Gutterballs

Watching The Big Lebowski. I decided to watch it after reading I'm a Lebowski, You're a Lebowski, which I had to do to cheer myself up after reading about the bombing of Hiroshima for class. I didn't think I would find a book more depressing than Primo Levi's Survival in Auschwitz. Then I read Letters from the End of the World: An Eye-Witness Account of the Bombing of Hiroshima. It turns out that things can get even more depressing than an account of someone being systematically dehumanized while being physically, mentally, and emotionally crippled by the intense suffering inflicted upon them by their fellow human beings.

As it happened, I was not accepted into the Iowa Writers' Workshop, but I'm actually pretty happy with this turn of events. I'm excited for the future. Still haven't heard from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, from which I'm supposed to get a letter sometime soon. I'm going to be glad when it comes, whether I get in or not. It's the waiting that kills me. Plus, the program is really unique and innovative, which makes not knowing ten times harder. I could see myself living in the South Loop, going to grad school. And when they called me for my phone interview, it sounded like they thought they were stealing me away from the Worskhop. I just let them keep thinking that.


Woo hoo! SPRING BREAK!! Yeah, I spent it traveling with my parents. I spent St. Patrick's Day with my parents and grandmother. I was in Spencer on Tuesday afternoon and Wednesday morning, celebrating my grandmother's 96th birthday. She's starting to talk more about going into a nursing home. Of course, she wants it to be near Uncle Jim and Aunt Mary. When we got to St. Paul, we spent an evening having dinner with Jim, Mary, and Kate. I told Jim about how Grandma manages to steer the conversation to Jim no matter what we're talking about. For example: I was telling her about that book I was reading for class, and how horrifying it was to imagine this poor man running around the bombed-out city of Hiroshima, desperately seeking his family, and somehow, we went from talking about that to talking about how Jim spent so much of his free time helping the neighbors out with yard work without being asked. She also mentioned during this trip that Jim was such a perfect son, he never once threw a temper tantrum.
Anyway, we took Grandma to Cindy's Steakhouse for her birthday dinner, and they brought her a small, yellow cake that was still warm. The whole meal was good, but the cake was especially nice. I think Grandma enjoyed herself, and she got to see a couple of her former students.

Then to St. Paul, where I bonded with my nephew and spent some time with my sister and her husband. Got another great meal from a fancified restaurant. We talked about my possibly staying up there for a while when the new baby comes, helping out a bit and saving money. I thought this might be nice, especially since Sam and I get along so well, and Meredith is able to get so much more done when she runs errands if there is someone else along to keep him occupied. When we went to Lowes on Thursday, she was able to get all of her business done while I took Sammy around the store. He seemed to like it. We looked at all the tools, then he sat in every riding lawn mower there. He calls them tractors. He also wanted to test out all of the bathroom fixtures: toilets, faucets, whathaveyous. It's pretty easy to keep him entertained. I think we spent at least an hour over a period of three days sitting in their front window looking out at all of the cars passing by on the road. "Big truck!" "Where are the people going?"
Also, he's scared of the car wash. Interesting.

So, that was spring break. Now I'm back in Iowa City sorting through things that I need to get rid of, being that I know for sure now that I'm not going to be here in the fall. The question is, where am I going? Chicago? St. Paul? New York City? Even Los Angeles is in the running.

For tonight, though, I'm keeping a narrow focus on movies and a Tombstone pizza that is currently cooking in my oven. Perfect, lazy end to a lazy spring break.

Creeping Treefingers

This is what happens when there's a snowfall, someone walks through it, and then strong winds blow all the snow away. You kind of get reverse footprints.
Trying to walk my sister's dog was a challenge. The wind blows the snow so that it collects in waves, and there are patches of bare ground in places, all according to the terrain. Then 25 mph winds blow snow hard in your face. So I was wading through snow drifts, trying not to let the dog pull me over, and I got to thinking about how my sister would have landed in Florida by then.







Poem #3 Remix:
She lives in Beverly Hills when She’s not in the sanitarium. Alcoholic, Unbalanced, Hysterical. There are shots of the real Frances as She is leafing through a photo album. She’s a slightly unhinged medium who has a nervous breakdown and is lobotomized. Zola Realism is Dedicated to surface authenticity that tries to project the illusion of breaking down form and content. After that, there are the first realistic shots of a spacecraft reentry. No actual fires are used, and the craft is almost fully intact, Considering it’s been in the ocean for 38 years. There is canned music and all References to homosexuality are removed. About the first sound stages – dreamy landscapes, romance, pretty people, heroic Television Playhouse and Television Theatre; Three Sisters, Death is a Spanish Dancer, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, where, again, All references to homosexuality have been removed.

Anyway, loving the camera phone is my new thing. Here's a photo of some graffiti that was spray painted on the Sam Becker Communications Building. I'm not going to argue that something's not art, but I can say with all confidence that this is some of the crappiest art I've ever seen. Someone must have just learned about the avant-garde in their art class. Now they're brilliant and rebellious. Perhaps they're the next Andy Warhol, but not as pretty.





Hunter doesn't sit for just anybody. He loves me because I give him chunks of bone full of marrow.

Trapped Under a Tree During a Rainstorm

June 23
I was watching what is apparently the Irish equivalent of PBS last night and they were talking about village boundary walls and how significant they were years and years ago. So happy I’m going to the Aran Isles, because that’s where they filmed most of the program. One man was talking about how his aunt wouldn’t let him and his cousins dig around the boundary wall because she said there might be bodies there. I don’t know how common this was, but, at least in his area, when women had miscarriages, they would take their unbaptized babies and bury them under the walls. This was typically done under cover of darkness, and he said miscarriages usually happened because the women would work too hard while they were pregnant.

Suzanne wrote a very cool piece about a grave digger/groundskeeper. I like the contrast between the living body and the dead – the disgusting nature of all bodies full of mucus and blood and come and carcinogens, and the decaying body, be it human or animal; which reminds me, I need to visit St. Michan’s Church.
The green room in Olympia Theater on Dame Street is supposed to be have a poltergeist, and people say that Johnathan Swift haunts St. Patrick’s Psychiatric Hospital. I should take a Ouija board over there and ask him what he thinks of my writing.

“Playboy of the Western World” supposedly caused riots – most popular explanation is that it used the word “shift” – ladies undergarment – outraged people.
“The Shadow of the Glen” – two spaces, two different spiritualities. In the house, it is dark and full of uncertainties and superstition. Outside, “by the grace of God,” nature will provide, the sun always rises in the morning in the East. Power of the oratory – “you’ve a fine bit of talk, stranger.”
Last night’s play was okay – “The Weir.” I think I’ll look it up so I can catch some of the things I missed early on because my ear was still adjusting to the rural accent.

June 24
Last night went to a pub called John Mulligan. It was very cool. I need to take my parents there. They had the best Guinness I’ve ever tasted.
I need to find the Hill of Tara. I think the story of Lugh the Long Handed and the Tuatha De Danann might be where all of the fairie lore originated. Supposedly, the Tuatha De Danann were in a battle against the Fomorians and were losing, and rather than surrender, they retreated into a mystical realm behind the hills.

June 26
Discussing The Book of Evidence. Character that’s given the most life in Freddie’s confession is the woman in the painting, for whom he imagines a very believable history. While I was reading it, I completely forgot that it was all supposed to be in Freddie’s imagination.
1960s – car bombs were generally placed in public areas – outside schools, parks, churches, shopping centers, and not outside police barracks or army bases. That seems very counter intuitive. I don’t get it. Was it to prove that they didn’t have any regard for human life and so were willing to do anything? And I guess if they only blew up police stations and such, then maybe policemen would become martyrs. By attacking the population, they create a distrust in government – people feel that their government can’t protect them – and a war weariness; people would demand that the gov. give in to terrorists to make the killing stop.

Took the bus home. Long ride, very nauseating. By the time I got off, I could barely stand up straight. Saw the garda arresting a group of people for no known reason. Woman was particularly annoying, trying desperately to play innocent and doing a terrible job. “Seriously? Are you serious? Seriously?” One of the guys standing nearby who was not wearing a uniform called one of the officers by his first name, Eddie, and let him use his mobile phone, presumably to call the station. I wonder if the first guy was just off duty or if he actually just knew this officer on a first-name basis. Probably the former, but it’s nice to pretend that the garda are just not so uptight. I was just thinking about how they don’t carry guns and how the UI just started allowing our campus cops to start carrying guns. Now that’s a good idea. I love going to class everyday knowing that I could be killed at any moment by some jackass with an eighth-grade education who thinks my phone is a gun. I always remember that time the cops busted into that artists studio without a warrant or anything and shot him dead because, they claimed, they thought his phone was a gun. I highly doubt it. That sounds like a bunch of dirty cops pulling a hit to me.
But anyway, there also wasn’t room in the garda’s car for all of the arrestees and the garda, too, so the guy with the mobile let them use his car. That would never happen in the US.
I hadn’t noticed until today when I heard one thunderclap while in class, but when it rains here, it’s usually just rain – there’s almost never a thunderstorm, whereas in Iowa, it hardly ever rains without it being a thunderstorm. It must have to do with the proximity to the ocean.

Malcolm MacArthur: real-life Freddie Montgomery (“Book of Evidence”) Tried to look him up on Wikipedia and it went directly to an article titled, “Grotesque, Unbelievable, Bizarre and Unprecedented.” There’s not a whole lot about him, except that he’s dangerous and killed a couple of people. Lame.
Northern Ireland trip tomorrow. I’ve been looking up some places that I’d like to see, if we get the chance. We haven’t gotten the trip itinerary yet.
The LIST:
Grace Neill’s (form. Kings Arms, 1611) Donaghadee, County Down.
Beltany Stone Circle, Tops Hill, Raphoe, County Donegal. “Baal Tinne” = “Fire of Baal” = Sun god Baal, dates back to 2000 BC, older than Stonehenge.
Carrickfergus Castle, County Antrim, 1185 = oldest intact castle in Ireland. also Dunluce Castle ruins in Nr. Portrush, 1300s.
Staying in tonight. Have to catch the bus at IES at 9am. If the Luas isn’t running, I’ll have to run, run.

news flash: elvis and evil are everywhere

The last few days have been fairly eventful. Not so much because of midterms, but because, for some reason, a couple has come to our campus (with their two pre-teen children and their obviously single female friend in tow) to stand outside in the Pentacrest all day every day and tell the students why they are going to hell. Why did they invade our campus uninvited? Apparently, seeking knowledge and progressive ideas is evil, and thus, we will spend eternity burning in the fires of Hell. They came, not so much to tell us how to avoid Hell, but to let us know that they are going to Heaven and we are not. Note to curbside evangelists: Get a job!

But I have been misleading by writing “for some reason.” The reason is, of course, that these people are in dire need of attention. They must show everyone how holy they are (these people refer to themselves as “saints,” by the way) or, in other words, how much better they are than everyone else.

FYI: I found out that I am condemned to the fires of Hell because I have pierced ears. I’ll probably see all of you there, because here’s what else gets you into Hell: everything.

I was raised as a Methodist and left the church many years ago because, well, because of people like those mentioned above. The last straw was when I went to talk to my pastor after a dear friend had just passed away, and he essentially told me that she was in Hell because she had smoked pot. I realized that I didn’t want to have anything to do with a group of people who would casually tell a sixteen-year-old that her newly departed friend is going to spend the rest of eternity being tortured by centaurs or whatever the fuck mythological creatures supposedly reside in the netherworld.

What is with Christians, anyway? Or any religion for that matter, but the fact that Christians have this idea of a place where people spend the rest of time being sodomized by a satyr in a Viking helmet while simultaneously standing up to their calves in broken glass with the best bloody mary ever mixed sitting just…out…of…reach. Damn. I’m sure other religions have a similar idea of eternal punishment of some kind, but I don’t like the religion I was raised with, so I’m not going to bother studying up on other ideas to rebel against.

Oh, yeah. You may be wondering how these “saints” that I mentioned above make money if they don’t have jobs. Apparently, they go from town to town insulting people until someone punches them; then they sue that person. Great, huh? I might also be impressed if the “saints” themselves weren’t so pathetic. Their poor kids. They just sit there in folding chairs, staring blankly, with absolutely no emotion, and saying nothing. I kind of suspect that they’re not live children, but robots or dolls or something. Robots would certainly fit in with my conspiracy theories about organized religion.