Song of this day

Because heroin heals...

Back-to-back NL Central Champs!

Here's hoping the 2008 Cubs can end 100 years of frustration.

Big Z!

It's about time.  Zambrano throws his first no-hitter, and the Cubs expand their lead in the Central.  This makes up for the Bears loss and the Dodgers wasting a great effort by Maddux.

Nailed the accent

Bears

Bears 29, Colts 13

If this is a sign of things to come, maybe this winter won't be so bad.

The Ditch, part 1: Frank Zappa Lives?

He walks around the Ditch, silent and gaunt.  Sometimes he rides a bike.  He doesn’t smoke, anymore—at least not the times I’ve seen him around—but he looks like he’s still losing the battle against prostate cancer: his skin wraps tight around his bones as if vacuum-sealed, his clavicles stick out like the handlebars on a ten-speed, the cords in his neck are pulled tight like guitar strings tuned to E-flat.  I search for a pulse in his emaciated neck when he passes, but there seems to be little to no sign of life. 

Are you still dead, Frank Zappa?  Is that you swerving on a Schwinn along the River Trail and staggering up and down Warren on foot?  It looks like you.  Your black handlebar mustache and soul patch have been powdered gray, and your hair’s a lot shorter.  But you’re still wearing those goofy striped t-shirts, the faded blues and reds straight out of the mid-eighties.  Open up, man.  Next time I nod and say hello, please do the same.  Let me hear your schnozzy, deep voice.  Say something obscene.

Do the dead walk in Mankato?  And if so, is this Heaven or Hell?  Some might say Zappa would have never made it into Heaven.  He wasn’t religious, so that pretty much blocks him out of any organized idea of Paradise.  But did he do anything to warrant damnation?  I know he wrote some morally questionable lyrics, but is that enough to be cast into the fire?  It would make sense to call the Ditch Hell, though.  Right?  The houses are worn down and sinking, the river contains high levels of mercury, and the winter—namely, its funk—lasts all year. 

This year the Farmer’s Almanac calls for a long winter.  This morning, I bought a plane ticket to Arizona.  I’ll be going during winter break in an attempt to get a little sunshine during the gloom.  Hopefully dead people won’t follow me there.

"Jesus Thinks You're a Jerk"

Stream of Conscious Piss

Toes will be stepped on...

I take my time reading.  I’d like to say the reason for this is because I pick apart every sentence and word, paying attention to detail with a surgeon’s care.  But I’d be lying.  The truth is that I get three pages into a story, essay, or epic poem and realize the piece is not about me striking out the side in the top of the ninth at Wrigley Field to win the World Series for the Cubs.  Because that’s where my mind tends to go when I read.  So I start over, concentrating on the words, seeing the images move in my mind.  Then I get to page three again and read the words that caused me to snap out of my daydream the first time around.  And I resume my previous daydream. 

Now, this doesn’t happen with every book or story or poem I read.  But it happens more often than I’d like to admit.  Especially when I read stream of consciousness writing.  We’re reading Ginsberg in Contemporary Poetry—specifically, “Kaddish.”  I’m not smart enough to decipher whether this piece is beyond my realm of comprehension, or if it should be renamed, “Ka-Shit.”  The fragmented thoughts—whether they’re supposed to mirror Ginsberg’s shoddy memory, voluntary repression, or feelings of guilt that he didn’t take care of/do enough for his mother—annoy me.  The lack of articles—maybe an emulation of the way his mother, a Russian immigrant, spoke—frustrates me.  The arbitrary indents and em dashes baffle me.  All of these things (repeated over the course of 19+ pages) distract me from the narrative to the point where I don’t even know what Ginsberg is talking about. 

And I’m trying to understand.  I didn’t give up reading the poem, and I didn’t give up reading On the Road when the same things occurred.  The difference between “Kaddish” and OtR, for me, is that the former piece had some compelling ideas and images—mom having seizures and fits of dementia compared to repeatedly being told how great all of the Beats were, how broke they were, how much they drank, and how every time they were down and out they decided to embark on a road trip; but both works were muddied by the rough prose.  I’m not saying that if a piece of literature is not polished and lyrical, it’s not art.  I’m saying poetry and prose that reads like random thoughts scribbled on post-its feels like bullshit bullshit bullshit. Typing Typing Typing. Not Not Not. Writing Writing Writing.

Maybe it’s A.D.D., or maybe I’m unwilling to get past the stream of consciousness style/technique/gimmick.  I read Baxter’s essay on Dysfunctional Narrative and can’t help but apply that label to the Beats.  Could be their point—fighting the mainstream, the conventional—but that’s not enough to make me want to explore more titles in the future.