Roll the Dice

Check out the new feature on the right.

 

 

 

 

My "I Remember" List

1. I remember something about getting crunk. Or something.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
8.
9.

...

One Bazillion.

 
 

NYC

New York was an inexhaustible space, a labyrinth of endless steps, and no matter how far he walked, no matter how well he came to know its neighborhoods and streets, it always left him with the feeling of being lost. Lost not only in the city, but within himself as well. Each time he took a walk, he felt as though he were leaving himself behind, and by giving himself up to the movement of the streets, by reducing himself to a seeing eye, he was able to escape the obligation to think, and this more than anything else, brought him a measure of peace, a salutary emptiness within. The world was outside of him, around him, before him, and the speed with which it kept changing made it impossible for him to dwell on any one thing for very long. Motion was of the essence, the act of putting one foot in front of the other and allowing himself to follow the drift of his own body. By wandering aimlessly, all places became equal, and it no longer mattered where he was. On his best walks, he was able to feel that he was nowhere. And this, finally, was the nowhere he had built around himself, and he realized that he had no intention of ever leaving it again.


from Paul Auster's City of Glass

 
 

Taco Town

 

Last week Saturday Night Live had a really funny fake commercial.

 
 

Dan Francisco

 
 

Crunk Cat

 
 

 
 

 
 

 

Unwrap the paper
Instantly disapointed
I said no chedder

from Duke's Fluke

DUKE: [Takes a big slug off of the jug] One time was different. It’s hard to explain because I don’t really know why it happened or how to think about it…. Or even what to think about it… Maybe you can tell me what you think… about it. (Beat) I used to drive to the bay. To visit friends. To get drunk. Sometimes when I was driving I would turn off the music and roll down the windows, and… it was like the Mountains, the stars, the trees… everything was just gazing down at me. The wind. The fuckin’ wind would blow right through my ears. It felt so good I couldn’t handle it. It scared me and I don’t know why. I’d immediately roll up the windows and turn up the music. Or get on the phone. But one wet night I didn’t. I couldn’t. Something wouldn’t let me. So I drove. I drove and I was fixed on everything around me. I don’t know how to say it, but it’s like my eyes were... My tears matched the rain and they wouldn’t stop. They couldn’t stop and I didn’t want them to. I’ve never cried like that before. I didn’t know if the howling was my own voice or the whistle of the wind through the windows. That night still haunts me daily, and I can’t figure out why. [DUKE looks intently at HOWARD for a reaction, HOWARD stares into audience for a moment, then responds to DUKE.]

 

Tempocide

--by Ben Downing

I tried to kill time but it would not die.
No sooner had I whacked its weeds than they
sprang tauntingly back up, revivified
by some artesian strength inside the day.
Its past I stabbed, then laced with cyanide
the golden sundials for its greedy rays—
fiascoes both. My attempt, while driving by,
to catch the minutes in a fusillade
of disregard; my fiendish plot to elide
unwanted hours just dawdling them away;
the clock-shaped voodoo doll; the evil eye
against my watch; calendars auto-da-féed:
all these and others went risibly awry,
so botched and feeble were my ambuscades.
The more I hacked, in fact, the more time’s hy-
dra heads came unwinding out to prey,
their long antagonisms multiplied
and whetted by such treacherous essays.
From tick to tock now seemed an ocean wide;
a googolplex of nanoseconds weighed
upon me crushingly. Helpless then to pry
loose time’s awful bulk or to delay
its reckoning, nabbed without an alibi,
a sorry-ass sicarius tout à fait,
I wished I’d let time be and wondered why
we try to kill what passes anyway.

Haruki Murakami at MIT, explaining another world. 

Haruki Murakami at MIT, October 6, 2005

Last night, Haruki Murakami — author of numerous novels including Norwegian Wood, A Wild Sheep Chase, The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle and most recently Kafka on the Shore — made a rare public appearance in Cambridge. This event was presented by the MIT Program in Writing and Humanistic Studies, who will also bring poet Anselm Berrigan; on Thursday, October 20.
When I arrived to the lecture hall around 6:15 for the 7:00 reading, I secured one of the last seats in the room. When the seats filled up, the diverse crowd — many of who had traveled from outside Massachusetts for the rare chance to see the author who they read either in Japanese or in one of a number of translations, — spilled on to the floor, out of the room and out of the building onto Mass Ave.
As 7:00 approached, MIT police officers entered the hall — which lacked air-conditioning due to a broken cold-water pipe — and ordered that everyone leave who didn’t have a seat. “Boos” flooded the room which slowly emptied. The process of clearing the fire walkways overlapped with the beginning of the lecture.
Haruki Murakami apologized for his appearance — he wore a “stupid t-shirt” because he didn’t know that the air-conditioning system would be broken — and then added “We should have used Fenway Park.”
He proceeded to tell an anecdotal story centered on a train ride in Tokyo: He had overheard three younger people — a “very beautiful girl,” an “okay” girl and a boy — in a heated discussion on the crowded train. He could not immediately tell what they were talking about, and he didn’t care, so he read his book. As the conversation became more intense, Murakami realized that they were talking about him and his work. One of them had read all of his books and really liked his work (“the beautiful one, of course,” he said), the boy had read some of his work and hated it (“I don’t know why,” Murakami said. “He must have had some sort of mental disorder.”) and the other girl was indifferent — she hadn’t read any of his work.
Murakami got off the train as soon as he could, even though it was not his stop. He said that he realized something after the train exited: “Some people will like me, some people will hate me, and others won’t care at all.”
He read the beginning of “Super Frog Saves Tokyo” from After the Quake, first in Japanese, then in English. Murakami explained that the music of the words is different between the two languages and that music is a very important part of his writing. The rest of the story was read aloud by a MIT faculty member.
The floor was opened up for questions after the reading. When asked about the frequent appearance of spaghetti in his work, Murakami said that he liked the food.
“Writing fiction is a tough job and spaghetti helps me.”
He was asked how the English translations held up to his original visions and said that the two versions are completely different experiences. He said he doesn’t like to read his own work in Japanese, but he will read it in English.
“When my book is translated into English, I read it and I enjoy the story very much,” he said.
He was also asked about his references to literature and art, and how they appear in the different worlds within his work. His reply was that when he writes — usually between 4 and 9am — he is transported to a different place, like the underground places in his work.
When he is down there, what is there is there — that is the place where he is digging for his work.
“Writing is like going into a cave,” Murakami Said.

-TN

Recent pix in decending order

Doug Gillard, the former guitar player for Guided by Voices, played a show in Cambridge the other night. What would the GZA say about those tables? The next 5 are from my roof, I live right below the roof on the 4th floor. Frankie and Murray in a Super 8, Utica NY, where I bought Yuengling Lager. The rest of 'em explain themselves.

Doug Gillard 

 

 

W 

E