rocket to nowhere

• @marginalcomment No, but I think your tweet qualifies as a hamm-fisted attempt at humor. in reply to marginalcomment #
• Sitting at Car Max, and waiting for an offer on a car I'd keep if I really wanted to continue not being able to afford it. #fb #
• Just sold my car to CarMax. Kinda sad. Kinda free. Kinda richer than I was an hour ago. #fb #
• Mmmmm, Katzenzungen! Die habe ich fast alle gegessen! #fb #
• Today has already been too full and it's only noon. The magic trick J did with the cat earlier was much appreciated though. #fb #
• @LairdHunt The most fun, beautiful, and perfectly useless ones! in reply to LairdHunt #
• I prefer to think JD Salinger has just decided to become extra reclusive. (via @hodgman) #
• Pondering a nyctaloptic palmiped. #
• RT @cornelln Brilliant yet obvious,completely true. Why iPad matters: Future Shock: http://bit.ly/ce4m5f /via @fraserspeirs #

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I will be giving a reading with the fabulous Joanna Ruocco
on Thursday, February 18, 2010
at 7:30 p.m.
in the English Department
at the University of Denver
(Sturm Hall 495
2000 E. Asbury
Denver, CO 80208)

You should come.

• Have spent much of the day working on Cubicle Deathmatch. #fb #
• Damn that was cold! #fb #
• In the meditative brainlessness that is cycling, I completely forgot about the Katzenzungen Joan gave me. A surprise in my backpack! #

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click here for an article about the photos on boingboing.net

• @do_or_diy I have had the M page hanging in my cubicle or house for the last 5 years. Can't wait to hear the mp3. in reply to do_or_diy #
• 10 miles on the bike. A good class. Cigar and bourbon on the front porch. A fantastic graphic novel. A call from a good friend. #fb #
• Every Man for Himself, and God Against All. #fb #
• I was very tired. Then I got into bed. #fb #
• I questioned my decision to ride this morning when I realized my crotch was cold. #fb #
• @achewood I can't begin to tell you how happy I am to find "gruntle" in the dictionary. You have made my day again. Thanks! in reply to achewood #

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• I will be tweeting an entire book starting January 4. Please follow, and tell others to too. Happy New Year! (via @SusanScarlata) #
• I should have used the RT convention on the previous tweet so as to avoid confusion. Follow @susanscarlata !!! #
• @hodgman The OED lists "materteral" as "humorous. rare." in reply to hodgman #
• Students expect their instructors to be a little scatterbrained, right? #
• I just heard the phrase, "the pedagogy of terror." Chilling and wonderful. #
• Alan Watts on Nothingness: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dLrMVous0Ac #
• Car battery dead. In a cab and late to work. #fb #
• Now on a bus with at least two incredibly beautiful and well-dressed people. #fb #
• @marginalcomment No, no. I was in the middle somewhere. in reply to marginalcomment #
• Go see the Cliff Evans video installation in the art building at DU. Go. See. It. #fb #

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• There were just 6 children under the age of 5 in the locker room–all screaming. Hooray for noise canceling earphones. #fb #
• transubstantiation #
• @Colter_Burkey It's a key word in the book I'm reading. in reply to Colter_Burkey #
• rhinoceroseses #
• @Colter_Burkey No, it was a key word in the song stuck in my head. in reply to Colter_Burkey #
• About to finish reading a novel by Paweł Huelle. I wonder how he pronounces it. #fb #
• Watched 4 episodes of Dr. Who today. Now to spend some quality time with Patrik Ourednik (while my wife works on her expense reports). #fb #
• A picture of my lovely wife and me can be found at http://sweaterwrecks.com/ #
• She said, "My fingers are dainty like knives." #
• Pie crawls, apparently. #
• "Did you know Lawence Welk music is so fast it can exhaust you" http://twitpic.com/w500n #

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The first thing I saw, the first thing I really saw, after I had had a moment to adjust my looking to everything I was seeing, was the udder of the great Holstein and the thin arc of milk expelling itself from one of her teats. Only then did I see her dangling head, the void surrounding her spine, and the blood draining from that void. Beyond that, there were men with knives doing a job, doing their jobs, and another man with an innocuous-seeming device which he used in a manner not dissimilar from the way a police detective uses arrest—as a formality at the end of a longer, secretive process carried out in doorways and on small slips of paper.

vs.

But there is a burden which will need to be shed, and that burden is named Robert. And Robert, though immensely small (small and still, a perfectly spherical zero) is also immensely heavy.

He took a walk. When people don’t have signs or other external cues for direction, they will probably end up walking in circles. Robert walked a circle with every step and still managed to get somewhere and not just the madhouse. (We don’t say “madhouse” anymore.) He took a walk and then he sat down. He sat down and then he made chicken scratches all over the back of a receipt for a cup of coffee and a peach muffin. Those chicken scratches became this story. (But this isn’t a story. (And Robert isn’t writing it.))

He took a walk. You might well ask where he took it. All right then, he went for a walk. He put one foot in front of the other. He compelled himself forward. He was walking. And he didn’t always realize it, but he was always falling. With each step he fell forward slightly. And then caught himself from falling. Over and over, you’re falling. And then catching yourself from falling. And this is how he could be walking and falling at the same time.

That is not, perhaps, the circle you were thinking of. He took a walk (that construction again!). Then he took a bow (ah, that’s why! (but it’s still not quite right . . . )). He went for a walk. He bowed. He bowed deeply, modestly, with sincere humility, but he also showed some pride in his bow because he knew how to bow, and he knew how to do it well. Robert did not bow when he was walking. (Well, once, at the very end, but I’m trying to avoid including biographical facts. They fit too nicely.) He did not bow when he made his pencil marks (what I have previously and unfairly referred to as “chicken scratches”). But, of course, his markings and his ramblings were made up almost entirely of a constant, circular bowing. Which is, of course, exactly how one makes a small, still, perfectly spherical zero.

He wanted to be smaller, to be small. It is irrelevant whether or not he achieved this goal. (Is it?) He certainly achieved a deep silence, but that’s once again uncomfortably close to biographical detail.

Oh look! But here! His mother suffered depression! One brother ended his own life! One brother’s life ended in an asylum (where Robert also lived, later)! He walked miles every day! His handwriting got smaller and smaller! He couldn’t live a normal life! He ended up in an asylum! He said, “I’m not here to write. I’m here to be mad”! He died on a walk, in the snow, on Christmas Day! These things, if correctly marshaled, must explain all 26 volumes of text! (But they don’t. And they can’t. And I’m not entirely sure the small, still, perfectly spherical zero can, either.)

Perhaps only the text can explain the text. (What difference does it make, motherfucker?)

1. This is proof that sound can plumb emotional depths even if the soundmaker/s probably have no experience of those emotions (at those depths).

2. This is proof that emotional depths are not ever deepened by the “I’m singing soulfully and with great meaning” set of gestures (where did these children learn said set?).

3. This is further proof that nothing Stevie Nicks related can be bad.

(video via WFMU)