Eyelashes and Coffee and Compulsive, ritualistic behaviors. Suits. Mumbling. Girls who detest Molly Jong-Fast. Avoiding jeans. Finding chemical solutions to spiritual problems. Watching a sickening amount of Cinema. Maintaining certain disciplines. Picking at my pocket lining. Binding the acceptable to the absolutely unacceptable. And Women who became bored by Bukowski.
..
Music
Springsteen
.. Leonard Cohen
Nick Cave
Tindersticks
Bob Dylan
Johnny Cash
PJ Harvey
Patti Page
The Silver Jews
Elvis Presley
Bobby Darin
Calexico
Cat Power
Smog
Sufjan Stevens
Warren Zevon
Joanna Newsom
The Handsome Family
Wilco
Au Revoir Simone
The National
Sigur Rós
These lists quickly bore me, so feel free to just imagine who the other 10,000 names might be.
Movies
Television
The Wire
Twin Peaks
The Sopranos
Deadwood
Seinfeld
Curb Your Enthusiasm
John From Cincinnati
Arrested Development
Mad Men
Weeds
The Shield
The End
Books
James Joyce
Don DeLillo
Joan Didion
Albert Camus
Philip Roth
Thomas McGuane
Flaubert
Bret Easton Ellis
Hemingway
Donna Tartt
Francoise Sagan
Anaïs Nin
Paul Auster
Murakami
William Burroughs
Updike
Vonnegut
Michel Houellebecq
Virginia Woolf
This is another list that could become very long and pointless.
About me: I try to write things that may have meaning that will show itself later on; some lines ring true, but I'm not sure what they mean. I am, in effect, planting truffles for myself to dig up in the coming years. And for other people too. Oh, and pigs.
Who I'd like to meet: Scotch drinkers. Grief tourists. Women agonised by emotional frailties. Crisis merchants. Alprazolam distributors. Fans of “Bringing Up Baby.” Anyone who feels intensely slighted by events that, in reality, had very little to do with them. No one from Random House. Someone involved in the breeding of Finches. People who strap their toddlers into harnesses when they take them down on the street. People who get dressed up to go to the coffee shop. Another girl that feels let down by the rehabilitation industry. People who waste big money on pretentious magazines. Women who hang out at the cinema in the early afternoon and have no use for their wombs. Individuals who feel menaced by certain large structures. Moloch worshippers. Chain-smokers. Analysts that may or may not have recently grown bored of something. People who can’t quite shake the far-off suspicion that the supermarket is haunted. People who plan to rent forever. City dwellers having conversations dominated by lines like, “I don’t care” or “I really don’t have much of an opinion on that.” Lawyers who might by sympathetic to the plight of a writer being unnecessarily harassed over expense payments. Bath-timers. People that have contemplated ordering a Cosmopolitan, but then decided not to. Women interested in the lives of the Saints. Lackadaisical neurotics. Worn down catholics. Readers intrigued by aesthetic frivolity. People who attempt to buttress the argument about the severity of their problems by saying, “But I only ever snorted it.” People who forgot to put their mittens on or have been blacklisted by certain unforgiving airlines. People who waste entire days in art galleries, or staring at a type of flower swaying pointlessly in a breeze. Discredited character witnesses and despondent young females wearing pretty hats and doctors that can avoid looking strangely at you when you tell them you have a heart attack each morning. Slinky Vogue dolls and various interesting dogs and all the people I knew who stopped mainlining smack, relocated to France and built studios in disused barns that happened to be sitting on their just purchased properties.
Under ordinary circumstances, I'd advise you to raise hell on your birthday: a rainbow of controlled substances, distilled grain beverages, sexual exploits involving Scandinavian triplets, meringue and a horse on a winch. Problem is, you do these things most days, so maybe you should rest. Happy birthday.
"In a blinding flash, a sister truth illumined in my mind's eye as if a lighting bolt had pierced the crown of my skull, exploding inside: WHEN WE DO NOT FACE THAT WHICH TRULY FRIGHTENS US; when we turn a rosy, trembling cheek the other way in cowardice, what we're really doing is drawing out the dark inevitable. We're inviting our unseen enemies to multiply and divide; to track us, frothing and feverish into future days and future dreams, growing more ferocious each time we close a fearful eye. By our abject indifference, we tease, tempt and taunt them—to further torment us in todays and tomorrows unforeseen—and in ways you and I will barely believe. These are the grave and certain consequences of fear and denial, fear and denial, FEAR&DENIAL. And until our minds, bodies and spirits are no longer able to withstand the brutal punishment this wicked duo hand me down, such nightmares will be our haunted, waking dream."
-excerpt from my blog, 'the dark inevitable.' come check it out!
My literary magazine, The Toronto Quarterly - Issue 2 and 3 are now available at amazon.com. There's some great poetry in each issue along with some cool interviews with up and coming and more established poets. Here is the link:
