a week of first paragraphs–sunday

a few days ago i published a couple of first paragraphs from novels by authors whose work i admire. a first paragraph in any book, but particularly novels, is the garden gate to the rest of the book. you might find yourself saying, “what’s just beyond that arbor there?” or “the hinges are a little rusty, but if i push gently enough i’ll be able to squeeze through and see what’s on the other side.” you may even experience a rush of feeling so powerful that to abandon the book would amount to nothing more than folly. (of course there are first paragraphs that warn you to go no further, “put the book down, it will bring you nothing but boredom, and possibly stupefaction.” can a book do that, i wonder? it’s possible i’ll never know for sure, for if after the first paragraph there is no desire to proceed, i rarely do.)

i hope you enjoy my selections and if you haven’t read the work, might find yourself at the library, or your local bookstore (are there any left?), online at barnes & noble downloading a copy to your kindle, however you come to it, and after that first paragraph you’ll discover yourself in a garden just as i have.

“Somewhere near Venice, Guy began talking with a heavy, elderly man, a refugee from Germany on his way to Trieste. Guy asked questions. The refugee eagerly replied. Neither seemed aware when the train stopped. In the confusion of a newly created war, the train was stopping every twenty minutes or so. Harriet looked out and saw girders, darker than the twilit darkness, holding an upper rail. Between the girders a couple fumbled and struggling, every now and then thrusting a foot or an elbow out into the light that fell from the carriage windows. Beyond the girders water glinted, reflecting the phosphorescent globes lighting the high rail.”  –Olivia Manning, “The Balkan Trilogy: Book One, The Great Fortune”

first paragraphs (and passionate kisses*)

here are two of my favorite first paragraphs** (or first paragraphs from a few of my favorite novels/short stories). it could be that these first paragraphs***  were what caught my attention at the bookstore and made me buy the book; it’s even possible i bought the book without reading the first paragraph (or any part of the book), buying it instead based on the reputation of the author to entertain me or because they were recommended by someone whose opinion i trust (of course that has its own pitfalls, reading being as personal as it is, “oh robert, i just know you’ll love this book,” as they press it into your hands and it turns out to be the worst thing you’ve ever put before your eyes, but you feel obligated to slog through it, so you do and eventually you forgive your friend/acquaintance as your brain works to bury the memory of reading the last novel by ______  _____________.)

“The sea is high again today, with a thrilling flush of wind. In the midst of winter you can feel the inventions of Spring. A sky of hot nude pearl until midday, crickets in sheltered places, and now the wind unpacking the great planes, ransacking the great planes….”  –Lawrence Durrell, “Justine”

“Something terrible happened.

“They are watching it on the screen with their after-dinner coffee cups beside them. It is Bosnia or Somalia or the earthquake shaking a Japanese island between apocalyptic teeth like a dog; whatever were the disasters of that time. When the intercom buzzes each looks at the other with a friendly reluctance; you go, your turn. It’s part of the covenant of living together. They made the decision to give up the house and move into this townhouse complex with grounds maintained and security-monitored entrance only recently and they are not yet accustomed, or rather are inclined momentarily to forget that it’s not the barking of Robbie and the old-fangled ring of the front door bell that summons them, now. No pets allowed in the complex, but luckily there was the solution that theirs could go to their son who has a garden cottage.”  –Nadine Gordimer, “The House Gun”

*the name of the roses featured in the photographs

**in some cases there will be two paragraphs. (because it’s my blog and i’ll do as i please.)

***this may become a series as the mood strikes me.

friday (a flower a day)

 

“i don’t know why i started writing. i don’t know why anybody does it. maybe they’re bored, or failures at something else.” –cormac macarthy

it’s the orchid, you *^&%@#!

it seemed so simple.  a perfect idea with the perfect image to illustrate the point. what could go wrong, you might ask yourself.   and i’m not talking about myself in the third person, i’m actually talking about you.   yes, you.  sitting there in the comfort of your ________ or at the local __________ where the wireless is free and the ________ are beautiful/handsome or both.  you may even be at your local public ______, but that seems a stretch, perhaps too last century and possibly a little creepy anymore, besides who do you know that actually takes advantage of the knowledge available at the ________.  It’s been at least 20 years for me since i was inside one and then i rarely had any conversation with the _________ because i knew what i was after and how to use the dewey decimal system (god, do you remember?)  although i can conjure up the smell of old _____ and waxed linoleum and the quiet scratch of the ladder as it moved along its support system–the children’s area carpeted and all of the furniture scaled down to pint-size–which you wanted to go sit in as an adult, because, well just because, but the actual reason is that for one minute it would be comforting to be a child again and not have anxieties beating on the door of your adulthood (or do they pound?  mine come in a variety pack–like those individual servings of cereal that your mother used to buy–the cornflakes always the last to go because they didn’t have the sugar punch the others did. mea culpa the mixed metaphor btw.)

but instead, here you are as i said, in the comfort of your underwear (admit it) and if not that then, the comfort of somewhere else where all of the world’s knowledge (or so you’ve been told) is at your fingertips, which reminds me, when was the last time you actually got your hands dirty with dirt?  and had to use that odd little rasp that swings out from your nail clipper to clean underneath the nails and got a good whiff of loam up your nose or pollen from a faded rose as the petals, at your touch, dropped away from the stamen, one, two, three.  (that is still a question.)  that is just one example, there are so many others:  touch, listen, see, feel, smell (food, music, sex, art, skin, theater, words you have written, the touch of your lover’s hand in yours).

use it or lose it.   after all, it is the scariest of all admonitions, is it not? (that question is for both you and i.)  and then there is the keyboard that is the obstacle (albeit a necessary one).  do i cop out here and say, “what i’m saying is get out, experience life”, which seems too easy , too trite and not truly addressing what the problem, as i see it, is.  (was there a problem?  oh yes, it was where were the words going to come from?) and it’s not like i haven’t addressed this subject before and yet they do, don’t they?   show up eventually.  sometimes unintentionally, sometimes with purpose, the brother that never quite fit into the groove of the family, the wanderer who shows up on your doorstep, “hi, i was passing through and thought i’d drop by and say hello and see the kids,” and you open your arms and take him in.

insert your thoughts here

so.  instead of what i thought i’d share with you (a project that i’ve held close to my chest for fear of spoiling it somehow by letting it be seen before its due date–whenever that is–although in my mind i see it finished, but not when,) i’m here tonight/today/yesterday or tomorrow, perhaps even next year as long as time means nothing to you, because that is true.

the rose has no agenda.  it blooms when it blooms and it blooms when it blooms (the words ‘blooms’ were interchangeable with each other,) and now it is blooming, but time had nothing to do with it.  unless.  unless you impose your sense of  time on it.  your need to control everything.  well.  it may not be your need, you may have no control over your time.  which.  is a pity.  not having any meaning, that is a pity (ah, but for a comma.)  but where were we?

oh yes, time.  your time here (but you said “your thoughts here”, which indeed is true, but that was a ruse to get your attention–and your time.)

to what purpose then?  they say you can share your time with another, but that is not the same as giving them your time, because they cannot take it and add it to their own.  it is still your time and you do decide how you will spend it (there is no time credit card, it is cash & carry only, oh i suppose they might accept american express, like costco, but when the bill comes at the end of the month you’d better be ready to pay.)

no.  i will not be sending you a bill for your time here, although the thought did occur to me just now that that is exactly what the new journalism (the one that replaces the old new journalism) is doing.  they are charging you for your time.   it is your time & now you are paying for its use (by you.)  which.  i may accept as a new standard for personal blogs.  pay me in time. (not on time, but in time, with your time, you see time is the only real currency that is left to us.)  look for your statement in the mail (also on its way out of our time.)

a sunday morning w/saturday photographs (foreword)

if you’re not careful, one day can run into the other quite easily out here.  the weather, on saturday for instance, was not that different from the weather on sunday, he said saturday night at around 9:50 p.m.  he’s even said that there are subtle differences between one sunrise from the  next, & we all know that that is not really true.  for evidence, please note photo above.  that is the sun rising on the right.  need there be more explanation?

but if you are paying attention, there are details that change everything one day to the next.  that statement is not true.  please direct your eye (& what else would you direct?) to the seascape in the photograph directly above this paragraph (a paragraph you’ll note that has no indentation, it’s only considered a paragraph because he has said it is, but that does not make it so, the reader is advised to maintain their distance & to not impose their own righteousness upon the text,) but back to the photograph, what was to be said?  the sea, the sky, some vegetation framing it.  a political act?

you would think not, but you would be wrong.  the very existence of the image is a revolution, a fight for freedom, & even this trite saccharine scene (a tree fern frond unfurls its edwardian moustaches) embodies the power to upend the status quo.

this then is the message that you will find throughout this forthcoming group of posts, a book, serialized if you will, that begins today & ends this coming friday.

what i don’t know about creativity

i know that it is always just below the surface of your skin (dare i say bubbling?) that skein of milk as it warms in a pan on the stove for hot chocolate, the pot set askew on the flame so that one side boils faster than the other.  it’s a balloon on the surface, & with its little ‘plomp’ it bursts & divides & spreads across the surface, multiple events, all of which are difficult to track, one by one, but relative to the objective, combine to create the smell of warm milk, comfort anticipated, frost on the kitchen window as the steam adds a layer of mica to the glass & distorts the outside world (pleasantly so.)

it’s there in the darkness.   you climb the mountain to the ascetic waiting patiently to distill the essence of being, but he tells you that it was within you all the time, dormant, unbidden, unloved (the repression of adults, who in a fit of pique deny your creativity with abject praise or complete indifference.)  the darkness of the cave is a refuge of what you do not know, repression like hibernation.   the sunlight of creating warms the front of your cave, you start to feel it on the bristles of your beard & it leaks under the lashes & lids of your eyes shut tight against the waking.

it struts & preens like a cock before a hen, “choose me, choose me,” it crows but you turn your back to it, its promise of blooming fields of flowers displayed in the fan of its tail, the orgasm of mating, that quick mount & sudden shock of release pushed back, sublimated after years of no, that won’t do, that’s not very good, that won’t make you a living, don’t waste your time, don’t don’t don’t don’t don’t, the rhythm of the blood in your temples (is it any wonder they call that spot on either side of your head ‘the temple’, its where a crown would rest, your god-head.)

but it is still there after all.  it bleeds into what you do everyday, little leaks, a tear drop, a runny nose, just as a reminder that it exists, perhaps it is even an irritant, a pebble under the 3rd toe of your left foot in a shoe that pinches at the arch, a splinter of wood that evades extraction, floating just under the skin “i can see it!” so that you have to tear away a layer of resistance to ease the suffering it causes you (too small to cause real pain, too big to be ignored, after all, a finger is forgotten until its easy use is denied you.)

this blog represents the longest, most consistent spurt of creativity i have had since adulthood.   of course, i have not spent my life denying my creative nature, but i have put it on hold here & there, letting it pop out (as it did in 1980 when i created the works that accompany this post.)  it’s not that i am not creative in my day-to-day existence, i am (at least i like to believe that,) but what i want to say is that this time, here, at the keyboard, has been a boon to me, i like to think of it as a place where ideas get worked out, thought out, said out loud (even if i’m the only one reading them,) a place where my creativity gets to go for a walk in the sunshine (& sometimes in the rain.)

you should try it, even if you think you might get wet (or cry, or laugh, or tire from the climb, or suffer the indignities of day-to-day existence, a pebble here, a splinter there.)

a review of a book i have not read (or how i discovered a writer)

one day a couple of years ago as i was minding my own business & browsing the world wide web i came across the website of an art director/writer/intellectual gay man (aren’t we all?) & as i was enjoying his musings on life, love & sex (the two not to be conflated) i took a look at his blogroll & clicked on a name that appealed to me for its mellifluous tonal qualities & its lilting (not redundant) short & long a’s interrupted by a soft glottal th & a couple of comely &  lovely l’s, all of which added up to:  matthew gallaway.

nothing out of the ordinary about all of this, is there?  what i found though, when i went to matthew’s blog was this fascinating, intelligent, slightly neurotic, goofy & funny, all-around-good-guy (a mensch, you know) who happened to be gay, who happened to like a lot of what i like (books, art, photography, cats [please substitute dogs for me] the nature of being unapologetically gay, the politics of society,) & one thing led to another & i soon found myself delighted by the similarities & the contrasts in our lives & on another day came to the realization that he touched me much like edmund white, whose work speaks to me viscerally (it may be my life in his “the farewell symphony” for all i know, it is that close to the bone,) & although i don’t see myself in matthew’s work the same way i do in white’s, i do feel like he’s talking to me.

but matthew (or should i use his last name?), but gallaway (there that’s better, a bit more removed, this is, after all, a review) is on the cusp of a literary adventure (sales! marketing! readings! “please sign my book, mr. gallaway,” he stuttered in embarrassment,) a book that he has said took him 10 years to write.  a goodly chunk of anyone’s life, you’ll admit, but i think when you’re reading his blog(s) (which i feel may be a bit more free-wheeling & less obsessed over than his coming book, the metropolis case,) but in any event, when you are reading his words & sentences & when the occasional paragraphical (is that a word?  well, it should be) break is inserted as a photograph of a cat, garden, wahi, mid-town, empire state building, sunset, sunlight, garden center, walk along the hudson, moss, stone paths, ferns [god, i almost forget the ferns!], i think you’ll understand what i mean when i say that i find myself swooning over his prose (& possibly jealous, but in a good way, you know the feeling, i’m sure of it.)

gallaway (oh, shit, let’s call him matthew, o.k.?  otherwise i feel like his 10th grade gym teacher), matthew, then, has this little thing called brilliance, you know the type, smart, but not condescendingly smart, he assumes you know.   the great thing is that you do know, because they way he builds a sentence & the words he chooses have led you to that understanding & you come out the other side feeling, well, feeling happy, sad, mad, weepy, laughing because he has allowed you inside his life for just the right amount of time to make you feel at home & comfortable & that to me is great writing, folks, & i for one am over-the-moon happy for him & have started a countdown until my copy of his book arrives on my doorstep!  you should order yours today, too.

 

 

dead crow on the freeway

the crow did not want to die in such a public manner

but death came up behind it and batted it out of the sky

it fell in an elliptical spiral, hesitating from the updraft

of the cars speeding by on the freeway below then plummeting

and hitting the pavement between two lanes with an unheard thud

one wing standing straight up in a avian salute

feathers splayed, shimmering & shivering in the rush of the hour

a juaneno headdress headless & heedless

the crow knew the time had come for death, its good intention

to fly to the sheltered grove of trees, close, as the crow flies

& find a quiet bower to rest & pass what time was left

with a caw/a preening/a settling of scores

as many animals do & arrange his still life a la chardin

(a rabbit recently found dead & curled around the base of the

fountain in our yard on a bed of withered leaves & dried flowers

a palette of taupe, pale pink & cream)

death, with its timepiece & schedule, laid those plans aside

& passengers & drivers never noticed the crow or its fluttering

feathers, a funeral cortège of speeding cars, save for one or two

quick realizations of what had come to pass perhaps nodded in

sympathy or at least a visceral understanding of a life brought still.

headlamps/submitted without comment (not true)

sometimes it just needs to be visual while the words re-organize themselves.  it’s a slow-cooker/thoughts/ideas/all chopped up & tossed in for consideration/stewing/pressure-cooking.  a mixture of flavors some savory, others sweet, some distasteful, more full-bodied/pungent/aromatic/herb-encrusted.  presentation must be considered/country/formal/china/chinette® (you know who you are)/linen/paper/everyday on the couch in front of the tv (goddamn tv.)

but time passes (don’t all writers deal in time? it’s their vice/their drug/their addiction) & one day, one week, one year (many years later) it comes out in a rush of pen/pencil/keyboard, cursor & orgasmic and then, the constant revision/adjustment (too tight underwear/not tight enough [going commando] who needs to see it all right now?)

writers are ecdysiasts–words their music, sentences opera gloves, paragraphs a boa (not constrictor,) chapters a feathered slipper–each note/word revealing a little more/the reader/patron panting drooling slipping a twenty in a garter for encouragement

those letters, each individual one so important, so loved, so cared for & nurtured, a child’s garden of verses (remember?) how you loved words & how the world blossomed in front of you as a b c became a window/doorway/road out of the confines of yourself, your circumstances, a circumnavigation of the world/exotic/insightful/frighteningly beautiful.

and now, that love/fear are yours to share/tentative hesitant steps leading to that great exposure/exhibitionist that you are/voyeur too.  it comes to this the presentation the hoped-for-response (& sometimes none) love me do/don’t/alright fuck you/oh god i need you to love me so basic so human so wonderful.