bike
i bought myself a new bike yesterday. it's to be my beater. an old nishiki road bike, hi-ten steel, heavy as a tank, sweet gray color, 63 cm. Less than $100 bucks and ready to ride now or fix up to most excellent future.
to follow: shins, crab, delillo
A young man called MGM got into my car last night. I had The Shins' new record on, as I have for the two days since I got it mostly. (I like it a lot. The melodies are beautiful, and the lyrics don't get in the way for me the way that Chutes Too Narrow did. In fact, I can mostly ignore them as they're delivered more wistfully and not didactically. Mercer has worked out this Robert Smith leading The Smiths thing, and it is very pleasant for me). MGM got in and immediately began singing the words to Phantom Limb, a relief to me as someone who never has had a satisfying encounter with MGM. He bumped his cigarette on the door getting in, sending a shower of sparks down. He stomped them out, too adamant and self-judging. It wasn't a big deal. I just let him sing the song and didn't say much as we drove toward his place on 36th and Lyndale, where I've driven him four or five times before. Phantom Limb ended and MGM requested the other single. I put it on. I really like it too. It goes, "You had to know that I was fond of you; Fond of Y-O-U". He knew all the words, the verbose and wordy ones I've never parsed. Then he told me where to turn. And then again. Did he not remember all the times that I'd taken him home? Our other conversations? He was kind of bossy about it, like always. It seemed fitting to me that the guy who would know every word on The Shins new record would not remember the people he encounters weekly in his life. Why was that? At the end of the ride, I tried to talk Shins with him anyway, to help him regard me as a human being so we would have better interactions in the future. "I really like this record. It might be their best. I felt like Chutes Too Narrow was a misstep."
Seeming to misconstrue what I was saying, or not even really properly hear me, he said, "This album is very accessible and pop-ish, but their true masterpiece is their first, an album called Oh, Inverted World." As though I hadn't alluded to it by saying Chutes Too Narrow was a misstep. I didn't know how to reply.
"Have a nice night."
Later, I picked up DD and MRP and I drew DD's attention to Frederic's nose prints on the window. I hadn't seen them, but I always crane around to see DD because her facial expressions are part of her wit, and they always make me laugh. Seeing the nose prints, I became embarrassed and so drew attention to them. DD pretended that they were expressive, a seascape. "He's very talented," quite straight. MRP and I talked about the coming demolition of more beautiful University sites to make way for stadiums. You know you live in the margins when the stadium comes and fucks your shit up, as MRP is losing both of his work spaces.
I had a strange dream about a crab-like arachnid. I had just had a rather difficult first encounter with a neighbor - a guy who wanted to buy something from me maybe. He was fussy about how I contacted him. Not by phone, but by a system of notes on his mailbox, knocks on his door. I didn't want to deal with him. Somehow I found out he was a sculptor - more like a bricoleur of junk. He went to my outhouse and came out with a couple of things he'd salvaged from the floor: a piece of orange netting, some ancient coins. I was skeptical. He walked off. I joked with my sister about looking in the bushes for other things to make sculptures out of. That's when we saw it under a hedge, kind of, but not really obscured at all. It was a crab/ant creature the size of four men, and it was motionless. It was, behind my sister, as well. I laughed: what was this. We were horrified. Looking at its mouth, more like a fish mouth than an arachnid mandible, was more horrifying than we could bear. "That's a death mask, now that's a face of death." I think I said it. I didn't want to look at it. I tried to frighten my sister when she looked at me, make a horrified face at her to suggest that it was rising to its feet. It didn't work. We laughed. We jumped on it and rode down the snowy sloped driveway, a few hundred feet.
I read a DeLillo (I would guess de-lee-yoh but I've heard many say de-lil-low) story in the New Yorker. It was about 9/11: a hopeful story about a relearning following trauma and then love comes back. Love coming back is a nice idea, precisely because I don't know that it ever happens. Still, DeLillo can paint a picture. He compares himself to a master, but of course his media and his subjects are different.
to follow: shins, crab, delillo
A young man called MGM got into my car last night. I had The Shins' new record on, as I have for the two days since I got it mostly. (I like it a lot. The melodies are beautiful, and the lyrics don't get in the way for me the way that Chutes Too Narrow did. In fact, I can mostly ignore them as they're delivered more wistfully and not didactically. Mercer has worked out this Robert Smith leading The Smiths thing, and it is very pleasant for me). MGM got in and immediately began singing the words to Phantom Limb, a relief to me as someone who never has had a satisfying encounter with MGM. He bumped his cigarette on the door getting in, sending a shower of sparks down. He stomped them out, too adamant and self-judging. It wasn't a big deal. I just let him sing the song and didn't say much as we drove toward his place on 36th and Lyndale, where I've driven him four or five times before. Phantom Limb ended and MGM requested the other single. I put it on. I really like it too. It goes, "You had to know that I was fond of you; Fond of Y-O-U". He knew all the words, the verbose and wordy ones I've never parsed. Then he told me where to turn. And then again. Did he not remember all the times that I'd taken him home? Our other conversations? He was kind of bossy about it, like always. It seemed fitting to me that the guy who would know every word on The Shins new record would not remember the people he encounters weekly in his life. Why was that? At the end of the ride, I tried to talk Shins with him anyway, to help him regard me as a human being so we would have better interactions in the future. "I really like this record. It might be their best. I felt like Chutes Too Narrow was a misstep."
Seeming to misconstrue what I was saying, or not even really properly hear me, he said, "This album is very accessible and pop-ish, but their true masterpiece is their first, an album called Oh, Inverted World." As though I hadn't alluded to it by saying Chutes Too Narrow was a misstep. I didn't know how to reply.
"Have a nice night."
Later, I picked up DD and MRP and I drew DD's attention to Frederic's nose prints on the window. I hadn't seen them, but I always crane around to see DD because her facial expressions are part of her wit, and they always make me laugh. Seeing the nose prints, I became embarrassed and so drew attention to them. DD pretended that they were expressive, a seascape. "He's very talented," quite straight. MRP and I talked about the coming demolition of more beautiful University sites to make way for stadiums. You know you live in the margins when the stadium comes and fucks your shit up, as MRP is losing both of his work spaces.
I had a strange dream about a crab-like arachnid. I had just had a rather difficult first encounter with a neighbor - a guy who wanted to buy something from me maybe. He was fussy about how I contacted him. Not by phone, but by a system of notes on his mailbox, knocks on his door. I didn't want to deal with him. Somehow I found out he was a sculptor - more like a bricoleur of junk. He went to my outhouse and came out with a couple of things he'd salvaged from the floor: a piece of orange netting, some ancient coins. I was skeptical. He walked off. I joked with my sister about looking in the bushes for other things to make sculptures out of. That's when we saw it under a hedge, kind of, but not really obscured at all. It was a crab/ant creature the size of four men, and it was motionless. It was, behind my sister, as well. I laughed: what was this. We were horrified. Looking at its mouth, more like a fish mouth than an arachnid mandible, was more horrifying than we could bear. "That's a death mask, now that's a face of death." I think I said it. I didn't want to look at it. I tried to frighten my sister when she looked at me, make a horrified face at her to suggest that it was rising to its feet. It didn't work. We laughed. We jumped on it and rode down the snowy sloped driveway, a few hundred feet.
I read a DeLillo (I would guess de-lee-yoh but I've heard many say de-lil-low) story in the New Yorker. It was about 9/11: a hopeful story about a relearning following trauma and then love comes back. Love coming back is a nice idea, precisely because I don't know that it ever happens. Still, DeLillo can paint a picture. He compares himself to a master, but of course his media and his subjects are different.