Journal Entries by 133

I’ve tried day in and day out to show the world that I’m worth something, that I can prevail through all of the stress and b.s. revolving around me. It’s hard, sure it is, what isn’t nowadays? You wake up at 6:30 a.m., brush your teeth, wash your face, get dressed, make sure everything in your room is put away and all the lights are turned off, lock your door, take the key out, look back and see that your book is still on your desk, so you put your keys down and grab the book, and walk out again. You walk down the dark hallway, because no one ever wakes up as early as you, and the light switch is at the other end of the hall. Down the stairs, slowly and quietly, making sure not to wake anyone else up. Open the door and step outside into the freezing, bitter cold air, stop! - and then realize you left your keys in your locked room - on the desk where your book was. I’ve started more days like that, more than I can count on both hands. I’ll go eat breakfast, see my friends, and realize that somehow, in the six hours of sleep I got the previous night, I did something “terribly, unforgivably wrong” with my girlfriend, and have to endure countless, never-ending hours of being ignored and having to think about what it was I could have possibly done - while I was sleeping. As soon as I get to my classes I notice that I have the wrong binder, and because of this, don’t have the homework for the day. Lunch comes quickly, and there again I’m greeted with cold eyes, and a shrug of the shoulder. After my classes are finished, I go back to my dorm, call my parents to say “hello,” and get bombarded with “did you finish your college essays?! Did you send them in?! you can’t come home until they’re done! Get moving! Maybe we can find a college for you that doesn’t have homework, haha!”
So let’s recap: 1) locked out of room because I left my keys on my desk; 2) girlfriend is mad at me for something I did while I was asleep; 3) didn’t turn in my homework because I brought the wrong binders to class; 4) girlfriend is mad at me for something I did while I was asleep; 5) parents are pushing me too hard to get college work done, and now can not come home or do anything else until they are, in fact, done. Of course, I’ll be able to get into my room later, all I have to do is find my dorm parent. I’ll send my homework via e-mail, and still get some sort of grade. I’ll sit down at my desk for twenty minutes and finish my essays. And hopefully I’ll realize what I did wrong, and apologize for the right thing later that same night. I’ll always be able to handle the pressure, it’s just a lot to deal with all in one sitting.


I’ll do what I can
Do my own thing
Listen to no one but myself
I’ll prove them all wrong
It’s my destiny
And mine alone.

What I Will Have (Re)Read By The End of Next Summer

I’ve been asking all of my students for a list of at least four books they’d read or reread over the summer. Here is a compendium of titles/authors:
Sophomores
The Alex Rider series
Soldier X
Splinter Cell
Tuesdays with Morrie
Mitch Albom
The Catcher in the Rye
Ink Heart
The Secret Life of Bees
To Kill a Mockingbird
The perks of being a wallflower
Romeo & Juliet (girls; boys ‘would rather die’)
Eclipse (girls)
Peaches (girls)
The Kite Runner
Fahrenheit 451
Into the Wild
The Lovely Bones
Little Women
Of Mice and Men
Dune
Lord of the Rings (any/all)
A Thousand Splendid Suns
Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy
Shogun
Anne of Green Gables, Lucy Maud Montgomery
Ender’s Game
A Separate Peace
Watership Down
The Iliad
Life of Pi
The Book Thief
The Things They Carried
Siddhartha
1984
Flowers for Algernon
Angels & Demons
Jodi Picoult books
Harry Potter (any/all)
How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents
The House on Mango Street
Seniors
The Lovely Bones
Life of Pi
The book thief
Peaches
To kill a mockingbird
Autobiography of Frederick Douglass
Of Mice and Men
Black Boy
Frankenstein
The Jungle
The Outsiders
Huckleberry Finn
Diary of Anne Frank
Me Talk Pretty One Day
The Kite Runner
Ender’s Game
Robinson Crusoe
Sherlock Holmes
A Separate Peace
Lord of the Flies
The Catcher in the Rye
Animal Farm
The Secret
An End to Suffering
Zazie in the Metro
Mehmet, My Hawk
Poems of Rumi
Short stories of F. Scott Fitzgerald
The Great Gatsby
The Bourne Supremacy, etc.
(oh yeah, and the image above is of Marty Feldman in "The Adentures of Sherlock Holmes' Smarter Brother," 1975)

Untitled by Jess L'Heureux

Resolutions

Jon Hartmann took this photo in Benares (Varanasi). It is not the typical photo of Benares. Part of it levitated to the blog title. We've been trying to get through to that number to put a Green Hill blog advertisement on that nice billboard on the right. Jon's "In Dimapur" essay (part one) was posted in November.

Still in the frame of mind - anthropophagic, animist - of the last post, still perusing (thanks to Joseph Löbb's dad, who also pointed out this particular poem to me) Adam Makkai, ed., IN QUEST OF THE ‘MIRACLE STAG’: THE POETRY OF HUNGARY, Volume 1 (Chicago: Atlantis-Centaur, 1996) - wherein this résumé appears on p. 264:

CIVILISATION

In the past the warring nations
Did not follow any precept:
The strong plundered what he could, and
Everything he looted, he kept.

That has changed now, as the world has
A more legalistic flavor:
When the strong now do some mischief
They confer and - vote in favor.

- János Arany (1817-1882), trans. Peter Zollman

Poem by Curtis Bram

Africa

Wild Gazelle running in African plain, on his own he is himself
He is crossing the wasteland, thinking of saving, alone he is himself

He, running, reaching a village nearby, he coming, saving the hungry people
He is bringing them to the sand, to brave coming he is himself

They suffering, starving, he come with hope, a brilliant glowing to provide being
He stinging defeat, to the last stand, he, succumbing not, he is himself

Food approaching the villagers eyeing their enlightenment to save them alone
They excited realizing their potential preparing the excavation, he is himself

They digging making their constructing pottery art perhaps darkness he is himself
He entering village they standing looking he enters trauma he is himself

Club descending attacking him bringing gift he unconscious saving he losing hope
His glow fading his failure looming he enlightenment leave he is himself

He place clay dome pain heat flame scorching he on his own they chant food
His death approaching his mission fail he food give he is himself

This neopost-everything poem by Curtis Bram was written, as it turns out, under appropriate duress. About its unusual form, Curtis writes: This is written in the form of a Ghazal, a Persian poem consisting of five to fifteen couplets with a refrain at the end of both lines in the first couplet and at the end of each successive couplet. This Ghazal follows a short long long (^ - -) syllable scheme for the most part.

The Fifth Diver by Alexis Romay

Two hundred spectators had gathered in the municipal stadium. Four hundred eyes followed each step of the fifth diver as he made his way to the twenty foot diving board, which had the distinction of being the highest point in the Sports Compound. At the beginning of the Contest, the pool was an ocean-blue that magnified its scarce twelve feet of depth. With the unusual configuration of an equilateral triangle, the pool clarified the moment of entry, since the focus of attention shifted from a man – spinning in the air, theatrically, audaciously, until he plunged into a micro-universe – to a triangle that received him prior to a consistent and euphoric flood of applause.

Sports Compound was a euphemism to define a space of circular structure, poorly roofed and crowded to its limits. Its diameter was sixty-five feet and, hanging from the four cardinal points, were low-intensity reflectors that looked anachronistic tied to the guano leaves that shaped the primitive cupola of the Stadium. The electricity depended on a series of extension chords that, a week before the event, were run from the nearest house and woven through the endless holes in the roof, becoming, thus, the most impressive electrical installation of the Third, Fourth and most obsolete of all Worlds.

The same as for the rest of the houses in town, waterproof here was an unknown concept, and this circumstance justified the dead-set date for the event: El Presidente's birthday, the Thirteenth of August, which always, almost prophetically, fell in the midst of a drought.

Since the ventilation had to be natural, the inhabitants took pride in having located the Stadium in a clearing, taking full advantage of the breezes that filtered through the walls. The afternoon heat, the flies and the rest of the insects also entered the Stadium, but during the most important social event of Las Palmas, amid the excitement of the competitors and the public, these minor obstacles were easily ignored.

The pool had only three sides due to an innovation in the building process. The idea was to save money on the construction materials, which were sent by the Government with a letter to the inhabitants of Las Palmas. The letter officially authorized them to build a modest stadium, as long as the residents took care of its design and construction.

The district of Las Palmas was comprised of about sixty houses with the same number of families tightly spread among them, to the point that sometimes there were four generations living under the same roof – two of which (the middle ones) had actively contributed to the execution of the Stadium, the only place in the community where all the Palmeros could fit, piled up in eight rows of benches distributed in a spiral shape.

This is the information that the inhabitants of Las Palmas were given regarding Diving: "An Olympic Sport that consists of a diver who jumps from a diving board or another high platform to a pool and executes all sorts of graceful and intricate turns on his way down."

A whole decade had passed since the sixty families living in Las Palmas ventured to build their own stadium. Subsequently, they spent years training their native athletes. The Annual Competition, now in its third year, had a few constants, the most notable being the public itself, presided over by the founders of the region who were accompanied by their proud offspring, forming a friendly and enthusiastic audience. Not a soul was allowed to sneak in alcoholic beverages or any kind of blade. And, on the belt of the President of the community, a revolver, which had acquired a symbolic and ornamental character, became rustier by the minute.

The Routine had been dictated by the President and was enforced with methodical religiosity: in the morning they celebrated a fair for the youngsters in the Town Park, and the diving competitions took place that afternoon. The rest of the year the Sports Compound remained closed.

The President of the community based the success of this tournament and his entire political career on a theory that he had inherited with the position of Eternal Leader of Las Palmas: "Regardless of its size, cultural level or aspirations, the only thing necessary to rule any social group is the distribution of Bread and Circus. It is crucial to provide the crowd with something to eat, along with a little entertainment."

In fact, since the President established a holiday for that hot day in the eighth month so that the neighbors could enjoy the Sports event, the impact on the dissident groups in the population had been palpable. They organized fewer street riots and painted less politically incorrect graffiti on the walls of the sad supermarket in town. Subversive gossip and social commentary had dramatically decreased and, at last, his opponents had allowed themselves to be pulled under by the euphoria. They joined the rest of the locals to share poorly fermented, home-made beer, and make bets that catapulted along with the divers, ranging up to three chickens and two bushels of rice.

The fifth diver proceeded towards the diving board, fully convinced that he was close to reaching (literally) the heights of his career. The theatricality with which he walked prompted the spectators to burst into shouts, whistles... pure excitement.

He was the last competitor and on his shoulders was the responsibility of closing the municipal championship. Although his severe training had prepared him for this moment, his nerves were betraying him publicly. He made a personal drama out of each step he took on the staircase to the diving board.

The fifth diver avoided looking inside the pool. At that moment, he was suffering from monumental vertigo; a vertigo that he had always interpreted as a symbol of dangerously approaching Success. When he reached the end of his journey, a tear emerged from one of his eyes. (Luckily, the public didn't notice this.) His body was rigid and his muscles were prominently featured, shining thanks to an unguent especially prepared from the fat of a Santa María snake (a reptile common in the creeks near Las Palmas). His bathing-suit, a pair of dark brown shorts, still bore the stains from his recent work as a farm laborer.

What was he thinking at that moment, the closest he'd ever been to his most elemental idea of Glory?

The Palmeros had been in full throttle – jumping, cheering and shouting hurrahs – as the previous competitors had walked through the Stadium to end standing at the pinnacle of their lives. But they quickly reduced their clamor to a respectful silence to allow the athletes to concentrate and climb above their own fears.

When the fifth diver prepared to execute his audacious flying maneuvers, the faces of the residents of Las Palmas looked petrified – as if they might stop breathing altogether.

Of the dives of the first four competitors, the most remarkable moment was when the second diver came one inch away from touching the ceiling with his feet: his limbs created a vertical human arrow at the peak of his parabola. The first diver, as well as the fourth, attempted a double front flip in which he turned in the tuck-position and entered the pool feet first. The third diver executed the infamous "one and a half," which was a complicated exercise that demanded one full somersault, after which the athlete had to stretch himself perpendicular to the pool and finish the dive head first.

The fifth diver tightened his arms next to his body, held his breath, and let himself fall.

The hush in the Stadium was disturbed by the impact. Upon witnessing how he broke into pieces, and joined the smashed bodies of the four previous competitors, the public burst into euphoric applause, shouting their joy.

The pool had always been empty. Nobody from the Government dared to tell the President that Diving was a water sport.


Alexis Romay is a Cuban emigre writer, translator, educator. Recent work includes a translation of Miguel Correa Mujica's Al norte del infierno (North of Hell), forthcoming from Green Integer. The excerpt above is by a character in his novel Salidas de emergencia (Emergency Exits), published by Baile del Sol. Thanks to Alexis and to Potomac for this brano del romanzo; we're looking forward to seeing Alexis y Valerie again, here & elsewhere.

Jung Min Park, who is from Seoul, worked from the memory of a photo to create this. More of her work is on the way - including parts of a sort of 'graphic novel' in progress.

Poem by Mebane Robertson

TROPHIES OF THE SUN

I’m writing you again, though I don’t
Know if this will make it through
The firewall or get pulled the way the last one was.
One never knows what the machine will flag, so

They are always calling me in. As per our last
Communication, I’m still being watched, but
Even when they know I know
They are friendly enough in passing.

“After all,” someone said, “We’re all on the same side
Here, Chris,” (what they call me). Since you asked,
My job description requires me to rotate
Often and aimlessly and to pretend I’m legally blind.

They can’t keep people where you are?
Try the turnover here! It’s a slaughterhouse! Your
Survival depends on not being able to see the butcher,
And not being willing to hear the crows.



Strangely, or appropriately enough if you look at the first stanza of the above, the last attempt to post a poem of Mebane's was botched, not by the firewall but by the program that doesn't like indentations. There's a way around it, of course, but in the meantime this poem without indentations is a decent segueway from the surveillance of the last post. Mebane's book is just out from the New Poets Series of Black Widow Press.

Jessie Tsai said she cut pieces out of Taiwanese magazines to create this. She said she tried American magazines first but couldn't get the skin tone right, as this depicts her own eye. So she made this in Taiwan, and because it's a bit fragile, that's where it remains.

Skyscrapers

Ted Rogers alert! The young man is too busy at film school (Emerson) to eat, yet his body is still vertically expanding. You want tracking shots? You got it. Just click da thingy:
http://pages.emerson.edu/students/e/edward_rogers/thirdmovement.mov
It was a huge pleasure to see Ted & Sean Kelly here the other day. Sean, I hope you didn't get pneumonia. Check here for future links to work by both of these tall guys.