Archive for the ‘Collaboration’ Category
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Some of you may know that I have been poaching wireless @ home + that my Internet connection is a touch spotty. That’s one of the reasons I post with such great infrequency here of late. Whomever I’m poaching from, I think, has figured it out, and usually shuts off the router. Whoever it is isn’t smart enough to password protect the connection, but shutting off the router. Damn. That puts a cramp in my surfing. I was pleased to find Airport recognized a new network recently, but it’s the same story. Been slammed @ werk, and, though I did write a new story last night, I forgot to bring it to werk to post, so you’ll have to wait until tomorrow. Meantime, though, fellow Montana blogger hosted the newest Rascal Fair, featuring fiction-writing bloggers from all over, but mainly from Montana from what I have seen. Head over and check it out. Big shout out to Julia who recently arrived in all of her glory in Brooklyn, NY. Watch out NYC, a Knitting Revolution is about to begin. Tags:IM Transcript Ninja with Mad Skilz: I wrote something new, but didn’t feel like typing. Tried to Audioblog it twice, but the service is acting all wonkey. So I give you one of my favorite diversions instead, and promise to have the new writing up next week. I’ll probably fulfill my writing commitment to CPFA first, though. But first, a lead-in story. When we were kids, my brother and I discovered a stash of old Playboys in my uncle’s old barn. We spent long afternoons there looking at the naked ladies. We must have been around nine or so. Then, we’d go pick black cherries from his trees and gorge ourselves. When we couldn’t eat anymore, we’d have cherry fights, and walk into the house looking like we’d just crawled out of a foxhole in WWI. Uncle Roger discovered that we had found his stash once, and called to tell my ‘ole man. I remember him calling us into his bedroom. We stood in front of him at his desk, and he calmy told us that Uncle Roger had found us out. He wasn’t upset, but asked us instead why we liked looking at those magazines. We said we liked to look at naked ladies. He responded by telling us that ladies would never pose for pictures like that. Years after having run embarrassed from his room, I have become bored by pornography. Forget that it is a multimillion dollar industry, that it desensitizes one to sex, that it subjugates women etc. It’s just plain dull. Most pornography lacks imagination and class. When I was on the road, the guys with whom I traveled were incessantly buying those horrid Barely Legal magazines. I found them hilarious, what, with all of their bad writing. I would call ArmyWife, for kicks, and read her the bad porn to torture her. One night, we were talking about the low quality of porn in the modern world, and spent some time surfing the Internet to see who could find the worst porn. I don’t remember who won, but I remember stumbling across Beautiful Agony , and being impressed with its originality and class. Maybe the women who submit their films aren’t ladies, and maybe the men who submit their films aren’t gentlemen, but the beauty is returned to sex. Back in college, Professor Baird used to say that sex was one of the most beautiful agonies we cold endure as humans. It’s one of the times we are most vulnerable, and we can look beautiful while doing it, but we also look very funny. When I first discovered Beautiful Agony, I remembered these three things, and was impressed with the tastefulness of the site. I was impressed at the gracefulness and bravery of these people exposing themselves to millions of potential viewers. And I have to say that Beautiful Agony gets the Marcus Maximus seal of approval. Drop by and see for yourself. Yes, it’s a pay site, but for those of you cheep-o’s out there, there are a few free Windows Media streams. The price is reasonable, though, if you want to go down that road. More fun than a box full of Q-Tips. Yes, there are men on the site too. Less so than women, but I guess that just means more women aren’t ashamed of their sexuality, then, doesn’t it? Beautiful Agony Tags: Usually I use an old photograph I have lying around for a muse. Today is a little different. Charles Harris, whom I found on a link from the NPR site as I was listening to a live Wilco show , agreed to let me hotlink an image I found on his site, and I went through a couple of ideas in my head over the next few days about what I would write. So I am breaking with tradition in that I have seen the image more than 30 seconds before I write about it. So, I decided to go back to the original premise of writing only for 10 minutes. Recent writings were 20 minutes or so because I had someone else involved who was not used to the structure, and wasn’t ready to write like mad. For those folks, I extended it to 20 or even 30 minutes. But now, I am back to bare bones. 10 minutes does not seem long enough, actually; 20 minutes feels about the right length in order to capture something raw and full of truth without too much over-thinking, so I will likely go back to 20 minutes in future endeavors.
But now, I present to you Driving to Warm Springs, 1985* She looked away from me when I got out of the car. I kicked the dirt and inhaled on my cigarette. I had pulled off on a backroad off of 48 just outside of Anaconda and wanted to tell her how much I loved her and she sat in the car and turned away. When she told me I had to take her to Warm Springs, I was not surprised. When she told me she wanted to ride in the back, I was not surprised. When she told me why she wanted to ride in the back, I was not surprised. She said she wanted to remember the car the way she found it. And the way she found it, was as a passenger in the backseat when five of us clamored into it, me ending up at the wheel, for a ride on the highway, past Soquel, past Santa Cruz, after a drunken night on the beach back in ’77. Seven years later, I’m driving her to Warm Springs and she won’t look at me and I don’t know if I’ll ever see her again. It’s early morning. The smoke from my cigarette mixes with the fog in the air and I wonder where the past seven years of marriage went. I flicked my cigarette to the ground and stomped it out for fear of starting a fire. I kick at the tire as I open the door and know that I loved her the best way I knew how, and that I infused our marriage with a tenderness borne of empathy and the understanding I had of her. I got back into the car and started it up. I knew that it wasn’t my fault she’s mad, and I did not know if, or when, I would see her again. And I was sad. But I understood.
Full size image here *Note: Warm Springs is where the insane asylum is in Montana. So, Peppermint called for a writing challenge, and I challenged her to a match of Polaroid Fiction. This may become a regular feature, who can tell. Turns out she writes better on a keyboard, I write better longhand (there was a time when I wrote better on a keyboard, but this is another conversation). She accepts the challenge. I email her the pic about which we will write. We agree to 30 minutes. This is 10 minutes longer than which I am accustomed to writing in this fashion, so I take the opportunity to do a little research, different than my usual style, but pretty raw, none the less. Anyway, here are the results of the experiment. Contrary to tradition, I hold off on posting the photo from which I drew inspiration. Instead, I encourage you to visit Peppermint’s take on things first. [update] Peppermint dropped out of the blogoshpere recently. 06.05.07 08.21.1903 - Nothing Ever Happens in this Town Charlie stood with his elbow on my shoulder. “Nothing ever happens in this town,†he said, and I had to agree with him. Nothing ever did happen. Mom always had our peanut butter sandwiches ready for us in the afternoons. Dad always came home smelling like Benzedrine, rubber, and stale beer. The fish never took the worms from our hooks and the girls always figured out where we hid their dolls. But today, something had happened. I was eating my peanut butter sandwich at the table when there was a loud crash outside. Mom rushed out to see what the commotion was and said, “Oh, my Lord Jesus.†Mom never cussed like that, and so Charlie and me knew it must be bad. Charlie stood up so fast his chair knocked over the plant near the table and I just tried not to let the screen door hit me in the head as I chased him onto the porch. We stood there for a minute and saw the smoke coming from the cables. The car had jumped the tracks and almost run clean into old man Peter’s living room, where I knew he was listening to the Cleveland Blues on the radio. Moore was pitching a no-hitter in the bottom of the seventh and it was all I could do to tear myself away from the radio to go outside and have a look. Dad came home from work at Firestone Aircraft just after ten, so I knew he ain’t on that train but I hoped Jessup waren’t on it, ‘cause he was out lookin’ fer work, today, an’ Jesus knows when he might come home. We ran off the porch to see the wreck. People all hysterical and whatnot, but it seemed like everyone was okay. Pretty soon, two police cars roll up. There musta been thirty people milling around, what with the conductors and the passengers all out in the road all shook up. Mamma? She on the phone to Firestone telling them that there was a big crash just before stop 97. Gram came running over from Long Street ‘cause she heard it from Mrs. Tippet there had been a crash. Well, it took them a long time a pullin’ the car out of Old Man Peters’ yard, but they did it. Turn out, the kids in the neighborhood done threw their shoes up in the cable. Who ever heard of sech a thing? Guess they daddy done made some money down in Texas at the oil fields and they ken ‘ford to throw they shoes aroun’. Since no one got hurt we set on th’ porch watchin’ all the ruckus. Drinkin’ lemonade. I reckon we’ll git our pitchir’ in the paper tomoor’, seein’ as how Charlie an’ me stood out in the middle o’ th’ road in front of all o’ the people. I jus’ glad Daddy still at the shop with the hose between his teeth. All dusty an’ smelly like, before he stopped at the tavern on South Main on his way home. He usually walked there, but caught the last car home. But I always thought he might go to the tavern early. ‘Cause sometimes. Sometimes, he came home before dark. ———————————————————– View the photo that inspired the writing here. Note on the photo: The back was inscribed in pencil with the following: ” Aug 21 -1903 Accident on [illegible]+[illegible] (34th). North side of car” I carry around a 3×5 notebook to write shit in. Ideas for stories, songs/bands/movies/books people recommend, phone numbers, dates. Fits perfectly in my backpocket. Pretty handy, actually. It was a gift from Shy Girl, who is the one who likes to modify magnets, you might remember. One Saturday I’m sitting in Bernice’s Bakery, writing in the journal, reading the paper, getting jacked up on coffee, and the (formerly known as) The Most Beautiful Girl In Missoula strolls in. As she sat there, making lists and phone calls and trying to buy herself a car, I hijacked her colored pencils. I used a clean page. Now, two months later, this is what it looks like.  A little digital collage I did by cutting/pasting/arranging slices from a photo taken at the CPFA Day in Photos by LoungePatriot. See the original here  “The good people of the world are washing their cars They drive their shiny Datsuns and Buicks – Sheryl Crowe The car wash. Ah, yes. The place where, this time of year, the folks in the Midwest are washing off the deadly salt and in these parts, they wash the mudd off their cars. I have found it to be a haven for finding those damn magnets . I have only found two, so far, before I noticed a pattern, but it doesn’t take me long to recognize a pattern gosh darn it. The first time, I place the “God Bless the USA” magnet on Shy Girl’s truck on a Sunday. She called me on that next Wednesday, mortified, but thankfully not upset. I arrived home from work to find the magnet hanging on my door, though just a touch modified.  So I found another one today. Today, it was also a red, white and blue one, but said something different, I can’t remember what, they all look the same. Shy Girl is currently in NYC, and my bet is that she is not looking in on me here, so it is safe to say that yes, I dropped it off on her truck tonight. We’ll see how long it takes for her to notice upon her return. And I cannot wait to see her modifications to this one. Tags: |
