stay golden

Gold, gold, gold.

Someone was bound to find it. Dig it up. Weigh it. Price it. I wonder who was the first person to say "This mustard-colored rock's gotta be worth something."

I'm remembering an Andy Warhol story, how he started painting money after a lady friend asked him "Well, what do you love most?"

Loving money is traumatic. It's always coming and going, switching hands, hanging out of some stripper's G-string.

I remember in kindergarden, being asked how I would make money when I grew up. "Veterinarian," I said because I wanted to bandage dogs.

In my public high school, we learned how to balance check books--there was a whole class on it.

I wish no one had to love money. I wish it didn't matter. No more poor people getting fat because they can't afford vegetables. No more humane societies killing dogs. All the kids who want to go to school in New York can just go.

Then I wonder: What would New York be without money? Or Los Angeles?

Or Vegas?

O America, land of a million sunset traumas, even now I hear the greasers in abandoned Allegheny junk-houses whisper...

"...stay golden."

You Are My Ulysses That I'll Never End

The streets howl with ghosts, the smell of cold rocks.

Edinburgh: Warm people bustling outside thorny houses.

I spend much of Scotland drunk/hung-over. Despite this I meet few Scotsmen. The hostel is run by Australians, and our roommates are French. When we meet, it is in an open door.

“’Ello," they say.

“Hello,” We say.

“’Ello," they say.

And so on. We must have stayed there, in the doorway, for at least two minutes greeting each other. We told them to eat a Hershey bar. They told us to watch Godard.

You have two minutes and an open door to communicate your cultural legacy. What will you say?

That night the Australians take us on a pub crawl ending at The Hive. Take the house from Mask of the Red Death and put a deejay in every room. Hang disco balls and strobes from the ceilings. Give Poe's worried guests cheap drinks and gyrating hips.

Violà Hive.

The next morning, I nurse my hangover with a peanut butter banana milk shake. Chelsea stirs a bowl of porridge. She's so groggy, she's talking about the future.

The Future: What I'm always preparing for / what I hope never-ever comes.

When we get to Dublin, the first thing we do is feast with our hosts, students at the local university. The three boys juggle studying and music (two guitars, some rat-a-tating) with happy yet critical cooking:

"Remember when Gregg burnt the chips?"

"Let's not speak of it."

When it's our turn to make dinner, I diligently chop half an onion before giving in to the Bailey's, already open. All is saved by Chelsea, her spicy, angelic pesto. I aid digestion by reading Flan O' Brian in a Yankee drawl.

Then, a party. The guests arrive. The smell of loose tobacco. A song by R.E.M:

The fear of getting caught

Of restlessness and water--

They cannot see me naked--

James Joyce is the slurred subject of the night. I never finished Ulysses, though I reference the book in my poetry. I love anything making me feel small: Highways, movie screens...James Joyce. My poems try and fail to hold oceans in paper cups. "No one's actually read Ulysses."

A chorus of objections. I stand corrected: At the Dublin city college, there is a whole class devoted to the book. The Irish fetishize Joyce much in the way that Americans build shrines to Hemingway's baby shoes.

Joyce and Hemingway: No, Joyce/Hemingway! By the time I finish a bottle of whisky, I'm convinced they're the same person, one far-flung sailor following s siren.

I've discovered the bridge between modernism and post-modernism. I want to call everyone I know. I want to give high-fives to animals. Break my bones and build fires.

Pour another drink.

The next night is spent in tense sobriety, huddled around a deck of cards. The game is Higher/Lower. We successfully guess that 34 cards are higher or lower than their previous card. The next card, card 35, has us biting our lips. We've come so far, we've drawn diagrams. Calculated probabilies. "Surely it's higher."

"Surely."

"Higher?"

"Higher."

Chelsea flips the card, and we flip a shit.

The card is lower.

---

Thus concludes my Scots-Irish-week-long-bus-hopping-hubaballoo.

The sun was too bright, the cemeteries too old. I can’t describe it. The people were too generous. So much happened, and in so short a time.

You know when film makers adapt Hunter S. Thompson by layering images in glittery, drug-induced sequences?

It was nothing like that.

It was a bottle of whisky with no hangover, a night talking about childhood bedrooms. Another night spent dancing. Birthday candles. Castles. The most masculine lip-ring you ever saw. "Jaysus!". The smell of seagulls. A ghost story.

Then, my forehead against the bus window, highway lights stabbing my eyes as if to say “wake up, wake up—”

The feeling of missing something I never lost.

In the song Voltaic Crusher/Undrum to Muted Da (typical title for Of Montreal), Kevin Barnes sings "You are my Ulysses that I'll never end."

Even though I'm back to writing essays and drinking shitty English coffee, part of me is still traveling--Hell if i know where.

Somewhere, I'm putting off a shower, writing a book I'll never end.

lightness

I call this 'Two Wes Anderson Houses Almost Kissing.' It is the best photograph i will ever take.

This morning, I got an email saying my paintings were accepted to be featured in a lil' lit' mag. Every time someone accepts my work, this is my reaction (sans the panning shot of past awards and published novels) :

I love the city. Especially now that spring's here.

I call this 'Two Colors of Levi Jean Almost Kissing.' It is the worst photograph I will ever take.

While getting my hair cut, back massaged, and feet detoxed at Ocean (a luxurious yet inexpensive salon. I didn't spend more than 70 pounds), I browsed the latest Vogue. Lana Del Rey was on the cover. I admire her (recorded) music, and her style--"Lolita gets lost in the hood"--so read the interview.

From the intersection of Nabokov and David Lynch

When asked why she didn't want to make another album, Lana shrugged: "I've said everything I want to say."

I feel like there's something heavy in me, a book, maybe. If i could just get it out, i know i would feel so much lighter. I wouldn't have to make anything again.

Academics are second to traveling. From March 4th - 10th, Chelsea and I will be in Edinburgh and Dublin. That said, I've taken to my Critical Theory class, especially our discussions about Untranslatable Terms. Here's an Arabic word that doesn't exist in the English language:

Ya’aburnee: Both morbid and beautiful at once, this incantatory word means “You bury me,” a declaration of one’s hope that they’ll die before another person because of how difficult it would be to live without them.

It's Sunday, and I don't want to do homework. Goodbye Internet. Hello dead white poets. Hello a song to pass the time:

Every time I'm Told to Write less like an American, I write more like an American

----

Deep Cuts

For Jack London

The idea is a vibrant thread—or is it a scar

left by a blade of hair, the memory of an ice flash?

Vibrancy ignites his oil lamp, the end

of a match. He strikes…

There: The story of a man lost

in the wild. He can’t build a fire, but dreams

of cutting open a dog so he can crawl inside. Somewhere

he’s blowing into his mittens—a thread clings

to his scabbed lips. Smiling, he cracks

them open, whistles a dog call.

---

This is the poem i handed in for Friday's workshop, one of many of my odes to the Author Jack London

In 9th grade, my Geography teacher showed me pictures of Route 66. Dylan unintentionally describes it best: "A highway of diamonds with nobody on it."

After my sister was born, My dad sold his motorcycle (didn't want to risk an accident). He keeps one of the gears--at least i think it's a gear, a tiny wheel i used to spin just to smell the metal on my fingers--in his desk drawer.

Recently, I discussed with another American how the longer we're abroad, the more we think of home; not wistfully, but in comparison. At home, there's so much space. We put up billboards just to make the sky smaller.

Here, every lawn square is fiercely staked and gardened. Even the countryside seems full.

In my Critical Theory class, i was asked if there were any American ideas that couldn't be translated, that would be impossible to understand unless you were intimate with the culture.

I said "Waffle House."

Cardiff Art

Partially Buried, James Rielly

I Feel Like I'm Living in A Box, James Rielly

Of all the artists on exhibit, James Rielly is my favorite. I love big, simple compositions."Partially Buried" takes up an entire wall. It's perfect.

Mutual Congratulations, John Banting 1937

Banting's "Mutual Congratulations" is apparently a class comment. He often represents the upper classes as talking skulls. Mmmyes.

Study For Self-Portrait, Francis Bacon 1963

"Study For Self Portrait" is postmodern poetry: We experience war, and suddenly we can't recognize our own faces.

An all-inclusive self-portrait is, in most cases, impossible. The artist has too many Selves: Past, present, future, and then all the Selves he imagines he could be if only he studied harder, took the 9:05 train instead of the 9:16. His what if Selves.

Picasso had the right idea, but he didn't go far enough. We're rotating cubes. Even in 4-dimensions, it's impossible to catch ourselves at a glance. We'd need eyeballs in all spaces at all times.

When I attempt a self-portrait, I resign myself to one awkward, sick Self. I invest significant energy in trying to be a graceful and well-adjusted person. I reserve the right to be a demonic chimera in portraits.

Dear Cardiff: I think you're one fine cup of coffee.

SWANS

I am 8 years old, and my dad tells me a story. A curse is put on a princess, turning her into a swan. She is banished to a lake with 12 swan maidens.

The princess can only appear to the man she loves in dreams, but even then she is terribly shy and never speaks. Instead she plays the harp. She makes the most beautiful music, more beautiful than Debussy and Arcade Fire put together.

The man falls in love with her. When he finds out about the curse, he doesn't give a damn. He makes his wizard turn him into a swan too.

After the wedding, the 12 swan maidens turn back into humans. The cursed princess and the self-cursed prince stay in the lake as swans.

This is the story in my head as, twelve years later, the swan follows me around the lake. I don't know why he's following me. I don't have bread. When I try taking his picture, he buries his head in his feathers, like one of those boys who look down in Facebook pictures.

The park is beautiful.

That night i work on my comic book. My drawing is okay, but my pacing is slow. Comic books are like movies. If you don't edit the panels, the reader gets bored.

i want to finish the comic before i come home for spring break. Since arriving Cardiff, i have been remarkably productive. Every day is another drawing or poem.

Next weekend i'm visiting Carolyn in Sheffield. The last time i rode a train across Wales, I sat next to an a man with giant thumbs, which he licked generously before turning the pages of his sheet music. That's the thing with Wales. Everyone has sheet music, a cello on their back.

The man on the train was a concert organist.

May we meet again, Big Thumbs. I raise my Mug to you.

it gets dark quick

I cross the bridge and walk over the highway on my way to class. I walk over the highway on Saturdays and Sundays, too.

It gets dark quick. I've been looking up those bands you keep recommending. They're pretty good.

Air is my favorite. Their new album, 'Le Voyage Dans La Lune', is about flying to the moon. It's based on a silent movie that was made in 1902, before there were atomic bombs and UFOs and The Simpsons.

I'm happy that even people without atomic bombs and UFOs and The Simpsons thought about flying to the moon, which is La Lune if you're French. Once, I watched the silent movie, the one from 1902, in a class. Darkness pulsed around the edges of the picture, as if the camera, which when you watch a movie is your eyeball, was very tired.

When the camera is very tired, it is called vignette.

When the camera is sleeping, it is called blackout.

When the camera is dreaming, it is called fade.

My eyeballs fade, and the highway isn't the highway at all, but another one, a bigger one that goes further than London, and I read somewhere that France is smaller than Texas, and the United Kingdom is smaller than France, and the highway in my head ends somewhere in the Pacific Ocean whose edge you are standing on because it is too cold to surf and anyway you don't know how.

I don't know how either, but I'll learn. I'm learning lots of things, like how to make coffee so I don't have to buy it every day and how not to wear ballet flats in the rain and how to draw people without them knowing and someday I'll know so much that I'll never have to tell anyone where I'm from.