silloin oisin niin onnellinen

Minna and I once ran into songster Topi Sorsakoski at the pool of a motel in Florida. We were eating there with our father, who knew the woman that ran the poolside snack bar. I think we were having hamburgers, which I don't eat anymore. Topi was on vacation -- people from Finland who have the money for trips like to go to only sunny places (mostly Crete, Majorca, or Florida) for their vacations. He had fallen asleep in the sun and was horribly burnt. Drinking a beer. I like to remember that he was swearing, but I'm probably misremembering. Anyway, this song is incredible. It is an adaptation of a song called "Johnny Guitar," though the lyrics to that version pale in comparison. I swear this guy has Gypsy blood, and I wish you could know the words like I know them. Even translating them is... just off. And I like to think I'm a good translator.

If you want to know, know this: the performance tonight was awesome. I'm in a good mood and having a glass of wine (thanks A!). Life in New York, for all its rotten bits, is good.

HEARSE-ALL

Here's the thing: working on this performance is turning out to be more than a bit of fun. I always forget this part. I'm in a cast with three people of various backgrounds, and it's making me realize that I don't often hang out with people who aren't writers. Spending time with writers is great, and most of my close friends are of the persuasion in one way or another, but yanno, sometimes it's just a little much to talk about projects and publications or even allude to them.

Also, it's great fun after a bullstuff day at work to just shed your careful office composure and move around, shift your weight, see what flips. Now I'm home after a two-hour rehearsal and though my stomach is making a fuss, it's been doing that all day, and I think it may actually just be my own delicate hubris bellyaching away.

Next Sunday I'm going to be in this. Conveniently located at Bedford Avenue in scenic undangerous Brooklyn. Come check it out if you're in the area and want to see some dance/movement stuff. I'm in Autumn's piece, along with three other performers.

Come see our monthly mixed media showcase in residence at Triskelion Arts.

This month we are featuring work by:
Stand Up Hungry, Keeley Walsh and Anna Stark Smith, DanceWorks by Michelai, Jenny Showalter, Autumn Widdoes, and Kenneth Lang

Suggested donation: $10, Reservations: 718.599.7997

Location:Triskelion Arts Theater

118 N. 11th St. 3rd Floor
Btw. Berry & Wythe
Brooklyn, New York 11211
www.triskelionarts.org
L to Bedford Avenue

shearling portrait

I should be working, so naturally here are some links.

Rauan Klassnik's electronic chapbook, Ringing. I love this word ringing. It is almost certainly one of my favorite words: the way it does what it sounds like, and does it twice in gerund form. Gorgeous. (Another favorite word.) Anyway, the e-item in question is deeply unsettling and deeply compelling. The words it employs are very simple and many times monosyllabic -- just what they tell you to do in poetry, and to an effect.

I was supposedly going to the Ugly Duckling Presse 6x6 release tonight, but I did not get home in time to make it there at a leisurely pace and didn't feel like launching myself elbow-first onto the L train again. So here instead is a link to buy the thing, which is well worth it as it's "priced low for freaks." UDP makes beautiful mean books with intent and purpose.

John Lytle Wilson. Holy smokes, check out the "corrected paintings" in which he inserts robots and monkeys into otherwise incredibly dull scenes of pastoral splendors and naturalistic glories. I almost nose-chortled my tea at many of these just because of their names. My favorites are "#14 vs the Sailboat" and "Setting Fire to a Lakeside Cottage."

Anyway, that's it.

the tender green shoots of human interchange

Today I went up to upper Midtown for a coffeemaker I craigslisted at a steep discount -- a practice I highly recommend for the sake of both moneysaving and being "green." The latter especially is a good thing; Americans throw away perfectly good appliances and other usable items when there is no need to do so, and you can often get stuff for prices that are little more than politesse. People have this misconception that being environmentally conscious involves only eating hydroponic peppers from the expensive organic grocery or whatever while drinking rice milk lattes and complaining about how your honey doesn't come from an ethical hive. This is simply not true. The average person can take small steps to partake in the movement of ecological consciousness without actually being a.) a dirty hippie or b.) a trustfundite. You can live green while living both cheaply and well (and end up with sleek new appliances for chump change).

Anyway, the weather was perfect and New York was positively teeming with drunken idiots (how! At 6PM!). Someone should find a way to combine St. Pats and environmental consciousness -- hell, everyone's already wearing green anyway.

wknders

The Bushwick Reading Series' 4th installment went swimmingly yesterday. Attendance to see the readers (Sean Lyman Frasier, Nathan Schneider, Susan Brennan, and Mary South) was remarkable (around 35 people) despite my awful, conspicuous lack of advertising (sorry guys). Afterward, it seemed like nobody wanted to leave the library area as they were "stuck at the mouth" which is a Finnish term NOT for makings-out but for continual conversations. To combat the irritating problem of having to bid adieu, we all sauntered over to a nearby hangout to continue conversatin'. It was all very improvisational and enjoyable and I hope those that missed it will come along next time.

Also! Now you (yes, you!) can listen to last month's reading here:
http://www.bushwickreadingseries.org/podcasts.html. The readers are Aaron Short (nonfiction), Matt Carney (poetry), Rohin Guha (fiction), and Marc Jaffee (poetry). You can also chuckle at the number of awkward pauses in my interludes.

Also this announcement (x-posted on the Facebook group): for the next reading, the Bushwick Reading Series wants also to expand its creeping literary tentacles into other media. So, if you are a FILM/PROJECTION ARTIST interested in projecting your work either as a writer reads his/her writing, or as a stand-alone piece, please get in touch with us (we'll provide the projector). If you are a MOVEMENT ARTIST who would like full use of our weird, bunkeresque downstairs space for your 2-10 minute piece, let us know. PLEASE FORWARD THIS if you know of people who might be interested. It will be a personal favor to me and I will thank you with a big handshake and possibly a crude sketch of an owl. You can reach me here on this blog, or the series at bushwickbunker AT gmail DOT com.

Other than that, it's a good weekend for visits. I had a sibling in town along with her partner in crime; we ate lots of tacos and a moderate amount of falafel. I also may get to see Gina today/tomorrow. But right now I'm making yet more tea and hoping to burrow right through this formatting project. The word "typist" came up when we discussed the job, and I talked about the word with my sister. We got to thinking about how antiquated it sounds. Typists are a dusty, gilded, dying breed, and the speci(wo)men probably smell like drawer satchets and thickish, mineral-heavy face powder, despite which they appear as chipper as the lady in the image. None of these attributes possess I, and therefore logic determines one thing only. Oh well. Back to it.

sour patch niina

I think readings are ruining my life. No, wait, that's not right. What I meant to say was that they're enhancing it, like this inaugural hat is enhancing the cat's already forbidding, stately visage. (The cat is selected from one page of results from the google search "cat wearing stupid outfit". Google is the Aeolian harp through which the banal, useless, booze-scented wind of human whimsy blows.)

Yesterday I went over to Pete's Candy Store for the Big Poetry reading series there; it was a really good show with a wide variety of style (all the readers were very stylish, seriously). I also managed this hilarious gaffe -- I awkwardly blurted "I just read your book and what a fuckin' good book it was" to an author whose book I recently finished. This person sat next to me, very unassumingly, and then the little author-photo-recognition light went on in my head and I started thinking about a kind way to compliment the collection of poems, which really was stellar... but before I could do it, my mouth was already talking, and it was just saying such brutish stuff. I'm a soul-stealing nightmare in any social setting. Dear author, I'm sorry, from me to you right here on my blog.

But right now I gotta veggie lasagna in the oven, and that thing's going to be stupid good, seriously. And then Garrett and I are going to watch Terminator. Take that, weekend. (Different from a Take That Weekend, which I assume was a pretty vied-for radio station prize in mid-nineties Germany.)

stop your motion

Even if you hate the music, put it on mute -- it's worth watching. I love stop motion. I also love sleeping, but of late I keep sleeping horribly and altogether too much, so I guess you could say this video is a sort of invocation.

a search-engine poem attempts to answer an important question.

Do Bears Drink Milk?

Bears!
What are the different kinds of bears? How do bears move?
Do people drink bear milk? I do.
I am concerned about the amount of liquid. But do not stop.
Another idea is that all the great families of animals—as bees and bears,
birds and fish, Bi Polar Bears – make music. On my one quick trip, I never saw a bear.
I didn’t drink wine either (back then I was a Scotch drinker) but I have grown to love this milk.
I have tasted all three flavors (tuna, coffee, cake) – Somehow I have an easier time than
other carnivore cubs.

Do you drink coffee as black or with milk or sugar?
Do you drink coffee as black or with milk or sugar?
I drink my coffee with milk or creamer.

#

The male bears grows larger then the female bears do.
They cuddle against their mother to stay warm. ... you're out hiking,
you see a bear, what should you do? Well, there is
a Coke in the snow and the two cubs will fight over it.
Then she'll drink the Coke and offer Coke infused milk
we buy for drinking fresh and for using in our cooking.

What do teddy bears drink when they party? Why milk of course!
Do you like parakeets? I do. You will learn a lot of facts about parakeets.
Brown bears have two names. One name is brown bear and the other name
Scrapefoot: what it takes for survival.
My illness is due to my doctor’s insistence that I
drink milk, that whitish fluid. I like to drink a small amount.
Let him ask for more.

My son drinks cows milk. We drink our milk, do you?
Water and milk were the other beverages with meals, and you're only a fat, stupid old Bear.
As you've doubtless guessed, you're going to make something
that bears a creepy ability to imagine ...

#

Infant grizzly bears eat no honey, salmon, or berries. They live on mother's milk.
Infant cattle do not graze on grass and sagebrush.
They become meat eaters, and never drink milk again.

link

Starting Today: poems for the first 100 days of the Obama presidency: an interesting project from Rachel Zucker and Arielle Greenberg. Updated daily, the blog posts a poem by a different poet in response to the presidency. So far, I like several, but I really like this one.

Slightly weird to me is the messianic connotation that creeps into some of these poems, but perhaps it's just relief and I don't actually mind it too much. In fact I like seeing the incredible recent upsurge in positive (or at least hopeful) political writing. I think people are totally still riding the high of being able to write a poem that includes the word "president" without the poem being mean or satirical.