dave writes right

Psalm

2011-12-26T11:49:00.000-08:00

The Lord is our shepherd
The flock has found wanting
And so put out to pasture.
We now lead thirsting to water;
We now restore souls.

Though we walk through
The Valley as the Shadow of Death,
Fearsome and evil, we say
“Thou art with me.”
With rod and staff
We comfort.

And prepare a table before others
As though they were enemies;
Anoint our own heads with oil;
Run bitter cups over and serve.

Surely goodness and mercy
Have fled from us as days
Follow days, and we have dwelled
In the wilderness without God
Too long.

Amazon's Offense

2011-12-08T11:50:00.000-08:00

All week I’ve been fuming. Nothing gets my goat like Amazon, and they’re at it with disgusting abandon. On Saturday, December 10, their new promotion goes live: price check an item in a retail store with the Amazon app for smart phones, then buy it from Amazon for an additional 5% off, up to $5. The promotion lasts only a day, but still, in the busiest season of the year, in the month on which many retailers rely heavily for future existence, and on what tends to be the biggest shopping day of the week, Amazon encourages consumers to flip the bird to store owners and employees who pay rent and taxes to be considered more than a free showroom, all for a measly five dollars.

Not only has Amazon been aggressively attacking books in short-sighted bursts of lunacy, but many consumers still go along with them. And the new campaign only capitalizes on a practice that already occurs frequently.

Now, maybe I’m getting ahead of my furious self. Dan Mitchell at CNN Money seems to think so, that my outrage is misguided because the Amazon campaign will deal most damage to other giants like Walmart and Barnes & Noble. He goes on to dismiss any concern that local stores will be affected because “those kinds of stores were mostly obliterated years ago” and the “victim is theoretical” in instances of Amazon’s greedy money grabs and sales sniping.

Tell Capitol Hill that Bailey/Coy Books was merely theoretical.

And, for the record, the Elliott Bay Book Company wasn't obliterated; it moved to a new location.

Other arguments pose that Amazon’s new campaign will bring foot traffic into stores. Once there, customer’s are positioned for impulse buys. It’s a funny thing, 5% is. It’s not enough to get people off their couch to try and get a deal. No, it’s a discount designed to entice shoppers who already bothered to leave the house. Then, in the store, that added discount (up to five measly bucks) is designed to tip a customer on the fence toward buying from Amazon, where prices are already gouged deeply, and shipping costs are nil. Impulse buys are never Nathan Myhrvold’s elaborate cookbook and food-porn masterpiece, Modernist Cuisine ($625, available at Elliott Bay Book Co.); they’re more likely to be chocolate bars, greeting cards, and Bananagrams. But those don't really pay the bills, do they.

It has never been a small irony to me that Amazon chose a Bradburian name like Kindle and Kindle Fire for their e-reader, as they continue to set fire to booksellers, publishers, and writers alike. Why Jeff Bezos and company hate books so much, I’ll never know. But I urge all readers to strike against Amazon and not buy into their underhanded ploys for business. You’re smarter than Amazon. Buying from them is like saying you don’t care what you’re buying, where it comes from, or who it’s for.

In Defense of the Bookstore: Eighth Day Books

2011-11-09T10:59:00.000-08:00

Wichita, KS. At the intersection of N Erie St. and E Douglas Ave. sits a bookshop, since 1988, as a testament to renewal.

Eighth Day Books is heralded by Image Journal as the “Miracle of Wichita,” and for its owner, Warren Farha, there’s likely more truth in that single statement. The store’s inception was grown from Farha’s own love of books: “I remember lying on our living room floor with a book called The Real History of the Wild West when I was three or four years old, looking at the pictures and pretending I could read. Reading led me into other worlds as often as I wanted.”

That, and the 1987 car accident that took away his first wife. “A completely intimate and unspeakable event, yet to describe the store without saying anything about that would be, fundamentally, lying,” said Farha. “In the midst of the cataclysm, one of the things I knew was that I had to start my life over in certain deep ways. Part of that starting over was entering a new vocation, and my umbilical attachment to reading, and the influence of the circle of friends I had inhabited for the previous ten years, pointed, in my head, to a bookstore.”

So here it sits, across the street from a rug shop and a bed and bath gallery, Eighth Day Books, with a name suggesting there’s renewal beyond the end of the week. The eighth day is the first day of the new week, the day symbolic of Jesus’ resurrection.

Devoted to “classics in religion, literature, and history,” Farha is hesitant nonetheless about the store being pigeonholed as “religious.”

“It slices ultimate truths from the stuff of life, defines it as one category among others, and also repels those for whom ‘religion’ has a viscerally negative connotation.”

He takes the distinction farther. “We’re aiming here at an all-embracing universality… We believe, in our souls, that all truth is interconnected—if rightly considered, Beatrix Potter and Curious George and Fyodor Dostoevsky and Wendell Berry can be as religious as Gregory of Nyssa and Maximus Confessor and Augustine and Aquinas.”

In an atmosphere where bookstores in general are increasingly considered quaint specialty shops, it begs the question of specializing further, but Farha persists in his now twenty-three year commitment to bookselling, his way. “From the beginning, I knew our selection…could not be supported solely by the local community,” though the store boasts a wide clientele from varying denominations, traditions, and depths of belief.

“A year after we opened, we mailed our first catalog, a 24-page broadside of our favorite books and short appreciate reviews… Our infant website was launched in 1998, mirroring the titles contained in our ink-and-paper catalog. By 2009, our website became comprehensive, presenting all 27,000-plus titles we stocked on the shelves, both new and used.”

Almost from its inception, Eighth Day has also been the representative bookstore at many an Image Journal event, along with Touchstone, the Calvin Festival of Faith and Writing, the Baylor Institute of Faith and Learning. It all started when Madeleine L’Engle came to speak at a local university in 1988. “A month after that was an event called ‘Assisi in Wichita,’ a gathering of representatives of the major religions from all over the world.” Later, Image seized on the bookstore for all their conferences, the rest followed. “We just sort of fell into this kind of thing.”

Meanwhile, Eighth Day Press does what it can by extension to make available books that fit the store’s niche. “Eighth Day Press began only because we felt compelled that certain books, whether old books now out of print, or—in the case of our first book, an original publication, The Feast of Friendship by Fr. Paul O’Callaghan—deserved to see the light of day. We don’t have the resources to do all we’d like to do, but we’re proud of the books we’ve published or reprinted. It’s more of a personal commitment to the books themselves.”

As I continue—albeit infrequently as ever—to mount a defense of the bookstore, I’m heartened to find each one is more different than the last, fitting their communities by engaging on the level of need, desire, passion. And I’m inspired with words Warren Farha left with me:

I nurture the hope that our nature as human beings cries out for the physicality of the printed book, and the almost endless and surprising variety a bookstore uniquely offers. Without wishing to offend anyone, I believe digital books are a Gnosticizing technology, by contrast with real books sterile and ephemeral, offering only convenience and novelty in exchange for the more subtle and enduring genius and delightful corporeality of the codex…I have no Plan B. I’ll keep doing this, as much as it depends on me, until by last breath.

What to Do With a Corpse

2011-10-31T10:00:00.000-07:00

“Oh...” The word dribbles down the tear in my friend’s mouth as she enters the parlor, where I seat her near the wicker basket full of this month’s newspapers. “So this is your place.”

Her eyes are on the mantel, but I direct her attention to the new floor rug I had shipped from London, special, three-day guarantee. “The weaver threads everything with unmatched attention to detail, on a loom that’s well over a hundred.”

“Is that so.”

“Do you notice the knot density?”

She’s still not looking when she asks, “The what?”

“The knot density. It’s how you know the quality of work, really. Nothing like this in stores. And it’s all done by hand.”

“Hand?” She jerks and kicks the basket of newspapers, which skitter behind her like mice, all claw against the hardwood. Her own hand is at her brooch before she knows it. Which gives her another jolt.

“Are you okay?” I wince.

This is the first she looks at me. The hand once at her breast gestures with timidity, and undue reproach, over my shoulder.

“Ah! The new mantelpiece.” I sigh into my teeth as a smile draws the drapes. “You noticed.”

Aghast, she nods.

“I thought about a clock, but these days, who has the time anyway?” I choke on my own wit. A brief moment regains my composure. “It’s hard to decorate sometimes. I get an idea in my mind of how things should look. A certain picture. Frames and pillows. Rugs. Mirrors? Do people decorate with mirrors still? Then there’s the ironwork, the woodwork, wicker, plastics—ugh! who can stand it? Marble. There’s the upholstery. I want it all to work, right? I mean all together. In harmony. But when I buy things and get them where I want them, I wonder if it’s really worth the effort. It’s never exactly right.”

I can see my friend is only half listening. Her eyes are glassy, but I’m almost certain she’s looking in mine by now. So I carry on.

“It’s like there’s something inside me that knows how a place is supposed to be, supposed to look.”

My friend stammers. I smile.

“Well—I can’t show everyone what’s inside me, now can I.” I turn and gaze again at the mantelpiece, cock my head to catch it in a different light, a different angle.

A Day of Their Own Design

2011-07-13T05:06:00.000-07:00

Heavy dusk fire casts the wedding party’s long shadows across a patio overlooking the harbor, a crowd of young men and women looking on at Bobby and Emily, and the couple’s families gathered along the perimeter. Considering I’ve attended about as many rehearsal dinners as Liz Taylor, you’d think the piano player serves a purpose before the actual ceremony. Considering the absence of any instrument tonight, and the complete dearth of music altogether – except the quiet lap of water on the rocks behind us – it’s clear just how important the wedding music is (not).

(Read the rest at the High Calling!)

Old Man

2011-05-29T20:17:00.000-07:00

a voice like yours
might coax a saline bead
along my cheek.
The way you read

or speak,

the rasp in your laugh
and after you’ve sung

every bit

moving through your lungs,
with a note of grief—

rather, relief.

If one day I speak
with all your honest tone,
know from you I learned,
too, how to hold my peace.

In Defense of the Bookstore: Changing Hands

2011-05-11T10:10:00.000-07:00

Meteorologically speaking, I’m predisposed to a reading climate best described as mostly cloudy, with a chance of showers, breaking occasionally for strolls down by the water. When a friend told me about a bookstore in Tempe, AZ, I was dubious – In the desert? As if. That is, until I got e-hold of bookseller Brandon Stout, at Changing Hands.

Changing Hands exterior

The store, a pillar of literary culture in the American southwest since 1974, gushed from the pipedreams of three alternative school volunteers. And, being volunteers, Tom Brodersen, Gayle Shanks, and Bob Sommer kept their community service in mind as they determined to create an outlet for hard to find books. Dealing in new and used books, Changing Hands overwhelmed its original space by 1978, expanding twice within just a few years, and eventually covering 5,000 square feet. In the next twenty years, they would open a second, much larger location.

In that time, the bookstore developed from a small outfit into a collective of friends, a worker-owned operation. Since then, with all the expansion, a core group of decision-makers was determined, taking on employees from then on, still heavily valuing fairness and involvement from all bookshop workers. Staying open for over three decades, the bookstore has seen its fair share of recessions and changes in the book business, and to have expanded so much in that time—incredible!

Changing Hands interior

Still, bookseller Brandon Stout is willing to claim, “right now is the most exciting period in history to be a bookseller.”

Anyone who’s glanced at the New York Times Book Review, New York Review of Books, or clicked on over to Salon or Huffington Post knows that books are yet again changing, in some ways nearly on par with impact of the original Gutenberg printing press. E-commerce and e-books are seeing a significant upswing compared to bookstores and print media, traditionally published authors are going self-pub, self-published authors are signing six figure contracts with big presses. It’s enough to make your head spin.

“It’s all changing so fast, and yet by working hard, being creative, and by loving books, authors, and readers infinitely more than chain stores do, or any online algorithm that ‘recommends’ your next read, indies remain a vibrant part of their communities,” Stout says.

And it’s community that Changing Hands has always concerned itself with, from the very beginning. The bookstore has benefited schools and organizations in support of education and the arts, generating an impressive list of recipients positively impacted by the participation Changing Hands has had in their fundraising.

In addition, the store plays host to over 300 author events offered throughout the year, big names like Barack Obama and David Sedaris to local authors—Stephanie Meyer alert! the Twilight author hails from Tempe—and indie press darlings, like Brady Udall, whose novel The Lonely Polygamist (an intricate and enchanting piece of fiction, in my completely objective opinion, and now out in paperback) is currently a finalist for the Booksellers Choice Award.

Sherman Alexie signs latest War Dances

“As far as connection goes,” Stout offers, “there's no substitute for author events. Yes, you can chat on Facebook or Twitter (provided it's not a personal assistant hosting the feed, as is often the case), but meeting your hero in person? Shaking his or her hand? Having your book signed and your picture taken? Take that, social media. Hell, take that, internet!”

Which isn’t to say Changing Hands escapes the World Wide Web altogether. “We got a late start on the social media front, so I made catching up a priority last year. Our Facebook community, which is approaching 8,000 fans, is particularly vibrant, because that's where our customers are, people who actually live in the area and come into the store, or might be induced to come in.”

They keep a Twitter feed, too. “Twitter is the sexy platform, right?” But there’s an inexplicable trend Stout points out: “I love our Twitter community, but in our case at least, it's an entirely different audience than Facebook. Very few locals. Other booksellers tell me the same about their own feeds.”

That such a distinction becomes apparent to someone like Brandon Stout goes to show how closely he and his colleagues are paying attention. It cultivates a sense of community for readers much in the way that friendships use social media to enhance relationships, an added ease in communicating events and other points of connection, while not diminishing the enriching power of those real life interactions.

As to why he remains passionate about bookselling, Stout puts it succinctly, if only in someone else’s words:

Patton Oswalt spoke at the store yesterday. When someone asked him why he persevered for so long as a young comedian, why he endured the crappy clubs, hostile or apathetic audiences, the lousy pay, he said, "I wanted the lifestyle long before I wanted the success. The lifestyle of a stand-up comic. Most of all, I wanted to hang out with other comedians, which is the best version of life you can live. When I was finally able to support myself by doing what I love, that was it. I'd already won. The success is just gravy." Substitute "bookseller" for "comedian" and there you have it, really.

Passing Note

2011-04-27T16:43:00.000-07:00

We’re just looking

they said,

mom and dad, pacing
the piano showroom

next door

to the teacher, who mom

quit months

after purchase. I tapped

at the keys

enough in the meantime
they thought to get me

private lessons

for my new inheritance.

For Random Acts of Poetry.

To never sing again

2011-04-20T11:37:00.000-07:00

we’ll say goodbye
to end the night—
an exhausted swelter
all satisfied

and spent,

down to creaky voice

and endorphins.

in participation with One Shot Wednesday.

In Defense of the Bookstore: Lindsey at Village Books

2011-03-24T11:48:00.000-07:00

Lindsey McGuirk began her career in books as the Events Coordinator for Village Books in Bellingham, WA. She took a two year stint at Algonquin Books in North Carolina, where she learned about the publishing end of the business, but returned to her true love of bookselling at Village Books in 2009. She is now the Digital Marketing & Publishing Coordinator and handles the online marketing and working with authors to get their books printed on the store's print-on-demand Espresso Book Machine.

These days we all talk. A lot. But not necessarily in the ways we used to—face-to-face, letters, phone calls. Now it’s emails and texts and IM’s and Facebook and Twitter and whatever else our ever-typing fingers desire. Caught somewhere in the middle of online communication are brick and mortar stores who still rely on that face-to-face interaction with customers, but know that their customers are spending much of their time on the internet. So how do those businesses reach those customers? By heading to the internet.

I wasn’t too interested in online marketing until a diehard online marketer and former co-worker at Algonquin Books opened my eyes to not only the possibilities, but also the fun of connecting with customers via the web. She shared much sage advice and when I moved back to Bellingham to restart my gig at Village Books, I was equipped with a great deal of online marketing know-how.

When I came back to Village Books, I was hired on as the (get ready for it) Digital Marketing & Publishing Manager. It’s one of those titles that requires an explanation. I handle the online marketing (Facebook, Twitter, VB’s website & blog) and work with self-publishing authors who want to have their books printed on our print-on-demand Espresso Book Machine.

Facebook and Twitter have opened up doors to staying relevant as a small, independent business. You may or may not have heard the rumor, but apparently books are dead. Being a, um, bookstore, that’s a bit disheartening to hear. Yet you rarely hear that from folks actually in the book business. Not because we’re in denial, but because we just don’t see it. And one of the ways we know people are still loving books are from the conversations we have through our Facebook page and Twitter feed.

In a year and a half, we’ve gone from 600 “fans” on Facebook to more than 3,500 and from 400 “followers” on Twitter to more than 2,700. Taking into consideration that many of our fans on Facebook are some of the same folks following us on Twitter, we’re still reaching at least 4,000 people through these online streams. We’re having a sale? With one click we’ve just spread the word to thousands of people. We’re doing a giveaway? One click lets thousands of people know about it. And what I love about these means of social marketing is that these people have chosen to listen to our messages—they’ve decided they like us enough that they want to hear what we’re saying on Facebook and Twitter.

Probably one of my favorite perks to social media is we don’t have to be stodgy in our messages. We can have the personality that traditional marketing may not afford due to space availability and cost. Village Books has always allowed itself to have personality, which is a huge perk of an independent business, but these other venues give us yet another way to show our goofier side. It’s almost as though we’re letting our hair down and yelling, “Yes! We know we’ve been curators of free speech and intellectual thought for years! But look, we’re wacky too!”

So yeah, social media lets us keep in touch with our customers in a new way and lets us show our wild side, but is it going to keep us alive? Well, no. Ultimately our customers are going to keep us alive. But social media helps us stay even more connected with them.

Now, going back to that nasty rumor about bookstores dying. We’re not dying, but we have to change. Being a bricks and mortar store in a world where online shopping is becoming prevalent brings new challenges. Being a bricks and mortar bookstore that sells physical books when e-books are growing in popularity brings about even more challenges. But these are challenges, not defeat. People are shopping online? We make sure to have an e-commerce site. People are moving toward e-books? We make sure they can buy them through us.

These changes can’t be taken on alone, so fortunately independent bookstores in the U.S. have the American Booksellers Association (and each other) fighting the good fight. The ABA does things like make sure independent bookstore members have the websites that can handle e-commerce, that all online retailers are subjected to the same laws and, most importantly right now, that independent bookstores make a profit on e-books. These are huge strides in keeping indies alive.

I’m not fooling myself into thinking that bookstores are impervious to all the changes that are happening. I know there are very real struggles going on every day. But with constant vigilance of the changing structure of bookselling, as well as the recent surge in consumers’ awareness of the importance of keeping money local, independent bookstores certainly have a fighting chance.

Guest Post at Literary Magpie: On Sound & Vision

2011-03-21T13:07:00.000-07:00

Check out a post I contributed to my friend, poet Jory M. Mickelson's blog, Literary Magpie.

On Sound & Vision

Closing their 2003 offering, One Bedroom, post-rock quartet the Sea and Cake covers one of few singles from the first of David Bowie’s Berlin trilogy albums, Low. All things considered, their version of “Sound & Vision” remains fairly true to the original. Such unabashed homage, I don’t often gravitate toward in a cover. If I wanted something so straightforward, I’d listen to the original. However, it is plain to see that the Sea and Cake is much indebted to Bowie and his Berlin collaborator, Brian Eno; half of the band’s sound is comprised of synthesizers and uncommon percussion. At the time of Low’s production, grounding an entire rock project in synthesizers was certainly not taken seriously, if not altogether unheard of. The sonic experimentation that resulted in not only the (eventually) critically acclaimed Low, but “Heroes” and Lodger as well, was a revolutionary move for any musician, particularly one so iconic.

I must have I surprised a friend after reading a poem called “Sound & Vision,” as unabashed homage as the final track on One Bedroom.

[Read the rest.]

In Defense of the Bookstore: Why I Am a Bookseller

2011-03-07T18:38:00.000-08:00

A recent article I have written for the Elliott Bay Book Co. blog, The Ship's (B)log addresses bookselling in the age of the internet, beginning what I hope will mount as a defense for bookstores everywhere, as a lately unsteady terrain continues to shift. Stay tuned.

Thanks to Seattle librarian Nancy Pearl, we have freedom to admit our book lust. And with Jessa Crispin, the Bookslut, on our side, we have no reason to be ashamed, of how much we read, how quickly we jump from title to title, how we just can’t seem to get enough. Something very visceral drives us to the book, it seems. The textured stroke of each page, the brilliant colors and covers, some ravishing, some demure. An altogether magnetic attraction. Something romantic, something animal—let’s not split hairs.

So who among us isn’t dubious of the e-book? Who among us doesn’t look askance as bookstores close doors across the country? For every book lover, every literary Don Juan, bibliophile, codex Casanova, who among us isn’t as passionate for the very houses that store them? We sometimes feel as star-crossed lovers in our digitized era.

[Read the rest.]

Hear here! for ThereThere

2011-03-06T22:15:00.000-08:00

Family, friends, critics, and lovers alike. Please, please make your way over to the site for the official release of my music project There There. Listen & download; name your price, including FREE!

A great deal of thanks goes out to my producer, engineer, mixer, and musical co-conspirator Chandler Stone, for his time and patience, the use of his studio, his expertise and instrumental talents. Thanks also to DJ Morgan for not only constructing and contributing drum parts to nearly every track, but also for designing cover art for the album. To Joel Sheppard of Bear Cove for playing bass on several tracks; to Bobby Morgan for guitars and bass on several others. To Dana Little for her vocal styling on the duet "Trouble My Heart," but especially for encouragement and advice in this whole process. To Christine Bron for offering vocals to "Hard Heart"; to Michelle McKeown for her cello on "There is Nothing." And, finally, to Martin Feveyear and Jupiter Studios for the final mastering.

Thanks, also, to you: for listening. Enjoy!

Listen Here: Sydney

2011-02-07T00:12:00.000-08:00

The album is off to the mastering studio.

By March 1, I should be releasing my full-length studio album There There, thanks to Martin Feveyear at Jupiter Studios, who recently worked with my friend Dana on her new solo album, Patterns, which just released this weekend.

While you wait for the mastered and final product, take a spin with Sydney. I like to think of her as the second single, a song about travel and abandonment, consolation for the absence of a wandering love in the form of guitars shredding over the pop of piano staccato. Enjoy! And share with your friends.

An Adoptive Father

2011-01-31T11:01:00.000-08:00

for Jim

consider the weight
of love, the heft
arms make in arms
and legs hold
against your chest

how they act a ballast

how they weigh
everything and nearly
nothing at all

when their bodies rise
like pop flies
toward your open hands
where they land
to rise again

consider boy for boy

consider it all joy
how pound for pound
you’ve raised each son

For Random Acts of Poetry at The High Calling.

Live Video: Brother, Boy

2010-12-18T13:02:00.000-08:00

The year is coming to a close, and there is still a bit to be done on the album I recorded this summer. As a Christmas gift from me to you, here's a live performance of the track "Brother, Boy" from a solo show I played a year ago in Bellingham. It's slightly different than how you'll hear it on the album; but, I hope you enjoy.

Also, be sure and check out what I like to think of as the first single from There There, "Hard Heart" at www.myspace.com/davidkwheeler. Friend me. Comment. Like. Tweet. Embed. And do whatever your social networking self likes to do, to your heart's content.

Brother, Boy (live)

David K Wheeler | Myspace Music Videos

Giving Away the Ghost

2010-12-03T11:00:00.000-08:00

Thanks to all who participated in the Noel Ghosts Giveaway this week. And thanks especially to Jen, whose poem Annunciation won her a copy of Contingency Plans.

Annunciation

At daybreak I hear a footfall
In the cold grass,
I feel an immanence, the threat
Of an eclipse, a veil
Over the sky

I step into my living room
Where my small faux tree
Last glittered
With its tiny white lights,
Its heralding angel
Against the gladdened
White walls
Of my own home

There, on Colorado’s pale blue
Morning
An eight-foot Alpine Fir
It has taken hours to trim

There are packages everywhere.
A shining gold bicycle.
A vintage Star of Bethlehem quilt
Folded, tied with a red satin ribbon

Instantly, I reach for my clothing,
My keys, to escape
With the dog to the river,
To let the cold air wake me,
Searing my lungs
But the door
Has swollen shut

And then I see my guest:
She sits with her back to me
In the wicker rocker,
Reading,
From the immense
1870 family bible.

ii

I know this intruder;
I once slipped from her
Turning and eager
Like a dolphin
Lay in her arms
Reaching for her voice

Once she sat with me in the car
driving out to the half-empty
house on the market
Where I demanded
She sort the picture frames
Tumbling
From the walk-in closet

Later, I said to her
on the telephone
to the nursing home
“No more chocolates
The next day she collapsed
In the beauty parlor

After the funeral
At the garage sale
I sold the Limoges china,
The bird’s eye maple desk,
That which she would have
Passed to me
For thirty pieces of silver.

iii

We sip eggnog laced
with brandy
In a snowman cup;
A pine knot crackles
In the fireplace.

We muse over the packages
Hanging a chipped
Gilded angel ,
a hand-made miniature
rocking horse
on the lowest, barest branches

I surrender
to her steady, green-eyed
gaze: I anoint
her bruised feet,
I brush her dark hair.

Poem by Jenne’ Andrews.

Dark House

2010-12-02T15:22:00.000-08:00

The Noel Ghosts Giveaway closes at 6pm (PST) tonight! For details and entry, go here. Check back here tomorrow for the winner, and visit Tweetspeak Poetry for a full celebration of everyone who participated in the challenge.

On the balustrade

and between the hollow floors
where the runner rolls along

the hardwood

fringe extended beyond
a fashionable mandala pile

for bare feet

curling under themselves
in the draft across the rug

and nightgown

that leaves naked the ankles
the raised hairs in the dark

as pale fire

diffuse in spiced solstice air
rises up the stairs, brushes up

your backbone

Noel Ghosts: A Christmas Giveaway

2010-11-26T09:00:00.000-08:00

Black Friday, I know. The Christmas season is irrefutably upon us. Advent is going to have us waiting and waiting; I thought I'd offer an early Yuletide gift. I'm giving away a copy of Contingency Plans: Poems, and to do so, it makes sense to say it with poetry, if you follow.

Two years ago, I wrote a poem about waking to find peace on earth and goodwill toward men, still haunted by my own poor spirits.

Christmas Morning

Almost, I didn't wake up,

and felt worse for wear.

I was so close to being swallowed

entirely by blankets and comforters

I never asked for but wrapped

around me anyway.

When I rose, I began

with sacred words mumbled

by unmoved lips and foggy head,

an insincere act meaning well.

To myself, I am

a person always out of breath,

quietly and leisurely being

driven out of my mind. And you

still regard me with a nod,

a smile, and a pleasant hello.

This week, I dare you to write a poem about Noel Ghosts. There's an old tradition of telling ghost stories on Christmas Eve. Charles Dickens is perhaps most famous for his: A Christmas Carol. Be they spirits of Christmases past, present, yet to come, or altogether fantasy, I love a good ghost story.

I'm happy to join with The High Calling for this Random Act of Poetry. Make sure to post a link to your poem in the comments by 6pm (PST), Thursday, December 2, for links and possible feature TS Poetry, Friday, December 3. Meanwhile, that same day the giveaway winner will be announced here.

The Kiss

2010-11-08T09:42:00.000-08:00

as one might an icon
when a guest
in another’s house
of God

as one would his
mother’s cheek
to warm her over
after arguing

as one does the wrist
a lady lends
the gentlemen when
on the promenade

as one gives friends
a salutation
after an extended
absence ends

as one shares a dear
thought afraid
it might get lost for
words and air

In the spirit of cataloging poems at The High Calling.

The End of October

2010-11-02T20:30:00.000-07:00

You finish off October in the heat and glut
of your oven, roasting gourds
and tubers for pies and soup, your youth,
a rich yield from the earth,
while you await the frost and turn of winter,
staying in when your friends
stride sidewalks downtown near the theater,
anticipating an apocalypse,
a mobile portent sung, in seven-eight trumpets
electric guitars and angels,
over your gutted pumpkin lantern guiding
you through the costumes,
the dead, and safely into November slumber.

A new poem for One Shot Wednesday.

As the Day Approaches

2010-10-14T23:33:00.000-07:00

Watch carefully, for the advent of Contingency Plans. The final product will be upon us within the next couple weeks, first at Createspace, then Amazon retail, and eventually (my hope is) independent booksellers and live readings and events. In the meantime, you can hear more about the book at the Contingency Plans site, as well as the Facebook page.

Bound Verse

2010-09-13T09:49:00.000-07:00

And so we have ourselves a cover, thanks to photographer Kelly Langner Sauer. This fall, T.S. Poetry Press, L.L. Barkat, Marcus Goodyear, and I will be pleased to present everyone with my book, a collection of poems, Contingency Plans.

More details to follow. Pertinent bulletins with be posted as news warrants. For now, watch and wait with me; this is big.

Leaks in a Paper Boat

2010-08-31T11:46:00.000-07:00

Studio time is easing—slowly—to a close on my music project, a full-length album with the newly minted title There There. By fall, nearly upon us, Chandler and I should be done with the nuts and bolts of recording. Then, it's on to mastering and production. I have no idea how long these things take.

To keep you all interested, to keep your minds at ease, I've leaked a track onto my site. The song is called "Hard Heart" and has turned out wonderfully thanks to the hard work put into it by my producer and sound engineer, and guitarist for this track, Chandler Stone (The Gramophones), whom you can hear singing along with Christine Bron (also from the Gramophones).

Other miscellanea you might be interested to note is that cover art is being done by D.J. Morgan (another Gramophone), who also plays drums on the whole album. We've come so far but have much farther to go. Thanks for bearing with me. Hope to have more for you soon.

Book Review: Sarah Cunningham

2010-07-07T08:32:00.000-07:00

Call me superstitious, because there are plenty of people who already do, and because I am a firm believer that there is synchronicity in just about everything I read, both between the books themselves and with my own life, even if it’s only residual. Sarah Cunningham (Dear Church) meets me in the summer of significant change—changing jobs, changing cities, changing faith—as a teacher, someone with a fair share of experience to speak of in her memoir Picking Dandelions. And, as it turns out, Cunningham has gone before me in so, so many ways.

A pastor’s kid with a precocious understanding of God, salvation, baptism, and everything, Sarah Cunningham’s story is all about change, adaptation, growth, something I have learned, am learning, will continue to learn, being a pastor’s kid myself. Coming to faith early in life maybe makes your conversion story a mite dull, but, as Cunningham suggests and I emphatically agree, salvation is merely the point of entry; there is so much story left to tell. And this is a beautiful realization for those of us who have ever considered our faith a humdrum bit of happenstance: the grit of our story becomes what we do with this holy gift.

Because God is God over change, as he is God over everything else. I once had a counselor tell me, “God loves you just the way you are; and, he wants you to be different.” You could say that sums up some of the tension in my own story, as it is the steady revelation in the pages of Picking Dandelions. Cunningham goes from polite, pettycoated church girl, to social activist, to school teacher hell-bent on personal, spiritual renovation. She is a writer traversing the spectrum of her story, honestly, and without taking herself too seriously. A good summer read, out on the porch, with a tall glass of tea, maybe a slight breeze, the mosquitoes nipping at your ankles—something along the lines of Trespassers Will Be Baptized: The Unordained Memoir of a Preacher's Daughter, by Elizabeth Emerson Hancock; mixed with the tenacity of someone like Sara Miles, whose memoir Take This Bread: A Radical Conversion asserts action as a necessary quality of faith.

Sarah Cunningham saves the best for last: the capstone to her memoir is a rich, powerful exchange with her grandmother, a British matron, a war bride with the bittersweet truth about change, like a breeze laced in menthol—she is clarity. As Cunningham traces through her formative years and on into adulthood, you get the sense, as a reader, that she is digging upward, toward good air. And then, with her grandmother, she breaks the surface; you can tell there is more work to do, but, at last, there is a certain affirmation. Not resolution, but, rather, direction. Much-coveted direction—by all of us, especially we who are faint in the throes of change.

Sarah Cunningham is a high school teacher, part-time college professor, mother, and wife. She is a popular church and conference speaker, the author of Dear Church, and a contributor to several books, including unChristian. A reader as well as a writer, she is so kind to accept my personal recommendation for summer reading: Eating the Dinosaur—pop culture analysis is at its finest when editorialist Chuck Klosterman (Sex, Drugs, & Cocoa Puffs; Downtown Owl) guides the tour, and it's now available in paperback! [More on the subject here.]

A Quick Word

2010-06-30T08:53:00.000-07:00

Poet and author L.L. Barkat, along with Marcus Goodyear, a couple gang members over at High Calling Blogs and T.S. Poetry, are some of the moving pieces behind T.S. Poetry Press. And starting now, they are two people who will be publishing my first book, a book of poetry. I have just submitted my manuscript for their review, a process that felt exactly like sending a piecemeal hunk of my innards through the E-mail, and after a summer of editing, we expect the book sometime in fall; but, like babies and meteorology, who can really tell with these things?

Meanwhile, this week I broke ground on my first full-length album. My friend Chandler and I have been logging some significant hours in his studio, and are sure to log plenty more with friends and musicians. The project has been on the back-burner of my mind for quite some time, and I’m thrilled to be laying the groundwork. July will be a busy month; but, between recording an LP and writing a book of poetry, I’d say I wouldn’t want to be doing anything else. Indeed, I wish every day could be July.

Simile

2010-06-27T12:05:00.000-07:00

When I read, I hope to learn things, if not directly, then by a mysterious osmosis anyone who has claimed to be a writer—you know who you are—is, at least, vaguely aware of. We hope to better ourselves vicariously, so we read good books, or books by authors we admire, which are not always good books, no matter what we might say in their defence. We hope to gain wisdom, ideas, new words, new turns of phrase, or just some respite from our own hapless word processer scribbles, written like scripture one moment and tormenting us like imps the next.

Dead into winter, I kindled a bromance with Michael Chabon, whom I am nearly certain is also Wayne Coyne of the Flaming Lips (incidentally, both having significant ties to Pittsburgh), over orange chicken and fried rice, while he elaborated on his childhood, adolescence, and essential experiences as a man, Jew, writer, and divorced and remarried father of four. Aptly, Manhood for Amateurs. Not unusual that I would be blazing through personal essays. Rare that they would be essays by a straight, white, middle-class man who doesn’t bother me with a lot of politics or religion. Instead, Legos and comic books.

Chabon is the man I aspire to be, or maybe just the writer; and, now, I am backtracking his novels to see what I can glean. I am not far; I am one-third through The Yiddish Policemen’s Union. That is all. But in those 140 pages, I have discovered what in four years (sort of) of English studies and the twenty or so years since I picked up—oh, let’s say—I Am a Puppy has failed to sink in: the power of the simile. There is memorable and lively cadence to the language Chabon uses in his story about a midlife detective in the Jewish district of Sitka, Alaska. And it took me this long to get the hint.

I think it’s because I’ve read (and written) so many bad similes, I’ve just become afraid of them, fearing like and as as if one were the reaper and the other fear itself. The more I think, the more I think similes are the vague mystery as to why some writing is just good and some writing is just not, rather the quality of the similes, like coffee beans to a decent americano. (And now you’re all going back through and counting my similes. Don’t worry, I have, too, and there are four.) If I’ve ever written a compelling simile before now, it was a fluke, an anomaly, because I have never put them into practice, preferring the ubiquity of the metaphor and a litany of adjectives to develop a scene. Recognizing the error of my ways, this is repentance. This is reformation.

The Backwoods

2010-04-24T15:57:00.000-07:00

Stay out of the woods.
There the spring is soft
as fiddleheads reach
upward. Air ambles
in fog and pollen and
imprints left around
the roots of giant pines.
The backwoods, they’re
called; and they call
back, if you’re listening:
moans, grunts, or wails,
like something roams
between the trees and
leaves tufts of hair for us
to find and follow back,
further into the forest.
The stories go far back,
but unless you believe
in fiends, in ghosts, I
will leave the matter
alone.

The Pacific Northwest Reader Giveaway

2010-04-17T14:36:00.000-07:00

My contributor copies of The Pacific Northwest Reader came in the mail yesterday, and I'm giving three of them away. I've seen copies of the essay collection on the shelves at Village Books, and I know stores like Elliott Bay Book Co., Powell's Books, Auntie's Bookstore, Eagle Harbor Book Co., and any of the numerous IndieBound stores in the Northwest have them too.

Booksellers, librarians, and former booksellers and librarians have compiled personal stories about their lives in Alaska, Idaho, Oregon, and Washinton to produce a collection about which New York Times bestselling author Garth Stein (The Art of Racing in the Rain) says, "These personal tales are fantastic, fun, and delightful on their own; they're a wonderful patchwork quilt of the region when taken as a whole. I loved this collection!"

Leave a comment here about how you're a Pacific Northwest reader--or reader of any kind for that matter--for your chance to win a free copy of the Reader. Or tweet: @daviewheeler I'm a #PacificNorthwestReader. [Contest ends 5pm (PST) on Monday, April 19, 2010.]

The Long Saturday

2010-04-03T10:45:00.000-07:00

Today, I remember that you died.
Not how or for how long, just
your momentary brush with mortality,
a dull epoch emerging with your exhale.

Since the dark, early morning I've known
your absence and your promise
to return, devoid of faith enough to decide
which is easier to accept completely.

Each hour elapses, and nothing
resolves except the quickness of unbelief.
You wither in my mind just as your body
before you, and my hope before that.

Suppose night remained, weeks passing
only in shadows and snow; and, days
hesitate, and clouds sustain today's grief.
And here, fearful and fitful, I rest.

Borrowing

2010-03-28T14:36:00.000-07:00

Part 2

Bernhard Riemann was a mathematician unparalleled in the field, who kept cryptic notes in the pages of tomes of number theory, teasing future math historians to no end. He suggested he had a secret formula for predicting prime numbers—something mathematicians have been reaming their skulls over for quite some time—but left little evidence for his peers and successors beyond a trail of bread crumbs resonating with the familiar juvenile taunt of nyah, nyah, nyah, nyah, nyah. The rest was burned by his housekeeper.

Mathematics peaked for me round about college-level algebra, starting a steep, steady decline shortly thereafter. It was while taking a course at the community college concerning itself with the business applications of calculus when I determined two things:

math is an incredible study in the hands of other people
I should never, ever own a business.

Amidst the graphs, the Microsoft Excel spreadsheets, and my TI-86, I was well aware that I was on numerical frontiers unimaginable to myself even two years before, coinciding with the increasingly bizarre plot turns on the WB’s Superman saga Smallville—in both cases, I knew my time with the subject was running short.

Ironically, this also happened to be the point I developed a profound respect for the subject of numbers. I was reading a treatise by Oxford mathematics professor Marcus du Sautoy on the historical and modern quest to find reason in prime numbering, Music of the Primes. Here was a mathematician who tried hard to make high concept number theory accessible to the lay public. In 2006, du Sautoy published an article in Seed, a New York science periodical, describing the relationship between Douglas Adams’s meaning of life, 42, in The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, and the prime number holy grail known as the Riemann zeta function. However, halfway through Music of the Primes, du Sautoy enters—by way of German prime number pioneer, Bernhard Riemann—the fourth dimension, in order to better explain the seemingly random distribution of prime numbers, a series of numbers only divisible by one and the number itself. Three dimensions might be the only reason anyone enjoyed the film Avatar, but graphing in four asks too much.

I picture mathematics as a revolving globe, with my head at its center. Calculus resides on the farthest exterior surface of my skull, just barely making contact with the scalp. The Riemann zeta function exists much further out into the middle space; but, it fascinates me. I am enchanted to think that there might be reason to the seemingly random, and to see it is a matter or shifted perspective, experience, and dimension. My (limited) understanding is that I—as all human beings, animals, and other life teeming on this earth—exist in four dimensions, that of height, width, depth, and duration, but I am certain my mind only fathoms three—the three I can adequately graph, on paper, in two dimensions. Here we have Bernhard Riemann who, of his own accord, managed to tear himself away from traditional boundaries to explore number theory in four whole dimensions, to attempt to map the true extent of human experience, in order to solve one of the greatest mysteries in mathematics.

Riemann died before proving any of his theories. You might say that he is a martyr, a pioneer who refused to return before he explored everything he had set out to.

Somewhat less high-concept was the premiere of the CBS crime drama, Numb3rs, which I watched with fervor for the entirety of its first season. This program had its lead characters—brothers, one of whom was an FBI agent, the other a mathematics professor at a fictional science institute in California—together managing to solve murders through probability and other applied mathematics. This was probably where I first heard the name Bernhard Riemann, and also probably when I decided that being a university professor might be fun. Incidentally, the younger, mentally tortured, mathematics professor brother vaguely resembled my own calculus instructor, so the already blurry line between TV and reality, for me, grew dimmer, and I carried on through the rest of the calculus course actually believing I might go further in math studies. The spell was broken later that spring, after graduating high school and realizing my general mathematics requirements for college would be waived.

I never looked back. Consequently, I now have my mother balancing my checkbook against my monthly bank statements. This might seem a juvenile request for someone in his twenties, but, my mother being an accountant, I think it as reasonable as a dentist’s son asking to have his teeth cleaned. That, and my check register rages like the sea. Asking my mother to plumb its depths is more akin to asking a veteran mariner to sail the waters of the Bermuda Triangle. In this triangle, figures change at their own whims and receipts come and go as they please. Anyone daring to navigate her way through it would seem morbid, but, for better or worse, my mother is about as seasoned as they come.

Up & Coming / Has-Been

2010-03-19T11:00:00.000-07:00

Over the last few months I have been receiving email updates from one of the editors at HarperCollins Publishers concerning the forthcoming Pacific Northwest Reader, in which my essay "My Washington ID" will be featured. Mid-April marks its latest proposed release date, when it will sit on shelves at independent bookstores around the Oregon, Washington, and Idaho region. To tease you a bit, here's a sample paragraph from that particular essay:

Between Leavenworth and Wenatchee are stretches of road populated by apple trees with white skin and gnarled branches, the heart of Washington’s apple country. Washington has been leading the country in apple production since the 1920s. Once, while rafting the Wenatchee River, our guide pointed to some irrigation ducts just visible near the peaks of the surrounding hills. “We call that the apple juice pipeline," he said. “You know Tree Top?” The six of us in the raft nodded. I’m sure he meant it was for irrigating the apple orchards, but I couldn’t help but imagine gallons and gallons of apple juice being pumped around the state. Now, every time I pass through the sprawling Wenatchee valley, I think of that—that, and the unassuming chic of agri-tourism.

Again, look for The Pacific Northwest Reader in the middle of April. Village Books and Powell's Books will most definitely be carrying it. In fact, Powell's bookseller Gigi Little will be running snippets from essays featured in the book on her own blog to promote the release. And you can bet if places like Auntie's Bookstore and Elliott Bay Book Company don't have it on hand by the end of April, they can order it for you. Don't expect to find it in the big box bookstores or online book traders.

And if you haven't seen my latest work, check out The Outlet blog, Burnside Writers Collective, and order the inaugural issue of Seattle's newest literary magazine, The Wanderlust Review. I'm keeping my fingers crossed that more of the like is in store.

Borrowing

2010-03-12T11:17:00.000-08:00

Part 1

There was a time I didn’t understand subtraction. Oh, the theory made sense: things were being taken away from me all the time—television privileges and allowance by my parents, and my brother took just about everything else: Hot Wheels, the TV remote, pogs. What didn’t make sense was pencil-to-paper arithmetic. Addition I got. Hannah had three apples and John gave her two more; I knew Hannah, then, had five apples and a pushover. Subtraction was a trickier business.

First you had the minuend, a big number, on top. Then, you took away the subtrahend, the smaller number below it. Finally, you had the difference. I tested well in theory; but, the first few goes alone at it left my second grade teacher, Mrs. Reed, puzzled.

The words didn’t bother me so much. In fact, I loved names, the weirder the better. The words let me understand what the numbers were failing to show me. There’s a story taking place on the page of the math lesson of which, I’m sure, neither Hannah nor John could make heads or tails. You had the minuend—just feel it as you say it—almost royal, like the minuet of the French ballroom. There was the subtrahend, the wily hunchback living below the castle, greedily waiting to take what he wants and leave the minuend wanting. In the end, the kingdom was a different, smaller place: the subtrahend had had his way, the minuend suffered.

Mrs. Reed seemed to appreciate the drama in the same way my parents appreciated my tirades concerning the G.I. Joe caper of ’95, which is to say, not at all. Instead, she called my parents in for a conference. “I’m concerned about David’s math skills,” she began. “We’ve been learning about subtraction, and he doesn’t seem to be catching on quite like we would hope. Lately, he just bends over his desk and cries.”

This was not entirely false, but not entirely causal either. Mrs. Reed would not have noticed me crying that day if not for that stupid know-it-all Junie Wilde, whose pretentions as the teacher’s pet were only hindered by the shocking ignorance she broadcast every chance she had to open her mouth. It was she who heard me sniffling at my desk, my head not half an inch from its surface.

“What’s wrong?” Junie asked, leaning in close so I could smell the deep-fried frizz she called hair. “Do you need help with your math?”

“N-no,” I managed amidst a torrent of snot and saliva. I wiped the excess on the sleeve of my blue turtleneck and turned the other way.

Junie’s hand shot up, and Mrs. Reed walked over to our desks. “What is it, Junie?” As a teacher, she tried to mask her reactions to Junie’s constant irritation, but you could tell Mrs. Reed would just as soon chew insulation as carry a conversation with this girl. “You know this is silent time for everyone to work on their math.”

“Mrs. Reed, David’s crying because he needs help with subtraction.”

That wily hunchback.

The truth was that I was crying because subtraction reminded me that I was actually in school now (albeit a private Christian school whose rural whereabouts in an already small town rendered it the equivalent of homeschooling for a very large family, but a family nonetheless) instead of home with my parents. After two years being homeschooled, I’d joined the ranks of the classroom, and it was all still very new to me. Adaptation is another challenging concept to me. Subtraction itself didn’t reveal this to me; my struggle with it was actually a metaphor for the trouble I had adjusting to my new institutional circumstance. But I couldn’t expect Junie to comprehend that as she seemed to understand very little at all.

I very much wanted to learn subtraction, and, after my teacher’s conference with my parents, I paid close attention during lessons, making time to sort out the ones, tens, and hundreds place in their respective order. We used M&Ms and pennies to make the process as comprehensible as possible.

As it turned out, taking single digits numbers from numbers with more digits I didn’t have a problem with. What tripped me up was the concept of borrowing digits from one column to use in the next column over. For instance:

2 3 4
- 1 5 6

One must borrow from the 3 in the tens column to take 6 from 4. This makes 4 into 14, and 3 into 2. Remember, this is supposed to make sense to a seven-year-old. Only, at age seven, I was taught that a person who borrows must return the thing borrowed. So, in my mind, 3 helped 4 become 14; in turn, the polite thing for 4 to do would be to return 1 to 3. In effect, the transaction is a two way street, and instead of yielding a difference of 78, I would suggest 188 is the proper answer, as 3 would “pay it forward,” so to speak, when borrowing from 2.

Clearly what I did not take into account was this world’s penchant for selfishness, and common sense. Were 6 to be taken from 14, 4 would have nothing to give back to 3—now 2—because the loan had been given away—to 6. This taught me a valuable lesson about debt collection; and, later, this lesson would be reinforced by crime dramas like Law & Order, where high society addicts were reduced by the debts they kept with their dealers. Had Mrs. Reed introduced me to NBC primetime television, I might have gotten on board with borrowing sooner.

A House of Many Mansions

2010-02-01T20:32:00.000-08:00

Let's start saying sacred like it means something again. Holiness, blessedness—hallowed, really. Somewhere along the line these became synonyms for don't touch that. I suppose there might be an or else attached, but I'll leave it at touch for now.

I love to be loaned books. It's the voyeur in me, but I consider it a privilege on par with being a guest in someone's home—a guest prone to snooping through the medicine cabinet. The book itself is telling enough to suggest what a friend thinks of you; any markings are like notes taken in a diary. A lent book is granted passage into the mind of another; or, so I tend to think. After a telling enough conversation with a friend, he handed me a copy of David Dark's new book The Sacredness of Questioning Everything. Inasmuch as book recommendations are my crack cocaine, I balk at an oversell; but, what the heck, right? I'd been looking for a little tea and sympathy, and received permission to flirt with a sort of nihilism—or, perhaps more aptly, get into some heavy-petting with deconstruction.

Dark, I am now certain, is of the Klosterman school of thought. That is, the school of thought that suggests all human experience can be translated into and related using the wealth of pop culture piling up around us. I like a man who suggests Stephen Colbert and Jon Stewart are modern prophets, while a song titled "(Antichrist Television Blues)" can actually serve to calibrate toward The Christ. In the midst of the hipster namedropping and oblique cultural references, Dark resounds with an impressive hurrah for an inquisitive spirit.

Questions of about God, religion, faith, the supernatural. Questions about the government and the media. Questions about our future. Questions are how we grow to better understand whatever surrounds us. Remember Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you (Matt. 7:7)? I don't think Jesus was talking about super-sizing or twenty bucks for the mall. Jesus tore open the Holy of Holies for everyone to commune with God. With that, I'm sure, he understood there would be a bit of curiosity on our part, snooping, like all good houseguests. And what could earnest seeking yield but more of him and less of us?

I'm not suggesting a cavalier approach to communion with the Most High. He is God, after all, not your homeboy. But an invitation is an invitation. I'm not sure I'd keep to the entryway until beckoned into the living room, then wait to be coaxed into the kitchen; just like I'm not prone to tear through the master bedroom, turning out the drawers as I go. The sacred is a posture of intimacy rather than pretense; a home with coffee brewing as opposed to a museum with velvet rope. The sacred is a lent Book. (Yeah, that last one made me a bit queasy too.)

If It's on the Menu

2009-11-23T21:34:00.000-08:00

Assuming there get to be more hours in the day, I’d like to take up crochet again, and work on a few essays and my novel, and set to work again on my reading list, amply revised since my fictional summer to better suit my taste for memoir. There’s only so long I can go without once again wondering what’s going on in the lives of people I know too much about to have never met. That in mind, I’d also like to make more of an effort to meet these individuals.

To kick off the month of November, I traveled north to Vancouver, B.C., to hear from one of my most beloved friends-I’ve-never-met, David Sedaris. Of course, I needed something for him to sign since I’d left my copy of Barrel Fever at home, so I stopped by my favorite used bookstore in town before hitting the road, purchasing—along with Sarah Vowell’s wry, her-storical spree, Assassination Vacation, because I have never learned to practice self-discipline—a fine copy of Naked, the only of Sedaris’s work I’ve yet to read. The only collection, that is, save for Holidays on Ice, which I own on audiobook, as read by David and his sister Amy Sedaris, and am waiting (endlessly, seemingly) until my long drive home for Christmas to enjoy.

That evening at Vancouver’s Centre only whetted my appetite for David’s devious storytelling. He’s the type of person who tries to write fables but, for their lack of moral fiber, must condescend to call them stories about animals. “I wanted to title the book Fables,” he said, referring to his forthcoming collection. “Now I’m thinking of calling it, Let’s Explore Diabetes with the Owl. Because,” he explained, “Let’s—it’s an invitation, you know?”

I spent an hour and a half waiting in line with my friends for David to sign our books because he’s personable in person, takes a little time to chat with everyone. He’s inviting, you know?

“What did you talk about in line?” I heard him ask the girls in front of us, whom my friends and I had spent the previous forty-five minutes criticizing for their hair and dress and diction. I’m not saying I’m proud of it, but I really hoped David would ask me the same question, that we might share—together, him and me—a notion of camaraderie at another’s expense. Instead, we talked about his visit to Western’s campus and the woman who, later, followed-up his reading there with a letter describing just how offensive and unfunny everyone thought he’d been.

“Now,” David leaned over the table he sat at, with a glint of familiarity in his eyes, “I was there.” His words were confidant but hardly self-absorbed. He shook his head knowingly. “And it had the same reaction as it always does,” which is to say, I’m funny. I know I’m funny because millions of people think I’m funny. Had I not been so head-over-tea-kettle about him, I’d have agreed. He returned my book to me with his signature and a doodle of “someone throwing up” on the title page, and I stepped aside, elated.

November is a month during which people have a tendency to give me things, no strings attached. Some call this a birthday; I call it Novel-berfest, which is a misnomer, really, since I give preference to nonfiction. But, a name’s a name, and there’s no sense in changing the only-slightly-true. Now, added to the stack with Sedaris and Vowell are Elizabeth Emerson Hancock’s PK memoir Trespassers Will Be Baptized, Augusten Burroughs’s irreverent holiday essay collection You Better Not Cry, and, quite possibly paramount, Eating the Dinosaur, essays by neurotic pop-culture analyst Chuck Klosterman. Arguably Klosterman is neurotic and analytical about more than just pop-culture, but we’ll let that alone for now.

Eating the Dinosaur not only comes with the same Klosterman attention to detail (all of them, any detail he can put his fingers on, along with some he’ll spend pages trying to nail down), the same bevy of footnotes (the man knows how to footnote), and the seemingly-wildly-arbitrary-yet-oh-so-understandable-once-explained corollaries (such as the relationship between the Waco, TX disaster and Nirvana’s final studio release); but, this book also has its very own apocrypha, concerning its title, homophones, and one very prominent news anchor. Indeterminable hearsay at best, I still like to think that this book might have been published as Eating with Diane Sawyer. Although it begs the question, What would have become of the triceratops diagram of edible meat cuts on the cover? One can only imagine.

Whether Klosterman had any intent to implicate Sawyer in the title of his book is inconsequential to me. I take my books with a pillar of salt. Do I believe David Sedaris is actually as witty on-the-spot as to argue French diction with an American guest in non sequitur Japanese? Sure. Did any of Augusten Burroughs’s nightmare of a childhood happen as he is published to claim? I have no reason not to think so. Would I go on record saying all things Klosterman, Sedaris, Burroughs, Hancock, Vowell, and many, many others (myself included) write are categorically grounded in absolute fact? There’s not a chance in Waco, Diane. (Except maybe Vowell—I get the feeling she does her homework.) Just because an item's on the menu, doesn't mean I'm ordering it. But if you want (and I just assume you do) I'll go on and on about these things under my own shaded assumptions of veracity, because, let’s be honest, there’s no sense in changing the only-slightly-true.

Sunday, September 27

2009-10-22T21:24:00.000-07:00

Here the trees are rusting just
a little sooner than last year, a little
brighter shades against the clear
blue sky. The way the leaves age
and crumble away just so, and how
nothing is quite the same as this
brisk midday || passed your way.

The Other Son

2009-09-24T22:03:00.000-07:00

The prodigal was never the problem, I think. The spite, the bitterness wasn’t because the lost being found warranted celebration. Indeed, I stand with open arms to the one son’s return and might even join the festival were not the father’s attention to the other son so cavalier. You are always with me, and everything I have is yours, sounds like rebuke for having never taken advantage, for waiting in bated hope and expectation for a simple and singular token given from adoration and not coercion. So vogue, now, blaming the father; but, suppose he never gave even reason not to.

Divide Wisdom, MT

2009-08-24T14:56:00.000-07:00

The hills seemed highest there,
to me, who was never before
nor since able to tell mountain
from foothill. You, always wisest,
would have urged me remember
my raincoat, one never knows
when the clouds will arrive.

And did they.

Along the divide, the storm
began, as sky blue slipped to
slate haze before my eyes.
Then, there were only hills
and highway--me, alone,
southbound, thinking aloud,
unsure the taste of the words.

They weren't right.

The imagined conversation
clouded me up more than any
we'd ever actually shared. By
now I might not recognize
a thought of you rooted in
the truth. And I fear the sun
because it came to you just

when I left.

This postcard just to say,
the weather even here proves
I will always have a small
excuse to write to you, just
enough to say you hold shelter
in my thoughts. I return by
week's end. Enjoy the sun.

Forecast

2009-08-10T22:15:00.001-07:00

Something like a torrent came today. Hard to say if anyone expected all the rain, how it showed up overnight, like the flu. They say grace is like that, like rain. Maybe because they both come at no one's behest: Heaven just about its business, shedding sheets of love, water, blessing. The only thing about it is duration, when the shower won't let up and everything soaks through. Fabric starts to smell or the basement floods. It all gets musty, moldy. It's partial to suppose this life, graced, is changed enough, like that's the whole of it. Not wrung, nor washed.

Dear August

2009-08-03T16:29:00.000-07:00

Closer to Idaho than you might expect is the remote lake community of Wallowa, OR, proudly self-proclaimed “the Switzerland of America” (?). We went there once, summers ago, for a family reunion with my father’s family, and Dad—the poor man—had such difficulty spitting out the name. “We’re going to Lake W-wall-aw-wa with the Wheelers." (Dad might not not be able to manage Wallowa or parmesan, but the man can nail a Scandinavian accent in some of the most absurd ways.) Once we had procured the necessary quantity of road food items, we packed up the station wagon and the car-top carrier (yes, we're that sort of family) and trekked south to a politically conflated, phonetically temperamental retreat town west of Hells Canyon.

What we found there was a startling landscape of blue mountains rising over the lake and evergreens, our hotel nestled into the woods like an ornament on a tree. (I've never been to Switzerland, but--allegedly--I don't have to now.) The timber siding was rough and stained, and inside there was a great room, with couches near a hearth. The winding pine stairs led to subsequent levels, revealing dim hallways to rooms reminiscent of the Wild West. This was my first experience with footed bathtubs and windows without screens, and it’s safe to say I was out of my mind thrilled. By this time, I’m sure, I had read a lot of Washington Irving and Nathaniel Hawthorne, and I probably figured I was residing in a version of the House of the Seven Gables that existed within a town second cousin to Sleepy Hollow. I was the kid who could never quite distinguish between real life and Narnia. My world was intrinsically tethered to the stuff of books and imagination. (Also, TV and movies, which sometimes made things harder on me: I was convinced until an altogether embarrassing age that Roger Radcliffe, Anita, Pongo, Perdita, and all the others lived normal lives when the cameras stopped rolling on the set of 101 Dalmations, the 1961 Disney animated version.)

Maybe because of the chances we get to run away to places like Lake Wallowa, everybody puts together their summer reading list, as though summer is a season that magically affords us more time to read. It doesn't, at least not in quantities that would necessitate the practice of lists--unless you have a career in education or someplace like the INN Ministries, where I will be starting as an intern come September. And because this new job begins a full three weeks before I've grown accustomed to my summer ending, I am realizing that my summer reading list of fiction--ambition at its best--was doomed from the start. Let's look at it, shall we? (Note: titles in bold are those I have actually read thus far.)

Unaccustomed Earth – Jhumpa Lahiri
How to Be Good – Nick Hornby
The Graveyard Book – Neil Gaiman
The History of Danish Dreams – Peter Hoeg
Jayber Crow – Wendell Berry
Downtown Owl – Chuck Klosterman
Wickett’s Remedy – Myla Goldberg
So Brave, Young, & Handsome – Leif Enger*
Nighttime is My Time – Mary Higgins Clark*
A Long Way Down – Nick Hornby*
The Book Thief – Marcus Zusak
The Savage Detectives – Roberto Bolano
The Brothers K – David James Duncan
American Gods – Neil Gaiman
The Talented Mr. Ripley – Patricia Highsmith
Lolita – Vladimir Nabokov
Suite Francaise – Irene Nemirovsky
Out Stealing Horses – Per Petterson

Now, when you factor in the required reading for my internship:
In the Name of Jesus – Henri J.M. Nouwen
Stone Crossings – L.L. Barkat
The Reason for God – Timothy Keller*

And the other books I flirted with on the side:
Where’s Your Jesus Now? – Karen Spears Zacharias
Angry Conversations with God – Susan E. Isaacs*
Blessing of the Animals -- Brenda Miller
Both Ways is the Only Way I Want It -- Maile Meloy

It's really no wonder I'll only manage about half what I hoped to before the end of August. Now, summer isn't over, and I do intend (denoted by *) to read the remaining novels by Enger, Clark, and Hornby, along with Keller's and Isaacs's nonfiction. But I look at the titles left over, ones that I really hoped to read (The Brothers K, American Gods, The Talented Mr. Ripley) and wonder when I might actually read them. There are always new books I'm finding, authors I'm falling in and out of love with. I know myself, well, and can claim no fidelity to any of the works queued here. My reading list is a living document, so I am quite certain that more of these than not will go entirely unread by me.

The weekend we spent at Lake Wallowa was one in August almost a decade ago. The days were hot, and my brother and I explored a creek bed in the forest behind the hotel. There I came mere feet from a full-grown buck, faced with the question, If I make a sudden move, will this beast run away, or will it maim me? The nights were balmy, full of games and laughter and the curious smell of liquor. Meanwhile, I probably read one of Kevin J. Anderson's blessings on the Star Wars franchise, the Young Jedi Knights series (junior high: it was an awkward age for everyone). As our trip drew to a close, I, like many a Garrison Keillor fan, was woebegone. I knew I could not yet be satisfied by such an enchanted place. I had bathed like a gunslinger. I had stood face to snout with my own mortality at the hands of a menacing woodland creature, and nature had turned its funny white tail and bolted. Today I feel just like I did packing up the rustic hotel room I shared with my brother that summer, stuffing titles back in a bag for a later time, with full knowledge I might never return.

The Darigold Wager

2009-07-23T10:43:00.000-07:00

We are all gathered around a table in Boundary Bay's taproom. I'm with my roommates and a few other friends and we are discussing bids. Ansel has agreed to the Gallon Challenge (warning: to follow this link may cause lightheadedness, nausea, and vomiting), a test designed to pit man against, well, milk. The contest requires an individual to consume one (1) gallon of milk (of 2% fat content or greater) within an hour, and keep it down. And, I think, it's the keeping it down part that causes everyone the trouble. No one knows why exactly the average human is unable to hold down an entire gallon of milk in that amount of time (or maybe everyone does and just never told me), but, like licking one's elbow or watching back-to-back episodes of My Super Sweet Sixteen, there is a morbid curiosity—or perhaps a pride in disbelief—that keeps people trying.

The taproom is loud with conversations at other tables and the clink of dishes as servers shuffle plates and glasses around, so we are shouting like stock brokers the specific times at which each of us thinks Ansel will break under the pressure, literally. I picture an abdominal swelling reminiscent of Violet Beauregarde in Charlie & the Chocolate Factory, only a skosh more revolting. But Ansel's determined: "I can do it. I can do it."

Ben, the challenge commissioner, guesses 8:42. Bobby guesses 8:50, and Emily guesses 8:40.

The challenge is to take place the following night at precisely 7:30pm. Ansel will have until 8:30pm to finish his gallon and, diverging slightly from the traditional rules of the challenge, must not expel the milk before 9:30pm. Now, if there is one person I know that should be able to excel in this sort of contest, it is Ansel Sanger. The man is no stranger to milk. He is the primary milk consumer in our house, drinking pint glass after pint glass in a single sitting. To him, there is nothing quite as satisfying as a tall, cold glass of milk, and osteoporosis doesn't even run in his family. I'm sure, if there's one person I know who can rise to the Gallon Challenge, it is Ansel.

I place my bid at 8:23. No, I'm not convinced he'll make it the whole hour. Because if there's one thing I know about Ansel it is that he is competitive, very competitive. His love of milk wouldn't even make the top 5 list of things characteristic to him, and I suspect he will not pace himself properly for optimal endurance.

Other bids include 8:10, 8:28, 8:46, and 9:10. Molly is the only one who thinks Ansel will not puke, but I feel good about my time. We finish our beers and leave, feeling a little like you might just before a raffle drawing, or when you receive sweepstakes mail: unshakable, with a flurry of excitement in your belly. You may already be a winner!

In the historical records of my house, the Gallon Challenge has surfaced time and again in conversation. From the beginning, Ansel was certain that he would emerge victorious should the challenge ever be set before him, and Ben always offered that he would buy the very gallon used. But, like many things spoken of around here—pool tables, helicopters, house cleaning—the event was never initiated. Now, in our final weeks living together, the gauntlet was finally thrown down.

The morning of the event, I woke to realize that the only milk in the house was reserved for Ansel to guzzle later that night, leaving me with a dry bowl of Frosted Mini-Spooners and a sour mood. I would not be around that evening when Ansel would test the limits of his digestive tract. Mercifully, I would be at work. Later, while standing at the bookstore counter, I felt my phone vibrate and, with no one looking, I peeked at the text message I had just received. It was from Bobby: Dave wins! 8:23 tons of puke!

With no real prize to speak of, my first thought was, "Gross. Nobody wins," but then I reconsidered. No, in fact, I had won: Not only did I guess the precise time for Ansel to vomit, I also did not have to watch any of the proceedings. I did not see the repulsive pint-after-pint drinking. I did not hear the eventual and incessant complaints Ansel surely made as the milk turned to rocks in his gut. And I missed the actual vomiting. Indeed, I won in spades. Getting the time right, well, that's just the icing on the cake. I felt unshakable, a little flurry of excitement in my belly. Everybody likes to win. If I were the gambling type, I knew my game, provided casinos and basement poker tournaments eventually expanded into competitive milk drinking. Still, I knew my game, and I had my cash cow—so to speak.

The Cold Season

2009-07-21T09:12:00.000-07:00

Would you believe I've been looking
for rain, here, with few days remaining
in this fleeting season of summer?
Our days are numbered that we might
share with the sun in a clear blue sky
and the hours growing warmer,

and I have kept an eye out for the clouds.
Only I wish for the conditions and doubt
that might send us all deep inside
our dark homes to sleep and read and pray
in preparation for the coming colder days.
Would you believe that the sight

of slate gray spanning horizon to zenith
and down is one I am quite taken with?
I'm partial toward the colder weather.
Today's weather is nothing I'm prepared for,
affection I will not yet yield to. No, I prefer
heat built from my own small effort.

How I'll Spend My Summer Vacation Epilogue

2009-06-25T15:02:00.000-07:00

or, I Have a Crush on Lauren Winner

I have a little crush on Lauren F. Winner, and it's not just because I wish I was raised Jewish. I don't think I understood right away—when I first picked up Mudhouse Sabbath last summer, at the behest of the INN University Ministries staff—just how wonderful a mind and writer Lauren Winner is. No, not until Girl Meets God did I realize what an elegant command of language Winner has, in addition to her wealth of knowledge on her subjects. By all appearances, come to think of it, my crush on Lauren Winner is grounded in the same basic appreciations as I have toward Chuck Klosterman's body of work. I suppose that's the usefulness of the term man crush; I just never thought I'd be the one to use it.

ANYWAY, since reading Girl Meets God, I've devoured volume after volume of excellent fiction and nonfiction alike. The bookshelf above my bed began to sag precariously the other day, so, to prevent a midnight clobbering in the event of a Pacific Northwest earthquake, I moved the ones I was less attached to out to the bookshelf in the living room. Sometimes I fear people tire of my constant, insatiable reading habit, but when I discovered a copy of Lauren Winner's book Real Sex—provocative!—The Naked Truth about Chastity—yet traditional!—in a box of free books, I took it for my never-ending reading queue anyway. I'd never seen a picture of her on any of her other books, but there she was on the inside jacket, a modest black and white portrait, horn-rimmed glasses and everything. Her marital status aside, her geek chic sensibilities confirmed for me that the two of us are meant to be together. (An aside: Some will be able to attest that this isn't the first time I've made declarations to this effect regarding women whose work I admire, including in no particular order: Audrey Tautou, Zooey Deschanel, Alison Sudol, Sloane Crosley, Tina Fey, that one barista at Avellino, Gertrude Chandler Warner, and Cosette. This, however, in no way diminishes my feelings for Lauren.) But none of this is really my point.

Perhaps the greatest dovetailing between Lauren Winner's life and mine is her own voracious capacity for reading. In one section of Girl Meets God she discusses the enormity of her bookshelf, the tremendous stack of books she's dying to read, and the agony it was to abstain from literature for the duration of one Lent. I remember being flabbergasted at even the notion of such a task at first, but lately I've been wondering if it might not be such a bad thing for me. So often I hole up in my bedroom with my nose in a book. When I'm not there, chances are I'm at a coffee shop with a book. Even when I'm spending a day in the park with friends, my instinct is to sprawl on a blanket and read without stopping until we leave. I blame my work. I blame the fact that I employed by a bookstore and need to know what I'm selling; I blame the fact that I want to write books for a living and, ipso facto, must read them in order to do so properly. All these things are true—having books to recommend is necessary in bookselling, reading other writers' books helps craft how I will write my own—but what's to say about moderation?

I suppose it's easy to live life in books—those already written, mind you; it's a hard thing to put your own life in a book. All the events are already planned out, set in unwavering motion, and I just get to kick back and watch them play, an existence of mere observation without personally experiencing the consequences therein. Significantly more difficult is to actually live in the moment of one's own life, even for those of us who don't tear through used bookstores like toddlers in a candy shop. We look ahead to the future, living in moments yet to come in a list of and thens that detail prospective career paths and vacations and retirement. We relive whatever golden years we can think of—college, high school, before Ross and Rachel broke up, before Michael Jackson died, when the Sonics were still in Seattle, our own infancies—and forget about the potential of the present. I'm guilty of just as many of these (except maybe the bit about the Sonics—or the break-up for that matter). Unlike Lauren Winner, I won't be taking hiatus from my summer reading—the list is much too long to quit—but I think I'm going to try and be a bit more relaxed when it comes to actually achieving my literary goals in favor of enjoying the opportunity these months afford me to connect and spend time with friends. Friends that, I hope, will forgive my gracelessness at conversing over anything besides books.

How I'll Spend My Summer Vacation

2009-06-23T08:14:00.000-07:00

You should know that since graduating college in December, I've been reading with a similar compulsion to two-packs-a-day oral fixation (cigarettes, gum, toothpicks), so this summer, I've decided to lay down some parameters: fiction. I'm planning to get current with a lot of fiction—so, actually, I've decided to lay down a parameter. Some time ago, I fell in love with nonfiction—memoir, personal essays, and the edu-tainment of Mary Roach. Until last fall, when I read Myla Goldberg's Bee Season, I hadn't read a novel since...let's move on. After spending a considerable amount of time contemplating the shelves at Village Books, I've put together a list of 15 or so books I hope to read this summer. Really, the project began as sort of an acquainting—afternoon tea, really—with novelists I'd never read, most specifically Nick Hornby and Neil Gaiman, but then it spiraled out of control from there. And now, I know you're thinking that if my idea of getting current with fiction means acquainting myself with Nick Hornby and Neil Gaiman, then I've really got my work cut out for me. I'll concede there, but, to be fair, I just saw Good Will Hunting for the first time two months ago. I've always figured I was a little behind the rest of the class.

What I wasn't expecting was the godsmack delivered by Hornby's How to Be Good, like Hornby had read my mind and scripted it directly into the mental interior of an adulterous doctor, married to the very definition of Type A Personality, mothering children like night and day, housing a spiritual revolutionary, and, I imagine, resembling a pre-Seastories Minnie Driver. So, those specific details that aren't like my life at all aside, I'd like to think that How to Be Good is about me. Both Dr. Infidelity and I struggle with what it means to truly have a positive influence on the world around us; we sometimes get tired of the people in our lives; and, we get right beastly with ourselves over it all. Eventually, it drives us both to church, Dr. Mom and I getting rather varied results. While she resolves by settling on a sort of good enough, I manage what I can and hope there's someone bigger than me picking up my slack. I think, in practice, it looks very similar; the contrast lies in our mentality—and, boy, have I got mentality to spare.

Now I'm nearly finished with Gaiman's recently awarded Graveyard Book, but that's a story for another time. I'm still thinking a lot about Hornby and am planning to revisit his catalog later in the summer for A Long Way Down, the suicide-jump comedy. What I'm still rolling over is the idea of the novelist who explores a point, or way of thinking, without seeming pushy or one-dimensional. Perhaps encountering benevolence and philanthropy from the perspective of the skeptic—the irritable, unbelieving martyr for sensibility—lends merit to a story that could so easily succumb to lecturing if left in the wrong hands. As a writer, reader, and person of faith, I'm still figuring out how to blend conviction and well-crafted story-telling, but Hornby gives me hope, not that I can attest to any specific beliefs held by Hornby himself. No, what I see in How to Be Good is the complement to what I felt in Leif Enger's Peace Like a River—where spirituality was the backdrop for a beautiful story of family. I like them apples. These books make me excited about writing, reminding me that my voice is worth raising in whatever way I can manage. They also make me excited about reading: after I finish The Graveyard Book, I'm thinking I might reestablish my ardor for Myla Goldberg with Wickett's Remedy, or press on into the unfamiliar with Peter Høeg's History of Danish Dreams. All I know is that this summer my bookshelf is All Fiction All the Time, except for the occasional essay collection. I just can't give them up cold turkey.

To Helena, once again

2009-05-27T18:53:00.000-07:00

the bellows are blowing with force
I am still surprised to consider ferocious
for how long I have weathered them here.
They say it has rushed along
the coast, down from the Alaskan cold—
this chilled edge we have to summer.
Nearly, I went over the edge, I
am ashamed to admit, taking offense
at the nip of wind, as it mussed my hair.
Surprising, this chip on my shoulder,
you know. That is, you'd understand.

Tandem

2009-05-25T16:48:00.000-07:00

"Never learned to ride a bike without holding on," I mention casually over breakfast, one hand around the edge of the table, the other cupping my chin. "Vertigo: it affects lives." She's not looking at me, so I don't carry on about the infections I had in childhood that led to numerous surgeries on my right tympanic membrane.

She surprises me: "Have you been tested for Benign Paroxysmal Positional Vertigo or Ménière's disease?" She has these quizzical hazel eyes. Now I recall saying something about ear infections before, when we compared histories of minor surgery. That was my last good excuse.

Poem-A-Day Appendix: From Wednesday, April 22

2009-04-30T12:32:00.000-07:00

Storm. Mark Strand.

The rogue is a recurring character in my life lately. Maybe it's because I just finished Leif Enger's Peace Like a River. Or maybe it's because I listen too much to The Decemberists, who wax poetic about the lives of rascals modern and historical, and have lyrics to a song called "Here I Dreamt I was an Architect": The structure fell up at our feet/and we were free to go. When I read Strand's words let's go, the guards have left/the place is a ruin, I feel excitement and urgency suddenly contrasted with sobriety over his languid companion who, in response to earnest pleas, pulled up the sheet/to cover her eyes. At that moment, I see our hero become wide-eyed Don Quixote, horse-whispering and riding into the distance—a lunatic who cannot see that the storm has only given way to a lazy Saturday morning, the guards being no more than postman and milkman attending to their tasks.

My Evening with Anne

2009-04-24T06:35:00.000-07:00

Summery Friday afternoon and I'm speeding toward Mercer Island the second I leave work. Co-piloted by my friend Jake, we hope to beat I-5 traffic in Seattle because we've got tickets to see Annie. Not the buoyant, red-headed orphan. You know, Anne Lamott, novelist, writing guru, and accidental spiritual advisor to a generation of Christians. I just call her Annie, for short.

We arrive at the Presbyterian Church where Anne is speaking in time to park in the marshy springtime grass serving as the overflow lot and meet our friends who are holding our tickets for us. I'm dressed in my nice jeans and a green, quarter-zip sweater with a polo underneath. Even early this morning, I wanted to look nice for Anne. This will be my first time ever seeing her in person, and, well, I'm not going to look like a slob. A copy of Bird by Bird lies waiting in the Timbuk2 bag slung over my shoulder. My heart pounds as we take our seats in the gym/auditorium.

When Anne speaks, she has a voice that is the sound of soothing, a soft drone with a sharp edge of humor, and life. She had planned to take this year off from lectures, but a series of events and relationships brought her, specially, to Mercer Island. I feel lucky—lucky to be seeing her at all, luckier that it was not supposed to happen. She talks about faith and writing and life, and I'm elated to discover that this woman has tapped into an elusive ability to write exactly how she speaks. Her pacing and rhythm are the same; the punchlines occur as I always imagine them on the page. Foolishly I had been worried she might not be as funny in real life. Instead, I find her just as funny, thoughtful, and impertinent as ever, going so far as to suggest that those who do not shop for books at independent bookstores will not be allowed into heaven's room of desserts.

Afterward, with Jake, I stand in line, waiting to hand her Bird by Bird for an autograph, worrying about what I might say to her. Jake holds a worn copy of Traveling Mercies. These are the two most important books Anne could have written, in my mind. What to say, what to say?

The point becomes moot the moment we step up to the front of the line where Anne is sitting. She sighs, with the makings of a smile on its way. "You two," she says and the smile arrives, "are the most adorable boys I've ever seen."

I swoon.

She takes our books and pens her name, continuing about the "flush of youth" in our cheeks, but I can only manage incoherencies in response before moving on.

The drive home, I am warm and comfortable. As a writer and a person of faith, I need reminding that the world is not entirely against me, and if it is, then at least I won't have to experience menopause. This evening, Anne let me see life a little bit through her eyes—crazy, tired eyes—and I rediscovered what I learned in Bird by Bird and Traveling Mercies: that she and I are crazy in the same ways, and tired of the same things, and are working out how to cope day by day. And maybe, just maybe, we can let ourselves enjoy the things that are truly, wonderfully good.

Poem-A-Day Appendix: From Sunday, April 12

2009-04-16T16:10:00.000-07:00

Twilight in Barcelona. Roberto Bolaño.

Bolaño's verse carries itself with grace and beauty, almost in spite of itself. No Spanish speaker myself, the effect of the original is lost on me, but the translation enchants me. I have never been to Spain; I knew nothing of Santiago Rusiñol or Erik Satie before Googling them and finding that Satie was a Turn-of-the-Century bohemian composer in the French district of Montmartre, somewhere else I have never been. Maybe this poem preys upon my ignorant wanderlust, casting a spell over me with foreign names and unfamiliar tongues. But maybe, upon finding an image of Rusiñol's painting of Satie, I recognize the germ of Bolaño's line The magnetic Barcelona twilights are like that, like Satie's eyes. Living in a city on the bay, one where our own twilights drown into the sea, I imagine we can resonate with Bolaño's own charmed reflection on the few passing moments between day and night, a gratuitous secret, indeed.

Poem-A-Day Appendix: From Wednesday, April 8

2009-04-11T12:38:00.000-07:00

High School Senior. Sharon Olds.

I know nothing of motherhood—or fatherhood, for that matter—but I've been seventeen before. This poem acts, for me, as a window for a specific kind of transition. Through it, I can see, perhaps, how my own mother felt as June 2005 approached, but I can also see the faint reflection of how I've felt about important people in my life leaving, moving on. On a more distinctively poetic note, the structure Olds uses, however subtle, is striking—the enjambment of the phrase I could not imagine/my life with her between lines 20 and 21; the imagery of wild animal mothers feeding children who depart immediately; and, finally, the visceral picture of the love she feels for her own daughter, alive in her heart changing chambers, like something poured/from hand to hand, to be weighed and reweighed. Love moving in cycles like blood, connective tissue.

Poem-A-Day Appendix: From Sunday, April 5

2009-04-08T13:03:00.000-07:00

Things We Agreed Not to Shout. Paul Guest.

There's something sweet and poignant about this litany of words and phrases that have been deemed inappropriate to yell. Paul Guest manages to weave between the lines a level of domestic intimacy that resonates far beyond My credit rating and Judas Priest lyrics. Also, let's just ponder a moment what circumstances determined that there would be no shouting Finnish curses on the firstborn. This is a poem built on rhythm and gut feeling.

The Evidence of Things

2009-03-30T16:50:00.000-07:00

[Jim has inspired me to attempt fiction in strict brevity: a short story in 101 words.]

This morning, I woke with stigmata; up my arms, out my tear ducts. Neighbors say it's a curse on this town: God has arrived in diminutive plagues. My vessels: blood rivers. Now we await our firstborn's demise, or something like it. We figure miracles'll kill us if they don't crush our souls first.

Sure, we never understood the blessing of the Blood. Thought He swelled into flesh only to wither away again. We have the hard, hard hearts. Mine seems to be crumbling to fragments; meanwhile, along my arms, here, is violent cleaving of flesh and faith, or something like it.

Published: Your Bright Wounds

2009-03-07T21:31:00.000-08:00

Check out my most recently published poem--"Your Bright Wounds"--at Chronogram!
(Pay no mind to the banner in the middle. That's not part of it.)

The Chance of Rain

2009-03-05T20:39:00.000-08:00

When it rains here, we soak
up to our ankles and down
from our hoods. You wouldn't
believe all the water filling
in the cracks of our streets and
rushing down the sidewalks
in thin sheets of current. We
could almost be swept away.

Music Review: Sixpence None the Richer

2009-01-25T17:46:00.000-08:00

My Dear Machine
1. My Dear Machine
2. Amazing Grace (Give It Back)
3. Sooner Than Later
4. Around

If you weren't looking for it, you probably missed the return of Sixpence None the Richer, humble and unheralded. Four and some change years ago, Leigh Nash and Matt Slocum parted ways, announcing the inconspicuous demise of Sixpence by wrangling its stray offspring and foster children that had found their way onto movies, TV shows, compilations, and the occasional contraceptive patch commercial, dumping them all onto one greatest hits disc. Even then, the general public seemed to have stopped paying attention after "Kiss Me" moved from Billboard Top 100 to soft rock radio stations, and was probably more surprised that the band just now decided to call it quits.

After four years and a carnival of side projects (that most always made nods toward their work together), Nash and Slocum agreed to revive Sixpence proper. The result: a sharp, four song EP called My Dear Machine, with their trademark whimsical artwork to boot.

The project opens with the title track and a warm guitar riff. "My Dear Machine" seems like an ode to the band itself with lyrics like "My dear machine, standing idle for so long, now it's time for another drive" and profuse apologies like those of a negligent lover. The song is earnest and catchy, and the horns are to die for. As the creative forces behind everything done under the name Sixpence None the Richer, Nash and Slocum seem to balance each other out. While Nash's solo album Blue on Blue fell too far saccharine, Slocum's work under the unfortunate moniker Astronaut Pushers seemed almost too hip for its own good. "My Dear Machine" is an exemplary product of pairing her pop sensibilities with his unique musical concepts and makes the most sense to anyone still listening—to them, to me.

They take a turn toward a familiar melancholy with "Amazing Grace (Give It Back)." This track contains my only complaint. And, no, it isn't the use of language too strong for many Christian circles. The title here, in fact, does no justice to the swirling resonations of doubt and candor. I can't imagine John Newton foresaw just how often songwriters would lift the title to his hymn when he penned it, and, while no one can copyright a title, this tired gem should at least be put to rest. And the parenthetical backup is no stronger, but this is all trivial quibble when this song embodies a certain paradigm shift for the band.

Since "Kiss Me," the band has almost seemed to try too hard to straddle the fence between mainstream and Christian music. They don't always fit the mold of contemporary Christian music, but they're a bit too religious for the mainstream. When Divine Discontent, their last full-length album before the big split, was released, Christian radio took the Jesus-take-the-wheel themed "Breathe Your Name" as a single, while mainstream radio took the cover of Crowded House's "Don't Dream It's Over." A happy compromise, for sure. Now, years later, the band seems to have a new resolve to completely uproot the fence, hunker down in the murky midlands of faith and real life. They remain true to their spiritual roots while approaching it in a manner that might easily be called "worldly" by the stuffier listeners. I call it "honest," because anyone who has committed their life to Christ has told Him "You're so damn hard to find" at least once, or something like it.

More hard truths show up on "Sooner Than Later," harkening back to the older mood and sounds of songs like "Within a Room Somewhere," from 1995's This Beautiful Mess. With a melody so memorable and words so sincere, this track stands out most to me. How often do I ask of God, family, friends, whoever "Won't you do me a favor: when it's my time to fall, please catch me sooner than later"? The ill-fated marriage of trust and doubt, hope and despair pop up again and again with Sixpence and is probably why, again and again, I find their music so agreeable.

Finally, "Around" closes the EP out with sounds like clockwork, begging for consistency, for companionship. Again, a song that could be aimed at the band itself: "We need you to be, need you to be around." The words fade, and all we are left with is the lush, haunting guitars and violins, and clinks and plunks. And then, when everything ends just around the EP's 15 minute mark, I am left with uncanny satisfaction and desire for more.

Sixpence None the Richer is yet again on the move, at the end of 2008, in addition to My Dear Machine, the band released the Christmas project The Dawn of Grace. They are setting up tour dates. And soon, hopefully, there will be more full-length albums. I look forward to the work Leigh Nash, Matt Slocum, and their rotating crew of bandmates offer in the future. For folks who thought they were done with each other, My Dear Machine proves that roads don't always part forever.

Lake Padden, Bellingham, January 2008

2009-01-12T09:49:00.000-08:00

Submitted for consideration at Memoir (And).

Christmas Morning

2008-12-31T10:46:00.000-08:00

Accepted for publication by The Penwood Review.

Top 100 things to remember about 2008 (in no particular order)

2008-12-30T15:13:00.000-08:00

Albums released:
1. Coldplay – Viva la Vida or Death and All His Friends
2. Mates of State – Re-Arrange Us
3. Low – Drums & Guns
4. Beck – Modern Guilt
5. Fleet Foxes – Fleet Foxes
6. Death Cab for Cutie – Narrow Stairs
7. Rosie Thomas – A Very Rosie Christmas
8. Kevin Max – Crashing Gates
9. She & Him – Volume 1
10. Ben Folds – Way to Normal
11. Keane – Perfect Symmetry
12. The Submarines – Honeysuckle Weeks
13. Lucy Wainwright Roche – 8 More
14. Coldplay – Prospekt’s March
15. Vampire Weekend – Vampire Weekend

Heavily-rotated albums:
16. Andrew Bird - Armchair Apocrypha
17. Stars – Set Yourself on Fire
18. Beck – Sea Change
19. Ben Folds – Songs for Silverman
20. The Decemberists – Castaways and Cutouts
21. The Blow – Paper Television
22. Arcade Fire - Neon Bible
23. The Submarines – Declare a New State!
24. Lucy Wainwright Roche – 8 Songs
25. Low – Long Division
26. Rosie Thomas – If Songs Could Be Held
27. The Most Serene Republic – Population
28. Spoon – GaGaGaGaGa
29. The New Pornographers – Twin Cinema
30. Bright Eyes – Cassadaga

Shows attended:
31. SubPop Anniversary at Marymoor Park
32. The Decemberists at Moore Theater
33. Bumbershoot
34. Stars at Western VU
35. The Blow at Western VU
36. Rosie Thomas at Town Hall
37. Dana Little at Lettered Streets (x3)
38. Christine Bron at various coffeehouses (x plenty)
39. Corban Watkins at Common Ground Coffeehouse

Movies released
40. The Happening
41. Burn After Reading
42. Batman: The Dark Knight
43. Smart People
44. Be Kind Rewind

Books read:
45. Walking on Water – Madeleine l’Engle
46. A Wrinkle in Time – Madeleine l’Engle
47. Me Talk Pretty One Day – David Sedaris
48. When You Are Engulfed in Flames – David Sedaris
49. Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim – David Sedaris
50. A Wolf at the Table – Augusten Burroughs
51. Dry – Augusten Burroughs
52. Magical Thinking – Augusten Burroughs
53. Tortilla Flat – John Steinbeck
54. Take This Bread – Sara Miles
55. Traveling Mercies – Anne Lamott
56. Bird by Bird – Anne Lamott
57. Plan B – Anne Lamott
58. Choke - Chuck Palahniuk
59. Snuff – Chuck Palahniuk
60. Bonk – Mary Roach
61. The Fidelity of Betrayal – Peter Rollins
62. I Was Told There’d Be Cake – Sloane Crosley
63. Bee Season – Myla Goldberg
64. You Can’t Go Home Again – Thomas Wolfe
65. Girl Meets God – Lauren F. Winner
66. Mudhouse Sabbath – Lauren F. Winner
67. Bowl of Cherries – Millard Kaufman
68. Lamb – Christopher Moore
69. Everything is Illuminated – Jonathan Safran Foer

Writing samples published (in Jeopardy Magazine)
70. “Nicodemus” – poem
71. “The Line Starts Here” – poem
72. “I have nothing memorized” – poem
73. “Because I speak on my feet” – poem
74. “Waiting for the Feast” – poem

Assorted events:
75. Graduated college
76. Celebrated 22nd birthday
77. Caught up in computer-gate scandal (I’d rather not discuss it)
78. Attended Peter Rollins’s lecture at Mars Hill Grad School w/ Seth Thomas, Sarah Johnson, Stead Halstead, and Ty Chang
79. Resigned from WWU Writing Center
80. Began working at Village Books in Fairhaven
81. Did yard work for Erv on Lake Whatcom
82. Stained Roberta’s fence in Ferndale
83. Counseled for one week at Camp Lutherwood on Lake Samish
84. Began leading an INN music team
85. Opened for Christine Bron at 3 Trees Coffeehouse
86. Headlined an Open-Mic at 3 Trees w/ band formerly known as We Walk Through Fire
87. Joined Amateur Prose for CD release show at Wild Buffalo
88. Performed w/ DJ Morgan and Hailey Mitsui at the INN Open-Mic Fundraiser
89. Performed w/ Christine Bron, DJ Morgan, Dana Little, and John Furtado at INN Welcome Back Carnival in Red Square
90. Traveled w/ the INN for a mission trip to Vancouver
91. Participated in Salt on the Street
92. Started first attempt at a full-length novel
93. Voted in first election (presidential or otherwise)
94. Traveled to Portland w/ Jake Summers, Sarah Condreay, and Lisa Schwank
95. Recorded one (1) song demo
96. Began Smart-Tripping regularly
97. Watched all available seasons of LOST w/ Megans Taft and Goodwin and others
98. Watched Ferris Bueller’s Day Off at Fairhaven Outdoor Cinema
99. Experienced coffee tasting (first of many, hopefully)
100. Competed in the running leg of Ski-to-Sea (first of many, hopefully)

Vespers: Advent

2008-12-06T15:30:00.000-08:00

I've been expecting trumpets,
a jubilee trimmed in joy and triumph,
heralds and heralds.
I have come to expect Emmanuel
and Incarnation, but Advent—
Advent, where we wait,
when we watch the days grow darker,
and, my, how they have darkened.

And the dark only knows how to oppress,
constrict.
Bound with cords of worry and frustration,
we are lashing out at everyone we bump into
as we fumble about.
And we find we can no longer stand it,
hearing news of light and joy and rest.
Elsewhere, as mere gossip.

I am most familiar with the darkness,
the wait.
Almost.
Delay, again.
I admit to having kindled furnaces
from jealousy, applying pressure
like bellows, just to keep warm.
The fire scalds as harshly as the cold.

They say the birth of Christ was most likely
in June—obviously, so light and comfortable,
Incarnation as solstice.

But I understand why tradition dictates
Advent for the coldest, darkest days.
Because it reminds us
that the days get brighter ahead.
Because another, kinder thread
has stitched us together with Hope.
Because our binding Hope is His
arrival, with Heaven in hand and a gift:
Peace. A clean and gentle heat—
opulent—that does not scorch.

So we wait together,
as Israel waited, gravely hopeful.
Thus we bid: Emmanuel, come.

Look Here

2008-11-03T13:59:00.000-08:00

There's a blog campaign going on called Faces of Bellingham. Lea Kelley, an artist by profession, keeps the blog to promote the beauty of the individual (and we have lots here). She goes around politely asking people she sees on the street if she can take their picture, and then posts their portrait on her blog. Recently, she developed a poster that features a mosaic of hundreds of Bellinghamsters that composes her own portrait. Now, I always hoped to be pulled aside by a strange woman who wants to take my picture, but I kept that to myself. Besides, I get terrible red-eye; the only reason my eyes are so blue in my senior pictures is they had to use a lot of airbrush. But I think Lea's is a fantastic idea all around, especially since she occasionally employs promotional contests. For instance, finding two portraits on her blog of the same person, who looks completely different. That's the one my roommate Jake won, the prize: a photo shoot!

After much deliberation, he decided to use his prize to complement our friend Andrew's farewell party. So, along with the mounds of barbequed burgers, guests could expect a professional photographer. Fortunately for everyone, Lea is a wonderful and funny addition to any dinner party. Somewhere between discussions about her own college experience and the supernatural, she suggested we take a few fun photos. We made human pyramids, and we hung ourselves out the upstairs windows like teenage girls within a five mile radius of Elvis Presley.

When Lea took my picture for her Faces of Bellingham blog that night, she took two. The first she decided had too much red-eye, so she covered the flash. "Look here, again," she said. This one turned out normal, and I was impressed. "The flash reflects off your retinas and causes you to have red-eye," she said. "It's just something that happens to some people, usually ones with larger pupils."

Suddenly, my life made sense. For as long as I could remember, I developed red-eye in pictures and didn't know why. Incidentally, I've also always been aware of the large diameter of my pupils, like if I had a nickel for every time someone said, "Your pupils are huge! Are you high?" It's even gotten me into trouble with University Police. It's a long story, but the short version is that I scraped up my car trying to turn around on an extremely narrow road in the Ridgeway Complex one Friday night. I did this because I am a poor driver, not because I was intoxicated. UP decided this was the case once they had tested my sobriety for half an hour. It was after the second breathalizer that the officer finally told me he wouldn't arrest me for driving under the influence. With as much effort as he was putting into the whole investigation, I didn't have the heart to tell him earlier that I naturally have pupils the size of a Japanese cartoon character. Just like I have one good ear. My left ear works quite well, and then there's my right ear. I like to think of this as my FDR ear: one too many illnesses and now he's in a wheelchair, but I keep him around because he's just so likeable.

I spent the rest of the night relishing in my own private revelation. Flash photography itself actually has a vendetta against me, and here I was thinking I was the perpetrator. It seems the camera just cannot capture my individuality. Indeed, the size of my pupils has been an asset in that I've never required dilation for an optometric exam--of which I've had plenty--for them to see what they need to. Although I have a different set of hangups concerning the optometrist, like when he decides he wants to test for glaucoma and shoot air into my eye. I still get nervous anytime someone points somewhere and says, "Look here."

Leaf Season

2008-10-05T17:49:00.000-07:00

The things I love most about autumn are with me today. In a donut shop downtown, I sit at the window, the sun frequently bursts over my shoulder to light the page of my book and heats my back. Stray leaves tumble through the open door on this bright and exceptionally windy fall day. It might be unseasonably warm, or maybe it's the humidity; maybe it's just the window seat. The leaves still hang from branches outside, creating an illusion of perpetual sunset. Next to me is a father of two. He's treating his kids to donuts while they run a few Saturday errands, and then they'll spend the rest of the afternoon flying kites.

The way everything is so exciting to them--the old sci-fi flick silently playing on the TV, the familiar song on the radio, the rows of delicacies in the display--reminds me about the way Saturdays were growing up. Today actually feels much like the Saturday five years ago when I drove to Whitworth University. I was buying tickets for the Jars of Clay/Caedmon's Call concert that would be on campus a few weeks later. Driving out Division St., to the campus that lay just north of downtown Spokane, made me feel like I was living a life completely separate from the one I had led up to that point. Everything was lit in amber. From the campus trees to the city streets, I can only remember the excursion in shades of sepia.

Like a parallel memory, this last year I visited another small college campus. Only this time, replace Spokane with Portland. Replace Whitworth with Reed College, and replace my mom with my roommate. But everything else is the same. The leaves are the same puberty of green to brown, as unevenly matured on the branches as high school students, the green ones envious, intimidated even, by the crisp appearance of the red ones. The tingling in my ribs is the same pitch and frequency. Everything is equally beautiful.

Rewind even further to Saturdays as a child. Before working at the library, before I was old enough to watch shows like Saturday Night Live, when homework came in negligible amounts, there were Saturdays when my only responsiblities included straightening my room, cleaning half the bathroom, and vacuuming the living room. I'd get a $5 allowance. The sun warmed our gold shag carpet in contrast to the brisk winds outside that carried away the milky veins of smoke from the burning leaf pile that my brother and I helped my dad rake together. Candles made the house smell like pumpkin; the crockpot was filled with stew. My brother and I each had to take a bath before we all watched Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman, and I was in bed before 10pm.

Today feels a lot like that. Autumn always feels that way, but I miss wedging into a corner of the couch with a book, smelling mom's stew. I never really flew kites with my dad, and burning leaf piles hasn't been legal in at least ten years. I miss more sunsets now because I no longer live in a house with a big, westward-facing picture window. But the thing about autumn is the same thing about Saturday, and it's the same thing about sunsets and about rainy days. It's nostalgic. It's idyllic. What it is comes naturally to a place like Bellingham, where it's rainy much of the year, where Saturdays occur as frequently as anywhere else, and the comparatively mild climate can make any day seem like October 3rd. And when it all comes together, on a day very much like today, I feel home.

My Baggage

2008-09-20T13:08:00.000-07:00

Some friends of mine have posted similar photos on their blogs. Interesting what we carry with us everyday. Although the contents of my bag change frequently, more so with school starting next week, this is more or less currently what I have been carrying with me.

First, the bag. This one-strap shoulder bag has been with me to Scotland and Australia, in addition to campus, the INN, coffeeshops, and various other locales in Bellingham. The buttons on the outside represent a child in Uganda and Bumbershoot 2008 (one of which says "Mine is playing in the road"--I do not know what "mine" is exactly, but I do understand that it lives recklessly).

There is some loose change I was surprised (but charmed) to find in one pocket. Next to that are the pink sunglasses I found on a bench at the Fairhaven lawn (finders keepers...). To the right of them is more Bumbershoot 2008 memorabilia (a magnetic button, a schedule, and a program booklet).

I try to keep food in my bag--Triscuits this time--to augment my lunch. And sometimes I just like to snack. Next to that is my iPod, with its broken screen and dodgy earbuds. Purell is always nice to have on hand, as are sticky notes. Lately I've been keeping Saint Augustine's Prayer Book around, curious about liturgical prayer.

I like to have my Moleskine journal with me just in case I'm accosted by the muses. It's why I also keep a pen with me, too. The brown Crayola marker made its way into the bag, but never back out again: I do not know why, on both counts. Finally, I keep literature around for lulls in my day. The novel is book sixteen for my summer reading and is called Bowl of Cherries, by ninety-year-old, first-time-novelist Millard Kaufman. He invented Mr. Magoo. The book is funny-ish, eloquent, engaging, and weird. Kind of right up my alley. Next to that is a monthly lit publication called Solarium. It's published locally and features short stories and poetry based on themes. This month: Too many ghosts in my closet to risk changing my clothes.

In the past, I've developed minor shoulder/back discomfort when I was carrying too many books and things in this bag, so I try to keep it light. That's all.

You Can't Come Home Until You Leave

2008-09-03T14:17:00.000-07:00

My new job at Village Books has me shelving books in all kinds of subjects. Like clothing brands and high schoolers, some books are just more popular than others. If you drank three cups of tea for every copy of Three Cups of Tea that we stock, well, I just hope you enjoy the decor of our restrooms. (See also, Water for Elephants) The Twilight series is also quite popular, as is Eat, Pray, Love, though I imagine for different reasons. Jokes aside, I enjoy being surrounded by the good, the bad, and the ugly of literature. I always end up wandering through the biography section in downtime, and I’ve been enjoying the travel section. I haven’t read anything from it yet, but opposite the guides to places like London and Brazil are what we call travel literature. They are, in a sense, memoirs written by travelers to anywhere and everywhere the world has to offer.

When I was in high school I worked at the public library in my hometown as a page. Vaguely resembling what I do now, this meant that all of the materials that were returned went through me. I checked them back into the system and shelved them in their proper places. I’d always been an avid reader—nothing extravagant, just a modest interest in literature—but when I became a page, I became intimately acquainted with every section of the library. Whereas before I stayed safely within the boundaries of the fiction section, now I was introduced to the vast variety of topics in nonfiction, the human stories of the biography section, and I was forced to reconsider the quality of genres I thought were behind me, books for children and young adults.

Because I spent more time in these sections, almost by osmosis I began to read more from each of them. I started with the more popular titles or the books in the “New” section. I picked up the Harry Potter series shortly after the fifth book was published. I read the Sting autobiography Broken Music. Then I started reading Mary Roach’s investigation into the curious world of cadavers in her nonfiction title Stiff. I revisited her when she published Spook: Science Tackles the Afterlife. At a moment I can no longer identify, I fell in love with nonfiction. The word itself seems to say, “bland.” Something about it screams, “BORING!” Something about facts and figures. That it actually happened in real life, and real life is decidedly uneventful. But Mary changed that. Mary and those that came after her, Steve Almond, Sue Carpenter, David Sedaris, Augusten Burroughs.

In addition to the new brand of books, I simply could not get enough of was the independent film. My library (because I had grown to think of it as my own and that all others were simply guests) had a subscription to Film Movement, which issues a handful of titles each year from all around the world and distributes them on DVD. Admittedly, and much to my own embarrassment, my first draw to them were the advisory warning on the back, that these films are unrated and may not be suitable for children under 18. I was in high school, what can I say?

I began with the Brazilian feature The Man of the Year about an assassin who becomes a town hero when he begins picking off members of the local gangs and mafia. The film was enthralling. I enjoyed every minute. When I returned it, I immediately checked out a Norwegian film called Buddy. In this dramedy, one man tries to juggle a serious relationship and a best friend who suffers from agoraphobia. From there, it was only a matter of time before I watched four Canadian titles including The Republic of Love and Wilby Wonderful and two Australian films (one starring musician Ben Lee in The Rage in Placid Lake). Spain gave me El Bola, and Croatia offered Witnesses. Italy, Light of My Eyes; Russia, Roads to Koktebel; Morocco, Le Grande Voyage. I saw The Forest for the Trees thanks to Germany, and Brazil showed me The Middle of the World. Over two years and fifteen international features later I began to itch for cities like Toronto and Oslo and St. Petersburg.

Each movie I checked out at work, I watch the following afternoon, when both my parents were gone. My brother had moved out by then, so I gorged myself on international cinema alone, in the basement, jumping every time I thought someone might have come home. This was my own secret that I wanted so badly to keep. Each of these movies took me somewhere far more interesting than Post Falls, Idaho.

The summer before leaving for college, I joined fifteen or so other high school students on a mission trip to Scotland. We spent two weeks in Glasgow facilitating a youth program at the local Assembly of God church. We took a day trip to Edinburgh. Another to Sterling, where there is a memorial tower for William Wallace of Braveheart fame.

Two summers later, I would spend a month in Australia with two of my roommates. We would spend a majority of our time in Sydney, taking a week to spend in Melbourne, and a few days for Brisbane. While there, we would see Sydney Harbour, the Opera House, the Royal Botanic Gardens, and the National Gallery of New South Wales. We would play a Tuesday night trivia game at a nearby pub, hike the trails of the Blue Mountains, and surf the beaches of a small Sydney suburb called Cronulla. In Melbourne, we would stay with family friends of Seth’s. They would show us the Queen Victoria Market (the largest open-air market in the Southern Hemisphere), the Great Ocean Road, and a sanctuary for the continent’s most famous animals. In Brisbane, we would go sailing with local yacht club, explore the city’s particular botanic gardens, and restlessly wander the city streets until the train station decided to re-open its doors to us in the wee hours of the morning. Over the consistently large blocks of travel time (13 hour plane rides, 12-16 hour train rides) I would read a total of six books:

Nicholas Nickleby – Charles Dickens

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows – J.K. Rawlings

Running with Scissors – Augusten Burroughs

Billy Liar – Keith Waterhouse

The Reivers – William Faulkner

The Great Gatsby – F. Scott Fitzgerald

After three and a half weeks of constant travel, constant activity, and endless walking, we would decide to settle into Lorin’s dad’s apartment for the last week. We would stroll into town and spend hours in the local Gloria Jean’s Coffee Shop, just reading. We would also get an account at the local Blockbuster. We watched four Harry Potters, an Indiana Jones, and Idlewild that week, every night deciding that the world was sometimes just too big and exciting for me. I could pretend like I was home, safe, normal, simply watching all the excitement on the screen.

At Village Books, I’m shelving tour guides to Sweden and Montreal. In three months I’ll be done with school. I’ll work full-time. I’ll participate at the INN. Meanwhile, I’m deadly curious about places like Helsinki and Amsterdam. I would love to go to Denmark. I want to see Russia. When I got back from Australia, I swore the next big trip I took would remain stateside. There’s so much of my own country I have yet to see.

My friends Katie and Allison visit. They’re looking for cookbooks, and then Katie mentions, “I want to go to the Tillamook factory in Oregon.”

Vile temptress. “Me too! I love the Tillamook cheese factory,” I say. I know I won’t be able to go because I’ll be working, but Oregon just happens to be one of my favorite vacation destinations. Portland. Tillamook. Astoria. The coast.

As much as I do want to see those places far away, I’m most assuredly not going alone. So until I can wrangle someone to join me for a couple weeks in Finland, I might just stick around and visit (or think about visiting) the cheese factory in Tillamook with friends.

Music Review: Beck

2008-07-08T19:42:00.000-07:00

Modern Guilt
1. Orphans
2. Gamma Ray
3. Chemtrails
4. Modern Guilt
5. Youthless
6. Walls
7. Replica
8. Soul of a Man
9. Profanity Prayers
10. Volcano

I feel super hip for having bought the CD before its official release date, but that has little to do with anything else I have to say about Beck’s new album Modern Guilt. For what amounts to be his eighth studio album (because nobody, apparently, is counting Stereopathic Soulmanure and One Foot in the Grave) Beck Hansen teams up with producer and half of the electronic/soul duo Gnarls Barkley, Danger Mouse. I’ve learned quickly that Beck doesn’t do “follow-up albums” in the traditional sense; for example, nobody saw Sea Change coming in all its orchestral and clinically depressed glory. And the country-western vibe of Mutations still remains something of an anomaly in his catalog. I’ve also learned that he can do nothing wrong. Sure, The Information was half bad, but it gave him an excuse to make music videos, which is, deep down, I think, what he enjoys most about songwriting. Besides, how does someone follow such a solid album like Guero? It’s like expecting salmon to go with the flow, or hoping I’ll take Kanye West seriously. It’s simply unrealistic.

Modern Guilt might not be too much new territory, but Beck gives it all a new look anyway, dousing everything in radioactivity and chemicals. Never being one to shy away from electronic music, he and Danger Mouse are like a match made in heaven, making the album much more danceable than I originally gave it credit for. With a pulse of drums and Beck’s familiar twangy guitar, “Orphans” opens the album where Guero left off with songs like “Scarecrow” or “Earthquake Weather,” except here there’s more atmosphere, more psychadelia, more Cat Power. It quickly found a home on my list of favorite tracks. Following that is “Gamma Ray,” a catchy pop song similar to Guero’s “Girl,” with rolling drum pads and throbbing bass that might make you wonder why Cee-Lo isn’t singing this song.

On “Chemtrails,” Beck turns up the atmospheric rock and gives us some of his falsetto, which we haven’t heard since Midnite Vultures. But don’t expect sex and neon anywhere in this song. This is the track that makes his touring the nation with Band of Horses click for me. This is quite an impressive fusion of rock ballad and the chemical sound he seems to be developing for this record. A soft piano and walking bass start the track before the drums break in, bringing things up a notch. Usually, you might expect Beck to end a song like this by deconstructing every instrument into static and noise for another 45 seconds. Here, he parodies himself by reprising the song with a tag that expresses just how polished and mature this album is as a whole.

The title track and “Youthless,” a current favorite, are bouncy and scream “Beck!”—and kind of sound like Beck’s been sneaking around Khaela “The Blow” Maricich’s apartment in his free time. But this is how Beck operates. There’s usually something vaguely familiar about the music he makes. He takes elements of everything already in circulation and then breaks them up and open like a glow stick. There are some people (remaining well within their rights in musical taste) who might be turned off to an album with so many transparent influences. I, however, am always the kind of person who thinks, “What if Andrew Bird did a record with A Fine Frenzy?” So the teaming on this record is like a pipedream come true for me.

“Walls” stands up as another song that could have easily been mixed in with Gnarls Barkley’s latest effort, and Cat Power returns for another go at the microphone. But beginning with “Replica” and increasing exponentially through the final track, “Volcano,” Beck’s maturity on this record bleeds through any familiarity with Danger Mouse’s other project. “Soul of a Man” is a crunchy, guitar-driven rocker that carries just the right amount of swagger, and “Profanity Prayers” is exactly the kind of rock music that you should grow to expect from Beck. Capping the track-list is “Volcano,” a slow-boiler bringing us back down to a guy and his guitar, but not without a smoldering chemical residue.

I’d venture to say Beck knew what he was getting himself into when he asked Danger Mouse to produce for him and gave him some drum credits. I’d also guess that Beck knows exactly what his music can be compared to for any given album. There is certain level of intentionality to Beck’s work that expresses more than flattering imitation. He reinvents. The result is an inspired collection of ten songs that I can honestly promise will be imprinted on the summer of 2008, permanently, in my mind.

What Doesn't Kill Me, Right?

2008-07-03T00:19:00.000-07:00

Interstate traffic isn’t too bad at 10am. As much as I’d rather not use four and a half hours out of what is supposed to be the nicest day of the year-so-far driving, I set the cruise control and settle into the music playing from my iPod. The only songs I’m able to access are the ones on a playlist I created of mostly folk and country-western influence. Some months ago, my iPod got smashed and now the screen doesn’t work. It still plays music, but I must navigate blindly, from memory. Rather than spin the click wheel, which is now much more like roulette, I just press the center button a few times and begin a playlist of Bright Eyes, Tarkio, Wilco, and the most cowboy sounds Beck has ever made.

By the time I reach Redmond, it’s nearly 11am, and I’m right in time to meet the father of a friend of mine. We had decided to do some recording today of songs that I had written for my band. With an upcoming show in September, I thought it would be timely to get some more feedback on our material and maybe get some demos out of the deal.

“I keep the shades drawn,” Darrell says, ushering me inside his house, “to try to keep the house cool. It’s supposed to be really hot today.”

“That’ll be great,” I say. “It’s still nice and cool in here.”

“Let’s hope it stays that way.” He smiles. “Let’s go upstairs and hear some of your tunes.”

At the top of the staircase, there’s a study that has been outfitted with some modest sound equipment (modest compared to, say, Chris Walla) and foam insulation on the walls. In front of the bookshelf, there’s a digital piano, and next to that is his desk with his computer and speakers. I take my seat at the piano, and after some adjustments I begin playing. Even though I’ve played this song a hundred times, I’m shaky and mar the music. I feel my heart pounding in my chest. My voice trembles in my throat, and I just want it to be done. I want to try again. I know I can play this. I’m pretty sure I can sing this. It’s just this new space, this new audience that’s throwing me off.

I play it again and my fingers find their way more comfortably, but my voice just doesn’t sound right. I’ve never claimed to have great pipes, but I thought I could at least nail a melody.

“Okay,” Darrell says once I finish another time through. “What’s this song called?”

“Where We Begin and End,” I say.

“And what’s it about?”

I pause to think.

“I think it’s about life,” he offers. “It’s not pretty and it’s not easy, but it’s real and that’s beautiful.”

I nod. “Yeah, it’s about relationships between people. About how we’re all broken and will hurt each other sooner or later, but to find solace in the times that we’re good to each other and support one another.”

“Okay.” Darrell looks at me. “Now, I’m not sure if how you’re singing it is really communicating the heart of this song.” I cock my head, and he explains, “You’re really trying to belt this thing out, but it just seems like you’re throwing the words at the music. I’m having a hard time figuring out where the melody is going. Can you sing the first line?”

I begin, and he stops me. “Okay,” he says. “Now can you play that on the piano?”

I try once and then twice and then get the first few notes. I repeat them until I can find the next few.

“See, I don’t think you really know what the melody to this song is. You haven’t really found the heart of the song.”

I’ve taken my fair share of creative writing workshops, so I’m not new to criticism. These are places where people bring pieces they’ve written—poetry, fiction, memoir—and receive feedback from their peers. Over time I have developed something of an ability to disconnect myself from the things I write enough to gauge them critically and receive questions and suggestions for change. But sitting here with Darrell in his office-cum-studio, I have lost all sense of objectivity. I wrote this song in the privacy of a practice room in Western’s Performing Arts Center and fairly recently grown brave enough to relinquish its intimacy to the friends I am in a band with. And now a man I met not a month ago is telling me I don’t know my song. That I had not yet discovered its heart. I’m not mad, just a hard blow to my ego.

Picture me as two people now. I am Dave the author, and I am Dave the songwriter. I am only now realizing there is a distinction between these two. When Darrell says, “You haven’t really found the heart of this song,” the songwriter is crushed and offended. Something is twisting icy fingers around my stomach, and I know my bile ducts are going crazy.

The author must be downstairs in the living room. I imagine him eavesdropping as he reads the newspaper. “You’re fine,” he says as he turns the page. “The song is great. These are just some helpful suggestions so you don’t make a fool of yourself in front of all your friends in two months. You know, so they take you seriously.” And I keep my head enough to listen.

“What I want you to do,” Darrell says, “the best advice I can give you right now is to draw out the melody of each of your songs. Write it down. Play it over and over. Because right now you’re just throwing the words at the music and that’s not going to connect with an audience. Don’t try to belt it out. Think vulnerability. Think unadorned. Do you like Wilco?”

“Yeah,” I nod. I’m trying not to appear put-off, but I’m not sure I’m good at hiding it.

“You know how he just has really simple vocals, nothing special. You can tell he’s more of a songwriter than a singer, but if you listen, he’s always on pitch. I know you can do that. When you started picking out the melody, you were starting to get the melody better. You just need to get control of your instrument.” He holds his throat. “I don’t think you have that yet. You need to be able to hear it in your head and know what it feels like in your throat. Here, close your eyes.” Darrell plays a simple set of four chords then strikes a single note. “What’s that note?”

I consider the question and keep my eyes shut tight. I listen as it continues to resonate in my ear. This is my greatest ignorance: I’ve played music all my life, but have never learned any theory. Everything is experimental, and there is no method. Names like “cadence” and “diatonic” mean little to me. I regard a metronome as a form of abuse. And I have never quite understood how to identify a note. “E?” I say with muddled confidence.

“C,” Darrell replies.

The songwriter is packing up my things. “This is why I got out of piano lessons the last time, you know that,” he says. “I don’t get theory. It’s not for me. We’ll probably have to cancel the show in September. Or get a real singer for our band.” He shakes his head. “Man, I wish the guys had told me not to sing. This has just been a waste of everybody’s time.”

“Quit being so dramatic,” the author calls from the kitchen where he’s making a sandwich. “Darrell’s helping out a lot right now. This is just a wake up call that there’s more to songwriting than music and pretty words. You’ve got your work cut out for you.”

We set note identification aside to record the song. “Just remember: vulnerable, unadorned,” Darrell says.

This time, instead of power, I almost whisper. Each time I miss a note, Darrell stops and we go back.

“What note do you start on here?” he asks.

“A,” I reply with hollow confidence. I find the melody on the piano and we continue.

By 2:30 we have a nice piano and vocals sketch of a single song, and Darrell says he’ll do some more work on it and email it to me. Meanwhile, my work is just beginning. I know that when I get back to Bellingham I need to write melodies for about eight songs. The author and songwriter pile into my car and we take the interstate north.

“Let’s not do anymore music today, okay?” the songwriter says.

“Tomorrow, then.” The author smiles. “You’ve only got two months, remember?”

When I wake up the next day, I don’t feel much better. “Sometimes I hate being a creative person,” I told my roommate Jake the night before. We were walking back from a music show at a local beer garden. “It means putting yourself out there for people to critique, and it doesn’t seem to get any easier. It’s not fun to hear that you’re not good at something.”

Jake and I ride our bikes to the farmer’s market. The weather has finally turned warm this late in June. After we lock our bikes, we run into some friends inside the market. My mind wanders from the previous day’s events and disappointments, though some of me is still tender to the touch.

As we wander through the booths we run into another friend, Seth. We spend some time comparing weeks and reveling in the glory of summertime. Then Seth asks, “Dave, are you around next weekend?”

“Yeah,” I reply. “What’s up?”

“Do you want to play music with me for church on Sunday?”

My chest feels like I started swinging my heart and lungs around in circles by any vein or artery I can get a handle on. I’m not ready to quit music entirely. Not yet, anyway. I remember when the guitarist in my band set aside his instrument indefinitely. “It just doesn’t make me happy anymore,” he told me. This was before we had officially formed the band and he was back in full force a few months later, but I still appreciated the enormity of the situation. I don’t think I’m there and I hope to never reach that point, but Seth’s offer is like a cannon fired over the surface of a lake, raising any and all drowned and disfigured bodies.

I smile and nod anyway. “Sure.” Maybe I’m better at faking composure than I give myself credit for.

“Alright,” he says. “We’ll talk more this week. You guys enjoy the farmer’s market, and I’ll see you around.”

Sitting on the roof a few hours later, I try to read a bit, but I can’t focus. Here, alone, I finally resign to relive the previous day in all its bitterness.

“It’s like I’m trying to write in a language I can’t speak,” the songwriter says. He’s dangling his legs over the edge of the roof, looking completely dejected. “Everything I want the song to communicate, everything I feel in the music that I write I can’t seem to say because it comes out all muddled. But it’s not even like I don’t know the language, it’s like I’m blindly navigating a language that I’m physically unable to produce correct sounds for. You know, like clicks and whistles.”

“The only way to get better is to practice,” the author says, taking a seat just below the window.

“I’d really rather not go back to that right now,” the songwriter replies. “And I’d rather not think about next Sunday either, if you don’t mind.”

But instead, music is the only thing I can manage to think about. Prior to this I might have considered the idea of being drawn to the piano as being romantic. I’ve probably talked about being impassioned to play before. I didn’t know what I was talking about. Now, sitting in a chair on my roof I can think of nothing else but music, and, to my misfortune, I want nothing to do with the matter. Because I know, at least for now, I cannot sit at a piano and not think about how I can make my throat match the pitches for a melody.

“Can’t you just be the productive one?” the songwriter asks the author. “Why do we both have to create things?” Then he turns on me. “You’d do anything in hopes of fame and recognition, huh.”

“Hey.” The author looks at me too and holds his hands up in innocence. “If you’re expecting me to get you anywhere, you’re barking up the wrong tree.”

“I can’t believe either of you.” I finally speak for myself. “I’m not trying to use either one of you to ‘get me anywhere.’ I just like working with the both of you, but if you’d rather bail because you don’t think you’re good enough, nobody’s stopping you.”

We sit in silence. Every time I close my eyes, I see the digital piano we keep in the corner of our dining room, and I can feel everything behind my ribs aching with raw tension. If this is what Ben Folds and Jeff Tweedy feel toward their craft, I might want to opt out now, before this goes any farther.

“I guess I could give this another try,” the songwriter says. “I mean, I already know what I want the songs to sound like. It’s really just figuring out the melody and how to sing it.” My stomach flips when he says that. “We can do that, right?”

“You’ve got to stop being self-conscious about singing in front of the roommates, too,” the author says. “I think that’s the first step.”

“Well,” the songwriter says. “What doesn't kill me, right?”

“Then let’s go, right now.” I’m sure the author meant this as nothing other than a good, old-fashioned dare. We all look from eye to eye and decide unanimously: the work is cut out for us, let’s get to it.

I climb back through the window and pick up the sheets of music I printed for my band-mates. The only thing left to figure out is the melody. Maybe it’s more than I can handle. Maybe this is all a pipe-dream. But I only know what I’m compelled by, and for reasons known only to a higher power, I am compelled by both words and music.

July! July!

2008-07-01T18:04:00.000-07:00

[A seasonal poem for the upcoming holiday.]
Submitted for consideration.

Book Review: Eric Greinke

2008-06-18T17:00:00.000-07:00

Selected Poems 1972—2005

For more than thirty years, Eric Greinke has been crafting poetry with colorful quality and provocative texture. This collection attempts to capture the unique evolution of a poet, and, I’m sure, only begins to paint a picture of Greinke’s true merit.

From the beginning, Greinke sets a mood of dedication. The first poem, “Postcard,” is a message sent to someone far away. Short and simple, he writes:

The sky is grey here.
My room is quiet & near.
Thinking of you

in my little cocoon.

From there, this collection becomes a series of poems as postcards, dedicated to family and friends and poets near and far. It’s like stumbling upon a box of old letters, in a desk, in an antique shop, inviting a stranger into the warmth and intimacy of Greinke’s life.

[Go to PoetsWest for the full review and more about poetry in the Northwest.]

A Brief Comma

2008-06-12T15:29:00.000-07:00

Submitted for consideration.

Postscript:
This poem may be more convoluted than I usually like my poetry to be. The images are more oblique, and it has less of a straightforward narrative to it. It's a holdover from my Fantasia Poetry Night days, although I don't think I ever read this one. It's a situation that reminds me of the necessity of revision. Far from what I might call complete, this is actually an amalgam of a three-poem set I had written, respectively titled "Acquisition," "Deficiency," and "Aphasia."

Recently I have begun thinking of revision as a game of Jenga. The initial draft(s) are a simple stack of simple ideas. It doesn't look bad, just kind of boring or obscure; the game is in moving the blocks. I usually go for the easy ones first, the pieces that shift at the slightest touch of my finger. With this poem, I actually stole entire blocks of text from the stack to place in different poems because it was easy and I liked the lines so much. Invariably I leave the harder blocks to move last--the process I have most recently been undertaking. When the structure starts to get wobbly, I want to stop playing altogether. I'm at about that point with this one. I'm afraid any more revision and it will fall to pieces. From three separate poems to one cohesive piece (now titled "A Brief Comma"), this one has been on my mind a while and it's come very far. Thanks for reading.

Out of Ink

2008-05-31T15:42:00.000-07:00

My pen slides along each page,
lifting at the end of each word,
but only sometimes between the letters,
leaving meaning to slip in and out of ink.

I stop briefly to read my writing
with loops and scribbles twisting
in hieroglyphic alphabet. Maybe
I’ll decipher what I meant later.

Elementary school taught me
to write in print and then in cursive,
languages in casual and formal wear.
Now my hand writes a messy combination

that spills out left-brained stigmata
through my pen perched between my fingers
at the point of the page that unites
white, lined paper with an inky rolling ball.

I remember desktops with sketches engraved
deep in their wood which sometimes
possessed my writing when the paper
overlapped against the creviced surface,

when I was given handwriting assignments
with letters to trace like connect-the-dots
on wide-ruled paper. The grooves
worked in opposition to the tracing lines.

I entered high school in 2001,
a small private academy in a small,
private town, where the teachers
loved the way I looped my l’s.

Maybe no one invented cursive writing
but I’ve always felt that whoever may have
would hate the irreverent way I mix
the conventions that distinguish it from print.

Or perhaps they would praise the way
I refuse to segregate, separate
my scripts, like I’m making advances
in civil handwriting rights,

where all letters are created equal.
The ideas are represented by an
objective race, regardless of appearance,
with readers discerning what is meant

solely by the combinations and construction.
My hand is always writing in curves,
layers that lean to the right of the page,
making script and stories out of ink.

Sanctuary

2008-05-19T18:51:00.000-07:00

Submitted for consideration at Tiferet.

Respiratory Systems

2008-05-07T20:59:00.000-07:00

My lungs reach maximum capacity and then my chest relaxes. I can feel the cool burn of air against my nostril walls subside just as I take another breath. I imagine my head a little lighter, with a little less pressure. The thousands of blood vessels God sent running through my skull expand with each burst of oxygen; all my muscles relax a bit.

Somewhere I got the idea that I enjoy swimming. Not just splashing in the lakes during the summer, but actual freestyle, breaststroke, backstroke, butterfly swimming. I took classes on it; when I went to the gym, I’d head straight to the pool. Once in the water, the echoes of people talking or patting along the wet floor sunk into shifting murmurs, worlds away. I only heard water in my ear. Goggles tight against my eyes, I pressed off into suspension. Soon my arms and legs took over, propelling me further down the blue tile lane. Water swished in my ear with every pull.

Then I needed air. For the first few seconds swimming was natural. Slow jets of air would slide through my nose, developing individual bubbles I could feel grazing along my cheek. Everything went without saying, without a thought. Effortless. But when my chest began to burn, my throat would join the revolution. My arms grew weak. My legs all but stopped kicking, kicking being their natural method of argumentation. Rising to the surface I turned my head and let my mouth and throat and lungs do what they do best before I interrupted, again submerging my face below the restless water-level.

After a few laps, once I’d battled my body long enough over regulating the very thing that keeps me alive, I appreciated liberty in breathing much more. The same way I feel after a cold. The same way I feel when I’m alone, in my room, with my door shut; only God with me. And although we don’t talk much anymore, I can breathe easy with Him.

Over Sloppy Joes

2008-04-30T22:56:00.000-07:00

My friend Seth made me breakfast at his house the other day. Coffee, eggs, and toast. Coffee always makes me a little jittery, especially the thick, dark kind of smooth espresso Seth made. It’s a good jittery, though—a sort of unstable energy that keeps me going all day. It’s like nuclear power in my blood. Most mornings I spend breakfast-time leaning against the kitchen sink eating a bowl of cold cereal. Bored, tired, half asleep. But breakfast is different. Real breakfast isn’t soggy flakes eaten over a dim countertop. It’s a warm kitchen, the smell of eggs and coffee, classical music on National Public Radio, and good company.

A meal is an excuse to spend time with someone. I love to get together with friends and family over food because a person is often so much more relaxed if their taste sense is stimulated, provided the taste is a good one. But regardless, food is an instant conversation-starter. When it’s good, the guest can ask, “How did you learn how to make this?” Even if it’s bad, the cook has the opportunity to apologize, and the guest has the opportunity to deflect with a comment like, “Oh, it’s not so terrible. There was one time I was with so-and-so and we were making such-and-such. Now that was bad news.”

My childhood saw its fair share of meals when dinner was long over, but Dan and I still sat at the table, staring at each other over Sloppy Joes. I’ve never been impressed by certain types of food—tomatoes, mushrooms, soggy breads—so it’s not a stretch that as a child, I was less than thrilled by what had been set before me. The Joes sat on our plates, barely touched. I guess my brother wasn’t much for soggy bread either, and the longer we sat there the mushier the buns got.

“You can sit at the table until you finish,” Mom called from the other room. It wasn’t an offer so much as a command. She and Dad had finished eating over half an hour before, leaving Dan and I alone. A face-off that only resulted in us poking at our food and horsing around—things Mom and Dad did not allow while they were at the table.

I picked at the top bun, eating sesame seeds and small bits of bread.

Dan finally grabbed his sandwich and took a big bite, eyes closed. “Come on, David. Eat your dinner,” he said through the food, a greasy orange stain trailing up his cheek from his lips.

“I am!” I said, indignant.

“No, you’re not,” he said. “You’re picking at it.”

“You’re not the boss of me,” I replied.

“Okay,” Dan said and took another bite. “But Mom’s going to be mad when she gets back in here and you haven’t eaten anything.”

“So,” I muttered. He was right, but I wouldn’t admit that until experience confirmed his snide wisdom. Mom and Dad were in their room getting ready for the evening service at church, and they had been yelling at us for the whole meal to eat up so we wouldn’t be late. To me, it was a game: push Mom and Dad far enough so they would end up making something I liked for dinner, like macaroni and cheese.

“Are you two finished yet?” Dad asked walking into the kitchen behind me.

Dan was mere bites from being done. “David’s not.”

“I don’t like Sloppy Joes,” was my defense.

“I don’t care,” Dad said and continued on his way downstairs to get some socks.

I looked out the sliding glass door by the table. Our dog Crissy lay on the steps, back against the glass. I knew she wouldn’t eat my dinner. She wouldn’t eat the pancakes Dad made, and since I liked those, I couldn’t imagine her eating something I didn’t like.

Not until my brother had finished his Joe and left the room did I finally make a point to finish my own dinner. Misery loves company, but what happens when the camaraderie ends? You’ve got to go it alone, hunker down the sandwich between gulps of room-temperature milk. To this day I don’t like eating alone. It becomes a job, a chore, something I’m required to do to keep from passing out while I’m doing something I actually enjoy. I still don’t like Sloppy Joes, probably never will. It’s like eating a pre-chewed hamburger; I’ll do my own chewing, thank you very much.

Dinner is best when there are jokes cracked and milk gushes from someone’s nose—like when my friend flubbed the name once and called them Messy Bobs. Or quiet morning conversations over simple breakfast creations. I think that’s why some people hold hands when they pray over a meal. Touch is the greatest reminder that there is someone next to you. To accompany you, to bear with you as you both embark on something that may or may not be a fortunate endeavor. Unconditionally. No matter how sloppy things get.

Song of Saint George

2008-04-23T09:38:00.001-07:00

(In honor of Saint George's Day today, here is my reinterpretation of the folktale.)

Near foot of barley hills and roads
rides fair Penelope
across the pasture by the church
with George on faithful steeds.

Within the guarded bulwarks' hold,
the Presbyter and priest
consoles his wife and eager waits
the day they are released.

The ruined walls of belfry stalls
all crushed beneath the feet
of dragons dealing blows to stone
and wrecking their new keep.

The saint strides out against the wind;
his foes crawl forth to meet.
He draws his sword, the dragons arch,
their fire shirks his shield.

And George, before the raided church,
is scorched in harsh defeat,
as willows wail their mourning song
for old-time jubilee.

The daughter of the Scotch Reform
looks on at all the grief
with furrowed brow and prayerful heart,
the Lord her soul to keep.

She begs the Lord to raise her knight,
commissioned to relieve
her parents from the monsters' clutch
and tortured devilry.

The hero fell in bitter brawl
with ancient sorcery.
The serpents crushed him once and twice,
will gladly make it three.

Below the boughs of weathered yew,
he lies revived in sleep,
from fiendish claws and wicked wind,
from monsters' flame and teeth.

Again he rides toward church and snakes,
again their fires breathe.
Their heads brought low to seal his fate,
his sword is plunged in deep.

The demons' scaly necks are hewn
by blade, the cut is neat.
Decapitated, now their forms
lie, mountains in the wheat.

Without their fearsome dragon guards,
the captives are released,
are reunited with their girl
whose suitor felled the beasts.

Rebuilding what the devils razed,
they spark a revelry,
and parents, George, Penelope
return to life in peace.

On Restlessness

2008-04-19T22:39:00.000-07:00

Submitted for consideration.

Bits of String

2008-04-03T19:21:00.000-07:00

Sometimes there are simply things I don't want to forget. I try to remember to write them down, but I've never been consistent with keeping a journal. For one of my courses this quarter I'm required to keep a writing journal. We'll see how it goes; it seems fitting to me that of all my writing classes in poetry, fiction, and nonfiction, a multi-genre course on writing spiritual autobiography would be the first to place heavy requirement on consistent writing. Much like this blog, my journal will not be emotionally driven. Instead, it will be a log of concrete details, unique metaphors, and clever dialogue to later draw from for whatever cohesive pieces I work on. Simply put, my journal should eventually be full of ideas I don't want to forget.

I made a quick list on Monday that featured as many things I could remember from my recent visit to Vancouver, B.C. Having failed to keep much of a record during the week, I did what I could to keep from forgetting. Fortunately, there are hundreds of pictures to help me remember at least for a time. I managed to keep a more detailed list of events from my trip to Jackson, Mississippi last year. Upon my return from the South, I was talking with my boss at the Writing Center, and she asked me about the trip. After I related a fair overview of my crash-course on race relations, white priviledge, white flight, predatory lending, and so on, she asked me if I had written about any of it.

"No I haven't really gotten a chance to," I replied. "I've just got a list of events written in my journal."

She gave me a quizzical look and responded, "Isn't that writing about it?"

The journal can be a powerful tool not only for writers but for all people who actively engage their experiences. Writing about something doesn't mean it needs to be a proofed and published authority on anything. I know I remember things better if I write them down. That seems to go without question, but what I mean is that even if I don't look back at what I've written, I still remember better. Admittedly, the more detailed journal entries are, the more effective they will be later on, but I think there is something to be said for short-hand and bulleted lists when reflecting on an experience. Like bits of string tied around your finger. Or a mnemonic device.

I wrote a poem that explores the power of forgetfulness a while ago called "I have nothing memorized." Although it takes a fictionally romantic turn, it remains a testament to my unstable short-term memory. This poem, along with four others have made it to the final round of consideration for publication in this year's Jeopardy Magazine, Western's campus-wide literary annual. As I understand it, the final round of consideration determines whether pieces will appear in the actual physical publication or on the new web-zine at http://jeopardy.wwu.edu/. Final decisions and respective publication should occur before the end of May.

For now, here is a prose piece that was not picked up by Jeopardy. I closely modeled it after a piece by Gretel Ehrlich as an assignment last quarter.

A Strike at the Heels
after Gretel Ehrlich's "A Match to the Heart"

Twisted in two. I am doubled down the middle. My guts splinter and spiral, suspended in the vacuum of my abdominal cavity. Something switches and the ground begins to pitch. I am walking on open water. My palms slip against each other’s sea-salt sweat. There are no voices. Only echoes. I cannot tell where soliloquy ends, so how do I decide where conversation begins? I feel anxious of future events I have invented in my head. The world is unstable. The room is spinning, sinking, turning over on its end. I lash my mind to anything right side up, but the twine is almost gone.

A single breath stirs words that churn my brain. What light. What space. What cluttered silence.

Another breath and words reawaken me from dumb vacuity. A tincture to calm the waves inside my tempest chest. I can’t tell if I’m speaking. My lips open to release flocks of butterflies chased by felines that arrest only the muscle bed of my mouth. Another breath and I have run out of my reserves.

Music slants the gaps between exhaling. They are the words I’d always meant to say, I just never knew the notes to write. I lean against the music staff to catch a breath of what is left. It steadies me, gives me rest.

My heart is punctured, and I am smitten.

White Elephants

2008-03-15T16:29:00.000-07:00

Garage sales are places of learning. If you pay attention you'll learn that items, if not sold at ticket price in the first hour, become prime candidates for even bigger bargains. For instance, a pleasant, mannish woman will kindly take 17 DVDs off your hands for a generous $1 a piece after waiting for an hour and a half. After glancing over the stack featuring Godzilla and the first installment of the Spiderman trilogy, I'm not sure who's getting the better end of that deal.

You may also learn that the rummage salers that darken the doorstep of any garage, yard, or estate sale 15 minutes before it is supposed to begin are quite confident in what they think items should be priced at. I watched one man mark down himself a ceramic bowl he wished to purchase by pointing out each nick, chip and scuff. You can't take your eyes off them. Not even for a paper-cut. Not even if you break the skin. Given the opportunity, I think that breed of person might try to talk down the price of blood transfusion while in critical condition.

There was a blood drive held in what looked like a RV converted into a small clinic on campus yesterday in Red Square. I didn't go, but not because of any sort of needle phobia--my freshman year at Western I used to drive out to Meridian to give plasma. Yes, I did receive money for this. No, I do not consider it prostitution. No, I am not allowed back--I have been permanently deferred from donating plasma. Something about my liver. I don't want to talk about it.

I don't donate blood anymore either. Chalk it up under Things I Can No Longer Bear, right below Lunchables and DuranDuran. But I think it's a good cause. When I was a senior, my high school was doing a blood drive. I had donated a couple times before, so I was familiar with the rundown: paperwork, pin-prick, needle, relax, cookies, juice, etc. I was looking forward to doing my part. You know, giving of myself for the greater good of mankind...

Almost stranger than what's bought is what is donated to garage sales. I would never expect to find packages of disposable razors or facial tissues. A water-pick, maybe. I'd be skeptical of the obviously used electric razors. And the unmentionables...well, I'll leave them unmentioned. The books/movies section usually has some gems like the cult film Ghost World in the midst of lutefisk cookbooks and pulp fiction.

In ancient times, physicians often practiced bloodletting, thinking that to drain one's blood would heal and prevent illness. By the 19th Century they used leeches for this practice. Now it's been proven that bloodletting doesn't work out so well for the patient losing blood. However, we also know that putting a person's healthy blood into someone else's unhealthy system (in certain cases, of course; I'm no doctor) can be quite beneficial.

As someone with a wider foundation in the rummage sale scene, Seth has some philosophies on garage sales, pricing, etc. "I like to aim high," he says, the profits from the garage sale helping subsidize the cost of mission trips for a goodly sum of INN students. He also likes to draw attention to the bigger items. You know, show the buyers what they'd be missing out on if they don't buy now, Now, NOW! "This couch is so comfortable," he sighs and leans back with a book and his coffee mug, really driving home the relaxing luxury of the well-worn loveseat.

Things went really smoothly as I filled out my paperwork while waiting to see the nurse. I don't even think I flinched at the pin-prick. I probably made some sort of face as the nurse squeezed the life out of my index finger, leaving it with a stiff, pale complexion usually reserved for bitterly cold days. And I bet I tensed up as the needle burrowed into the bend of my elbow, but everything was cool. I was cool. I was giving my A-positive blood and making a difference by the pint.

At a garage sale, you may also have epiphanies. You may realize that you are painfully ungifted at haggling. You may hear the word "shafted" a lot. It may be revealed to you that you often require a calculator for simple math. That patrons with cash suddenly add mounds of unnecessary pressure on the critical thinking skills you had once been proud of.

Maybe I didn't eat a hearty enough breakfast earlier that morning. Maybe I didn't drink enough water throughout the day. For whatever reason, when the nurse pointed me in the direction of the cookies and juice (across the width of the gym) I managed about halfway there before I realized I was losing my vision. Everything was getting darker. I had no peripheral. Then most of my visual field was black and cloudy. I'd had this experience before. It's like when I stood up just after the anesthesia wore off when I had my wisdom teeth removed. Or trying to get out of bed after having the stomach flu, feeling sweaty, cold, dizzy, and simply disoriented. I usually end up on the floor, though with no idea how; I just know that my shoulder hurts and my headaches.

I didn't end up on the floor that time. I focused on keeping my hands in front of me, my feet one step in front of another until I felt the refreshment table. After I regained my vision, I grabbed a handful of cookies and a Styrofoam cup of apple juice and found a chair.

"Dave, you're really pale. Are you okay?" someone else asked.

No would have been the right answer. "Yeah, I'm fine," I said, and smiled because a smile means everything is okay. Always. No exceptions. "I just need to sit for a little while."

The beauty of a garage sale is cleaning out. People can donate all the things they don't want or use anymore, like old T-shirts from the Thomas family weekend or a tea set still containing a used teabag. They can get rid of their Dance, Dance Revolution floor pads (though they may never be completely healed of the disease). All of this so others can find enjoyment in the many, many, many items strewn over tables and shelves. To find new purpose. To rediscover everything, in shame of nothing.

I enjoyed the movie Ghost World once. I read the graphic novel for my comics literature course last spring. Lisa just shook her head when I bought the VHS. I didn't care.

Chances are I'm fine to donate blood. I just need to make sure to eat and drink properly beforehand. So maybe I will eventually donate blood again. Maybe. Someday. But not in Red Square. Not in an RV converted into a clinic about the size of my body.

For the Impressionist

2008-03-09T14:21:00.000-07:00

Submitted for consideration at The Believer.

As Luck Would Have It

2008-03-06T14:58:00.001-08:00

The highway community of Grand Mound lies just north of Centralia, approximately ten miles as the crow flies. It's a speck along I-5, and aside from the elegant concrete guidepost welcoming weary travelers, Grand Mound is home to a mere handful of gas stations, burger joints, and, as luck would have it, a Dairy Queen for pilgrims with a sweet-tooth.

I was traveling south from Bellingham on a weekend with a few friends of mine, hoping to meet up with some other friends in Portland. One of my weekend getaways. We were driving Sarah's car late into the night. Conversations rolled from the day-to-day to Marry, Date or Dump to playful arguments heavily laced with sarcasm.

"Lisa, do you kind of feel like this is a mission trip?" Jake asked as we pulled off the freeway. "I mean, you're taking a trip with a bunch of students."

"No," Lisa replied, shaking her head at the steering wheel. "Usually when I'm on a mission trip and driving somewhere, I handpick who sits shotgun. Someone who I think will be good at navigating."

We all look at Sarah, who occupied the position. She tightened her lips, sighed, and looked out the window.

"And," she continued. "I'm usually driving a rental."

"Well," Sarah retorted. "Just remember you're not driving a rental this time."

"You should go to the 76 Station over there to get gas," Jake said. "I've got a gas card."

"I do get a gas card on mission trips, though." She pulled up to the stop light and turned right toward the gas station.

We all soon realized that the road we were on would not take us to the 76. In fact, it would lead us right by the parking lot but with no means of getting inside. This was about the time that I finally conjured a clever Marry, Date or Dump: "Gary Busey, Nick Nolte, and Gary Cole."

"Who's Nick Nolte?" Sarah asked.

Wasted. Fantastic. "Hey Lis," I said ignoring the flat reception of my look-alike trio. "I don't think this is going to take us where we want to go."

"Thank you, David," she said in a tone that implied she was not at all thankful for my contribution. "Let me just find a place to turn around." Finding a wide place in the road, she pulled the car onto the shoulder and made sure there were no cars coming.

"Just remember, Lisa," Sarah said. "This is my car. This is not a rental."

Lisa spun the wheel and pulled out over both lanes of traffic to make her U-turn. As she did this, we all noticed the growing headlights of an oncoming car.

"Lisa!" Sarah blurted. "You almost got us killed!"

"Relax," Lisa said, effortlessly navigating the car into the returning lane and gassing it. "You'd think this was your car or something."

"It is my car," Sarah pouted.

"Oh," Lisa laughed.

We found ourselves again approaching the 76 Station, but with no idea how to enter the parking lot. With a shrug, Lisa turned down the only other road that even appeared to take us to our destination.

"Oh!" Jake said. He pointed to the sign now in front of us that read To 76 Station above a large, red arrow pointing down a dark road that evidently had not been paved since the gas station was erected. "Thanks." When we stopped, he got out, filled up the tank, and reentered the car.

As we left the parking lot, we found ourselves behind a semi turning onto a different road. "Why didn't we find this road on our way in?" Lisa asked.

"I don't know," I replied. "It looks like it should take us back to the main road."

"Doesn't it?" Lisa said. "I'm going to follow this truck."

She did. She followed the truck out of the parking lot.

"I wish there was a Dairy Queen here," Sarah said whimsically.

"You mean like that one," Lisa pointed through the windshield, across the median, and beyond an intersection.

"Yeah! Can we go there?" We all agreed there would be nothing better.

Lisa turned left onto the new road, still following the truck in front of her. And, just like the truck, she ended up back in the 76 Station parking lot. "What! Well, I guess we can't get out that way." She pulled out from behind the truck and began speeding up. "Oh goodie!" In front of us was a large pool of standing water. Maybe it was from the earlier rainstorm. Maybe it was left over from the recent flooding. Either way, Lisa was headed straight for it at increasing speeds. Sarah tensed. Jake laughed. I laughed. The car bottomed out just as the displaced water reached its peak.

"Lisa!" Sarah cried again. "This is not a rental!"

"Sorry," Lisa said through giggles. "I keep forgetting."

Lisa finally found the way out of the gas station and back to the main road, turning off into the Dairy Queen parking lot. "What does everyone want?"

"I think I want a strawberry sundae," Sarah said.

"I'll have an Oreo Blizzard," Jake said.

"I want a Snickers Blizzard," I said.

"Okay," Lisa turned to the speaker. "We'll have one strawberry sundae, a Butterfinger Blizzard, an Oreo Blizzard, and..."

Butterfinger Blizzard? I thought. That must be Lisa's order. I wonder why she's so hesitant to order my Snickers. Did she forget? Maybe I should--

"...and a Snickers Blizzard."

Nope. She got it.

"That'll be $10.09 at the window," the speaker replied.

We pulled forward, fishing around in our pockets for cash or cards. "I can't wait for my Snickers Blizzard," Lisa said.

The rest of us looked at each other with shared confusion. "Lisa," I said. "You ordered a Butterfinger Blizzard; I ordered the Snickers."

"No," and suddenly Lisa's face shifted to match ours. "Oh no!" When we reached the window, Lisa waved exasperatedly to get the servers' attention. "Excuse me, I think I misspoke."

They were able to change the order right away, and when they asked for the $10.09, Jake said, "Ask if they can make change for a $100." Something one must know about Jake is that he's a giver. He gets things--like $100 from his parents--and wants to give it away. To let the people around him enjoy it as much as he would. "I've got this one, guys."

I wasn't going to argue. Apparently, neither were the girls. We exchanged the money for ice cream and moved on to enjoy. Sarah took the lid off Lisa's Blizzard and repeatedly offered it to her before we reached the road. Lisa finally said, "Sarah, I'll take it when we get on the freeway. Just give me a minute," like Sarah was trying to hand her a flaming bowling pin when she was already juggling two knives, a chainsaw, and an ostrich egg. I didn't feel inclined to comment at the moment, seeing as I was occupied by a Blizzard; but had I, I would have explained to Lisa that God created us with a lap for a reason and that one should not turn down ice cream when it is offered or one risks losing said treat.

Back on the freeway, we continued south. Anything that was said was mumbled through gobs of soft-serve. Twenty-six miles later, Jake began patting down the backseat, twisting and turning, and lifting up jackets and miscellany. "Hey guys." The statement piqued my interest in a way that I knew that the inquiry that would follow would not be humorous. "Did we get our change?" Or convenient.

This question. The way this question was phrased, had, at its core, the same revelation as when my brother would leave his orthodontic retainer in a fast food napkin. The napkin, along with its contained appliance, was invariably discarded, and his realization would only come later. Only after we were back on our way. Only when the solitary solution would be to return and dig through large bins of fast food waste because, most often, nobody could remember which trash can we had thrown our trays into.

Somewhere along the way we had forgotten all about our $89.91 change. Maybe it was the ice cream: I'm inclined to forget everything going on around me when ice cream is involved. But this is only after I already have the ice cream. There was a time at age 4 when I would not smile for a portrait despite my mother bribing me with a milkshake. I was grumpy, probably needed a nap, but I was simply not going to smile. I suppose that's another story for another time, though. We had forgotten a fine sum of money back in Grand Mound and now the freeway had no visible exits.

Jake tried calling Information. Unfortunately--and this is something to remember in times of distress--411 cannot locate a place by its county. We had not noticed which town we had been in until later, only that it was in Thurston County. We thought hard: Millersylvania? Centralia? Chehalis? Nothing fit. We finally found an off-ramp and turned around, hoping we would retrieve the money. We also managed to blame each other, blame the DQ staff, suspect their intentions, and even suspect ourselves the plot of a Mary Higgins Clark novel (though there was only one passenger who had read anything by Clark; I was not her).

"This will make a good story for a talk," Lisa said.

"No," I replied. "This will only be a good story if we get the money back. Otherwise, this will be a really bad story." But I still wasn't worried about it all. I don't think any of us were all that desperate.

I don't know what's changed. Maybe it's my generation, maybe I'm just growing up, you can decide. But I'm curious when I reached a point that I'm able to step outside my surroundings. Had this been any Dave prior to the one I am now, my blood pressure would have been off the Richter scale and I'd have developed an ulcer before we had a chance to turn the car around. As it was, I was concerned, but I wasn't going to let it get to me. It would not have ruined my weekend.

I went to an amusement park with a friend of mine from high school a couple summers ago. We rode one of those water attractions that completely soaks its passengers. As luck would have it, the ride ruined my cell phone. But I didn't really care. I was disappointed, but I got over it by the end of the afternoon. Months later, my friend was still apologizing for the incident, even though he had no control over the situation. I'm learning how to roll with the punches. Jesus says, "Do not worry, saying 'What will we eat?' or 'What will we wear?' See how the lilies of the field grow. They do not labor or spin." Bono once sang, "Don't let the bastards get you down" on my favorite U2 album, Achtung, Baby. Worrying about things doesn't really get you anywhere, especially if you worry about flukes that happen in strange towns like Grand Mound or at amusement parks. I'm still learning how to practice that. There are days I get all bent out of shape about the state of things in my life, but I'm a long way from where I started.

Back in Grand Mound (40 minutes after we had left it), we were banging on the windows of the now closed Dairy Queen. "I tried to give you your change, but you drove off too quickly," the manager said.

Oh, so you want to blame us, I thought. Typical.

At Home with a Piano

2008-02-19T23:17:00.000-08:00

On any given three-day weekend, I'm usually thinking about where I can go to get away from school and work. I went to Portland for the last few, if I recall correctly. I'm planning to go there again in a couple weeks (sans a Monday holiday). This last weekend I went home, though. To the same house I've lived in since I was two, until the day I moved to Bellingham about 2.5 years ago. It doesn't look the same as it did during my formative years. There's no more gold shag carpet or popcorn ceiling. No more yellow kitchen appliances or cold, unfinished basement. In fact, my parents just finished turning the last unfinished room in the house into their office. Really, the place looks a lot better than it did 16 years ago.

Being home this weekend brought back a lot of memories. I gave some of my friends a guided tour of my hometown: where I went to school, where I went to church, where I hung out. We looked through my old yearbooks. And it's funny, I don't ever really remember the growing, but now I look back and realize just how far I've come. (I think those who had the pleasure of seeing my 7th grade yearbook picture will agree.)

The changes are really easy to see looking at pictures, but I've been experiencing similar revelations in my creative nonfiction class. Writing personal essays and memoirs forces you to look at your life from a different perspective than you're used to. You get the opportunity to tell the same vignettes you tell your friends all the time, but this time it's on paper. And when the story's on the page, you've really got to look at it. Somehow the experience becomes real in a different way--it is a reality independent of its experiencer, free to be experienced by anyone who happens upon the words.

I'm realizing that I was something of a brat as a child. Granted, I've been choosing the more bratty occasions to write about--they make for more comic anecdotes--but all the same, one bad apple... Regardless of what type of child I may or may not have been, I think the man I'm becoming is more outside himself than I was as a child. Which is, if I'm not mistaken, the point of maturing. In more concrete terms, my experience with the piano is a good illustration of how I've grown up.

This is an alternating essay I scripted a few weeks ago. I think this form best shows the dramatic change over time without having to detail the change itself.

Pianoforte

When I was still taking lessons, Mom and Dad—mostly Mom—wanted me to practice half an hour every day. More if possible. I never liked that idea much. Minutes were precious, especially during afternoon reruns of Spiderman and Animaniacs; I couldn’t spare any of them between coming home from school and eating dinner. And then after dinner were chores, homework, and bed. There simply wasn’t any time for piano. I frustrated my parents. Probably made my piano teachers feel uncomfortable when I had nothing to offer them after a week of avoiding practice.

“Hey Dave. This is Lance. I was wondering if you would be available to play tonight—my piano guy is sick. Let me know if things aren’t too crazy for you today, and I’ll see you around five.”At the beginning of every week I secretly hope to get a message from Lance to play piano at the INN on Tuesday night. For one reason or another I was unable to apply for a regular position on a music team, but Lance makes sure to get in touch with me on the occasions he needs someone to fill in. So after my last class ends around 5 o’clock, I hurry down Garden Street toward First Presbyterian Church of Bellingham where the INN meets.

I figured out a number of ways to trick my parents into thinking I had practiced. If they finally coerced me into sitting at the piano for half an hour, one method I used—more on principal of avoiding actual practice—involved playing only the things I already knew how to play. All the stuff my piano teacher had assigned me for the week remained untouched in the magazine rack next to my instrument while I only played pieces I had learned for previous lessons or recitals. To my parents, this looked like practice, but I suspect my piano teacher always knew.

As I walk into the church sanctuary, warmly lit with chandeliers suspended on chains from the vaulted ceiling, Lance is tuning his acoustic guitar in the music pit. Corbin rat-a-tats the drums. Another student thumps his bass. Another strums her guitar. Others, with hands in their pockets, are poised behind microphones.

“Hey Dave,” Lance says, without looking up from his guitar. He carries himself with a perpetually cool demeanor. Nonchalant. Effortless. “Glad you could make it.”

“Thanks for having me,” I reply, sliding onto the stiff padding of the piano bench. Suspended above my lap is the keyboard of a Boston baby grand. The lid, cocked coyly to display the tension on the strings, is a black mirror of everything it faces.

“We’re just doing some sound check things, and then we’ll get started,” he says. He turns to the back of the room and calls up to the intern behind the sound board, “You want to set the piano on a little lower setting. That way we don’t get as much of a pop over the speakers.” He turns his head a bit to catch my eye over his shoulder as he continues. “Dave has a tendency to play a little more percussively than our other pianists.”

I grimace but am still a little flattered. I have been listening to the heavier-hitting rock piano from the likes of Ben Folds and Elton John and emulate them. I want to do everything with a piano that they could. I’ve never ceased to be amazed by how Elton John manages to stretch his stubby little fingers to fiddle with so many keys. And I simply consider Ben Folds to be the Chuck Norris of piano.

The most effective way for me to avoid practicing was when my parents went out and left my brother and I home alone. They had to be out for at least forty-five minutes for the lie to work best. When Mom and Dad decided to run errands, all I had to do was get my brother to be my alibi.

“David, did you practice today?” Mom asked.

“Yeah,” I replied. “I practiced while you and Dad were at the grocery store. Right, Dan?”

“Right,” was all he needed to say. Sometimes he made me play one or two songs straight through. It wasn’t ideal, but it was a good compromise.

Lance stops the music. “Dave, I think the passing tones you’re doing there are throwing off the harmonies a little.”

My stomach drops, and I feel the heat on my cheeks. I’ve never been called out like this before. Never been told that what I’m doing isn’t working. Over the top. Cocky?

The bassist chokes a snicker.

“Sorry,” I mutter.

“Don’t worry about it,” Lance smiles. “It sounds cool. I just don’t think it’s working for this song
right now.”

I nod. We start again.

For the next few songs I pull back a little. Triads in the treble, octaves in the bass, quarter notes all around. Then the set begins to pick up again, and I start moving my hands more. Suspended chords, sevenths, small trills here and there.

On the last song before dinner, Lance calls over the music, “I like that, Dave. What are you playing there?”

“It’s a G-7th,” I call back.

Despite all the dawdling and diversions, there were days I just couldn’t outsmart my parents. “If you don’t practice today, I want you to practice for an hour tomorrow,” they said.

I sighed, hung my head low, and shuffled into the living room. We had a Technics digital piano, like the gaunt figure of a cyborg, speakers out the bottom of the keyboard.

“Sit up straight,” Dad said when he caught me slouching. “Why don’t you play Für Elise.” Everything seemed to test my patience. I snubbed requests, only playing what I wanted to.

When my second teacher introduced me to a book of Disney sheet music, I was intrigued. He began playing “Chim-Chim-Cheree” from Mary Poppins. I watched his hand bend the keys into the soft, lilting melody. Somewhere in my guts resonated with the familiarity and enchantment of it all. We were turn-of-the-century London, and he was a busking chimney sweep.

Over the following weeks I learned how to play “Cruella deVil.” The song was sinister and jazzy. It was a dark side of the piano I had been deaf to before. The rhythm popped much more than the simple ditties from Alfred’s Basic Piano Library or the soaring melodies of Beethoven and Bach that I was used to. This was music intended for a dilapidated upright piano in a smoky speakeasy or on a vaudeville stage. The notes were entrancing.

After two hours of practice—give or take—we’re ready for the 9 o’clock service. The lights go down, and our set begins. With each song I find new direction. This one leads me into the lower octaves, off-beats, and triads. The next is slower, broken chords. Then I play the melody. Then passing tones. Higher octaves. Mid-range. The music guides my fingers, and suddenly my hands separate. They are self-sustained, and my mind is carried along.

I learn the delicacy and power of the piano. It is beautiful. Aggressive. It is both spiritual and physical. It is subtle and passionate. I hear Ben Folds, Elton John, Tim Rice-Oxley of Keane. I play alone, with others, for others, in the presence of God. I am captivated by the manipulation of black and white keys. Hammers on strings. Melody. Harmony. Percussion. Silence.

Creative Nonfiction and the Coterie

2008-02-12T18:23:00.000-08:00

Starting a blog has been in the back of my mind for a while, mostly because I enjoy the act and process of writing. Synthesizing ideas and images with feelings and opinions, revising and reviewing them. A blog also gives me an outlet for my writing. Then again, to me, that seems like a cop-out, the easy answer, a sort of weird self-indulgence: Just in case my writing isn't good enough to make it into a magazine or between the bound covers of my own book, at least my friends and family will get a chance to read it when they want.

I'm learning, however, that writers from the 16th and 17th Centuries created a similar community. Not a cop-out at all. Granted, publishing opportunities were much more scarce in those days, but that's why they created writers' groups to pass around manuscripts. To get reactions, advice, suggestions, etc. The word is "coterie." In effect, I'll probably use this as primarily that: a pre-staging of things I'm writing to get feedback from an audience.

There's also this idea of blogging as creative nonfiction that's been bouncing around inside my head for the last month. I'm taking a course on writing personal essays, and I can't escape the obvious connection to blogging. Now, I'm no expert on blogging--in fact this entire format is less intuitive to me than I had hoped, but I will definitely spend some extra time making this space less template-y and more Dave. Regardless, I think blogs are an interesting form--if not simply the embryonic stage--of the personal narrative essay. It combines multiple threads, images, all the things present in your typical memoir, only this form includes community.

I'm excited and intrigued by the idea of writing in a new form, genre, medium, whatever you want to call it.