Inbox, outbox
Inbox:
o the new live Wilco record "Kicking Television." A disappointing show, and only for completists.
o the Putomayo 2005 Sampler.
o a check for $50 from Toshiba. Thanks, Toshiba!
Outbox:
o a submission of five poems to Black Warrior Review.
o an application to the Stegner Fellowship.
A man on my block died last night. Maryann, a woman two houses down to east gave me the skinny as I came back from my run. It happened like this: last night at 1 am or so I noticed two NYPD cruisers and patrollers taking statements at the house two houses to the west. Witnesses, those thick black statement pads like halved phone books, idling cruisers. I tried not to worry about it and safely got past the glance of one officer who regarded me and my 40 of Guinness in a plastic bag with a manner that was briefly but definitely interrogative. This morning, after the run, two cruisers remained there. I eyed officers going into and out of the bottom floor apt., which has a separate entrance from the rest of the brownstone. Scenes from Law & Order kept recurring to me. I imagined that if called on to provide any information, I wouldn't offer up anywhere near the same level of moxie and attitude witnesses do on the show. That's the show's most unconvincing element, I think. In the face of an actual life event or death event which will impact actual people, I like to think that I'd be more compliant. But so the old woman who turned out to be Maryann saw me stretching on the sidewalk and asked if I was alright - apparently joggers are rare sights in Brooklyn, and a young man sitting on the sidewalk in their eyes has got to be injured. No, I told her, just stretching. A man died down there last night, she said. I got up and went over. Apparently this man, John perhaps, was 42 and a bouncer. He had so many girls coming and going that it wasn't funny, Maryann opined. Apparently he drank, fine, but the Russian woman (beats me) found out that he'd been a user of some drug or other too.
Remarking that this occurence is "sad" and "a waste" seems to be a terrific understatement, and the fact that I even find myself writing about it makes its other dimensions appear, however partially. It's like the few weeks when my friend JBG lived in Springfield OR during the reign of some still-uncaught arsonist: every other night it seemed another house near his went up in a safety-orange cone of fire, and the sense of being either unsuccessfully hunted or successfully toyed with by some higher power made him uneasy in the extreme.
Also makes me think of Eamon Grennan's technique of calling on people in class - no rhyme or reason, no warning, just out of the blue: So right, good Hathaway, but what do you think about it Wil? Like a match of academic Battleship with questions instead of shells.
And the whole Gravity's Rainbow extended metaphor of artillery, ballistics, and brennschluss, i.e. main-engine cut-off (MECO in NASA acronymics): the point at which vector becomes set.
As to other volleys, well, it's time to leave the house and see.
o the new live Wilco record "Kicking Television." A disappointing show, and only for completists.
o the Putomayo 2005 Sampler.
o a check for $50 from Toshiba. Thanks, Toshiba!
Outbox:
o a submission of five poems to Black Warrior Review.
o an application to the Stegner Fellowship.
A man on my block died last night. Maryann, a woman two houses down to east gave me the skinny as I came back from my run. It happened like this: last night at 1 am or so I noticed two NYPD cruisers and patrollers taking statements at the house two houses to the west. Witnesses, those thick black statement pads like halved phone books, idling cruisers. I tried not to worry about it and safely got past the glance of one officer who regarded me and my 40 of Guinness in a plastic bag with a manner that was briefly but definitely interrogative. This morning, after the run, two cruisers remained there. I eyed officers going into and out of the bottom floor apt., which has a separate entrance from the rest of the brownstone. Scenes from Law & Order kept recurring to me. I imagined that if called on to provide any information, I wouldn't offer up anywhere near the same level of moxie and attitude witnesses do on the show. That's the show's most unconvincing element, I think. In the face of an actual life event or death event which will impact actual people, I like to think that I'd be more compliant. But so the old woman who turned out to be Maryann saw me stretching on the sidewalk and asked if I was alright - apparently joggers are rare sights in Brooklyn, and a young man sitting on the sidewalk in their eyes has got to be injured. No, I told her, just stretching. A man died down there last night, she said. I got up and went over. Apparently this man, John perhaps, was 42 and a bouncer. He had so many girls coming and going that it wasn't funny, Maryann opined. Apparently he drank, fine, but the Russian woman (beats me) found out that he'd been a user of some drug or other too.
Remarking that this occurence is "sad" and "a waste" seems to be a terrific understatement, and the fact that I even find myself writing about it makes its other dimensions appear, however partially. It's like the few weeks when my friend JBG lived in Springfield OR during the reign of some still-uncaught arsonist: every other night it seemed another house near his went up in a safety-orange cone of fire, and the sense of being either unsuccessfully hunted or successfully toyed with by some higher power made him uneasy in the extreme.
Also makes me think of Eamon Grennan's technique of calling on people in class - no rhyme or reason, no warning, just out of the blue: So right, good Hathaway, but what do you think about it Wil? Like a match of academic Battleship with questions instead of shells.
And the whole Gravity's Rainbow extended metaphor of artillery, ballistics, and brennschluss, i.e. main-engine cut-off (MECO in NASA acronymics): the point at which vector becomes set.
As to other volleys, well, it's time to leave the house and see.
posted by Wil at
12:53 PM
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