, And it’s all made of trash!

Sulphur-fuelled living fossils lurking in the deepest ocean trench, Russian thistle on the overpass, it’s non-stop inspired improv.  A force is relentlessly making use of me and all my nonsense, making use even of the addictions, the nightmares and waiting in line.  It is not at all clear when it is all being used for.  (Though I’m pretty clear it’s not a family-friendly entree.)

What makes use?  There’s a force, not exactly a force, a something, though of course it’s not actually a thing.  It’s not interested in my comfort, it’s sure as hell not interested in making me look good, though it’s certainly willing to string me along, even rescue me, from time to time, in ways that aren’t strictly speaking believable.  

Something is always plotting, even when it’s nuts, stupid, impossible, ridiculous or too late.  There’s no way to stop it because,  whatever you do, it makes use of it.  Like an incorrigible lech, trimming his toenails at the age of 99, noting that the lady across the hall isn’t half bad-looking, not for a centenarian.  

What is it?  What is all the time making use?  I can’t say what it is. I can say what it isn’t.  It’s not a Republican engineer all the time mining the resources.  It isn’t practical or pragmatic, it isn’t regimented or capitalist.  It isn’t prudent.  If anything it’s profligate, making use of everything all the time, betting on everything with everything, like a fish that lays a thousand eggs and not one survives, then the next moment comes, with another thousand eggs.

It’s quite crazed really, Kolkata at rush hour, the very definition of stopping at nothing, or, as my father-in-law would say, throwing money after nothing.  It’s useless, it’s pointless (or use and point cannot be found and held) it’s gorgeous (if you’re not wedded to the family-friendly entree) and it’s actually more than slightly exciting -- IF you can accept that you are not in charge and this ain’t gonna be your non-stop coronation, the rich Dutch ladies all appeased, the toxic cousins looking pleased.

And it’s not about being good.  (It’s not about being bad either.)  This ain’t the Pilgrim’s Progress.  Being good is often just an imposition.  (I’m going to make my life something my mother likes to eat!)  Being good with all its incessant lists.  “From now on I’m going to be good.  For breakfast, only juice, followed by cardio, selfless service at work, clean up the credit rating, orthodontia research, family time”.  It is no wonder really that one more or less immediately decides, “You know what would really make this juice delicious?  Vodka!”

As for the cooking show, I am tempted to put the chives on the eggplant and present the other items individually with simple condiments.  That’s not how it’s supposed to be, of course.  (What makes use is not what makes supposed to be.) 

Each item on small white plate.  How to disguise tripe?  I reckon you must let the tripe be the tripe.  The experts of course will disapprove.  That is their job.  But if you used nice plates, assorted drizzles and insisted, with your full authority, that it was all an example of French naturalism, I reckon you might get away with it.

You might get away with it.  You might not.  Whether you did or you didn’t, something would make use of the success or the failure, that which is all the time making use of lazy days and bad politicians, of eggplant and cocoa powder, of us.  

This moment’s predicament becomes the ingredient for whatever comes next, for that which is relentless and non-stop, neither benevolent nor heedless, neither pragmatic, infernal nor virtuous.  No time or chance for positive identifications of that which is all the time making use, making use, making use.

A Plea for "An Inagaki Taruho Reader".

Inagaki Taruho, One Thousand and One-Second Stories Translated by Tricia Vita Sun & Moon Press, 1998



This small and peculiar book has become very nearly legendary. The fact that no publisher has returned it to print is an on-going source of mystery and frustration to me. Inagaki Taruho’s One Thousand and One-Second Stories has become the 21st century version of Ted Berrigan’s Sonnets -- an out of print book everyone covets that nonetheless remains stubbornly out of print. My friends and I carry around faded, smudged, stapled copies of a copy -- how retro. (My friend who owns an actual physical copy won’t let me anywhere near it -- no doubt a prudent choice.) Here are tiny stories of fisticuffs with heavenly bodies, with shooting stars and a tricky fellow named Mr. Moon. As Taruho says, regarding an enchanted and explosive pack of cigarettes, “There’s no telling what’ll jump out or what its value is.” Published when Taruho was in his early twenties, these stories are a brilliant and playful response to, and extension of, Surrealism, dada, and early cinema. The stories are an absolute blast, with titles like, “On Being Shoved Down an Aqueduct”, or “Scuffling With a Shooting Star” or “Making Bread Out of Stars”. Full of comic book language (Pow! Bang! Flummp!) and sideways talk of gay bars, there’s just no book like this book. (In my heart of hearts, I imagine Taruho and Frank O’Hara getting along fabulously in Heaven...) I was introduced to this book in 2001 by a professor, when I was in graduate school and writing small odd queer stories of my own. I immediately adored it -- and found it was already unavailable. From what I understand, Sun & Moon Press ceased to exist very shortly after publishing it. I’ve spent the last dozen years searching out all the Taruho I could, a quest that led me to the beautiful and precise work of Jeffrey Angles, whose gorgeous translations of Taruho are scattered in literary magazines. I even met a Japanese jazz enthusiast who’d published a bootleg unauthorized version of a Taruho novella. On behalf of readers everywhere, especially those passionate about Japanese literature, queer writing and genre-busting work, I plead for ‘An Inagaki Taruho Reader’ -- a book which would return these stories to print, as well as the uncollected Angles translations and the (remarkably weird) novella. This work has found brilliant translators (with Angles in the lead), and ardent readers (must I handcuff myself to something?) Now: where is the publisher? May the necessary and joyful work of Inagaki Taruho at last be made available again for an English-speaking audience.

It was whispered that perhaps in the icy resplendence of the fading night we had met the followers of a moon that rendered everything luminous

Happy Birthday, Nicanor Parra!

Poems and Anti-Poems, in Honor of Parra

In honor of Nicanor Parra, the great anti-poet of Chile, celebrating his hundredth birthday on September 5, 2014.

The Power of Prayer

* * * chart of conversions * * *

One hundred people praying = One atheist sends an email
Two hundred fifty people praying = One atheist picks up the phone
Five hundred people praying = One atheist helps with the laundry
One thousand people praying = One atheist shows up with lunch




On Error

Kernel of the error: the conjunction of “my” and “life”.



Also, is there some sane reason why I should prefer the contents of my mind to whatever the cat is doing?




Heaven

Everyone says they want to help, but almost no one actually helps. Those who do help are virtually always women over the age of 45.

Yet never once have I seen an accurate depiction of Heaven, populated overwhelmingly by middle-aged women.




Wisdom in Three Parts

The first part of wisdom is to compose a list of idiots and resolve henceforth to ignore them.  Because the world includes a great number of ranting self-important fools who can be relied upon to be mortally offended every three days and useless in-between.

The second part of wisdom is to recognize that one is, oneself, a person on that list.

I don't know what the third part of wisdom is.




On Pain

Small small things don’t much mind pain.  No chatter, no crusade.  I know from my life as a pebble.  And still more from my time as the Hindenberg.

Dodge consolations.  The pain has a lot to say.  Happily, almost none of it is about pain.




On Track

The right track and the wrong track are not in different directions.  Only a hair's breadth -- no, only a soundtrack separates them.  The right track is a non-track.  Unless frequency counts as a track, which it might, but still not like a track through forest or college.  You don’t make a goddamn career out of it.




reading nicanor parra makes me think I, too, 
can write anti-poetry

one thing about
this all-pervading fear
like a flow of water that won’t turn off
(yes, like wetting my pants)
like an unending series of slaps
pay attention!
is that whatever happens
inside this fear flood
this excess of attention
I remember
so that therefore
although it’s terribly
uncomfortable
it’s also worth more
somehow




On the End of Youth

I was young until the age of 38. Lucky, don’t you think?  Lucky -- very possibly spoiled.  I was young on the muralled streets of Santiago, sharing beers with Ratoncito.  Even on the plane back to Japan, I was still young.  On the very last day of my youth I watched kabuki from an impossibly good seat.  The next day I accompanied the Nicest Guy in the World to the hospital where I learned a great deal I had not been told.  The nurse put oxygen tubes in my husband’s nose as I stood beside his wheelchair, uninsured and middle-aged.




Love Equation

The amount you love someone is exactly equal to how much you are willing to be inconvenienced on their behalf.

The rest is crap.




my fame

walking down bombero nunez
santiago dreaming of publication

in prominent internationally-recognized literary
magazines as ahead of me a stray dog darts
into the street my fame
the car swerves my success
confused the dog runs
so incredibly
important beneath the tires

my certain fame

if only I could trade it
for the life of the dog.




On Ministry

As a promiscuous homosexual and wannabe practitioner of literature, I note that, even on the highly unlikely chance that I someday have five thousand readers, my primary ministry will still have been fellatio.

I have no problem with that.  I’m better at sucking cock.  I aim to praise and thank, to adore.  I do my best work where words are not even an option.




?

not sure
it counts
as charitable
work

volunteering
each day
to be
the fool




poetry

just an excuse
to sit
around

naked




The Power of Prayer / 2

A man shuffled past, his bald head bowed down. He was holding a string of smooth prayer beads that reached nearly to the ground.

As he passed I could hear him chanting, “Help isn’t coming. Help isn’t coming.”




Hard as It is to Believe

No one has shown us the curve.
For all we know we may be doing well.






theology

maybe it isn’t
holy
really

maybe it wasn’t
holy
until
we
said

yes