Oversleeping beneath the algiz rune

Half-assed apologies for the lack of writing lately, folks. I've had the holidays and work and general apathy on my plate, but things are looking up. One thing in particular, but I'll leave the details for later, when everything's in order.

ASGARD AWAITS.

Behold the solstice!

Hope y'all enjoy the longest night of the year as the great wheel keeps turning. It's a comforting thought.

Anno Futilitatis in review

Once again, a survey stolen from Elspeth, and once again, my phone's fuckin' dead. Jesus.

--

1. What did you do in 2006 that you'd never done before? Gone without eating meat. Exchange writing on a semi-regular basis with other writers. Work at a law firm.

2. Did you keep your new years' resolutions, and will you make more for next year? I didn’t make any. Next year’s consists solely of doing something, anything, to make my life less banal.

3. Did anyone close to you give birth? She’s not that close, but yeah.

4. Did anyone close to you die? My grandma and Natalie.

5. What countries did you visit? Just Texas.

6. What would you like to have in 2007 that you lacked in 2006? Gainful unemployment and a novel worth writing.

7. What days from 2006 will remain etched upon your memory, and why? The day I took my brother to the airport to leave for New Zealand. The day I found out about Nat’s suicide. The day of Nat’s funeral. The day of my grandma’s funeral. Thanksgiving with Dave and Andy.

8. What was your biggest achievement of the year? Aside from sticking to vegetarianism and proofreading my pops’ book, I achieved virtually nothing this year.

9. What was your biggest failure? Wasting another year writing a book I realized I cared nothing about.

10. Did you suffer illness or injury? Nope.

11. What was the best thing you bought? No one thing in particular.

12. Where did most of your money go? Rent, food, booze, and records.

13. What did you get really, really, really excited about? Nothing.

14. What song will always remind you of 2006? Ask me when it's not 2006.

15. Compared to this time last year, are you:
Happier or sadder — Sadder.
Thinner or fatter? — The same.
Richer or poorer? — Richer.

16. What do you wish you'd done more of? Write more worthwhile stuff than Unheimlich. Walk. Get the fuck out of Houston.

17. What do you wish you'd done less of? Work on Unheimlich. Hang out at the bar. Talk to strangers. Work.

18. How will you be spending Christmas? With my folks.

19. Did you fall in love in 2006? Oh, that’s rich.

20. What was your favorite TV program? Metalocalypse.

21. Do you hate anyone now that you didn't hate this time last year? No.

22. What was the best book you read? It’s a toss-up between Stillwell and the American Experience in China 1911-45, A Floating Life, the His Dark Materials trilogy, and Against the Day.

23. What was your greatest musical discovery? Greatest? Hard to say. Lots of good shit, though.

24. What did you want and get? A new job, though that’s a dubious “want.”

25. What did you want and not get? Peace of mind (not that it exists). Inspiration.

26. What was your favorite film of this year? Shit, what new movies did I see?

27. What did you do on your birthday, and how old were you? I turned 27. I sat in my driveway with a bunch of friends and got less wasted than I expected to.

28. What one thing would have made your year immeasurably more satisfying? Getting paid to not work, and using that time to write something I didn't hate.

29. How would you describe your personal fashion concept in 2006? Same as last year: hessian.

30. What kept you sane? Books, records, friends, cooking, and video games.

31. Which celebrity/public figure did you fancy the most? Nobody in particular, though I liked David Lynch’s bovine loitering promotion scheme.

32. What political issue stirred you the most? That clusterfuck of a war we’re involved in in Iraq.

33. Who did you miss? My brother.

34. Who was the best new person you met? Ryan.

35. Tell us a valuable life lesson you learned in 2006: Frustration is as omnipresent as oxygen.

36. Quote something that sums up your year: From me: “Days like loose pages in the wind.”

i/o

My phone's not working. I hope the battery simply died after I got to work, but I'm not sure. Oh well; that makes two things that aren't functioning, the other being myself.

Another shitty, stupid, paralytic autumn/winter. Way to go, self.

Fuck Xmas parties without a date, deadlines, missed shows, and everything else:

MY FUCKIN' BROTHER WILL BE BACK IN TEXAS IN LESS THAN 24 HOURS!

Godspeed, Smitjoll!

Godspeed You! Black Pudding

an ounce of ashes:

wounded shoulders
friends looking at the war horizon
(Lord don't let any more go)
dust on more than one stylus
lifelong layovers on the way to
America's oldest town
winter as elusive as the mythical She
ill beasts
a veritable Heavenly
(Infernal?)
Host of small mean concerns
on and off the clock.

no alchemical fix here.

Some more prose poetry.

-the end isn't near, it's only last call-

All the upbeat indie pop songs that color the world shades of neon red hopeful are just gloss on the lips of a beautiful face subtly ruined by the bad bone structure beneath. Doesn't mean it's all false or cosmetic, only that everything musical comes down to gnarled roots and lonesome reverb against the thick dirt of life packed hard below the permafrost. What was merely lost in translation becomes a mangled attempt at a dead language. 4/4 time devolves into strangled chords that never got mapped to staves. Innocent chatter from pretty throats tilts in the aether, and on its new axis sounds like acrimony and bathroom tales of sexual conquest and the comparison of garish makeup colors. Planes overhead- we all live in their flight paths these days- spew roaring remains of dreams and carbon in the most beautiful of patterns.

There's no denying the glory of skylines, badly lit bars, burlesque dancers in their street clothes, and poets in unlikely quarters, but to ignore the dread, the roadside weeds, the misspoken words, the ankle-wrenching potholes and heartbreaking glances across the room at doom personified, well, that's a shrug and a quizzical look when what the world demands is an honest acknowledgement of how tainted it really is.

D.A.S.
November 26/27, 2006

This really ain't Mr. Finnegan's year.

I feel like a fool for not taking Tim Finnegan in to the vet when his hair started falling out in September. It turns out that it's not a symptom of old age: he's got adrenal disease, which may or may not be due to a tumor (benign or malignant) or hyperplasia, which means the glandular cells are enlarged but functioning normally. Whatever the case, odds are that his left adrenal gland, which is far larger than it should be, will have to be removed. Dr. Jordan mentioned the option of giving Tim a shot (I can't recall the name of the medicine) once a month that might do the job, but that'll only work if the adrenal gland isn't cancerous. Ergo, I think I'm going to go ahead and have Dr. Jordan perform the surgery.

Thankfully, Mr. Finnegan doesn't seem to be suffering too much. He has lost weight, which I couldn't notice because, well, his baldness threw off my perception of his size, but he hasn't become lethargic, which is another symptom of the disease. He doesn't seem to care too much about being bald, though I reckon he'd say otherwise if he could.

I'm going to call the vet back tomorrow and schedule the surgery for sometime in the next week. More details as I get them.

On a less depressing note, Thomas Pynchon's new novel, Against the Day, came out today. I've read the first 40 or so pages, and so far, so good.

I LOVE FICTIONAL WOMEN

Dora
Faye
Pen-Pen
Raven
and even
Hannelore
(Ellen should be on here, but she wastes her time reading the almighty Kierkegaard to fuckin' dolphins, so fuck her)

I reckon I should have titled this post "read Questionable Content, because the female characters are rad," but what the hell. I'm drunk and listening to "Sliver" by Nirvana on repeat. That clearly exculpates me from something; what, I'm not exactly sure.

I've also eaten nothing but motherfucking potato chips today.

Other web comics worth checking out include Templar, Arizona and Toothpaste For Dinner (of course).

I blame music.

Time-related obstacles are overcome, and then others crop up when I hear a certain song.

Sometimes I think I am pathologically unable to grow up. Lord knows I don't want the responsibility.

I could quote from Fear and Trembling now, but I'm gonna listen to Last Eve and... well, you know.

Someday.

-D.A.S.
Squire of Infinite Resignation

I could talk about politics...

...but I don't feel like it, really. Suffice to say that I'm glad to see America has taken a step in the direction of sanity for the most part, even if my fellow Texans decided to act like sheep and re-elect a shitty governor.

Anyway, life is, well, life. Nothing particularly interesting to relate to y'all, alas, aside from recommending warm rice wine from handmade ceramic cups (untold thanks to Sara for the handiwork) and Red Pine's translation of Poems of the Masters on cold nights of solitude.

Kings, academicians, heathens, gods, and corpses.

Namely, König Ludwig weissbier, Li Po, Borknagar (specifically their albums Quintessence and Origin), that which is known more or less as Yahweh, and yours truly.

When you get such a diverse group together, there's bound to be friction, and since I'm the one who convened this eclectic, clashing pseudo-democratic Althing, guess who's playing moderator.

Being a human being is an honor that is very, very hard to best.

It's still Halloween by the Welsh method of delineating days.

Drunk folks in bad costumes

stench of sweat beneath
polyester:

Let's leave Halloween
to the kids and pagans.

Bring on 2007.

Christ, I hate wishing for time to pass any faster than it does, but I'm really looking forward to the new year and the potential tabula rasa it'll bring. I'm in the final stages of proofing shit for my dad's book, which seems to be an interminable and increasingly daunting process because so much is riding on it. I'm proofreading a second book for Len Bracken this year, both of which have come within the past month or so. Unheimlich is angrily gathering dust on the writing desk in the back of my skull. There are impending birthdays and holidays to attend to. My attempts at teaching myself Chinese are half-assed at best. I've got almost a dozen records and CDs that I've only barely listened to; same goes for books, though I'm making more headway with those (only 1800 or so pages left of Three Kingdoms!). I sleep too much, but not enough. On top of all this, I'm trying to cut back my drinking and smoking.

It's not even that I lack the time to get all this shit out of the way by the deadlines I or others have set. I don't know what it is, really. I'm definitely unmotivated, but not as much as I think I am. Frankly, I think I've simply got too much going on, which is as difficult to deal with as having absolutely nothing to focus on.

I hate having plans.

82

Involuntary removal from the driving population puts this corpse back on the bus for a few days. Exhausted midnight riders of all stripes, white and blue and no collar, stinking of late shifts and clothes worn for weeks on end. Cell phones clamped to heads in doo-rags, low sweetnesses or impending plans muttered to distant someones, though not all the souls with voices direct them across the ether: some folks talk to the invisibles, others bombard the driver with tales of conquered chicken fried steaks or exegeses on the bus schedule. Most don't talk, too beat by their jobs or themselves to waste the energy, and so remain silent testaments to the horrors of labor or introspection or monthly payments to the demiurge that tells all of us, in tones seductive or bland as television, that yes, it's worth it, keep it up and the world will be yours.


I get off the bus, my soul getting paid overtime tonight, and walk into the noisy neon where we all try desperately to earn ourselves another day.

First it's the cold, come down overnight,
long overdue,
that bites my ears to and from the bar.

Then, home from the corner table,
blood thinned,
comes the music.

Clamped to my ears,
warming them with Norwegian beats
and noir never filmed.

Then the body's tiniest bones
tremble at the voice of God
or a mortal echo thereof.

Raining antlers.

My laptop has been going on wildcat strikes the last couple days- or maybe it's either Firefox or Windows acting up like a bratty adopted child- so I'm writing from the crusty yet beloved warhorse that is my desktop for the first time in what is probably ages. I've gotta say, it's a welcome change of pace. Sure, the keyboard sticks, the wheel of my mouse has been gnawed to the point of near-uselessness by the ferrets, and I can't stretch out in my (uncomfortable) bed while I catch up on the news, but at least I can move freely without my cat5 cable dislodging and dropping my connection.

It's all very much like it was a year ago, but it's not. In some ways, I was happier then, but at the same time I'm almost where I want to be now. Better job, vegetarian diet, wheels, minimal hassle from non-Dave sources, etc. It's also nice returning to a position where I don't have to get up to flip an LP- my turntable is literally within arm's length.

I hope y'all are doing well, and that if I have to keep using my desktop, I have the wherewithal to get a new keyboard soon.

now playing: Greenland, Teeth of the Hydra

"Amusing Myself"

Face wine not aware get dark Fall flower fill my clothes Drunk stand step stream moon Bird far person also few

Facing my wine, I did not see the dusk, Falling blossoms have filled the folds of my clothes. Drunk, I rise and approach the moon in the stream, Birds are far off, people too are few.

Hanzi, pinyin, and literal/literary English translations courtesy of chinese-poems.com.

I know criminally little about poetry, especially Chinese poetry, but I know what I like, and I get the impression that this poem might have led to the legend that Li Bai drowned while trying to embrace the reflection of the moon in a stream when he was drunk. Worse fates than that, I reckon.

Speaking of poets, I seem to meet and/or associate with a lot of them lately. This is a highly excellent thing, be they the regular circle of hookah-smoking folks I've spent most of my Saturdays with, or the Shakespeare-tattooed bartender at the icehouse, or the long-standing poet and professor Robert Phillips, whom I also encountered at the icehouse today. I've gotta say that it's a rare pleasure having folks appreciate, or at least be interested in hearing, my bursts of language that aren't directed into pure conversation or my novels. Thank y'all, and keep up the good work and good spirits.

Zaijian, Meiguo.

Ni hao.

It's not a recent thing, mind you, but I've pinpointed much of what's wrong with my life... and I can't, or won't- or both- do anything about it.

A downer note to cough up after over a week of silence, I know, but there have been some good things. Got to see Destroyer 666 on their first American tour. Been plugging away, slowly but surely, at the ol' Potunghua lessons. Work's all right. Dave gave me a copy of Stephen Fry's The Ode Less Traveled, which is providing me the structural basis in poetry I've been needing for a long while. Speaking of poetry, the Saturday night writing group I've been involved in for a while now has yet to let me down.

Still, I really need to take care of some obligations, not least to myself, and hammer out a couple other outstanding moral issues, and maybe then I'll make it through the fall and winter without being ragingly disappointed with myself.

Not likely. Self-sabotage has become my modus operandi.

Good night, y'all. Sorry to be a killjoy, but blathering here doesn't do me or my attendant shreds of optimism any favors. Instead of reading this, go read a book or listen to a record that doesn't drag you down.


Love always. Always.
Dave Smith

Hours spent in exile.

No, I haven't been much of a hermit- the title comes from a Dark Tranquillity song, probably my favorite.

But being a hermit sounds pretty good sometimes. After all, odds are you won't be able to make morally dubious choices if you're engaged in prayer and foraging for sustenance most of your day.

I really don't like praying more than once daily.