On Sloths
By James Bezerra
Sloths are quick
swimmers.
This is not
a poem,
but a delightful
fact.
but a delightful
fact.
.
.
.
Friday, October 21, 2016
On Applying Karma as a Luxury Tax.
On Applying Karma as a Luxury Tax
By James Bezerra
Yachts
may not
carry
lifeboats.
.
.
.
Haunted.
I had to do a writing exercise for one of my classes. The prompt I went with basically required writing something that is “haunted by cinema”. This phrase “haunted by cinema” sums up an idea that is commonly discussed in writing classes: that movies have had a dramatic effect on the way that narrative writing works. There are things that movies do very well, like convey motion and action and the visual, things which written words do not do as well. Sometimes narrative writing tries to adapt itself to the strictures and functions of film and a lot of people would say that doing so undercuts the things writing can do that movies can’t (interiority, history, examination, etc.). So that is where this phrase “haunted by film” comes from.
The exercise below is not terribly good, but I tried to steer into the skid by invoking the logic of movies while using language that movies normally don’t have access to.
.
.
.
The Building in 6 Scenes.
The Building in 6 Scenes
By James Bezerra
In reality, the building is old.
Two stories of damp brick resting on a story of gray stone and masonry.
Pre-war.
Which war?
Who could know these things?
Which wars?
Twenty small units inside. The wood floors still original, largely. Inartful patchwork ribbons of wood around the radiators, which were replaced after one of the wars, but before one of the others. In 205, the second floor at the back corner, facing out at the rainy dog park, an obese cat like a roly-poly panther, weighs enough to make the floors creak as she trumbles over to the window, focuses up at the windowsill, tenses her girthy body. Leaps. Lands there, skitteringly. Plops her body and gazes out at the dogs; dashing, darting, leaping. Dogs. Idiots.
In the French New Wave story of the building, the aluminum sink - clearly not original - leaks. It drips. It drips. It drips.
It drips.
It.
Drips.
Drip.
The woman who lives in this entirely black and white apartment - 306 in the back, also facing the park, but in the center of the side of the building - is a typical femme. She leans against the soft old wood of the window frame. She gazes out, her small mug of black coffee in one hand. A hand-rolled cigarette in the other. Her silk robe drawn only loosely across her body. She is looking out at a man playing with his dog as she might once have with a child. He is simple in is good looks. He looks up and sees her looking at him. They share this gaze together. Because rain is tittering the glass of the window, he can not tell if she is crying, but he thinks that she is. He calls to his dog and he leaves the park.
In the Noir story of this building, the men wait in 301, third floor at the front right corner. From there they can peer down into the street at the parking spots below. The men have the lights off, so that she will not know that people are in her home. One of the men is tied to a chair. His own desk chair. He is bleeding from his face, which is pulpy, but this scene is not violent. All the violence has already happened or is about to.
The other two men - one of them has big bloody knuckles, the other has a gun - are smoking the cigarettes they found in the desk. “When does she normally get home?” One of the men asks.
“She’s not coming home tonight,” the man in the chair tries to weakly lie, which is brave in its useless way, because he knows it means they will hit him again.
In the Horror film version, the camera is low on a dolly and moves frictionlessly around the halls, looking slightly up. It is the glide of a small ghost around the building. The shot moves through a door and into 108, first floor at the front corner of the building. Bars on the windows because these windows are at street-level. The building having been built back when such a thing was not terrifying.
The ghost shot comes slowly to rest on a blacked out corner of of the closet where there are small skittering animal noises. Rats fighting there in the darkness. Shrill little squeaks, aggressive. One rat dashes away. Slowly a larger, grislier rat wanders out of the dark corner. It is dragging something, a wet tendril of some kind. It wanders further from the darkness. The tendril is an optic nerve, a small pretty human eye dragging at the end.
In the American romantic comedy, the building always smells like cookies.
“I love my new building,” she says into her cell phone as she checks her mail, “it always smells like cookies.” She is exactly as young and vibrant and charming and plastic-perfect as she is supposed to be.
She reaches back into the metal shoot of her mail box and a quizzical expression passes across her face, “Did you send me a package?” She says into her phone.
She removes a small box.
“Oh,” she says, “you didn’t. It isn’t for me. It is for my neighbor.”
She knocks on the door of 205. The man who opens the door is exactly as young and vibrant and charming and plastic-perfect as he is supposed to be. The fall in love, experience some initial difficulties, then overcome them and everything is perfect, more or less, forever.
In the documentary, they open with an establishing shot of the building. It is two stories of damp brick resting on a story of gray stone and masonry. Cut to a lingering shot of the front door of the building. The door opens, a French woman steps out and puts on her very dark sunglasses. She moves left out of frame.
The door falls slowly closed behind her.
A young couple, clearly in love, enter from the right side of the frame, carrying grocery sacks brimming with fresh and colorful things. They pull the door open and go inside.
The door falls slowly closed.
It goes on like this for awhile.
Two large, hulking men exit the building, hands in their pockets, and shuffle hurriedly away.
The door falls slowly closed.
A couple of rats skitter through the corner of the shot.
The voice over begins:
In reality, the building is old.
Two stories of damp brick resting on a story of gray stone and masonry.
Pre-war.
Which war?
Who could know these things?
Which wars?
Twenty small units inside. The wood floors still original, largely. Inartful patchwork ribbons of wood around the radiators, which were replaced after one of the wars, but before one of the others. In 205, the second floor at the back corner, facing out at the rainy dog park, an obese cat like a roly-poly panther, weighs enough to make the floors creak as she trumbles over to the window, focuses up at the windowsill, tenses her girthy body. Leaps. Lands there, skitteringly. Plops her body and gazes out at the dogs; dashing, darting, leaping. Dogs. Idiots.
CUT
In the French New Wave story of the building, the aluminum sink - clearly not original - leaks. It drips. It drips. It drips.
It drips.
It.
Drips.
Drip.
The woman who lives in this entirely black and white apartment - 306 in the back, also facing the park, but in the center of the side of the building - is a typical femme. She leans against the soft old wood of the window frame. She gazes out, her small mug of black coffee in one hand. A hand-rolled cigarette in the other. Her silk robe drawn only loosely across her body. She is looking out at a man playing with his dog as she might once have with a child. He is simple in is good looks. He looks up and sees her looking at him. They share this gaze together. Because rain is tittering the glass of the window, he can not tell if she is crying, but he thinks that she is. He calls to his dog and he leaves the park.
CUT
In the Noir story of this building, the men wait in 301, third floor at the front right corner. From there they can peer down into the street at the parking spots below. The men have the lights off, so that she will not know that people are in her home. One of the men is tied to a chair. His own desk chair. He is bleeding from his face, which is pulpy, but this scene is not violent. All the violence has already happened or is about to.
The other two men - one of them has big bloody knuckles, the other has a gun - are smoking the cigarettes they found in the desk. “When does she normally get home?” One of the men asks.
“She’s not coming home tonight,” the man in the chair tries to weakly lie, which is brave in its useless way, because he knows it means they will hit him again.
CUT
In the Horror film version, the camera is low on a dolly and moves frictionlessly around the halls, looking slightly up. It is the glide of a small ghost around the building. The shot moves through a door and into 108, first floor at the front corner of the building. Bars on the windows because these windows are at street-level. The building having been built back when such a thing was not terrifying.
The ghost shot comes slowly to rest on a blacked out corner of of the closet where there are small skittering animal noises. Rats fighting there in the darkness. Shrill little squeaks, aggressive. One rat dashes away. Slowly a larger, grislier rat wanders out of the dark corner. It is dragging something, a wet tendril of some kind. It wanders further from the darkness. The tendril is an optic nerve, a small pretty human eye dragging at the end.
CUT
In the American romantic comedy, the building always smells like cookies.
“I love my new building,” she says into her cell phone as she checks her mail, “it always smells like cookies.” She is exactly as young and vibrant and charming and plastic-perfect as she is supposed to be.
She reaches back into the metal shoot of her mail box and a quizzical expression passes across her face, “Did you send me a package?” She says into her phone.
She removes a small box.
“Oh,” she says, “you didn’t. It isn’t for me. It is for my neighbor.”
She knocks on the door of 205. The man who opens the door is exactly as young and vibrant and charming and plastic-perfect as he is supposed to be. The fall in love, experience some initial difficulties, then overcome them and everything is perfect, more or less, forever.
CUT
In the documentary, they open with an establishing shot of the building. It is two stories of damp brick resting on a story of gray stone and masonry. Cut to a lingering shot of the front door of the building. The door opens, a French woman steps out and puts on her very dark sunglasses. She moves left out of frame.
The door falls slowly closed behind her.
A young couple, clearly in love, enter from the right side of the frame, carrying grocery sacks brimming with fresh and colorful things. They pull the door open and go inside.
The door falls slowly closed.
It goes on like this for awhile.
Two large, hulking men exit the building, hands in their pockets, and shuffle hurriedly away.
The door falls slowly closed.
A couple of rats skitter through the corner of the shot.
The voice over begins:
V.O.
It is a pre-war building ...
.
.
.
Monday, October 17, 2016
In Need of a Patron Saint.
I have been having a few difficult days.
Only in my head though.
It is a kind of vicious irony. For so long one of the only things I knew I really wanted was to get into an MFA program. AND I DID IT! I am in one and it is a good one and it is in Portland and that is awesome and - therefore - I am awesome.
But being here has been hard. It is hard to move very far away to a very different place and to do it alone. The difficulty is compounded by the fact that I am someone who has had to restart his life more than once. Turn-it-off-and-turn-it-back-on. For some strange reason, I feel like that is what I am doing here right now.
I heard a TED Talk the other day with a writer named Lidia Yuknavitch and she was reflecting on her success - or lack thereof - over the course of her life and she said something like, “How many times I have had to reinvent myself from the ruins on my choices …” and because I was in a sour and blue Hamlet sort of mood I thought to myself, “You tell ‘em sister. I know what you mean.”
It occurred to me almost right away though how much of a self-involved idiot I am. From the back of my brain came the voice of that part of me that actually has goals and stuff and it said, “You are not here all sad and lonely because of the ruin of your choices, you dumb shit. You are here because you are one of the relatively small percentage of people who got accepted to one of these things. Of course you are feel isolated, you don’t know anyone in this state and you have been here less than a month. Stop being such a self-pitying jag-off.”
I had to concede that all of those were good points.
Now, that does not mean that the clouds parted and the shown down upon my face and I smiled. Let’s be clear, much of my difficulty is external. To make a long story short - and say it with me if you have heard this one before - : there is never enough money.
I am not starving (yet), but I’ve had constant struggles with the admissions, housing, and financial aid offices, I have not yet been able to find a job, I feel like the other people in my program have figured all this stuff out already (although objectively most of them clearly have not), I’m kind of pissed that this program has not (thus far) given me the support (financial, emotional, or professional) that I was expecting, and - because I am given to flights of geopolitical grandeur - I look at these problems and at most of the chapters of my life and see that the source of most of my life stress has been money - just normal fucking money - and how the hell does it make any sense to build a society where such a thing could be true?
A couple of years ago, when I was in a similar predicament while getting my MA, I tweeted, “This starving artist thing looked a lot better on paper.”
On top of everything else, I had a terrible and nasty cold about two weeks ago (it knocked me on my ass for several days) and I just have not been able to kick the sniffles and the cough. So it has been two weeks now that I have been some amount of sick.
There should be a patron saint I can pray to about these things.
I walk around downtown Portland when I need to clear my head and downtown Portland is full of homeless people. They are just all over the place. Recently I had a conversation with a native Portlander who was complaining about the population boom of homeless people and he said, “I hate them. I just hate the homeless everywhere.” And he explained why and I guess I could understand where he was coming from, but I do not hate them, in fact when I wander around, they make me bashful and a little afraid because I think about how easily I could become one f them. There is some hyperbole to this, but not much. I may not be living on the knife edge of poverty, but I live close enough to it that I can peer over the edge.
So like I said, this starving artist thing looked better on paper.
I know that this raincloud I feel like I’m living under is a combination of being alone in a distant place, being somewhat disappointed by the reality of my program (as opposed to the fantasy land I’d imagined it to be), worrying about money every third thought, and then feeling generally as though my life has been a series of violent, disaster-averting hairpin turns rather than a steady and progressive movement forward.
Maybe it is all of us, or maybe it is just me, but I have this thorough feeling of un-accomplishment. Of disappointment in myself for all of the things I have wanted to do but been unable to do, so far. This is different than imposter syndrome (which everyone loves to talk about now). It is just run-of-the-mill disappointment. So common it is barely even worth commenting upon, which is kind of heartbreaking in its own way.
Now all that being said, there are cures for all of these ailments. Obviously perspective is one (I’ve been here only about a month and I should chill the fuck out about rainclouds and disappointment). Another is exertion (a week from now I should be able to start running again and until then I should knuckle down and do all this schoolwork instead of feeling sorry for myself). Attitude is probably the final cure for what ails me (Yes life can be difficult sometimes, but feeling sorry for yourself just makes it harder. So turn that frown upside down, asshole).
Anyway, I am going to go do stuff now while attempting to maintain a positive attitude.
.
.
.
Saturday, October 15, 2016
LOOK AT THIS VIDEO OF ME DOING A READING!!!
I look terribly fat here and I was SO nervous, but it was a fun night.
.
.
.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)