Paul de Man, in Allegories of Reading, argues that literature is inescapably concerned with its own language, and that the reader must therefore attempt to draw meaning from rhetoric – “the study of tropes and of figures” which assist in understanding the employed language – in order to better approach understanding of a sign's complex imperfection. (1979: 6). A sign is simultaneously a perception of reality (a form or signifier) as well as reality as it exists independent of perception and communication (the content or signified), and because of language's various interpretive meanings, the signifier is unreliable as a means of approaching the signified. Because narratives employ language through necessity, however, one must read the narrative in all conceivable ways if one hopes to approach understanding of it. Literature must attempt to reconcile its linguistic failings with the reader, according to de Man, by offering rhetoric that assists in interpretation, and one way literature attempts this reconciliation is through the reading of literature within literature – Proust's character Marcel being driven by his grandmother “away from the unhealthy inwardness of his closeted reading” the first of such examples (de Man 1979: 4). Narrative media within narrative media presents the fictional world with rhetoric in the same manner that the real-life reader is presented with it, but through the layering of narratives the real-life reader is also assisted in acknowledging the various ways the signified can be read. The real-life reader is presented with an image of self in the fictional reader, but is simultaneously presented with yet another image of self in the fictional reader's interpretation of the embedded narrative, thus illustrating all narratives' inherent imperfection but unquestionable importance in referential understanding of one's own identity and, more generally, what 'is'.

"You worry me," he whispered, his breath dancing across her skin like a faint, teasing caress.  "You don't eat.  You hardly sleep.  You drink too much."

Tensing, she tried to move away from him.  Cullen wouldn't let her, though.  He ended up crawling into the hammock with her, cradling her up against him.  He made it seem easy and Taige lay there wishing the damn thing would flip them out onto their butts.  "I eat enough.  And I drink because I don't want to dream.  I hardly sleep because I don't want to dream.  You don't like it, then stop showing up in my dreams."

These dreams weren't any more real than his love for her had been.  She knew that, so seeing him looking at her like she was the center of his world was like plunging tiny, needle sharp shards of glass into her skin.

His hand came up, cradling her face for a long moment and then he smoothed her hair back.  "What happened?"

Taige flinched as though he'd jabbed her with a hot poker.  She shook her head and tried again to pull away. "I don't want to talk about it."

"You never do."

She sneered at him.  "You're nothing more than my imagination, you know.  Since I imagined you, wouldn't it make sense that you already know what happened?"

"Taige."  A warm hand curved over her neck and then a hard mouth pressed a gentle kiss against hers.  She shivered and then opened her eyes, stared at Cullen.  His lids were low over his eyes but that couldn't hide the frustration she saw there.  His hand tightened on her neck but he didn't say anything else.  He just eased her body back up against his, holding her tight.  She buried her face in the front of his shirt and wished this was real.

If it was real, she could tell him.  She could cuddle up against him and cry herself dry and maybe the ache in her heart would ease a little. Maybe if she cried hard enough, maybe if she told him all the vile crap she had been forced to wade through for the past decade, she could breathe without feeling like there was a band around her chest.  She could sleep deep and easy without nightmares, without guilt.

But it wasn't real.  Cullen's presence in her dreams came from years of loving the bastard even after he'd kicked her out of his life.  These dreams were a sham, something brought on by her weak, needy heart and she hated them.

Suddenly desperate to wake up, to get away from him, she shoved against him, hard and fast.  She ended up flipping the hammock over but she landed on her hands and knees–and away from him.  He swore under his breath and reached for her but Taige scrambled away.   "I don't want you here, Cullen," she said, squeezing the words through her tight throat and wishing she could scream it at him.  Wished she could hit him and do something to ease the pain inside her.

"Yes, you do," he whispered, striding towards her.  She brought her hands up, ready to punch him if he came any closer.  Cullen was ready to risk it, apparently, because he just kept coming. She swung towards him and he blocked the first punch.  The second one caught him on the chin, but he still reached for her, pulling her up against him.

Taige struggled, kicking at his shins.  But her bare feet weren't going to do much damage.  She ended up with a sore foot and that only made her madder.  "Let go of me, damn it," she snarled.

"No.  I did that once and I've hated myself ever since."

~*~*~*~*~*

Don't forget, if you pre-order the book or buy it during release week, you can be entered into a contest to win an ARC of FRAGILE.  Details here

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[p. 85] Even if he wanted to, he couldn't search all the town. Look at this map. The towns dotted the page in casual disorder. And he wasn't going to be able to inspect every tourist. There were hundreds of them, limping around with their sissy bottles of water, Myers among them, one of them. The Nicaraguans were all right, not waving the tourists away like stray dogs or chasing them off with sticks. Everybody seemed to get on fairly well. But the whole experience was inconvenient for one thing, lots of getting up and sitting down, lots of staring at the pages of the guidebook while trying to walk without bumping into anything and pitching over. And the entire affair was too hot, as if a madman had come along and heated the place up -- really outrageous -- and everyone walking around as if it were normal, as if the heat were the least interesting outrageous experience of the day.

-- Deb Olin Unferth, Vacation (McSweeney's; $22) IN STOCK

I was on a cane. I was going to the doctor for the pain in my back and the pain in my knees. . . . What was so awful about it, there was no validation, none. . . . That is what makes it so hard, because I will sit here and hurt for weeks before I go in because I was—because every time I would go in at the beginning they would tell me I had cancer. And they would only look for and give me cancer-related tests. . . . I wanted him to look for something else to diagnose me with. All he would do is sit there and write down my symptoms and then say, “OK, bone scan.” He gave me cancer-related tests. He never looked for any other things. . . . And the general practitioner that was supposed to be involved with my case, I came in one day with my cane and I’m sitting here thinking that she was going to give me some info about why I was hurting. Why was I in so much pain? And she said, “You know, you don’t have cancer.” Her response to me was, “You need to get back out there and get back to life.” In other words I was moaning and groaning, and as far as she was concerned, what was the big deal? . . . The medical community stressed me, and then they would turn around and tell me that I wasn’t handling the cancer diagnosis. It’s not in my head today that I can’t stir to go make some cornbread or to whip up some eggs. They’re sort of like, “OK, we caught it in time. We saved your life. Now leave us the hell alone.” That’s how I feel. They saved my life, but then the value of my life after they saved it with the chemotherapy was zero.

Significantly, without a diagnostic label for her symptoms, when Pat left her job, she could not claim benefits from Social Security Disability, a federal insurance program that provides payment to disabled people who are unable to work. She might have been eligible for benefits, but only if a physician certified her inability to work. “The doctors kept saying, ‘You’re going to get better.’ They said breast cancer was not debilitating. They said it had a good prognosis as far as living was concerned. So I’m always trying to figure out how I’m going to pay my rent and take care of my sixteen-year-old.”

For more excerpts from After the Cure, keep checking this site!

So could you love this bastard child?
Though I don’t trust you to provide
With one hand in a pot of gold
And with the other in your side
‘Cause I am so easily satisfied
By the call of lovers so less wild
That I would take a little cash
Over your very flesh and blood

‘Cause I am a whore I do confess
But I put you on just like a wedding dress
And I run down the aisle, I run down the aisle
I’m a prodigal with no way home
But I put you on just like a ring of gold
And I run down the aisle
I run down the aisle to you

Wedding Dress by Derek Webb

I'm going rafting on the Nile Saturday (no big deal) and will be slumber partying with my American friend Rachel tomorrow and Saturday night.  She's staying with a pastor of a church.  His family has a toilet and a shower!  Oh, hot water, how I'm looking forward to our reunion!! I won't be updating until Sunday night, so here's pictures to hold you over.

This girl doesn't reside at the orphanage and I don't know her name.  Quite frankly, she tests my patience.  She's always interupting my lessons with the kids here.  And when I ask her to "faluma" or "ganda" she doesn't leave.  She just stands there and smiles.  But she did take a really cute picture.

I love this picture of Paul and Anisha.  He was trying to get her to pose for me and she wanted to stand on this little ledge on the wall.  At one point, Paul was talking to someone else and not looking at Anisha.  She thought he was going to leave.  Look at her little hand grabbing not only at his shirt, but also checking to make sure he's still protecting her.  And Ruthie is trying to sneak in the shot between them.

Faith.  She was slow to warm up to me and really show her personality, but now we're pretty much BFFs.  I think that's Natasha and Rebecca dancing in the background.

Anisha was no longer in the posing/smiling mood.  Mercy was trying to get her to look at the camera.  It was a failed attempt. The babies always have crust all over their face.  It disgusted me at first, but whatever.  Snot, mouse/rats, pit latrines...it's all old news now.

I love you and I miss you, but I don't want to hog the internet all night.  Chani probably wants to send out a few emails.

The coalman turned his fury on the horse. 'Drop him, ya big bastard! Go on, let go, drop him!'

Getting no response he dug the animal viciously in the belly with his thumb. The horse took the point at once and released me like an obedient dog dropping a bone...

After some time I stood up. The coalman was still shouting and the crowd was listening appreciatively. 'Whit d'ye think you're playing at - keep yer hands off ma bloody hoarse - get the poliss tae ye...'

Once clear I started to walk away rapidly and as I turned the corner the last faint cry from the coalman reached me.

'Dinna meddle wi' things ye ken nuthin' aboot!'"

[Herriot, James. All Creatures Great and Small, Ch 18]

He waited for her to answer her own question."

Though the story is set in Burma (or Myanmar) I would call it her "least Asian" book to date. She does great justice to the physical and cultural beauty of the country, but I think the political turmoil there is rather confusing and too serious to lend itself to Tan's style of book. As always, I love how Tan weaves humor into the cultural misunderstandings -- one of her strongest points as a writer -- but again, I think that's where the Burma piece doesn't work as well. To make light of individuals who misinterpret each other is one thing; to try to apply that same lightness to people who are killed, raped, tortured, and otherwise hurt by a military regime is... awkward. I think she was trying to do a good thing, by bringing awareness about the problems there, but at the end of the book, I realized that there was no positive way to conclude that aspect of the story, and thus I had to question everything else in the book. It's like...

Despite all that, I found a great number of quotes and passages that I liked. Seems a little contradicting, I know, but like I said, I DID still enjoy the book! Mostly. Like over half of it. Just not so much towards the end...

Anyway, because there are so many, I will put the majority of them under the cut. Enjoy:

From what I have observed, when the anesthesia of love wears off, there is always the pain of consequences. You don't have to be stupid to marry the wrong man. (p 15)

I hid my deepest feelings so well I forgot where I had placed them. (p 30)

"Can we discuss this more rationally?" Ver said. My dear friend despised hearing people use sexual expletives for emphasis. Invoke religion instead, she'd say to those in her organization--use the "damn" and "God Almighty" that show strength of conviction. Use the f-word for what it was intended, the deep-down guttural pleasure of sex. And don't bring it into arguments where hearts and brains should prevail. She was known to have kicked people off projects at work for lesser linguistic offenses. She observed that Dwight was smart and abrasive, and this combination was worse than being simply stupid and annoying. It made people want to pummel him to bits, though they might have agreed with some of what he had to say. (p 36)

Passionate people create too many problems: They are reckless. They endanger others in their pursuit of fetishes and infatuations. And they self-agitate when it is better to simply relax and let matters be. (p 43-44)

In China, many notions previously thought to be impossible could not be so easily dismissed. (p 124)

I just never saw the point in spending days and days reading stories only to disturb myself with problems I was powerless to fix. (p 146)

Let me hasten to add that although I was raised a Buddhist during childhood, it was a Chinese kind of Buddhism, which is a bit of this, that, and the other--ancestor worship, a belief in ghosts, bad fate, and all the frightful things. But it was not the Burmese version that desires nothing. With our kind of Buddhism, we desired everything--riches, fame, good luck at gambling, a large number of sons, good dishes to eat with rare ingredients and subtle flavors, and first place in anything and not just honorable mention. (p 147)

Off in the distance, Wendy and Wyatt saw a shady path leading into a forest of bamboo, and strolled hand in hand. Wendy had not yet recovered from her perceived rejection by Wyatt, but she pretended that all was fine. She chatted and flirted, yet she had a sick pang of fear in her chest. She was looking for proof that he felt equally warm toward her, which was--well, it was hard to say, exactly, except that she knew he felt none of the uncertainty that she did. He was perfectly at ease with their being together, as he had been, she imagined, with every woman. Why was he not concerned whether he felt more for her than she for him? Why didn't he worry over whether he had given more than she had? Did he feel no risk of emotion? When her eyes began to sting with tears, she pretended a lash had caught under the lid, and she rubbed at her eye. He, in turn, raised her face to his, to see if he could help extract the offender. To see such concern from him filled her with even more desperation, and she wrapped her arms around him. He instinctively did what she craved. He kissed her, clutching her buttocks. And in joy, she blurted the forbidden words: "I love you."

To his credit, Wyatt continued to kiss Wendy, covering her mouth so that she did not utter anything more along those lines. He had been expecting her to say this, afraid she would. He liked Wendy a lot. She was fun most of the time, except when she was analyzing everything he said with those searching eyes. He didn't want to hurt her feelings. Also, they had another two weeks to go on this trip. Keep it steady. Keep it fun. (p 220-221)

Death was not a loss of life, but the culmination of a series of releases. (p 229)

I realized then that we miss so much of life while we are part of it. We fail to see ninety-nine percent of the glories of nature, for to do so would require vision that is simultaneously telescopic and microscopic. (p 251-252)

She needed his constant attention, the evidence that he adored her as much as she adored him, and she persisted because he had not yet said the actual word "love." She blew again. To see it from Wyatt's side, this childish play was suffocating. He wished Wendy would just enjoy the moment rather than work at it. He had found her so much more fun to be with when he first met her and she was so easygoing and did not demand attention but drew it naturally. (p 254)

"We've come to this beautiful place," Roxanne narrated, "and we've learned that within beauty, there is tragedy." (p 289)

It's amazing, isn't it, how easily people hand over the reins to those who presume power. Against their own intuition, they allow themselves to trust those who they feel should not be trusted. (p 299)

Through trial with death, you discover your power. Through trial, you shed your mortal flesh, layer after layer, until you become who you are supposed to be. If you die, you were mortal all long. But if you survive, you are a god. (p 313)

Alas, in every community that proposes to do good, there are always a few who do good mostly for themselves. (p 329)

It was a mundane life they'd led, but even the mundane was precious and he wanted it back. (p 368)

Putting her thoughts to paper freed her of some burden she never knew she carried. (p 458)

The book had been more difficult to write than she expected. The swirl of important ideas and powerful epiphanies seemed diminised on the page. They became fixed words and were no longer fresh internal debate. Still, she finished, and was excited and nervous to see what people would think, how her work might change their lives. It could have a ripple effect. She did not want to get her expectations up too high, yet writing about personal discovery could prove to be her calling.

And then she could not find a publisher. She kept sending out the manuscript and received only rejections or never heard back. It had been a waste of time to write the damn thing. She was going to throw it in the trash--it pained her to see it, this big lump of wasted time. But then she reconsidered. She was stronger than that. It wasn't a failure. She simply had not come out of the jungle yet. She needed perspective. She needed to revise her life before she could revise her book.

No more excuses about obligations. No more thinking she was indispensable. She bought a ticket for Paris. On the plane, she conjugated verbs that would soon have real meaning: Je crie au monde. J'ai crié au monde. Je crierai pour que le monde m'entende. I will shout to the world to hear me. (p 459)

Both are from The Great Divorce by C.S. Lewis, which I finished today.  Onto The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath.

Pity was meant to be a spur that drives joy to help misery.  But it can be used the wrong way round. It can be used for a kind of blackmailing.  Those who chose misery can hold joy up to ransom, by pity.

Sweet Jesus, what an honest truth.  Please save me from the misery and pity I'm constantly looking for in the situations I'm in (and I'm not just talking about Uganda).  Joy.  Pure, holy, amazing joy, Jesus.

Our light can swallow up your darkness; but your darkness cannot now infect our light. No, no, no. Come to us. We will not go to you. Can you really have thought that love and joy would always be at the mercy of frowns and sighs? Did you not know they were stronger than their opposites?

(Emphasis added.)  Truth.

.

Another quick Coelho book. I've realized I don't really care for his more spiritual/personal books, and strongly prefer his fiction. This book leans more towards the former category, but because it is comprised of quick inspirational anecdotes, I was able to enjoy it. It's sort of coffee table self help-y, but sometimes that can be nice.

Just a few excerpts (there were many ideas worth saving/noting):

A Warrior of the Light knows that certain moments repeat themselves.

He often finds himself faced by the same problems and situations, and seeing these difficult situations return, he grows depressed, thinking that he is incapable of making any progress in life.

"I've been through all this before," he says to his heart.

"Yes, you have been through all this before," replies his heart. "But you have never been beyond it."

Then the Warrior realizes that these repeated experiences have but one aim: to teach him what he does not want to learn. (p 10)

--

In order to have faith in his own path, he does not need to prove that someone else's path is wrong. (p 17)

--

Inside each of us there lives an angel and a devil, and their voices are very alike. (p 29)

--

He is capable of seeing what is beautiful because he carries beauty within himself, for the world is a mirror and gives back to each man the reflection of his own face. (p 120)

Copyright Richard Leakey, 2007.

One of the often unnoticed tragedies of an era of technological advance and improving communications is the passing from living memory of customs, language and beliefs as small insular pockets of culture are overtaken by the sweep of civilization.

This impressive book is a complete record of the ways of the Kikuyu people, before and during the period of European influence which accompanied road and railway building and political and economic changes in the late 19th Century. It is the major anthropological achievement of the late L.S.B. Leakey and the culmination of his life-long study of the people among whom he was born and raised. Written in the graceful, readable style characteristic of scholarship in the thirties, it draws on the memories of the Elders whose confidant Dr. Leakey became.

CHAPTER ONE 

Drunk-dialing was never a good idea.  Ever.  Any woman in her right mind knew that.  Unfortunately for Sarah Buchanan, she had too many gin and tonics in her system to be in her right mind, so she went right on dialing, taking three tries before she hit the right choice from the selections in her cell phone and ignoring the seemingly far-away voice screaming for her to hang up, for God’s sake, before it was too late.

Her dog, Bentley, sat on the floor, staring at her as she flopped backward onto the couch from the arm where she had been perched, and she was almost certain his blue eyes showed genuine concern for her.  Or was it disapproval?  Somehow, she couldn’t be sure.  Then the room tilted sickeningly and began to spin.  Sarah slammed one foot to the ground, an old trick her father told her he used in college, referring to the spinning as the “B.T.s,” or “the black twirlies.”  It didn’t work this time and she tried to push her foot down harder as her call went through and the phone began to ring.  Once.  Twice.  Three times.

“Hello?”  It was picked up on the fourth ring, the groggy voice on the other end hitting Sarah like a battering ram with its soft familiarity.

“Happy Valentine’s Day.”  Emotion made an unexpected appearance, and Sarah tried to maintain a steady voice.  She reached out to scratch Bentley’s head, using him as a touchstone to keep her calm.

“Sarah?  Is that you?”

“Yeah, it’s me.  Hi.”

“Do you know what time it is?”

Sarah squinted at the antique clock mounted on the wall, but her eyes couldn’t—or wouldn’t—focus on the hands.  “No idea.”

“It’s after midnight.”

“Oh.  Oops.  I guess I’m a little late then.  My bad.  But you know what they say.  Better late than never, right?”

The frustrated breath Karen blew out on the other end of the phone was also familiar to Sarah, and she winced when she heard it.  It had been a far too common sound during their last few weeks together, as if Karen’s repeated attempts at an explanation for why she’d chosen Derek over her had been endlessly falling on deaf ears.

“What are you doing?”  Karen’s voice held the gentlest of reproaches.  Maybe she’d been expecting this, especially today.

“I’m sprawled out on the couch,” Sarah answered.

“No, Sarah, I mean what are you doing?  We talked about this.  Why are you calling me?”

The tears sprang up so fast, they surprised her.  First she was dry-eyed, then she wasn’t, just like that.  “It’s Valentines Day.  And I miss you.”

“Sarah…”

“Don’t.  Don’t do that.”

“Don’t do what?”

“Say my name with such pity.”  Sarah sat up, her unreasonably quick change of mood lost on her, her sudden movement startling Bentley to his feet.  “Like you feel sorry for me.”

“Have you been drinking?”  Karen’s tone remained steady, calm, rational.  Damn her.

“Like a fish.”

“I’m hanging up now.”

“No, wait.  Wait…please?”

Karen’s end was silent, but Sarah could hear her breathing, knew she was still there.

“I just called to tell you I miss you,” Sarah tried again.  “I don’t see anything wrong with that.”

“And what do you want me to say, Sarah?  What exactly do you expect me to say to that?”

Sarah could picture her ex, her reddish-brown hair all sleep-tousled, her brown eyes bleary, freckles sprinkled across her nose.  Karen never woke up easily; she was like a kid that way.  She loved her slumber and she was always adorable the way she looked forward to snuggling under the covers.  Sarah smiled as she thought about how Karen was most likely wearing boxers and a tight-fitting tank top, her usual sleeping attire.  That smile slipped, though, when it occurred to her that they were probably his boxers…  Bile rose in her throat, but she choked it back down.

“Is he there?”

“Sarah.”  Warning was etched all over that one word.

“Are you with him right now?”  Sarah couldn’t help herself, the anger building too rapidly for her alcohol-addled brain to filter it out. 

“Why do you have to do this?”

“Is he lying next to you?”

“I’m definitely hanging up now.”  As it always had been, the larger Sarah’s anger became, the calmer Karen sounded, and it was obvious that this behavior wasn’t new or unexpected.  She sighed heavily.  “Drink some water, take some Advil, and sleep it off.  You’re going to be hurting in the morning.  Good night, Sarah.” 

The click seemed to reverberate through her head, and Sarah whimpered at the sound of it, feeling so utterly helpless and alone she didn’t know if she could bear it.  As if it were some foreign and unidentifiable object resting in her hand, she gaped at her cell phone.  “God, what the fuck was I thinking?”  She snapped it closed and tossed it none-too-gently onto the end table next to her.

There was no fighting it; she knew that.  The second she threw her arm over her eyes, the tears came.  Her crying jags were nothing new to her, nor to Bentley.  She felt his wet nose nudge against her hand and she patted him absently on the head, but made no move to get up.  It wouldn’t be the first time she slept on the couch, the combination of her screwed up emotions and too much gin sapping her of any energy or the desire to get up and go to her bedroom.  God, she used to have such control of her life, such a tight handle on everything.  Of course, that was part of the problem, according to Karen.  Why are you such a control freak?  Loosen up, for Christ’s sake.  You don’t have to orchestrate every aspect of your life, you know.

Sarah snorted.   “If she could see me now,” she whispered.

She felt Bentley move closer, his soft tongue darting out to clean the tears off her cheeks.  He was worried about her and she knew it.  It was his job, after all, to look out for his herd and to make sure each member was okay.  She dug her fingers into his fur and murmured reassurances to him, telling him she was fine, not to worry.  He lay down on the floor with a sigh.  Apparently, he too understood they’d be sleeping in the living room again.

#

“Oh, Christ.”

Sarah felt like a freight train was blasting through her head at full speed.  Squeezing her eyes shut against the overwhelming brightness of the bathroom lights, she braced herself against the vanity with both hands and tried hard to regulate her breathing and stave off a second bout of vomiting.

Nice and easy…

In…

Out…

In…

Out…

Slowly and carefully, she opened her eyes and attempted to focus on her reflection in the mirror.  That proved to be a very large mistake.

“Oh, Christ,” she said again, pulling the medicine cabinet open so she wouldn’t be forced to look any more.  Fumbling for the bottle of ibuprofen, she turned on the water and filled a glass.  After popping three pills, she closed the door of the cabinet and tried again.  “Consider it your punishment for last night,” she mumbled at herself in disgust.

The woman who looked back at her was a disaster of epic proportions.  Her normally sleek and shiny dark hair, which had its own little zip of curl to it, hung limp and lifeless, not to mention tangled and matted, just past her shoulders.  She had a normally creamy complexion that many admired, but that certainly wouldn’t be happening today, not with the sallow gray shade of it and the purplish-black circles underneath her eyes.  Speaking of her eyes—which were definitely her best feature on any given day—Sarah hardly recognized them.  Their usual cheerful blue was dull, and “bloodshot” didn’t begin to describe the redness.

“God, what the hell is the matter with me?”  The question was no more than a whisper, but Bentley lifted his head from the bathroom floor to look at her.  “And you,” she said, glaring down at him in mock anger.  “How could you let me call her?”  She squatted and dug her fingers into the impossible silkiness of his tri-colored fur, scratching around the thick coat on his neck the way he liked it.  “Hmm?  How could you let me be that stupid?”

He was such a good dog.  She couldn’t have created a better one from scratch; she’d gotten that lucky with him.  Bentley was a miniature Australian Shepherd—a mini Aussie—and she would never have another breed as long as she continued to own dogs.  He was smart, loyal, loving, and gorgeous, and he was really the only thing that would make what she’d decided to do today difficult.  But it would be okay.  She was sure of it.  She just needed some time.

Showering and getting dressed were not easy tasks in her state.  Despite the handful of drugs, her head continued to pound, and the idea of putting anything other than coffee into her stomach started it churning in revolt.  Too uncomfortable to put much effort into her appearance, she twisted her hair back behind her head and chose the pantsuit that needed the least amount of preparation for wearing—the black rayon combination.  Deciding on the usual simple, royal blue silk shell for underneath it, she hoped it didn’t accent her eyes too much this morning.  Her makeup was doing next to nothing to cover the evidence of her rough night, and she didn’t need everybody and their brother asking her if she was feeling all right.  The truth was, she was not feeling all right, mentally or physically, and she hadn’t been for a very long time.  That didn’t mean she felt the need to discuss it with anybody.

Self-deprecation was apparently going to be her close, personal friend for the day, as it followed her all around the house that morning, tossing out whatever snippets she could remember from her conversation with Karen the previous night, making her cringe at her own desperation.  She still couldn’t believe she’d called, although she had a vague memory of entertaining the idea as she sipped from her fifth gin and tonic.  This was the fourth morning in less than six weeks that punished her with a brutal hangover, and she absently wondered if she should be worried about herself.  She’d always enjoyed an occasional cocktail, but she never used to get toasted like she did last night.  Drunk was unattractive.  It was embarrassing.  It meant no control, no filters.  She was dreading the idea of hearing what stupidly personal things she’d spouted at the bar, though she was sure Patti Schmidt, her administrative assistant, would tell her.  Patti always told her.  Patti meant well, but had no clue what it meant to keep business and personal separate, and Sarah certainly didn’t help matters by going out and getting obliterated around somebody from work.  Patti was too naïve to realize that this wasn’t exactly appropriate behavior.  Sarah made a mental note to have a little talk with her admin, one that included an apology.

When will I learn my lesson? She scolded herself as she maneuvered her car into a spot around the corner from Valenti’s.  All she’d hear about all day was how much fun Patti had last night.  And while she brought Sarah water and asked her how she was feeling and was her usual  concerned and nurturing self, Sarah’s skin would crawl with embarrassment.  God, she should know better; she did know better.  She felt like kicking herself.  The car door took the brunt of her frustration as she slammed it with more force than necessary.

Valenti’s was a bakery and coffee shop in the more eclectic section of Monroe Avenue that had evolved with the times.  Sarah knew this because she’d been coming to it for nearly ten years—at lunch time when it had been an Italian deli, and for the last three years, in the morning, since it had moved focus to baked goods and coffee.  As the neighborhood had become younger and younger, centered more and more on recent college graduates, the deli business had tapered off considerably.  Sarah had noticed fewer people each time she stopped by and worried about the survival of such a traditional place.  One Monday about three years ago, there was a sign on the door that said simply, “Closed for Renovations.  Will Re-open Soon.”  Less than a month later, Sarah’s favorite coffee shop was unveiled, and the coffee and homemade baked goods were so wonderful, she never even missed the deli for a second.

It had been a very smart move for the owners.  Each morning, it was packed with a steady stream of yuppies and tech geeks ready for their first jolt of caffeine and a blast of sugar from the homemade confections that lined the glass case.  Sarah would swear on a stack of bibles that Valenti’s had the best latte she’d ever tasted.  It was a very rare morning that she didn’t make it in for one.  And today, she needed it more than ever.

Waiting patiently in line and trying hard to ignore the pounding of her head, Sarah focused on the woman behind the counter.  Woman?  Girl?  She looked young, but had an air of professionalism and poise that told Sarah she might be older than she seemed.  She was adorable, sexy even, Sarah had always thought, with her small build and energetic smile.  She was terrific with the customers, always quick with a wink or a laugh, a little flirty, but not obnoxiously so.  Her eyes were either a light hazel or a dark green, Sarah wasn’t quite sure, and her hair color changed on a regular basis.  Last summer, it had been short, spiky, and bleached blonde with a bright pink streak in the front.  Then she’d let it grow out and went nearly jet black, still with the pink streak.  Now it was almost a bob, the ends skimming the tops of her shoulders in a warm chestnut brown, and Sarah speculated whether this was the closest to her natural color she’d been in a while; it seemed to suit her.  She still had the pink streak that fell casually across her forehead and over her right eye, and Sarah felt the sudden urge to brush it out of the way.  Clenching her hands into fists, she glanced toward the homemade cannoli.  On any other day, she’d be tempted, knowing from experience how decadently delicious they were, but today she swallowed down the sudden urge to retch.

“Hi there,” the girl said, flashing her usual flirty smile as Sarah reached the counter.  At least, Sarah always thought of it as flirty.  An extra large latte was set in front of her before she even had the chance to respond to the greeting.  She blinked at it in surprise.

“I usually just get the medium,” she said finally, lamely, as she looked up to meet eyes that were definitely light hazel.  They glittered back at her in what appeared to be friendly sympathy.

“I know.”  The girl blew the colored lock of hair out of her eye, then lowered her voice and leaned slightly forward.  “You look like you could use a little extra help this morning.”

Sarah grimaced, torn between being flattered that the girl knew her order by heart and embarrassed that her appearance apparently screamed “hung over.”  Not that she was surprised.  She certainly felt like shit; why wouldn’t she look like it as well?

“Ugh.”  It was all she could manage to say as she nodded.

“It happens to the best of us,” the girl said, winking and waving away Sarah’s money.  “This one’s on me.  I hope your day gets better.”

“Thanks.”  Sarah took her latte and kept her eyes cast downward as she exited the shop, hoping nobody had been privy to that little exchange.  She bee-lined to her car and drove to the office feeling like a gray cloud of shame hung over her as she raced along the road.

Her extra large latte, however, was perfect.

[p. 7] I was born in the city. My father was a bank man, my mother starred in soaps. We lived like the famous in a house by the park and I woke to a vase of fresh tulips each day. We had long hallways and long tablecloths. My mother had rooms full of clothes. So many strangers gave us presents that we had a man to pen our thank-yous. Photographers slept outside the house.

-- Vacation (McSweeney's; $22) IN STOCK.

"Deb Olin Unferth is, I believe, one of the crucial literary artists of her generation. Her fictions give evidence of an artist determined to speak about the remarkable, who manages with exactitude all elements necessary to produce the well-made, eccentric object. Her vision evokes high comedy and the violence of tragedy heard through voices exquisitely particular to her mind."
-DIANE WILLIAMS

Jean is quoted elsewhere in the book, and she's one of major foundation leaders who really understands the promise of online social activism. The Case Foundation, founded by Jean and her husband Steve in 1997, invests in individuals, nonprofits, and social enterprises that aim to connect people, increase giving, and catalyze civic action. A growing portion of that commitment is aimed at connecting people with causes online. Here's an excerpt from the foreward:

Today, in the worlds of philanthropy, social activism, business, and even politics and policy making, this question is especially ripe for  asking. We are at a juncture where new forms of civic engagement and business activity — supported and spurred by new social web technologies — are being used by both individuals and organizations to create and expand a rising culture of giving and a coming together of ingredients that can create powerful opportunities for positive change.

CauseWired  is so timely in its arrival and spot - on in its focus. A new generation of givers — the  Net - native millennials  — is emerging, and a fresh generation of nonprofit, foundation, and business leaders is already taking the helm. But do we understand what these changes will mean? Do we know as donors, foundations, nonprofi t and business leaders, policymakers, and volunteers how we should participate in this change? What more do we need to know in order to capture this opportunity to motivate and engage more people and increase giving of every kind, everywhere?

My thanks to Jean for a terrific foreward - it really sets the stage. For more on the Case Foundation's involvement in the CauseWired world, I highly recommend participation in it Social Citizens^BETA project - great research and an interesting conversation.

Introduction

1. Gladwell wants to convince readers that “decisions made very quickly can be every bit as good as decisions made cautiously and deliberately.” (14)
2. A question to ponder: “When should we trust our instincts, and when should we be wary of them?” (15)
   1. Examples of snap judgments (“rapid cognition” or “adaptive unconscious”) vs. conscious decisions: debating the authenticity of a Greek statue; noticing the rules of a card game; judging the efficacy of teachers by viewing only 2 seconds of a taped lecture (13)
3. Most importantly, Gladwell wants to convince readers that “our snap judgments and first impressions can be educated and controlled.” (15)

Chapter 1

1. John Gottman “analyzes an hour of a husband and wife talking, [then predicts] … with 95% accuracy whether that couple will still be married fifteen years later.” (21)
   1. Another study got it down to 3 minutes; “The Mathematics of Divorce”—codes every conceivable emotion in a conversation
2. “thin slicing”—“the ability of our unconscious to find patterns in situations and behavior based on very narrow slices of experience.” (23)
   1. helps explain how Gottman can predict divorce (pattern recognition similar to “fists” in Morse code)
3. “Four horse men” that predict imminent divorce: defensiveness, stonewalling (more common with men), criticism (more common with women), and contempt (33)
   1. most important sign of trouble: contempt (33)
4. Judging people by their bedroom/personal belongings is better than judging them by actually meeting them, because you avoid misleading comments that people say about themselves.
   1. Personality evident with “identity claims” (deliberate expression of self); “behavioral residue” (inadvertent clues); and thought and feeling regulators (changes to personal space that affect one’s feelings when inhabiting space) (37)
   2. “You can learn as much-or more-from one glance at a private space as you can from hours of exposure to a public face.” (37)
5. Malpractice: Patients don’t just sue because they received bad medical care, but also because they weren’t treated well as a person (didn’t like the doctor).
   1. Doctors who didn’t get sued spent 3 minutes longer “orienting” with patients (i.e. had more caring tone of voice, asked personal questions, came across as more respectful rather than domineering). (41)

Chapter 2

1. Priming:  2 groups of African American students took the GRE.  One group had to identify their race before starting the test.  That group got half as many questions right as the other group.
   1. This is an unconscious process; the group who performed poorly were not aware of priming.
   2. Brings up the debate of free will vs. outside influences (58)
   3. Ventromedial area: the part of the brain that works out contingencies and prioritizes (59)
2. Speed dating: unconscious vs. conscious wants in an ideal mate (67)
   1. People’s explanations of what a perfect mate would be don’t match their actions = a “storytelling problem”
   2. Culprit: We are quick to provide explanations for things we really don’t know/can’t readily explain.
   3. “We learn by example and by direct experience because there are real limits to the adequacy of verbal instruction.” (71)
   4. Suggestion: We should feel comfortable saying “I don’t know” more often.

Outline of the rest of the chapters coming soon!

It is a card to be used when I need to go through a metal detector – such as at airport checkpoints. What it states is the fact that there is a metal implant in my leg. This could (or will) set off the detectors.

“This patient has a prosthetic joint implant....” is one the back of the card under the title..”Medical Alert”. It's alerting whoever reads it to the fact they are dealing with a Bionic woman. :)

The front simply states my name, implant type, attending surgeon signature, and medical facility contact information.

I'm having it laminated to last a lifetime. Some people I know think it's just too cool to have this card. :)

]]> http://blackrainbowspress.wordpress.com/?p=21 Sun, 28 Sep 2008 18:15:32 +0000 blackrainbowspress http://blackrainbowspress.el.wordpress.com/2008/09/28/from-the-pornographer-general-lights-camera-oroboros/ Picture this.

"First, who sent you?" I demand, "And second, why should I give a shit?"

"Rolling Stone," he yeeps.

That stops me. Rolling Stone wants to do a piece on me, F.U. Stein, Pornographer-General?

"What’d you say your name was?"

"Benjy Zene. Ben, you call me, I mean, you can call me Ben."

"Why so nervous Benny?" I ask him, still in his personal space, keeping him off foot.

"I’m not..." he says, and I’m shaking my head very slowly so he decides to be honest, "It’s just that I’m such a huge, huge fan and I can’t believe that I’m really talking to you Mr. Stein. I have all of your work."

Now, something smells just a tad off here, but little Ben is being straight with me, at least as to why he’s nervous. That rules him out as one of the normal whackos who comes around from time to time filled with God’s Judgement and ready to do a Peter Sellers Strangelove job of being judge, jury, and executioner.

But why would Rolling Stone send a kid like this? His shirt is paisley and has a detachable collar... who wears shirts like this anymore?

I back off, grab a bottle of mineral water from the cooler -it’s ionized, Chispa is a freak for alt lifestyles- and sit down on the edge of my bed. It’s the only other furniture in the room which has been stripped, more slick surfaces reducing the amount of work the A/C unit has to do. I motion for Ben to squat on the cooler.

His pants are red with white piping. I’m thinking, Who dressed you?

"The magazine," I say, "They really send you to interview me?"

I give him a long and special look. He shakes his head, and tries to claw a little back.

"I thought, you know, I could write it on spec, have something hard copy to show them," he says.

It figures. I’m just thinking up the best way of destroying him -slice? dice? serve on rice?- when Chispa opens the door and leans in, spider web tattoo on her throat stretched tight to deliver some bad news. Then she sees my visitor.

"Quien es?" she asks.

"Benjy Zene is the young mans name," I tell her, "Benjy Zene, this is Chispa."

He looks at her, dry swallows like a cartoon character.

Honestly? Chispa is every mans ideal woman, as long as he doesn’t care that her collar size is bigger then his. Chispa does a lot of weight training.

She shakes her head, snorts and dismisses the canapé which is little Ben.

"Mr. Stein, the cherry picker for the crane shot has problems, it is a motherfucker. Chispa is moving the shoot schedule back one hour. You have problem, yes, no?"

I give her a big grin.

"Not if you say so my cuddly little chupacabra."

She nods, winks at Benjy like a coyote winks at a quail and the door snaps shut.

An hour to kill before rolling? It looks like it’s someone’s lucky day.

"Okay Benny old boy," I say to the geek on my cooler, wrapping my neon blue and yellow kimono tighter against the frigid air, "You’ve got yourself an interview."

***

I’ll give him his due, he knows he is dying.

He has been poking where he should not, has asked about people whose lives have collided with mine and whom have not survived the wreckage, dredged up my mistakes, touched upon old wounds. All completely unintentionally, the sap.

My mood is souring rapidly. This is all in the first ten minutes.

Little Ben has a ring bound notebook which is looking more dog eared with every terse answer I give. Even with the A/C on nasal stinging he is starting to sweat. It is as I am on the point of getting up ready to hand him his own ass on a plate that he asks a question that stops me.

"Where do you get your ideas?"

Now, honestly, is that possibly the lamest question anybody can ever ask an artist, whether they work in marble or oils or flesh? I mean, if you had a prime-time Thursday night chat show, were the media darling of the moment, and you asked a guest that one little question, you’d be canned and washing cars by Saturday morning, right?

You would be the guy who changes the air freshener hanging from the rear view.

But just this once the question fits. It is perfect, and the bad thoughts are gone from my mind.

I smile.

"Benny, Benny, Benny," I say, "There’s hope for you yet. Are you really as big a fan of my work as you claim to be?"

"Yes Mr. Stein, twice that in fact, if you get my meaning, yes sir," he stutters.

"Okay, list three variations on the nu-humors," I say.

"Uh… red rhapsody, scat, and watersports," he says.

"What’s tromboning?" I ask.

"Uh… that’s a reach around tagged with a rimjob."

"What do you do if an elephant comes through the cat flap?"

He opens his mouth, makes like a goldfish for two heartbeats. I take pity, and tell him you swim for it. Just a joke, it’s funny, laugh kid. He laughs.

"Good," I say, "Now tell me what we are shooting here today. The title. I had most of the message boards closed down when it got leaked, but if you’re as much as a fan as you say…"

He nods. He has ugly, chewed looking lips.

"The working title is Oroboros Rex," he says.

"Bingo," I say, "And here is the world exclusive for you, cub reporter Benjy Zene. I can tell you exactly where I got the idea for this one. I got it right here, this very acre of nowhere Nevada."

And I tell him about the Serpent.

***

It had been a year since I had directed. I was burnt out, and I was going through that stage in any artists career in which he sees the best of his years gone, true genius unrecognized, and is contemplating ending it all.

You know, going to kill myself. But not really. I own too much nice stuff.

Honestly? This was triggered by some bad medical news, an acronym nobody wants to hear and which I told nobody that I had. I shot gunned Death In The Afternoon and lit up on some sweet golden brown from Pakistan and tried to forget what the Mayo clinic had told me.

I tried to work.

I kept having nightmares. Stuff that made no sense. Something to do with snow and ashes and a cabin in the woods... I would wake up screaming, and Chispa would tell me I had been talking about things in my sleep. The First Parents, The One Who Drowned The World, The Tower, Fire From The Sky.

It was one morning of fruitless production at my typewriter that Chispa wandered in drinking a flax and pomegranate smoothie whilst curling twenty pounds on the other arm. One thing you can count on from that woman is a little straight talk.

"Frankie," she said, "You a sad motherfucker. Ai!"

I told her she did not understand the muse and almost let slip with my bad news. But no, I wasn’t sleeping with her. She was my significant other, but it was a spiritual thing rather then a physical relationship.

"What, you think it is hard to write fuck pictures? Let Chispa see; okay, scene one, a man and a woman. They fuck."

"Thanks. And from my critical public..." I slowly clapped my hands.

We could have gone on like this, but Chispa told me that the way she saw things was simple; I was spiritually numb, my soul close to flat lining. She said that she had heard true art come from suffering, yes, no? Then she told me that whenever she needed to get straight when she was inside she used to kick her cellmate unconscious and get thrown into solitary for a week. She said a little isolation was good for the spirit, allowed time for natural readjustments to be made in a persons karmic field.

Honestly? That’s a fruity way of saying what she actually said. The gist, sans Spanish ejaculations and repeated use of the word "motherfucker".

But it helped. We drew up a plan, less drastic then a stay in the state pen, but one which looked good on paper. She would drive me out into the desert, far away from the world and all its materialistic yadda yadda yadda, and there I would stay until I had a spiritual revelation. A week ought to do it. Chispa claimed some Cherokee in her lineage and said they used to do it all the time.

So that was what we did.

I had a foil blanket for the cold nights, seven liters of ionized water, seven cans of unlabelled food, a shotgun and half a pound of crimson lipstick deposited on my cheek by Chispa before she sped off back towards civilization.

My wrist watch had been replaced with a GPS tracker. Time would be portioned out by the rising and setting sun, but finding me at the end of the week would be a snap.

The first three days I was bored; my normal day to day life is saturated with stimulus for all five senses, so the unchanging desert wasn’t cold turkey as much as turkey at absolute-zero. I wandered around until I got too hot and dug holes so I could lie in cool dirt with the foil over me. These holes did me at night as well, shivering as the temperature plummeted.

I did not see a living thing in all that time. I never wandered very far from the holes I dug. In those three days I burned and peeled and burned again.

The boredom was killing me by the fourth. I was talking to myself and was masturbating pretty much round the clock. By the fifth day I stopped moving altogether and tracked the moon with my shotgun, waiting to blow his smile open if he winked.

Then on the sixth day, as I drank my ration of water, I heard a strange little noise.

I heard my mind snap.

And the world opened up.

I work in movies so you know I’ve done drugs; powder mountains have sandpapered my septum cigarette paper thin and I’ve chased dragons into the endangered species index. But this was beyond anything I had ever hoovered up my nose or huffed or free based. I was Dorothy stepping out of sepia toned dustbowl Kansas into screaming Technicolor hyperreal Oz.

I was visited by a parade of the great and the damned and the gods of pop culture, the dead and those who had never been; talking mice with comma eyes and white gloves, a triumvirate of disembodied heads -Jayne Mansfield, Colonel Sanders, the MGM lion- the entire back row from the Sgt. Pepper album complete now with Jesus and Hitler sharing a cherry phosphate like teen lovers, Candy Starr before the surgery, the obese best boy who collapsed with reverse peristalsis during the shooting of An Orifice And A Gentleman, Fatty Arbuckle, Marylin Monroe, John Holmes and Linda Lovelace, Angelo, Kaa, The Man From Nantucket, Bibbidibobbidibu...

I remember the noise they made as they accused me or swapped Polish jokes amongst their ranks as they waited for their chance to accuse. I remember yelling at them to shut the fuck up, that I was sorry, and why hadn’t Judy Garland come, hadn’t I invited her especially? She was, after all, my first sexual fantasy as a lonely kid living out his childhood in the cinema rather then the shitty apartment that was always full of screaming and fists.

Then I heard singing, someone singing about a land that they heard of once in a lullaby.

I ran.

Who knows how long or how far I went before I stopped. At some point dawn had come and I was surrounded by a whole helluva lot of nothing. More nothing then before. I had no water, no food, no gun.

But I was alone.

The awesome power of the human mind; I made a mental note that when I got back to civilization I was going to kill off at least a fifth of my brain with high tensile alcohol. Hopefully I would get the part which had conjured the parade.

There was a hair caught in my eye lash, irritating me. I tried to pluck it off, couldn’t get it. My fingers gripped where it should have been but came away empty each time, and the damned thing was still there. Then I realized my mistake. There was no hair. I was seeing something in the distance, on the horizon.

I looked all around. It was the only landmark I had to go on.

But what was it?

There was only one way to find out...

As I began the long march towards it I tried to figure out what it could have been. It was a thin line that flickered, travelling up into the washed out sky so high I could not see its end. A rope tethered to something up there? A ladder supported on nothing, miles tall? No, that was all crazy. And anyway, what it really looked like when a hair gets into a film projector, gets blown up huge on the screen, almost like a living thing.

The sun began its slow crawl. I picked at peeling skin. I got closer and closer, still trying to figure on what it was.

It was not flickering anymore; as I shortened the distance I realized that what it was actually doing was swaying, gently. From far away and being so tall it had looked all jerky, but now it was sort of hypnotic. The sun was behind it when I realized that the edges of the thing were moving, seething.

And all at once I realized what it was.

Honestly? What it was… was fucking impossible.

People.

One on top of another, each sat on the shoulders of the one below and supporting in turn on their shoulders the one above. At the very bottom was a naked man, feet planted on the instant coffee dirt of the desert, skin smooth and dark, uncircumcised with heavy balls, and somehow he was supporting a tower of hundreds. They swayed, barely keeping their balance.

I looked up.

They were all moving. Heels idly drummed on guts, fingers snapped. They had no heads though; thighs clamped around necks which seamlessly melted into the crotch of each one above. That was how they were anchored to each other.

I was less then twenty yards away, my stupid feet still taking me forward. I stopped. Even though I knew I was hallucinating I didn’t want to get any closer.

"Shit," I whispered.

All at once, every set of limbs on the tower stopped moving. It tensed. It had heard me. My balls crawled up inside me and the hairs on my forearms did a Mexican wave.

I took one step backward.

The body at the bottom began to clap its hands, a quick, erratic rhythm, jiving along to a song only it could hear. The body it was supporting took up the beat two seconds later, and another two seconds later the body on top of that also began to clap, copying.

The time lapse rhythm began to race up through the ranks, passing through each pair of hands. As the tune went up and up the noise got louder and the original beat was lost in a static of flesh smacking flesh.

It was a code. Don’t ask me how I knew, but that’s what it was. A code, a signal, racing upwards towards… whatever was at the top. I thought about Jack and the beanstalk and took another two steps back.

The body at the bottom stopped clapping. Moments later so did the body above it. In reverse order, one by one, the code rippled away as each set of hands finished communicating.

Another step back.

The hulking male at the bottom fell to his knees. Then, slowly, he leant forward and placed his hands down on the dirt, and the feet of the one above him landed on the ground. Then that one knelt down as if to pray, sank forward onto its hands as if ready to be reamed out doggy style and the feet of the one above it touched the earth.

And the next. And the next. And the next. And…

I turned and ran as the tower behind me fell.

I heard knees and hands and feet thumping to the ground in an endless cascade, not daring to look back even as they got louder and I knew it was gaining on me. By the time my throat was raw and every breath felt like fire in my lungs it should have caught me, fallen on me; but then I saw movement from the corner of my eye.

It was arcing out to one side, looping away to nearly half a mile distant. It overtook me, and then it began to swing around again. I slowed down, wheezing. Soon it was falling in front of me, then around to the right. It was cutting off any escape.

I stopped, bent double for breath. It had circled around and was still falling.

All I could was watch. It was like a rope had been suspended in the sky, and then had been cut; that was what it looked like, a rope falling in coils. Coils that circled around and around me, getting closer, closer.

I waited. I wasn’t afraid; I was too awe struck. And hey, I was just tripping right?

One after another the bodies fell into supplication, until finally the last one, the one at the very top of the totem, landed, squatting awkwardly in front of me, close enough to spit.

In industry terms she was barely legal. She was bald, beautiful, skin so dark that it had that honey glow that never comes out on film. Her tits were pierced through by stone knives, and she was blind. A cross between a centaur and a centipede.

Milky eyes stared at me.

"F.U. Stein," I say, automatically flashing my knock’em dead smile, "Director. You know, I could make you famous."

The hallucination spoke.

"Up yours son of man," it said, "Don’t you know who you speaking too?"

I shook my head, still smiling. My lips were stapled back.

"Nope, can’t say I do," I said.

It sighed.

"I the Serpent," it said, "The first friend of knowledge. Now, if you’ve come to see the Serpent then you want something, so spit it out son of man. What can the Serpent do for you?"

"I’m… on a spiritual quest," I said.

It laughed.

"Yeah, the Serpent heard that one before! Every yahoo who gobble down peyote and wander about in the desert think they on a spiritual quest. And always the same, same reasons! Mid-life crisis? Buy you a muscle car and trade you wife for a younger model."

Now I was getting angry. Honestly? It’d been a long time since anyone had dared talk to me like that.

"Hey!" I shouted at the thing that was wrapped around and around me, "Fuck you! I came out here because I’m all used up and I need some direction, so make with the life affirming epiphany or I’ll blow your fucking head off!"

The Serpent tipped its dark and gorgeous skull back and laughed with all its teeth.

"What’s so funny?" I asked, grinding molars.

"You gun, it looong gone," it said.

Shit. It was true. I’d left it behind when I’d wigged out.

Still chuckling, the Serpent palmed away tears of mirth and looked at me again.

"Okay, just for the funny the Serpent will make you a deal. You get what you need if you play a game with the Serpent."

"I’m listening," I said. A game? I thought about the parade; I didn’t want to go back to all THAT anytime soon. So, a game? It couldn’t hurt.

The Serpent grabbed the handles of the stone blades that were thrust through its tits. It pulled them out, dripping red, and handed one to me.

"The rules they simple," it said, "Each stick out they tongue. Who has a full mouth at the end wins. The other drowns in they own blood, and doesn’t win."

"So not Monopoly then?"

It snarled.

Now, I knew I was hallucinating, but I had a nasty thought. People who were hallucinating would go to almost any length to maintain the illusion. I was thinking of stage hypnotists and people making complete asses out of themselves. So what if in my deluded state I did play the game, and lost? Would I cut off my own tongue?

The stone knifes seemed real enough. Had I made them myself, and forgotten?

"Listen," I said, "I’m a little unclear on how this works. Could you demonstrate? I mean, I can already tell you’re an expert with a blade…"

The Serpent nodded, pleased by the compliment or pretending to be fooled by my ruse.

"OK son of man," it said, "The Serpent will go first, give you a chance."

It stuck out its tongue. It’s tongue was a cock, slick with come.

I dropped my knife. That confused it -thinking I was going to take a swipe, and then not- and in the split second window of opportunity I jumped forward, stuck out my own tongue and sucked the Serpent’s into my mouth. Then I bit down, nailing us together.

I heard a voice say something very clearly to me;

"Son of man, do you believe in Hell?"

And that was when I remembered every single detail of my childhood, from the words of a song about a land heard of once in a lullaby... right up to the taste of sour dog food.

It unfolded in a loop, the peep booth of my mind. For a time I was there, in that cabin again, watching the snow coming in the door and drift across the open and unseeing eyes of the preacher.

The Serpent snarled.

I came back; what it had for a tongue was still in my mouth, and the taste lingered with the memories. The taste of semen.

The Serpent scowled at me and brought its knife up… but stopped an inch from the rope of flesh between our lips.

After all, if it cut off my tongue it would have to cut off its own.

It hovered between decisions. I winked.

Eyes closed, opened. It dropped its knife. I unlocked my jaw and our tongues parted.

"Very good son of man," it said, "Making a tie. Both win, both keep tongues."

"Nobody beats the Pornographer-General," I told it, "You can take that to the bank."

The Serpent began to rear up. The body that I had been speaking to was lifted up as the one beneath it levered itself onto its knees and then, with the body beneath it pressing up, that left the ground. Hands and feet pushed up, one body after the other, and the totem began to grow, a snake being charmed by an Indian fakir.

I licked my lips to ask a question, but did not need to.

"The Serpent think you have what you need," the Serpent called, and waved. As each new body rose up they all joined in, waving.

And so it began to unwind around me, unsticking from the desert floor and slowly curling up into the air like rising smoke. The rings of flesh around me diminished. Around and around and around it twisted in a widening gyre until soon it began to peel off back the way it had chased me, waving and waving.

Soon it was a thinning line disappearing into the coming dusk.

"Frankie, ai! There you are!"

I turned. Chispa was out of the car and was running over to me. There were tears in her eyes. She slapped me, angry and relieved, and hugged me.

"Chispa was worried! You wandered so far away she never thought she could find the signal! Motherfucker... your clothes! You covered in... ai, blood!"

"Did you see it?" I asked, not knowing or caring what she said.

"See what?"

I turned around in her strong arms. The Serpent was a thin line against the darkening sky.

"Smoke, a camp fire?" said Chispa, eyes wide, staring at the blood.

It was a hallucination, wasn’t it? Stretching away up and up...

"Sure," I said, "Some other whacko is out here, getting themselves a revelation... let’s go home."

I held out my hand to her. Chispa saw what I was holding and screamed. At some point during my spiritual quest, I had cut off my own cock.

***

When I finish Benjy Zene blinks, coming out of a trance.

"I..." he says, then just, "Wow."

Honestly? That about sums it up for me too.

That and the months of recovery after they stitched my dick back on.

Chispa is at the door again.

"Time to shoot," she says.

I get off the bed.

"Want to see?" I ask Benjy.

He nods.

The paperwork was a nightmare, getting all those waivers, clean med sheets, contracts assembled. But here is my naked army, all prepped and ready to go. They look a little red, those who are white, and the black guys and the Latin boys are sweating. But they are all ready.

The cherry picker is fixed, camera in position.

The sound crews, the cameramen, the fluffers, the caterers, onlookers, various life partners and well wishers... the atmosphere is incredible.

Benjy whistles.

"Six hundred and sixty six," I say, "In honor of our patron. That’s a mighty long rope of dick Benny old boy."

Chispa is herding them left and right, getting them all into position. A queue.

I mount into the cherry picker with my own camera, bullhorn at the ready. I yell orders, checking the various crews are where I want them. Every conceivable angle, every possible shot is accounted for. I motion for Benjy to join me. This is one he’ll remember for the rest of his life.

Oroboros Rex is going to be a legend even in my oeuvre of extreme sexual experimentation.

"How ‘bout a little fire, scarecrow," I whisper.

Chispa has them all lined up. She swats a cock here and there that she deems too primed, ready to let go and wreck months of work. She gets them all to put their hands on the shoulders of the guy in front.

A conga line.

She takes the lead guy by the hand and gently leads him around in a huge circle, the others shuffling after his lead. Then, when she is stood behind the last guy in the queue she steps out of shot. The boys are all in position, a huge ring of men, all races. Some are hung, some are not. That isn’t the point.

I yell for the cameras to roll.

Technically perfect; everything snaps into place without a single problem.

Boom mics on.

Yes.

The fluffers run forward, hands full of lubricant. They wax the rods, retreat.

I yell for each of the boys to line up their cues. Plums nestle into asscracks.

My own camera on.

Action.

To a man they all sit down, impaling colons on erections. The collective sigh after hours of waiting is a wind in the desert waste.... my flesh bristles with gooseflesh.

The cherry picker is set to rise as slow as it can.

As a single creature the boys begin to bounce on the laps of the one behind them. They go slow, settling into a rhythm. There is a delay from one to the next; it makes a rippling motion run around and around the ring of muscle and bone, gasps like steam escaping from cracks in a pipe.

Film rolls.

Benjy, next to me, has gone red. His tongue darts out and licks his lips.

This right here is breaking records that will never be matched. Size of orgy. Biggest gang bang. Sodomy per square inch. Greatest collective orgasm.

They aren’t long getting there either. When it happens, the psychic energy that pulses out of the ring is enough to cause twenty three frames of film in every camera to blank out, but we won’t find this out until later.

Honestly? Even my breath is taken away.

"You know what Benny old boy?" I say, kind of shaky, "I think somebody up there likes me."

And I look up at the Serpent looking down as ash starts to fall.

US Amazon http://www.amazon.com/Pornographer-General-F-U-Stein/dp/0955693802/ref=pd_rhf_p_img_1

UK Amazon http://www.amazon.co.uk/Pornographer-General-F-U-Stein/dp/0955693802/ref=pd_rhf_p_img_1

I'm going to be putting up some excerpts from CauseWired over the next month as we get closer to publication, and in the spirit of community organizing, I thought I'd share a bit about Joe Green, one of the co-founders of Causes on Facebook:

Joe Green recalls working on the Kerry campaign in New Hampshire during the summer of 2003 and thinking social networks and organizing activists. "That's when I first saw Friendster and I thought, here is this map of how everyone knows each other." Friendster is a social networking service founded in 2002 that eventually grew to 50 million users, but peaked in the United States well before sites like MySpace and Facebook became household names. The service had much of what drives online social networks - profiles, photos, and lists of friends and contacts. Green was intrigued at its application on political and social activism campaigns: "That fall I thinking about it a a lot. I asked my roommate about creating social network for politics, but he was more interested in a social network for college students." [Note: his roommate was Mark Zuckerberg, founder of Facebook.]

Green went off to work for the Kerry-Edwards campaign in the general election, canvassing neighborhoods in rural Arizona for the unsuccessful Democratic ticket, but he continued to think about combing old-school organizing and new media social tools. set out to build one on his own. After the election, he founded essembly.com, a non-partisan political social networking website that would let connect with one another based on political opinions. The site was deliberately small in scale and by invitation of other members, and it was designed to try and force intelligent discourse while discouraging flame wars and personal attacks. Its design around small groups of dedicated voices - using political statements called "resolves" to start discussions - hearkened back to Green's personal experience as an organizer - which began in high school in Santa Monica, California. Green described the formative experience on the progressive political blog MyDD: "I first got active as a senior in high school. Santa Monica had a living wage campaign - one of the first that covered not just city employees, but everyone in our tourist zone. The campaign barely lost but we got a lot of students at our high school involved, many of whom had parents who cleaned hotel rooms in beach hotels for like seven bucks an hour."

At Harvard, he studied under Marshall Ganz, a professor of public policy and a well-known organizer who spent 16 years working with Cesar Chavez and the United Farm Workers. The lesson was an important one: "Here was Cesar Chavez trying to take pretty much the most powerless people in the country, the people who are closer to serfs than we've had for a long time, with almost no legal rights, and organizing them. But first you had to convince them that it was even possible for them to have any impact on all-powerful forces. And once you did, there were no shortcuts. You start with a small number of people, just speaking one on one in a meeting, and you share your personal story, then you convince them to have a meeting, and it's through these existing social connections of family and friends and church that you grow these movements. Basically you're organizing yourself out of a job."

In thinking about modern media technology and old school activists, Green was struck by the potential of online social networking in organizing support for causes. "One hardest parts of organizing is sitting down with the address book and figuring out who everybody knows - the transparency of connections struck me - if we had one of these networks where you knew how everyone was connected, it would be very powerful."

To Order CauseWired CauseWired is now available at Amazon.com and other online outlets. Order your copy today!

• Parindo ko milegi manzil ek din yeh faile hue unke par bolte hain,
  wohi log rehte hain khamosh aksar zamane mein jinke hunar bolte hain.
• Zindagi mohtaz nahi manzilo ki,
  Waqt har manzil dikha deta hai.
  Marta nahi koi kisi se juda hoke,
  Waqt sabko jina sikha deta hai.
• Zaruri to nahi jine ke liye Sahara ho,
  Zaruri to nahi hum jinke hai who humara ho,
  Kuch kashtiya doob bhi jaya karti hai,
  Zaruri to nahi har kashti ka kinara ho..
• Reit pe naam likhte nahin hai….Reit pe likhe naam tikte nahin hain….
  Reit pe naam likhte nahin hai….Reit pe likhe naam tikte nahin hain….
  Log kehte hain hum paththar-dil hain…Log kehte hain hum paththar-dil hain……
  Par paththar pe likhe naam mitte nahi hain!!!
• Mushkilein dil ke irade aazmayengi,
  Khwabon ke parde nigahon se hatayengi,
  Girkar haunsla mat haarna ae dost,
  Yeh thokrein hi tujhe chalna sikhayengi..!!
• Sitaron mein chand tanha jagmagata hai, insaan akela bhi manzil paata hai,
  Gam se na ghabrana mere dost, gulab kaanton ke beech mein bhi muskurata hai...!!!
• Har ek jazbaat ko zubaan nahin milti, har ek aarzoo ko dua nahin milti,
  Muskaan banaye rakho to duniya hai saath, aansun ko to aankh mein bhi panaah nahin milti..!!
• Zindagi ki asli udaan abhi baaki hai,
  Zindagi ke kahin imtihaan abhi baaki hain,
  Abhi to napi hai mutthi bhar zameen
  Aage saara aasman baaki hai....!!

Quotations are from an excerpt from Awaken the Giant Within by Anthony Robbins

And I say that proudly!

Wahahaha, I've finally written an ending that I find satisfactory enough to be called an ending. It's a completely different ending from HHHL, chances are you'll hate me after reading it, but I find it the most suitable since this story now set in a series.

That's all I'm going to say about it to prevent myself from typing out any spoilers.

Now I'm going to rest for a few days to refresh my mind and my creativity (What miniscule amount of it, however.) before I start working on Draft Two. Right now I think that the story is too "draggy" at certain parts, mainly because I added in a lot of chapters but hardly removed any. I'll go through the comments you guys gave me at the old blog - no they're not deleted, I just hid them. And I'll do my best to address as many issues as I can in the second draft.

I'll try to shorten the story in Draft Two since I believe that the only reason HHHL managed to capture so many readers ( I don't know about you but 25,000 views is a lot me.) is due to the short length of the story. Most novels out there in bookstores are like freaking thick (Harry Potter anyone?), which is naturally a turn off to those who don't particularly enjoy reading.

Once I'm done resting, I'll have to read through the whole of Draft One and list out all the changes I need to make. And for the sake of chronicling, I will include some of the changes to be made in my next post.

Oh and one last thing.

After Draft Two is completed, I think I should be able to post up some excerpts for you guys =)

- Derick

In surgery, as in anything else, skill and confidence are learned through experience--haltingly and humiliatingly.  Like the tennis player and the oboist and the guy who fixes hard drives, we [doctors] need practice to get good at what we do.  There is one difference in medicine, though: it is people we practice upon.

-Complications, by Atul Gawande (Picador, $14), IN STOCK

***

Also, a top seller in hardcover last year, Musicophilia is now in paperback.  (Vintage, $14.95),  IN STOCK.

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