#310

 How 'bout some memories? Why not, right? 

*

Couple beers in and I'm spinning off a yarn, threaded silver with witticism. My audience--at the time, my girlfriend and my best friend--are laughing hard enough to cry and gasp, but I do not relent for even a second--the sight spurs me. I take it up a notch. At the time, under the prevailing conditions, this requires zero effort. Pausing briefly only to swig from my dark brown bottle of stout, I lean forward, pull faces, gesture ridiculously. Keeping up the patter, lighting up a cigarette. Their faces are red, they lean back in their chairs to clear the way for breath to reenter their lungs as it may, they beg me to stop between gales of laughter, but I have a goal in mind, a shining line to kill it with, and there is no deterring me. It's all worth it when I get there. Worth it in every sense, for everyone, most of all me, and I relish in it, the power of being able to sustain the verbal dervish that eludes me so completely when sober. 

By the time I'm five beers in, I don't say much. Eight beers in, done talking for the night. Just sit there, drunk. Just sit, while they talk incomprehensibly around me, my ears choked with thoughts made of dark fire, thoughts overburdened with incommunicable meaning. We've had our fun. Now it's dark. And it will get darker, each time, until the end of the line, until life heaves itself into a new configuration for all of us.

Now, these days, can't remember a word of what I said. Dunno what even the hell I was talking about. My best friend hasn't reached out or answered my attempts at contact in over ten years. My ex-girlfriend is even more reclusive than I am; an accomplishment that lives closer to the humorless truth involved in the jokes I tell about myself--hermit, shut-in, non-participant in society. Am I to blame for this state of affairs? Largely, perhaps entirely.

Was it really worth it, all of it, the nights around that wooden table laden with poisons, gritty with ash? All that came of that rough and drunken circle? Though I couldn't defend it materially, I have to believe that it is so. There is no other choice in life.

*

Smoking a cigarette late, late at night by my door, on the tiny wooden platform up the slippery wooden steps. The lower floor and basement of the house behind me is unoccupied; no one uses the front door. I use the back, which opens on a stairway up the second floor, where I live alone. Worn down from work, eyes stinging from too much reading and too little sleeping, hunched over beneath the weight of my leather jacket, I reflect that I have possibly never been as lonely. The feeling makes me smile. The realization makes me savor the thought of it, the suffering in it I have always been more or less immune to in the past. I have changed, I realize. I have become more human.

*

A friend and I had breakfast at the nicest diner in town and went down to the river to talk. We choose a couple bridges to suspend ourselves over the water on, let it pull itself and everything that can settle on its tension beneath us. We go down to the shoreline and balance on the mossy stones. I take my shoes and socks off and wade in till the water rises to the middle of my calves, the current lazy, the water almost as warm as my skin, the minnows nibbling, the sun searing down like a laser and the cool swooping in like a savior with the patchy clouds.

We talked about her memories of her trip around the world. She told me about roaming around Australia, about getting by in Russia. A boy she fucked in Barcelona, a sweetness that turned dangerous and had to be escaped. This was a pattern with her, the sweet, sensible masks that boys she fell for disposed of down the line. She told me about some dreams she had in Japan, a psychic she saw in Tokyo, how she came to realize reincarnation was real, remembered some of her past lives. A time when she was her sister's mother. 

She is dead, now. May her next life break the circle. May our lives all break the circle. Or not. Whatever the will of God may be. May we see one another again, beyond this strange and shadowed veil. If it is not to be, may she find the peace and satisfaction that so often eluded her in her body's time scrambling on the surface of the earth.

*

More like this soon? Maybe something completely different?

Only! Time! Will! Tell!

--JL

#309

Library was having a bag sale to...celebrate? Commemorate? Capitalize on moving their archives to a new location. Pick your favorite "c". My whim dictated that this particular sale spell an end to my not getting that many books, at least not all at once, and I have come up with a haul as in the days of yore. So yes sir, two bags full sir--of books! Not bad at all for ten bucks flat. Bag sales are very thrilling that way.

Let's do a list, like we love to do. We love lists here at Factually Pointless, and believe me, I decide to not show more lists than I post. Always wantin' to list shit up ins, folks. Always.

Anyway. 

The Best American Short Stories 2014, ed. Jennifer Egan

Balkan Ghosts, by Robert D. Kaplan

The Founding Fish, by John McPhee

Glastonbury, by Donna Fletcher Crow

Beauty Is a Wound, by Eka Kurniawan

The Well and the Mine, by Gin Phillips, introduced by Fannie Flagg

García Márquez en Cartagena-Sus Inicios Literarios, by Jorge García Usta

Europe 1880-1945, by J.M. Roberts, Silver Library edition

John Adams, by David McCullough

A Slight Trick of the Mind, by Mitch Cullum

The Realm of Fiction: 61 Short Stories, ed. James B. Hall

The Solace Is Not the Lullaby, by Jill Osier, foreword by Carl Philips

Blood & Iron-From Bismarck to Hitler/the Von Moltke Family's Impact on German History, by Otto Friedrich

Families of the World-Family Life At the Close of the 20th Century/East East Asia, Southeast Asia, and the Pacific, by Hélène Tremblay

Alarms & Diversions, by James Thurber

Moral Voices/Moral Selves-Carol Gilligan and Feminist Moral Theory, by Susan J. Hekman

Three Girls From Bronzeville, by Dawn Turner

The Art of Fiction-Notes on Craft for Young Writers, by John Gardner

All Loves Excelling, by Josiah Bunting III

Words, Thoughts, and Theories, by Alison Gopnick and Andrew N. Meltzoff

Writers Reading At Sweetwaters-An Anthology of Poetry and Prose, ed. by Chris Lord and Esther Hurwitz

Leone Leoni, by George Sand

The Thin Tear in the Fabric of Space, by Douglas Trevor

A Little Chatter, by Terry Connell

Middle-Earth, by Henri Cole

In All This Rain, by John Stone

Tell Me a Riddle, by Tillie Olsen

Semantics-A New Outline, by F.R Palmer

Idylls of the King, by Alfred Lord Tennyson

Pocho, by José Antonio Villarreal

Typee, by Herman Melville, afterword by Harrison Hayford

The King Must Die, by Mary Renault

The Reader's Companion to American History, ed. Eric Foner and John A. Garraty

I also grabbed a spare copy of Tristram Shandy and a Dover thrift edition of Kafka's Metamorphoses (plus those near-ubiquitous Other Stories) just to lend them out when so inspired, or perhaps serve as a pair of the foundation stones for a Little Free Library of our own, on our yard. We'll see.

*

Cool! Man, what a complete waste of fucking time. Hope this blog gets good again soon. Got a feeling something might actually happen this week. Just a tingle in the fingers, perhaps--maybe--some sparks in the back of the mind. 

Again, we'll see.

--JL

#308

Drove to work bright and early this morning only to find the parking lot empty and the garage and gates locked. As I cruised the scene to make sure to myself that there was truly no one else there and no one was going to show up, the realization dawned: spent too long in the service industry. Too many years working every single holiday except Christmas Day and New Year's. Worked some of those, too. 

Pour one out for everyone consigned to the more permissive levels of modern slavery today. I need hardly mention that many should be poured out often for all those consigned to any form of modern slavery. A lot of bad shit happens to a lot of unlucky people every day, and in most cases, the people with the power to do something about it are prevented from doing so for a multitude of reasons both legitimately constraining and merely selfish. All those of us without such powers or constraints can do, we ought to, even if it's just to bear witness in our hearts, and feel something about it.

*

Indeed, being as we're already talking about this particular national holiday and gross, avoidable human misery, perhaps I'll allow myself a word or three on the way this Supreme Court majority is popping off. "Happy fucking fourth of July! Abortion is literally murder because of twelfth-century British common law, so fuck 2022, fuck society, and fuck women. The EPA can't tell anyone nothing! Every company that wants to belch all the carbon they can into the atmosphere can do so with impunity as far as we're concerned. And we're just getting started, you godless cumsluts. Lube those shitty little assholes while you can, 'cause we're coming in full bore."

Honestly fucking grim. I joke but do not laugh. Is it even a joke? Everything bad I was afraid would happen six years ago is happening, because every bad thing I was afraid would happen fourteen years ago happened. You don't even want to know the shit I'm afraid of right now. Happy fourth of July, we might not have another because our government is no longer a republic or a democracy. A cadre of unelected officials are dictating public policy with formal impunity to the detriment of the population, a corrupt and totally ineffectual legislative branch whines for the camera--all the majority of them know how to do, seemingly--and an ancient, doddering figurehead moans and gestures from a discredited office. 

I dunno, man. Just looks shitty. Like some fast-forward fall of Rome shit. Checks and balances right out the fucking window.

Ah, well. What can you do but watch it play out and try to make the best decisions you can based on what you see. Personally, I'll just keep going to work and reading books. Perhaps lay by a goodly stock of nonperishable goods and potable water. Pray and think, and think and pray. Practice dying an honest man in my mind, that I may be ready if called upon.

--JL

#307

Ugh! Time. It passes, events in its slipstream mass, accrete, gain specific gravity, and settle into an orbit from which they are difficult to deviate by main force. Took a whole trip to Chicago since last I posted! Had a little ten-day vacation between the end of school and taking on work as a bus washer until school starts up again! Also, have had a lot of intricate, heavily plotted dreams wherein having sex with a variety of extremely hot women was integral to many of them, about one woman every three dreams. This probably indicates that I could use a girlfriend, but who knows. Sometimes extracurricular romance is a healthy and natural thing (provided all generals and particulars are honest, open, and aboveboard) and sometimes it's the devil in you, jerking you around by the glands. Hard to say! Hard to say.

*

Chicago is always pretty cool. Love being in that city. As a born city boy, merely the sight of many tall buildings, let alone being amongst them, is soothing to the mind. Love a small town, love the great wilderness even more, farms are cool, I can hang anywhere and thrive, but there's something about a city that is particular, and that something particular to each city, and I love Chicago and Chicago's particular thing very much. My dad used to work there, both my brothers went to college there. It's a thing with our family, hanging out in Chicago. Ezra hadn't been since some barely-remembered middle school trip, so we did some basic tourist things; crashed at an err bee and bee on the south side, up to the big skydeck on top of Willis Tower (I would say the weirdest part of Sears being in its grave is decidedly the new name for the tower--why couldn't they have kept the name on, I wonder? Because we fucking hate history in this country, history can fuck off and die, we say--the new Skydeck, incidentally, had a lot less history than it did the last time I was up there), Shedd Aquarium, all day the next day at the Field Museum basically, and on the last day we wandered about Millennium Park till it was time for the train to leave. Next time we'll do some more stuff like that but also try to get to a couple of the neighborhoods less traveled and also try to spend more time there in general. I like to spend a lot of time in museums, and can easily spend two days in the Chicago Institute of Art. Like to see Pilsen and Hyde Park, too. We took the Line everywhere, as is right and proper. 

*

We had breakfast at this place kind of at the bottom of a hotel near the lake twice called Little Branch--man, that place was just rad. Loved their digs, their food, and their smoothies. Also had a big ole cup of Mexican chocolate and that was extremely legit as well.

*

Everything, of course, cost way too much damn money, But that's part of it. So fuck it.

*

Doing a thing of reading several books at once at the moment. Here is what they are and how it is going:

Still reading John Milton's Paradise Lost. I dunno, I like it, and I read bunches of it at once, but it doesn't seem to finish. And there's two more poems in the book after that, Samson Agonistes and Lycidas. Damn, boy. I mean. he's good, he's fucking brilliant and all, but damn. Something about it is just slow.

Los Años Extraordinarios, by Rodrigo Cortés--pretty early on, but it's damn awesome. I read a lot slower in Spanish--maybe have mentioned this--but it's important, so we soldier on. In this case in particular, gotta stop and look up words pretty much on every page 'cause the dude has a word fetish, which is cool. Yet, there's a reason I need to break this thing up with other books.

Sometimes a Great Notion, by Ken Kesey--loving this bad boy. The one on which progress is proportionally the most voracious at the moment. Kesey really is fucking Steinbeck-level Great American Novelist, boys, you heard it from me and you can take it to the bank. Might have to reread Sailor Song soon. There's a book that smacked my brain and changed me around.

Jason & Medeia, by John Gardner--call me what you want. but this is way fucking better than Paradise Lost. Like, way better. This shit is intense and way more readable. Dope poem, makes me want to work on something like this that's been rattling in my brain for a long time.

*

Whichever one of these I finish first will give way to Steppenwolf, by Hermann Hesse. Love my Hesse. Gotta find that book of fairy-stories of his, that shit is fire. Also everything the man wrote, pretty much.

*

Ok bye gotta eat gotta write more still getting used to everything but hardcore production will, I pray, resume sooner rather than later because I really want it to ok yes cool peace

--JL