parlando

old post #10, 22 jan 05

Posted on February 12th, 2010 by Scraps.
Categories: Words, Reading Classics, Writers, Books, Old Posts.

The Genocides is an underrated book. It was a paperback original, his first novel before he had acquired much reputation (it was published in 1965), and his next two novels were undistinguished (I think Camp Concentration is the fourth, not counting work-for-hire stuff). The Genocides was also vilified by a couple of reviewers, including Algis Budrys, who dismissed it as a J.G. Ballard imitation (and we were all supposed to know how we felt about that back then; the war between the traditionalists and the radicals was already beginning to heat up). But it's a compact and neat story of collapse, and the character delineation is superb. Disch has said that to his mind, the appeal of the disaster novel was the implacability, and his disaster wasn't going to be diluted by any kind of rescue or redemption. Even so, it isn't bleak, exactly; the narrative follows the characters and their emotions and tribulations like a camera, but there is something about it that feels disengaged, so the story isn't sad or tragic or even bracing; it's just there. In that sense it is like Ballard, except Ballard's disaster novels tended to suck all human emotion out of everything except one character's interaction with his disaster.

2 comments.

old post #9, 7 sep 00

Posted on February 12th, 2010 by Scraps.
Categories: Words, Old Posts.

I saw a skateboarding dog on the way home; now that's a cheery sight. Using it more like a scooter, three paws on the board and one pushing, dog never got on and just rode, it did waver and swerve an awful lot and ended its adventure by plowing into a parked car, but of course one hates to be too critical: the dog is riding a skateboard.

We should all aspire to be dogs on skateboards.

1 comment.

old post #8, 4 jul 99

Posted on February 11th, 2010 by Scraps.
Categories: Words, Old Posts.

This story has a happy ending.

Several weeks ago the building of my friends Patrick and Teresa acquired a stray dog. She walked in as though she belonged there, and by the time a neighborhood search had conclusively turned up no one with a lost dog of her description, she had thoroughly ingratiated herself with the residents. She splits time between at least two of the apartments, and is now named Blossom.

Tonight a bunch of us went up to the roof to watch the firewroks over the east river. Blossom came up too, and she didn't seem scared by the noise, just trotted around in the heat with her tongue out, apparently having a fine time. We lost track of her. After a while, I heard, in the distance, several rooftops away, "Whose dog is that?" I was a little worried about her being so far away, so I got up to see where she was. I couldn't see her. Susan noticed me looking around and said "Are you looking for Blossom?" "Yeah," I said, "I just heard those people way over there wondering whose dog she was. But I don't see her." We both walked over to the next roof and peered around, but neither of us, I think, wanted to make a big deal of searching for her; there was only so far she could go. "I'm sure she's okay," I said stupidly. "I'm sure you're right," said Susan. We knew Blossom was a very social dog, and was probably just hanging with some folks. We turned back to the fireworks.

A couple minutes later a young woman walked up to us. "Is that your dog?" she said. No dog was in sight, but we knew it must be Blossom; we said yes. "She's fallen off the roof," said the young woman. We stared at her. We were five floors up. "She's fallen off the roof??" I said. "What, to the ground?" We started moving, slowly at first, the way people do when they want to think that something isn't really very bad. Then I started running across the roofs. I heard the woman say to Susan, "No, down to another roof. To the church." I knew that building, about six roofs away; I couldn't remember whether it was one story or two storeys shorter.

As I skipped from roof to roof, all the groups of people knew what was going on, and several people asked me if it was my dog. "Yes," I said shortly, not wanting to slow down for more explanation. People closed in behind me. I reached the end of the roofs, and looked down at the church roof: one storey down. Blossom looked up at me and whined. Then, thank god, she ran around in a circle, and I could see she wasn't limping or noticeably injured in any way. I had the presence of mind to turn and yell over my shoulder, "She's okay," which no one had bothered doing. Then I thought about getting down to Blossom, and what I could do when I got there. It was about a twelve foot drop, which I thought I could manage okay, but she was already spooked and running around, and she kept dashing to an edge and looking over. I talked to her and she would look up for a second, then start running around again. After a few seconds Susan arrived, and as soon as she started talking to Blossom the dog stayed in one place trying to climb the wall. Someone on the roof we were on said we could go down their stairs and someone from the church building said we could go up theirs; we decided that Susan would stay and talk to Blossom while I went over to the church roof.

This turned out to be a little more complicated than we thought, since no one was waiting downstairs to let me into the building, and no one responded to buzzing. I went over to the fire escape to see whether I could jump up to it. I couldn't. I went back to the building and pounded on the door until someone grumpily let me in; when I quickly explained what was going on, she let me go through her apartment to the fire escape -- the door to the roof was locked -- and I climbed up it, knowing I could never get Blossom down it, becuase it was ladders, not stairs.

I got to the roof, and two guys were there; they'd probably jumped down. Blossom was spooked again, but she came over to me right away and started bumping me. I sat down and she climbed on to my lap. Susan was still leaning over the rooftop above; I told her we couldn't get the dog down the stairs or the fire escape. A guy up on the higher roof said he could bring a ladder; we decided that the the three of us on the church roof could hand Blossom from person to person up the ladder -- none of us felt confident that we could carry fifty pounds or so of dog up the ladder by ourself if she decided to panic.

While we waited for the ladder, I patted Blossom and talked to her, and she settled down. I took her head in my hands and said that was the most damn fool stunt I'd heard of a dog pulling in ages. She licked my face. I told her I was missing the fireworks. She licked my face again. After a few minutes in which my face was licked about every ten seconds, the ladder arrived, and after putting Blossom on her leash for whatever psychological value that would have, I handed her to the first guy, and he handed her to the second guy, and he handed her to Susan, and she was up to the proper roof in a few seconds without a hitch.

We ended up with about thirty new acquaintances from the surrounding buildings; when I left the building a few ours later to go home, a group of folks on the street asked me if the dog was okay. I assured them she was. They all think the dog is mine now; I suppose she is now, a little bit.

0 comments.

seattle's nocturnal house is closing

Posted on February 10th, 2010 by Scraps.
Categories: Badness, Stuff.

And I am distressed. I loved zoos as a child, and Woodland Park Zoo was my second home. When the Nocturnal House opened, I was fascinated, and it immediately became my favorite. I went there for hours and hours. Now it's going to be closed, a victim of budget cuts. I guess I assumed that it would be open forever. Thank god I saw it last year with my family.

1 comment.

old post #7, 2 jul 97

Posted on February 10th, 2010 by Scraps.
Categories: Words, Old Posts.

(Answering “What is your comfort food?”)

This tuna-pea-pasta casserole on english muffins thing my mom makes. We called it Shit on a Shingle, despite the fact that it bears little resemblance to what the US Army calls Shit on a Shingle. Actually my circumspect parents couldn't quite bring themselves to say "shit."

Once when I was deliriously sick, 104-degree fever & everything, and Ellie was desperate for something, anything that could make me feel a little better, she asked me what food I would most like in the world, and in the childlike state that men inevitably revert to in illness, I pathetically mumbled, "my mom's shit on a shingle." When Ellie had recovered from this request, she called my dad to get the recipe, which he dutifully retrieved from my mom; then he said, mildly, "Of course, in this house we call it Bleep on a Shingle."

1 comment.

old post #6, 29 oct 96

Posted on February 10th, 2010 by Scraps.
Categories: Words, Old Posts.

(Answering "if you could possess any one supernatural ability, what would it be?")

I'd like the ability to set myself inexorably on the road to getting everything I want and need, and then forget I did that to myself so I could enjoy it all without knowing I'd cheated.

0 comments.

old post #5, 23 jun 96

Posted on February 9th, 2010 by Scraps.
Categories: Words, Comedy.

A: Knock knock.

B: Who's there?

A: Interrupting Magritte.

B: Interrupting Ma--

A: This is not a joke.

1 comment.

old post #4, 5 jul 96

Posted on February 8th, 2010 by Scraps.
Categories: Words, Memory, Old Posts.

(Answering "What is the best time you've ever had at a fireworks show?")

Eighteen years old, with my first girlfriend, sitting on a bluff on Capital Hill in Seattle overlooking Lake Washington. It was three days after we'd kissed for the first time, and eight days before she took my virginity; we were at some very nice place in between for most of the night. Some hours after the fireworks we dropped acid and waited for sunrise. In the very early slow light before dawn, holding each other in absolute infatuated blissful stillness and silence, an owl swept down into the valley beneath us, passing not two feet over our heads. Just remembering that moment makes goosebumps rise on my arms.

0 comments.

old post #3, 16 jan 01

Posted on February 8th, 2010 by Scraps.
Categories: Badness, Movies, Old Posts.

My roommate has a cat, Milo. A neurotic cat, but until recently within normal cat neurosis territory. But my roommate has begun a relationship that has him outside the apartment a great deal more than previously, and unfortunately Milo turns out to be a Desperately Needy cat, starved for attention after mere minutes of solitude.

I am friendly to cats, but allergic. Petting is out of the question; I swell up, choke, go blind, die a dozen unpleasant deaths. Milo begs for love, and though I cannot touch him, I speak to him kindly, endeavor to make him understand that his problems are heard, that he is appreciated and loved and that someday his master will return and shower him with the affection to which he is so manifestly entitled.

No more. Yesterday, as I prepared to meet my sweetheart to see a movie, the phone rang. My roommate's phone was closest -- he was gone, naturally -- and as I answered it, Milo ran up behind me and bit me on the fucking leg. Hard enough to draw blood. I whacked him with the phone receiver -- I'm sorry, but he was out of line -- yelled at him, poured disinfectant on the wound, and yelled at him some more. Not to put too fine a point on it, I was fucking freaked out; blood running down my leg, wound swelling, cat running around howling. Not fun.

Then Velma & I went to see Shadow of the Vampire. It was good and creepy, but I'm seeing Nosferatu in the cat's fuzzy face now.

0 comments.

old post #2, 24 dec 00

Posted on February 7th, 2010 by Scraps.
Categories: Old Posts.

I am housesitting for Brad and Deborah. They have fish and lizards: ornamental pets, the kind you can't really get empathetically connected to, but are fun to look at. Velma spent considerable time trying to figure out how fish think; she soon amended this question to whether fish think (conclusion: No).

The lizards require crickets. Brad and Deborah helpfully left a supply, so we were not obliged to hunt our own in the parks of New York (where I have never seen so much as a grasshopper). They were in a little plastic box, with a few torn up egg cartons and chopped potatoes. Crawling with crickets.

I had not given much though to extracting the crickets. It seemed straightforward enough. Ha. They had no interest in climbing up the little tube that had been provided for extracting them. Nor did any other simple method of just extracting three or four come to mind. We tried covering part of the opening and pulling out one of the egg carton bits, since the bugs seemed sedate. Ha again. They lurched to life, crawling and bounding about alarmingly. One made a desperate bid for freedom, leaping through the opening, barely missing my face, hitting the table and falling to the floor.

We had no insects in hand, but we had one on the loose. If I'd been a seven-year-old, I'd have caught it in my hands, but that didn't occur to me. The narrow tube was inadequate; the bug hopped away before the plastic prison could descend. I went to the kitchen to get a glass; when I returned, five seconds later, I couldn't see the cricket. "Where did it go?" I demanded of Velma. "I don't know," she said, "I lost it." "But I was only gone five seconds!" I cried in despair. We searched unenthusiastically and unsuccessfully.

Eventually we managed to extract a few hapless crickets and make the lizards happy. But there is one rebel, one rogue cricket skulking about the apartment, just waiting for the lights to go out; then we will listen for the sound of miniature ladders and grappling hooks, and the tiny cries of insect escape. Revolution!

0 comments.

old post #1, 26 sep 96

Posted on February 6th, 2010 by Scraps.
Categories: Comedy, Old Posts.

[i'm going to post lots of old stuff, because i'm still learning to be me again.]

Hey, I've never introduced myself. I'm Scraps, but my true name is Lancelot St. Goodfellow, and I work for the New York Department of Public Spectacle as a cheese grater. In my spare time I throw pillows and conjugate verbs. Someday I hope to build a rope bridge to the future and walk across it on my elbows. I like fuzzy fruit and bald hamsters, and I hate people who are deaf or otherwise unable to pay attention to me. The sick ground chuck drops other the lazy fog. Selah!

0 comments.

bite

Posted on January 25th, 2010 by Scraps.
Categories: Music, Musicians.

Frank J Oteri: And in terms of training before you got exposed to jazz? Did you train in classical music at all?

Carla Bley: No, I didn't. I never studied anything.

Frank J Oteri: So you're completely self-taught!

Carla Bley: No, my father taught me until I was four, or five maybe, and then my mother tried and I bit her. I bit my mother at the age of five and they gave up on me. That was it. I never learned anything else.

0 comments.

the message

Posted on January 18th, 2010 by Scraps.
Categories: Stuff, Recovery.

Tomorrow it's the important doctor's appointment, with my neurologist. I've careful written down the message:

"So I tried Keppra another six weeks, with Gabapentin gradually tailing off until it was done. It’s better without Gabapentin, but the Keppra is still bad.

"It’s still, all the time, twenty-four hours a day, dazed, dull, sluggish, and a little bit stupid. I hate it, all the time. I can’t find the words. It’s been two months since the seizures; I was improving, but now I’m not – if anything, I have regressed -- and I am frustrated.

"I have a theory. I think Keppra is all right if the stroke didn’t affect the language part of the brain (or not much). Maybe the medication is making me dull and dazed, but theoretically it’s fine because my language is still fine.

"But it’s not fine; my language is very much affected. I need that part of the brain. I value that part, so much so that I can’t do without. Please, can we try something else?"

4 comments.

spelling

Posted on January 14th, 2010 by Scraps.
Categories: Words, Recovery.

Another: My spelling is still 100% good -- when I'm presented with the correct word. But my spelling function -- "spell it out" -- is horrible. In other words, if I get presented with five variants of a word -- say, "fortunately", "fortunetely", "fortunetelly", "edgar", and "fortunatelly" -- I will pick the right one every time. But if I'm asked to spell it out aloud, I will be dumb. And sometimes I can't spell even writing -- not speaking -- simply, I can't find the word; for instance, I can't think of the variant "fortunately" -- the right one -- and I'm helpless. Once I've found it, I know it.

It's really hard to explain, that one.

0 comments.

my mind, etc

Posted on January 14th, 2010 by Scraps.
Categories: Words, Recovery.

Samuel Beckett, Rough for Theatre: "There croaking to the winter wind [rime with unkind], having lost his little mouth-organ."

I literally can't parse "rime with unkind". I understand perfectly the sense of it, but my mind skips, every time I try to sound it out, the winter wind rhyming with unkind.

addendum: It's not Irish. It's not the words.

I understand perfectly how "wind" rhymes with "blind" and "mind". But my hearing mind doesn't understand it; it's broken.

It's weird.

1 comment.

function words

Posted on December 29th, 2009 by Scraps.
Categories: Words, Stuff, Recovery.

Today my head speech therapy guy, Luis -- it's between semesters, there is nobody who is a student and therefore usually speaks to me, so it's up to Luis (don't get me wrong, he's very busy, and I'm a free -- Medicaid -- therapy case) -- anyway, Luis said the neurologists and speech doctors in charge of me had a meeting. They were worried that I had regressed -- which, of course, I had, since the seizures -- and they wanted to keep me pointing forward, so I am -- probably -- going off the maddening Keppra, and going on something else. (Unfortunately, Dr Benjamin, my head neurologist, was not there.)

We talked about homework; specifically, we talked about the homework that was going to do any good to me. I asked about function words, because those are words that were particular problems for me. Unfortunately, he said there were no homework -- things? jobs? this is how I write, casting about for words -- he said, well, my mind is ahead, even though I can't grasp it. (And I can't, today.)

0 comments.

completions

Posted on December 27th, 2009 by Scraps.
Categories: Words, Stuff, Recovery.

I went to speech therapy today, and she felt confident of my sentence completion skills that she sent me home with homework. Last week I was numb; I was just staring at the paper. So today I was writing; still can't write like two months ago -- before the seizure -- but slowly coming back. Especially humor; grade-school humor, but still.

I'll show you some. It's mixed with humor -- not wit, that's coming, I hope -- and, well, despair and anger. (This is what Velma has to put up with.) The all-caps is the part I'm completing:

2. I DON'T LIKE cell phones BECAUSE they're difficult to hear.

3. THE TROUBLE WITH POLITICS IS, well, nothing. Politics is compromise; you can't necessarily get what you want, but you get something, if you participate. Unless you're talking about corrupt politics; to many, corrupt politics are the only politics. I think that's a copout.

4. YOU LOOK LIKE a patient woman.

6. SHE CAME LATE BECAUSE her hair fell out, and she had to glue it back on.

7. I WISH I had my language back. Also, I wish I had just one more hit single.

8. IT UPSETS ME TO have to write eighth grade sentences; and that I know I have to.

9. FLOWERS ARE funny. Particularly daisies; I don't know why.

2 comments.

intellectually exhausted

Posted on December 20th, 2009 by Scraps.
Categories: Stuff, Movies, Recovery.

One of the changes in my life is movies. Reading is now very hard for me; I can read, but it's ten times as laborious -- still -- and it's exhausting. But movies is easier. So I've begun, late in my life, teaching myself the classics. One of my lists is Roger Ebert's 4-star movies. So far, I have watched The Thief Of Baghdad, In a Lonely Place, 12 Angry Men, and The 400 Blows.

I watched The 400 Blows yesterday. And I discovered another dismaying thing: if it is not English, I have to expend translation time -- ten times as hard, basically -- trying to keep up, flickering my eyes up and down, everything watching, not comfortable, not lost in the movie. By the time it's ending, I'm again exhausted. The 400 Blows is really good, but I've going to have to watch it again, tomorrow, because I was literally lost for much of it.

The ending shot was powerful, though.

2 comments.

walking

Posted on December 13th, 2009 by Scraps.
Categories: Stuff, Recovery.

I have a sore left (good) leg. That's because I left the apartment alone yesterday good and mad -- both of us were mad -- and walked, walked, walked. Do you know the distance between lower Park Slope and the Verrazano Narrows bridge? I walked it there and back. There was fine; back was grim, and getting grimmer as I approached home. Velma met me about a quarter mile away, and I stumbled and staggered across the finish line. When I was healthy, I walked often, and far. So I took a grim satisfaction that I could do it, even though I took about six hours.

Today Velma and I are better. She's off to sing, wearing our derby hat. I'm preparing dinner. I'm making chicken hearts, slow cooked, with Indian jalfrezi sauce, red onions, green pea and lentil sprouts, and a mixture of wild and white rice. The only thing was hard was getting the jar of sauce open; that took five minutes.

My language is better: I mean it's better even in twenty-four hours. Maybe Dr Benjamin (my neurologist) is right about Keppra. Well, good. I still feel it, like a blanket around my head, numbing; but the words are forming, and the keyboard is not attacking me anymore.

Time composed: twenty-five minutes.

2 comments.

recovery slipped

Posted on December 8th, 2009 by Scraps.
Categories: Stuff, Recovery.

Three weeks and four days my precarious recovery slipped, wobbled, and spiraled down, and I'm still slowly coming back. I'd been having a rough day; crying, depression, I don't know what. Sometimes it's hard. Late afternoon I entered the living room, and sat down to watch tv. I was tired, and I laid down. Suddenly I felt strange; maybe five seconds I felt weird, and I felt -- maybe -- my leg started to get cramped. And I felt numb, and I couldn't move. Then I felt better; except I couldn't speak.

Velma was looking pale, though. I wanted to speak to her, but I couldn't. I felt bemused. Suddenly -- again -- the apartment was full of people, EMT people, five of them. I couldn't understand them, mostly. I started to panic. Why? It's just five to ten seconds! They loaded me on a stretcher, and I began to cry. Going to the hospital, again! And I got mad. Speech slowly returned. But I wouldn't talk to the EMT people, or (mostly) Velma. I wasn't rational.

I arrived at the hospital. I was in and out. I remember Howard and Helen were there, but I don't remember them arriving. I lay down, and I turned, and then again I felt strange and again my leg started to cramp. Howard said loudly something.... And then it was three or four days past, upstairs. Apparently I had loudly threatened to kill myself. Apparently I had calmly told Velma I didn't love her anymore; that's hard, but is harder for Velma. Apparently I had two seizures, about three minutes; when you experience something as five seconds but in fact it actually is three minutes, it's, well, weird.

Anyway, I'm back, slowly, again. I'm home, after six days. Two weeks of Lexipro was hard, but I finally got off that stuff. Now I'm still on Keppra, which makes me numb and sleepy and queasy and I can't sleep -- yes, I can simultaneously can't sleep and am sleepy -- but my neurologist thinks it's messing up with Gabapentin, so I'm going to pull off the Gabapentin slowly, about six weeks, then check.

So yeah, the recovery slipped. But my comeback is back.

7 comments.

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