Writing

I am not a prolific writer except on these pages which barely matter. I know this. I should be as prolific a writer as can be because it is what I was supposed to do. I know this, too. I also know that writing should not be done as means to an end, and that the reason it is so difficult is because it is work. It is work, work to spin through every ounce of sense memory and bit of knowledge and experience you have and to, as Gene Fowler said, to “stare at a blank sheet of paper until drops of blood form on your forehead.”

Last night, I got 2.5 good pages out. Took me about an hour. Maybe less. That isn’t easy. But it’s good. It’s a start.

Sine Hear Pleas

I’ve probably walked by the sign four thousand times. It faces out from the inside of a glass door to a nondescript office, across the way from Whole Foods in Clarendon. It is white letters on red posterboard, perhaps a foot and a half inches high. And I have walked by this sign perhaps four thousand times, and only tonight did this sign’s absurdity pinch my consciousness.

The sign reads: “Emergency Entrance Only.”

I passed the sign, having actually read it this time instead of just looking at it, and then I stopped and went back to it, and immediately began to attempt imagining the urgent emergency that would require my immediate ENTRY to a building.

So, if you saw me standing in front of that glass-paned door screaming “BIRDS! BIRDS! AUGH! IT’S HORRIBLE! AUGH! BIRDS ARE ATTACKING ME! HELP! AUGH! THEY’RE EATING MY EYES! MY EYES! COME ON, MISTER, YOU’VE GOTTA LET ME IN! THERE’S A SIGN! THERE’S A SIGN!”, I apologize.

It just couldn’t be helped.

Tens of Thousands

I opted several years ago to make it a policy never to declare myself to be a “vegetarian,” even if I am at the time practicing non-meat-eating, which I have from time to time. See, when you declare yourself a vegetarian, you have to stay away from eating meat and such, which is a problem, because meat tastes good.

However, I’ve got a renewed interest in the practice of eating lower on the food chain after reading about the slaughter of tens of thousands of chickens in India due to a fear of the “bird flu.” That’s just disgusting. Those birds wouldn’t even be farmed if folks didn’t want to eat them. Now that the farmers have arranged for their existence, they have to kill all of them. That’s a sick situation.

Bean and rice burritos are delicious.

Mean Street

I have often thought it would be neat to be famous, but when I see what they’re doing to Mr. Van Halen, I come to believe that it might not be my bag after all.

The man takes one hideous picture, and that’s the one the wires pick, the one that makes him look strung out. This man entertained and delighted me for hours and hours through my years as a teenager. I used to put on the Van Halen on a boom box and listen—usually to Fair Warning or Women and Children First—whilst I raked leaves every weekend. It made a shitty chore passable. I feel like for that, for being one of the reasons that music is magic, for that, the man should be offered a bit more respect than snarky snarky photo editing. The editors who purposely went with a shitty picture of Eddie Van Halen should be canned.

Ash Wednesday,

Joe Biden Ash Wednesday

a day when I like to go around with a wet rag and go up to people and say, hey, you’ve got a little schmutz right there…just let me…no, don’t move…almost got it…why are you fighting me here, it’s just that you’ve got all this schmutz on your forehead…