Futurisms' Desecrated Domesticity

The place was a shit-hole. Dry and creaky and caustic in the winter, the stark awful paint would worm away from the walls in straggly strips. The high ceiling wore a skirt of nicotine stains. No two bulbs would stay burning at a time in the rattle-trap fixture eight feet from the rough floor boards. The window frames would swell shut in the summer swelter and lean callously to the left in the winter, welcoming dagger drafts of December chill. In a way, it suited us. Our curb-found furniture and thrift-store decorations gave the place a decrepit uniformity of squalor.

Only the kitchen really received any of our affection, though certainly not because it merited any.

Being in your 20s has the compounded problem that you don’t know what to do, and now you know that neither does anyone else. “When a child first catches adults out,” wrote Steinbeck, “his world falls into panic desolation.” She and I stayed in this place, and (most importantly) stayed in this place together, out of the sheer momentum of the thing. We were too poor to shop at Whole Foods, but too self-conscious not to, even just in front of one another. We were de facto vegetarians and we never ate anything in season, except strawberries and asparagus. The month of June was best and we spoke the least. I had lists and projects. I became a master of the invented errand and could spend whole days traipsing on public transit. She had day-time TV and the joy of stuffing envelopes.

She’d tell me these stories, relaying the plight of conjoined twins from Maury or the slutty nine year old from Tyra and I’d tuck a thumb in my book and stare at her blankly. I’d start in on the liberals or the conservatives or the rich or the poor, and she’d paint silently. Thursdays, we’d crunch through sour, unripe fruit and listen to our neighbors argue in some phlegmatic and eastern European language. For six weeks, I had an untreated sinus infection so bad that I’d leave wads of blood-streaked tissue around the place, like little Technicolor Rorschach tests.

Only the sex made sense. It was our sweaty, vigorous fort against the barbarian invasion of boredom and inaction. The bed was never less than a wild thicket of cheap cotton sheets and scattered pillows. If I came home and she was doing some household chore in an unlikely outfit, we wouldn’t even greet each other first. I’d stumbled backward onto the uneven sofa more than once, two soapy handprints bleeding through the back of my t-shirt. After the afterward scavenger hunt for shirts and socks, I’d always realize I’d forgotten to drop something in the mail. Or to get some important ingredient for dinner. Sometimes I wouldn’t leave, but she would lock herself in the bathroom and cry, naked against the long unwashed tile.

And an hour later, her thumb would tuck into my waistband and her free hand would make a greasy climb through my hair while I tried in vain to make the hallway door not scrape against the floorboards twisting towards the ceiling, like eternally separated lovers craning to kiss from distant afterlives.

Nattering Nabom of Narcissism

First and foremost, you should know that for the whole month of June, the really awesome chicago-suburban band Sleeping At Last will be giving their album "Keep No Score" away for free on the interwebs. Here is the info from the studio-journal blog:
In celebration of our upcoming new album, we’re thrilled to announce that for the entire month of JUNE our previous album “Keep No Score” will be available as a FREE download!

Here’s how it works: Through a company called NoiseTrade we’ve set up a widget that allows you to choose between two ways to receive an immediate download of the album:

The first way is to enter your name, email address and zip code along with the emails of five of your friends. You can then immediately start downloading the album for FREE. You’re friends will receive just one email inviting them to sample the music and download it themselves. Neither you or your friends will receive any spam from NoiseTrade and only those that choose to sign up will receive any emails from us as well.

The second way is to pay any amount you wish, from $1 and up and start downloading.

Also, if you would like to help spread the word, the widget can be embedded anywhere that accepts html! So you can add it to your own facebook, myspace etc.. by click the “embed this widget” button or use the “twitter this” button.

Check it all out now, here: www.noisetrade.com/sleepingatlast

We’re really excited about all of this, thanks so much for reading! We’ll be updating you all soon on lots of exciting news about the upcoming New Album!

Love,
Dan & Ryan – Sleeping At Last

And, here's a clip of their string players recording from their studio journal, which you can follow HERE:


- - - - -

Now, let’s interrupt the micro-fiction for a bit with some good ‘ole fashioned what’s-up-with-Jon bloggery, whadduya say?

I just spent two weeks in California, which is where I did the last couple entries here. Among other things, I went to Santa Cruz and hung out w/ my family, both biological and ecclesial at Missions Springs. I’ve been going on this all-church retreat every year since I was a kid and I try to make sure I get back in time to attend it after my spring semesters end. It was sunny and warm and delightful. I sat on the grass and read with my sister. And went and explored Santa Cruz with my sister and her BFF. And goofed off and rough housed with my sister. And got roped into running lights and sound for the worship services…with my sister.

Look, I’m gonna warn you right now, my sister is appearing prominently in this post. She’s totally awesome, so that shouldn’t be a problem. But if it is, you can suck it.

ANYWAYS, after we all got back, I went and saw Ben Folds play in Oakland. My mom loves herself some Ben, so she bought tickets for herself, one of her friends, my sister, me and JD, my BFF. We all went, the oldies sat in the balcony and the youths stood on the floor. We bathed in pot smoke and Folds’ awesomeness for a couple of hours. It was pretty damn cool. Plus, any time you hear a whole concert audience burst into three part harmony, you know its gonna be a good night.

Didn’t do much the rest of the week xcept hang w/ JD and read and drink coffee and shop and write for this blog. I read The Metaphysical Club by Louis Menand. If you like history, academics in general and/or America, go pick this book up. Excellent popular history of the influence of a handful of post-civil war new-england-style nerds on the 20th century. Friday night me and the sister drove to the Shoreline Amphitheater and saw the NIN/JA (Nine Inch Nails / Jane’s Addiction) Tour. We got there late cuz she had to work, but we saw all of NIN set. If you can catch them on this tour, get off your ass. Worth every penny. They are dialed in musically and their lighting design might be the best concert design of the decade. Just impeccable. Also, I argued with some fundamentalists who were picketing the concert, fueling further Christian-bashing amongst America’s youth. (My sister might still hate me for that.)

On Saturday, I went to a rawkin’ nineties-themed house party, where my sister rescued me from a it’s-3am-and-I’ve-lost-good-judgment make-out-session with the party-host’s ex GF by demanding we go home. I woke up the next morning and thanked her. After thanking her and sleeping through church, I played roller hockey w/ the guys, which was just fantastic and pain-inducing, and then church and a heffenade party at the same venue as the previous night, sans-almost-make-out girl. Then Monday night I got my owl finished and once its healed, I’ll post pictures. Some more JD/Sister/Coffee/Writing and one last jaunt to Santa Cruz, and then I hopped a plane back to Boston, where I promptly went to Common Ground for 80’s night.

So, anyways, I’m back on the East Coast and trying to get my summer legs about me. A brief run-down of what the heck that means? The briefest:

- Lattes and reading/writing at Café Fixe in Wash Sq.
- Hipster girls with bad attitudes, 2 at a time.
- 20 hours of soul sucking IT job a week
- Cooking/Baking/Crafting/Artsy-ing
- Lonergan/Blondel paper-proposal cluster-fuck

Futurism Loses Its Way

She never could stand the cold without the snow. A sparkling, virginal blanket of white on the streets and the lawns and the windowsills excused a host of meteorological sins. The padded quiet of a world sound-proofed in snow was hushed and womblike and she felt like nothing could harm her. If the sun was deceptively shining, however, and the ground was dry, the frigid wind felt like the sting of a slap from God’s own disdaining hand. No scarf or glove or coat could take the cold from her mind or heart. It’s as though winter would take up residence in her and the weather only confirmed her suspicions.

Mostly, she stayed indoors breathing the stale dry air of radiators and cigarettes. She refused to eat the food that wasn’t in the cupboards. When leaves were colorful and off their branches, she’d salvaged a tiny child’s school desk from a dumpster and it had found a home beside her bed. The zeros of her alarm clock blinked red off the branches of a small plant breathing its last backwards CO2 breaths in a strawberry basket on the tiny seat. In the middle of the night, the rattle of her ringing cell-phone would shock her awake, trembling against the industrial metal. A single pulse of buzz-saw silence would plead from a foot left of her case-less pillow. She knew it was him. She told herself she probably didn’t care.

Every third day she’d get all dolled up to go out. She’d try not to scrape her cornea with her eye-liner pencil. She’d try not to burn her neck with the straightener. She’d try not to nick her chalky ankles with the razor. The cutest tights with the prettiest dress with the least comfortable shoes, but she’d rarely make it off the landing. She’d fall asleep in her Sunday-best, a stepped-on paper crane on the couch. A used up Kleenex of indifference. She liked the light of the television, but not the sound. She liked the heat of the coffee, but not the taste. She remembered sleeping, but not how. She never listened to the music he’d pretended to like anymore.

She’d done her best to be kind and maybe that wasn’t too impressive. He’d just stood there, letting the rain pour across him. He didn’t ask for the explanations she’d told herself just below the music all night. He’d dragged her there, to the middle of the road and wrapped his hand around her hand. He said something she didn’t hear about the rain and Hollywood movies. She just stared at his worn out converse and wondered where her air had got to. When it finally spilled out, he nodded and flipped up his collar, like he’d only just noticed the weather. She didn’t remember walking home.

The empty sky still refused to snow and the sun was impotent to quell the stark winter. She won’t get dressed today. She didn’t know last night’s rasp of cell-phone sadness was the last he’d ever try.

Pragmatist Produce Preoccupation

For some time now, I’d been neglecting the question and problem of ethical eating. Long ago I committed myself to an ethical position on Western drug/alcohol culture and started calling myself “Straight Edge.” That had its roots in an at-the-time inexplicable revulsion at our societal relationship to drugs, alcohol and tobacco and I’ve since worked out a rationale about and behavioral posture towards those things I’m pretty happy with. After 8 years with that commitment, I’m finally allowing the concerns about all those other things I ingest to become influential.

And, much like that first commitment, I’ve finally decided to take action and then work out the arguments behind it. As I encounter difficulties and new discoveries in the ideas behind the behavior, like a good pragmatist, I’ll adjust my actions and ideas in a reciprocal dynamic.

So, what’s the new commitment? Well, it’s not as radical an abstention as being Straight Edge. I’ve decided to be an almost, not-quite vegetarian. Red meat is certainly out, as is pork. Dairy and eggs and other vegan-no-no’s are hanging in there. I’ll probably eat small portions of chicken and fish here and there, either because circumstances don’t allow me to avoid them without being rude/difficult/etc or if they are from a local, green, reputable source as far as I can ascertain.

So, it’s a nuanced and plastic position. But so is being straight edge. Being uncharitable or inhospitable in order to “stay pure” in either is just not an option.

And I have lots of reading and studying and thinking to do before I determine my “final” position. So, here we go:

-This Michael Pollan article convinced me to take a serious look at my eating habits, especially because I want to be able to (paideia-style) show my children someday a rebellious, counter-cultural way to eat.

-This website has lots of scary graphics which I’ve now stolen and posted w/ this blog post. Also, an awesome example of how to re-imagine local, amateur produce production towards the end. It comes with this exhortation:

“And finally, in the context of ecological economics, fossil fuel depletion and climate change, ask whether what you do in your life, vocation, hobbies, and habits, contributes to the long-term function (or dysfunction) of society.”

And this excellent advice:

"It appears that some of the greatest saving can be realized by:

* reduced use of petroleum-based fertilizers and fuel on farms,
* a decline in the consumption of highly processed foods, meat, and sugar,
* a reduction in excessive and energy intensive packaging,
* more efficient practices by consumers in shopping and cooking at home,
* and a shift toward the production of some foods (such as fruits and vegetables) closer to their point of consumption."

Futurisms' Myriad Marvels

It’s all light and lightness, cozy in the heavy white of morning dreams. A creaky hand of mine excavates the sheets beside me, traversing the hollow of where bedside companions would be. Colors tumble into shapes behind my stubbornly shut eyelids. Angles and flashes and light and nothing and more, depending on which way I loll and roll about the broken down mattress we’ve shoved in the corner beneath thrift-store curtains and odds-and-ends decorations; amongst a litter of clothes and stacks of un-shelved books. The swirled mass of blankets beside me evidence that she’s been here and their remnant warmth evidence it was recent enough. It’s a good thing she quits the bed well before me in the mornings. If she lingered, I’d never write a thing.

When I convince eye-lashes to part with cheeks, she’s perched at the window sill, like a kid to candy store windows. Our mountain looms somewhere in her gaze and the morning sun can’t bleach her silhouette. She heaves a contented sigh and the blinds shimmer around her. I sleepily push up seated and the corners of her mouth lift and the corners of her eyes pinch pleasantly.

“I think the peak thinks we should dance today. At least once.” She says, gravely. “To something old and something new. But not necessarily in that order.”

“Easy for him to say. Mountains don’t have to finish dissertations.” I reply, gruffly, while tucking a tired pillow behind my head.

I press my eyes closed again, gently, and the swirl of shapes and kaleidoscope patterns washes around me. For the theater of my mind, the random dance of rods and cones before the blood-vessel patterned curtains. She’ll pad across the floor in bare-feet and re-inhabit the mass off blankets and sheets where she nests with me every night when our eyes can’t keep to their reading lines. She’ll run a cold hand across my chest and hook an ankle with mine and nuzzle into the crook of my arm and chest. Her cheekbone will set into the notch of a long-ago-broken collarbone as though God set the cost of this moment before our births; one bitter tumble and 6 high-school weeks in a sling.

“Did you notice?” she whispered into the egg-shell sheets.

“Notice?” with eyes still closed, feeling her breath rise and fall.

“God gave us a new place in the night. We’ve been the victim of angelic relocation. I can’t believe you slept through a miracle, young man.” She yawned,” While you were staring at me, I bet you didn’t notice the drywall is now exposed beams and white-washed cedar walls.”

She poked me in the ribs.

“You’ll find that Gabriel rolled up his sleeves and built our deck in the night, with his own golden sweat and honey blood. Patio furniture, delivered by cherubic messengers, carved from heavenly Galilean corral, light and sturdy, bears our morning meal. Jesus himself strolled through the home, performing inverse-fig-tree miracles on every pot and planter. We live in a sea of white and green. Michael’s sword cauterized a white-sand beach just steps from our front door. The basket is already packed with brie and strawberries and crusty, rustic bread.”

“I’d settle for coffee,” I teased.

“Let’s not pretend I’m the weird one, yeah?”

“Coffee, three pages and lunch and a swim. Then we’ll dance. Does the peak have a playlist in mind?”

“Let’s start with Marvin.”

“…and end with Justin?”

“and we’ll improvise in between.”

In our still-damp t-shirts and swim-clothes, we swayed and smiled and laughed as the afternoon sky darkened with the mountain’s bass-beat of thunder. It would be a week before we saw another soul. A month before either of us laughed at anyone else’s jokes.

Hemi-veritable History (Futurisms' Look Back)

It was a look you’d expect on the face of a mischievous child, really. Her chin held squarely and evenly straight ahead, with a waxing smile to its north and arching eyebrows more northerly still. It was the eyes most of all, somehow looking at me, though they were directed up and away. It was a face that said “Water balloons? What water balloons?”

But it resided on a face I’d never seen before and it traveled with a person passing me in a public place. I fear I may have gawked openly at first, only to drop my head shyly at the last moment, and catching that troublesome look only sidelong. Her hair was a weightless but satisfying whirl about her head in the springtime wind and her white, unbuttoned and knee-length coat whipped with a contrasting sharpness. The rest, including sharp dark jeans, rolled to the peak of the ankle and some stiff, elegant but simple collar of her shirt showed without imposition. The only item without tact and impressive consideration was the plastic handled, retractable dog leash, which conjured images of velour be-track-suited housewives on mid mornings walks much more than this urbane cloud of lavender scent.

At the end of this retractable, awful leash was a gleefully spirited terrier, like a pit-bull, but smaller and with none of the menace. Only Romanesque musculature in miniature. Its broad head swung, smiling mouth grinning to the world, from side to side, weaving erratically across the paved path between swaths of inviting lawn. Uninterested in me, the terrier dashed across my path from behind, and then returned behind me again, following the trajectory of a Frisbee or the like. Responding to its mildly annoyed owners calls, it dashed before me again, and I realized I was going to be wrapped in its tether. I attempted to step to my right, onto the lawn and out of its spiraling path. The leash joined me in the traverse.

Some other distraction found the canine attention and my ankles’ noose was suddenly synched. Laughing embarrassedly, the girl who’d moments earlier looked away, stepped towards me, stooped and trying to free me.

“Oh my god, I’m SO sorry!” She chirped, between titters of laughter and stammering steps towards my predicament.

And we pitched together on the lawn in a silent moment, my eyes filled with springtime sun and my ears with springtime wind. We just lay, for a moment, laughing with mutual shame and good-nature. A rough, warm tongue came to my cheek and streaked across my forehead in the greeting of four-legged friends. I gripped the pooch about the ribs and lifted it into the air.

“I think this is yours,” I said, staring into friendly eyes.

“Haven’t you ever read this before?” she replied, holding up my copy of Gatsby that tumbled from my bag in our mutual felling. Propped up on her elbow, she flipped through the pages casually. I put the terrier down between us, immediately regretting the barrier.

Starting to stand, she clutched the dog under her arm, pressed a free hand against my chest and said, “Besides, you should make notes in pencil. Second readings rarely yield identical notes.”

I nodded, without looking her in the eyes I would have bet were green, and untangled myself to leave.

She was already laying out her blanket beside me.

Sweltering Summer (Futurism)

At least on the balcony, there’s a breeze. The soap and brush and bucket from when I scrubbed these ancient patio furniture this afternoon still sweats in the corner, beneath the vine creeping across the wrought iron, losing its grip on the decrepit French windows. Those awful windows, single paned and warped, that let out all the heat in the winter and leave no place for an air-conditioner in the summer. Her sandaled feet, clad in the gladiator style of several summers ago (that I teased her so mercilessly for following), rest on the railing, nestled into a niche of bare wrought-iron amidst the august greenery. She’s been drinking the white wine I’ll only buy a bottle at a time.

“I won’t display alcohol like it’s a prize,” I’ve been known to say, over wine-racks at flea markets and bazaars.

“Its not a liquor cabinet,” she’d tease,” its vino!”

The glass still hangs tenuously from her slender fingers, just a breathe from the brick. Her nails are painted an ice-like blue and I can’t tell if her eyes are open behind her sunglasses. Her head is tilted gently back, at rest and her face is creaseless in a near smile. The breeze remains faithful. A favorite t-shirt, washed and re-washed to near-gossamer, wraps across her stomach, crinkling here and there with deep breaths.

A train rolls by as I mutely take my seat beside her placid sea of composure and the bell cuts over the din of work-a-day traffic. Beneath us, 10 or 15 feet, an army of joggers and students and young mothers march their discordant parade route of the late day. It is the heavy golden hour of cinematographer dreams, and warm in that way only the late summer can be. Warm and heavy and somniferous, like the atmosphere is decompressing us (and school children, most of all) for the ascent into autumn, we retreat from the brick oven of the apartment. Salad for dinner and day-old bread with oil and vinegar linger unattended between us on a low, wobbly table decorated with a spotty mosaic of a rose or some such thing. We’ll nibble at our meal eventually, when she feels like talking and I’ll mostly listen and eat more bread than salad.

Her breathing pauses ever-so-briefly and I look, expecting her words.

“How come I’m never ready for August?” she exhales, in mock frustration.

She laughs that easy laugh of youth and smiles at me, shielded in the blank owl-eyes of her sunglasses. I reach across, leaning my chair perilously on two legs, and swipe her wine glass carefully. She reaches out for the lost item, faux-pout on her lips. I switch the glass to my right hand to keep it from her reach.

“ I’ll open a bottle of red when it gets dark,” I say, taking her hand in mine. We fold our fingers together and she resumes her perfect relaxation, as though I’d dropped a stone in a pond and the ripples had diffused themselves, to be forgotten for always.

I squint against the golden glow to catch in my view the slightest part of her lips at her breath and the throb of pulse in her regal neck, trying to make a memory in the materiality of the life she shares with me.

Blessedly, the breeze remains faithful, propelled to us by a storm the french windows will not survive.