Hot Whisky

2010-12-27T22:31:00.002-06:00

Merry Christmas to me. Despite my unending reluctance to use things I might consider 'high technology', I'm writing from an iPod Touch at the downtown Java House in Iowa City. Nuts.

There's a lot of snow, the pup is good, and it's almost over. Good riddance 2010. Working on my first logic assignment for my Winter course that started today. This tiny keypad is wearing me out.

till next time...

Where's Which Word?

2010-12-22T21:13:00.002-06:00

A while ago, four years ago, I started writing down words I didn't know in my reading, so that I could later look up their definitions without interrupting my rhythm. At first it was words I just had never heard of, but now it's sort of evolved into words that are familiar, but whose exact definitions escape... words I might even use in conversation, that I could list synonyms of, but whose essence I lack.. The other main entries now are words I read often, and generally understand, but would never use in my own conversation or writings.

It can be tough. It can be mind-numbing at times. When you read a lot of 18th and 19th century literature, you come across a vast sea of words whose meanings and associations have blown away. For example; unique styles of horse-drawn carriages, foods whose main ingredient is lard, furniture which seems specific to a certain city on a certain day to a certain person in a certain mood.... basically a lot of words about things that don't exist. But I want them all at my command. Or at least I'd like to draw a richer experience from my reading, because maybe that one-of-a-kind corduroy-clad rocking chair made by your great-uncle Jeremiah will appear again in the annals of literature...

Anyway. There are so many distances in our education, geography, and experiences, I thought it might be worth including a word of the day.. or word of the week feature on this blog. I know that many of these exist, but my thinking is that if you read this, we likely have some sort of relationship, mutual acquaintance, or intersecting interest. So, as long as we are a little bit alike, how about we check out our differences? I'll post a word and a definition.. maybe include the source, and then you can either say, "Hey, cool, I've never heard of that word!" or, "Wow! I always gloss that word!I'm glad I know what it actually means!" or, most likely, "Holy shit. Are you kidding me Sawyer? You honestly didn't know that? I thought you were an English major? What a moron."

And so..

This is a test.

tautology - needless repetition of an idea, especially in words other than those of the immediate context, without imparting additional force or clearness

Eh? Not a great word, but one I was completely unfamiliar with. There's a lot to say about a lot of things, but I'm being coaxed to Donnelly's....

till next time...

DevilDevilLifeStareTrouble

2010-12-14T06:47:00.006-06:00

Devil Devil Power Down Several Several Near The Ground.
Revel Revel Devil Several GlowUp Light Layer Round Around.
Several Devil Take That Shovel Lighter Lighter OnThe Town.

SunUp SunUp Fire Fire SunUp SunUp Fire Fire.
Brighter Brighter Far Horizer Brighter Brighter Gone By Far.
Tighter Tighter Faster Faster Lighter SkyWard Morning Star.

Lifestare.
Powerlark.
Killit
Lifestare.
Killit.

TroubleTrouble.

BiggerBrighterLighterLighterLighter

2010-12-14T04:53:00.005-06:00

Bigger Bigger Lighter Brighter Brighter Brighter Fighter Skyward Skyward Timeward Timeward. Gotsome Gotsome Awesome Flotsam Gotsome Hotsome Topsome Topsome. Inner Inner Outer Outer Powder Flower Outer Shouter Inner Sinner OneBeginner JustRemember OneBeginner. NoTimeToday NoTimeTommorrow SkyRhyme Inside BorrowBorrow.

Bigger Bigger Brighter Lighter Topsome Take Us Skyward Skyward.

Faster Faster SayIt Faster Blaster Blaster Craft Disaster.
Faster Faster Brighter Brighter TakeIt Topsome Skyward Skyward.

Live video feed from the International Space Station.

Lightcast

2010-12-13T20:41:00.012-06:00

Over the summer and into the Fall and a little now and then when there's time, I've been watching the television series "Cosmos' with Carl Sagan. An awesome exploration and explanation of many things, large and small, in our universe. Tonight is the Geminids meteor shower, which should be visible everywhere on Earth and is supposed to be the best and brightest of 2010, so if it's clear, drive out into some country and see yourself some shooting stars. If you're not inclined to brave the cold.. or stranded under cloud cover, here's the live NASA video feed of meteor shower, which may or may not be awesome, I've only spent a couple of minutes on it.

On stars, here's an incredible time-lapse sequence from Goldpaint Photography...

Wiser for the Time from Goldpaint Photography on Vimeo.

till next time...

Counting Down

2010-12-13T17:21:00.005-06:00

New video of the litter put up by the family that's reared them so far. This is them tromping around with mom and dad in Boise, ID. It's difficult to imagine that we'll be splitting them up, they look like a happy fuzzy family. The Iowa-bound pup is the only one with big spots on his back, he comes on a little into the video and chases his dad around. Playing keep away with their favorite bear.

It's absolutely still an ice-ball in Iowa City right now. The low tonight is forecasted at -2 and dropping to -10 with windchill. Nice night for a stroll. It's also finals week. The library is full of kids pounding out papers, sort of awesome to think about the transfer of knowledge that's happening in the building, the shear number of new synaptic routes being created is probably overwhelming for these some square feet of the UI Main Library.

Not much work this week. Happy hour Tuesday and closing Thursday night. This one (late) paper to finish and then an exam Wednesday afternoon followed by a presentation Friday and the semester will be finally and officially over. I'm taking a winter class that starts the 27th, so my break is about a week... I think studying will be a little more enjoyable with the pooch around.

Hoping to squeeze a good book in as well over break. Maybe a new Faulkner.. actually I have to finish 'Light in August' from the summer. Reading about the sweet humid South, that'll show the cold! I love these old Vintage Press editions.

Time for school.

till next time...

Freezing Dreamsicles

2010-12-13T03:12:00.004-06:00

It's late. I've been up a pretty long time and at the moment I'm listening to that Townes van Zandt video I posted the other night. The hotel version of 'Rake', really an incredible song.

There's snow on the floor of Iowa. It's freezing freezing freezing cold outside, something near the heart of Zero and subtract a pulsing wind from that. Not really any snow blowing around, just a bitter night. It's been a long time since I've seen it so cold in mid-December and maybe even longer since I recall there being a measurable amount of snow on the soil n bricks before Christmas.

Had a pretty bizarre dream last night that the puppy showed up. Except in the dream the woman who sold him to us was there with every other buyer and all of the puppies sliced up like bread in plastic baggie. We had to sort through the parts and reassemble our dogs.. it wasn't gruesome or anything in the dream but certainly nerve racking to try and identify each part of your own pup from memory of a few photos that show their markings and the length of their fur. It was followed by a strange dream that was me saving either Keri or Sarah (both, really, alternating) from an old man assassin with supernatural powers. We fled the house where the hitman was coming and drove quickly and dangerously through construction zones until eventually the old wizard summoned up three towering Stay-Puff Marshmallow men like i Ghostbusters, at which point I curled in a ball until something crushed me and I woke up sweaty and covered in sugar. Not really about the sugar.

It's almost 3:30. It's a Sunday night or a Monday morning and it's time to go to bed.

till next time...

Kingfischer?

2010-12-11T18:37:00.006-06:00

The little Wirehaired Pointing Griffon will be here Wednesday!! barring excessively inclement weather. Why is 40 degrees in Boise and Salt Lake City equivalent to 8 degrees in Iowa? At the moment I'm pulling for the name Kingfischer, but it isn't exactly all my choice so we'll see how that works out.
Here's the chosen one at about a month old...

A handsome young gentleman. He has something of a lazy eye(lid) we found out today. There's a relatively common disorder that occurs especially in puppies called Entropia. It's most common in dogs with really fleshy faces, like Shar Peis, but it can and does happen to pretty much any breed. Basically, there's more skin on the face of the dog that can really fit on its tiny noggin', so that excess skin of the eyelid droops down and curls under slightly. In little humans this might be fine for awhile, but seeing as how said young gentleman is covered in fur, it irritates the eye and can eventually cause ulcers on the cornea. Ouch.

So what to do?

Because he still has a lot of growing to do, probably about 50 pounds worth, it's likely that as his the size of his skull increases the skin will pull taut and self-correct. Until then, we'll probably need to have a minor tacking operation done, where a few tiny sutures are used to roll back the excess eyelid. It's temporary, but by the time the effects wear off, he should have grown enough to be of comfortable size all around. If it's still occurring, a bit more serious operation will take place to remove excess skin. The good news is that a dog can be affected in four places, in the top and bottom lids of each eye, and it sounds at this point like our little fuzz just has it in the top of his left eye. So we'll see!

That's the puppy news. In current events, I'm at the library working through some Middle English poetry, it's snowing and icing outside, there's going to be a dance party in the warehouse later tonight complete with Sarah Mannix wearing battery powered Christmas lights, and in one week I'll be in Newago, Michigan for Keri's family's holiday shin-dig. I wonder if that woman who made Irish coffee last year will be around? I'm excited to see her parents second home turned first home out there in the woods.

Also bought two Townes Van Zandt vinyls today at the Record Collector. Delta Mamma Blues and the other I think is self-titled. I'm not a huge buyer of the re-issues, it seems like the pressings are generally thin and light and play at a lower quality than vintage editions, but Townes is hard as hell to find so I'm into it. I'll leave you with two songs, one from each of the albums...

and...

till next time...

Heather's Sketch

2010-12-10T16:35:00.003-06:00

I love looking at this sketch she did in Italy.

Cold

2010-12-10T14:57:00.002-06:00

Haven't posted in nearly twelve months. Mostly it was a desert of a twelve months with more bleached out bone than watering hole. All things spring eternal though, and now it's almost the end of the Fall semester, and already dipping into the negative digits with flurries a weekly reminder of what's in store. I had some thought as to why I wanted to get back in the habit of posting here, but I'm not sure I remember what that thought was... hmm.

Let's do it like this..

Book II

Football season is over in the mid-Western states of our proud union. Joe Lieberman is sometimes an ass and sometimes kicks ass. DADT will hopefully fall beneath his heel. Julian Assange hopefully will not. It snows some in Iowa. It freezes some in Iowa. It sits for long hours at the university library in Iowa. It works at Donnelly's and consumes coffee and Guinness like a vital diesel in Iowa. It gets sinus infections in Iowa. It needs to go to the dentist before it's health insurance runs out in Iowa. It will have a young pup in Iowa. It registers for intriguing classes in hopes of having a successful semester in Iowa. It will soon graduate from Iowa in Iowa and will leave Iowa.

December 10th finds our hero posted, more stuck, between overlapping fringes of young male culture. Cue the student. Cue the employee. Cue the tranquilized wolf. Being on the fringe is fine, commendable, but being on more than one fringe will push you two ways and you'll be a pancake. A potato pancake. Our hero is not big on syrups.

What had I been signing off with? ..till next time?

..till next time

...briefly

2010-01-31T20:58:00.004-06:00

Two weeks into the semester- things are going well. Today was a Sunday off from work and built itself mostly around a few hundred pages of War and Peace to get myself caught up for Wednesday night class. I actually really love the book so far... never seems to ramble inanely, and it constantly moves between a huge host of equally entrancing characters. Hasn't brought me to tears quite yet, maybe a few moments of choking up, but I know that I won't make it forever without yielding to Russian sorrow.
I have a couple of things to recommend if your looking for recommended things. First off is this documentary that's up for instant viewing on Netflix, it's called Rivers and Tides. I haven't watched the whole thing yet... but it follows artist Andy Goldsworthy as he creates art directly from nature, bouncing especially off the power of time and the constant transitions that water inflicts on structure. If you don't have a Netflix account you can find several clips on YouTube, here's one I remember...

And in the world of music, here's a video to put some rhythm back into your frozen toes...

I still plan on talking about my trip to Puerto Rico, but not until I have the time to give it justice. Let me know what you think of Andy's art, and if you know of anyone doing similar work!

till next time...

Well-loved poem.

2010-01-20T14:05:00.001-06:00

Wait

by C. K. Williams

Chop, hack, slash; chop, hack, slash; cleaver, boning knife, ax—

not even the clumsiest clod of a butcher could do this so crudely,

time, as do you, dismember me, render me, leave me slop in a pail,

one part of my body a hundred years old, one not even there anymore,

another still riven with idiot vigor, voracious as the youth I was

for whom everything always was going too slowly, too slowly.

It was me then who chopped, slashed, through you, across you,

relished you, gorged on you, slugged your invisible liquor down raw.

Now you're polluted; pulse, clock, calendar taint you, befoul you,

you suck at me, pull at me, barbed wire knots of memory tear me,

my heart hangs, inert, a tag-end of tissue, firing, misfiring,

trying to heave itself back to its other way with you.

But was there ever really any other way with you? When I ran

as though for my life, wasn't I fleeing from you, or for you?

Wasn't I frightened you'd fray, leave me nothing but shreds?

Aren't I still? When I snatch at one of your moments, and clutch it,

a pebble, a planet, isn't it wearing away in my hand as though I,

not you, were the ocean of acid, the corrosive in I which dissolve?

Wait, though, wait: I should tell you too how happy I am,

how I love it so much, all of it, chopping and slashing and all.

Please know I love especially you, how every morning you turn over

the languorous earth, for how would she know otherwise to do dawn,

to do dusk, when all she hears from her speech-creatures is "Wait!"?

We whose anguished wish is that our last word not be "Wait."

Spring Semester

2010-01-19T09:04:00.003-06:00

First day of spring classes. Heavy fog. Thursday maybe fortyfour? Excellent. Sinus infection and Bowerbirds show last night. Hip new khakis from JC Penny. Dancing in front of a three way mirror set directly across from another three way mirror in a new pair of tight red clay colored pants FEELS GOOD. You really go forever, in the mirrors I mean. Here are my classes.

Tolstoy Dostoevsky
Am Drama Since 1900
Evo & Hist Life
1St-Year Russian II
Poetry Writing

Bonus: Warm socks, fresh from the laundry basket.

In Ditches

2010-01-06T21:35:00.002-06:00

Here's a new piece that just got finished. I'm headed to the beach so if you have any comments about this I'll get them Friday the fifteenth! Stay warm and safe.

In Ditches
Long kicks of gravel and dust rose up behind the truck leaving east from where he stood in his denim overalls alone with a state issue lawnmower and two plastic sacks; one for the trash and one for the waterjug. In every direction the earth stretched away as rectangled patches of brown dirt stitched together by the drainage ditches that grew lush while the fields sat fallow and useless after the rain and river had soaked every arable acre in the county for months and now in the first heat of a clear morning he could still smell the rain and river on the shifting air. Looking up and down the gray line of the highway he found himself in a corridor of knee high grass that went to forever as far as his purposes were concerned and with a lowered shoulder he primed the carb twice and then once more for good measure and took a piece of twine from around his wrist and wrapped the start lever down against the handlebar so as not to be holding it the whole day and with that he ripped on the pullcord and the mower shook into life.
The grass was tall enough that he kept the mower deck at its highest setting to avoid smashing any edge of the metal blade on a rock or whatever else might be buried in that tangle of life. He took a deep breath of exhaust before gripping the second lever that engaged the mowers selfpropelled front wheel drive which didnt propel anything anywhere at this moment. With a glance at the blueing sky he dropped to a knee in the grass and slid a crescent wrench from his breastpocket and removed the plastic casing for the control cord that connects the selfpropel lever to the transmission box as sometimes the cord breaks with wear and can be knotted but on this mower there wasnt even a cord to be broken and he turned again to the cloudless morning.
When he stood his right knee was dark with wet denim and he paused to examine the shine of dew on the leather of his boots in the moment before they turned to a mess of broken grass and with the thought of it his body stepped out in front of his elbows and his shoulders pulled back while he thrust his chest into the handlebar and gave it a great shove against the falling grass.
The first row he cut was worst with the highway directly on his right and a determination not to spray the gravel with clippings no matter how little anyone drove those backroads when the fields were empty and no matter how little anyone wouldve cared anyhow. It was no good to head east either with the clippings shooting further down into the ditch because with everything this tall and wet his trip back over the lower spots would find too much cut grass on top of the uncut and the whole deck would pack full and jam so he resigned to keep on west away from the roar of the sun with the blower detached and swinging in a plastic sack while his boots tramped through the sicksweet smell of clumping grass. He mowed without hurry giving the knots in his back and arms and legs time to loosen themselves into workable muscle again while his ears picked up the rhythm of the blade and the flywheel to check that the timing was right which it was. It seemed like the missing control cord was the only problem on the thing and he marched on counting the Jack pine telephone poles that stood over the beaten telegraph ones wireless beneath them like forgotten children that grew old without moving forward in time.
Today was different only because this section of highway was one of just four in the county that he hadnt ever been across with a mower in his two decade career that began as mandated service on a penitentiary work crew. During his time in county prison the warden had relaxed enough to drop the highway crew off unattended each afternoon until a storm hit so hard one August that it sent all them all running for the state line under the cover of torrents except him who kept mowing up to the point when the rain flooded the twostroke engine of every mower brought. He was found sitting alongside the highway with eight flooded mowers and one just out of gas gathered together and waiting for the warden and so when he asked to keep on mowing after his parole went through there wasnt anything to argue against.
Sometime well after the dropoff he counted his threehundred and fiftieth telephone pole and left the mower idling as the punctuation mark on a flat green sentence that measured some twentyone inches wide by six miles long which like every sentence was the product of a collective thought but uniquely faithful to its author who was now kneeing himself a path down into the bottom of the ditch. It was no surprise to him that the further he went towards the rolling hills in the western part of the county the steeper the ditches got and so when he found himself sunk to midthigh in muck and old water he kept the curse to himself and focused on his left boot that nearly took leave of its foot when the muck gave way with a plop and he closed his eyes for a moment to smell the fecundity that followed.
Up in the barren field he walked to the threehundred and fiftieth telephone pole and undid his brass zipper to relieve himself down the cracked wood while watching the ants struggle against the stream until he shook himself twice and once more for good measure with a dusty hand that made a thin skin of mud when he wiped it on his damp leg. He drank from the gallon of water and rocked the machine on its rear to wheelie the spinning blades across the gravel without stopping the engine and setting it down level again started his cut back east on the opposite side of the road with the sun near straight up overhead and making it hotter all the time.
A car rose up on some hill in the distance and he relented to undo the knot of twine from around the start lever which stopped the blades from kicking any rocks out into a passing car but more importantly made it quiet if someone should stop to talk but they must have turned at the bottom of the hill or stopped with someone else because they never came and having waited too long in the rolling silence he restarted the mower and continued.
As the day drew slowly through the afternoon the knots in his back reappeared and with them he stopped every twenty or thirty minutes to stretch his hands down into the freshly cut grass and inhale the rich smell of his county and eventually he began to wonder when he would find the red gas can set out for him to come across before the mowers small tank went dry. He had mowed enough ditches in his life to feel the growing lightness of the machine while he squinted ahead to search for the missing gas can and when the thing began to groan in his hands before shaking back into stillness he resented but expected it. Pushing along on the gravel now his thoughts trailed to the neighbors yards he used to mow for a dollar with his reel mower that took no regular maintaining apart from putting an edge back onto the blade with a file once or twice a year. For him there was power in the efficiency of form that made the reel mower beautiful to begin with and even more beautiful when it was in his hands where he learned the curve and purpose of each part and where those same hands could work any straying piece home again and keep the arching strips of smooth blade spinning swiftly and when he closed his eyes he could feel its smooth surface and hear the purr of the reel as it rolled through his thoughts.
The sun hadnt taken any breaks that day and now it was slipping west enough to throw shadows that broke the glare of afternoon but even so the heat continued to climb and the sweat continued to roll. In this stretch of ditch the highway offered more trees and bigger pockets of water with frogs in them and when he needed to rest his arms or relieve himself he would circle the little ponds and listen for the white of the frogs skin to slap against the surface gracelessly and watch all the ripples overtake each other as if they were galaxies fighting over the infinite with their smooth circles of raised and liquid light quietly bumping into one another.
Moving back onto the flats of the county he rounded the uplift of the last hill and stopped for a break from the heat and found himself a spot beneath the short and mangled oaks that held in the sandy soil of the drainage ditch that was part filled along the center by a large pool of leftover rain. He eased his back onto the rough bark and scraped together a handful of stones to skip across the length of water which the first two did easily with four or five long ricochets against the surface but then the third caught its edge and shot up sideways slicing down again without much splash but followed by an upheaval of water unexpected enough to set him on his feet and running down the ravine before turning to face the roil of bubbling ditch water.
The first thought was that a spawn of grass carp had been stranded in the pool but with a few steps nearer he saw the glint of a single giant fish thrashing in just enough water to cover it by a foot or so when laid flat and he wondered how a fish that couldnt swim kept enough water moving through its gills to breathe and when he walked closer the thing calmed down at the sight of him and sunk as deep as it could manage. Whatever it was he thought it looked longer and heavier than him and even with it washed up in a mudpuddle he wasnt about to get himself mauled by a six foot carp while mowing a county highway and so he walked the edge of the water and saw it turning slowly with him and following with its eyes down in the murk. He found the snag of brush and rotted cornhusks that had dammed the water there and while the eyes watched he began pulling apart what he could and quickly the blockage gave with water spilling away along the length of the ditch. He watched the front edge of the pool as it drained and turning back he was blasted by a tower of mist that whooshed past his face and looking down there was an adolescent dolphin resting its muddy head on his boots and looking up at him with a question.
Not thinking he stepped back to blink and reset and when the earth came to focus again he was paralyzed in the animals stare until it opened its mouth and clicked for him and cautiously he knelt near its height and reached out part way but the dolphin thrust its snout into his palm and nuzzled it and with a great effort of twisting hopped itself to the wet earth beside him rocking its long head with an excitement that made him lower his so that their cheeks rubbed as he put his arm under the dolphins neck and pulled them close together. He held on smiling and the adolescent grinned a long row of teeth clicking again and arching its body affectionately under the cooking sun that tumbled still further west leaving behind it a dry heat and doubling the shadows of the oaks.
Cupping the sleek face in his hands he wondered if it were made like a man or like a woman and whether it knew what the smell of cut grass meant on his hands as he moved its head back and forth to peer one at a time into the eyes that matched him level by level and he might not have ever stopped if the dolphins breath hadnt started wheezing through the dry skin around the blowhole that no longer misted with each exhale and in a sudden panic he noticed the pool draining empty beneath them. What water was left went spreading out past the dam in a shallow stream and his eyes lit with a fear that pushed him on all fours up the ravine stripping his clothes and flipping the mower and then wrapping his shirt around the blade while he pulled the crescent wrench from the tangle of denim and removed the bolt that held the sharp doubleedged steel to the deck and then rushing down to hack at the small and gnarled oaks with the shirt slipping out from under his grip and the blade now digging deeper into his flesh than into the sunhardened wood of the oak until finally one branch gave and then another. Sliding each branch through a leg of his overalls he set the makeshift denim stretcher beside the young dolphin and started the struggle to push its body with his shredded hands until finally it did slide with the mud and at last he strained with the bark of the oak branches digging into his palms as the weight almost lifted but didnt and left him sobbing against the red and brown streaks of his blood and the dirt on the smooth skin of the dolphin.

till next time...

TwentyTen + Four

2010-01-04T06:09:00.002-06:00

Iowa City has turned to tundra! At the moment it's -3 with a windchill of -15 (-20 and -28 Celsius), and it looks like the arctic weather is here to stay, with temperatures predicted to never rise above freezing in the month of January. To keep warm this morning I've kept myself in a steady supply of steaming yerba mate that seems to be the best mood booster I've found when dealing with the seasonal anxiety that comes with a scarce few daylight hours and the epically expensive utility bills typical of a midwest winter.
I remember the first time I'd ever heard of yerba mate was in the biography Che Guevara: A Revolutionary Life, by Jon Lee Anderson. The story in the book is of Che attempting to start a yerba mate plantation with a small inheritance, a plan which fails, but continues as a theme even after Che becomes the warlord of Fidel Castro, using the stimulating national drink of his Argentinian homeland to suppress his chronic asthma. The image that comes to mind now is of the bearded and bloodied Che crouched in the bushes of southern Cuba, taking pause from a firefight against soldiers of the Batista regime to brew himself a quick thermos of yerba mate, bullets still flying through the sugarcane fields around him. (Sidenote: today is the date on which Che left Argentina on his Norton 500 motorcycle named "La Poderosa", the journey which would eventually transform itself into The Motorcycle Diaries.)
How sad to think about South America when I haven't seen a living plant in weeks. Easier, actually, to think about leaving Iowa behind in three days for the beaches of Rincon, Puerto Rico. Average high 84? Average low 70? Yes please! There's also been constant alert for this area on the Weather Channel website of dangerously high surfs and powerful riptides. The house were staying in literally has waves hitting the seawall of it's raised porch at hightide, so as long as nothing is underwater there should be plenty of massive waves to jump around in. I'd be concerned about the rip tides.... but... I can't swim, so really I probably shouldn't actually be "in" the water anyway, ah well. Even being a non-swimmer I'm SCUBA certified, so if we make it around to the other side of the island I'm sure there will be plenty of time in the water, with the assistance of facemasks and airtanks.
Anyone have any good resolutions for two-thousand and ten? I don't think I do. I'm not against resolutions, I just can't remember anytime I've ever actually set my mind to a goal and accomplished it. Every time I've ever lost weight or saved money or quit a destructive habit it's always been the child of luck or circumstance. For myself I'd rather be surprised by the types of gains we all hope to make in life. I like the idea of waking up in the middle of the night to realize I've shifted something major in a positive direction more than the constant thought of attaining something or the tedious checkmarking of progress towards a goal. That's not completely true, but that's at least how I look at it on a whim. Party life.
Wherever you are stay warm and well fed and most importantly be happy. If on the map you live in the unhappy boxes with their lids of northerly latitude locked shut, don't let the ice in! Do whatever you can to keep your soul alive and growing and glowing, hibernation is for the bears and dormancy is for the trees. Seriously.

till next time...

Midwest Shakedown

2009-12-25T18:18:00.005-06:00

Merry Christmas, Happy Hanukkah.
It is actually winter here now that we're a few days past the solstice, but if the color coding of a doppler radar was any sort of indication, the twentyfourth might've been spring. Yesterday, meteorologically, was light green and dark green and some breakouts of red which translated to a Christmas Eve rainstorm that was festive only in it's choice of color combo. Driving I-80 that afternoon was a parting of the sea and even this morning the rain hadn't stopped drizzling dismissally against the window behind the lit tree. Seriously, an insane amount of water in December.
Today's threat level is pink and the trek back along the interstate started grey before eventually building into a blurry streak of speeding white flakes pushed along by the same forty mile an hour crosswind that made the car weave between the lines. If you've ever driven through a snowglobe while it was being shook I can relate.
The beauty of snow is that it collectively textures the empty space around us and lets us forget for a minute the crushing vastness of that 'nothing' in which we live, and in doing so each flake manages to retain it's own identity... not just with it's irreplacebly unique shape, but more importantly by it's joyful and thoughtless flight pattern. Like a lazy drunk landing a hotair balloon with a hole in it. That joy got smashed by the wind today, homogenized snow, bummer. One highlight though was the hawks that sat in the frozen grass of the median... probably too brutal on the fenceposts and utilitypoles.
Later on now, I've just had a friend's Samoyed on a blizzard walk. Her fur puffed out more than usual in the wind and her quickness on the icepacked sidewalks landed me on my ass more than once. It's bizzare out there with the heavy rains of yesterday now freezing into place while the snow still falls. At one dip along the walkway the dog crunched through the thin ice on a deep puddle and sank up to her backwards knee.
The rain has sunk holes and ridges into the blackish snow turned up by plows along the roadways so that now with a dusting of white it looks like the fungus of a frozen planet, matched by the stop signs and street markers that have a moldy white powder growing along their edges too.
It's getting closer to seven now and that means it's time to brave the moonscape in an attempt to find sanctuary with a warming glass of whiskey at Joe's place. Hope everyone's holiday dream came true this year. Close out your year with style. Don't let yourself start twenty-ten with a frown.

till next time...

Final Exam Week

2009-12-14T02:32:00.003-06:00

Welcome to Monday the 14th of December and the first day of finals at the University of Iowa. It's just getting past 2:30 and on my side of things it's got to start now because there's a ten page take home final for Shakespeare that hasn't been started yet that's due at noon.
The outside scene is something like rain and fog and flurries but the radar's clear so I don't know... it seems like tomorrow will be up in the happy 30's and if nothing else at least you won't freeze to death migrating between your classes and the library. Last night there was a lot of adderall xr but instead of getting any school work done I started a story from this dream I had about a dolphin in a drainage ditch near a farm that's pretty damn sad... maybe when that's shored up I'll post it here. It might be too long though to read off a blog.
Waiting for things to kick in here so I can write about Othello but until then I'm cruising the iTunes radio stations which are about the perfect thing for being studious because the chances of a song that I know coming through is about nill. Anything else? Guess not, just good luck wherever you are and whatever your doing and that goes triple for anyone with exams this week and try not to ruin your stomach.

till next time...

Shrink Wrapped Windows

2009-12-12T11:15:00.003-06:00

Today it's going to get up and above thirty degrees for the first time in five or six days here in Iowa City and thank god I've gotten the windows covered with those saran wrap sheets just at the right time. If you don't live in the mid-west we had our first mentionable snow Tuesday and Wednesday and now things are generally shades of white and lightbrown and it reminds me of the winter two years ago when the roads stayed hilarious nonstop for three months. I have a warm spot in my heart for an old prairie town with harsh winters that still refuses to use rock or liquid salt on their roads.
It's also the introduction to finals week, so cabin fever is easily put to rest under the blanketing guilt that comes with doing anything that isn't related to school. I think I have it pretty easy with three finals; one take-home, one that can't harm my grade, and then just a lit-class final about New York fiction which shouldn't need much more than a reglossing of the stuff we've read. My biggest and only real fear is that my stomach will dissolve under the weight of such massive quantities of caffeine.
I guess it's been a long time since I've written anything so I should say that the International Writing Program's Fall Residency is over, had been for almost a month, and so that's one less job to balance with life. It went well and I'll definitely try to work with them again. The writer's, for all times it might have seemed to the contrary, had a good time and most were sentimental on their last shuttle trips to the airport and many are slowly trickling in as Facebook friends so it'll be nice to keep up and keep contacts around the world. The open invitation to stay with many of them is drawing... Tel-Aviv? I think so!
At Donnelly's though the weather and stress of school has driven more people into the warm embrace of liquor, which is fine by me not only because I live on their tips but also something gets really happy inside of me watching a bar full of people quietly reading and working at one o'clock in the morning on a Monday with a glass of unchilled whiskey or an Irish coffee.
What a beautiful way to use alchohol, a mitigater against the tide of stimulants. Like a personal trainer rubbing down your quads and calves before a foot race the alcohol swims and sings and defrosts your mind and soul and relaxes the mental barriers to mush so that new connections and ideas can phoenix up from the ashes of a fatigued brain.
So today is at least warm enough to pop your legs around outside for a metabolic boost and the gratification of real sunlight. People have started to speed east back to Chicago or further on to the coast for their break and soon Iowa City will be back to it's beautiful and near-empty self. I think I've agreed to work Christmas night so if you're feeling thirsty or cold come by on the 25th for some cheer.
And one more thing, Puerto Rico! After a lifetime of trips to the Colorado mountains, where it also freezing, I think I've re-directed the family scene to a place where the record high is only thirty-five degrees higher than the record low. Ah, sunny Puerto Rico, what gifts you've given me before. All I want now is to fufill the early November dream I had of swinging in a hammock along the ocean with lime-bedecked drinks and a tall stack of Tennessee Williams.

Till next time...

Thanksgiving

2009-09-25T16:13:00.003-05:00

Went to Des Moines yesterday with the South African writer who had a reading at Drake. Half the westbound interstate was torn up and it took about forever to get there but after I'd dropped her off for dinner with some people in their English Department I went to pry around the campus. It's pretty. A few city blocks of grass lawn with stone buildings brought up in a sort of skewed grid. Lots of big oaks dropping acorns and maybe the healthiest squirrel habitat I've ever seen. Wasn't a direction you could turn to without catching a new dozen squirrels strung out along your line of sight, all digging their prizes into the soil.
After her reading and the reception our van rolled out towards home on I-80 through fog and heavy traffic and the terrifying rattle that big vehicles get when you push them over 70mph. So we were moving pretty quick. Something I did not predict was that lurking behind us in the darkness were several hundred turkeys, squawking mayhem and gaining on us foot by scaly foot. The semi passes and crammed too brim of the cage that's its trailer is an endless mash of turkeys, audibly terrified, tearing through the night in a flurry of white feathers and fog. They almost literally flew by us, the truck pulling them at some speed usually reserved for interstellar travel and as the red tail lights started their disappearance into the thick darkness we we're left in a rain of the feathers, the battle of good and evil decided with an epic pillow fight.
Long after they passed from sight there were still ruffled chunks of snow drifting down onto the highway and those that had already fallen I saw kicked up in the headlights of the cars behind us. Right as I started to wonder how long people would be driving into feathers a heavy rain started, beating the feathers to the earth and washing them into the gravel on our sides.

You're a turkey. You're crammed so tight into the back of truck that everytimeone of fifty turkeys shits it gets all over your feet. You're being hurdled through the cold, rainy, and foggy night towards certain death... moving so fast that even though they've left you your garments they are being stripped off by the rushing wind. You can hardly hear anything. All that's there is a roar and the panicked screams of ...help!.......help!.......heeelp us!....garble garle.

happy thanksgiving...

Heaven or Bust

2009-09-10T14:27:00.002-05:00

On September 10th heaven is taking a shot of Jim Beam and chasing it with yesterdays cold coffee. Orange Bourbon Blossom, thanks Joel. Didn't go to classes today in favor of sitting at the apartment to get work done and search for new music. Good news about that music.. check out Blind Pilot or Sun Kil Moon or Wild Sweet Orange sometime. I'll give youtube a running-over soon and put some videos up here, probably later tonight.
I'll be headed to the Quad Cities soon to see Heather before she leaves for providence/Providence again and later tonight I pick up an Armenian poet in Cedar Rapids. Supposedly I'll write my first epistemology paper tonight, but honestly the whole thing is nearly over my head and it's too deep now to do anything but swim. Hmm. I get small humor from the thought that I'm mostly an English major who spends the majority of work time on Russian and epistemology.

Time for another swig+swig=heaven. Maybe I'll make a list of three hundred and sixty-five things that are bliss and give one to every day. Such that every Sept. 10th I'll take a shot of Jim Beam and chase with coffee. And something like every February 17th I'll take a bath. So I think now the best thing is to wait and keep track of the best thing I do every day of the year, so that I can repeat it the next year. The catch being that if something trumps what was the best thing then it goes on the list for the year after that! And if it's unavailable.. for geographic reasons or whatever... then I'll do the thing from the previous year. Sort of like mapping out the genome of my angel? Err more like putting a GPS on a monk headed down the path of enlightenment, so that we can just pull of the waypoints and get there when we're ready. Who knew Garmin was in the salvation business?

till next time..

Just About Full, Moon

2009-09-04T00:57:00.004-05:00

The inevitable all night schoolin' session has arrived at last. It's tough to go be in class all day, work all evening, and then jump in between the pages. Much better to watch 30 Rock and eat a spoon of peanut butter for awhile until the murk clears out from your attitude.

Tomorrow is going to be a full moon and the weather, at least in Iowa City, is exactly the sort of weather that a full moon should shine over. Sort of a Halloween Light tomorrow.
I'm not one to take seriously most phenomena that attempt to link our physical reality with the world of spirits, ghouls, and God.... but full moons bring with them some weird energy.
If you Google full moons you can find an endless amount of studies (questionable studies) that correlate the full moon to things like increased crime rates, increased likelihood of suicide, and increased dog biting incidents. Probably most psychologists doubt that full moons have any effect on animal behavior, but I've walked through the nursing home where my mom works enough times to think that there's something going.
The people at this nursing home are almost always asleep early (or just always asleep), but a few of the times I've walked in after midnight there's been a noticeable horde of walker and wheelchair enabled wrinkle machines out and acting strange. People that I've never seen move from their beds will be wandering the hallways and asking me who I am and trying to follow me down steep flights of stairs. In the Alzheimers unit the despondent forgetters were one time standing in a circle holding hands and swaying back and forth. I'd never thought much about it until one night I noticed that something like half the patients were still up for after hours. When I asked the staff what was up they all said, "Oh, it's just a full moon tonight." Seemed like a joke, although I knew it was a full moon, until my another nurse told me later that the home had considered scheduling extra staff on full moon nights in anticipation that help always got called in on these nights anyway. Hmm.
A connection exists here. So how does the lunar cycle physiologically tap in our subconscious and send out behavior and mood askew? Anyone? Anyone? Buehler?

Well that killed some time. More Russian verbs out there need conjugating. If anyone in Iowa City is looking for something to do tomorrow in the evening, the first reading for the International Writer's Program is tomorrow at the Shambaugh House, 5-6pm and comes with free refreshments! One of the authors is Iraqi and the other is from India.

till next time...
::howls::

Arithmetic. Arithmetoc. "One more year." says the clock.

2009-09-01T01:12:00.002-05:00

Today is my birthday, and while I was walking across town to get my car from a parking garage (it's free if you leave after midnight) I thought it would be nice to give myself a little poem as a present. I worked this one out while standing on the Burlington St. bridge, watching a very large tree stump get knocked around by the pour off the roller dam.

i was woken up in the middle of a sad dream last night
by (an evil) a woman (an angel) and her black expanse of eyes
with the weight of her heavy breasts, resting on my shoulders
she gathered sand between soft fingers and held them with her others
she took my hourglass away and dropped them in the top
then looked at me and whispered slow
...keep on sleeping
...keep on sleeping
...you might just live forever

Hmm. Sounded better in my head.

The previous post is so brilliantly everywhere that I don't think I can delete it.

till next time...

Hey there, near-day-break.

2009-08-30T04:32:00.002-05:00

To be completely upfront, I'm quite drunk.

It is coming on 4:30AM in the tiniest hours of Sunday, August 30, and I've just walked home from a good distance aways. I managed to keep my head about myself enough to walk with Sarah home, and then to traverse the Iowa River by sticking to Benton all the way down.
Today, prior to the drinking; especially, has been an absolutely fantastic day. I started my
IWP job in full force, spending the better part of the morning and afternoon driving between Iowa City and Cedar Rapids repeatedly picking up authors from all over this mediocre planet.
I had, earlier, sometihing pertinent to say, but now all I can give you is the sad fact that two cats who looked pretty hungry refused to follow me to the apartment for some free deli ham and clean water. But whatever, I guess that little dude is just as unread as I am. Coming from Kirkwood, I can say with the slightest degree of conviction that the assignments in class are just as easy, it's just the shear amount of material requiring movement that creates an entirely spereate direciton.

Good luck and God's speed.,
Sawyer!

New Kids (Passed Out) On The Block

2009-08-20T15:03:00.003-05:00

Frank, wherever you are, I hope you feel like the psycho that you are. The special sort of psycho that comes from getting everything you want all your life, only to have it crumble on the third day away from your parents

Last night, a bit past 2am, I was walking along the alley behind Falbo's and The Sanctuary and stumbled across a kid who was... stumblin'. I watched him sort of saunter down through a row a bushes like someone who had just been shot in a B-movie, until he fell back against a cement retaining wall and buried his head in a bush.
"Hey bud, you going make it?"
"I'm so fucked man."
"Where are you trying to get to?"
"Burge."
"Oh. Well you're headed in the completely wrong direction. Do you know how to get back to Dubuque Street?"
"......."
"Hey bud, I said you're headed the wrong way."
"Burge."
"Oooookay, come with me."

later
"How long have you lived here, Frank?"
"Three days. Man if this girl doesn't talk to me I'm going to lay in the street and get killed by a car."
"If you lay down in the street you'll wake up in jail."
"Then I'll kill myself in jail."
"I've never seen a guy in a graphic skull t-shirt so upset before Frank."

I put the half limp kid on my arm and walked him the right direction. Fast forward half an hour; Sam and I have the kid stumbling down the alley to Burg,e where his terrified WWJD roommate is standing with the guy whose harboring Frank's ex-girlfriend, who he (Frank) had been molesting that night (her birthday). Got an RA downstairs so hopefully that poor WWJD can get a new roommate. Frank, I hope your head is in a vice and I hope you figure out that an 18 year old's break-up isn't worth jumping in front of cars for.

On a lighter note, I ran around in the thunderstorm on top the Linn Street parking lot in just me skivvies. We jumped all up and around the balustrades and I felt a bit like a gargoyle gone on all fleshy. My finale was the flinging of my briefs on top of the ModPod building.
This I guess is about the last real day of summer. Three more shifts at Donnelly's to close things out and then on Monday, Shakespeare at 8:30am. I'll hold on reminiscing until things are really sealed up.
Today is cleaning up the apartment and then trying to put down at least a hundred pages or two of the Mark Twain biography by Ron Powers. Imagine I'll do that Java House. Then tonight is the Cardinals first game in a new series with the Padres. All these damn games in California start at 9pm CST! Cubs fans I know feel the pain, I think all we did was swap opponents. I'm no Cub lover but I hope you guys keep Manny grounded into the dirt and maybe the Rockies will swoop up to take the NL West?

till next time..

Late Bloom Music

2009-08-19T13:27:00.004-05:00

So. Although it may a little late in the grand shoot of things to be coming into some real summer music it's happening anyway. If you haven't been getting around to any Tallest Man on Earth, then consider these couple of videos from the House of Blues in Dallas a candy kind of gift. For me at least, these songs build up an electricity in my forearms and I just sit here shaking my fist about twice as fast as the tempo of the songs. Sometimes the sound and look of thing calls out for you to howl in the rain and bury your head into the goodness of it all. Nectar!

this...

and this...

till next time... (!!!)

After 11 Hours of Sleep

2009-08-19T10:22:00.003-05:00

Fell asleep a little before 8 last night and came to sometime around 7 this morning. Felt good, woke up like I had been drinking coffee in my sleep and it's nice to be recharged after a bended week of unwinding. So many things have been pumping through me and there's still a lot to be dealt with before classes fire up in less than a week. Wonder if it'll be hard to strike the balance between academics and alchemy? As long as I don't fall behind in Russian I think it'll be a steady race in favor of the lighter horse. Dark horses, my dark horses at least, seem to keep their heads down when they know the heat is on. If the black mare gets you too good with the wrong timing the beast might loose it's legs altogether, you know? Better for him to keep in moderation and avoid the bum leg.
Three days off from work though... and now is near the middle of it so we'll see what little bit of galloping goes on while the carrots are still about.

till next time...

Post-Saturday

2009-08-16T03:01:00.003-05:00

While I'm starting this post it's 3:02am and I'm soaked after the rain we just had. Sitting here I'm wearing a bathrobe and eating nuts out of a tin... I feel like I should be at a ritzy hotel complaining about the water pressure in the shower, but I guess you can't always live what your'e dressed for.
(After that last paragraph, I stood up and got some water, sat back down and got sucked into watching Point Break for the first time. Someone should have warned me that Patrick Swayze surfs, that the chick from Free Willy is in all ocean related movies, and that Keanu Reeves really is that horrible of an actor.)
A few hours earlier in the night I was on the Old Capitol steps with the big pillars sitting comfortably at my feet. There was the sound of the water cracking apart as it hit the pavement beneath the drainpipes and the steady sound of breaking waves as they're pushed along by the tires of cars going by on the street at the bottom of the hill. Two buildings each sit on the slope with their corners making arrows that point to the two down hill arrows that make the corners of the building on whose steps I sat. On the top of each of those other corners four floodlights shine and the heavy drizzle is forced to look like a fast snow from the foot of those pillars.
A light blinks on the hospital across the river, a light blinks on the stacks at the dam on the river, a bit of lightning blinks like a twinkle in the eye of the everything and now instead of thunder the sound of a trains steam horn pushes through the storm, followed by the heavy metal spinning of it's wheels, followed by a burst of real thunder and a strengthening in the rain.
Up in the floodlights a moth gets beaten down out of sight, just too far away to see tiny collisions that are drowning it. A minute later and another moth goes down. Then a bat goes paddling by after whatever is left and he bops about unmolested. Then a girl falls asleep and it's time to go home.
Get home and warm up. Put on sandals and walk out in the storm with a plastic bottle of Beam. It rains hard at first and there's a house for rent that looks vacant, so I stop in for a look at the unlocked sunroom. Nice big screen windows let the sound but the lack of furniture or anything else makes me uneasy so I head back out onto the street. Nothing else really of note... I think my favorite thing to look at was this T-intersection. The through street was downhill coming from either direction, and the intersecting street moved downhill away from me, so all the water coming from two directions was sort of fanning out from thick streams in the gutters to an alluvial spread over the width of all available asphalt. A lot of little brown and red leaves were floating along in the depth of the streams, but got stranded and started spinning once the plane of water thinned out. Wish there could of been more lightning.

till next time..

So This Is Summer

2009-08-12T20:19:00.003-05:00

It's a hot and humid 8:20 in Iowa City tonight. Getting dark and still well up in the 80's but the ceiling fan has got some good stuff goin' on and there's a freezer stocked with bright plastic ice cube trays so I'm pretty unconcerned. I've been following the Cardinals with a certain fervor this season.. I guess mostly it has to do with working at a pub that has FoxSports Midwest and being able to watch every game and a little bit to do with being so deeply sunk in a sea of Cubs fans (rivalries aside, I'm an NL Central supporter). So the television got the baseball spirit sparked again but I still can't relegate so much of every evening just sitting there in the glare of the that glassy screen (that brown and green and spots of white just looks like heaven though), and we're well out of the reach of KTRS radio out of St. Louis. Happy news though! I overcame a small patch of my techno-wariness and ventured into the world of streaming radio and here I am now happily out 15 bucks and listening to Mike Shannon rumble out the play-by-play. Slap on the fact that the redbirds are winning tonight and well, shit, I feel like a kid again.
The last I remember spending any time seriously listening to a baseball game on the radio was back in junior high. I played baseball myself then and a typical summer evening would be a game or a practice with a team and then an hour or two of catch with my parents, them taking turning to check on whatever might be grilling up on the deck. Dinner would be inside in the air-conditioning and then my dad and I would go out to garage where I learn how to change oil or repaint the shutters or whatever else needed doing... the clearest memory might be the nights before the Pine Wood Derby, sanding down a piece of balsa wood into a model car with weights screwed into the undercarriage... I can't believe I never won that damn thing.
I guess that's the irony of my generation... and more so the few generations before me... maybe even every generation to an extent. The use of the uncomfortable and new in an attempt to preserve the cozy and remembered. Cardinals are up and it's time for a sandwich.

Till next time..

Return of the Hedonistas

2009-07-26T11:47:00.002-05:00

Back in Iowa City after a week of pedaling the two-lane highways of this suspiciously hilly state. The trip as a whole was a blast, add to that the fact that it was also a week off work and you get me feeling pretty great. Let's see if I can't throw together a quick recap of what happened...

Day 1- Around 5 or 6 in the evening we take off from Iowa City and there's Miller High Life and a volcano and soon enough I'm completely passed. We arrive in Council Bluffs, snag a campsite, and ride our bike a few blocks into town to a middle-ager bar with a volleyball court of soft cold sand. A few overpriced pitchers ($8 for Bud) and Keri and Drew and Cole and I are out knocking the ball around. I think I served up the most Aces, but who's counting? (I was. I made 16 points on serves and the next closest was 7) Bike back to the tents, freeze are asses off, and eventually fall asleep.

Day 2- It's the 19th of July, why is it 50 degrees? Pshh. Load up, suit up, cycle up, Drew is driving the van. We cycle out towards a decently short 40-some mile day. Outside of Council Bluffs we eventually hit the first town, Mineola I think, and I realized that RAGBRAI was essentially a lot of folks in their 40's drinking heavily and riding their bikes very quickly. One the Fischel brothers described RAGBRAI as being essentially a Girls Gone Wild for middle-aged midwesterners, which I thought was funny... even more so when I understood that it wasn't a joke.
We make another stop, just Keri and I now, in Henderson and have some awesome and cheap $2 chicken sandwiches, corn on the cob, and more watery Miller Lite. Mmm. Oh and by now the path has reached an inappropriate amount of topographical undulation which seems highly uncharacteristic of Iowa. Legs burrrn.
Soon enough though we pull into Red Oak, set up camp by the support van in the cemetery, and go in search of aloe, sunscreen, and booze. We find all three. We also find Quinn in the parking lot of the Pamida with some derby girls and the Puma camper and we all head down to the live music. On the way my sunburned knees and thighs start to ache something awful so I roll the legs of my gym shorts up into the elastic so that I'm strolling down the streets with polyester daisy dukes on and a plaid button up shirt. Class! One good result was the weathered but cute 30 year old blond women that slapped a Batman sticker on my ass. Then it was bedtime (warmer now).

Day 3- Wake up sore with sunburn, but the muscles were all feeling pretty great. Take some ibuprofen, take some Budweiser, take some Jim Beam, rub on some aloe, and I'm primed for business. The big climb to get out of Red Oak and vroooooooom!! I'm gone like a bullet now. Flying without hesitation through Vallisca and Nodaway, stopping only for a second or two at a high vantage point to take in the rippling green velvet of the soybeans below. A nice river too! And then again... whamooosh! The sweet spinning rhythm of the foot, ankle, calf, knee, thigh, and hip... somehow like the coupling and connecting rods that drive the steel wheels of a locomotive. Pushing and pulling in every direction at every moment. Round and round and round... I wonder how many revolutions I made with those pedals..hmm, revolutions!
I rolled into Corning sometime not too far from noon and a couple hours ahead of the rest of the Hedonistas.

More to come here***

Bipedial Locomotion ist Iowa

2009-07-18T13:05:00.003-05:00

In an hour or so it'll be time to hop in the van of the Hedonista Team and drive out to Council Bluffs, Iowa (the far west side of the state). Tomorrow morning is a 40+ mile bike ride followed by a week of 70+ mile days until we up in Burlington sun-burned, battle-tested, and Jim Beam-buzzed. The good life.
The thin stratum of intent and wiggles beneath the layers of camaraderie and liquor related revelry is the desire to more intimately understand the topography and sociology of the this midwestern slice of America that is Iowa, and that is home. Ready to see that corn wave proud and glistening green and even more ready to imagine the wild prairie that was burned, drained and destroyed to make way for those genetically engineered rows of corn. A pretty clever business, grow corn in Iowa to feed cows in Texas to be shipped back to Iowa. Meaning something like one ton of corn travels two thousand miles (powered by petroleum) to be returned to us as ten pounds of meat. Ahh. Well, at least maybe there will be some donkeys llamas to be enjoyed guilt-free.
Hoping also to scribble some landscapes in the little notebook and see if something won't manifest itself out from a week out of town. See you in seven!

take it easy..

Summer Chill

2009-07-17T17:00:00.002-05:00

Big cool down in Iowa City today, mid-July and somehow it's too chilly to be outside in shorts and a t-shirt? I was downright cold riding my bike for groceries earlier. Bikes. The Tour de France has been an awesome watch the past few days, especially the most recent two stages, which were each taken by impressive solo bursts out of lead groups. Nikki Sorensen made an insane run for it yesterday to take the win; after hundreds of kilometers up a few mountains and still having the leg strength for a push like that ..... damn. Today it was Heinrich Haussler who managed to stay out front of the pelaton by a big margin and managed to keep nearly half the field 20+ minute behind him. Alps soon.
Bikes, groceries and yeah! RAGRAI is almost here. I think we drive out tomorrow night to western Iowa to get set for a Sunday start? I spent some time today getting our bikes cleaned and waxed and that along with a bottle or two of bourbon should make for a pretty excellent week.

Last night we ate dinner in the Quad Cities with my parents. Lived large with corn on the cob, ribeye, and salad. Mmm. Then a few micro-brews and a piece of Mississippi Mud Pie (both phenomenal and recommended) at BlueCat in Rock Island and an hour or so at the slot machines and we came back to this county stuffed and satisfied. The drive home was clear skies and I'm willing to trade the twinkling cherries of a slot machine for the twinkling cherries of a supernova anytime.
Now it's off to Java House for a warm mug of St. Louis Blues on this faux-Fall evening. Will be reading that one book finally, hopefully getting it done before work tonight at 8. Stop in for a drink!

take it easy..

After Hours

2009-07-16T02:22:00.003-05:00

Ahh, the happy weight of money. Just worked the happy hour and closing shifts and made good money.. enough to make up for all that spending last night. The pub is clean and I'm ready for the cool bike home through the pentacrest and along the river. I wonder if there will be crickets again? Maybe the sprinklers are going on the Old Capital lawn and I can get a nice misting in before I zonk for the night.
Day off tomorrow and the plan is to finish reading Seth Abramson's Suburban Ecstasies (his book length poem) while I do laundry at Linn Street. Keri and I are headed over to the Quad Cities tomorrow evening to gather up anything that might be useful for camping along RAGBRAI and to catch dinner out with my parents to hear about their trip to New Mexico (my Mecca, sweet stream gurgling, pine smelling and red stone mountains, how I miss thee so!!). Next shift isn't until Friday night so let's get a lot done until then. Oh! Maybe I'll go see Harry Potter tomorrow?

take it easy..

Oh Morning

2009-07-15T11:22:00.002-05:00

Oh sweet, sweet head.. calm yourself. Things still spin.. slightly. What was last night? I remember a couple of bars, a couple of sketchy rooftops, a spliff, Triumph, and some sort of gray putty I was trying to make into a shark. Beautiful summer I love thee.
Now it's morning and I'd be happier if I'd been sleeping until now but we got some things moved in preparation for the big move in a couple of weeks. Big big apartment here I come! Spreaaaad out.
If I hustle I can make it to the 12:15 showing of Harry Potter.. hmm? Oh no I almost forgot about Jeopardy! The new episode is coming on now so I think I'll sit down to that and then bust over to the Potter flick. I think it will be nice out today.

take it easy..

Pushing Into Tuesday

2009-07-14T03:40:00.003-05:00

Ahhh, the smooth and welcome weight of some cash. Being broke for the day was not too bad, the only severe moment of weakness came after a long bike ride to the town of Hills. Coming back through Iowa City the smell of The Pit's cooking set some wild animal urges in motion and it was hard to think about anything but roasted meat for a few hours....
Work went well, and now there's money and a happy hour shift tomorrow and it's time to start thinking about the first month of rent at the new apartment, due in a couple of weeks. The thing about Monday nights is that if it's slow you can close early, and if not, well then you're making money and tonight was the latter.

Now it's a near perfect 67 degrees out and still a few hours before it rains. Hopefully I'll wake up to a dark and storming morning.... The bike ride home was calming after the shouts and tossles of the drunk crowd. For the first time I really noticed a few crickets chirping alongside the clicks of the sprinkler systems and the low mechanic inhales of all those window A/Cs.
It's getting close to 4am and I think I've wound down enough to fall asleep without getting anxious dreams about the bar. Going straight from work to bed is an adventure. Laying there in those few minutes of semi-sleep you wake up startled that you should be doing something, that you've somehow wandered home in the middle of your shift and crawled into bed. But that shouldn't be too much an issue until the student mass returns at the end of August.
To sign off; Pujols didn't pack much punch in the homerun derby, but that's okay. Sotomayor is moving closer towards confirmation which I think is positive but I guess I have reservations about her?? (too many pundits, me too ignorant about the judiciary). And the best guilty pleasure of my generation is built upon in less than 24 hours when the new Harry Potter movie is released. Ahhh Mr. Potter. Funny story about me and him.. maybe tomorrow.

take it easy..

About Half Summer

2009-07-13T16:35:00.000-05:00

It's somewhere near the halfway point of summer and it isn't too hot of a day to be enjoyable up here above Lou Henrii. Finally I'm broke. I spent last weeks tips on a new bag for hauling things around as my old one is deteriorating at a quickening pace. There was some cash from Friday night and some scrapings from Saturday afternoon but they went to pasta and ice cream cones and beer for the double-header yesterday at Wrigley (Go Cardinals.)
So there's a dollar sixty left. Probably I could dig through the pockets of my laundry and empty the change jars and have enough to revel a bit or eat something nice but I haven't really got the energy and anyway it sort of relaxes a certain part of the mind not to have any money. The gating off of a certain set of possibilities (those that cost) has given me its' liberating effect and made it easy lounge around reading and drinking coffee downtown.. I had three sixty when I got up. So instead of gin and tonics or heavy meals my mind is limber and I ran around Paris with Henry Miller and got to know a nice whore there....
What a happy strange evolution to be a person who can refuse to overdraw an account into credit, and instead embrace a temporary poverty of spendable income. Well, I suppose it's an easier angle to take when work comes again tonight and there's the promise of waking up tomorrow with a wallet a few presidents thicker.

take it easy..