July 2011
7 posts
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Waiting, Itching (a very unfinished piece indeed)
A vector is an organism that carries and transmits an infectious agent from reservoir to host. A vector is a geometric entity endowed with both length(/magnitude) and direction.
The light here is filtered always, through the dust particles clinging to unformed water droplets in the air, through the haze of sputtering rickshaws and waves of rebounding heat. Or inside, through the yellow of aged...
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Ring Road
They built the Outer Ring Road to direct traffic away from the whirlpool of downtown and shunt impatient vehicles into a crooked, breakneck orbit. It fits the city like a fifteen-year-old belt. Nudging inwards as a reminder of past circumferences. Spilled over on all sides by the insistent bulge of new business.
And it isn’t the only one – along with the Inner Ring, and the impending Core and...
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(from a visual prompt)
Impressions: stray ink blots, or staticky reception, like the momentary holes on projected film reels that crackle in peripheral vision and vanish the next millisecond, thin scratches (the time I experimentally dragged a bobby pin across the smooth surface of a group portrait), reflections with no sign of the surface other than sharp angles, symmetrical splotches like an accidental Rorschach test,...
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before/after
-the shape left on the uncoastered table: somewhere between crescent moon and full, sloppy edges bleeding brown onto the wood
-the brownish growth across napkin fibers, quick and amoebic, like a shadow or an omen
-the fog on the glass – its own chilled breath
-the sizzling noises, even fresh from the fridge; a jumble of popping, a confused pop
-the curve of the bottle: the only of its kind, such...
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Paper/Photograph
We make marks on paper not because it is blank, but because it is white. Because some things are much easier to penetrate than others, and light is one of them. Marks are made by layering, obstructing the bounce-off of rays hitting the surface, slathering on something that will absorb, yawn and consume instead – odd that adding something new to a page can be like chiseling something else away. I...
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on venice
There was a song Fed used to sing, it went something like “because in Venice/ everyday life’s a work of art/ that must be seen firsthand…” It was pretty, the way the room filled with the quick pulse of a tenor voice, the way he slid up to the note on art, drew out the ahhhh and drawled the consonants into the closing. The ripples of the piano line, of the held vowels, bounced around in my ears for...
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Good Advice. →
June 2011
7 posts
1 tag
on vision
It’s not just that by day all vision occurs in hues of blue – it’s that all figures must be silhouetted, as well, backlit by some far away something that lies beyond the rippling roof, or maybe just along it. Perhaps they resemble eclipsed suns, darkened but for a streaming white outline; or perhaps they seem haloed and angelic as they wriggle and shine along. Or does all that refracted and...
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What are you thinking about?
(this is some of the random draft-ish stuff that didn’t make the chapbook)
The blank stare, I promise, is not a sign of some inner vitality, some wishful rendition of clever conversation ping-ponged across the flat mind or return to the landscape of last night’s dream (the one all in shades of soft purple); no, no, nothing like that. It is a signal that I am not ‘here,’ though – ‘here’ being...
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An Abbreviated List of Ways to Make Things...
(this served, at one point, as the endnotes for a longer essay on inheriting a cavernous apartment full of random stuff)
1. Use permanent marker or highlighter.
2. Refer to it by its full, proper name.
3. Give it more names, and refer to it by those instead.
4. Capitalize its first letter, even when you’re speaking.
5. Fit it into a pattern, probably one...
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an introduction to turing
Boy Meets Living Statue, taken in Rome, Italy in the summer of 2010
The Turing Test is supposedly a measure of a machine’s ability to exhibit intelligent behavior. The breakdown: if a human holds a conversation with a hidden machine and is unable to distinguish it from a conversation with a hidden human, the machine has passed the test. Really, the test just looks for imitation, for a...
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winged victory of samothrace (at the louvre)
They’ve been recovering her bits and pieces for years – finding her palm and puzzling out that, yes, this was her forefinger and that her thumb, this is what her wing must have looked like, her arm, her open mouth. They have a mental picture, now, of all the pieces that were left in rubble when she first found her way to the head of the staircase; they see each phantom limb like they had fully...
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coffee and cigarettes
(from a creative nonfiction workshop I took in the spring of 2011, inspired by the jazz standard Black Coffee and our tireless coffeemaker, Froust. the next few posts - the ones I’ll make in quick succession - are bits and pieces of the shorter work I did for that class, some of which was included in my chapbook, entitled Variations on Turing. I realized that I haven’t posted in this...
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October 2010
1 post
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WatchI am obsessed with this.
September 2010
5 posts
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Does Your Language Shape How You Think? →
Yes.
August 2010
5 posts
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The Politeness Enforcement Tactic →
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Michael Andrews and Gary Jules - Mad World...
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Morning Commune
This morning, I watch on as a group of business people, khaki-clad, collared, sandaled, slacked, stiff as the trunk of a hundred-ring tree rooted in Mad Square Park, tries to find moments for breath in the middle of a morning commute. They’re in a circle now, eyes closed for the most part (Pink Collar is peeking – snatching examples and wondering who’s peeking back) arms raised above flat-lying...
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This should be about Italy
but it’s hard to find its light etchings on my mind with only hindsight, and when all the rush hour traffic of an island that swells to twelve times its evening size is barreling through the point between my eyes, it’s a fight to stop squinting through heavy lashes at the crosstown buses and the taxis blurring by, at the socks high, cap straight, stretch-necked father posing sons and their smiles...
July 2010
1 post
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June 2010
6 posts
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Last One
Assignment: Biography.
My subject: my roommate. I’m dubbing her K for the purposes of this blog.
In real life, I made the piece into a kind-of-book that requires some flipping and navigating… but I guess, in this venue, it just takes on the form of a vignette-y essay. It’s long, so make your bathroom run now.
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On K
On pink
If an...
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Another from ENGL0180
This one’s a personal narrative.
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All I Want For Christmas
When I was in third grade, the ‘missing two front teeth’ look was a particularly coveted one among youngsters. There was a small bunch of kids in my class who had simultaneously developed large gaps in the front of their mouths… it was as though, overnight, the Tooth Fairy had gone on a...
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ENGL0180 - Creative Nonfiction
I figured that I may as well post a couple of pieces from my creative nonfic class this semester… the prompt for this one was to write about something you love, but without using any personal pronouns.
I wrote about markers. No surprises there.
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Aisle 3 Royalty
Here, browsing is a pretense. Even attempting to meander seems...
May 2010
1 post
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i carry your heart with me
by e.e. cummings i carry your heart with me(i carry it in my heart)i am never without it(anywhere i go you go,my dear; and whatever is done by only me is your doing,my darling) i fear no fate(for you are my fate,my sweet)i want no world(for beautiful you are my world,my true) and it's you are whatever a moon has always meant and whatever a sun will always sing is you here is the deepest secret...
February 2010
4 posts
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(and scene)
Autumn His eyes crinkle at the corners from years upon years of grins and smiles and mischievous winks, receding, now, into the crevices of his skin, etched by fingers tracing and eroded by water coursing and numbered, painstakingly, pain-takingly by the soft brown eyes of the pudgy four-year old perched on his stubborn thigh. His teeth have seen too many turmeric days, but not enough preschool...
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(more)
Raindance The too-green grass was wet with laughter as much as with the slashing rain - not that the green was visible beneath the insulated overcoat of Scottish night – but still, the flecks of Crayola Kelly, Hunter, and the occasional Jungle, splattered across hands, now dispersing under the steady course of tap water, were there, engraved, on palms and in minds and in star-dancing eyes. Strands...
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Surprise!
Found this (and some others) in my poetry notebook from my fall ‘08 seminar. Whoa now.
Handwriting I scribble myself upon the page before me inscribe my fingernails in wails of looping graphite every tooth-ridden edge etched into the sliver-blue lines I write my crescent-moon tips and the beds they lay on into the lead waves they play on and watch as shaky hands pattern the page with words...
January 2010
3 posts
1 tag
Adele - Make You Feel My Love
Sing it, girl.
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Sleep Talkin' Man makes my day! →
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December 2009
4 posts
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WatchTop 25 songs of 2009… IN ONE GO. Bam!
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I LEGO N.Y. →
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November 2009
4 posts
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WatchChristopher Walken reading Pokerface.
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motorcycle
yesterday, three people to one seat, sloshing, two-wheeled, through gray-tinged monsoon rain was giggle worthy - with the thrill of whirling roads blurring past weaving speeders pulsing wildly red against wrists and clutched fingers (we’re fine, we’re fine) we tugged at our curls and leaned back fondly into glazed eyes today I lean back into those average times and wonder where these skidmarks...
October 2009
5 posts
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Kakapos are pretty cool, but THIS KAKAPO IS... →