Got Mashed Potatoes

My wife and I are anti-Christmas cards, simply because it takes work and money to send something that sits on a surface for so many days or weeks before collecting enough dust and annoyance that you file them (where?) or toss them. Not to say we don't like receiving them. We received quite a nifty missive from some friends who enjoy their new townhome. It's just our laziness that holds us back. But as I've said to everyone -- "I don't need cards, just come to the website." -- so I suppose I'm obligated now. After a mighty absence, however, I'm bereft of clever phrasing and helpful transitions. Therefore . . .

• I interviewed for a job recently. I really wish friends and family could see me during these interviews. What bullshit I spew. I really can turn it on. Still waiting on the job. Supposedly I have it, they're just "really screwed up from the holidays". Isn't that a pat excuse? But who could argue it? That's why it's pat.

• Saw two films recently: Return of the King and Return of the King.

• Did a lot of painting. Ah, painting. We now have a yellow hallway and a bedroom with one wall that is expressive plum. Every time I walk in, yes, I feel "expressive".

• wrfarah.blogspot.com gained, and sadly, lost its fourth reader last week. Sister Amy, upon declaring, "Why would anyone want a web log anyway? Who cares what YOU have to say?" immediately sat down to peruse my creative barbs and intellectual omissions. After ten minutes, she shot up out of her chair: "I'm done. So is that true? No? Well, that's enough for me." She will be missed.

• For Christmas, I received: a tool box (keep your laughter to yourselves), Day of the Dead, all of Roethke's poems, all of Crane's poems, a neat book of poems by Billy Collins, a vest to be delivered, cash, a bottle of champagne with toads on it, a Santa mug that I intend to use year-round to annoy my wife, and several other fantastic dvds.

• A large rainbow-colored bruise appeared on my left arm after plasma one day, leaving me one-armed against the needle.

• My wife and I have struck a neat balance in our discussion of Christmas lights. We both agree that net lights have struck a terrible blow to the night aesthetics. We also agree that flashing lights is usually absurd, unless coordinated well. We tend to disagree on candles in the windows -- her against, me for -- and the big, fat lights you typically see on municipal trees; I still think that they can be done right, but no one takes the time.

• Sexy Beast is the rental of the week for wrfarah.blogspot.com. Not that I and the staff have ever gotten together and voted, or even thought up the idea of a rent-of-the-week, but there you have it.

• I disagree with Johnny Rogan about Mirrorball, Neil Young's 1995 album with Pearl Jam. Rogan, who's usually a fair critic, calls it a rushed mess. Rushed, yes, it was produced in like three days. And, OK, some of the lyrics by Neil are pretty weak. But there are tracks on there that stand alongside anything from the 70's Neil and Crazy Horse period. Too bad he's practically ignored the album since '95.

• Thank you, Abby H. for your helpful comments you made re: STFL more than six months ago. Damn, you're insightful.

• One thing I've learned about poetry recently is that although I read a lot of it -- probably more than most of my friends or family -- there is so much of it that I dislike. I think it's coming to the ones that I do enjoy that must be so rewarding to keep me reading. I also think it's why I like James Wright so much . . . . Because there's just very little he writes that I don't like, he disappoints me the least. I can read his The Branch Will Not Break over and over -- once a month perhaps -- and it still hits as hard every time. Every time.

• I should mention a little football game I saw this past week that will go down as one of the best football experiences I've ever had . . . but that might alienate one of our readers, and as I'm in editing mode right now, I try not to alienate anyone.

• My wife so far hasn't taken back any of her gifts. Bonus!

• That thing on Seinfeld about how Jerry and Kramer note the glory of the phrase, "My wife," -- they're right. I can begin any sentence with it, and it just makes the sentence that much more fun to say. I'm afraid it isn't the same for married women: "My husband," carries that extra, annoying syllable that just ruins everything.

• And now we depart to prepare for that most hated of all holidays for me: New Year's. Ah yes, the celebration of the living. The drawing of the line between new and old, living and dead. It's as if we're all eyeing up the cemetaries, saying, "I'm closer, but I'm not there." The asymptote that is not. The line that, despite our wishes, will touch . . . but not yet.

Anyone happy or impressed by the recent capture of Saddam ought to check out the original Red Dawn. Someone in the Pentagon has taste.


I used to run Division III cross country, and briefly, track. Some may define this endeavor as life-defining, others may call it life-wasting. Imagine it as something in between, yet complete with details that stick with one long afterward. Such as . . . .

We have this friend -- I'll call him 'Jude'. He was a good runner and a good guy. Still is. He was not widely celebrated for his intelligence or social luck, but was probably considered a friend to all, something I can't really say I've ever achieved. He also went through an unfortunate streak of time where he repeatedly shit his pants while running. Can't say I've ever achieved that either. (So he's two up on me. Three if you add that he was a much faster runner.)

Now I know what you're wondering: "Why are you bringing this up? This isn't why I come to wrfarah.blogspot.com." Yes, you're probably right. According to an unofficial poll of readers, 33.3% said they came for the poetry, while 66.6% said they either typed in the wrong address or liked all the self-aware prose. I agree -- self-awareness is so underrated.

So why would I stoop to such a "middle school" level of humor, as to write about a friend's poor luck (or just a lack of common-sense planning) with his colon?

See, what fascinates me about this -- yes, to this very day -- is a logical component of it. (So it's not really the "middle school" humor I'm shooting for here, it's the bizzare logic -- do you buy that?)

What happened is that one day, yours truly and a few of his beleaguered colleagues were sitting home one dank Sunday night when we received a phone call. It was from a mutual friend, I'll call him 'Mick'. Mick called to give us a report on the races that were run that day (as we, for various reasons, opted to remain home instead of race in this major, end-of-the-season, race).

Mick gave us the anticipated report. The big news was: Jude kicked ass. Ran really fast. 2nd in the 10K at Conference. Wow -- 2nd at Conference, that's fantastic, top-tier, a superb accomplishment of which we could all beam with pride. And . . . he shit his pants . . . and it was in the middle of the race.

Now I might have some of the details wrong here. Frankly, I don't give a damn. What's important is not details. It's that: after telling us of this -- frankly, hilarious -- news, Mick said to us in a very serious, take-charge tone: "You guys can't rip on Jude for this. He ran really fast. 2nd place at Conference is amazing. So he doesn't deserve your shit."

Excuse me?

Yes, yes, yes -- 2nd place at Conference: amazing. I probably couldn't accomplish that if I was allowed to bike the 10K. But he shit his pants. In front of everyone. At Conference.

I don't care if he becomes president some day, walks on the moon, discovers the cure to cancer, rids the world of poverty and hunger -- he still shit his pants during the 10K at Conference. He's gonna hear about it. Maybe not forever. Maybe some day we'll forget about it, let it rest, whatever. But at some time, I thought -- probably the next time we see him, probably for a few weeks -- he's gonna hear about it. See, I've just gotta know what kind of person goes into a major race -- no, stop. I've got to explain.

When you race distance, you load up on carbohydrates the night before. And this guy -- Jude -- he liked an ice cream night-capper the night before racing. So assuming all this was done -- mass consumption of spaghetti, bowl of ice cream; carbs, lactose -- don't you think he could have gotten to a bathroom, a port-o-let, a shady grove -- before the race (which typically lasts around a half-hour) began?

I just have to know the thought process. I have to ponder this, question, implore, wonder, and, yes -- ridicule. We were a struggling team that spring, we had a tense year, then he goes out, runs like a king . . . and shits his pants doing it?

AND I'M SUPPOSED TO ACT LIKE IT DIDN'T HAPPEN?!

I think not, Mick. Just because one achieves a certain level of greatness does not preclude him from the joshing and intense ridicule that he deserves!

"Can't rip on Jude." What BS is that? Did Mick really think he could restrain our freedom of expression with a friend? Who did he think he was? Who did he think we were? What did he think we were? Sensitive? Made me want to say: "Attention, Mick: The elephant is in the corner. Next to you. It just shat it's pants."

I've heard you've been coming here, reading these words.

You know who you are.

I saw you that night -- in the house, with the girl. She was too young, lied about her age, and smiled too easily. I imagine after all these years you've thought you got away with it. And you have. But now, at least, you know that I know. I know:

That her friends left without her, passing knowing glances. That the house cleared out for the bars, and everything, for a time, was confused in the way only alcohol drenches things. I know the way you looked at her through the glass. I know the way her hips swung down on the couch.

I heard her say, "No," and how she just came to have a good time. I scowled at your hushing response. I listened to it end, like a killing, and she walked out, as if limping. I still think of her long, cold walk home, alone.

You didn't bother to close the front door after her. She just came for a good time; your dick was empty. You heaved yourself up, zipped, and climbed the stairs.

It is good we don't see each other anymore; I still hate myself for this. All I have is that I will never forget. And now you know.

Standing on our separate
sidewalk squares,
Nab & I watch the
desperate television sunset,
squaring our shoulders
and making our spines
stand up to the symbols.

Nab nudges me from across
the grainy tube—
'It’s something-something in
that movie with all the actors.'

We grow silent and admire,
sit forehead-to-forehead,
our eyebrows knitting
together and apart,
as we sift through self-criticisms,
placing them against rituals,
debasing and escaping.

And then comes Carmody,
charging across the screen,
wearing Vietnam Armani,
screaming secrets.

Nab & I move back with the crowd,
snickering in time,
though still dreaming
of combat boots and
what is cool.

Nearly seven months after walking away from the editing process, and nearly eleven months after finishing the first draft, I've returned to editing my second manuscript, Selling the Finish Line.

It was an easy book to write. I had the idea for it long ago. While editing my first manuscript, I thought I probably had one more book in me that would directly confront the sport of running. I've gone back and forth with this. At one point in time, after finishing STFL, I stated I probably wouldn't write about running anymore. And to some extent, that's true. I certainly won't need to address it to the exhaustive extent I have in the first two novels. But months later, in a poetry class, I listened to this woman read some poetry she had written about Houdini's wife. Very powerful, acute work. Another woman in that class wrote almost exclusively about Darwin's childhood. The professor commented on these topics, saying something to the effect of, "Once you have a subject you can call your own, by all means stay with it. Some people search forever in vain for a subject they can write meaningfully about." That's a hell of a point. So I probably won't ever rule the subject of running out of my work. If anything, it's a suitable crutch to lean on for storytelling as narrative develops.

Anyway, back to my idea. I think I thought I had another book on running in me because my first book was an emotion-driven tale on collegiate running. I had some idea that there was a high school book to be written, mainly because the differences in age between college and high school offer very different developmental periods for the characters. I also knew this book would have to be different, tone-wise, as I'd never really be able to replicate the emotion of the first book.

But that was all I had. I never really planned on writing the thing until I finished another two books. I immediately began research on a novel based intricately on Nietzschean philosophy. But the research, while fun, was not writing. After months of editing, and more months of researching, I began wondering if I would really be able to write creatively once the time came for that.

Somewhere around that time I went for a run with a friend who spoke the nine words that motivated me to stop researching and start writing STFL. They're on page 201 of the current manuscript. And whenever I got stuck on a particular section of the novel, I'd go back to those words, and try to work out how I could get to them, how I could get the story to reach the point at which the character must say those words.

And for the most part, the story wrote itself. I had 34 great pages started in late 2001, and then my computer picked up a virus. And it died. With nothing saved outside the harddrive (other than my first manuscript, thank God), I lost those first 34 pages. (Incidentally, at the time I thought I lost all my research for the Nietzsche novel. Months and months later, I opened up a notebook to find that at some point I had printed out all of that work. I almost cried for joy.) As soon as I was back up and connected, I tried writing those 34 pages as quickly as possible to retain what I could, but it just didn't come off the same. Still now, after I've refined the beginning of STFL probably a dozen times -- to the point at which I now feel like it's one of the strongest parts of the novel -- I wonder about that first, lost draft. The story's the same, but I wonder about the wording, the phrasing.

The writing was on and off, through 2002. I was still editing my first book, so that took a lot of time. I also moved, lost a job, and got married. But the book kept writing itself. And around December, I sensed an end approaching. I figured I had probably 30 or 40 more pages, based on what I had left to say. But one night I had a strange conversation with my wife, and then couldn't get to sleep. I just sat in bed working out a new story, a new novel. This, being in the primal, developmental stages, seemed much more exciting than STFL. After getting up to type out all I could think of at 3:00 am, I decided I had to finish STFL pretty damn soon so I could start on this new book.

And that leaves me here and now. Well, sort of. I did end up finishing STFL in January of this year. I took a particularly long time with the last chapter, wanting to make sure that I was really finishing the story, not just putting the book out of my mind to start another. So I completed it -- I reached those nine words that sparked the work. And then I put it down. And then the problems came up.

That spring semester I had three fiction labs at UWM. Three classes in which students submitted their work -- either short stories or chapters of a novel -- to the rest of the class for critical feedback. I should mention something about submitting one's work. Once you finish something you like, you think it's gold. You think it's gold even though you've only run a spell-check. You think it's gold even though you KNOW it has problems. The good parts stand out. The bad parts get explained away. Right after finishing a novel, an author is his least helpful critic on the planet.

It's with this attitude that I quickly submitted various chapters of STFL to each of my three classes. I suppose the responses could have been worse. They could have all hated it. It could have been a united front against everything I submitted. But it was not united -- it was all across the board.

Class number one got the first two chapters. The response was extremely positive, although there were comments of naivete on some points. Fair enough. The professor gave a me a ringing write-up. Class number two got the third and fourth chapters. This response was more mixed. The story was fine, but since they relied on a summary for the first part of the novel, they weren't so sure about tension or voice. The professor gave me a review that was cautiously optimistic. The third class got something smack in the middle of the novel, and they loved it. One classmate pointed out some minor changes. Fair enough. The professor gave a triumphant endorsement. That was round one of submissions.

Round two. Class number one tore open a mid-book chapter I particularly liked. They, with a couple exceptions, massacred it. Professor wrote a disappointed, though well-graded, response. Class number two was evenly divided on a mid-book chapter. Some derided it. Some defended it. The professor wrote a disappointed summary. Class number three loved a mid-book chapter. The professor wrote an excited, thumbs-up summation.

In each of the three classes, as well as another outside reader, however, I had a minority of people "Just not get it." This is the killer for me -- worse than those with intelligent qualms about the book. Worse because STFL is the most basic, clear, lucid, simpleton writing I've done. The first-person narrator is the voice of a high school boy, so I couldn't make it fancy or complicated. Yet this fraction of people came back with, "I don't get it."

After discussing this with a writing partner of mine, I decided the only way to move on from the labs was to toss, throw away, forget, or burn some of the responses. In his wise words: "Some people are just dumb, man. Better not to torture yourself with it. You gotta write for the average, not the minority."

While some people are, indeed, dumb, I could not ignore several glaring problems the novel exhibited during its time in the critical spotlight:
A.) There needs to be more tension. Especially early on.
B.) The second half of the narrative only takes up one quarter of the book. Meaning: I hurried through to the ending.
C.) There needs to be more characterization.

But I also learned:
A.) Never submit chapters of a novel to a lab. Many people will have many questions, and these questions almost always lead one to say, "Well, in the portion of the novel you didn't receive . . ." This seems like a cop-out. In a lot of ways, it is. But it's also true. People can only judge what they get, and novels build. Stick to short stories.
B.) Some people are just dumb.
C.) STFL is more manageable, as far as plot and characters, than my first manuscript. It's shorter, quicker, funnier, and easier to envision.
D.) While labs can be intimidating and confusing, they can be extremely helpful. Although I did throw out several reviews, there are many more that I will look to upon completing the second draft. It's amazing how you write something from one idea, expecting a certain response, but then someone comes back with an entirely appropriate, yet thoroughly unexpected reaction.

So with all that stated, I jut had a hard time coming back to the novel. There was so much I liked about it . . . yet definitely much to be improved upon. How much work was this? How quickly could I do it? Could I do it? That's what the seven months were for, I guess. I can't just write a novel and stick it in a drawer, like Salinger. No, I have no real dreams of publishing. I don't really care much at all if any of my work sees the light of day. But it's terribly important to me that what I write becomes the best novel I can put out. Does he really think he's so talented a writer that when he sticks it in the drawer, it's perfect?

So I started Monday, spending three hours rewriting the outline. When I first wrote STFL, I told myself I would do it without an outline; I would only develop a "schedule" of sorts that the characters would run by. Otherwise, I wanted to book to skip along without any pre-set structure. But now that I'm editing, I need to know where the narrative and character gaps are. And it's amazing, looking at it on paper, to see exactly where they are, to see where the novel turns from light to dark, to see where I need to add sections, etc. Rewriting the outline also got me familiar with the story again. I saw those moments in the book that made me say, "I don't know if I've written anything better than that." I also saw points in the novel that made me say, "Jebus, you crammed a month of story into a week, and there's not a lick of character insight."

So that's where I am now, right back in the gray area between, "Is it publishable?" and, "Is it utter crap?" It's a matter of editing with the latter prospect as the assumption, but making decisions with the former as a given.

I should note, that, as I've written quite a bit about this now, I did consider putting a chapter or two up on the site for my three readers to read. I realize it can't be terrible interesting to read about a novel one has not read. But I've decided against posting it, as the site does not allow for tabbing, or any creative typography. In fact, I'm very limited in my poetry on here, because most of my work is littered with tabs meant to create an objectivist space in the line . . . but that is lost on the log. I can live with posting poetry that's a semblance of my intention, but not fiction.

As C.S. Lewis puts it, pain is of two types:
a.) A sensation that is recognizable, whether likeable or disagreeable.
b.) Any disagreeable experience. Suffering, anguish, tribulation, adversity, or trouble.

There is much more to say on this subject. But beforehand, I'll interject my opinion, and that is that the problem of pain is that it establishes. Meaning that, while one can tolerate some pain, even this toleration removes a level of will from the subject because it inflicts an understanding upon the subject, who now has expectations.

"Imagine at birth that we are all blocks of potential. Perfect, square, unblemished blocks. Not perfect in their morality, but in their fullness of potential. That is to say that we are born neither good or evil. Only innocent. Over time's course, these blocks are weathered by pain -- physical harm, mental anguish. Like a sculptor's block, we are chipped at, whittled down -- to the form of man."

Lewis states that he can have a toothache that hurts x. The person next to him may also suffer, and complain that it hurts exactly as much as Lewis's pain. Therefore, the pain in the room is 2x. Lewis scoffs at this, saying "there is no such thing as a sum of suffering." That is to say that once we have reached a maximum of suffering, we've reached a terrible point indeed, but that this is the greatest suffering in the universe; "the addition of a million fellow-sufferers adds no more pain."

Adding to that . . .

In Lewis's discussion of Hell, he notes that souls cannot be consumed. If they could, they would be the only truly unique entities. Wood may be burnt, but there is a natural remnant left over from this process. So if a soul could be destroyed, one would think, at the least, there is a state of "having been a soul." He argues, then, that this could be the ultimate pain, the fate of having to be 'one who has been' -- 'being', permanently in or defined as the past.

"Their vision fails them and they cover their eyes from the intolerable light of utter actuality, which was and is and shall be, which never could have been otherwise, which has no opposite."

With that said, pain provides the opportunity for heroism.

These white beautiful women
with blond locks trailing
down naked skin,
like rivulets into a far field:
they pose and pout
their lips up
to the cup
of America--

they press their sex against the glass,
confusing it with gender,
inequities escaping them,
like a quick gleam
skipping off of jewels
that should have remained hidden.

It's that time again. If you're a perpetual academic, like I am, it's the end of the semester.

"What time is that, Will?"

Well it used to be test time. But here at the women's college . . . it's (I advise you to hold your breath . . .) assessment time. Just what are assessments? That might require some background.

Take my English class. Oh, the thought brings a flood of memories. Like the first day of class, in which we created posters which represented how we thought of ourselves as readers. That's right. I'm 26 years old, I go to a women's college, and we made posters. Laugh it up. Woo-hoo, look at Will, Will the clown, ha-ha-ha, he goes to women's college and makes posters.

It gets better.

The major project of this English class was to take a metaphorical digital picture of ourselves, which we later presented to the class. This presentation of our metaphor (which, again, was to represent ourselves as readers), was videotaped for the department to view. That's right. This isn't just one nutball prof. This is what an entire department of learned people have decided to label education.

This is also the class in which we started out by reading Jane Austen's Emma. During our last class on Thursday, I handed in my final draft of the paper we were to write on the book. Was I late? No, my paper was on time, all right. Did we do Emma the entire semester? Thank God, no. I argue that we never really did the book at all. I can remember two class periods in which we specifically discussed the book. What did we do the rest of the time? Well . . . there were no other novels, no short stories. There was a poetry unit. A drama unit lasted about 20 minutes. That's all. I seriously wonder where the time went.

During our last class, our assessment was to write a self-assessment on how we've changed metaphorically based on this class. As I've detected (thankfully) no change at all, this was a serious exercise in bullshit creation.

I still have one class left -- my education class. For that one -- get this -- I have four assessments left. (I say "left" because we don't really have exams, just constant assessments.) In this class, we taped ourselves teaching, so we could view our classroom dispositions. Fair enough. Then we were to trade tapes to view someone else's. Fair enough. Then, and this is the part that kills me: we have to write a self-assessment of our tape, one of our partner's tape, and then videotape the partner-meeting . . . and then self-assess that! What the hell am I gonna say on all this? "OK, there I am . . . teaching. Look pretty smart up there in front of the seventh graders, I do." "There's my partner's tape. She's OK. Not sure why she wore those skin-tight pants to middle school, though." "There's me and my partner talking. We get along OK. Whoop, there I go, blabbing on the tape. Not my fault, though, she wasn't speaking."

The final project for this class is to view, and then self-assess, another videotape of ourselves presenting a unit plan to our class. This just blows my mind. Why must I self-assess something I videotaped? It's right there. I can look at it whenever I want. I don't know what the hell I'm going to write for this. I'm tapped of bullshit. I'd like to write: "HERE'S YOUR FUCKING SELF-ASSESSMENT. I STOOD UP IN FRONT OF THE CLASS. YOU WERE THERE. THE OTHER PROFESSOR WAS THERE. YOU ALL SAW IT. YET HERE I AM WRITING ABOUT IT. SELF-ASSESSING. SHARING MY THOUGHTS AND FEELINGS. HOW DO YOU LIKE THESE FEELINGS? DO THEY MAKE YOU HAPPY? GOOD. BECAUSE THEY'RE NOT MY FEELINGS. I DON'T GIVE A DAMN ABOUT FEELINGS. EDUCATION IS MORE THAN FEELINGS. FUCK YOUR FEELINGS. FUCK THEM. AND EVERYTHING I WROTE UP UNTIL NOW? IT'S ALL BEEN WINDOW-DRESSING. ANSWERS CRAFTED TO FIT YOUR QUESTIONS. HOW'S THAT FOR HONESTY? LOOK AT HOW MUCH YOU KNOW ABOUT EDUCATION, NOW. BET THE DRIVER NEVER HAD THE RIDER DEMAND HIS TICKET, DID HE?"

Or as Socrates put it: "What a way to behave, my friend, going off like this, and dashing the high hopes I held!"

Carmody,
whom I hate,
focuses his harshest
Sax Rohmer stare and says:

Do you want to fuck with me?

A question
commonly asked
in bars and on
basketball courts,
alleys and movie screens.

Is this the blunt pick-
up line that’s been
winning for decades—

Does he want me to fuck . . . him?
I think of the last people to speak to
Matthew Shepard: They don’t
have the imagination for
untying fucking from fucking,
do they?

Did Lincoln ask Robert E. Lee to fuck with him?

Would Carmody repeat his question if we stood inside a choir?
Then I could sing--
My answer!
The response!
Alleluia!

While I’m figuring
this out, his knuckles
make me wonder: Did
Ali ask Frazier if he wanted
to fuck with him, or could
only Cassius ask this?

Since I never answer Carmody,
I read this at the hearing, but
the judge wonders why
doesn’t it rhyme? And
I say but we haven’t
rhymed in
decades!

Hell, Whitman didn’t even
rhyme all the
time!

And then she asks
who was Whitman
and that depresses
me, so I make a
crack about Russell
and the judge asks
me if I want to fuck
with her, and I say
well, now that you
put it that way,
so she
puts me
in contempt,
where I
purchase cigarettes
for the man with
metal boots
and greasy trim
who asks whether
I want to fuck with him.

Proof you have a good marriage:

When you can drive ten hours from Milwaukee to North Dakota with someone, and then another ten hours back, and not once get bored or annoyed or wish you were with someone else.

I can complain about many things. But I am a very lucky man.