High Tide Time

I'm home in Asbury Park, the house is cozy against high wind, and my street is just wet right now even though it's two and half blocks in from the beach. I don't think the tide is going to come up this far, but I'm definitely keeping an eye out. It shouldn't be too hard to leave should I need to get out as there are multiple options: Asbury Park isn't on an island, no bridges or back bays to worry about. The thing I'm not looking forward to is a power outage, especially of the extended sort. So while the kilowatts are still humming and the house is still nice and warm, I thought I'd pass along three short videos of that sea: one from Saturday night, from the back of Convention Hall; another from yesterday looking south; and one more from this morning, at high tide time, which I somehow managed to take without being stopped by the cop, who slowed his patrol car when he caught me running.

Rescue

The first issue of (em) contains my story "Thank You," an outtake from Unbuilt Projects before the story became something else. You can download a free PDF of the entire issue by clicking on the link above.

And here, the playlist Unbuilt Projects III for The Rumpus Poetry Book Club:



                                          At the outlet mall north of Rehoboth Beach:

Smokey at the Outlets:

Over the Ocean in Rehoboth...

Over the ocean in Rehoboth Beach last night after midnight: stars, one meteorite, and the signs of a monster storm--orange flashes, every three seconds--a hundred miles out. No pictures of that, alas, but here's two from my little trip for now: the deck of the Cape May-Lewes Ferry for that sanitarium-at-sea-kind-of-feeling and the view outside my motel room, where I'm supposed to be doing some writing this weekend.

Juxtaposed, Feeding Off or Contradicting

Two weeks ago we talked about Aleksandar Hemon's story "The Life and Work of Alphonse Kauders" in my fiction workshop. That prompted me to bring in Jenifer Berman's interview with Hemon, which appeared in BOMB back in 2000. Two passages of that interview have stayed with me since then, and I thought I'd put them up here.

*****

Jenifer Berman: Many of your stories--"Islands," "Alphonse Kauders," "A Coin,"--are structurally disjointed or fragmented. Seeing as you're a native of Sarajevo, people may want to suggest that this refers to the factious political and cultural situation in your homeland. Is that the case?

Aleksandar Hemon: To say that the fragmented structure of my stories is due to the breakup of Yugoslavia would be just too neat, even if it were true. I began writing the Alphonse Kauders story in 1988, long before the big breakup of the Soviet Union, and consequently, the breakup of the world that was organized around a USA-USSR binary--so many people around the world have witnessed fragmentation. Besides, fragments have been around forever--the Bible consists almost entirely of fragments and disjointed parts. Recall the 18th-century cabinets of wonders, a lot of little disjointed things put together to be marveled at. Remember T.S. Eliot's whining in The Waste Land: "These fragments I have shored against my ruins," dreaming of the perfect order, ending up, practically, a fascist.

Fragments are yesterday's news, but what is relatively new is the sense that the transcendence--the original order of things--is gone. I am inclined to believe there never was a transcendental order, there never was an original unity that was fucked up by history or the masses or what have you. Fragments are always the order of the day, it is only a question of organizing them, if they need to be organized at all. My preferred way of organizing them is to have them juxtaposed, feeding off or contradicting one another, reveling in discontinuities, producing noise--the models for that being film and popular music, particularly hip-hop and all that came out of it. The story of the original good unity is a big ruse that tended to work for the privileged classes. I think that those who are pursuing either the good old order or the new order tend to be conservative if not totalitarian. I have anarcho-liberal proclivities, living in a fragmented world doesn't bother me, as long as fragments get to hang out together a bit every once in a while.

*****

JB: Another character says, "Perhaps art is one of the last pockets of resistance to chaos. And then again, maybe it isn't." What do you believe?

AH: Well, I've written that but I put it in the mouth of Alphonse Kauders who ain't exactly a moral or political role model. Chaos is the opposite of order, which would mean that art is orderly, and I don't like that kind of stuff. I think art should be disorderly, a little confusing, with loose ends and odd corners sticking out. It should not provide an alternative to a disorderly world, but drag you into it, help you understand it and live in it. Kafka said that a book should be an ax for the frozen sea within us.

Kindling

An interview with me at Cafe Americain, the newspaper of American University in Washington, D.C., where I'm reading tomorrow night at 8:00 PM. Please come, or send your friends.

In other news, Unbuilt Projects is now available as a Kindle book.

Unbuilt Projects II

Two of four. (See post below for details.) Three missing tracks here, for some reason. Radiohead's "In Limbo," Headless Horseman's "Wavlngth," Tori Amos' "Space Dog."



Also, some sea. From the Ocean Grove Pier yesterday morning.

Martyr

Here's an even newer piece, written this past May, which just went up on Revolver. I wrote it at a time when I was reading a lot about martyrs--think of Saint Lucy and those paintings of her eyes. You'll get the picture.

****

In other news, Unbuilt Projects' official pub date was yesterday. I've noticed that copies have temporarily sold out on that famous site beginning with the letter A. (At least copies won't be available for the next one to three weeks, so the message goes.) That is both good, and also very frustrating to me. I think the better place to go right now is straight to the Four Way Books site, which you can get to by clicking the book's icon on the right hand column of this blog. Or ask for it at your local indie, even better. Thanks so much for your support.

NSFW? You Decide

Two new ones from The Awl: "I Am Fucking with My Enemy" and "Nutella." I tend to use the non-generic term "piece" to refer to anything I write, regardless of length or form, but it is an honor to be published as a poet.

With thanks to Mark Bibbins.

Two Lists

Once a week for the next four weeks, I'm putting up a weekly Spotify playlist related to Unbuilt Projects.  This is in part to open up a discussion about poetics for the Rumpus Poetry Book Club--the live chat is happening online on November 1st, All Saints Day--stay tuned. I have my own ideas of how these songs influence and echo the stray daydreams that make up the book, at least in terms of form, style. Maybe it will get you to thinking.



And--the promised pictures of September. We're almost up to date.

Riptide water at Asbury Park

MFA Student Picnic, Cherry Hill

My father at 88, Somers Point

Lagoon behind Anchorage Point house

Beach at Asbury Park

Mikey and me at Max Fish, Asbury Park

Lisa Zeidner and me at the Q/A after our reading at Rutgers.

Tillie, my brother Michael's dog, Anchorage Point

Tillie getting all silly, Anchorage Point

Pastless Futureless

We talked about Robert Coover and Donald Barthelme in class a few weeks ago, and ever since that night, I've been thinking about this passage from Barthelme's "Robert Kennedy Saved from Drowning." The story is in fact describing itself here in form and idea, but as in any good story, the implications reach outside the frame.

(More photos to come, by the way.)

*
from "Robert Kennedy Saved from Drowning"
Donald Barthelme

"The Marivaudian being is, according to Poulet, a pastless futureless man, born anew at every instant. The instants are points which organize themselves into a line, but what is important is the instant, not the line. The Marivaudian being has in a sense no history. Nothing follows from what has gone before. He is constantly surprised. He cannot predict his own reaction to events. He is constantly being overtaken by events. A condition of breathlessness and dazzlement surrounds him. In consequence he exists in a certain freshness which seems, if I may so, very desirable. This freshness Poulet, quoting Marivaux, describes very well."

Go, Little Boat

I don't know why this seems appropriate to the day, but here goes. Just off the beach last month. A little Amarcord in Asbury Park.