Me and Mr. Jones

Welcome to my day. Waking up with a kiss and a cuddle right on time to watch CBS Sunday Morning. A quick oatmeal breakfast and a walk down the street to drop my lover off at work and grab a soy latte at the local hip coffee joint. Home again to report on my day.

Digital music blasts against my eardrums.

I am officially recognizing today as the beginning of my Spring Break. Seven full days off to do whatever the hell I want. A reward for being a teacher. I have many books to read, some school plans to make, an NYC vacation to enjoy, and shit to write. I’m also weening myself off of my anxiety medication and am finally ready to take my stool sample so the doctor can check and see if my intestines are bleeding.

The collaboration with George is moving slowly because I’m out of constructive ideas. In case you haven’t been paying attention, I am writing text for his musical composition that will feature an overlap of seven instruments and seven voices spoken. Weaving in and out, sometimes obscured and othertimes supported, my text is meant to create the sensation of overhearing bits and pieces at a party. Only not so. I have two sort of finished, and my third is supposed to be a one-sided phone conversation which will reveal a full narrative from beginning to end.

The sun is shining but it is cold outside. I would like to spend the rest of the morning cleaning. I feel very little inspiration about anything at the moment. The world outside of my headphones is very still. And that’s all.

Working on a third piece of text for the project. I already know this won’t be it, but I want to publish it so I can move on. More soon (hopefully)…

Blood, thick and unknown. He was covered in it after a long day in the Gulf stream spent fishing for tuna.

Blood pours after the fish is pierced by the gaff. The idea is not to kill the fish, no, anglers simply stick them so that other men may hoist their heavy bodies aboard. The slaughter happens later.

Blood had soaked his legs and filled his boots.

He was in love with the act and with the fish themselves. The camaraderie among the mates. The sun. Much of his young life had been devoted this day and many others like them. For him it was not bloodshed, it was living.

George is hungry. He wants some text every other day. And he wishes I wouldn’t say things like “porno” and “dildo”. (he passed on “Ceiling/Floor”) Man…what did I get myself in to?!

Actually, I understand and agree, but that means I have to use my mind a bit more and my crotch a bit less. Alas.

So tonight’s offering sounds something like this:

Acetaminophen for headaches, both natural and unnatural.

Alcohol for everything else.

“…was literally squeaking so hard it woke us both up.”

“Yeah I know. It is like we are living in a brothel. The funny thing
is, when we first tried to move in the landlord went on and on about
how this was a “professional” building and it is really quiet and he
wasn’t sure if we could live there because we were students.”

A new task, should I choose to accept it (which I did), was given me yesterday. I was asked to help in the creation of:

“…a chamber piece (ca. six players) that uses
spoken text. Each of the players will speak as well as play. the
idea is that the music sometimes obscures the text, other times
supports the text, or even continues the text / takes over. the
effect i had in my head is something like concurrently eavesdropping
on different bits of conversations in a party. like a collage of
completely different but ongoing strains of thoughts.”

This was my first offering late last night:

Yellow radio sits on the bicycle’s handlebars. A quaint system playing that song I somehow associate with you although we are hardly connected. The man riding is making no statement at all, just spinning wheels to facilitate his travel. Portability means different things to different people.

At home again, or not at all, dust scatters in the light. The neighbor lets his dog bark. I am at a loss.

Last week I received a phone call from my doctor. “It’s not an emergency,” she said on the message, “but please call me back as soon as you get a chance.”

Being highly anxious and an aspiring hypochondriac I immediately gave her a call. It seems she was looking at the results from my most recent CT scan (I’ve had two others) and all four of my sinus cavities are clogged and filled.

“How are you feeling?” she wondered?

I told her that I was very worn out and my face was sore. She wasn’t surprised. And it seems that instead of waiting six weeks for my follow-up appointment, she wanted me to come back ASAP.

So I went back for the follow-up and was told they want to operate. On my face. I’ve been told this before. However, this was the first time I agreed.

How did I get here? Well, it has a lot to do with being clumsy. In seventh grade I was at a party on the last day of school. I was wearing Converse high-tops, an R.E.M. “Shiny Happy People” t-shirt, and cut-off green army pants. This was the high-point of my formative years of fashion experiments. With this outfit I was attempting to be cool. As it turned out, all I could manage was spastic. I was running around like a crazy person and somehow managed to smack face first into a closed sliding glass door. There was more shock than pain, but the end result was a break in my nose which caused my insides to look like this:

This mishap (along with several other tripping, passing out, or just walking into poles incidents) set the stage for bacteria to hold court inside my head. They’ve caused all sorts infection that has been unable to drain out due to blocked or crooked passage-ways. That and the fact that I seem to be allergic to everything on God’s green earth.

But I’m ready to fix it now, ready to say good-bye to my monthly trips to the doctor for antibiotics and decongestants. I’m ready to have them shove things into my nasal passages and drain out all of the goo, and sit swollen-faced for weeks while things continue to drip.

Why am I finally ready for this to happen? The reality is that I don’t have much else going on. So why not?

I know this is about 10 years too late, but, um, am I the only one out here who has a slight obsession with Damon Albarn? No, No, it is NOT because I think “He’s so dreamy…” (although the Defense is unwilling to stipulate that he isn’t!!!), or that I’m jealous of his foppy hair and pithy pop songs. Well, maybe it is a wee bit. His bubble-gum pop is so sprawling and he does have a cartoon band of monkeys, and he did write the lyric: “Tender is my heart / I’m screwing up my life / Oh lord I need to find / Someone who can heal my mind…” Okay, fine, I’m smitten. Is that so wrong?

“Come gather my children, please have no fear,
Yes this is a costume, and yes I am on my 10th beer,
But today is a day that is celebrated by all,
Please note: If you have to throw-up, the stalls are down the hall…”

If ever I had known that some religions set aside certain days to get wasted and crossdress, I probably wouldn’t have slandered the Big Guy as often as I have in the past. This may be the time to strongly consider getting circumcised.

a single man and pen and receipt and red chair from ikea i haven’t been to ikea in years but still i sit upon such furniture and tables and when the heater comes on it shrieks and it has been theorized that such white noise actually makes you more fatigued like talking to the dumb blonde man on the plane and dreaming about friends from the past wearing wigs like erykah badu there once was a teacher at my old school who got arrested for selling pot at school and now i sometimes feel that a lot of effort in some situations is hopeless or perhaps boring like the continual return to the same couch or the same moment of being tipsy or titillated or merely being in repetition perhaps leads one to self-destruction or mind-numbing television except thursdays rarely offer much to watch and so the choice is to read or “work” or then maybe sleep but i’m too tired for having slept all the hours that i close my eyes and yet even now i yawn but want to wait for your arrival i often wait for your arrival and also brush my teeth so just in case our lips might touch then you won’t be distracted by the scent of earlier meals or drinks and focus entirely upon me or our kiss and i do all of this too much to justify feeling the way that i do but sometime one just feels and that is what makes you feel that all in all is all we are

At the moment I am haunted by the texture of the squid we ate for lunch. I had already quite put myself to bed, I even dozed off a few times, but for some reason this is keeping me awake. The last time I was so bothered by something I ate I had mistaken caviar for orange marmalade. It was during college, at a friend’s house, and I had braces which complicated matters–but this will only distract us from the topic at hand.

So back to our fried calamari appetizer, well, for some reason its rubbery essence is still holding court in my mouth. Which leads me to think I should stop eating the stuff entirely. Not just fish, no, perhaps most things that were once animals should not become my meals. But even this keeps us distracted as well.

We went to the Fish Store after lunch and I asked about the Puffers, as I often do now that I have plans to adopt some for my own enjoyment. It turns out there are more out there than the miniature Dwarf variety and their regular-sized bigger brothers. No, there’s some in the middle that weigh in at maybe an inch or so, cute-as-hell and still affordable. Yeah, and at the moment we were looking at them they were playing with the bubbles that bounced around the tank’s filter.

Adam, who requested that we stop by the fish store, is anxiously anticipating his Spring Break fishing expedition to Guatemala. He was explaining to me how he feels no guilt in keeping the “tasty” ones, unless of course they are too old or noble to die. But sometimes he also enjoys devouring those that are both “cool and tasty”, these he won’t let go either.

Everytime he describes this trip I think of Bishop’s poem, for no reason except that it was one I read closely in college and one that remains with me. Do you remember it? Well…

“I caught a tremendous fish
and held him beside the boat
half out of water, with my hook
fast in a corner of its mouth.
He didn’’t fight.
He hadn’’t fought at all.
He hung a grunting weight,
battered and venerable
and homely. Here and there
his brown skin hung in strips
like ancient wallpaper,
and its pattern of darker brown
was like wallpaper:
shapes like full-blown roses
stained and lost through age.
He was speckled with barnacles,
fine rosettes of lime,
and infested
with tiny white sea-lice,
and underneath two or three
rags of green weed hung down.
While his gills were breathing in
the terrible oxygen
the frightening gills,
fresh and crisp with blood,
that can cut so badly
I thought of the coarse white flesh
packed in like feathers,
the big bones and the little bones,
the dramatic reds and blacks
of his shiny entrails,
and the pink swim-bladder
like a big peony.
I looked into his eyes
which were far larger than mine
but shallower, and yellowed,
the irises backed and packed
with tarnished tinfoil
seen through the lenses
of old scratched isinglass.
They shifted a little, but not
to return my stare.
It was more like the tipping
of an object toward the light.
I admired his sullen face,
the mechanism of his jaw,
and then I saw
that from his lower lip
if you could call it a lip
grim, wet, and weaponlike,
hung five old pieces of fish-line,
or four and a wire leader
with the swivel still attached,
with all their five big hooks
grown firmly in his mouth.
A green line, frayed at the end
where he broke it, two heavier lines,
and a fine black thread
still crimped from the strain and snap
when it broke and he got away.
Like medals with their ribbons
frayed and wavering,
a five-haired beard of wisdom
trailing from his aching jaw.
I stared and stared
and victory filled up
the little rented boat,
from the pool of bilge
where oil had spread a rainbow
around the rusted engine
to the bailer rusted orange,
the sun-cracked thwarts,
the oarlocks on their strings,
the gunnels until everything
was rainbow, rainbow, rainbow!
And I let the fish go.”

I am not sure when I will be able to synthesize my life into its proper words and stories, but surely sleepless nights like this will help.