Catcher

God wants you to read Catcher in the Rye out loud.
He's thinking of a rehabilitation program; maybe Satan is just a Holden Caulfield-type who never got the attention he deserved during his career as the Morningstar.
You ask if He's read it before and He has in that Omniscent-omnipresent way, but frankly, at any given time he's moving on people to avoid genocides in Siberia, South Asia and Your Backyard.

God wants you to read Catcher in the Rye, out loud, in heaven, to an audience of saints and angels; let the sinless vaccuum breathe a little bit, maybe you're going to convince him of a couple things.

If it goes well he’ll start a book club and policy board; next up is The Satanic Verses.

This thought mats your hair down with sweat, beads up your eyes and gulps your throat and you suddenly wish you were Catholic and had some sort of tradition to deal with all of this. You're not sure why God asked or why he needs you to read it aloud, when he knows you have a fear of public speaking.

Jesus shoos away some orphans he's playing with-- he's always fucking playing with orphans-- and takes you aside. “Could you do this for him? I mean, I'm not sure exactly what he's thinking with this one; if not for him, for me.”
Your eyebrows and jawdrop do the talking. What would your pastor think? Like he could hear you, Jesus shakes his head, fingers his wrists with what almost looks like a sneer.
“You know how well I get on with Pastors. No, no, you're right, I mean, sure, after all, what did I ever do for you?”

good to know he still has the sharp tongue that got him strung up there in the first place.

"it was a good reading. i don't care what everyone else says."-- jake

tonight I did a feature at zippy's java lounge in everett. felt good about it, though the crowd was appreciatively unresponsive. . . unresponsively appreciative? I think it is not a room that lends itself to raucous sorts of participation i.e. Poetry Night or The Crunch, but has a bit "bigger" feel than a lot of coffee shops, so spacing it out can be difficult.

Setlist:
Neo Takes the Blue Pill
Little Red Corvette
Zombies and Paint Thinner
Cafe Across . . .
Beneath the Cathedral
Get Smart!
Rucksacks
Ambition is Critical
Paintings of Famous Satanists

I realised afters that just because I close with my two favourites in the book doesn't mean they'll be crowd pleasers.
But. It was great to see loads of friends and family there (from camp and abroad, new and old) and getting to hang out with Chris/Ryan/Jake always serves both as fun and grounding. Reading at Chris' house in December, too which I'm excited for.

on the way home I listened to Pack Up the Cats for the first time in about 3 years. My copy still skips.

Doctor, doctor

I don't often write politics here; I would hardly describe myself as a-political, but my levels of information intake and activism pale in comparison to many of my friends.

Still, its been with interest I've tracked the Health Care Reform bill and debate surrounding it. Precisely because I'm one of the people that Obama wants to help. I'm not the most heart-wrenching story, granted, but it's been about 10 years at least since I've been able to go to a U.S. doctor. I had more comprehensive coverage as a student-visitor to the U.K. than I have here. For the most part, I've just made the best of it and in my more health-conscious moments hoped that the old "apple-a-day" adage is true.

For most of our lives, this has been true with regards to my parents. As Dad said "there were a lot of times we just had to give you some aspirin and hope it got better."*

So, on the surface I'm glad that the health care bill passed the House of Reps. I don't love doctors, but I'd like to go. But I'm kind of scared.
I'm not scared that Obama is going to plunge the nation into a socialist welfare state akin to Communist Russia or whatever. I'm not really that scared that right-wing reactionism will prompt actual attempts at secessionism or what-have-you, either.

But. Watching the way the parties have been batting this bill back and forth, the complete lack of actual discussion (nothing new, really) and level of public frustration, I'm not convinced anything good can come. From my heady days in Youth and Government, I know it takes one poorly worded line to change the entire meaning of a bill. And Max Bacchus has written a 1,000 page epic. You don't have to be a let-them-eat-caker to approach that with caution.

What I'm afraid of is that a bill will make it through that's been gutted by republicans and saddled with impossible and impractical retaliatory provisions by democrats. And that when it finally passes, in whatever form it is, Obama will sign it because he has to. He's created a situation in which its political suicide to not sign a bill that comes through. And we'll be left with a system that costs taxpayers a shitload of money, creates loads of new bureacracy, endangers existing practices and after all that I still won't be able to go to the doctor.

That. Is what I'm afraid of.


*I still have some un-fond memories of the doctor's office.

new writing project:

I'm trying my fingers at Nanowrimo.

So far I have half a page. If this is the pace I keep up, I will have a long short story by the end of the month, about a guy with a toothache who lives in the second tallest apartment building in the world that has a window in the bathroom but its okay because the building is so tall, but his head hurts and he is waiting to die.


don't everyone jump up to publish at once.

at least we see eagles, like, every day

The great thing about working Lights Of Christmas is that when you're up on a ladder or unraveling strand after strand of multi-colored LED's for ground display you have plenty of time to ponder the future, near and far, relive memories and basically just think about life.

The horrifying thing about working Lights Of Christmas is that when you're up on a ladder or unraveling strand after strand of multi-colored LED's for ground display you have plenty of time to . . .

there was a wind-storm friday night that knocked over the Sunset Scene, a new display in which blinking LEDs fade in, out, create a sunset effect. It actually looks pretty cool. When it isn't spread all over the ground because its black backdrop could, in Dad's words " . . . effectively be used to carry four hundred-plus pound boats accross the ocean."

This is the first job I've worked where the weather mattered so much to actually doing it since I drove the truck to San Francisco.

_ * _ * _ * _ * _ * _

good weekend in Seattle. I almost laundry-listed a post about what occurred but decided to write about christmas lights instead.

It won't be what you want it to be, oh no.

Four things, relevant:
1. That tooth, you know? That tooth?
The one. The wisdom tooth that has been on and off hurting like a motherfucking fuckass hellacious shitcuntfuckfuck for about a god-diddly-damn year, yesterday I went to the dentist I have the poem about and he yanked that horrible, rotted-out pseudo-tooth out of there.
Dr. Jones knew where Swansea was and what division their football team was and the dental assistant was cute with and without her mask and told me good luck with the writing. And now I don't have a toothache.

I do, however, need a root canal on the one right next to it.

Dear Money: I take back what I said. Let me hold you next to me. I love you. I need you.

2.
Tonight and tommorrow, two volunteer shifts at Hugo House. The first one has free food and booze for volunteers, the second lets me sit and read and shelve zines for four hours.

3.
We've gotten far enough on the Lights of Christmas that me taking a day off to attend to things like teeth and writing and going to Seattle is not a problem. Come November we'll be busy again, but right now we've got five people on two-person jobs.

4.
Visiting Grandma gets more difficult as it becomes more necessary.

No longer Pumps and Grinds

So today after helping 20 fifteen year olds take down some tents* in the pouring rain and after driving around 25 minutes in order to find a two minute parking spot to verify things with Bronwyn and being late to my volunteer shift at the Hugo House and leaving early to get Bronwyn and a very scenic if rainy trip out to Duvall, I did my first feature reading back in the United States of America.

Setlist
Flicking Ash
Swansea-Cardiff Blues (Bham Ed.)
Isolation Therapy
Cavities
Zombies and Paint Thinner
A Little Fear of Drowning
Missing Every Day
Rucksacks
Tall Drink of Water
Genus, Species and Flavour
Get Smart!
__(end of night encore)__>Story Problem


Thats a lot of poems, over half the book. Which is funny because two nights ago I was looking over it and thinking man, I don't likeany of these. I'd already decided I wanted my first reading back in the states to be all stuff from Swansea Morning Coming Down. Plus, while I've got a good chunk of new stuff, the amount of it I feel anywhere in the neighbourhood of "finished" with is not high.
Anyway. It went really well. Good reactions and sold a few books. The owners of the Duvall Coffeehouse asked if they could display SWMOCODO (nifty, huh?) on the "local authors" shelf.
Duvall is not close to anywhere in Washington (except Carnation, natch) and a lot of folks showed up from all over, including a majority of my in-state family. It felt really right that Duvall be where I step back into reading in the States. I'll do one in Everett in November probably and B'ham in February (I think; by which time I may have made at least a mini-book of new stuff) but I'm glad I started with Katherine and my family and a rainy night in Duvall, Washington.

Now I am back at Warm Beach Swamp Ground, Brielle is here and we are listening to Tom Waits' Alice and waiting for Mom and Dad to return with the three youngest sisters.