Thursday, December 10, 2009
Monday, December 7, 2009
"Ponder" from A Dream of Ice Skates
The story went that an elderly woman named Vivian Hirsute one day washed up on the bank of the pond in horrific fashion. Landers told of the drenched and bloated corpse in a one-piece bathing suit, her face a slain Medusa.
Apparently, in her early twenties Vivian had competed in the Atlanta Summer Olympics in synchronized swimming. During televised performances, the commentators would always praise the curvaceous agility of her pale legs as they chopped like scissors, barely disturbing the calm of the teal water. But what was ten times more intriguing, more lovable, was how perfectly she harmonized with her partner Carol Barely on land and in the sun-heated ripples of an Olympic size pool. More than a few fans projected that the two young women were lovers or at least nearing something other than a professional relationship.
Accepting silver metals for the United States, they held moist, amphibious hands and leaned in for those European kisses that make a bond all the more ambiguous. No one could have been aware of the bickering, the jealous, bitter fights that played out between them in hotel rooms in the big cities prosperous enough to care about hosting water sports.
“Why do they always lavish so much fucking praise on your legs?”
“They don’t really. They like both of us. Didn’t you hear Mark Combs of CBS saying just the other day that he couldn’t wait to see our nimble feet soar like seagulls above a crystal ocean,” Vivian countered to build up Carol.
“You know damn well which of us CBS favors!”
“Carol, stop it. I won’t be able to perform with you like this.”
“I should have continued on with Nancy, who didn’t make me feel like a whale.”
“Carol, Nancy could not swim to save her ass, and you know it.”
Atlanta turned out to be their last Olympics together. By the next U.S. Finals, a frenzied discord had rendered the women completely laughable—an endless charade of seal-like one-upmanship.
Despite every sentence Vivian tried to formulate to rekindle the synergy that had made them stars, Carol pushed away, blew up, shredded Hirsute’s words and threw them back in her chlorine-stiffened hair.
Nancy Graves was the name that kept bouncing on the diving board of Carol’s beautiful tongue; a miniature Nancy waded water in her emerald eyes, and that more than anything pained Vivian to the point where she could not cry.
Michael Landers hypothesized that the brutal breakup of the fame-bound duo weighed on Hirsute’s heart with oppressive force even fifty years after Carol swam off surprisingly not with Nancy but a young unknown named Mariana Black-Blake. While Vivian abandoned all competition from that point forward, she still cherished water as her natural element, a Pisces through and through. She moved to Loch Raven in Baltimore County and took up residence in a neighborhood of historic log cabins with access to a considerable, placid pond.
The pines of the woods in the sun and in the winter the smoke of the chimneys made for the best aromatherapy in all the world.
By twenty-seven, Vivian had eased into a new path in life; she excelled as a private swimming instructor, focusing specifically on blind young girls and girls with disabilities. Fulfillment came from floating their trusting, exuberant little torsos in the chilled pond, guiding frenetic arms, legs and stubs, teaching the blind to splash and smile. Hirsute established such good relationships with the families of these girls that she barely had to stock her own kitchen cabinets. Monday dinners were with the Adams clan in their cozy cabin on the hill. Mr. and Mrs. Jones always equipped little Amelia with fabulous pecan and rhubarb pies to give her instructor; however, the desserts often soaked up a little too much pond water by the time they made it into Hirsute’s hands.
Landers did not know anything else. Fuck it. It was all hideous gossip. Perversions of pond and pitiful deluge accusatory! Smoke and go away. Smoke and go away. He thought about the dumbness of talk, and he shit on the idea of a book. The woman died slimy wet, a legendary loss not mourned in this town. The mystery of Hirsute was happy, abysmal jazz, shit to shoot in a park of young boys.
Apparently, in her early twenties Vivian had competed in the Atlanta Summer Olympics in synchronized swimming. During televised performances, the commentators would always praise the curvaceous agility of her pale legs as they chopped like scissors, barely disturbing the calm of the teal water. But what was ten times more intriguing, more lovable, was how perfectly she harmonized with her partner Carol Barely on land and in the sun-heated ripples of an Olympic size pool. More than a few fans projected that the two young women were lovers or at least nearing something other than a professional relationship.
Accepting silver metals for the United States, they held moist, amphibious hands and leaned in for those European kisses that make a bond all the more ambiguous. No one could have been aware of the bickering, the jealous, bitter fights that played out between them in hotel rooms in the big cities prosperous enough to care about hosting water sports.
“Why do they always lavish so much fucking praise on your legs?”
“They don’t really. They like both of us. Didn’t you hear Mark Combs of CBS saying just the other day that he couldn’t wait to see our nimble feet soar like seagulls above a crystal ocean,” Vivian countered to build up Carol.
“You know damn well which of us CBS favors!”
“Carol, stop it. I won’t be able to perform with you like this.”
“I should have continued on with Nancy, who didn’t make me feel like a whale.”
“Carol, Nancy could not swim to save her ass, and you know it.”
Atlanta turned out to be their last Olympics together. By the next U.S. Finals, a frenzied discord had rendered the women completely laughable—an endless charade of seal-like one-upmanship.
Despite every sentence Vivian tried to formulate to rekindle the synergy that had made them stars, Carol pushed away, blew up, shredded Hirsute’s words and threw them back in her chlorine-stiffened hair.
Nancy Graves was the name that kept bouncing on the diving board of Carol’s beautiful tongue; a miniature Nancy waded water in her emerald eyes, and that more than anything pained Vivian to the point where she could not cry.
Michael Landers hypothesized that the brutal breakup of the fame-bound duo weighed on Hirsute’s heart with oppressive force even fifty years after Carol swam off surprisingly not with Nancy but a young unknown named Mariana Black-Blake. While Vivian abandoned all competition from that point forward, she still cherished water as her natural element, a Pisces through and through. She moved to Loch Raven in Baltimore County and took up residence in a neighborhood of historic log cabins with access to a considerable, placid pond.
The pines of the woods in the sun and in the winter the smoke of the chimneys made for the best aromatherapy in all the world.
By twenty-seven, Vivian had eased into a new path in life; she excelled as a private swimming instructor, focusing specifically on blind young girls and girls with disabilities. Fulfillment came from floating their trusting, exuberant little torsos in the chilled pond, guiding frenetic arms, legs and stubs, teaching the blind to splash and smile. Hirsute established such good relationships with the families of these girls that she barely had to stock her own kitchen cabinets. Monday dinners were with the Adams clan in their cozy cabin on the hill. Mr. and Mrs. Jones always equipped little Amelia with fabulous pecan and rhubarb pies to give her instructor; however, the desserts often soaked up a little too much pond water by the time they made it into Hirsute’s hands.
Landers did not know anything else. Fuck it. It was all hideous gossip. Perversions of pond and pitiful deluge accusatory! Smoke and go away. Smoke and go away. He thought about the dumbness of talk, and he shit on the idea of a book. The woman died slimy wet, a legendary loss not mourned in this town. The mystery of Hirsute was happy, abysmal jazz, shit to shoot in a park of young boys.
Saturday, November 28, 2009
Sunday, November 22, 2009
North Pole Diet Poetry Reading: Timmy Reed
Timmy Reed, hands down, delivered one of the best performances at the North Pole Diet Poetry Reading, because he seemed to have tapped into a remarkable, inventive technique of opening the poem up beyond what is simply written on the page. Rediscovering his visionary "Rainbow Water Salad," inserting new colors and trains of thought, he achieved some true moments of hilarity and made the whole thing very conversational, repetitious, but never dull. I was inspired by what he accomplished on stage with his friend Bella standing at his side like his absurd muse.
The Positive Spirit
I am not going to doom and gloom and talk garbage about other artists and their projects to bolster myself up. I lack those feelings really. I was taught early on by one of my main inspirations to sort of bob my head in the joyous uncovering of the world’s colors and laughter and its blood and its fortunes and upsets. So goodbye to the boy who frightened me out of my mind! Because I am so happy, feeling so many details of the happiness that is constant like a heartbeat, I also carry around the attached void, the vacuum sealed depression (a locket of eternal times, whose meditative, unmedicated facts refract their wild light all along the mirrored clown town of these days in my human skull's jelly brain). The therapist cited chronic depression. Whatever. . . . I never really feel it in the way that you feel a cut. And it does not stop me from stacking up the ridiculous amount of activity that is an adventurous flower towering over the family of this world and these words, the simple suddenness that sustains the “anti-suicide.” The Ohio boy’s clown explosion and internet of protective hate (infected dog bites) are lava streams of the killer weaknesses cluster-fucked all around my volcanic happiness. Boy, o, boy, remember this uncelebrated corpse that you shunned while he lived in the sun of fun.
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