People Are Reading Your Mail

Who am the Gregory? This basalt effigy,
recently unearthed in Mesopotamia, bears a
chilling resemblance to my brother Greg.

Greg:

It may surprise you right out of your ruffly under-drawers to learn this, but other people are reading your mail. And by "your mail" I mean this blog. And by "this blog" I mean this thing that I write on the InterWeb because I'm too goddamn cheap to continue purchasing Crane's 100% rag stationery ($1.80/sheet) and stamps (five shillings fuppence) instead of burning up 100% FREE photons that are my God-guaranteed right to consume. In other words, this blog costs me nothing, and I haven't lost a cent if you don't write back. Considering the cost effectiveness of blog vs. US Post, I'm perfectly comfortable with putting your correspondence on what amounts to flypaper for the world's eyeballs and letting the everyone know that you wear ruffly under-drawers.

Speaking of postal spies - it may interest you to hear what Christiaan van Vliet, a reader of your mail and Ween enthusiast recently relocated to beautiful Salem, OR (and who incidentally goes by the sobriquet "Glasses Bitch"), had to say:

I really can't wait for the Superbowl to be over,Thaddeus. I mean, when did you turn all ghey (sic) for the football? Sheesh. Every week I look forward to my copy of Dear Gregory for insightful and witty prose, not sports commentary. Although, you're better than George Plimpton, I gotta give you that...

Now I don't care that Sr. van Vliet (of the Zuyder Zee van Vliets) doesn't like the football or the commentary that goes with the football or the fact that I am ghey for the football. I am overjoyed that Mssr. van Vliet actually responded. Which is something that you do not do, save for using the 2-Way Telephonics Device. And I'm beginning to suspect that your story about losing both hands in a fluke accident involving an electric drafting eraser is just so much hooey. If you have a helper monkey like you say you do, then you should stop having it wax your bikini line and teach it to type instead.

So yeah, people are not just reading your mail, but are also submitting unsolicited (but not unwelcome) critiques of the content. Also of interest should be this comment from Tim:

Is Gregory a real person?

So yes, to confirm your existence, you should probably dictate a letter to your helper monkey which I will reprint right here in this space. This will prove to the world once and for all that this blog is an actual correspondence, and that I'm not just using my imaginary brother as a gimmick/motif for my rambling commentary on Buddhism, coffee, poetry, depression, and how ghey I am for the football.

Is your monkey ready? Begin!

-Thaddeus

PS: You must realize that your response may also predicate the existence of our older brother Sgt. Rock and of course our "tweener" brother John. Viz., you will no longer be able to claim that you are the dauphin, as you are so fond of doing at parties.

PPS: It should be pointed out that I am ghey for the football, but it's Teresa's fault. She made me watch the Super Bowl ecks ecks ecks vee aye aye back in ought two and I was hooked.

PPPS: Although you know that I can go on ad infinauseum about the football, there is no commentary on Super Bowl XL in this blog because it seems that every helper monkey on earth that has access to a keyboard is already doing that. I thought it'd be overkill.

P4S: Every time you respond to this blog, a Jesus gets its wings. -TRG

Poetry & Football: Together Again For The First Time

Poet Megan Grumbling:
Probably not a huge Seahawks fan.

Greg:

Look, I know that you've had it up to here (he said, indicating a latitude about 4'10" from the floor) with me going on and on about football. The season will be over as of the night of February 5th, so at least you may take some comfort in the fact that there will be no more fuel for my obsession. After the Super Bowl, my interests will no doubt return to the introspective - Buddhism, poetry, coffee, dysthymia - you know, the standard Pacific Northwest leisure pursuits.

Speaking of the Pacific Northwest, here are some quick notes on life in the Big Wet One:

• As of this morning, we are on our 27th consecutive day of rain. As of Friday, our annual precipitation is 4.10" above average, a fact that I find 99.9% less than ossum. We don't live in a state. We live in a leaky basement.
• Humorous sign seen on a house during a recent trip to Portland, OR: HIPPIES USE SIDE DOOR.

And speaking of hippies - Arrrrgh! Body - strong! But - will - weak! Must talk about football!! Jake Plummer, the quarterback of the Denver Broncos, has either ceased all forms of personal hygiene for the duration of the playoffs, or is appearing in an off-Broadway revival of Jesus Christ Superstar. His exceedingly beardacious and hair-riffic appearance caused me to dub him Jakus Christ Superstar while the Gunn household was enjoying the Patriots/Broncos game yesterday. By the way, Jakus Christ and the Broncs beat Tom CryBrady and the rest of Coach Bill Bitch-A-Lot's Patriots rather soundly - 27-13. Undoubtedly, the Patriots will attempt to file a nuisance suit in civil court claiming fraud, robbery and battery by a crazed band of hippies in tight white pants. ("We was only there to goes and does some skiin', which we hear is wicked nice in Colorader this time of yee-uh," the plaintiffs said.)

Which brings me to poetry. Had a rather nice discovery in the last issue of Poetry magazine. (Yeah, I'm a subscriber, so what? Shut up!) A poet with the unfortunate name of Megan Grumbling (adolescence must've been hell on her, no doubt obviating the career choice) has a book out titled Booker's Point, a series of poems written around and about an old Maine coot named Booker. Poetry magazine has a selection from it online, the poem Raking Near The Great Works. (Please go read it before they update the page and the link breaks.) It might remind you a lot of the autumns we had in Michigan. Now that I live in the Land Of Two Seasons (and those would be Unbearably Shitty and Fawking Gorgeous), I miss those true autumns something ferocious.

And one final note, since you probably haven't been following the playoffs much-if-at-all, the Seattle Seahawks won their first playoff game in 21 years. And they did it despite 3 turnovers and the loss of their NFL MVP running back in the second quarter - which of course prompted me to write the following truly awful (and probably the first) Seahawks football haiku:

You heard us knocking / Now the door is coming down / Cold pond overruns

Cheers, and give my best to Marie.

-Thaddeus

The Definition Of Sport

David Carr: a man with an unimpeachably
positive attitude despite a dismal team record
- which makes him my personal hero.


Greg:

I know I should be doing something productive, like being a heckler at an open-mic poetry reading, but last night's MNF match up betwixt the Indianapolis Colts and the New England Patriots is still ablaze in my mind, so blog I must.

Yes, I know you're not a football fan, so just indulge me. Let your eyes glaze over and roll heavenward while I get this off my chest.

Fact #1: Pardon my French, but New England blows. Yeah they have three Superbowl wins in the last four years, but wins and stats ain't everything. To wit: they and their fans alike exhibited such unsportsmanlike behavior and so little grace last night that it only deepened my aversion to them. Example: When the Patriots were down by 14 points at half time, their own fans booed them. Booed them. What the hell? You root for a team, you support a team, and that means even when they suck. I sat in the teat-freezing rain in the midst of some-thousand-odd alcohol-drenched walnut-brained Bills fans until the very bitter end of the Hawks 38-19 loss to them last year. And I applauded my team as they left the field. The Bills fans around me were so stunned they were speechless, which if you know Bills fans is saying a lot.

Fact #2: To build on a point from #1, stats and wins alone do not a sportsman make. F'rinstance, you may laugh, but I think one of the finest quarterbacks in the NFL is the absolutely for-fucking-lorn one-and-seven Houston Texans' quarterback David Carr. Why? Because in spite of the fact that he's been sacked over 30 times this year (which is more than most QBs get sacked in their entire career), he has a brilliantly optimistic attitude. We're talking about a little Calvin Klein underwear-model-of-a-guy who wound up underneath 250 pounds, forty ounces, three stone, half a quart and tuppence of Hawks defensive end Grant Wistrom (shown here in his college days as a Nebraska Cornhusker)and came out smiling. For comparison, let me drop a davenport on you thirty times and see how cheery you remain. And on the odd occasion when his offensive line actually blocks for him and lets him get a play off, he looks pretty damn good. To paraquote: "I know we have a losing record, but game by game we're improving, and I'm improving." David Carr, you are a PRINCE! If I were him, I would give each and every one of my offensive linemen a bare-ass spanking at mid-field during a Monday Night Football broadcast and then summarily fire them all. And then fire the coach. And then the owners. And then crown myself King of all Football.

Fact #3: New England blows (he said, restating for added emphasis, right index finger held aloft). Why? Because last night, when they were down they became whiners and moaners. Coach Bill Belichick threw an illegal challenge flag in the 4th quarter, was apprised that it would cost his team a penalty, so to save his ass, made a bullcrap challenge on a clear-as-day call. Then to save hometown darling QB Tom Brady from taking complete responsibility for a 40-21 trouncing, they reached into the team ossuary and pulled out Doug Flutie's geriatric ass to replace him for the last series of the game. Flutie, voted the World's Most Birdy-Legged AARP Member, succeeded in picking up the sucking where Brady left off, actually tried to draw a foul on the Colts by bumping into a Colts player on purpose and then whining to the ref. And to just to shine up their turd of a loss real nice, Flutie got sacked and made a turnover on the last play of the game.

I don't care if they have 3 Superbowl wins. They act like losers, so to my mind, they are.

To give one last example, the consistently beleaguered Detroit Lions came to Seattle in 2003 and took home a beating. However, QB Joey Harrington, in the 4th quarter with no way of winning the game, was still skipping the huddle and calling audibles at the line as though the game were tied. That, sir, is sportsmanship.

Competitive sport is an unequaled opportunity for humans to practice grace under adversity, which is a salient lesson in our most troubled times. It is also an opportunity for the players to teach the spectators that same lesson by example. If you fail on that score, you are squandering your chance to strengthen the human character. And that failure, dear Gregory, while short of being unforgivable, is pitiable indeed.

Cheers and give my best to Marie. Go Hawks.

Born To Be In Rehab

Jim Carroll, c. 1968

Greg:

So, to continue our conversation about the relationship betwen madness and artistic/musical ability, I submit the poet and musician Jim Carroll, who had prodigious talent in many areas, junkie-ism being only one. He was also a basketball prodigy and academic wizard. Notice the stunning resemblance to Leonardo Dicaprio who played him in "The Basketball Diaries".



Ted Kooser puts the "rock" in "Adirondack chair"

Now, for comparison's sake, I submit Ted Kooser (aka The Kooze, Terrible Ted, The Ten Fingers of Doom, Sorry I Missed My Last Poetry Seminar Professor Kooser) current US Poet Laureate, abundantly talented old coot and retired insurance company executive.

So, beyond the argument that every wildly talented person is nutso-ballo, which may or may not be true, I further submit that artistic inclination (or talent, if that's a measurable thing) has nothing to do with how screwed up or un-screwd up you may be, and is in fact only a perception/expression issue. In other words, artistic inclination is a matter of expressive or communicative style, and not a function of emotional makeup or personality. To wit - on the obverse, fantastically talented poets who were neither nutso nor ballo, and held down regular jobs (mostly) in the private sector: Wm. Carlos Williams, William Stafford, Wallace Stevens. And now the reverse, fantastically talented poets who pickled their livers, took the gas pipe, or booted themselves to Palookaville: Dylan Thomas, Wm. S. Burroughs, Sylvia Plath. And finally, the control category, fantastically talented poets who were hit by dune buggies while vacationing on Fire Island and died at age 40 without developing a really serious substance abuse problem: Frank O'Hara.

As my optometrist is so fond of saying, "Better A - or B?"

So, brother of mine, tortured live = artistic talent is a fallacy in my book. It leads to that whole "if I could just drink/shoot/snort/skrog more, I could write better" line of thinking that even I have been heir to at one time or another.

Thoughts? Comments? Or would you just like to boot some smack while listening to Stan Getz and reading Allen Ginsberg? Or eat a hash brownie the size of Linda Hunt while reading Gertrude Stein?

Cheers, and give my best to Marie.

Yes Sir, I Am That Kind Of Douchebag

Dale Wicks: Coffee House Lizards

Greg:

I used to wonder what kind of a douchebag would sit around and read poetry all day. When I first moved to Seattle, I saw people sitting in coffee houses reading at all hours of the day, every day of the year, season in and season out. And I would think to myself Jesus Christ, do none of these people have jobs? Is this entire town unemployed? The coffee house people were all pretty well dressed; they didn't seem like transients or artists or people on the dole. I knew that Seattle wasn't all that rich, at least not as rich as the neighborhoods of Beverly Hills that I used to see from the bus window every morning on my way to my minimum–wage job. Those people could certainly afford to sit on their asses in coffee houses all day. And mind you, I made this observation about Seattle's coffee house denizens before the rise of Microsoft, so God knows there weren't a lot of millionaires around here at that time, at least not as many as there are now, and certainly not enough of them to keep the coffee houses full to the gills all hours of the day and night.

Well, having said that, I am now that kind of douchebag. The only difference is that I don't hang out in coffee houses. The main reasons are that there's only so much coffee I can drink in a day, and that the coffee I make is far, far superior to anything I've ever had in a coffee house. I make coffee so rich and potent that it would make Turkish men weep for joy and sell their wives, so what would be the point of me lapping up the rusty nail water that they're peddling over at Starbucks for $2.50 a cup?[1]

I am currently deep in the tender grasp of a five–day weekend. I'm working on the AOL account for Smashing Ideas, and I got all my stuff turned in at noon on Tuesday like I was supposed to, so now there's nothing for me to do until next Monday. I feel so fortunate for my situation that I'm lightheaded all day. Instead of using this time to "take care" of little bits of business that I might otherwise get out of the way, I've decided instead to just fritter away this time as though I were on vacation. That means that I'm not allowed to worry, or run errands, or clean things or whatever. Besides, I'm beginning to believe that the idea of "getting ahead" on the day to day business of life is a lie and a hoax. It's something we tell ourselves so that we can feel useful and not – God forbid – waste time. That in itself is impossible, as time is either incomprehensibly vast or altogether an illusion. It would be like wasting the vacuum of space. The pithiest parts of life are lived in moments, or if we're really lucky, over the whole spine of a week. The petty nigglings of daily business will never go away, but by the same token, they are there for us to pick up or lay down as we choose. (This rare moment of lucidity brought to you by my lazy side, which I have irrevocably surrendered to for a full five days.)

Which brings me back to being a poetry–reading douchebag. I'm sure that it's clear to you from my previous letters that I've become obsessed with poetry. I believe that my fascination is healthy because I don’t feel compelled to write any. (A thousand dead poets just collectively wiped their brows and sighed with relief.) I know that poetry often drives those who aren't poets to the brink of poetry; some even leap off and land on the stages of coffee houses on open mike night.[2] Not me. I'm content to just ponder the stuff on my balcony every morning, or read aloud to my wife in the evenings, or burn up the batteries in my book light and fall asleep with a volume on my chest at night.[3]

I've recently acquired enough poetry to break the back of a healthy she–ass.[4] I went down to the new public library and picked up a bunch of Mary Oliver including her poetry, prose and instructional texts, and some books of essays by Edward Hoagland. When I left my job at LMC, they gave me a gift certificate to Elliott Bay Books, so I used some of this stolen time I've been blessed with to browse for hours and I wound up purchasing something incredible. It's a book and 3–CD set called Poetry Speaks. And here's the coolest thing. It has recordings of two dozen or so dead poets reading their own work, including a recording of Alfred, Lord Tennyson made by Thomas Edison. Also included in the recordings are Frost, Auden Nash, Ginsberg, Plath, Whitman, Yeats, Sandburg, Langston Hughes, Dorothy Parker – the list goes on and on. Better still, the text has short biographies of all the poets, and also has essays by well–known living poets that explain and enrich the poems themselves. It's a boon for me because when it comes to understanding poetry, I'm still an idiot. Part of the problem is that in some cases, I'm not familiar with the text that the poet is using for his/her inspiration, as is the case with the mythology that Tennyson uses.

Why was I averse to poetry (pun NOT intended) when I was a kid, and now it seems that I can't get enough of the stuff? When I was younger, it seemed that all poetry was nebulous and effeminate, some sort of faggy code that I found frustrating to try to understand and didn't care to break. Now it seems like nourishment. And it helps my writing, too. I used to notice that when I was reading prose, my writing would start to sound like whoever I was reading. When I read poetry, I can't hope to write the stuff, so it simply acts as a stimulus for me to create original language in my own voice. Maybe that's what fascinates me about it. The licks are way too good for me to cop, they're beyond the horizon of my abilities, so I'm forced to use what I got, and the net effect is innovation.

So I'm hoping that my letters have helped to chronicle these unexpected changes in my middle–aged mind; to wit, my "discovery" of math, football and poetry so late in life. When I was younger, I thought that all my tastes and talents were already established. As time goes on, I find out that's not true at all, and it makes me look forward eagerly to the future.

Cheers, and give my best to Marie.

[1] And while I'm on the subject, what the hell is the deal with all the chain coffee houses selling "light" roast coffee in the summer? Like a lighter roast is going to keep you from getting too hot or something. The shit is weak to start with, and it's the same temperature as, say, a fine cup of Satan–black Senegalese, so what's the advantage? Coffee is an aphasic. It's going to make you sweat and pee regardless of what the outdoor temperature is.
[2] Children are often driven to act out things they don't understand and can't easily assimilate into their psyche, like the World Trade Center disaster or domestic violence. Adults acting out their fascination for poetry on open mike night is no less bewildering and horrific.
[3] Truth be told, I did all of those things just yesterday.
[4] Ed Hoagland used that term in his essay Behold Now Behemoth and I just can't get over it. I've stolen it and I'm going to use it as often as possible. Hoagland should be used to my literary larceny by now. I mean it as a compliment.

Cog Sci For The Masses!

Thos. Moran: A Scene On Tohickton Creek

Greg:

Okay, I'm writing again. I've gone to Crane's (obviously) and picked up some more stationery. I've also bolstered my collection of artwork that I use to decorate my letters with a little Thomas Moran (above). Also, as you can see from the envelope, the US Postal Service has decided to issue a series of stamps that really has some artistic substance and looks like money – you know the way God intended, the way they used to make stamps back in the good old days when the adhesive on the back of them tasted like the horsehide it was made from. It's the most beautiful damn stamp I've ever seen, even if it is printed on Mylar. Too bad it's a memoriam to two crazy muffuckers who blazed a trail that was too soon followed by the founders of trailer parks. In this series, the US Postal Service has issued the panoramic stamp you see on the envelope, plus one portrait each of Lewis and Clark. Sacagawea got nothin'. They probably figured she already had a coin, and if they gave her more than that, they might appear apologetic.

It's only been a couple months since I was formally enrolled in a class and I can already feel my IQ taking a vertiginous drop. I feel like I need to get back to my math right away before I forget all of it. There's a precalculus for life sciences course that I'm looking at taking this summer. One of the people I tutor with has a degree in math from Dartmouth and she has agreed to tutor me if I need it. I have an awful lot of math to get out of the way (117, 122, 123 and then Calculus I and II), so it would probably be wise to get started on it as soon as possible.

I'm sure I lamented to you on the phone about the fact that all the really groovy schools are in the middle of bumfuck nowhere. Hampshire and Bennington are two that I'm really considering right now. The interdisciplinary approach that I'd like to take is Cognitive Science and Creative Writing. The reason for the combination of the two has a practical purpose in my mind. I believe that Cognitive Science is the fastest emerging science of all and will also have the greatest impact on the average person. It seems to me that the best way to get the most beneficial discoveries in the field into the hearts and minds of the population is to be able to write about them in the vernacular. The rubber has to hit the road in other words. What good are any of these discoveries if in the end they only make for interesting cocktail party conversation between a bunch of academic wanks? On the subject of creative writing, I just found out today that Mary Oliver was until recently a faculty member at Bennington. She's a poet that I mentioned in a previous letter. I included her picture. She kinda looked like Joe Namath in it. Remember? Anyway, I read her poetry handbook and it just stunned me. I also told you that Ed Hoagland teaches there. He is, in a word, the dope shit as well.

Christ, but it's late. Eight thirty already. I'm off to bed now, and I promise it won't be so long between letters.

Cheers, and give my best to Marie,

Eccentric :: Ezra Pound as Delightfully Nutty :: Shithouse Rat

Ezra Pound: Pro-Fascist and a nutcase to boot 

Greg:

I've been thinking about this since last night and I have to get it on paper before it all runs away. I want to write something authentic – something that is faithful to my intention, reflexive of my true self. Moreover, I want to write something that speaks a pure truth whether it's about me or reflects me at all. That is my goal, my intention, in this life. Ezra Pound wrote in ideograms, or so I'm told. In other words, something like Words Written on Papyrus or whatever it was called was just that. The title was eponymous to the object, the object exactly what it was titled, the work in sum precisely filling the volume of the idea which is the vessel. No more, no less. A perfect representation, an exploration of Plato's forms, if you like.[1]

I look back on what I've written in the past and it all seems so obsequious, so approval–seeking. It seems that I was writing as a form of showmanship. It meant that I wound up writing things that were very entertaining, but very low on content. There was no residual value to them other than the momentary amusement. My work looks like an endless string of "a–horse–walks–into–a–bar" jokes. To wit: pop songs. Not that there's anything wrong with jokes (or a really good pop song, like one written by John McCrea of Cake), but jokes like that have their place and I don't think it should be in literature. Even if you're going to write humor, I think it should be at least honest, in other words, not just going directly for the laugh at all costs. Humor is an adjunct to storytelling, but not the point of storytelling. So much of my writing has been a constant construction of façade, putting up a front so that I'd be liked, accepted. What crap. I should remember that even my writing isn't about me. As the novelist John Auster says, "you make a pact with yourself to tell the truth, and you'd rather cut off your right arm than break that promise". So hereafter, as much as I am able, I'll pursue my writing with the truth as I see it as my guiding principle.

Yeah, that's a grandiose aspiration, I know. But is there any other aspiration worth having? People say "don't get your hopes up". I'd rather the adage was "get your hopes up and leave them there". You should get your hopes up, get them up as high as possible, and not let anything bring them down. People do all sorts of hopeful and optimistic things every day, things they never give themselves credit for. Like get out of bed, for example. People who have no hope and no optimism stay in bed. Just ask Brian Wilson. What seems to me to be a fundamental error in our logic is that we do all these hopeful and optimistic things moment by moment – every second of our waking day is filled with some affirmation of the undammable persistence of life, each action we take propels us further ahead in the unspoken faith that something constructive will happen – yet we still agonize over how unfair, unjust and unfulfilling life is, and conclude that we live in a land of dread. I've done it myself, and it still confounds me. I came to conclusions about the whole of reality based on my skewed (viz. depressed) assumptions: I believe that my life sucks, therefore the whole of reality sucks. That's an error in inferential logic. I know, I've gone on a complete tangent, but as I said at the outset, this has been running around in my head since last night and I feel that I have to get it on paper to clarify it for myself and to confuse the hell out of you.

Which brings me to correspondence.[2] It seems to me that letters are a form of literature that are completely authentic as a creative expression of personality. People who aren't trained writers, as well as those who don't refer to themselves as writers, write letters. So correspondence is a considerably more open province than, say, fiction or poetry. It is therefore also more honest.
Goddammit, now I've run out of time! I have school work that I promised myself I'd get done, note–reviewing and whatnot, and I have to do that now before I go to work. I'll probably wind up looking at this tomorrow and writing another version of it that's more easily understandable.

As I am loath to waste paper, I have cut–and–pasted a poem by Ezra Pound which I have chosen at random to fill out the remainder of this page. Okay, well, not entirely at random. I chose The River Merchant's Wife because it's based in Asian culture and it's, like, Lunar New Year right now and all. And I like it. It's just so goddamn sad.

Give my best to Marie,


The River-Merchant's Wife

While my hair was still cut straight across my forehead
I played about the front gate, pulling flowers.
You came by on bamboo stilts, playing horse,
You walked about my seat, playing with blue plums.
And we went on living in the village of Chokan:
Two small people, without dislike or suspicion.

At fourteen I married My Lord you.
I never laughed, being bashful.
Lowering my head, I looked at the wall.
Called to, a thousand times, I never looked back.

At fifteen I stopped scowling,
I desired my dust to be mingled with yours
Forever and forever and forever.
Why should I climb the look out?

At sixteen you departed,
You went into far Ku-to-yen, by the river of swirling eddies,
And you have been gone five months.
The monkeys make sorrowful noise overhead.

You dragged your feet when you went out.
By the gate now, the moss is grown, the different mosses,
Too deep to clear them away!
The leaves fall early this autumn, in wind.
The paired butterflies are already yellow with August
Over the grass in the West garden;
They hurt me. I grow older.
If you are coming down through the narrows of the river Kiang,
Please let me know beforehand,
And I will come out to meet you
As far as Cho-fu-Sa.
[1] Ezra Pound was a raving pro–Fascist who was, in the clinical term, about as crazy as a shithouse rat. It takes someone like that, I believe, to create such things as ideograms. Perhaps it's the literary equivalent to minimalist art.
[2] Oh, is that where we were going, Mr. Gunn? Coulda fooled me. I thought we were taking you to the Nuthatch.