Room with a view

The room on the third floor overlooks the western sky and a row of vinyl-sided triple decker apartment buildings and beyond that are the deciduous trees still recovering from a long vernalization. An American flag waves on a pole in the park like an autistic child waving goodbye. A bare bulb dangles from a wire in the drop ceiling and faux wood paneling covers one wall. The linoleum floors are peeling back at the corners like a skinned animal. A desk and a few books, some clothing - the spartan possessions of the cloister. The power is out half the time. Because the stove is electric, water will not boil. In the adjacent bedroom the window has been blown out and covered with plastic that flaps in the wind like a sail on a boat whose crew members have drowned themselves. There is no bed here. I sleep on the floor. The view of sunset at twilight is breathtaking.

Walk the waters.

The rush for 2nd place

Rejected by Virginia Commonwealth University. If I had a quarter for every MFA rejection letter I have received, let's see, I would have about three dollars and seventy five cents. Just enough to buy a beer at The Sloop!

If I had forty cents for every rejection letter, that would be six dollars...just enough to Sloopersize it! O life.
Just think of what I could do if I had one dollar for every rejection letter. The possibilities abound.

Last Day in the Emerald City

Dear Seattle -

I must return to Boston now, that great American pukehole of brick and privilege and collegiate booshit.

I will pine for your growlers of plentiful beer. Your salmon streams, even though I don't eat fish.
I will pine for your verdure, the black spruces and the firs, the ugly coastal pines and the Lance Armstrong cyclists in lewd spandex.
I will even pine for your ubiquitous and slick condos, their flat facades of glass and steel.
I will even pine for your salty seaman dudes who hawk their spittle on your shores.
I will even pine for the unremitting rain that falls on my head like pigeon shit.
I will even pine for the air mattress that has ruined my back and my dreams.
I will even pine for the crepuscular light of noon that looks like dirty toilet water.
I will even pine for the nauseating hangovers induced by your delectable beer.

Seattle, farewell, adieu, auf wiedersehen, ciao, peace, love, debauchery.

A note for the union and confederate dead; a lamentation for the state of the world

Malcolm X get up, we need you!
FDR get up, we need you!
Robespierre get up, we need you!
Marx get up, we need you!
Thoreau get up, we need you!
Che get up, we need you!
Attila the Hun get up, we need you!
Shakespeare get up, we need you!
Emerson get up, we need you!
Nietzsche get up, we need you!
MLK get up, we need you!
Ginsburg get up, we need you!
Sartre get up, we need you!
St. Anthony get up, we need you!
Job get up, we need you!
Lenin get up, we need you!
John Adams get up, we need you!
Socrates get up, we need you!
Joan of Arc get up, we need you!
Mailer get up, we need you!
Zapata get up, we need you!
Foucault get up, we need you!
Adorno get up, we need you!
Leopold get up, we need you!
Galois get up, we need you!
Sagan get up, we need you!
Artaud get up, we need you!
de Sade get up, we need you!
Spinoza get up, we need you!
Deleuze get up, we need you!
Weber get up, we need you!
Get up, we need you!

Dubai

Since this blog seems to be gravitating around the topic of cities, let's discuss a city
that, in all probability, we have not visited......Dubai.

Thoughts from cyberspace?

Dear Notre Dame, go to Purgatory

Hello Amos,

Here's what I can say: The prose faculty selection committee met last week and they have created their list of candidates. You made the final round of choices. You are NOT completely out of the running with us, but you are far enough down on our list that I would recommend you accept another offer if it pleases you. Thank you for applying and your interest in our program. Our communication is all unofficial, of course. Eventually official graduate school letters will arrive. The very best of luck to you and for your success. Where were you accepted? And, I'd greatly appreciate you letting me know your final decision. I keep bugging the grad school for MORE slots for talented people. It's helpful to tell them [not by name] where applicants decide to go. Thanks again for writing and your fine application.

Cheers,

Coleen Hoover

Creative Writing Program

Department of English

340 O'Shaughnessy Hall

University of Notre Dame

Notre Dame IN 46556-5611

574-631-7526

http://www.nd.edu/~alcwp/

Portland in review: overrated.

Or should I say, Portlandia? Utopian nightmare. A city built by Walt Disney.
Hipster invasion. The demogaphic is heavily skewed towards lily-white, almost
entirely homogenized. Neo-liberal dissent is normalized. It is simply
too quaint. It is too eerily like Marx's communist society on earth - the end of
history. Stagnation. Coming from a city like Birmingham, and living in Boston, has made me
appreciate the complex beauty of dysfunction and imperfections in city. In summation, the city is so perfect that it is a shit-hole, if that makes sense at all. I am glad I visited, though I am not sure I could live there for more than 6 months without
getting claustrophobic. The East Side of the river is not very walkable.
To give it credit, the transit infrastructure in the downtown core is
something to be envied. The Alphabet District is quite nice. I didn't hear a single gunshot the entire time I was in Portland! I felt a slight hint of wistfulness.
On top of all that, the local economy of Portland is probably worth less than the total GDP of
all sub-Saharan nations combined. If the world I live in isn't broken, or in need of salvation or rectification, I don't want to live in that world.

After St. Augustine

Tomorrow we go to Portland. And so the search for the perfect city, the city of God continues...

From Seattle

Since I have been rejected thus far by every MFA program I have applied to and since grad school seems to be going the way of the dinosaur, here are the options:

1. You join the Air Force.
2. Join rebel forces in Somalia.
3. Work for USPS and write by moonlight.
4. Commit myself to McLean Hospital (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McLean_Hospital)
5. Move to one of the following cities: Richmond; Minneapolis; Seattle; Mogadishu (yes, that is in
Somalia); Chicago; Indianapolis; Baltimore; Philly, etc.
6. Buy some 3rd world country and a tugboat and start a coup.
7. Live in the Hoh Rain Forest.
8. Commit a non-violent felony for which I am arrested and then write subversive literature
AND the Great American Novel on the taxpayer's dime while serving a life sentence.
9. Start a world religion, in the footsteps of Joseph Smith, Muhammad, Christ, L. Ron Hubbard, et al.
9. All of the above.


Thoughts from cyberspace?