Thursday, September 30, 2010

Entry #28 Anecdotal

I wrote a play last night about my month-long stay in Lia and Piper's New York apartment.

A quickie before I go:


I used to keep my box fan in the window frame with the window open behind it.  One night, I was reading in bed, and the fan lifted up in the window frame and flew across the room, crashing into the opposite wall (at my feet).  I didn't go through all of the questions one might have about what had happened, why what had happened happened or how.  Instead, I got up and went over to the fan.  It was now unplugged, its plug had been pulled from the wall in flight.  I picked up the fan and carried it back to the window frame.  As I did so, the blades began to spin, slowly at first but with increasing speed.  Once I had set the fan in the window, the blades were at a regular roar.  I lowered the fan to the floor and got in bed.  I left the fan off, sitting on the floor beside me.  I was alone.  I made a few phone calls but no one answered.  It was late.  So I made a deal with the ghost.  I keep the fan on the floor now.  I sleep with my back to it.

Wednesday, September 29, 2010

Entry #27 What is there to keep me here? The dialogue!

Lovin' it.  "Or something"

Endgame is a kind of sandtrap.

I'm having my first cup of french-pressed coffee in almost a month...survey says, "better than Nescafe, but too ritualistic?"

I just sifted through ten minutes of Family Feud blooper reels for a good clip...and I just don't think bloopers are that funny, maybe...or youtube's standards are awful low.

Ok, that's all I've got for today...I'm already late...and I'm officially in charge of keeping up with another blog at Dear Navigator, my pseudo-job.

Here's an excerpt from the Variety of Literary Experience Series I'm messing around with:


Beckett

            My friend insists Beckett’s a bad roommate.
            “This is what he said,” my friend said, “‘There are four Pringles to be eaten.’  He announced, then he counted them.  ‘One…two…three…four.  Or this is three, and four is this one, then.’  Those are his actual words.  Then, ‘if I start with one, it would make sense to follow to two, or even three, considering the size, if not four.  Two would be more…natural.  But what do I mean?  Eating any one would leave me with three…a chiptic.’  Do you believe that?  He makes jokes all the time, but he doesn’t laugh…he never ever laughs.
            “I’ll take him,” I said.
            “He’s up all night, doing whatever…I don’t even think he does anything.  The guy just doesn’t sleep.” 
            On the other hand, Beckett didn’t ask for much.  He’s never stolen anything from my friend, no food or paper or pens.  Nothing.  He’s never even asked to borrow something.  He doesn’t make much noise, and he keeps to himself.
            “’There are four Pringles to be eaten.’  That’s what he said.  ‘Eating any one would leave me with three…’  And then he didn’t eat them.  Not a single chip!” 
            “You told me.”  This was one of those conversations where nobody’s looking for advice.  My friend just needs to say all of this before he heads home.  And if we’re lucky, that will be soon.
            “’One…two…’”
            “You told me.” 
            “God damn him.” 
            But he didn’t mean it.  Or, I don’t think he meant it.  Ever since Beckett moved in, my friend’s been different.  For the better.  He’s out of the house more.  He seems happier, even when he’s complaining.  There’s a reason to be out of the house now.  There’s a reason to be talking more, or looking to talk.  Beckett’s at home, not doing much, staying up late.  Beckett doesn’t go outside often, and when he’s inside, he doesn’t move much.  Not lazy exactly, just still.

            I met my friend at their apartment once and a bee came in the open window.  I swung at it with a curled up magazine, but struck a cup on a speaker propped up beside me instead.  Beckett was there too.  He was sitting on the floor, actually, pretty much right next to the spot where the cup wound up.  It was porcelain.  It broke beside him with a meaty kind of clattering and, after a beat, he looked at it. 
            “Nothing to be done,” he said.
            “Fuck there is,” said my friend from the kitchen.  “Here’s a fucking broom.”  He held it out in front of us…in front of me, to take.  I cleaned up the cup and then we left for work.             
            We work all the time, my friend and I, at a Starbucks.  Six to eight hours a day. 
            “I can’t stand him,” said my friend.  We were in the middle of “re-training”.  When you’re too slow on the assembly line, they put you in a room with two tables and a Mr. Potato Head Doll, which you build and reubuild and build and rebuild for an hour or so before you get a break. 
            “You don’t mean that,” I said.  I stuck in an ear. 
            “But God damn him anyway,” said my friend. 
            The eyes slid into place. 
            “God damn him and whatever anyway.” 
            The arm wouldn’t stick.  I put it in.  It fell.  I put it in, it fell again. 
            “He’s just this lump of impulse.  Like he’s always right there on the verge of…not moving.” 
            The nose pushed the eyes up and made the thing look sad there in my hands.  The eyes were upside down, but it didn’t matter. 
            When one of us gets assigned to “re-train,” the other starts fucking up until they put us in a room together.
            “He pays rent on time-…,” I say. 
            “But do you know that feeling,” says my friend, “that feeling of just a whole lot of nothing and you’re stuck with it?  You’re just moving around it because you can’t move through it.  Even though it’s nothing, you can’t move through it because…”  He didn’t finish his thought, because we were done. 
            The figures were built enough, and I stood mine up.  The arm fell out. 
            “Excellent,” said the assistant manager.  “Let’s try it again.”

(end of story/excerpt)


Guest blogger tomorrow???

Tuesday, September 28, 2010

Entry #26 Never There He Will Never

Running late, as usual.

Might see, might seeRSVPed November 15th.

I have these mugs, and I bought them without knowing their secret.  I rinsed them, and the color came off like a layer of ash.  That kind of surprise is worth every penny of the ninety-nine cents I paid.

Today: another video presentation.  I don't have stills or anything to show yet, but I will. 

What more can I offer you?

Today, I feel like I'm in Cub Scouts.  Show and Tell was my favorite.  And, the third thing, somewhere in between.

Monday, September 27, 2010

Entry #25 Who's House?

Saw the plays, then.

My hotmail account has been "compromised," so I'm going to find out by whom and send them a line from one of the plays I saw last night, "What are you doing in my house?" 

I've spent a little too much time trying to think of how to fit this link in, so I'm just going to do so...here.  Trick comes in my trying to understand why I'm so struck by this.  Maybe it's just pretty much completely terrifying to me.

Here's an oldish excerpt that most of you have read...there's even a video somewhere I think of me reading it:


Zero Gravity - Colin Winnette

            Zero Gravity has once again been voted the number one dance club for young adults in the Midwest.  Naperville, Illinois, specifically.  Tonight there will be a look-a-like contest for some singer, some young female singer, hardly old enough to date, whose name when read aloud from my computer chair evokes a nod from my daughter meant to hurry me along.  She’s beside me with her hands behind her, fidgeting.   
            “Are you planning to dress up?”  I click the NEW TAB option on the web browser and do a search of the young celebrity’s name.  In none of the photos does she look comfortably dressed.  In not one does she appear caught off guard.  Even in those of her laughing, the snapshot is typically timed with the release of some handful descending; drops of water, glitter, petals, buttons, but her expression seems soundless, more the hollow shape of a mouth than the active frame of laughter occurring. 
            “No,” she says.  “I don’t know.  What does it matter if I do?”  She’s shifting, impatient, but then draws herself upright and still.  At the bottom of a second page of photos is one of the young celebrity holding an ice cream cone.  A small dog cradled in the crook of her arm, pressed against her side.  Her hair is pulled back beneath a hat.  Its brim rests atop the large duplicate lenses of sunglasses doubling the shape of shields, the crest of which is all she sees.  Her mouth is still.  Expressionless as an elbow.
            “Look at her here-…”
            “-some girls might,” my daughter says.  “But not me or my friends.  I’m not sure I would feel comfortable.  She really dresses up.”  Once my daughter is old enough to drive, she’ll no longer rely on this kind of backpedaling. 
            “Let’s get ice cream,” I say.  She makes a long sound, a nasal kind of yawn of the word Daaad
            I click a link, ABOUT US.  A video ad comes up for a bank.  A man holds an elevator door for a woman.  Later, the woman catches a coworker who has leaned too far back in his office chair.  Leaving work, the same coworker picks up a child’s toy, catches up with another man pushing a stroller, and returns the toy.  The man, sans stroller, pauses to let another man enter traffic, and that man-
            “Dad.”
            Kindness is contagious. Blank Bank of So and So.  I resist the urge to search “teenage sex party + code,” “celebrity surgeries gone wrong,” “girls + missing + father + aftermath.” 
            NEW TAB, I search “Kindness is contagious.”  Blank Bank of…there is no good way of telling her I’d prefer she didn’t go...(end of excerpt)

There's that, then.

And here's this, hot off the presses:

Monday - Sunday - Colin Winnette



Saturday, September 25, 2010

Entry #24 Mark Your Horses!

Something for all you Dentonites to do tonights...

I have a teacher who emphasizes the importance of a writing persona...what then, is mine?  Or could be mine?

Writing all this stuff, some part of me feels like, but most of me feels like.

...

Ben Marcus is coming to Tex Gallery, April 2nd, 2011.  Mark your calendars!

Friday, September 24, 2010

Entry #23 Why Not Quick Food?

Stayed up too late last night listening to this while trying to read about the heroic couplet. 

Everyone was so serious in the 80s.  I'm trying to figure out that horse sound in the end...recommended alternative?  H.

Here's another story from a series I'm not sure why I'm writing:


Anton Chekhov on Reality TV

            I read a story once about Anton Chekhov watching Top Chef.  In the story, Chekhov bemoaned what was happening to the ceremony of eating.  Is nothing, he asked, sacred?
            But a story is a story and that’s just not Anton.  Anton hardly watches TV, but not because he objects to the content.  I think he told me once he found it boring, or hard to connect with.  He feels like an outsider, he might have told me, like he’s missing something important. 
            Anton’s an eater, it’s true, but there’s little ceremony to it.  He eats what’s there, when he’s ready for it.  He’ll take on a hot dog as soon as a roast duck, or work a pretzel if we’re walking far. 
            We take walks occasionally, Chekhov and I.  He likes to make up stories about the people we see on the street, and I’m humored enough to listen.  He’s not a bad guy, Anton, but his stories are a kind of sand trap.  The people we see, they disappear into his stories, and all I remember from the walk is Anton and the pretzel and the stories.  And I’ve got no mind for stories really, that’s why I don’t say anything most of the time.  I just watch the people disappear as Anton points, one after the other. 
            But I read that story about Anton Chekhov watching reality TV and I said to myself, that’s just not Anton.  I called him then and asked him to take a walk. 
            “It’s late,” he said.  “I’m tired.”
            “Do you know the show Top Chef?” I asked.
            “I don’t know,” he said.  “What’s it about?”
            “Have you ever read Anton Chekhov on Reality TV?”
            “What’s Top Chef about?” he asked.
            “It doesn’t matter.  What are you doing right now, why are you tired?”
            “I don’t know,” he said.  “I’ll tell you tomorrow.  We’ll walk tomorrow.” 
            I really like Anton.  I look up to him, like an older brother.  And, like an older brother, I think he could take me or leave me most of the time. 
            I was thinking a lot about Anton after he hung up on me, so I sat down and wrote a few short stories about him, as he might have done with something he couldn’t stop thinking about.  None of them were quite right, though.  A story is a story but Anton is Anton.  A sand trap is a deathtrap and if a story is a sand trap then its subject is a dead man walking.  It’d be better if we never knew anybody.  We’d like the stories more, but wouldn’t feel bad when they ended.



So there's that.

Everyone stayed an hour after class to come see the project I photographed for yesterday's podcast.  What a bunch of sweeties!

Going to a play tonight.


Oh me oh my oh my god.

Thursday, September 23, 2010

Entry #22 Bad Blogger, bad.

Here's what I'm doing and why I'm being a bad blogger:


That is an inverted installation.  Bam. 

Wednesday, September 22, 2010

Tuesday, September 21, 2010

Entry #20 Hermit Crab Reading Rainbow

Our twentieth anniversary!  That's sweet.


I fixed this story, so here it is:

M. Proust


             Proust found the body of a dead boy once.  Someone had dug him up, it was obvious from the look of him, but there were no graves or graveyards anywhere in the area.  The boy was beautiful and newishly dead, so Proust scooped him up on impulse and carried him to the closest house of a friend he could think of.
            “Marcel,” said his friend.  “This boy is dead.”
            “I know,” Proust said.  “I know.  What do we do with him?”
            “Put him back where you found him,” said the friend. 
            “I don’t even remember where it was,” Proust said, even though he was a little embarrassed to admit it. 
            “Well put him somewhere new then, just get rid of him,” said his friend.  “This isn’t good for either of us.”
            “Yes, of course.”  Proust didn’t want to impose any longer.  He wasn’t a strong man and couldn’t really dig.  He’d never had to, not really.  He wouldn’t have had the strength for six feet. 
            He carried the boy for some time, farther and farther from the city, before he realized he didn’t know where he was.  He had to do something; he was lucky to have made it that far.  He couldn’t loop back, there was too great a risk of being caught. 
            Proust had been carrying the boy for hours now and was starting to smell like him.  The boy’s hair was in his clothing.  The boy was stiff in his arms, like a cord of wood or a small statue.  Proust kept moving, however slowly, until he came to a river and the site of a bridge underway.  Everyone had gone home and the barrelss and the tools and the buckets of mortar and cement were temporarily abandoned.  The bridge itself hung unfinished, like the statue of a cliff. 
            Proust carried the boy to a field nearby the bridge.  He brought bucket after bucket to the site, until he’d gathered three.  He hid the boy in plain view; he cast him in cement.  Proust was very tired after that, but he stood up the cast and stared at it for some time.
            After that, he came back to the spot, almost daily, for years, to watch the boy encased in cement. Then one day, Proust just stopped going. 
            A little while later, Proust’s friend died of what someone called Leukemia. He had been sick for some time, but hid it well until close to the end.  They buried Proust’s friend in a graveyard, headstone and all.  Proust visited that stone again and again.  And sometimes he would visit the statue. The dead boy was one of the most beautiful boys Proust had ever seen.  He was still, at the stone or the statue, and just watched them, anticipating nothing.  He walked the miles between them, rested, and then walked back.  And he loved each of these stones very much.  They had something so clean and precise about them.
***
I wonder if Bob Villa was part of a subversive ad campaign to sell wood?

Monday, September 20, 2010

Entry #18 The Mysterious Missing Entry #18!

This may be all I manage today.  I've got a meeting and I'm on my way...hey hey hey.

Here's a third short short, why not:


Tolstoy And I Go Trolling

            “You’re Leo Tolstoy,” I said. 
            “That’s right.”  After that, I bought him a drink.  After that came more and more.  We wandered the streets growling and listening to the clicks of garbage articulate the wind.  We stopped every now and then for drinks or to pee.  Leo peed outside with his hand on the wall in front of him, leaning.  He called me a Mother Fucker, then apologized. 
            In another bar, we met two women and he flirted with both.  When he went to the bathroom I told them he was my grandfather.  The two women liked his beard and how lewd he was without being creepy.
            “He’s not even creepy,” one of them said.  He went home with both of them and I went home alone. 
            In the morning he called me.  Tolstoy woke me up. 
            “You’ve got to pick me up,” he said.  “Last night was just awful.  I feel awful.”
            “Where are you,” I asked.  He was very far north, so I asked him to take the train.
            “The train?” he said.  “You Mother Fucker.”  After that, I couldn’t get back to sleep.  I lay in bed instead, thinking about Tolstoy on the train. 
            Tolstoy called me an hour or two later.  He was home.  He was safe.
            “Look,” he said.  “I’m sorry.”
            I said, “Yup.”  Then we were out of things to talk about. 

Sunday, September 19, 2010

Brain So Good Coulda Sworn You Went to College

Literary Contest  -

Call for submissions!

allofthisbeforeeleven is looking for literary analysis!  Submit a piece (up 1500 words) providing keen literary insight into any aspect of this site:

-the form
-the aesthetic significance of orange and gray
-the excerpts
-the emergent need for approval
-comments posted by others
-etc. you choose!

Submit via email: cwinnette@gmail.com
Or, Submit via one of the comment boxes at the bottom of each post!

Winner receives their very own short short, illustrated by a brilliant Chicago artist!

Contest ends October 1st.

Entry #19 Shrinkage

FriendAirportShort Shorts:


Daniil Kharms Buys a Coca-Cola


M. Proust

Friday, September 17, 2010

Entry #17

Alright, so it's only before eleven PM, but whatever.  I forgot to post anything about this and should have.  So here it is:

If you're in Chicago, come see me and a bunch of other literary greats read at Cassandra and Cody Troyan's book release party!

Entry #16 !!!

Spoke with Ben Marcus today.  Guess who may be coming to Tex?

Oh, and this came out.  It's very sweet of them.  But here's the full interview...they're light on their feet with those snippers these journalist folks. 

Thursday, September 16, 2010

Entry #15ish

Hey you!  I know you're looking for a tasty bit of baked blog right about now, but I'm limiting the content because I'm...I don't know...cramming too much into one space perhaps and trying to use this blog for a class as well as recreation...So in an effort to avoid totally confounding my good friends in Workshop, I'm keeping the next few posts short and sweet, so they can access all the goodies below without forcing them to sift through piles and piles of my...internetly good times.

Go to Tex Gallery Saturday, twill be amazing.
If you're in Chicago, come to the Dear Navigator launch tonight at 7:30, Innertown Pub!
ANNNND, come to my reading in Pilsen on Saturday.  1622 S Allport @ 8pm.  Whew!

Wednesday, September 15, 2010

Presentation for Miniatures Workshop

 Colin Winnette
cwinnette@gmail.com


Here is a link to the accompanying audio piece.
Please Right Click or Control + Click on these links to open them in a new window so you can read as you listen.

The Kid Naps
            Every afternoon you’re asked to sleep at the same time, but you are not always able to do so.  This was not a problem at first.  Not really.  Not for you.  Not until the day you were told you cannot be a creative person who creates things if you do not get enough sleep.  A person who wrote books said that, and while those are not his words exactly, those are some of them. 
            When it is time to sleep, part of you rejects being told what to do.  Part of you rejects being told what you feel or what you think, what you can and can’t do, that you are tired and need a nap, that you are hungry, or are going to be.  Part of you resents someone else getting to the thought before you, or presuming too.  But when you are lying down on your mat, near one of the smelly kids - and they are almost all smelly kids - your eyelids drift nonetheless.  Your mind is active but your body slowly disappears.  There’s a spot of darkness.  Your eyes must have closed.  You think about how not tired you are, how hard it is going to be to get through the next half hour, unable to sleep. It is not easy to say exactly why you cannot sleep, but there is a reason.  You’re sure of it.  If the reason occurred in nature you could point at it, you could show anyone and everyone through a gesture outward.  However it is not a thing that occurs in nature.  You are resigned to say that there is a reason you do not sleep, not what the reason is.  You do not because you cannot.
            After the day of his visit, when you are asked to sleep, you think of the man who wrote books.  You remember him and what he said about creative people who create things.  You’re upset with yourself, more often than not, because you’re not tired enough to want to nap, which means you’re not tired enough to be a creative person who creates things.  Worst of all, you’re unable to even think up why you don’t sleep.  A creative person who creates things could maybe say why, more than likely because they’re well rested.  Someone like that knows when it’s time to nap.  To someone like that, it comes naturally.
            The one who tells you to sleep, for example, she could be one of these people, maybe.  But, to be honest, she often seems more tired than anyone, and she’s never once napped that you know of.  She swallows pinches from a series of small plastic jars at her desk while clicking away at some card game on the computer.  You tried to play the card game once, but the rules weren’t clear.  She wasn’t mad when she found you there, but she asked you to join the rest of the class for naptime and not to use her computer again.  When she talked to you she used a soft voice.  She looked tired and a little like a cartoon version of something with a sad face.  She did not look real but looked serious.  Her voice was not like that of the man who wrote books, but what she said staid with you nonetheless.  (Please Take a Moment to Consider Object One).
             One afternoon you wake up and you feel you are that much closer to the man who wrote books.  You did not expect to sleep but you slept, which means you are maybe a creative person who could create things, only you might not have known it yet. 
            Later, during Art and Crafts, you get in a fight, but it is not your fault.  Another boy is bad with his words and scared of them and therefore takes your things without asking.  You count three things - one, two, three - he takes without asking, one of them straight out of your hands.  So you turn to him and yell three words, give it back.  He doesn’t give it back and he pretends not to hear, so you hit him on the back of the head, but you are scared and so you soften the blow right before it makes contact.  Still, he’s knocked forward a little.  The paint water spills yellow and red on the table. 
            Watercolor fissures in the pale enamel work their way toward a wobbly house on a piece of paper opposite you and a polychromatic mess beside it.  It is the painter of this picture, the mess, who yells first.  Then the boy you hit starts to cry because he cries a lot, almost every day.  Then the girl whose painted house is now melting yells too, for the teacher, and the teacher pulls you aside again and talks to you, but not with sad eyes, with mean eyes instead.  She tells you what you’ve done is wrong.  She tells you, you are a violent person and what you did was a mean thing to do.  This is not the way you think of yourself.  You are a creative person who will one day create things, maybe, and she does not understand this because she forces everyone to sleep at the same time and sometimes you fight the issue, sure, but sometimes you fall asleep, like that very day, so she probably definitely has the wrong idea about you. 
            You do not like being told you are a mean person.  You do not like being told anything about yourself by anyone who is not you or the maybe the man who writes books.  He was a nice man and he made it seem easy and fun to make things and you have always liked to make things, just ask anyone but the teacher.  She says you are not listening and tells you you’ll have to sit out longer, for the rest of arts and crafts.
            In time-out, you are not allowed to sleep and if you try, the teacher wakes you up and extends time-out.  You wish she would let you sleep when you want to because then you would more likely be a creative person who creates thing and she would maybe see that if she let you.  Instead, you have to sit quietly and not make things and not sleep and watch everyone else use your things and the teacher eats more pinches from her bottles. 
            After arts and crafts is story time.  After story time you will be asked to sleep again.  Every time it’s story time you think maybe the man who writes books will come back, because he came one day - it must have been a few months ago, you can’t be sure - and he read from a few books he wrote and showed a few pictures he drew and all of it was pretty great, except for one or two of the pictures were kind of boring or looked flat like your eyes wouldn’t stay on them, but just kind of slid off instead, like the pictures were covered with oil or ice, and then he told you that you cannot be a creative person who creates things if you do not get enough sleep. 
            After that, there was absolutely no hope for sleep.  You really tried but couldn’t sleep because you were thinking about his stories.  (Please Take a Moment to Consider Object Two).
            The man read each story aloud, and, page by page, he showed you the pictures he made that went along with them.  One was of a guy underwater in what looked like black underwear.  You were laughing with a friend because you guys go swimming in your underwear too, and in the sprinkler as well, but for you it’s all fun and no one expects you to record what you found (Please Take a Moment to Consider Object Three).
            Then the man who writes books told you it was time to sleep and suddenly you didn’t feel like laughing or thinking about the movies or his books or anything anymore because you really don’t like being told what to do or how you feel or that you’re tired when maybe you’re not or anything anywhere near it.  So you were a little upset with him, and then he said you couldn’t be a creative person who creates things unless you get enough sleep.  Then he asked you all to go find your mats.  When you found your mat you were still a little uneasy with all of it but you kept thinking about what he said and how you would remake that movie and about the books he made and you worried you were maybe not a creative person who could create things (Please Take a Moment to Consider Object Four).
            These problems kept you awake all through the period when you were supposed to be sleeping.  You were awake, eyes closed, and you could hear the other kids sleeping.  One kid was making little high-pitched whisper sounds with the front of his mouth because he was dreaming, probably about something that was making him scared or sad, though there was no way of telling exactly what it was.  That was the kid you would later hit in the back of the head because he stole your things, but you didn’t know that then, when you were unable to sleep and thinking about how you were going to be a creative person who created creative things, even though you couldn’t, didn’t like to sleep, when you were told because hearing someone tell you over and over again what you think and feel and want and need is worse than having someone grab you by the wrists and spin you around or pick you up and shake you, when all you want to do is stand still for a moment and think.  Then you fell asleep. 
            When you are sleeping, no one else is themselves but you are still you.  That was what it was like to listen to the stories by the man who wrote books.  You were still you, but suddenly everything else around you had changed, or seemed to change, or more importantly could change, until he stopped and told you it was time to go to sleep.  Then you were you.  The mat was the mat.  And every day you’re asked at the same time, so the day was the day as it always was.  But there was something different this time and you knew that much, but what it was you couldn’t say, and then he said you had to sleep in order to be a creative person and all of the sudden you weren’t you.  At least not who you thought you were, who you now wanted to be.  Lying down, you were no longer the you who had lain down all those days after days before, because that you, had it thought to, would have seen you as a creative person who could create things, but here you were and you couldn’t, didn’t want to sleep, so maybe you weren’t who you thought you were or who you would have thought you were, and (Please Take a Moment to Consider Object Five).

            After you get out of time-out, the teacher reads you all a story and you listen but you don’t listen.  You watch the boy you hit.  He’s sitting across from you and he’s listening very much.  He’s watching the teacher, and isn’t sad anymore.  That makes you happy because you want to make things, but not bad things, and everyone seemed to think that what you made during Art and Crafts that day was bad.  It was good to see they could forget or change their minds or maybe what you had done wasn’t that bad after all. 
            You listen more to the story then and sort of forget about the boy you hit, as he seems to have forgotten about you, but you still think how isn’t it kind of neat that the same thing is happening then and there to the both you?
            In the story the teacher read, a boy refused to take baths because he didn’t like being told what to do.  (Please Take a Moment to Consider Object Six).
            You think maybe the teacher read that story on purpose because she knows how little you like being told what to do, and that you are trying to be a creative person who creates things as well as someone who gets along with others and is respectful of their minds and bodies, which is really hard sometimes, and you resent her reading such a bossy kind of story at story time when you do your best daydreaming and coming up with great ideas. 
            At naptime you close your eyes.  You are actually pretty tired this time around, given the events of the afternoon, and almost immediately you start to dream about all kinds of things you can’t remember when you wake up as everyone is so loud and running around you because you slept a little later than usual and it is past time to put away your mats for recess.
            At recess the kids are all running around and screaming and taking turns on the slide and the sun is really hot on your forearms and three girls are singing, row row row your boat gently down the stream merrily merrily merrily merrily life is but a dream and the teacher is sitting by them smiling and she just looks so sad, so you look away and walk away and are not expected to look back. 
            One of the girls singing is a blonde girl who one time let you touch a part of her she wouldn’t let you see.  She made you close your eyes and told you to guess which part of her it was.  You said, your ear, and she said no and left and never told you and doesn’t talk to you much anymore anyway.  (Please Take a Moment to Consider Object Seven)You spot the slide, the steps to the slide, and you head that way.
           
            You climb the steps of the ladder to the top of the jungle gym with the slide, and there, at the top by the slide, is the boy you hit.  He doesn’t look sad or like he remembers really that you hit him.  Instead he looks happy and excited about the slide.  He’s yelling to a friend who just went down.  You walk over to him to apologize for hitting him because you really do feel bad about it, or uneasy with it.  Then he looks at you like he remembers, and it is not a good look.
            You hear people say they’re sorry all the time, almost everyday, because people are always sorry for something even when they’re not sorry, and so the words just come right out as if someone else had said them, or like somebody kidnapped your brain for a second and drove it all down and around some old dark roads before dumping it off back where it started with you.  It’s like the words happen to you, rather than it being you who says them, and when the words stop, you’re you again and the feeling of saying the words is gone and you don’t know why but you kind of feel like jumping forward.  The boy you hit seems to think for a moment then steps aside to let you have a turn and you take it.  So then you go down the slide and close your eyes and open them again and the wind is different each time, like you’re controlling it with your eyes, and it’s so fast and smooth and the wind picks up and you’re at the ground running and you can hear the girls singing and singing and singing, and maybe the blonde girl too, you think you can hear her too somewhere in there in their singing merrily merrily life to the quick of your running until they stop.

            Then, some years later, you’re listening to someone read to you, as if from a list of feelings you might have felt or might have thought to feel or could think of feeling now, but the list is like a dream from which you can only remember parts, a little hook of feeling that falls like a piece of ice, rattling somewhere to a dark corner of linoleum where it will shrink, and you will think of the man in the restaurant, and that the fart wouldn’t have done much for the story, and then that you have to leave, because you’re a person now who does a number of things, and they are all of them miles away.

Entry #14.5

Just finished the NT Daily interview and I had to celebrate by sharing some of this stuff with you guys.  Check back here in a few days for the full interview.

People Talkin' 'Bout Tex...

http://americanliteraryreview.blogspot.com/2010/08/here-is-one-reason-it-is-great-to-be.html

http://thingsthatcantbetakenback.blogspot.com/2010/08/reading-at-tex-gallery.html
...
Keep an eye out for our interview in the NT Daily, out next week!

Also, look for the upcoming article from the UNT College of Arts and Sciences publication Synergies at http://www.cas.unt.edu/synergies/

 Viva la Tex.

Entry #14 For St. Valentine, who, as it turns out, is as dubious as Homer, as unknowable as the actual author of Shakespeare's plays, as elusive as the patch of desert we pretended was the moon!

All these questions of authenticity originate from a bout of laziness, or stead-fastness, which kept me reading late into the 10 o'clock hour, thereby relying on Walker to take the reigns for Entry #14.  He did a fine job adopting the style.  You can tell he just loves this thing!
 

Hard And Soft Exhibit

Every year the Denton Greater Arts Council has a Materials exhibit called Hard & Soft.  It's usually worth going by if you're ever in the area. 

Excerpt:
No Big D
by Walker Smart

    Earlier in the day, before Scott left for Darren’s house, he overheard his sister Kelly talking with her friend Chloe.  Scott was working on the computer in the next room when Kelly and Chloe got home from tennis. 
    “Richard from our class?” Chloe had said.  They were in the kitchen, probably still holding their rackets and wearing tennis clothes.
    “Scott’s friend Richard.  The one who’s always here.”  Scott moved away from the desk to hear what she said once he heard Richard‘s name. 
    “What was it like?”  Chloe couldn’t help but be loud.
    “It was pretty smooth I guess,” Kelly said.  “I don’t know.  I didn’t think a dick would be so smooth.”  She was talking quietly, but not enough so Scott couldn’t hear every word.  And he couldn’t stop himself from listening.     
    Kelly is a freshman.  Or she will be after the summer is over.  Scott never wanted to hear her talk about anyone’s dick, let alone Dick’s dick.  Why is Dick getting his dick touched by Scott’s sister, who’s never touched a dick before?  Doesn’t Dick want to have his dick touched by a girl his age, who’s touched a few dicks before, who is emotionally ready for all that dick touching could mean, and who can handle his dick properly and efficiently, with the kind of treatment Dick’s dick deserved?
    “Did he like it?  What happened?” Chloe asked. 
    “When he took his dick out I moved my hand toward it.  I was nervous.  As my hand got close his dick lurched forward, like his dick was metal and my hand had a magnet in it.  Like it was a snake jumping out of the grass to bite me.  My fingertips brushed against it and his dick kind of nodded, gingerly, as if to say ‘it’s okay, touch.’”
    “Did he come?” Chloe asked. 
    “Well, I started rubbing, but I must’ve done it wrong, because he took my hand and moved it up and down his dick.  Once I got how he liked it he started touching me, then he quivered and his dick threw come on my hand and down my arm.  Some got on the couch.”
    “I wonder if he’d let me try sometime.”  Chloe asked.
    “Do you ever see him?”  Clinks from plates force Scott to crack the computer room door to hear the rest. 
    “Yeah, when’s he at the mall he comes by the food court and talks to me.
    “I didn’t know that,” Kelly had said.  Scott hadn’t known either.  “He’d probably let you.  You’re cute.  You’re cuter than me and he let me do it.”
    “You wouldn’t care would you?” Chloe asks. 
    Kelly laughed at that.  “Not at all.  I couldn’t date him even if I like him because Scott would hate me for it.”
    They way she’d said it hurt Scott.  It’s hard to pinpoint exactly why.  He doesn’t want Kelly not to do something she wanted because of him.  And he really doesn’t want her to touch dicks anymore.  Scott wants out of that part of her life, he doesn’t want to think about it, but it was shoved in his lap and now he has dicks on the brain.  He looks at Dick and sees Kelly touching dicks, Chloe watching and asking if she could touch the dicks too.  Darren’s dicks, Dick’s dick, even his dick.  Scott can’t lose the image of his dick jumping out his pants to Kelly’s hand and her laughing and Chloe grabbing his dick from her hand, them talking about how smooth his dick is, although not as smooth as Dick’s.  Maybe if they could touch the two dicks side by side, Chloe suggests in Scott’s brain over and over, they could figure out why Dick’s dick is so much smoother...(end of excerpt)

Tuesday, September 14, 2010

Entry #13 Abro los ojos

Warning!  This article is a stub:


I'll keep this brief. 

I'm listening to this, but Sandra Bernhard makes me feel awkward about it.

Workshop begins today.

Go here.

Monday, September 13, 2010

Entry #12 ...begets...begets...begets...begets...,etc.

First off, let me apologize for yesterday.  Total Cliffhanger ending.

Tex Gallery on Saturday.

Derek Bailey in the morning.

Christian Marclay and I have the same caliphone.


Here is an image I look at every morning, as I am right now. 
by Alan Skelton.
Environmental Readaptative Happenings

by Colin Winnette.



I'd like a real camera.

Sunday, September 12, 2010

Entry #11 ...

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Saturday, September 11, 2010

Entry #10 The Vanishing Point - Winnette

Here's what grad is school is like sometimes (an excerpt):

Every so often, comfort food and Bud Light Lime is free, maybe even Bud Light Wheat.  We first years gather, look around the place, wondering what we're doing here, what we'll do here, excited.  Then the chair of the program introduces you to someone important, the lead editor at a magazine where you want to work.  Then you make a face like Brad Pitt when George Clooney discovers him hiding in the closet in Burn After Reading.  Later, you talk about how, yeah, sure, I guess Spice World is the Hard Day's Night of our time.  Proust comes up too, if you're lucky.  You look around the room, at those of us sitting somewhere between the lip of the table and the edge of our seat, hovering, and you think, if this were soccer camp, we'd all be wearing our shin guards, always.  (by sometimes, I mean two nights ago at dinner, and by excerpt I mean as much as I could think to gather around that oh so perfect spoiler [alert!])

Vito Acconci.

Parts of a good essay.

Josquin de Perez.

Don't miss it.


"Robert Frost had exactly five poems accepted in the first seventeen years in which he was submitting."

David Markson's last novel, The Last Novel.

Something we talked about long distance.

What I appreciate is how appreciative they all are.

Vanishing Point -
Markson, Monson, Sharatt, Muller, Tofel, Roessner, Gieson, Cole, Bonners, Pendelton, Hawes, West, Plunkett, Mitchell, Lummis, Flower, Canning, Tabucchi, Parks, Fredericksen, Wentworth, Dahl, Cheevers, Smith, John, Masters, Meek, Desai, Dawson, Cerasini, Birgfeld, Freeman, Hornig, Wheeler, Chadd, Nikolaides, Leatham, Beck, Plowden, Baglio, Mitchell, Flagg, et al.

Friday, September 10, 2010

Entry #9 Yoko Ono Yoko Ono Yoko Ono, Refuses to be a Palindrome

Here's a gchat Walker and I are currently having, me in my soiled gym shorts, ready to run, him, in TX:

    Walker:  ive got two more rejection emails in the makes for you don't worry
 
    me:  pfft
    you think a handful of rejection emails makes you special?
    dude
    gmail's sending me notices about consuming too much bandwith because of my backlog of        
    rejection  letters
    they were like
    "we're sorry to inform you, but your excessive backlog of rejection notices is not a right fit for       
    gmail.
   feel free to delete something, or get a life.
   sincerely,
 
 Sent at 9:33 AM on Friday
 
  Walker:  pish
   those are just the ones that dignified me with a response
 
   me:  the rest will streadily trickle in
   little disappointments mail bombs
 
 Sent at 9:36 AM on Friday
 
  Walker:  either that or ill get nothing but acceptance
   or almost acceptance
 
Following that, neither of us has said anything for a while.


This conversation was spurred on by Walker's proposal for a poem hodge-podged from our collective rejection notices.  Issue would be, they tend to run together and become one big, bright...oh, i don't know...mobile of disappointment. 

We still haven't said anything.  He may have the sneaking suspicion I am doing this.

What else before I go...today I meet with Jesse Ball

Thursday, September 9, 2010

Entry #8 Drake's Drowning

I decided to use this in a piece.  In the words of Benjamin Percy, "Refresh, Refresh.

I wrote a gimicky story last night that uses no margins, I'll send it to you if you've got a steady eye. 

Oh I just spent too much time trying to find a magic eye.  I'm embarrassed to post this.

Am I wrong to think that my sudden attraction to Magic Eye images has to do with all the Thomas Bernhard I've been reading lately?  The story I wrote last night certainly does.  And it, having no margins, looks like a magic eye...ruminative resolution.

Wednesday, September 8, 2010

Entry #7 Blogging solves the hold problem

Any moment now Financial Services will put an end to this...

Check out the comments for the last entry, then email Walker an evasive and congratulatory email.

"Dear Walker,

There is something in your blog comment that resembles good news.  Please continue to post on the subject until the source of this positive feeling is exhumed.  Then hold it up.  Wipe it off.  The remaining dirt in your nails will frame whatever's shining in your palm.

Sincerely,
a most sincere follower of Colin Winnette's blog"

Financial Services failed to put an end to this.  They could have, if they wanted to, because I would have done anything and everything they asked.  The reality is, they're more anxious to get off the phone than I am, so I'm left with the rattling feeling that perhaps there are more important things to do this morning than blog...


...nah.  There are, yes.  But finish what you start!  As long as it's before eleven.


I got this email.  

I used the word "dross" in an email just now, in reference to an essay for which this excellent piece is a response.
 Okay, so that link isn't to the actual "excellent piece" I'm talking about, but just search for Ben Marcus' article in Harper's.  It's an old article, sure, oldish, but take a look at it anyway if you're interested in this kind of thing.

Oh, hey there, Dad's calling...



 

Tuesday, September 7, 2010

Entry #6 Make some noise, Joseph Beuys

Oh me, oh my.  A state of constantly forgetting and learning anew, or coming to.

"The End" by Samuel Beckett - stories and texts for nothing.

It's eleven, I'm out of time.  I am porous and easily influenced.  I, too, am a leaky vessel.  (search "vessel")

I wrote a story last night, and here is one of my favorite lines from it:

"The birds were somewhere in the house making irrelevant noise."

Obviously, the story still needs some work.  Excerpt tomorrow?

Monday, September 6, 2010

Entry #5 Nothing to be duned

Dreamt about this kind of thing last night, and then the internet told me it was real.

This is a part of an email I got from the editors at a magazine:

"Could you possibly send us a clearer jpeg of this." - in reference to a project I spent several hours power-sanding off the walls of Tex Gallery the last time I was in Texas.

Not true, I was there yesterday.  The time before the last time.  The actual last time, I can quote, Alan, I believe it was, saying with pragmatic satisfaction,
"You can't see the Weiner thing at all," in reference to the blank patch of panelled wall where we planned to hang a series of new paintings.

Here is an image of what we're talking about:

by Colin Winnette and Blake Normile

Entry #4 Slight of Hand

Civet coffee, because the combination of thoughts of coffee/poop that my Nescafe culled within me led me there.  Which led me to this: food for thought.

Down to the wire here as far as personal deadlines, which are, of course, the easiest to break.  I forgive myself yesterday and will do two today to make up for what I failed to get to on the plane yesterday.  I will keep this one short

Saturday, September 4, 2010

Entry #3...I refuse to let this title be about my coffee.

texgallery.org - Tonight!

Krapp's Last Tape

Ants and Bumblebees

This is what I'm talking about

Virtual Reality

Maybe links don't count as a post...but these took time and thought and sequencing...and now Tex Gallery needs primping. 

Drive, walk, bike, get to us tonight, 1012 Egan St., Denton, TX and see what has never been seen before!

http://www.loumallozzi.com/  + Damon Smith = ...

Friday, September 3, 2010

Entry #2 "But when is it not after midnight?" and other reasons I should never own a Gremlin

My father left for an island only moments after I fell asleep printing these:

Not too shabby for page 3, huh?  You should see page 1!
You can see how this formatting makes sense if you come by Tex Gallery this Saturday (9/4 @ 8pm) for a night of improvised music by Lou Mallozzi and Damon Smith, and pick up a copy of the Tex Gallery Review Vol. 3 while you're at it!


Watch these stories read by their authors on YouTube!

I am listening to this right now.

I should link you all to ubu.com...and it's done!

The hits I've received on facebook for publishing this site reads like a Thanksgiving VIP list!  Heyyy guys! 

Also, if you'd like to read the rest of the story from yesterday's post, just send me an email or leave a comment at the bottom of either post...I'll write you an ending...or just copy and paste it.

I actually posit that no one should own a Gremlin, regardless of your optimism.

***

Thursday, September 2, 2010

Entry #1 - Missing Lil Wayne Til November

Here is a selected line from each of the emails I wrote this morning:

Dear "Fiction Editor,"

No Worries.

How quickly can I begin budget billing?

***

So there's that.  I hope there's enough of an introduction packed into these lines to avoid my having to much more here.

*** 
I'm working on two books right now.  
www.texgallery.org - is also important to me.
I will do this more regularly.  I will wake up to do so.  Not early, exactly.  But all of this before eleven.