From whiskey river:
One Source of Bad Information
There’s a boy in you about three
Years old who hasn’t learned a thing for thirty
Thousand years. Sometimes it’s a girl.This child has to make up its mind
How to save you from death. He said things like:
“Stay home. Avoid elevators. Eat only elk.”You live with this child, but you don’t know it.
You’re in the office, yes, but live with this boy
At night. He’s uninformed, but he does wantTo save your life. And he has. Because of this boy
You survived a lot. He’s got six big ideas.
Five don’t work. Right now he’s repeating them to you.
(Robert Bly [source])
…and:
When you think about it, it’s not easy to keep from just wandering out of life. It’s like someone’s always leaving the door open to the next world, and if you aren’t paying attention you could just walk through it, and then you’ve died. That’s why in your dreams it’s like you’re standing in that doorway, and the dying people and the newborn people pass by you, and brush up against you as they come in and out of the world during the night. You get spun around, and in the morning, it takes a while to find your way back into the world.
(Rick Moody, from The Ice Storm (film version) [source])
Not from whiskey river:
Phase 3: Final Interview, a Few Last Questions
If a stranger getting on a train you’re leaving
makes as if to put his cigarette out in your eye,
do you let the doors close behind you with sorrow
for what some woman must have done to his life
or do you just hate him hate him
or do you hate yourself for letting him make you
hate him? Is this one of those hatreds
you’re allowed to have, that you can justify?
Do you shield your eyes on the next platform
or do you smile valiantly, chin up, unsquinting?If you know the words to a song you hear sung
uncertainly on the street at dusk by a stranger,
is it right to sing along, is it an invasion
or an obligation to connect, only connect,
even if he’s wearing spurs and chains
and aims a spurt of spittle at your foot?
If some of your best friends wear chains,
should you mention it? With how wide a smile?
Should you invite him home to play the record,
or in the next world will you regret it,
or worse, regret it if you don’t, why worse,
or in the next world is there no regret?
No looking back? No next world?If a butler in the familiar and shabby livery
of someone else’s trouble brings you a message
on a silver plate — and stands waiting —
should you fling it into the fire unread?
Should you excuse yourself and leave by the back door,
should you read it and swallow the return
address, and murder the butler, and leave
with too little money to make it back in case
the desire to help should ever seize you again?
It’s not important, you virtually already
have the job but we’d still like to know.
(J. Allyn Rosser [source])
…and:
If Ever There Was One
She could tell he loved her. He wanted her there
sitting in the front pew when he preached.
He liked to watch her putting up her hair
and ate whatever she cooked and never broachedthe subject of the years before they met.
He was thoughtful always. He let her say
whether or not they did anything in bed
and tried to learn the games she tried to play.She could tell how deep his feeling ran.
He liked to say her name and bought her stuff
for no good reason. He was a gentle man.
How few there are she knew well enough.He sometimes reached to flick away a speck
of something on her clothes and didn’t drum
his fingers on the table when she spoke.
What would he do if he knew she had a dreamsometimes, slipping out of her nightgown —
if ever God forbid he really knew her —
to slip once out of the house and across town
and find someone to talk dirty to her.
(Miller Williams [source])
…and (the writer is returning home from Papua, New Guinea, with some souvenirs):
“Open ’em up,” commanded the [customs] agent, pointing to our suitcases.
He worked like a surgeon… professional and without emotion as his fingers moved quickly under the plastic bafs and among the shoes stuffed with socks and bras. Finally, both of his hands met in the bottom of the suitcase and he carefully extracted three elongated gourds and held them up for the entire terminal to view. Then he barked, “What are you going to do with all these penis gourds?”
It was like one of those scenes when E.F. Hutton talked and everyone listened. So that’s what they were! I thought they were primitive artifacts they wore to add interest to a dull belt. By this time, decent people behind me were beginning to form opinions about us. Taking a deep breath, I said, “I’m going to use them for planters.”
He motioned with his hand for me to move on and turned his attention to the next couple.
The lines from customs counters funneled into one large mess at the door where you had to show your passport and your declaration card before you were cleared to leave the terminal.
By this time, my face was on fire, my eyes were swollen half shut, and my lips were cracked with fever. The attendant flipped my passport open and looked from the photo to my face for confirmation.
“Good likeness.” He smiled.
(Erma Bombeck [source])
“You Don’t Know My Mind” seems like a natural wrap-up to today’s (long) post. I haven’t yet learned much about the song, though. It seems to have been written by one Jimmie/Jimmy Martin, an old bluegrass performer of whom I’ve also been able to learn little; the lyrics mutate depending on the performer. (Actor/musician Hugh Laurie included it on Let Them Talk, his debut album released in April. You can hear Laurie’s version here at YouTube.)
Below, blues great Odetta tackles it (although the title superimposed on the video is wrong):
Lyrics:
You Don’t Know My Mind
(performance by Odetta)My bread is on the table, my coffee’s getting cold
Mama’s in the kitchen getting sweet daddy told
You don’t know, you don’t know my mind —
You see me laughing, I’m laughing just to keep from crying.I’m walking down the levy, with my head hanging low
Looking for my sweet daddy, Lord, he ain’t here no more
Now you don’t know, you don’t know my mind
You see me laughing, I’m laughing just to keep from crying.I worked all the summer, and part of the fall
Come home for Christmas in my old overalls
Now you don’t know, you don’t know my mind
When you see me laughing, laughing just to keep from crying.Well I’m not good looking, I don’t dress fine
But I’m the kind of woman who will take her time
You don’t know, you don’t know my mind
When you see me laughing, I’m laughing just to keep from crying.I cannot forge no wheel, I can’t shape no fly
But I can do anything if you show me how
You don’t know, you don’t know my mind
Now when you see me laughing, laughing just to keep from crying.You don’t know, you don’t know, you don’t know my mind, doggonit
You don’t know, you don’t know my mind
Now when you see me laughing, I’m laughing just to keep from crying —
When you see me laughing, I’m laughing just to keep from crying.
Nance says
I just got home from seeing Ryan Gosling in “Driver.” This post is the perfect follow-on for the movie. As I read it, I felt a Ryan Gosling lip-curl smile come up…slowly, slowly…until it was…just…perfect. The way an alien would smile when he’s beginning to catch on to the place.
You’d have to see the movie to know.
John says
I’m looking forward to seeing that movie, Nance. It sounds somewhere between viscerally thrilling and off-the-wall (Ryan Gosling as an action star and Albert Brooks as a gangster?!?), a favorite zone for me to scout around for films.
You caught onto this place some time ago, methinks… glad the post evoked an enigmatic smile!
marta says
I liked the Rick Moody quote. I haven’t read any of his books, but I remember a dust up in the book review world about a reviewer (in The New York Times, maybe) who said Rick Moody was the worst writer ever. Or maybe he said the worst writer in the world. And that was arguably not the worst thing said in the review.
The review made me like Rick Moody and made me wonder what a person has to do to get called the worst writer ever.
The title of your post…”Alien You” reminds me of the times someone has said something about me that didn’t sound like me at all or that I just hadn’t considered. Like when a young man said to me, “You’re very hard to read.” Really?
And oh, Erma. Haven’t we all had our Erma Bombeck moments?
John says
I’ve never read any of Moody’s books, either, marta. But I do remember that “dust up” (always loved that expression). The review appeared in The New Republic, by a critic named Dale Peck. (It’s available online here, at the Powell’s site.) Peck was/is apparently among a small minority of detractors. Having re-read the review, it seems to me that “Rick Moody is the worst writer of his generation” means about the same thing as “Rick Moody is my least favorite writer of his generation.” I think Moody and Peck — now there’s a law firm name for you — are also fairly close in age, hardly of different generations, which makes it difficult (for me, anyhow) not to hear a faint whimper of envy in Peck’s review.
The next-to-last thing I added to this post was the photo. I had way too many selections to include this week; I think I chopped three poems before publishing. The post’s working title was “The You of You.” When I found that photo, via whatever search string I was using then, I fell in love with it. It didn’t quite fit with that title, though. Yet I just couldn’t resist including it. So the title as published was a last-minute inspiration, meaning sort of the same thing as the working title but expanded/redirected to include the photo.
Way too much information, I know. :)
Froog says
Even richer than usual this week, JES. The Jill Rosser piece is such an inspired stream-of-consciousness, I immediately felt impelled to go off and check out the whole book.
And, my god, Hugh Laurie’s done an album of blues songs?! I was preparing to be underwhelmed – particularly straight after the Odetta – but it really does sound very good. The man has an unreasonable amount of talent. (You know he’s written a novel as well, a pretty good thriller called The Gun Seller?)
I was suddenly reminded of Cyndi Lauper’s Memphis Blues album last year, which also came as a complete surprise, but was seriously good.
John says
Froog, I’m embarrassed to admit how little attention I’ve paid to Hugh Laurie. I’ve never seen him on TV, in any role. Had no idea he’d written a well-received novel. That he’s an accomplished musician, tackling the blues on his first outing rather than, say, cabaret-style pop classics — well, clearly, if it weren’t obvious before it is now: my ignorance of him borders perilously on Philistinism. Sigh…
Wasn’t Rosser’s poem great? As I mentioned to marta, above, I had to toss a couple-three selections before posting this, and I kept thinking of scratching her “Phase 3: Final Interview” poem. Couldn’t do it. Each of those little riffing questions crackles with an infectious energy; I can almost imagine the poet laughing to herself as she thought of each one.
Jayne says
(Finally, after a full weekend of soccer, I can focus here!) My goodness, where is Carl Jung in this? And the Bombeck piece! Very funny. Reminds me of when I slipped some Cuban cigars out of one of the islands for my husband. It was actually quite easy.
Did you know that Rick Moody writes for Rumpus (music column)? Not only that but he also writes music? And he has written music for Wilco. Actually, he wrote the book on Wilco. And I love, love The Ice Storm. And some of his shorts are terrific, too. Like The Grid. So, I guess you could say I’m a Moody fan.
That is a fantastic photo at the top and I’d love to know where it’s from. (New Jersey??)
John says
Jung is implicit in the Robert Bly poem. :) (Bly has written Jungian non-fiction.)
I do need to see if I can track down the source of that photo. (Can’t remember what Google Images search term(s) I was using at the time, but it was buried fairly deeply in the results… I found it on a WordPress blog, but the blogger made no mention of a source and didn’t seem likely to have taken it him/herself.) Wish I could tell you I was one of the kids there — probably the anomalous masked-cowboy-attired one behind the “main event” — but, alas, not!
The Querulous Squirrel says
I just love that picture, too. It’s so perfectly little boy. And I love the Robert Bly concept of the three year old boy with six big ideas only five of which work telling you what to do. I think I’m going to start to use poetry with patients. This one is so perfect for the ones with OCD. And the penis gourds! So many embarassing moment passing in and out of security at customs in Israel when I was there as a youth and they were always on high alert. Young women were always considered to be security risks by naively carrying bombs for strange men. This blog is so clean and clear. Mine has gotten very cluttered, like a hoarder’s house. This is inspiring, even though I’m lazy.
John says
Squirrel: of course, you picked up on those nuances in Bly’s poem. (My favorite part was that although the inner child is only three, s/he hasn’t learned anything in thirty thousand years.)
Very happy that you like the new look. I didn’t feel like a hoarder under the old one, but I did want to open things up a little, at least. It’s like windows… When I’m working, being able to see outside is a problem. (I have no windows in my office at work; at my home-writing office, I have a single window — behind me — but I keep the blinds lowered.) But having sunlight or even the gray light of pre-dawn or cloudy skies flood the kitchen and dining room makes SUCH a difference in the room’s mood. Same here. The posting/admin interface is exactly the same as it used to be, but I think this theme has more uncurtained windows than the old one.
The Querulous Squirrel says
I love that every section is boxed and the margins are so small. It’s hard to find a theme like this in blogger or wordpress. I don’t have the computer skills to do a hybrid.
John says
For the record, here’s a demo of the theme before I started to play around with colors and such. It is itself a variant of this bare-bones “parent” theme.
I’m very pleased, as I said, that people seem to like the new look. I don’t have a great deal of confidence in my design skills, and constantly fret that colors aren’t coordinating, or that I’m hammering too much at the same color palette, or whatever. Luckily, given a design, I do know enough about what goes on “under the hood” that I can tinker with it! :)