I Don't Have Any Stories With Unified Metaphors So This Is Just A Few Things I've Been Thinking About
Generally, people are repulsed by arrogance but I remain confused about whether or not arrogance is cool as long as the arrogant person is being arrogant about something that’s true. Fact. If you step to me in a game of Monopoly Junior, I’m going to fuck up your world. Is that arrogant? Sounds like it. But is it true? Try me, motherfucker. Oh. Oh. Where’s all your money? I’ll tell you where all your money is. It’s in my pocket. And look. I’m wasting all your money on useless shit that’s ephemeral. Don’t know what ephemeral means? Look it up. If I’m smarter than you and I know it, does that make me arrogant? If so, is that bad? Maybe. But not as bad as being dumb and broke with no board game skills. Loser picks up.
*
I frequently return to the issue of what’s actually happening when you’re reading a book. For contrast, let’s jump to TV real quick. There’s an image on the screen and sound coming from the speakers and you’re having this audio/visual experience that’s just like the rest of your life (supposedly—be careful). You see people. You hear them talk. You go places. See a bunch of shit. Sound happens. So there’s your TV too. Visions and sounds.
So what the fuck is a book and how does the story arrive at its storyhood? A book is a bunch of white pages with black symbols on them. But then all hell breaks loose. You read these symbols with your eyes, yes—BUT NOTHING REALLY HAPPENS (in terms of the story’s physiosensory imagery type stuff)—and then something happens. But what? What the fuck happens? There’s just this big GAP in between the reading and the “happening”. But if someone asks you to tell them what’s going on in the book you’re reading, you just start rattling off what happened AS IF SOMETHING HAPPENED: “So this guy meets this woman and, even though they were never previously sadomasochists, the guy instantly wants to beat the woman senseless and she wants him to nearly choke her to death while they have compulsive anonymous sex in a bathroom at a gas station in Iowa.”
You have a dirty mind. You “SEE” this hardcore sex with the man’s hands around her neck. (Is one of them you? Oh, you ARE dirty.) But inquisitive Black Hockey Jesus reader: Where the fuck does this happen? And don’t say Iowa. And don’t say in your brain or in your imagination because these are just phrases that seek to “explain” an enigma by concealing it behind things that don’t really explain anything. What the hell is an imagination?
Reading’s fucking trippy. You should think about reading and be confused. Your mother is smiling and waving at you. That’s just 33 letters on a blog. But do you have the courage to wave back? Do it. That’s the courage to wonder.
*
I’ve been trying to figure out why those cages around trampolines bother me so much and I’m afraid I’ve got a bad case of When I was a kid, which is disturbing because when the hell did I get old enough to scoff at youth? The other day it occurred to me that Jimi Hendrix died two years before I was born and Kurt Cobain died four years before my son was born. So Kurt Cobain seems as old and classic to my son as Jimi Hendrix always seemed to me. How the fuck is that even possible? My head can’t wrap itself around shit like this. I am almost 40 god damn years old.
Anyway, when I was a kid, I remember sprawling out in the backseat of the car to watch the moon and wonder why it followed me home. There were no car seats or seatbelts and the drunk drivers went home with warnings or a slap on the wrist. Me and my brother jumped our bikes off plywood propped on cinderblocks with our hair—yes, OUR HAIR—flapping in the wind. And when we crashed, our helmetless heads smashed the concrete and blood spewed from our melons like a fucking horror movie. Which brings me to the trampoline cages. Randy Potratz had an old school rectangle trampoline with no cages or nets or pads. Just iron bars painted yellow that chimed when they cracked the bones of a limp body that we all feared might be lifeless. Until the kid groaned or squealed or laughed while moving slowly, assessing the need for hospitalization.
I know I’d feel differently if my kid broke his neck on a trampoline. Then I’d probably start some stupid organization called TRAMPOLINE CAGES NOW! and inform everyone of trampoline dangers while collecting donations and shit. But, for now, I’m questioning the kind of adult that will emerge from a childhood of safety nets, helmets, handrails—no relationship to danger of any kind. It’s a hard thing to formulate because I love them so much but sometimes I get the feeling that both my kids need to just get out of the house and go get bit by a fucking dog.
Life is a big dangerous dog that’s going to eat your helmet. I don’t know when being a parent became protecting kids from life.
Thursday, September 1, 2011
Reader Comments (26)
Yeah, so I want to cross stitch this entire entry on the inside of a tent and then take my tent somewhere really awesome where I can sit and think about what the hell a book IS. Brilliant. Loser picks up.
(Both Perry Como and Robert Reed died on my birthday.)
#mancrush.
We're more scared of losing them now. We don't accept it as much as people used to when it was a fact of life. There's lots more people in the world, and we are growing up with the belief that we shouldn't have to die til we're old, and it makes us scared.
On one hand you're right, but on the other, if you disregard their safety and something goes wrong, it's YOUR FAULT AND YOU'LL NEVER FORGIVE YOURSELF. I don't know what the answer is.
Your description of reading is hilarious and fucking DEAD ON.
I also like to imagine the weird juxtaposition of me siting on my fat, lazy ass (getting FATTER, no less) having amazing adventures IN MY HEAD.
I think arrogance is always bad. But perhaps I only think that because I live in Britain.
Not a darn thing wrong with arrogance as long as it's prepared to meet up with humility.
waving back, of course;)
The 'happening' is in your imagination! you get to experience what its like to be choked during sadomasochistic sex. Or try on a dick and do the choking.... The thing is, though, that its different for everyone based on their own imaginings. TV tells you what it is you are supposed to be doing feeling experiencing. But when you read its all you!
Love your writing!
It happened in a Shell station. Not one of those mini-mart gas stations but the good old service station with two bays and barrels of motor oil. He asked Ernie the owner (or maybe his name was Ivan) for the key, while she waited around back.The key was attached to a piece of two by four to prevent people from stealing it. The weight and length of the wood would be used to serve other purposes. He felt arroused. The key seemed almost too small to open the large heavy metal door, which would dampen the sounds that she was going to make.
The bathroom was surprisingly clean for that type of gas station, but it would be for very long.
Damn. Books are pages of whatever you want them to be. Never look at a book for just what someone else printed inside of it. Read it in your own voice.
*waving*
*and totally being choked from behind because I'm not afraid to give up my defense mechanisms in order to fucking feel being fucked*
*bubble wrapping the kids* *watching as the smallest of my boys freaks the fuck out over bubble wrap* (He hates that stuff.)
I don't think you realize how awesome this post is. Hell, I don't even realize it, because I'm in the process of trying to figure out what happened and how I could read something and think that it was awesome even though it was nothing, damn you, Black Hockey Jesus, and your logical philosophical conundrums.
I waved back. I'm in love with your brain.
it mighta happened in an arena on a random Wed afternoon because they both knew that no one would be there except the janitor...
or it mighta happened in his mini-home while his girlfriend was out shopping, with their bastard child...on a cold and clean kitchen floor...because the bedroom was too far...
or it mighta happened on a desk at work, because you can only hold out during late nights for so long when everything else in your life is shit.
Shit happens...people give in...especially in Iowa.
"Just iron bars painted yellow that chimed when they cracked the bones of a limp body that we all feared might be lifeless." It is weird to think of being among the last to remember the spooked awe and hushed anticipation. But your prose assuages that lonely oldness. Thanks for that.
This post kind of made me swoon. I should probably go run 50K.
Btw, you may be able to beat me at Monopoly, but I'm pretty good at card games.
I loved this too. And, just to fixate on the most boring point, I understand the "trampoline cages now" thing, but I'll never understand the leap from there to "jail for any horrible, miserable parent who doesn't use a trampoline cage."
You can send your kids over to my house for a lot of danger and life. My sons have a sister who has seizures every day -- they've learned a lot of life that way. I guess I should be thankful, but I do admit that the whole helmet thing and other safety hysteria/admonitions passes me by most days. It's all about control, and when you realize that there isn't any -- REALLY -- you let go.
Love the post, by the way, as always.
We have an old school trampoline in our front yard with no cages or shit. My kids play fightclub on it and fall off, but no broken bones yet. My kids do all the shit that me and my husband did when we were kids. I'll save the cotton wool for their grazed knees, but I will not wrap them in cotton wool and send them out into the world.
When my son wants to go to the mens toilets at a shopping centre I tell him to watch his back. And scream if some pervert wants to touch him. And my son looks at me with innocence and I say sweetheart, there are a lot of weirdo freaky people in the world. You need to take care of yourself.
If my mother is smiling and waving at me it is because she finally thinks I am a worthy person to know and she wants me to smile and wave back. I want to punch her and hit her and do all the despicable things she did to me when I was trying to grow up ... she probably won't be smiling and waving at me so much anymore.
BH there's some strange shit is in my world, guess I got it out here. Sorry.
God damn it, I love you.
My husband gets annoyed when I am reading.....how can you just sit there and read? And why not just watch the movie version he asks-because I say, the pictures I make in my head are MUCH more interesting. In my version, the actors are much better looking, or more scary than anything CGI can make up.
I recently found out that I am a synesthete-yep there is a name for a person who makes pictures in their heads (synesthesia)-well, it's much more than that, it's having colors for numbers, images for weeks and years....and we all have a little of that. But now I am wondering if I do really READ books differently than others. For me, I have a little screen in front of my head where I actually see the story come alive. Okay, weird.
In a different time, I was a voracious reader. Initially, because it was one of the few things I could do, without cause for spontaneous punishment; slightly later, because I was naive enough to think that what you read and when are testaments to your intelligence -- and self-worth -- and I wanted to matter, so I picked up Kiss Me, Kate, and then the Taming of, and the Henry and Midsummers and on, and on, until finally, my teacher -- second grade teacher, that is -- noticed me.
Anyway, the years moved on and I got more literal about reading, picking up what I was interested in, whether Shopaholic may bestow sub-par SAT-score labels above my head or not. At points, I read more than a book a day, generally alternating every third or fourth with a slew of non-fiction about the interest of the moment.
I'd read in the bath, for an hour. While peeing -- sometimes getting so distracted by it, I'd be there, unproductive for a half hour. While walking down the street. In the passenger's seat of a moving car, driving down a highway at night time, with only the following car's headlights to lead my way, and the window rolled way down, to curb the car sickness. While listening to music, watching movies and once, while having lacklustre sex.
But I could never read if I was high. I always thought about what was or was not happening, and what the act of reading a story actually produced and why and OMG, what could this be doing to my synapses?, and if I could harness the potential 90% use of my brain that was apparently dormant, could I actually BE the story? Especially if peyote were the catalyst? And I could rarely make it past entire paragraphs, then.
True story: I skipped the first few paragraphs of this post. I don't know why. Reading about reading made my head hurt. But then you started talking about uncaged trampolines and I was on that shit because I love how different I am today with my kids than I was 10 years ago.
We have helmets. In the garage. With spiderwebs in them because they are used so often.
Our swingset was breaking, so we dismantled it, used some of the wood for a garden fence, and left the big beams and the slide in our backyard because we're, um, lazy. My kids have made the best junkyard forts out of that shit. They propped the slide on top of an old boat-shaped sandbox and now have a slide again. Voila. My kids are geniuses. Who cares that it is rickety and extremely unstable? They have learned to jump off when it starts to tip over.
I know this post was days ago, but I was wrong. It's not all in the imagining because so much of the 'happening' depends on how the words are jigsawed together. Some fraction of that 'happening' is the writer. There. Thats what I meant.
Those kids who are overly protected.......we turn into control freaks! We also have extremely over-active imaginations. I am just thinking of all the grotesque scenarios that could be possible from falling off the bike, trampoline etc. etc. I am crazy, there is something seriously wrong with me.
On another note.................it could have just happened in the bedroom, somewhere in the U.S. It was dangerous and exciting........might do it again.
On my playground in elementary school, we had this metal slide that would burn your legs off. We would grease it so that you'd fly off the end in an attempt to peel yet more flesh from yourself. That is, if you made it to the top of the slide in the first place, as you had to climb chain mesh (pro tip: don't let anyone above you step on your hands) and duck under a railing while rolling onto the platform just to get up there.
The world basically beat the everloving shit out of me for my entire childhood. I think my knees were scraped for like ten years running. It was pretty awesome.
I don't know if I've ever commented before....but I've been reading you since the early Wind days....and God, I love you. I don't ever send my kids out on their bikes without their helmets, always trying to do the RIGHT thing....but I once hit my head on a mailbox while riding my bike, and I survived. I skateboarded in my basement and hurt myself beyond human understanding...and yet, I'm here to write this comment. Pain builds character. My daughter, in all of her eternal, beautiful, sapphire eyed, whininess, could stand to have some character building pain. Not that I wish harm on her....Thank you.