Stupid Chinese Sayings and Commentary 1

Wind in the cave;
Movement in stillness.
Power in silence.

So much snoring. I can’t tell Joey from Rumiko. When both fall silent, I rip a long fart in Alex’s face. He burrows closer to the bend in my knee.

At a conference

Ryan hadn’t seen Todd in two days and Laura had disappeared for nearly a week, ever since the last day of their interviews. Ryan spent the last full day in San Francisco by the pool, drinking beer and trying to beat his hangover he’d had since their second day in town, when he’d met up with his ex-girlfriend from the Peace Corps. Todd drank full-throttle with friends from Hawaii. Ryan took a taxi to the airport to catch their flight, assuming that Todd would find his own way. Laura showed up in a terrible state, coming down after two days of tripping on LSD. She nearly walked by Ryan in the boarding line, saw him and stumbled, then hung on to him while they waited to board. She and Ryan had exit row seats on the starboard side; Todd had seats two rows back but on the other side of the plane, a 747-400, a big one. Before take off the flight attendants checked that Ryan and Laura were comfortable “performing the duties” required of an exit row passenger. They nodded and JaLaura n fell asleep as soon as the attendant was gone. She slept all the way to Tokyo. Ten and a half hours, without a break. Ryan woke her up when they landed and asked if maybe she had anything with her, any drugs. She shook her head and staggered down the aisle of the plane but was steady and swagger-free going through customs and immigration.

A Mocha UCC blended coffee can

We keep our loose change in you and take you to the bank when you’ve done your job. We reach inside and lessen you when we want to buy beer, or machine popcorn, or top off a bill for a payment at the door. Watch out, or you’ll end up dented and outside, like your friends.

April 29, 2003

You were sunny, and we went iking near the house. We left at 9:34, hiked up high enough to see the house, then turned around. We stopped at a festival held at the car park at the base of the mountain and watched local people and Shinto priests fire walk over hot coals. After Rumiko had showered we went to Tsutaya to rend “Bad Company”. Rumiko bought books and we had lunch at McDonald’s. We both tried their new something-or-other burger. We had to ask what was on it because we couldn’t tell from the picture at the counter. We bought rods to hang outside the bedroom window, to hang futon from, and beer and cat food, too, at Musashi, and then came home. It was a windy day and the futon that Rumiko had hung up before we went hiking had blown down. We had curry for dinner, sat with the cat, watched most of the video, and went to bed around 10:00. I had disjointed dreams and woke up in a fright when the telephone started beeping, not ringing, but beeping after a heavy wind had slapped the curtain against the phone stand and knocked it over. I was sure my family was trying to call to say my father had died.

Going to Pieces

Pieces jumps on my keyboard and I say, “What you doing, pumpkin head?”, and she squeals five times in my face and rubs her cheek against the edge of the screen. She’s a silent movie. A lot came together and it’s doing fine. It’s pieces, for sure. Don’t you bite me! Quiet meow, small coughs.

For the Mizunashi

I’ll be old and lonely and sitting on a stump by the campground up past the second bridge, listening to you, wondering why rivers sound the same, hearing old friends, staring at old fires.

It never happened

We might as well have fucked
For all the people who thought we did.
Shows who your friends are, huh?
Care a little bit for you, and show it,
And suddenly my car is parked out front with the motor running and we’re inside fucking in your kitchen.
That’s what our friends would like to think, would like to have thought.
Nothing like it ever happened.
The closest was a morning I woke up early and stepped out on to the beach. We had coffee together, waiting for your other family to wake up. I did think about you then, more the situation than the fact. Coffee in the morning, on the beach, early, waiting for your husband and child to wake up.

To a father-in-law

You were the first person I knew well who died. We heard you had cancer. We watched you get sick and die from it. You died in December, during the first snow of the season. I don’t know if there is life after death, but I think you still exist, that you’re still there. If I think you’re still there, then everyone, every living creature is still there, somehow. Thinking about your death has made me think that the next level of religion or spirituality has to embrace the entire world, the entire realm of all plants and all animals. But, in fact, I don’t think about your death much, as I don’t feel it. You fought for what you thought was right for your daughter, and after I married her you were a good and trusting and fun father-in-law. You were true to your word in every sense. One of these days I’ll miss you, but not yet. For me, you’re still in Irihirose, working in the garden, watching TV in your small room in the corner of the factory, presiding over the family, getting me drunk as a monkey.

To a dog of the deep south

I’m sorry I was cruel to you. Perhaps wasn’t, but that’s how I remember it. You were tiny and sensitive and so eager to please, and we had our share of running and playing, but a mean streak in me made me sometimes shout at you, bully you. You would cowl and try to make yourself small, but that didn’t stop me. I shouted more. I was frustrated and unhappy and you were small and couldn’t fight back, and you liked my father more than you like me, and I hated that, and I hated him, and so I hurt you with my shouting and my abuse. I’m sorry I encouraged my father to have you put to sleep. You had been sick for so long and seemed in so much pain. You tried so hard to do the things that you knew pleased us. On some days you could run a few steps and even chase a ball, and bark, but on other days a few steps and you’d fall down, kicking, unable to stand up. Your breath and your lick were fowl and nauseating, and you were eaten up with something, maybe cancer, and for days you wouldn’t get up. I really thought at the time that having you put to sleep was the best thing. My father couldn’t make the decision so I helped make it for him. You woke up the morning of the day we killed you, and we knew it was your last morning. You didn’t know that. You couldn’t know that. I’m sorry we did that to you. I’ve never shed a tear, and suggesting that we put you to sleep was, in a way, getting back at my father. You were a great dog, and a kind creature, and I was bad to you. I was mean to you.

To Rento Yukiguni

A small place, two six-tatami mat rooms, a kitchen, a tiny toilet, a small bath. My first place in Urasa. The kind of place where you say, “Well, you really have done a lot with this place!”, and then laugh. A view of the mountains to the east, a side view toward the south, a screened window over the kitchen sink, a small window west. There were women sometimes and lots of beer, and many phone calls from Marc, to talk about work, mostly. Rumiko moved in and brought her things, a huge chest of drawers, a Sony 19-inch Trinitron, and bookshelves. We moved out after I’d been there for nine years. I missed racing to school from you, missed the jogs around the rice fields near you, missed walking into old Urasa for groceries. You’re still there, but the area has changed, with needless construction of a new bridge, a bypass, a winery, an empty museum, less green and much more grey of concrete. But, I’m getting away from you now. I did that once before. I don’t want to do it again.

For the creek, being wet

Just a small creek, running through our back yard, separating nothing except this side of you, and the other side of you. No special names like “The Hole” or “The Secret Spot” given to you. Just a “Mud Factory”, a small place where fine-grained sand gathered and where we could stand and grind our feet and made red mud. You were what my father built a bridge over, what Steve broke his cheekbone and collarbone and arm falling in to. I hid in you, waded in you, and smoked my first joint hiding behind your banks.

When I grew up I always came to you first when I came home, and I felt at home sitting alongside your water, looking down and upstream. I took the women of my life down to you to show them your fish, and onetime your crawfish and a bullfrog. Then, I think in the early 1980s, too young, really, I came home and felt nothing sitting beside you. Your magic had gone, or you had turned your face away. It was a windy day and a branch fell from high in a tree and almost landed on me and I felt an anger and hostility from you. You didn’t want me there, or you had gone and something else had taken over that part of this Earth.

Much later you let me come back, but only for five minutes here, a few moments there. I don’t even carry pictures of you anymore.

For the Tux

I think you are an angel, sent to me to atone for the black cat, much like you, with missing teeth and a fucked up eye, that we had put to sleep, that died in my arms after an injection, my best friend Jeff horrified and silent.
I think you are an angel, for taking care of Jenni’s kittens, for following her around the house, to the local temple, to the community center, always at her side.
I just wish you’re learn to get along with the indoor cats. You don’t have to kick their asses on sight, you know!
I like that you don’t photograph. You don’t show up in pictures. You are what is not there. You’re a black cat, with a white spot under your chin, and so Joey Tux, and Mighty Joe Young, too, and Rumiko’s tears.

For Bethel

When we were almost not teenagers any more
I invited you over on a summer day.
We filled Coke cans with water and raced rivulets down my driveway.
We smoked joints and listened to Joni Mitchell and drank white wine, you always partial to Sloe-gin fizz.
You came to the “All Liquor” party and we sat on the stairs. Never kissing, never touching.

The do happen

I was 15 and we were driving back from the beach. I fell asleep and a car overturned in front of us. Three teenagers were thrown from the car into the road. One stayed with the car and then got out and ran up the road and collapsed after the car stopped. My father stopped and we jumped out. One of the teenagers was dead. That was obvious. Another had his legs crushed. The guy who ran up the road died while we were there. The last guy had his brains spilled out on the road. We had an ice chest in the back seat of our station wagon and got it and soaked a towel and tried to push the guys brains back in his head. The brains had mixed with sand and gravel and we weren’t sure what to do. There wasn’t much blood, just brains and grit.

The things we do

Come to me now, this past, and drape yourself over me, just for a while, and this time here will be released.
Broken memories, slanted thoughts of home, cheese and women on the porch,
Mixed drinks and valiums and first plane rides.
Please say you’ll come for a while and stay and remind me who you are.
I’ll get you a blanket and warm your feet. We can look at pictures and talk about ways you can heal me, because I need healing. We’ll smell wood and hold stones between our fingers and pretend to be sorcerers. You gave me such chills, and thinking about you now leaves me warm. I do believe you are there. Say we mediated on a bus trip and shot arrows in the air and never quite managed to build a model airplane that flew. Remind me of how we once looked at pond scum under the microscope in our basement room, and listened to the Rolling Stones and snuck out back to smoke Viceroys. Just for a while, take a rest here. I’ll put in a video and later we’ll talk about the people that only you remember, and I’ll tell you what I’ve forgotten about them. I”ll ask you, “What happened to me?” and I’ll say, “Please tell me I’m still here.” I’ll believe that’s what you’ll do.

Running After Sheryl

I got a Norman hand-made guitar, you got a guitar made by a monkey.
I listen to 60s rock, you like French pop singers.
I don’t cry at movies, you keep a tissue box by the remote.
I drink too much, and you only try to stop me a little.

In the kitchen I’m playing Miles Davis, with John and sitar and tambura.
In the bedroom you’re doing make-up and hair and standing sideways at the mirror.
Patting your tummy.
By the bedroom door Charlie is upside down and sleeping, really sleeping.
Halfway down the house my thick blue trekking socks are drying and I’m thinking will they be dry for me to wear them to school.
The kotatsu is on and Milkshake has found a place to hide there. Charlie faces the window outside his cat house and watches the rain and watches out for his feral friend who eats his food and leaves his ears scarred and matted with blood.
All this. That’s who I am.

Of a sort...

He was born in March, the year Einstein hit his life speed,
And he played down by the creek, and climbed the nearest tree,
And his daddy threw him baseballs and worked under the car,
And his momma fixed his meals and asked him to take out the garbage.
But he ran through the woods and dreamed of clouds to take him away,
And horses in the pasture to lie next to and drink their smell.

He took a book and cigars and climbed the tree,
That smothered their front lawn,
He read of Che Guevara and asked his daddy for his gun,
And shot birds down by the dozen, and walked away and back home.

And he read and read and watched the water in the creek, and caught crawfish with white bread, and fought his pet chickens by the basement door.
He was mean to the little dog his daddy bought him when he was six.
The dog was meek and smart and lively and never bit, but stayed away from him when they were alone.
It loved his daddy, who was even meaner, who fed him from the table and hit him when he peed or wouldn’t eat, and every morning the little dog, named Dixie, laid shit on the kitchen floor and his daddy beat the dog and smeared his nose in the shit.
And he hated his daddy for doing that, and disliked himself even more, and waited to get away and hope to be someone else.

The snow fell on a dark morning after all night at the mill.
He came home and parked at the top of the hill.
His mother made coffee and they walked to the road and stood by the car.
He had a scarf on and long hair and she took a picture.
It was his favorite picture, smiling.

Not long after he lived in a small house with a woman he would marry.
Her friends from New York came to visit and took a picture of him.
They were drinking coffee. He leaned across the table, his chin in his hand.
He smiled and her girlfriend took the picture.

In Botswana they had a black cat. They went away to Zimbabwe and the landlord gave the cat away. They found this out when they got back. Some neighbors said she ate the cat. Other neighbors said she gave the cat away to be eaten. They got another cat and she had kittens and they all had deformed back legs, like frogs, splayed and unable to run. They kept one kitten. The mother cat disappeared and before he left Botswana for good he gave the cat away. He was sure it soon ended up dead.

As all things do.

Bad Blog! OUT!

Standing at the station, pick up my guitar, see a puddle by the platform, wonder what it is for, crying for a shadow, fucking up a rainbow, pounding on a drum set, twirling his sticks he sits behind a Gretch kit and sees the future, by the aisle a couple fight about their children, he has a tube of vinyl cleaner in his pocket, and no socks. He wonders about the stains on his big toenails, his broker says don’t buy Enron but he picks up 500 shares and keeps them for himself.

Shine a Light

It was a Friday night and K and J and I had nothing to do and no money so we decided to steal hubcaps from the Grant's parking lot across the highway. This was mostly K's idea. The three of us snuck through to the edge of the woods at the edge of highway 29 and decided that K and I would run across the road and hide among the parked cars in the Grant's parking lot, J's job to stay at the edge of the woods and shout CAR! if he saw a car or anyone on foot coming near us. When there were no cars coming K and I sprinted across 29, down and back up a gully and duck-walked from the edge of the parking lot to the nearest cars. K went to work with his screw driver and J yelled, "CAR!" We scrambled back to the gully and waited and watched but didn't see anyone. K duck-walked back to the car and popped off a hubcap. J yelled, "CAR!" K hunkered down and I crawled up to the level of 29. I waited until a car passed and ran across the highway to where J waited at the edge of the woods. J asked if we could hear him yell car and I said yes we could but why was he doing it because K and I had not seen any cars. J said, "You told me to yell CAR if I saw one. There are lots going by all the time." We were not communicating and I went back across the highway to talk to K and we agreed we'd best try to steal hubcaps some other time.

Stop Breaking Down

My first car was a purple Rambler. My oldest sister drove it first and then is passed to my middle sister. My father took it over and waited two years to hand it to me when I got my licence. It was a real American car of the 1960s and 1970s. There was always something wrong with it and always something with it expected to go wrong. The engine would start if you stepped just the right way on the brake pedal, with no key in the ignition. And sometimes you could park the car, take the key, get out, lock the door and head toward the store or toward the school and the car would sit there and crank itself up. Then the car died. My oldest sister and I had been to Greenville, to the only record store in the area, and on the way back just before our country-road turnoff the radiator hose busted. My sister and I heard the bang of the steam releasing from the hose and we both looked back and saw water on the road. My sister said, "Look at all the red lights on the dashboard" and "What do you think it was?" I said maybe it was a water balloon. Maybe someone threw a water balloon at us. And though the roads were clear and there was no place to hide for anyone on either side of the road the water balloon story held up until the engine seized up just at the top of our driveway and about a mile and a half from where we'd been attacked by the water balloon.

All Down the Line

She bet me I wouldn't cross the Chick Springs trestle. I told her she was right. I wouldn't. But I followed her when she started across. It was dark out but with a moon so we could see the tracks but not the 50 foot drop on either side. We got to the other side both breathing heavy and then walked back across, slide down the bank, crossed the road and jumped the fence into the Chick Springs swimming area. We took off our clothes and waded into the smaller of the two lakes, natural lakes filled with mud and packed leaves along the banks. We swam. We whispered to each other and tread water and paddled toward shore when the water got too cold. It was our first date and one of our last, though we stayed together for almost two years. We never called it dating. Dating was something my older sisters did.

On a Thai Beach

I was sitting with an old traveler and his wife on Lamai beach. The old man said, "You spaced out a little there, didn't you? Think about this. You were just somewhere else in your mind. You were here and there. What if you could just be there and not just here all the time? Do you kow how much effort you put out being here? If you drift away you bring yourself back. Lose your place in a book for a minute and then you come back. But look at those gulls. You can imagine what it must be like to be one of them and when I do that I feel like I almost could completely imagine being them, but I can't. Because I'm me. And if I could become one of them I wouldn't remember it. The I that is me wouldn't remember it. And as a gull would I know that I was a person being the gull? No. I would just be the gull. What keeps us from shifting our awareness completely is us, who we know we are, what we've been taught we are. Some people can do it. I believe the buddha could do it. He had an oceanic experience as a child and spent his whole life in training to recapture and maintain that moment. But for the rest of us I don't think we can any more tap that ability that the buddha developed than we can become the gull, unless we can put our normal selves aside, the ones that are sitting here now, whatever that means."

A View of a Kill

A woman walked past a man begging on the street outside a shop across from the Nana Hotel in Bangkok. I sat in a taxi stopped in heavy early evening traffic. I saw the woman walk by and I saw the beggar say something to her. The woman walked on for several steps and then walked back to the man and spoke to him. He said something to her. She hit him with her purse and then her fists and then kicked him. He tried to stand up but she pushed him down and kicked his face. His head hit the side of the building and he slumped to the sidewalk. Shop owners and a few people watched while the woman took a liter bottle from a crate on the sidewalk and broke it on the man's head. There were more people stopped on the sidewalk but no one tried to stop the woman when she picked up a metal sculpture of a dancing Siva outside one of the tourist shops. She dropped the statue on the man's head and lifted it again and brought it down on his head again and a red and gray fountain lay next to his head. The woman walked away. No on followed her and my taxi moved on. The next morning I asked the Nana receptionist if she knew about the beating. The woman said, "Yes. He died." He thought yes, he must have. No one could take a beating like that.

Let it Loose

He got to Marbella by bus and stopped at the Bullfighter Bar on the way up the hill from the beach to the hostel he'd chosen from his guide book. He met a dozen or so other travellers and met them for dinner. He played guitar and Wolfgang from Toronto passed around joints and 10-grain valiums. His journal writing stopped. The group swam naked in the ocean one night and were taken to the police station, all of them singing A Hard Day's Night as he played guitar. He picked up the the girlfriend of the bar's owner and lived with her for a week until the boyfriend threatened them both and she went back to him. He met an English woman. She was trying to connect with local heroin smugglers for a magazine article she was writing. Two days later the woman pointed out one of the smugglers at the Bullfighter Bar. That night he and Wolfgang and another traveller took acid and were beaten up on the beach at dawn. After the beating he and the other guy stole four quarts of milk from the steps of the police station and drank them in an alleyway. A week later the same two guys took a night boat ride with some Spanish guys who pulled the boat to a dock and told them they were in Morocco and to help load some packages onto the boat. They did and then they ran into the hills and hid. They dropped acid again and went back to Spain but later they weren't sure if they had been in Morocco for real or not and 30 years later still weren't sure. Everyone tired of drugs and the police and so moved on. His journal picked up again.

Just Wanna See His Face

The head of the English program called a three-hour meeting of all the teachers. "We have to decide if we want to continue with the new executive program," he said. The teachers met and everyone agreed to tell the university administration that the program should be cancelled. Two days later and one day before the all-university faculty meeting the English program head called another meeting. He said he wasn't sure what had been decided at the last meeting. The program director and his teachers got together again and everyone agreed that the new program should be cancelled. The next day at the all-faculty meeting the English program director reported to the university president and secretary general that there was no question but that the new program should continue and that the English program was happy to be involved. The head of the language programs, the boss of the English program director, took a large marker from her purse and wrote "IDIOT" on the back of a page from the previous meeting's minutes. She added an arrow and held the paper up for everyone to see, the arrow pointing at the English program director, who sat and grinned at the management like a dog challenged by persimmons.

Ventilator Blues

The alarm at the Nana went off at 2:45 a.m. He'd slept for an hour. He dressed in the clothes he'd put out the night before and dragged his luggage to the 8th-floor elevators. The reception area of the Nana was chuck full of whores and old men waiting for them and some old men waiting for drugs and maybe something else, anything else. He took a taxi to the new airport and checked in for the flight to Tokyo. He bought a bottle of flavored vodka in a duty-free shop but Northwest wouldn't let him take it on the plane because the airport was new and didn't yet have a bonded area. He handed the vodka over but a Thai guy with Northwest wrapped it in a box and said he could get it on the plane as checked luggage. He thanked the guy and handed him 20 baht which was shaken away with a firm no. He boarded the quiet but full 747 at 5:30. A Laotian woman was in his seat. She had tickets for the center seats but wanted the aisle seats. He called over a flight attendant and said look if you can seat me somewhere else then that will be great because then she can have her seats and mine and I can have my aisle seat somewhere else. The attendant said the flight was full but she would see what she could do. He stood in the aisle. The plane was quiet and cool. A man sitting in the aisle seat across from him said, "Just let her have your seat so we can get out of here." He leaned over to the man and said, "Why don't you just shut the fuck up. This has nothing the fuck to do with you."

Turd on the Run

He and his guide walked four and half days in the rain along the Annapurna trail and then he got chilled and had no more dry clothes. A fever hit, then diarrhea and for three days he tightened up through stomach cramps and took Cipro and other medicines and didn't get any better and couldn't eat. He read a Dean Kootz book. He ripped out each page as he finished it to lighten the load. He knew he would be weaker when he and the guide headed back up the trail but that was not to happen. Trekkers coming back down the trail reported two feet of snow along the approaches to the high pass at 5,500 meters. His guide wanted to continue but he said no. I didn't sign on for walking in snow, he said, and you only have running shoes, so no. They headed down the next day and he saw the mountains he'd missed seeing on the way up the trail.

Happy

After his father died he asked his mother what had made him happy. She had no answer. He reckoned it could have been having a drink and telling stories but he had only done that a few times in the 48 years he'd known his father. He fixed the family cars when he could, kept the lawn mowed, cut trees, but he tired easily and no one liked to help him because he ended up in a bad mood. Always. He sometimes talked about his mother but those stories were about his getting whippings and when his mother was much older and in the nursing home he didn't like her very much. He admitted that. His older sister said, "He liked you, David. You made him happy. You were his only son." But David hadn't forgotten the beatings that went on and on until he thought they had stopped, until his father's belt was back on and then he would whip it off again and lay it across David's bare legs. His father made him strip to his underwear for his beatings. So what made his father happy? David couldn't come up with an answer. His father was dead so what did it matter?

Loving Cup

I don't know anything special to say about my brother-in-law except that he has never been mean to my sister and he can dance with cats. It is the stupidest thing you ever saw. He can dance with any cat. His cats, your cats, a stray. Any cat. Case in point. Last Christmas we were in my other sister's house in South Carolina and this stray cat, big and long-haired and gray, a real stray but friendly, this cat crosses the creeks and makes towards us, probably wanting some food. Greg, my brother-in-law, asks me do we have anything special to do and do we have some time. I said no and sure and he said OK. He walked toward the cat and cut off its path toward the house. The cat sat down. Greg swayed left and right, slow, looking like he was hunting for something in the dark and getting the attention of the cat. This went on. The cat watched. It just watched. Then the two of them started following my Greg's hand. He moved his hand in the air in big figure eights and they both man and cat followed his hand. Two hours later the man and the cat were jumping together in the yard, in the same places they'd been two hours before. Random jumps, tandem jumps, spinning jumps, jumps to the side and toward each other, some jumps big and many small. Like I say, it was the stupidest thing I ever saw. The whole thing started slow and built and built and went on that way and then both stopped and my brother-in-law stepped aside while the cat went on towards the house. Then we drank beer on the grass until it was time to eat.

Sweet Black Angel

When my mother died I had to clean out all my books from my room in the basement to get it ready to show to buyers. I was then nearly 50 and working in an MBA program in Shanghai. I was juiced into the whole money-making thing, the thing that after all got millions and millions of Chinese out of poverty and was doing the same in India and could do the same in any other country that would buckle down and get some order established and let people run free enough to make money but not be disruptive. It would work anywhere but Africa was a problem, admittedly. I found my Diary of Che Guevara and Soul On Ice and anthologies of the works of Lenin and Marx and Mr. X, plus a stack of newsletters from the American Socialist Workers Party. When did I put them down? Had I put them down?

Torn And Frayed

Waldrop and I had been drinking on the USC campus, at the Gamecock campus bar in Russell House. Waldrop was not in school and didn't have a place to stay except his Volkswagon and I said he could stay at my place off campus no problem. He drove us to my place and grabbed me by my jacket as I was trying to put the key in the door lock. He flung me back and I fell against a fire hydrant he'd stolen from somewhere and left outside my door on the lawn. I ripped my jacket and jumped up and although he'd been in the army twice and kicked out twice and thought he was tough he was drunk after all so I jumped up and hit him square in the nose and the door opened and broke when he hit it. He fell inside and I kicked him in the side. "You crazy fuck!", I said. "What the fuck is wrong with you?" I left him there and walked into the kitchen and was getting us both some water and when I turned around Waldrop was swinging a half-gallon and three-quarter full glass bottle of vodka at my head. I ducked my head into the sink and the bottle hit the spigot and and vodka and glass went everywhere. Waldrop hit me in the side with the broken neck and handle still in his hand and cut my jacket again. Then he slid in the vodka and fell back and I kicked him in the balls. We called it quits. The next day he split early and showed up in the evening with an English whore who fucked him in my bed and then fucked my other roommate, Jerry, for some reason in my bed and when it was my turn I pretended to pass out on the floor and those three kept at it. The whole thing was Waldrop's way of saying he was sorry but it was a poor and messy way and in my bed and I waited for a more suitable apology.

Sweet Virginia

My sister remember my sharing a room with my father when I must have been six or eight or maybe even ten. I don't know just when but he told me stories about growing up and we would laugh together at the things he did and the whippings he got for doing them. I would ask for more stories but not the one about the car hitting his dogs and to relax me he told me to imagine a cabin and me alone in the cabin with snow outside and cold inside and wolves barking and baying at the door. But the door was strong and wolves full of only noise and I was safe and always fell asleep. I can hear my father's voice and the wolves crying at the door and scratching their paws on the wooden porch outside the door and sometimes my father's voice is telling me what the wolves are doing and they are doing it and his voice fades as the wolves gather at the door and snap at each and each other and sometimes else I only hear my father's voice and the wolves are waiting quiet and still at the door, waiting to be wolves, to wonder what to do next.

Tumbling Dice

The magician told the children he would tell them the secret of the trick. You see he said if I do the trick fast, and he did, it's too fast for you to see and if you can't see you don't care. Now, asked, what do you think if I do it (he said stretching it out) real.....slow. What do you think? One child said that's boring but another said no do it again we can see better that way and another child said he thought he'd figured it out. The magician waited. Anyone else he asked. I can show you the trick slow, he said, but it's difficult for me to do slow. If I do it fast it's easy for me but not for you. But the kids were bored and the magician did the trick and again and again and again at the same steady speed and the kids watched and rocked forward and giggled too the rest of the afternoon.

Casino Boogie

We were sitting around stoned as monkeys on the beach in Samui and listening hard to the CD from the bungalow bar speakers and Mark beat the drum pattern in the sand and said, "That change there! Right there! That cymbal, man, just opens the song up. You could play anything on top of that." And over a simple solo Mark sang an unsimple solo and the band shuffled off into a fade and I said, "That's what it is, man. That's what they do. They strip it down so you can hear anything over it. You can't play what they play but anybody can play what they don't play." Mark said, "We are both so stoned."

Hip Shake

He liked southern rock, he guessed, but could name three songs that took the same riff and made whole songs of it without credit to the old black blues guys who first pulled it off, while it took an English band of feral junkies to give due credit and bury the riff under another guitar with a wild, gutsy full tone and a harmonica as nasty spit running down your thigh.

Rip This Joint

You have to imagine that somebody said, "Guitar solo" but someone who better understood the music and the soil it grew from left the track blank or let them go ahead and add the guitar solo but wiped it later and had Robert overdub a solo there later. And that was the track.

Rocks Off

The first few bars are lurching and scattered. How will this stay together? They manage and it does and the real kicker after many listenings is the rythym guitar buried some here and there and not so much other places and how it holds things down while the drums are hitting a different not stabbing or slashing pattern but cutting. Then at the end Taylor smiles and it's over.

The Stand

I decided to take two books with me on my trek to Nepal as I would be gone for 8 weeks to do as they say the Lantang and Annapurna Sanctuary and Around Annapurna treks. But two would last me only if they were big or slow to get through so I took my Methodist church copy of The Bible and Stephen King's unabridged The Stand. I gave up on The Stand after King mentions Randall Flagg having eyes like the creature in Predator but the movie came out in 1987 and the The Stand in 1978 and even though I knew King had updated some pop culture stuff I was put off but happy that the trip up came in the first third of the book and not in the last few pages like in Blood Meridian. So I put down The Stand and picked up The Bible. The Bible ended up being way scarier and a whole lot more contradictory and arbitrary than the stand and I left it in a lodge in Chamje on the Annapurna Sanctuary and spent my evenings reading The Stand. I made a list of the characters and what happens in each chapter, just like Wikipedia does now.

The Sixth Sense

I just assumed, you know, that with Bruce shot so severely and then the jump to something like six months ahead that he was dead, you know? Shot bad and shot straight through. When Bruce next appeared I was all like, "OK. He's dead. Let's see how this plays out." At the end I thought pretty good movie but the whole audience gathered in the Koh Samui bungalow bar on Lamai Beach was stunned. The guys playing pool stopped and the crowd wanted to see it again instead of the new movie hand written on the sign outside the awning on the street. I looked around and ordered another Singha and it came and I wondered what I'd gotten myself into.

The Cat and the Car

The calico leaned over the roof to squeeze in through the window but fell between the window frame and the sudden collapsing angle formed by the window, her body hanging down the side of the car, her head trapped in the wedge of glass and metal. She beat her legs against the door and clawed with her front legs to pull herself up but the car was new and the paint shiny and smooth. She choked herself hanging from the car window against the door and died. Another one of the cats, a fat black male, much older and with only one eye sat the whole time and watched the calico step forward fall squirm and die.

Emily Dickinson

She considered everything and as much as she told and I can tell rejected nothing and scorned less. Would she have made a good scientist, a Juliet? A plane companion? It would be frightening to sit next to her, her name like Ethan not on the manifest.

The Man in Blue

I was 19 and talking to my girlfriend on the phone and looking into the mirror in my mother's room at the same time. The air in the house changed in the same way it had the last two nights and I turned and saw a man with blue skin standing in the doorway looking at me. He wore a dark blue suit darker than his skin and the sleeves and legs were too short. His hands and feet were bare and his eyes were pale blue with no white or irises. He stood and looked at me. I put down the phone and looked at the door and the man was gone and the air in the house never changed again. I told the story for years and then for more years I didn't tell it.

Shona and Ndabele

The village school hired a Shona teacher, a political refugee from Zimbabwe and a science teacher. The American Peace Corps volunteer worked with the Shona teacher. The Shona teacher's name was Elder. The volunteer liked Elder but the other Zimbabwe teachers at the school all refugees were suspicious of Elder. Elder despised the Ndabele and hated much more the American. A month into the term the government school threw a party and invited the teachers from the village school. Elder got drunk and shouted his rage at the American teacher. "He is a spy, a spy. We must punish him." An Ndabele teacher named Dumisani stepped from the crowd. "He is no Boer, you know," he said to Elder. Elder raged against the American until Shadrack and others, Shadrack Dumisani's older brother, stepped from the crowd around the kegs of beer with a rubber hose and beat Elder to the ground. Shadrack and others took turn beating Elder until the volunteer walked over and stood between Elder and the rubber hose now red with Elder's blood. The crowd returned to their beer. When no one was looking the volunteer hit Elder in the nose twice very hard and knocked him out.

Over the Edge

When the tourist got to the top of the stairs leading to the overhead cross walk at Sukhumvit Road and Soi Nana the man ahead of him spilled the cup of coins held by the beggar at the top of the stairs and stole several coins. The robber looked back at the man thinking he is just a tourist and I can take more of the beggar's money but as he picked the coins from the ground and the beggar began to moan and cry out in Thai the tourist grabbed the man's belt and heaved the robber over the crosswalk barricade sending the robber 5 meters down into the Sukhumvit traffic. The robber hit the top of a taxi bounced and rolled into the road. A bus ran over the body. The tourist walked toward the Nana hotel and stopped at a pharmacy and paid the chemist three times the normal price for illegal 10 grain valiums. The tourist took one and stepped on the sidewalk as police and drivers who had stopped crowded around the body.

The 4th Dimension

After the door shut the cat looked at the wall and walked through it.