Rupert Wondolowski's Blog, page 14

The Mud Luscious Stamp Story Anthology is Out and I'm In

Arriving just in time to make me feel almost like a real writer again is the beautifully bound Mud Luscious Stamp Story Anthology with my tiny 50 word story. Order a bunch! Perfect stocking stuffer.


[ C. ] An MLP Stamp Stories Anthology is shipping now & to celebrate, we've done two things: First, we hooked up with the wonderful & freakishly good Scott Garson to create a special edition of Wigleaf, including thirteen original Stamp Stories by thirteen of our [ C. ] authors, all online & free here. Second, we are putting [ C. ] on sale for the next few days, giving you one-hundred Stamp Stories by one-hundred of the greatest contemporary writers, all for $10 with free shipping here. Good right? We thought you'd like it. So, read the special Wigleaf, order a sale copy before our deal expires, & then wait hummingly at your mailbox for the likes of some beautiful new Mud Luscious.

Stamp Stories are texts of 50 words or less, printed on 1×1 cardstock, & shipped free from participating presses. We wanted to tie together the indie press community in a vibrant yet viable way, & so this venture was born. Through 2010, we solicited stamp-sized texts from 100 authors & distributed the physical Stamp Stories through more than 40 participating presses. [ C. ] collects all of these texts into one perfect-bound edition.

Participating Authors James Tadd Adcox, Jesse Ball, Ken Baumann, Lauren Becker, Matt Bell, Kate Bernheimer, Michael Bible, Jack Boettcher, Harold Bowes, Jesse Bradley, Donald Breckenridge, Melissa Broder, Blake Butler, James Chapman, Jimmy Chen, Joshua Cohen, Peter Conners, Shome Dasgupta, Andy Devine, Giancarlo DiTrapano, Claire Donato, Elizabeth Ellen, Raymond Federman, Kathy Fish, Scott Garson, Molly Gaudry, Roxane Gay, Steven Gillis, Rachel B. Glaser, Amanda Goldblatt, Barry Graham, Amelia Gray, Sara Greenslit, Tina May Hall, Christopher Higgs, Lily Hoang, Tim Horvath, Joanna Howard, Laird Hunt, Jamie Iredell, Harold Jaffe, A D Jameson, Jac Jemc, Stephanie Johnson, Shane Jones, Drew Kalbach, Roy Kesey, Sean Kilpatrick, Michael Kimball, M. Kitchell, Robert Kloss, Darby Larson, Charles Lennox, Eugene Lim, Matthew Lippman, Norman Lock, Robert Lopez, Sean Lovelace, Josh Maday, Dave Madden, John Madera, Kendra Grant Malone, Tony Mancus, Peter Markus, Chelsea Martin, Zachary Mason, Hosho McCreesh, Alissa Nutting, Riley Michael Parker, Aimee Parkison, David Peak, Ted Pelton, Adam Peterson, Ryan Ridge, Joseph Riippi, Adam Robinson, Ethel Rohan, Joanna Ruocco, Kevin Sampsell, Selah Saterstrom, Davis Schneiderman, Zachary Schomburg, Todd Seabrook, Ben Segal, Gregory Sherl, Lydia Ship, Matthew Simmons, Justin Sirois, Amber Sparks, Ken Sparling, Ben Spivey, Michael Stewart, Terese Svoboda, Sean Ulman, Deb Olin Unferth, Timmy Waldron, William Walsh, Rupert Wondolowski, James Yeh, & Desmond Kon Zhicheng-Mingdé.

Participating Presses Artifice Magazine, Artistically Declined Press, Atticus Books, Barge, Blood Pudding Press, Blue Square Books, Calamari Press, Cow Heavy, The Cupboard, Dark Sky Books, Dzanc Books, Ellipsis Press, Fairy Tale Review, Featherproof Books, Gigantic, Greying Ghost, Hobart, The Iron Rail, Ink Monkey Mag, Keyhole Books, Kitty Snacks, Lazy Fascist Press, Magic Helicopter Press, Monkeybicycle, Narrow House, Opium, Outside Writer's Collective, Pank, Paper Hero Press, Pear Noir!, Pilot Books, Publishing Genius Press, Quick Fiction, Ravenna Books, Scrambler Books, Starcherone Books, Typecast Publishing, Tyrant Books, Word Riot Press, & Yes Yes Books

From Trucker Spunk Island to Hog Heaven!

They say that when you travel a great distance with a loved one you unearth new secrets about each other. On this trip down South I discovered that Everly thinks hotel rooms are giant spunk traps where the spilt liquid DNA of lonesome truckers live forever like nasty sticky ghosts on every polyester fiber of bed cover, carpet, plastic tv remote and vinyl chair.

She brought this up vividly as I tried to choke down a Greek salad and some of her pizza that we'd just purchased at a closing joint up the street in a strip mall. We turned on the clunker of an old electronic dream box and the remote system looked like the equivalent of the first Space Invaders video game. It basically seemed to be hooked up to be a conduit to porn movies. The four movies "currently showing in theaters" that you could see were "Captain Ron" starring Goldie Hawn and Kurt Russell, "Couples Retreat", "Bruno" and some movie where Amy Adams buys high heel shoes.

We happily went back to Duke University radio, which was playing all Rough Trade singles from 1978 to 1982. Kleenex and Delta 5 really hit the spot and still sounded fresh. And in honor of the land we were visiting (although in the Red Roof Inn we could have been pretty much anywhere) I cracked open the Collected Stories of William Faulkner.



Everly is nothing if not the researcher. Plowing through Yelp and old Splendid Table shows she got us to the amazing Sunrise Biscuit Kitchen somewhere near Chapel Hill, North Carolina. A drive through only and a longstanding legendary joint they were not amused by or indulgent with our initial confusion pulling up to their window of vast splendid greasy coronary journeys. They knew that if we dithered for even two extra minutes there'd be a pile-up of hungry angry drivers.

When I'm at home I usually stick to just a piece of toast or croissant to line my stomach for incoming iced coffees and allergy pills, but I love me a good greasy breakfast on the road. But this place is the Speedy Meemaw of Hash Slinging. Just in the ten minutes that we were there wolfing down our chicken, egg and cheese biscuits (and I ate my hash brown hockey pock after standing and waving like a fool in front of the annoyed lady in the order taking glass box so I could get some hot sauce) at least a dozen cars went through.




With swollen gut and my pleasure centers sated with cholesterol and carbs and Texas Pete we headed for Chapel Hill's main drag and came upon a coffee place conveniently located next to Occupy Chapel Hill. Although I've been a fried and frazzled bastard and all my time lately has been sucked up by work and trying to at least keep up a pretense of being of a writer, I confess I haven't checked out Occupy Baltimore, but the movement has been a breath of psychic fresh air in the atmosphere of politicians fighting each other to see who can turn the clock back as far as they can to pre-FDR times and common human empathy.

The first bookstore of the day was Nice Price Books. A friendly unassuming shop that had the feel for some reason of a beach shop Nice Price also had a good vinyl record selection. In fact, I found the records to have nicer prices than the books, which were generally paperback and strictly half the cover price which these days and for most paperbacks isn't really that great.
But in the vinyl bins I scored a nice 12" Ramones promo, an original Bikini Kill split with Huggybear and a few obscure jazz pieces.

There was an enigmatic man working there who resembled a Nashville mix of Neil Diamond and Elvis with a sliver of Benicio Del Toro. He kept hovering nearby with a broom clearing phlegm and emitting a vibe of "I just want you to be aware that I'm miserable". But he kept reminding me of a lounge singer that used to be my assistant manager when I was a teenager working at Rite-Aid (it was a quaint pharmacy with a lunch counter and was named Reads before the Rite-Aid hog ate the head off it). He ate chili for breakfast every day, his admirable dark hair was always exactly the same without looking like a wig and he took me aside after we talked music and I told him I was a writer and singer and he told me to always follow my dream no matter how much resistance there was and who got angry about it.



Above is a picture of All Day Records, my Moby Dick of vinyl. It was such a beautiful day in Chapel Hill, around 70 degrees in November and we were on only the second day of our vacation adventure and Nice Price Books had whetted my appetite to find some great records.

Walking up to All Day Records I thought I'd found the place. The lights were out, although it was Tuesday and near noon, but I could see great stuff lined along the one wall in three rows - Erkin Koray, Skull Defekts with Asa and Brother Moonfish Higgs, a bunch of titles on the Indian label and Link Wray in front of the used bins.

Despite the darkness and no upright humans insight within I grabbed the door excitedly and it opened to an empty shop. Was this a cruel scientific lab test? Was William Shatner dressed as an army psychiatrist in a backroom watching me, waiting to send volts of electricity through me if I tried to pluck a $5 Ajda Pekkan album (the one where she's riding a horse nekkd) from a rack?

Apparently we had arrived at a time not falling within the parameters of "All Day".




But hey, I am a fellow dealer who does not like waking early. Or waking period, really. It's an ugly affair, getting the electrified ancient meat prone and functioning after 9 or 10 hours of flying through hidden mountain caves with Batman. Plus it made us feel like participating North Carolina citizens to hang out by the door and make sure those more desperate or less enlightened than us not walk in and have a mad grab of freebies or engage in a foul "Blastoma" - the medical term for an orgasm reached while having a Starbucks' induced bowel movement crouching in a darkened retail store.

Also we got to check out the graffiti near All Day and post some Normal's stickers (although if you're Johnny Law I'll deny it).

Eventually a much younger couple approached the store and sadly they weren't there to (hu)man the counter. The girl was touring under the name Headache and the gent was touring under the name Michael Collins, which he claimed was his real name. Turns out they had just played the Copy Cat building in Baltimore a few days ago, so that led to me heatedly throwing out all the Baltimore venues I could think of until they backed away Twittering.

The four of us did bring up the possibility, though, that maybe the counter person was collapsed behind the counter in the dark. This brought to Everly's mind a library story of a patron sliding under a table after a heart attack and not being seen in the slow, quiet period until another patron came along and discovered him.

At any rate, Everly ventured in just long enough to peek behind the counter like someone rushing through an apartment where you'd just set off pesticide bombs, then ran back out. Having determined no foul play or acts of God, she went to the open business next door and told them "Human Vaporizing, NC" what was going on. They kind of chuckled, shaking their heads and saying the record store owner's name in a manner that implied perhaps this wasn't unusual.

The young touring couple moved on, but I couldn't let go. Finally Everly lured me away, promising me we'd drive back after cruising the neighborhood some more. And to her credit, as always, she told the truth and return we did. At 1. Still no lights on. We exchanged a quiet moment of mutual understanding like in a Hallmark television special when little Aiden realized that Innskeep the Gerbil had gone on to Heaven and it was time to put it in the Keds shoebox and bury it next to Grandma's grave in the backyard.





And like many a human who's old enough to see end written in the newly exposed crinkle lines of his balding pate and no longer has good strong vices to erase the pain of being human, I happily let tasty North Carolina style barbecue assuage my vinyl lust at Hog Heaven, another Everly discovery (hopefully she will Yelp this bitch up, cause she writes real good like!). This place is on the outskirts of Chapel Hill when you're pointed towards Atlanta and they serve up a tasty subtle chopped bbq sandwich. And the best chicken and dumplings I've ever tasted in my life.

To top it off, they also had hanging the Men's Room this plaque that reflected both portions of their sign "Hog" and "Heaven". "Accept one another. Just as Christ accepted you." Sentiments I definitely like. But these hogs are up for slaughter!!!!!

Thermos Iced Coffee Loaded, Lungs Hungry For Air, Eyes Craving New Books & Records, We Hit the Road

Thankful and feeling more lighthearted now that the store was on somewhat of a roll and that I had a crew that I felt confident leaving it with, hungry as hell for some sunlight and new scenery and new books and vinyl, grateful and blissed out that I was with a partner who loved books, records and funky road food as much as me -, we set out to see what was left of America and how its mutation was going.





The first point of interest was "Aqualand" in southern Maryland. Sadly closed down, but it looked like it probably originated in the '60s or '70s and I'd never heard of it before. Had that Enchanted Forest kind of DIY vibe to it.

Our first stop was a very disappointing quick peek in at a roadside antique shop. It was full of granny lamps, but I thought it was worth a shot asking for records and books because it might be the kind of place where they just threw a few boxes of them in the back for sale cheap with no regard for their value. Instead, I just got a lecture from the too prim white moustachioed gent about how a man can't make a living off of selling records. "Tell me something I don't know Bizarro Santa. How many elves do you have strapped into Iron Maidens behind all those Tiffany glass trinkets?"




The next stop was much more fun and gratifying - Plan 9 Music in Richmond. After loading up on historic "Sally Bells Kitchen" potato salad, deviled eggs, cheese nip and Smithfield ham of course. The place was started in 1924 and some of the original sunlight from that year still warbles in egg yolky blobs throughout the eldritch interior.

As I was near giddy with happiness going through Plan 9's International Music bargain bin and finding a few really cheap treasures, the gawky young teen behind the counter played some of the most gruesome hair rock I've heard since being mocked in Jumper's Hole Mall in Glen Burnie in the '70s. Refreshing, though, in a backwards masochistic way to hear such awful music in a record store in these ultra-hip times.

In their new arrivals I snagged a near mint Bob Dylan bootleg I'd never seen before called "Tangerine". Live in Paris from 1978 it covers a diverse selection of songs from his career. And the cover is a photo taken during the shooting of Billy the Kid. Also got a really nice clean copy of Leadbelly Sings Play-Party Songs Volumes I and II on the Stinson label, pressed on red vinyl and a very good + original Reprise stereo copy of the Fugs' "Tenderness Junction". Does the gatefold include a nude picture of Sir Allen Ginsberg? Why, yes.

The one frustrating thing about picking up all this great stuff on the road is not being able to spin the new vinyl. I've got about a dozen Brazilian albums from 1975 or before that I've never heard but that look fantastic. Plus the Dylan boot has a live version of the weirdly compelling "Changing of the Guards" from the underloved masterpiece "Street Legal".



Cary Street where Plan 9 abides, also hosts a great new and used book shop called "Chop Suey". It's two-storied and the first floor is mainly a fairly small but well curated selection of new books. But their new arrivals area near the front boasted four Phil Dick paperbacks, so my bibliowillie was engorged.

One of the books I was seeking out for myself which I'd owned many times before but didn't hold onto, was a copy of Paul Bowles' autobiography Without Stopping. Sure enough I found it, along with a hardback bibliography of the books of William Burroughs, in their "Beat Era" section. It's a fine UK Peter Owen hardback to boot. (And today I just found a Putnam first of it in Decatur, but more on Decatur later).

The stairs leading up to the used floor were lined with really good contemporary art. If I had had more time I would have gotten some information on the artists, but we wanted to get to Atlanta at some point and who knew how many more thrift stores and flea markets awaited us.

AS I HAVE SAID BEFORE by Austin Al Ackerman

As I Have Said Before

Face the lumpy one the hairy cookie
under the couch and my stone of stunning water
where I broke my ticktack camera do it
even before meat's door grows sticky with your black heads
finding an airport destination, setting and landing
on a giant empty hole known to all of us in the club
as what if not a scream to yourself into an empty hole
anyway I drew my trash thicker across my forehead
with pagination had I clutched the wheel
mumbler dazed into the windshield scummy
its holiday strips open late
my foreskin lost in towels
         basins tongues watches trembling
petulant you've addressed yourself to all that surgery
I thought I'd whistle locker's throat fainter than
the key's throat but that was not the locker's throat
that was brittle nesting theory brought to you by
crossed eyes and how many open late

(from jmb of 2/24 etc.) - Blaster Al Ackerman

Lectures on Marxism 3 - The Glory of the Lard, by Mark Hossfeld

Lecture on Marxism 3 – The Glory of the Lard.

I was sitting beside my bed-ridden grandmother not long before she died when we got to talking about lard.

For her beautiful, flaky biscuits she preferred the lard from Regyptus County , Mississippi , where even the livestock was virtuous.

The humans of that county were famous for a profound act of Christian charity: they had shaved off the horns of grateful Jews so the poor heathens could wear bigger hats.

Regyptus lard was used as a salve for aching horn stubs.

When she was thirteen she got work as a yolk spooner at a biscuit factory in Vicksburg , where she learned the lubricatory secrets of lard, for which she credited her landing a husband.

I asked her to entrust these secrets to me, but she took up the question of flour and the grind thereof, gave out on me and passed on.

When I entered my late middle age I started to think on death, politics and biscuits.

All I had left of my grandmother was a wooden spoon by which I mastered yolks.

Even though I lack all vibration in my dangling lobes, I listened for rumors of a certain lard.

I recalled my grandmother believed there was one particular lard that should be universally despised and yet was coveted.

It came from Clitchen County , she said, not far from Dripping Nipple.

The men there preferred to marry animals and were dying out because what offspring they had were helpless, bleating monsters.

Needless to say, the lard from there was spunky, the men having made mistresses of the boars, fucking, slaughtering and selling the remains of all they had not married.



-Mark Hossfeld

Dodson Drive by Amanda Dorsey

Some of you may already know the talented, gentle Amanda Dorsey with the beaming smile from local folk duo Sea Couch, who are playing the upcoming November 4th Shattered Wig Night with Her Fantastic Cats, Kim Gek Lin Short and Bruce Jacobs. Not only can she play a mean banjo and mandolin, but she has also been doing some fine artwork and writing. Here is a poem that I love from her blog "Hello My Name Is Dreaming" at:
www.amandadorsey.blogspot.com


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Dodson Drive


This morning passing
metal boxes
all at once--
birdseed patio galaxy
suspended in ivy
twin fig trees and typewriter
sharing far-off love
hummingbird kissing
your afternoon eyes
damp cheeks of sisters
tricycling through bed sheets
watering the rug
below blue room rotary
the taste of candy corn
lingering in our mouths
lingering once again

Lecture On Marxism 2 - Resolution on the Current Situation by Mark Hossfeld

(Image borrowed from Mr. Topp).


Lecture on Marxism 2 – Resolution on the Current Situation, June 2011.



So the Trotskyites didn't like the class composition at Syntagma Square .

No, composure is not entirely different from composition.

For example, I had a rabbit-headed character once – I used to draw comic books to entertain my friends – who calmed down enough to be a Marlowe-like detective.

I suppose I did mean the one who wrote "Edward II."

Some people thought that Marlowe was a spy, which is somewhat like a detective.

Anyway, here is how people in Chengdu eat rabbit heads: after the spicy meat is gone, use the jawbones as utensils.

Once I held the rabbit head on my fingers and made it say funny things, like a puppet.

"I'm the gay King of England! You can't find my butt!"

Nothing peeks out when you are incorporeal.

The story of the King's two bodies was in another play in which two bloated, bobbing monarchs were towed out to sea.

I'm so sick of monarchs, aren't you? They just swell, explode and ooze.

Swell, explode and ooze.

That's also the three stages of socialism.

If trinity could be a verb, it would mean something like that.

Meanwhile, I have never met a rabbit that enjoys high humidity.

They just fall out like the rest of us, lolling about in the grass, demanding to be shaved.

Well, they don't say, "Shave me, shave me!" It's just that everyone knows what they mean.

And then, as the harpsichords plink merrily along, a real human baby is born, or a champagne bottle is smashed against a big spaceship or a crowd of workers is shot.

That's how it goes most of the time.

Since the Moon got popular we've been gathering at the riverside lighting incense and commemorating the late Michael Jackson.

Some have been grumbling, but, as I gnaw at the cheek flesh of this rabbit head, I think we have a lot to be thankful for: no King; actual Soviets; General Intellect.


- Mark Hossfeld

Violet Hour Show at Normal's - Thursday, October 27

Thursday, Oct. 27th. 8PM at Normal's - 425 E. 31st St.
Baltimore, Cultural Capital of the Known World
Suggested donation of $5 or $6 for musicians

The Violet Hour
Alicia Jo Rabins and Aaron Hartman
Jefrey Brown



Local duo The Violet Hour who played an amazing Sunday afternoon here long ago return to enchant and introduce their touring friends Alicia Jo Rabins and Aaron Hartman (pictured above), who play "post-biblical art-pop" .
Leonard Cohen meets Owen Pallett with Violin looping; lyrical songs about leprosy, betrayal, and love.

Here are some rave reviews from top guns:

"Hauntingly lovely" -- LA Weekly
"Dynamic folk-rock" -- New Yorker
"Stellar"--Largeheartedboy.com

And here are their sites to check out:
www.myspace.com/girlsintroublemusic
girlsintrouble.bandcamp.com

Also on the bill will be Jefrey Brown of Jackie-O-Motherfucker and Evolutionary Jass Band fame.

Mangumetized

The change of season could be smelled in the air at night, but the last swampy tendrils of August and August, The Sequel (The Month Formerly Known As September) were still trying to snatch at our flying ragged coattails.

It was nearing the end of a pleasingly busy day when the tall thin gent with the deadpan expression, long black Prince Valiant locks and Huck Finn cap entered holding a Regal acoustic guitar with his equally tall girlfriend endowed with loose black ringlets of hair, holding a black chihuahua and looking like the head of a cutting edge ballet company.

The woman eventually passed the dog off to the gent and we talked about his dog and my dog Max. How I actually had a black chihuahua in my mind when I looked for a dog years ago, but then into my lap dropped THE GREATEST DOG THAT EVER LIVED. By a very subtle extra light that came into the quiet man's eyes I could tell that my passion for young Maxwell had not frightened him but touched him.

From dogs, the conversation easily moved to one of the other great passions of life - books. The couple also came in with a few friends and one of them had helped unionize Powell's in Oregon, one of the Promised Lands of used books.

At this point I was already a happy bookseller. Embroiled with good talk among customers who were making tidy piles of books and records. With a black chihuahua to boot. At about this point the enigmatic and beautiful possible Ballet Company Director said: "We should probably go soon Mangum".

The rusty bells of the chapel that I usually set my hunchback to each gray UK morning in the abbey finally began to clamor.

"Wait, are you Jeff Mangum, playing Baltimore tonight?" Indeed he was. The beautiful acoustic guitar should have been a tipoff, but in the mood I was in I was fixated on the dog more than a customer walking in holding a guitar. "I'm coming to your show tonight with my nephew. He and my nieces sacrifice gentle creatures in your name on handmade eco-altars each night and hold you only slightly below Buddha in esteem."


The surprising thing was that from my nephew and niece's hushed discussions of Mr. Mangum's decade of silence since "In The Aeroplane Over The Sea" and some sort of possible Christian induced seclusion from the material world, I always envisioned him as a small haunted nervous man, but here he was completely in the moment and at peace in his skin and pretty damn tall and model-like.



Riding the crest of my third iced coffee I asked if he would sign something for my nephew Geff, saying that it would place me at the highest reaches of Unclehood. He went me one better, asking for a piece of paper and doing a signed drawing on the spot. Plus an additional one for the store.


At about this time said nephew himself, claiming he had received psychic messages that Jeff Mangum was in the store (true), showed up to use the can. He played it far cooler than myself and engaged Sir Mangum in subdued musical chatter. I loaded up his bag with my Origin of Paranoia As a Heated Mole Suit, Blaster Al Ackerman's Corn and Smoke and The Baltimore String Felon's CD.






I almost dropped the ball on getting my own ticket for the night of Hawk and the Hacksaw and Jeff Mangum after pulling the few strings I have left in Baltimore (thank you Todd and Tiffany!) to score one for my sleeveless nephew Homie Geff, but luckily Madame Tiffany called me a few days before saying she had one for me. I count myself a fan of Neutral Milk Hotel and a few other groups from the Athens, GA Elephant 6 collective, but I hadn't quite had my Jeff Mangum religious conversion moment until catching his show that night after meeting him in Normal's.

Opening act A Hawk and A Hacksaw (the core of which is pictured below) didn't hurt. They played crisp charging Balkan music that had my limbs stirring and made me want to call my old pal from Furniture Falling Down the Stairs and Little Gruntpack, Scott "The Swede" Larson. The things that Jeremy Barnes (formerly of Neutral Milk Hotel) was doing to the accordion would have had Scott drooling expensive imported beer into his rustic wiry beard. And Heather Trost on violin was impeccable. I hope to live and remain married to Kim Jong Ev another 9 nines at the least and to have a lot of money so I could hire these folks for our 10th wedding anniversary. By then I most likely will only be a pair of gray eyes floating in magic water inside an old Cracker Jack box, but still.....



After a blistering set by A Hawk and A Hacksaw, Sir Mangum quietly took the stage with a few acoustic guitars and a music stand. The atmosphere he created and nurtured was truly blissful. The crowd was so far into his songs that they sang along very ably with most of them and did some nice background on others. And once again I was surprised because his live voice was even stronger and clearer than on the records.

Among all his by now classic songs he also did a moving version of Daniel Johnston's "True Love", which local duo Sea Couch also covers. It was beautiful and reminded me of how happy I was in my own life having found Everly and how just a few years ago I'd lost all hope of my heart finding a home.

And then, as if I wasn't already floating on air from the Zombies show the week before, Jeff Mangum and crew hanging in the store and then catching his great show that night, someone yelled "Where have you been?" "What do you mean?" Sir Mangum asked. "Like today? Today I hung out at Normal's Bookshop."

Bliss indeed.

Lectures On Marxism I By Mark Hossfeld

Okay, I finally send something that I think I haven't sent before. Don't be fooled by the title: Lectures on Marxism.

But it is kind of funny: I actually gave Lecture One at Dian zi ke da (University of Electronics, Science and Technology of China, where I teach) to a roomful of bewildered students and got paid for it. The things a foreigner can do around here!

I copy it here in the email and as an attachment:


-----------------------------------------------------------------------

Lecture on Marxism 1 – From Chengdu , Sichuan .



I just stole this pen from Rupert over there.

His reply was, "Property is theft."

The happy philosophy which instructs me to cheerfully steal from my good friend – who knows when I'll be able to do that again – also proves my beard-worthiness through exceedingly apt quotation about sulky submissiveness and how it just ain't right.

But even these lofty ideas came to grief when the high-spirited became:

!). The professional and finally, fatally, the credentialed.

At this rate, the stately, graven system will grow hard as a hoof day before yesterday.

No more about it then.

That's like looking for the soft side of an axe.

Speaking of which: the dashing Che, who all the girls cooed over, where are his hands?

Why, they're safe in haven, that little opening to the sea.

Where is Dietzgen in his leather apron?

Gone, gone; pinched down to the size of a Fukushima particle.

That particle is the narrowest, privatest portion of collectivity, by the way – private because some things become the memory of just one person only.

Watch as it gets inhaled: length without breath, air without the little poky bits, shrunk back into their molecular scrota – even the fossils lie screaming up for more.

Who has the microscope that can find me out in the vast tracts of my nothingness?

Out of nothing I came, nowhere near rich, yet I was nonetheless formed a pauper princeling, idling my childhood in a castle by a lake.

There are dragons at the bottom of the Lake of the Saline Women.

Rheumios dipped their dicks into the skirts of the lake and the game of spoons glistened over girls' knees.

It was a golden age, for there is no need to be somber when you know how dumb you are.

But it was also a long time ago, when apples had skins like polished furniture and everyone had recently escaped a breached Bastille.

Then there was thunder.

Omens are like that, they grumble that nothing's happened yet.

Then there was wind and rain and hail.

Smart black cats scurried under carports.

Millions of humans put on their ponchos and revved their motorbikes.

Machines labored on, lashed by the weather.

I called my family after the storm – the power came back – and America sounded nice enough.

Apparently a giant, metallic robot lumbered by, almost stepping in the rosemary.

The Communist President had turned out to be a disappointment, though.

I called my friend in Shanghai , who, in a hushed voice, told me indignant Spaniards were everywhere.

I called my mentor, a Greek Jew, who told me my grandfather is the dust wherein I draw a happy face with my forefinger.

He was right, I had done that.

2) My phone card ran out, so I went to my meeting and found a friendly guy who confessed he was a murderer.

I thought to myself how the letters of the law spell a tortured soul.

Thou shalt knot, from the holey scroll of punk perfection.

I said, well I hope you done give that shit up.

Turns out he had, of course, but he had taken up thieving, which was crueler, in its own way.

Crueler to him, that is.

The urge to kill good and suppressed, he was full of lust for toaster ovens, garlic mashers and sturdy ladles.

The glint of the sun on a perfect stranger's French press was a palatine dream.

But that's the key to understanding, he said.

It's the sun that's the original and despite what you may have heard, you can't steal the fire of the sun.

The mosquitoes had found us on the roof, so I said I'd walk him home.

We walked until we heard a rustling in the ecological park.

We went in, peers in fear.

There was graffiti-scarred bamboo shouting warning and giant banana leaves darkened the place.

We saw some light on the ground and pushed the fallen leaves away until we found the glowing roots of the moon.

Them is some photons, he said, illuminated.



-Mark Hossfeld