My Blog

Blog

  • Kennedy

    He tries so hard
    to look bright around the eyes
    bright Kennedy eyes
    kind crinkles soft
    wisdom star fire big pupils with
    flecks of genius
    knowing, nodding
    but it always
    comes out
    crazy.

  • Blog’versary

    A tad over twelve months ago, I blogged my first post. It’s been a fun year, writing these poems, reading that book, collaborating on that cauliflower, making that monkey noise, and whatnot. Thanks to everyone who’s been dropping by. And special mad props to xian who makes this all possible and who suggested I getta blog in the very first place back in March 2003.
    On a related note, I’ve been really enjoying the blogs of comrades such as RaptorMage, Kim Said, and the notorious Mrs. T. I know blog blog blog, we’re all pretty burned on that word. But the thing about blogs is, they’re an amazing gift to folks who like to write — just a really powerful way to get yerself off the stone. Or perhaps on that stone. Or just by the corner of said stone. In a writerly way.
    All to say, let me highly recommended the blogging life to any of youse writers what want to be writing a little bit more, and you know who you are….
    In other news, as the Gravity’s Rainbow Deathmarch nears its wrap, here’s a heads-up that we’ll be starting DM2 with a somewhat smaller though still challenging book right around the end of May. More details soon. Hope to see ya there,
    -Cecil

  • The Gravity’s Rainbow Deathmarch, Week 16

    Well this is it — the last stop before the final push! Just 7 days till we receive Ultimate Wisdom! Woo!
    I enjoyed the last week’s reading, packed with taffy bits, although I’ll confess to getting pretty lost during the FF sequence. I’ll hafta go back and give that another read.
    One recent passage I thought I’d pull out for the thread, on page 691 (p/v): “You didn’t like the haiku. It wasn’t ethereal enough? Not Japanese at all? In fact it sounded like something right outa Hollywood? Well, captain — yes you, Marine Captain Esberg from Pasadena — you have just had, the Mystery Insight! (gasps and a burst of premonitory applause) and so you — are our Paranoid . . . For The Day!)” which I thought was a really nice explicit statement re what we’ve talked about a fair bit here on the thread — the often cartoony/genre-heavy/cinematic style of the proceedings. It doesn’t necessarily say why he’s doing it, but at least it does say that we’re all named Captain Esberg from Pasadena. And again: Woo!
    Next week: What can I say? See you on the other side. Perhaps it’ll be like the end of Narnia, and we’ll all be partying with the dead. Reepicheep! Peter Sachsa! Here I come!

  • Wire Act

    We saw this squirrel the other night. And she’s carrying one of her kids in her mouth over a thin black power line — tree to tree, in search of better digs.
    In her mouth! POWER line! Or…maybe it was a telephone line. But either way, it was crazy.
    So she drops the first kid off on a big branch in this new, flush tree, takes a quick breath, and then heads back out to get kid number two.
    This time across, she seems wiped out, stumbling dramatically — we gasped! This is thirty feet over the concrete sidewalk. And kid number two is huge. At least half its mother’s size.
    Well the mom just barely makes it over, but make it over she does. We all cheered! And then back she goes. Step, step, then lying down on the wire, lying down. Embracing that wire, then step, step, oh god I’m so beat stumble. Lie down. Again. Then step. Spent.
    We wondered why she didn’t just walk on the sidewalk, nudging them along with her nose? A thin wire? Thirty feet in the air? Why make it so hard on herself? And then we realized Oh yeah. For a squirrel it’s like: “we die on the ground.”

  • waiting in line (a true story)

    waiting
    in line
    for a defective roller coaster.
    a waste of time.
    but more than that —
    just a bad idea.

  • Knock Knock

    Here’s a joke my four-year-old told us at dinner tonight. I enjoyed it and thought you might too:

    Knock knock.
Who's there?
You know what's broccoli made of?
You know what's broccoli made of who?
Peas.

  • Scramble

    When I was in second grade my family moved to Holland. We lived in a town called Wassenaar and went to school in The Hague (Den Haag) – a big city about 20 minutes drive away.
    Every morning, a bus would swing through our neighborhood and pick me and my brothers up on the corner, just around the block from where we lived.
    There was a small, circular park across the road with a pair of benches and plenty of thick bushes — the kind you could crawl through or just sit inside for a while, at least as a kid. And this whole scene relaxed in the shade of an old Dutch church with a deep-voiced clock tower that kept the town moving on collective time.

    (more…)

  • The Gravity’s Rainbow Deathmarch, Week 15

    At So-Called Bill’s excellent suggestion, last week turned into one final rest, reflect, and reread week before the grand finale. Now here we are, tanned and ready, primed for the big wrap and just — jinkies! — two more weeks to go. I really like the word “jinkies.”
    Next week: Page 706 (p/v), once more with feeling….

  • x-post: and the monkey and the poetry and the discoball of it all

    “Poet Makes a Housecall” is back over on ye olde Monkey Vortex Radio Theater. This Monkey Vortex Monday (remember those?), it’s Holding On, a beautiful piece of disco poetry, written and produced by Tony Jonick. Enjoy! -CV.

  • x-post: The Hillside

    I recently got to add some keys to a lovely country trance number by Yaniv Soha (formerly of “Yaniv Soha and the Bear”). The resulting tune — The Hillside — is now live and available for free and easy downloading in the popular MP3 format over on Yaniv Soha.com.