my newest project:

cut-out skull sweater. i am not a huge crafty person but with enough dedication and diligence my sweater(s) are going to look amazing.

these are earrings i just bought. i’ve wanted them for some time now and finally let myself have them. i love (sugar) skulls!

i will conclude this post by posting one of my favorite richard brautigan poems. i was upset to find that my schools’ bookstore does not sell any brautigan. a damn shame!

Boo, Forever

Spinning like a ghost
on the bottom of a
top,
I’m haunted by all
the space that I
will live without
you.

c. richard brautigan

“Una volta, tanto tempo fa, c’era un cavaliere nano
cui erano state concesse per tutta la vita solo cinquanta parole
ed erano talmente brevi e veloci che lui ebbe solo il tempo di indossare l’armatura,
montare il nero destriero e scomparire per sempre in un bosco di luce”.

© Richard Brautigan
102 RACCONTI ZEN, 1999

The bum on the corner holds his sign: ANY AMOUNT WELCOME GOD BLESS. Whether he’s scamming or not he’s superior, he can toss away self-respect or dignity long enough to collect coin, and everything he makes he keeps, no tax. What good is self-respect if it doesn’t pay off?

*******

Welcome to The world’s shortest love story! I found a matchbook in the street. I ignored all of the matches still intact, noticing only the space where one had been ripped out and used. That was the match I wanted.

*******

Kayaking. Why?

*******

Frisbee on the roof, neon orange plastic bleached white by the sun. What does this have to do with winter? It’s over.

*******

Giant tortoises never write books, or maybe they do, they just procrastinate the first 100 years.

*******

Why are you surprised by problems? So much of our economy is based on people that never learn.

*******

I read the obituaries, aka People You Will Never Meet. It’s the only part of the paper promising an end to suffering.

*******

Only very still fish prefer to swim in formaldehyde.

*******

I can’t cry.

Being far too lazy to dig around for appropriate frames, I proceeded to simply pin these items to the wall without much thought. If the wallpaper is damaged it is for good reason. They are on there for none other than my eyes.

From Balenciaga to Schiele; via Renoir and le Petit Trianon; finished by Brautigan. As if I could feel any more inspired, torn pages or not.

In St. Marks Place the deeds were done and done again as my life is done in St. Marks Place. Most places were open, a few places closed, but all the colors much brighter than anywhere else in the city. You’ll see.

Is it open, closed, a business, a home…who knows… But it’s purple!

This is the orange door you heard about.

An editorial.

She made me promise to show things moving in, too.

Fruit!

http://alphainventions.com

She knew you could see something in her. She could tell, even then, before she understood the significance of temptation.

They all stood around the green room between Annie, Get Your Gun scenes, James dressed as – what was he? No matter.  And she was a snake dancer in Buffalo Bill’s Wild West show.  A little girl, wrapping herself with a creepy toy snake and luring unsuspecting men.

She and James talked about Kerouac – he saw her reading On the Road – and other writers. He understood something about not belonging, or maybe he didn’t. Maybe he just wanted, but knew better. He must have been ten, fifteen years older than she was, but he still appealed to her.  He would not have been the first one twice her age to hold her hand, or to kiss her. She would have let him, too, if he had stepped up to her and leaned toward her, or allowed his arm to rest too long against hers when they sat side by side. And she had the anticipation of something that she didn’t recognize yet, something held out in front of her like power, or gold.

But she watched as James instead indulged the attention seeking of another girl, two years older than her. The older girl’s needs were greater, or at least louder, than hers, and impossible to evade.

She felt jealousy, covetousness, unseemly desire, none of which she was allowed to show. To whom would she show it?

She wanted him to take her away, or touch her, or satisfy that craving inside her. To see her and name her: desirable, wanted, loved.

Instead, he brought her Brautigan. Revenge of the Lawn.

She kept the book for so many years it barely held together any more. She held onto it as a possibility, a hope that she might again find someone who could stand in the face of her power and not crumble and fall, and succumb.

It could be that these memories are childish infatuation stories, composed of ephemera and youth, but she still remembers with gratitude the one person who took nothing from her, and gave her Brautigan.

“Hast du gehört, Brautigan hat sich die Kugel gegeben”, sagte Linus eines Abends, als er ins Mumms reinkam, im Januar 1985.
“Was..? Richard Brautigan??”
“Ja. Er hat sich erschossen, in seinem Haus in Montana, oder Kalifornien. Aber schon im Herbst letztes Jahr. Und heute wäre er fünfzig geworden. Hab ich im Radio gehört.”
“Nee, du Scheiße.. Das wusste ich nicht.”
Ich nahm einen Schluck Bier.
“Warum?”
“Warum was?”
Linus hatte große Augen und raspelkurzes Haar, wodurch seine Augen noch größer wirkten, wie Auftaktsiege.
“Warum hat er sich erschossen?”
“Weiß nicht. Hat er mir nicht gesagt.”
Er stieß mit mir an.
“Auf Richard. Auf seinen Fünfzigsten.”
“Ja..”, sagte ich verstört.

Ich war wie betäubt. Brautigan war tot. Ich kannte seine Bücher noch nicht sehr lange, und es war Linus gewesen, der sie mir empfohlen hatte. Linus, der immer ein Geheimtipp in Arbeit hatte, der sich auskannte. Im Gegenzug hatte ich ihm John Steinbeck geliehen, Die Strasse der Ölsardinen. Linus verliebte sich so sehr in den Roman, dass er, je länger er darin las, immer langsamer wurde, weil er Angst hatte, es sei sonst zu schnell am Ende.

“Jetzt ist nur noch Hank übrig”, sagte ich, und Linus nickte. Jetzt war nur noch Bukowski übrig. Brautigan und Bukowski waren unsere Helden in einem Meer aus Scheiße. Ihre Bücher machten Mut, dass man auch anders schreiben konnte. Dass man sein Herz in die Hand nehmen konnte.

(Glumm bei der Arbeit, Zeichnung die Gräfin, ‘94)

Auf 500beine: Die Fütterin

i’ve stolen two books in my life, and while  i’m certainly not proud of it, i’ve had one stolen in return, and i can’t help but feel like i deserved it.  along with insulting someone’s cooking and leaving your car idling , i’d rank book theft among those rare inexcusable social sins.  but, as with most infractions, there are exceptions, and, in some cases, sanctioned exceptions.

ground rules: never steal a novel.  if it’s a novel the person likes it’s tantamount to stealing their spouse.  if it’s a novel the person wasn’t too keen on then just ask for it, seems straight forward enough.  that’s where our gradient originates.  on the way down we’ll run into  short stories, some of which (9 stories, strange pilgrims, interpreter of maladies) can be just as consequential as a novel, classics (the inferno, the illiad), and plays.  all of which i call out of bounds for the purposes of burglary for reasons financial (plays and short stories tend to run in more expensivecollections) and emotional (you never know how close a person is with the text).  and if it’s best not to tread in those patches of a person’s library then a roving book-filcher is sure to gravitate to the glaring exceptions: non-fiction and poetry.  that’s where i’ll start.  

i leant ‘the system of objects‘ to a friend who works in design.  i’d gotten stuck in passages about the interaction of furniture and the ontology of cityscape and to give me and the book a much needed separation i found someone i thought could appreciate and process all this jibber-jabber about couches.  les accepted my offering with aplomb and we made all the arrangements for return.  fast forward 3 years and there’s no doubt that i won’t be seeing that copy of the book again.  to my requests i’m greeted with reassuring “next time i see you”s promptly then followed by a few “oh, i totally forgot” and once a “i never got to finish it but i really want to so when i do i’ll get it back to you.”  and my reaction: time to buy a new copy.  the book is better off with her and i can prove it.  aside from her obvious affinity for the subject matter i think there’s an even more fitting lithmus test: who would jean b (author) want to see with the book.  and when i’m honest with myself i’m certain that he’d endorse her readership over mine-  she’s got the cognitive boudriallard chops that i sorely lack- and he’d know that.  to recap: the stress test for non-fiction- is the person well-suited to the book?  who would the author pick? is it a book you’re willing to replace? (if yes, replace it, if no, then keep at them, maybe try to steal it back).  

and then there’s poetry: i have a good friend who’s a poetry boon.  she know’s i’m irrecoverably lazy in finding new poems or poets and over the years she’s sent me rilke, auden, lorca, and neruda.  she has a great ear and a distinct panache for locating small  publications by way of tireless thrift store hunts.  to cap it off, she’s a capricious lender.  that’s wherei fit in. in an attempt to give brautigan his unclaimed due she started lending out her small collection to persons she was sure would spread the word. it’s harder for a poem to gain steam than a novel or a short story.  if you want to test this out then go up to the next 3 to 4 people you meet in a book store and ask them the last time they read a collection of poetry cover-to-cover vs. when they last read a book. 3 times out of 4 you’ll get look that says ‘who reads collections of poety?  isn’t that what ‘poem of the day’ is for on my igoogle account?’  poems have it rough.  one or two will get a lot of play but getting a person to sit down and really take in a few hours worth of poetry is hard.  much harder than, say, passing on another good reading rec.  i say all this to say that one has to mount a more active campaign when deciding to take up a poet’s cause.  and this will inevitably lead to an increase in the amount of material leant and shared.

so back to brautigan: i got the two book, loved them, and kept loving them.  i sent a few excerpts out to friends of mine and it seemed like lauren’s campaign had been a success.  but as the window for returning the brautigan shrank so did any trace of me.  and there they sit on my shelf, hanging out next to my honestly retrieved egon schiele prints,  the two brautigans: ‘loading mercury with a pitchfork’ and ‘the pill versus the spring hill mine disaster.’  and we’re back where we started.  poetry is ripe for the theiving because it’s so ill-suited to the owning.  it’s a different bird, requires a different energy from a reader.  poems are the enigmatic flings in a world of literary relationships.  they’re hard enough to keep around and even harder to get to know.  they take on more outside influence than other forms of writing and just when you think you nailed them down, they’re already headed somewhere else.  and that’s just reading them.  once out of your sight poems move on effortlessly to their next reader.  i say that poetry theft is in some way sanctioned because i’m certain these brautigans are only making a pit-stop on my shelf. they’ll be toted off when i least expect it by some other sap taken with his laconic style and ginsberg eye.  that’s the way these things work.  i’m sure if lauren wanted them back she could get them back, but the whole point of her sharing the poems was to get them out; literary pollenation.  

so if you’re looking for a good read, i recommend brautigan, and if you’re looking for a good brautigan, i have a couple i might be willing to pass along.  my favorite:

there is a motorcycle in new mexico.  

that’s the title, and the body.  

(some practicality has to find its way into the whole theft problem and i think the last question you should always ask is  ’how big is the book?’.  as a general rule, the larger the book the less sanctioned the theft.  you’re just a jerk if you steal someone’s complete works of shakespeare or the collected writings of borges.  just a jerk.) 

-

seven samauri/ concha y toro- carmanere.  it’s the greatest $10 night in you could possibly have.  the movie is absurdly good.  it’s total cinema, if you believe in such things.  and the wine is taut but sturdy enough to hold up to 210 minutes of badass samauri-induced scrutiny.  done and done.

“It’s very hard to live in a studio apartment in San Jose with a man who’s learning to play violin.” That’s what she told the police when she handed them the empty revolver.

-Richard Brautigan

–

Richard Brautigan (1935-1984) was an American writer of novels, short stories, and poetry. This story comes from his collection Revenge of the Lawn. Check it out.

Also, head over to John F. Barber’s website www.brautigan.net to learn more about the author. Definitely worth a visit.

Name: Laura
2009 goal: 30
Fav. Authors: Sarah Vowell, Don DeLillo, Richard Brautigan
Fav. Books: Right now I’m into armchair mountaineering books, and Russian lit. Favorite book of them all though? A Wrinkle in Time. Hands down.
Fav. Time: Definitely when I’m at home alone, or gearing up for sleepyness.

Stop by and read the first issue.

]]> http://bartyodel.wordpress.com/2008/12/04/wtm-1033-lennon-vs-brautigan-vs-ellis-vs-bittova/ Thu, 04 Dec 2008 09:36:59 +0000 bart • wreck http://bartyodel.wordpress.com/2008/12/04/wtm-1033-lennon-vs-brautigan-vs-ellis-vs-bittova/ http://midwestpoet.wordpress.com/2008/12/01/published-in-covert-poetics-4/ Mon, 01 Dec 2008 04:12:09 +0000 Scot http://midwestpoet.wordpress.com/2008/12/01/published-in-covert-poetics-4/

I have two poems in Covert Poetics (click on banner)

Brautigan Meets Bukowski ( first appeared in Instant Pussy) & The Last Lonesome Poem Ever Written (first appeared in Chocolate Zomby)

I’m currently in a multi-read mode, slowly covering a few books simultaneously. On a year-old reccomendation from Guy, I’m finally reading Brautigan’s Trout Fishing In America. The wikipedia post offers an accurate description of the book: Novella length prose poem with no discernible storyline wherein trout, San Francisco bums, and fishing in Northern California and Idaho play central roles. It’s not something I would have thought I’d have liked, but the writing is too good to put it down.

A prime selection: “The two artists talked about comitting themselves to an insane asylum for the winter. They talked about how warm it would be in the insane asylum, with television, clean sheets on soft beds, hamburger gravy over mashed potatoes, a dance once a week with the lady kooks, clean clothes, a locked razor and lovely young student nurses. Ah yes, there was a future in the insane asylum. No winter spent there could be a total loss.”

Concurrently, I’m working through Saving Homewaters, by Gordon Sullivan, a reccomendation from Jim Van Loan. It’s about how Montana brought its trout population back from the brink of disaster. The point in the book I’m at now, hatcheries are the savior of trout fishing in Montana, but I have a feeling that perspective will shift as I continue reading. I hope to see if lessons from this book could apply to Oregon’s fisheries problems.

Lastly, I’m reading Dismantling the Hills, a selection of poems by Michael McGriff. McGriff is from Coos Bay and his poems are largely about central, coastal Oregon. There are some great lines in this book, and I really like the way he captures the run down, gravely feel of highway 101. You can find a bunch of his poems online at From The Fishouse (an amazing site btw).

I had just cut
the hole in the ice
when I got the text
saying you had left
this time for good
it was like the time
when brautigan
met bukowski
in some afternoon bar
and neither
had anything to say
and nobody wrote
a poem about
the other
but drank alone
two stools apart
and here
the lake trout
looks up at me
through wtf eyes
and I say
exactly

After my ol’ pal Buk, I have a deep love for the works of Richard Brautigan.

Here’s one for ya. Knock yourself out with more here.

Boo, Forever

Spinning like a ghost
on the bottom of a
top,
I’m haunted by all
the space that I
will live without
you. 

.