December 2009
47 posts
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Rock Springs
My father kept saying how the landscape was going to change. Now in just a minute it’s going to change again, he’d say. You’re going to see it change again just after these switchbacks, just after this rise. Or else the change was retroactive. He reminded us that where we had been was different from where we were now.
You saw how we were climbing the whole time after we left...
Go Walking Down There. Chris Isaac.
Bought the...
Sleipnir
Excerpt from Christmas Customs from Around the World:
Nisse is a very real part of the Scandinavian countries at Christmas, although not many have ever seen the little man. Nisse lives in the attics in the cities and towns, and in the barns with the cattle wherever there are cattle. The family cat is about the only one who is on intimate terms with the Nisse.
Christmas starts at daybreak in...
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An Indian ranger on a bulldozer idling on the path, checking the choke, deer frozen stock still in the brush cut, a slip of hawk turning over the sky.
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Excerpt
Excerpt from a work in progress:
Kari-Jean was masturbating with a pillow between her legs when Al opened the door with an all-access key. She had a shirt on and her ass was up in the air, her face turned away. Al held the door for the others to come in and then let it slam shut.
She did not stop when she saw him. She was about to come. She looked at the figure behind him. A girl with a...
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We decided not to take a break. We decided to keep going.
Rainwater. Jóhann Jóhannsson. from And in the...
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These online free words
This afternoon I googled death, prayer to find something a Chaplain might recite after a soldier’s death. Among the search results was the Sudden Death Prayer at prayer-and-prayers.info:
God of hope, we come to you in shock and grief and confusion of heart. Help us to find peace in the knowledge of your loving mercy to all your children, and give us light to guide us...
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“An endless ritual endlessly repeated, the propagation of the great secular host...”
– The Crossing. Cormac McCarthy.
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Sedona
I was standing in the kitchen making coffee this morning and an old Chevy sedan comes down the road past the window. Our house is at the end of the road so we don’t get many cars out our way unless they’re meant for us. The engine shuts off and I stand there with my hands in the sink and here comes Bob Smith across the gravel. He had a white mustache and coffee stains down his shirt...
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The Usual
I came into The Usual on Vanderbilt this morning in my coat and gloves. The owner was setting the tables in shorts and sandals. His brother was behind the counter talking to a man with a fur collar and a treble clef tattoo behind his ear. This is my favorite weather like this, said the owner. Just exactly like this. Oh boy. Perfect day for playing hockey. We would play hockey all day on a day...
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Movement
Kenneth Koch is dead and I love this poem very much because it is a true thing and Physical Presence is everything, the reason for life.
Why did I take my life into my hands to see a few fish And some gigantic cakes of ice And to meet a few South American writers? I could have imagined all this without coming here And slightly increased my chances of staying alive. I used to think it...
The work of Ethan Murrow
Huffaker and Lillienthal’s dispute over publicity issues causes them to miss the launch entirely. From Cloud Collecting with the Pinto Brothers. Graphite on paper, 2006.
I saw an exhibit of Ethan Murrow’s drawings and video work in Venice Beach in 2005. His protagonists are usually doomed explorers, men obsessed with cloud collecting, dust mining, flight.
It was awful luck,...
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I used to have a different website but my exgirlfriend turned it into a tranny porn site. At least I think it’s tranny porn. It might just be gay porn. The tan lines make it hard to tell.
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Western Situations
I am very much absorbed with tactics carried out in western landscapes. Western cities as staging grounds. Dallas. Albuquerque. Phoenix. Men approaching each other from a distance. Line of sight. Bearing clean across.
Encounters in open spaces take on broad meaning. Anything placed inside emptiness has immediate significance. The lone rider syndrome. SWAT units under halogen glow. The year is...
100 best last lines to novels →
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Pattinson
Six months until Robert Pattinson just kills himself. via scout. via sade.
A man standing in a hallway with his hat over his face head against the wall. Probably in Los Angeles, a city built by men in a state called California.
He doesn’t seem to be going anywhere. He seems to be thinking. Maybe he’s waiting for the other men with cameras to finish photographing his back.
...
pheezy:
In the dark living room I found a bright light on the floor. Knelt down to what must be a tiny hole. All I can see is an adding machine.
The Irish Beauty Contract
Yesterday on Court Street I picked up a copy of Philip Atlee’s spy novel The Irish Beauty Contract off a table of pulp books in front of a second hand shop.
The back of the book features a 5-panel black & white photograph of Atlee inhaling a cigarette and a 3-paragraph summary of the novel. The firtst paragraph is devoted to a description of Atlee’s returning protagonist, the...
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From an interview with Gay Talese in The Paris Reveiw. via nowihaveablog.
INTERVIEWER: How does your writing day begin?
TALESE: Usually I wake up in bed with my wife. I don’t want to have breakfast with anyone. So I go from the third floor, which is our bedroom, to the fourth floor, where I keep my clothes. I get dressed as if I’m going to an office. I wear a tie.
Cuff links?
Yes. I dress as...
We must not forget that the genius of Da Vinci was the genius of a child at play.
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The Burns Tapes
Before my grandfather died my mother asked him to dictate his life into a tape recorder. She recently had the tapes converted to digital and I listened to my grandfather, Michael Burns, narrate the first twenty years of his life while I traveled to Chicago. The tapes range from his birth in Tiff City Missouri in 1926 to his discharge from the Army after the occupation of Japan. He was a country...
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Today we make opium.
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“Small orphans were abroad like irate dwarfs and fools and sots drooling and...”
– Cormac McCarthy. Blood Meridian. via fallingandlaughing.
It has been said that Blood Meridian is “unfilmable because of the sheer darkness and violence of the story.” McCarthy said that’s a bunch of crap, all it needs is someone with imagination and a lot of balls. Currently it...
“I’m gonna kill her. I’m gonna kill her with a .44 magnum pistol. A...”
– Martin Scorcese. Taxi Driver.
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Beth Israel
I am staying in a different part of the city for a week. A beige and brown brick tower dominates the view from my bedroom window. Beneath the tower is an empty lot surrounded by sagging tenements. Hundreds of feet of black wire run down the sides of the buildings into the lot. Faded graffiti crowds the borders of the roofs, the letters crooked and badly spaced from being written upside down by...
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“How often have I lain beneath rain on a strange roof, thinking of home.”
– William Faulkner. As I Lay Dying. via sometimes a great notion.
One of my favorite lines from Faulkner.
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Song for Jesse. Nick Cave & Warren Ellis. From...