Jonathan Carroll's Blog, page 52

CarrollBlog 5.24

Celibacy at Twenty

by Sharon Olds

After I broke up with someone,

or someone with me, days would go by,

nights, weeks, soon it would be months since I had

touched anyone. i would move as little

as possible, the air seemed to press on my skin, my

breasts like something broken open, un-

capped and not covered, the buds floated in the

center at the front, if I turned a corner too

fast I would almost come. Swollen,

walking like someone carrying something

filled to the brim, the lip of the...

CarrollBlog 5.23

Walking towards me early in the morning is a 20'ish man with things in both hands. As he gets closer, I see in his right he's holding a hamburger, in the other a large aerosol can of whipped cream. Holding the can over the burger, he spritzes a giant white dollop of whipped cream across the top and takes a bite. By the time we pass, he is already spritzing more cream onto his meal, etcetera. All the way home I keep wondering what that combination tastes like. But more importantly, how in the ...

CarrollBlog 5.22

Funny stuff-

THINGS YOU'D LOVE TO SAY OUT LOUD AT WORK:

1. I can see your point, but I still think you're full of shit.

2. I don't know what your problem is, but I'll bet it's hard to pronounce.

3. How about never? Is never good for you?

4. I see you've set aside this special time to humiliate yourself in public.

5. I'm really easy to get along with once you people learn to see it my way.

6. I'll try being nicer if you'll try being smarter.

7. I'm out of my mind, but feel free to leave a ...

CarrollBlog 5.21

A Man Alone

by Stephen Orlen

I hated breaking up and I hated

Being left, finding myself in an apartment

With an extra set of silverware and a ghost,

Impatient to be gone. Then to summon up

Who I was before the bed was full with woman.

To shift the street-mind from getting to

To slowing down and window shop. In the bar down the street,

To let my eyes simplify again, and make no judgments,

And breathe in the smoke that drifts

Through one body then another,

And find myself close enough

To...

CarrollBlog 5.17

It takes a few moments to realize or rather *recognize* the smell: It's one of those overpowering, nearly unbearable foul stenches that can only come from a human being who's not bathed for weeks, months. I'm standing in a very full subway car and almost gagging at the onslaught of this stink. Looking around, I try to find the source. Biased or not, the first thing you search for is some variety of vagrant, a bum, a street soul way far down on their luck, wild eyes or hair or beard, too many ...

CarrollBlog 5.16

The Night House

by Billy Collins

Every day the body works in the fields of the world

Mending a stone wall

Or swinging a sickle through the tall grass—

The grass of civics, the grass of money—

And every night the body curls around itself

And listens for the soft bells of sleep.

But the heart is restless and rises

From the body in the middle of the night,

Leaves the trapezoidal bedroom

With its thick, pictureless walls

To sit by herself at the kitchen table

And heat some milk in a pan.

...

CarrollBlog 5.13

Go Back to May 1937

by Sharon Olds

I see them standing at the formal gates of their colleges,

I see my father strolling out

under the ochre sandstone arch, the

red tiles glinting like bent

plates of blood behind his head, I

see my mother with a few light books at her hip

standing at the pillar made of tiny bricks with the

wrought-iron gate still open behind her, its

sword-tips black in the May air,

they are about to graduate, they are about to get married,

they are kids, they are...

CarrollBlog 5.12

What if a demon were to creep after you one night, in your loneliest loneliness, and say, 'This life which you live must be lived by you once again and innumerable times more; and every pain and joy and thought and sigh must come again to you, all in the same sequence. The eternal hourglass will again and again be turned and you with it, dust of the dust!' Would you throw yourself down and gnash your teeth and curse that demon? Or would you answer, 'Never have I heard anything more divine'...

CarrollBlog 5.10

Puttanesca

by Michael Heffernan

Before I gave up wondering why everything

was a lot of nothing worth losing or getting back,

I took out a jar of olives, a bottle of capers,

a container of leftover tomato sauce with onions,

put a generous portion of each in olive oil

just hot enough but not too hot,

along with some minced garlic and a whole can of anchovies,

until the mixture smelled like a streetwalker's sweat,

then emptied it onto a half pound of penne, beautifully al dente,

under a heap o...

CarrollBlog 5.9

"Jacob Rabinow, an electrical engineer, uses an interesting mental technique to slow himself down when work on an invention requires more endurance than intuition: "When I have a job that takes a lot of effort, slowly, I pretend I'm in jail. If I'm in jail, time is of no consequence. In other words, if it takes a week to cut this, it'll take a week. What else have I got to do? I'm going to be here for twenty years. See? This is a kind of mental trick. Otherwise you say, 'My God, it's not...