The Children of Tantalus

They crave death, they crave sorrow. They fear the future, they fear the past, they fear time. A world that has already ended cannot change; a world that does not change cannot end. Their eternity is that of the flash. Statis, the instant, and eternity — they see these three as the same thing, and they see them as the ideal. Ideals. Ideas without bodies. They fear bodies and they crave living forever solely in ideas. They love ideas because they think ideas don’t change, and they fear bodies because bodies do nothing but change. The petulant glee in their actions. They are driven by a manic fear. They fear lines, they fear circles, and they especially fear spirals. To be starved for certainty but to never have it. To live with certainty always almost within reach but always just beyond your grasp.

Last, next.

91: Snowy Evening (15,902)
92: Kraft (graph)

twenty-nine years

My wife and I met twenty-nine years ago today.

I was invited over to a friend’s apartment to meet her — and she ignored me the whole time. No hello, no eye contact. Absolutely nothing. She was utterly unapproachable. Instead, she spent the evening in the other room, forehead-to-forehead with her friend, discussing and analyzing a VHS tape of the modern dance concert she’d choreographed a few weeks earlier. And I could see instantly how smart, articulate, beautiful, and, most of all, strong she was.

Some stories belong to the breath, not to the pixel and keyboard. Some stories need the counterpoint of digressions and indignant amendments, of interruptions to refill the wine glass or the bread bowl, or to choose more music, album by album. They need the bustle and patience of a long evening, the wood and steel rhythms of a well-provisioned table.

So: to hear the rest of the story, you’ll need to be seated across from us, favorite beverage at your elbow, and all the time in the world. And perhaps a story or two for us in exchange.

Now playing:

Something just happened and, honestly, it’s taken me a few days for the reality of it to sink in. It’s of no consequence to almost anyone else, of course, but it’s rather a big deal to me.

Last week, I signed a contract with Unsolicited Press, which will be publishing my debut book of poetry.

More details soon, but first I need to attend to my chapbook, which will be coming out early next year.

I spent the better part of 1992 through 1994 writing thousands of lines in iambic pentameter. Maybe it’s time again. 2023, the year of blank verse?

It’s a Wayne Shorter evening.

“I Am Spartacus!”

You know that scene where Faye is mailing letters and she hears “That Thing You Do” on the radio and she and the bass player run down the street screaming like lunatics and then they all dance around Patterson’s appliance shop?

Yeah, that.

Details to follow.

Discarded email drafts account for probably 99% of everything I’ve ever written in my entire life.

Now playing:

This morning, my mind is like, um, it’s like, oh what’s the word? Something fancy and cool. And super smart. C’mon. Think. Quicksilver? A sieve? An abandoned power station?

RIP Tom Phillips.

Well. Isn’t that just some of the best news I can’t tell anyone yet.

Now playing:

Crescent moon through bare branches out my kitchen window this morning, unphotographable.

Now playing:

Last, next.

90: Pitch Black (lined)
91: Snowy Evening (15,902)

Laszlo will have to wait. Tomorrow will be beyond imagining.

Now playing:

We just bought our tickets for the Guthrie’s production of Hamlet in April. We’ll be preparing by rereading some of our favorite monologues and — of course — rewatching the first season of Slings & Arrows.

Now playing:

The books I brought with me, in case you were curious. (The Midgley is a reread.)

My wife and I will be out running errands all morning, so — of course — I’ll have three books with me, just in case.

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