Grass and flowers, revisited

I

Yo-yos were in for a while.
I was in eighth grade. I learned
some tricks, I was pretty good.
My daydreams involved wooing
the cute girl from my earth science
class in a yo-yo showdown – old
west meets geek meets fad
meets a melted heart. I wanted
a 3-in-1 yo-yo, all-wood, forty
dollars from the company web-
site. It was the perfect yo-yo for
me, I thought. Forty dollars said
otherwise. I never bought the yo-yo,
I never wooed the girl, and I went
on to mostly forget. Perfection is
a rare thing to find, and even rare
to imagine.

II

Alcohol on a cut or scrape has
been hell to me. Fear of the
sting cuts so deeply.

III

On Memorial Day, 2005,
I went with my family to
the cemetery, looking for
stones with names I hadn’t
known before, but names
that I was told belonged
to me. We found a young
magpie, injured or sick on
the ground near a tree. It
was very cold, and my dad
caught the bird and we
took it home in a box. We
hoped to nurse it back to
health, and then to free
it. I secretly wished to
keep it as a pet. It didn’t
recover in the cage where
we kept it. We buried it
without tears showing.

Grad School Dedication

For Leslie Lynch King, Sr.,
Jimmy Cracker, and
Strawberry Clean,
with all my love.

Grass and flowers

My Praktica MTL5B Camera
is a prized, if seldom used,
possession. Perhaps I love how
constant it is. Kodak prints

remain Kodak prints, and though
my perspective may change,
the purple flower, and not the
white one, will remain in focus.

No revisionist history will bring
a kestrel's head out of its box,
no wishing can hide that a paint
can once held honey-roasted peanuts.

East German, one battery, all
manual. Even smudges on the lens
can be blamed only on me. And
regrets are dated and catalogued,

Every 3 by 5 in every album
eternal in its message: I
do not take back what I have
felt, I do not withdraw my statements.

I do load a new roll of film.

(Gordon Rees, personal communication 2009)

So Tuesday afternoon I'm working on calculations for a soil physics lab. Then I stop thinking about it all together because I've got this monster paper due Thursday by midnight, right? So, it's not exactly on my mind, if you catch my meaning.

At least, that's what I thought. Turns out: no. It was on my mind. As evidenced by the following:

Wednesday night I went to bed earlier than I maybe should have. I hadn't made a lot of progress that day on the paper I was supposed to be writing for my Pedology class. At least, I'd made very little progress in the actual writing part. That is, I still hadn't concluded the research portion of the paper, let alone started writing it. The good news from Wednesday, however, was that, after a long early-afternoon nap, I woke up to the conclusion that I'd picked the wrong topic for my paper, and that's why it wasn't coming together mentally or emotionally for me. I changed the topic a little after three that afternoon from gleization, shrink-swell, and ferrolysis to clay synthesis, shrink-swell, and ferrolysis. This was a huge comfort to me, and I became, almost instantly, a much more pleasant person. Unfortunately, there was no one else there to enjoy this dramatic change.

At some point, while I was in bed (and I honestly can't tell you when - maybe just when I'd gone to bed before I'd actually fallen asleep, maybe when I had a brief textersation at about 1 am, maybe waking up randomly during the night, maybe after my alarm had sounded in the morning but before I'd really awakened... Maybe in a dream) the thought came to me: Wait, we did all those calculations using the Q value as if it were our q value. We have to divide by the surface area of the column. That's why our saturated hydraulic conductivity (K) values didn't come close to matching what we'd calculated earlier.

It wasn't until a little later that I realized how bizarre this was. The K value disparity hadn't really bothered me at all. I hadn't been thinking about it at all. And suddenly, in a state of partial consciousness, not only did this lab randomly come to mind, but an error in my calculations that I hadn't been looking to find.

I'm not sure that makes any sense to anyone else, but I can't get over that. A day and a half later. Bam. I have to divide by surface area. Bam. When was my mind thinking about that enough to process all my calculations and come to that realization?

I haven't ever really had a fried pie. Maybe I can remedy that. Maybe not...

There's your trouble

I was going to spend most of the day working on the 10ish page paper due on Thursday that constitutes a third of my grade in one of my classes. I was going to spend most of yesterday evening on that too. Now I'm thinking maybe that's what tomorrow is for. Obviously I'm in a bad way - I dangled that preposition and I don't care.

On the bright side, I'm almost done with that paper: at least in terms of time: I'm only a couple days away from finished.

Circle of Life

I'm full of myself.
Sometimes I wonder what would happen if someone else came in and wrote a blog post as me. What would they say? Would they project my own ideals and opinions or would they type what they perceive of me? And if I were to hack into someone Else's blog... what would I write?

Goodnight, dear void.

What's the point of forgetting if it's followed by dying?

I really am trying. I swear.

I once started filming a movie (with some friends) about a person who would start crossword puzzles but never finish them. Actually, I'm not sure he even started, he might have just thought about starting. I think that's how it was. But he was always certain that he could finish if he wanted to. The sequel to that movie might involve him actually trying to finish a crossword puzzle and failing. It would be devastating to him, but at the same time, it would only confirm all of his unspoken suspicions.

Also, keep your eyes open for Newsies 2: Life in Santa Fe. *Spoiler alert* It's actually about a teenage girl who becomes so obsessed with the movie Newsies that she believes that she must live out the rest of Jack's life by traveling to Santa Fe and fulfilling his dream. (Is that his name? Jack? I'll have to check that before I write/direct/produce the sequel.) But don't worry, I won't tell you here whether or not she succeeds. You'll have to wait 'til it hits the dollar theaters to find out. Or maybe it'll go straight to VHS.

Poems on death

I wrote this one year ago today. That's why I'm posting it now. I mention it here. I do plan on reading that talk again tomorrow. I think it'll be appropriate once again.

I

I want to talk about my dog -

In June, she was dying from cancer
and I went out to say goodbye to her
before I left on a trip.

We had carried her down the steps to the grass where she could lie in the shade
and we had covered her with a faded brown towel to keep the flies off –
we had tried to pick off the maggots that had already hatched from the eggs they were laying.

As I laid my hands gently on her
this is what I said to her:

How’re you doing, dog?
Are you alright?
I wish I could do something for you.

Dog, do you remember
how when I first got you,
when I called you puppy,
that you spent the night
in a brown cardboard box
and we would take you out
to hold you?

Do you remember that
when you grew a little
I would take you out
to the front yard and
play with you on the grass?

Do you remember that you
didn’t run away then?
Do you remember, dog,
that later we had to keep
you fenced in the back yard
but that you only jumped
that fence one time?

Do you remember how high
you would jump next to that
fence without pulling yourself
over?

Did you choose not to make
that leap out of love, or out
of fear, dog?

Do you remember winters and snow and you would jump, rabbit-like, through it while we watched from inside the house and laughed?

Do you remember thunder, dog?
Or have you chosen to forget
how it tormented you?

Do you remember the nights
when I sat with you and held
you to comfort you until
the storm had passed?
Do you remember how I would
talk to you in those early morning hours
and tell you secrets that I never
told anyone else?

Have you kept those secrets, dog?

Do you remember the nights when
you would jump and whine out
of fear of the thunder, and I would
close my door downstairs and
pretend that I couldn’t hear you?

Can you forgive me, Dog?

Then I spoke to her in Spanish,
telling her all the secrets that
I have never told to anyone.

I looked at my faded brown dog,
and watched her slow breath
and felt her shiver
and I said a prayer:

Let her die, God.
Let her die.


II


A month after my dog died,
I met you.

I told you about her,
and how she never
jumped over the fence
in our back yard.

I didn’t tell you that
one time, she did
make it over.

You said that maybe
God sees us jumping like
I saw my dog
and wishes we would
pull ourselves over.

I didn’t tell you that
I had been terrified that
my dog would clear that fence.


III


It’s been more than a year since
my grandmother died of cancer.

I was alone with her when a nurse
came with forms for her to fill out.

What should we do if your heart stops?
she asked.

Let me die was my
grandma’s answer.

If you stop breathing?
Let me die.

If you enter a coma?
If you lose consciousness?
If you can’t swallow your food?

Do not resuscitate.
Let me die.


IV


If I don’t dream of you at night,
it’s not because I’m not trying.

Wind in dry corn is an autumnal silence

That's the kind of line you write in your mind after your first few minutes biking into the wind on a gravel road when you're trying to avoid thinking about other things. And when you have to stop to take a picture of that dry corn.

Every solitary child rules the universe

So I can now add pear cheese pie to this list.

This is why I should have just skipped everything else and gone to Thomas Pynchon from the start

From Vineland:

Question was, would it be this time, or one of the next few times? Should he wait for another spin? It was like being on "Wheel of Fortune," only here there were no genial vibes from any Pat Sajak to find comfort in, no tanned and beautiful Vanna White at the corner of his vision to cheer on the Wheel, to wish him well, to flip over one by one letters of a message he knew he didn't want to read anyway.

As per your request

I want to know the trees

Powerpoint slides – a novelty
in my high school – taught me the
trees. Fifty of them: Common name,
Scientific name, Principal identifying
characteristics. Populus tremuloides, Little-
leaf Linden, Weeping White birch,
Acer negundo. Amateur pronunciations

of Latin drew snickers at times: Salix
matsudana, Catalpa bignoides. I’ve
forgotten most of what I learned. Now

I want to start again, but this
time not just fifty, this time all of
them. Starting with the leaves, and
moving down. From the trunk down,
without looking up: I know you.
Eventually, just from the roots. The

reaching I recognize, the suction I
feel unmistakably: I know you.

Then from trees to birds: Harrier,
Cooper’s hawk, blackbirds. A chasing
game? Or life and death? Mimus
polyglottis: So you know him also?

A feather, this flutter: I know you.
And from there: roads, books, oceans,
fields, Cracks, waves, flashes: I know you.

I want to sense your footstep,
hear your feeling: I know you.

July and November

So if the luckiest guy in the world ended up not being quite as lucky as he had originally thought, he might incorrectly think that he wasn't really the luckiest guy in the world, or that he was no longer the luckiest guy in the world. And it might take a few months before he again realized that his luck never really changed.

Alone and solitary only look alike in a photo.

These are the plums, revisited. I was going to do cherry sap from the same roll, but that picture has never been digitized. In some ways, that's very comforting.

Some colors I wouldn't dare put in a rainbow.

So it's been more than a month since I last sang, and this was starting to bother me. I've really been wanting to sing, but my current living arrangements don't allow it. I've got neighbors. I live in a duplex. And when I go to school, there are other people studying. And there's really nowhere where I can be alone. Some of you may think that I'm being far too self-conscious or ridiculous or something to feel that I can't sing just because I have neighbors. Others of you have heard me sing. I mean, actually sing. I'm just sayin'. So, today, I decided to ride my bike west until I got to the middle of nowhere where I would feel like I could sing. I eventually found a spot - near the hawk (pictured) - but it took longer than expected, so I only sang while on my bike. That's also where I was when I took the majority of these photos. Digital images.

Migratory

There are birds that fly over, which feels significant. The sky at twilight isn't poisoned the way the word is, but instead is yellow, orange, yellow-orange, vespering.

See, birds flying over gives this place a feeling of openness, of belonging. Not belonging, but not alone either. The horizon seems to suggest that there's a place from which birds might come, a place that they might go. I came through here on a train, once. I knew I would return. I didn't know that reflecting ponds of water in a recently graded construction sight would lead me to spontaneously salute the not-yet-yellow sky.

Supporting documents

Rain...


Tortillas.

Not everything, maybe

So the bruises, the little red spots, are gone from the tips of my fingers, the ones I hit over and over again while roofing the shop out behind my family's home. That's good, because I was sometimes reminded of Isaiah 49. Don't get me wrong, I wasn't doing any comparisons, it's just that those verses would come to mind, and that probably wasn't for the best. Anyway, sometimes forgetting is good, in a way.

The nails were very short, see, too short to hold normally, so I had to hold them with my hand palm up between the first two fingers:
This led to me hitting my fingers. Also, if anyone would care to read my palm, all those lines are absolutely accurate. I know, incredible life line, right?

I wish I could remember everything

When I was five, my family took a trip to the Washington D.C./ Maryland area, where my grandparents and several other relatives lived. While there we visited Annapolis. In Annapolis, there are brick streets. Not everywhere, but in parts. There's a roundabout that I have in mind which I might also call a traffic circle, and I believe it was there that I started to walk out into the brick street as a five-year-old when my dad grabbed me. Because the streets were brick, I didn't think to look both ways before crossing, but luckily my dad was paying attention because he narrowly saved me from being hit by a car coming around the circle.

In Argentina, I was in San Martín when, while we were talking with a man on the side of a dirt road in Villa del Carmen, a little girl (3 or 4?) darted between us running out into the street just as a car was coming. I grabbed her by the shirt about a second before a the car passed -- the driver hit his breaks as soon as he saw her, but he couldn't have stopped in time. The girl gave me a mean look for grabbing her.

This is out of character, but I liked this:

So I went out on a bike ride because it felt like Mendoza this morning.

8:34 pm

Air is never sickly –
hazy, smoky, foggy, crisp,
dry. But never sickly.

I imagine this haze
is a veil of fog
rising out of asphalt,
and dirt streets,

brick buildings lit
too dimly inside. I
imagine the coldness
of the morning.

I imagine the
smell, the not-home-
baked bread and I
imagine the exquisite

beauty of those
chains of crusty rolls.

8:40 pm

Darkness is not
only thick, but visible
in a way that’s hard
to imagine inside.

One moon isn’t
enough on a night
like this. Its
yellow is too

Autumnal, its fullness
too near to me, its
roundness too incomplete.

I will not look to see
if it waxes or wanes,
I will look at a dark path
to see it does not cut.

8:46 pm

Cain and Abel must
anticipate swapping stories.
Brothers in a lonely land
must share more than
a table and lentil soup,
Dipping torn crusts, and
buttering cut bread.
A hot knife was never
needed to slip through
and divide
such exquisite feeling.
When I sat and ate with
them, I looked from brother
to brother and
felt at home.

SORRY

Christmas Lights

I guess those are Christmas lights, technically speaking. They're being used to decorate the sign in front of Baja Tacos in Santa Fe. Some of the best food in the world is there - I personally recommend the bean and tofu burrito smothered in green chile and the breakfast burrito (without meat) smothered in green chile. I've never actually had the breakfast burrito smothered in green chile. I wanted that, and I thought I ordered that, but I'm told I only said, "with green chile," and all the breakfast burritos come with your choice of red or green chile inside. The burrito was still fantastically delicious. However, I'm afraid I was also ordering the same thing for William, and he was rather disappointed that his was not smothered. One thousand apologies without changing, che. The red chile is also good there. I recommend the green. Also, I'm rather pleased with the fact that I was able to get the lights there at all - I had to go in and edit the HTML by hand, which isn't something I'm particularly trained to do. I had a class in seventh grade that prepared me some, though.

Astronomy

So there are a lot of things that I was going to do over the Summer that I never did. Many of these things began with the letter S. I did other things instead, and I have plenty of regrets.

Here is one regret: On more than one occasion I thought about poems I know involving stars. I always remembered First World and The Song of Wandering Angus and Poema Veinte. There's this other poem I memorized in high school - A Song by Joseph Brodsky, and it's been bugging me for a while that there's one line of it that I couldn't remember. Last night I looked it up, and it's this: I wish you were here, dear, I wish you were here. I wish I knew no astronomy when stars appear, when the moon skims the water that sighs and shifts in its slumber. I wish it were still a quarter to dial your number. The one part I couldn't remember was I wish I knew no astronomy when stars appear. I really regret not having remembered that line because it's one of my favorites in the poem, and I could have added this to the poems I know about stars when thinking about those things. Also, who knows how many girls would have fallen in love with me had I remembered it? Seven or eight is the best estimate according to this site.

California

I feel that a blog post is in order, because I've moved to a new place. Some people would like updates, I'm sure. Tell them they're free to call me.

Here's something I haven't told anyone yet, though: near the library there's some kind of tree or plant or other botanical item with this terrible smell. At first I thought the older, very heavy-set man sitting on a bench there had been smoking pot. This turned out not to be the case. Either that, or he left a very lingering smell. He was a large man, so I guess it's more than possible that he would leave a lingering smell.

So one time I went up the canyon with some friends and there was a bonfire and we came home smelling like smoke. If we told you we'd met with some people who were smoking pot and that's what had scented all our clothing, we may or may not have been lying.

I think landscape designers and grounds crews and landscapers should be required to study plant odors.

I think green is a fine color for a room.


Sometimes I think, what if? That's a dangerous thing to think. I apologize to anyone who has been hurt by my thinking, what if?

Here's a statistic: AT UC Davis, on peak days, there are 20,000 to 30,000 bicycles on campus. Today is not a peak day.

Note 4

It's a dry place, my place of birth. So the rain at the airport when I landed was unexpected. But it seemed right. This land is, after all, a part of me, and I a part of it, I guess. When I look out of the small airplane window and see it streaked with rain as we taxi to our gate, I imagine sorrow, pain, memories not easily forgotten, a thousand memories too quickly remembered, Springs and Summers and silence, and I am not really surprised even in this dry place.

A Second Lovesong

So this baby goat loved
his mother very much.

"I love you, mother,
very much. May I climb
onto your back to be
near to you?"

So he would climb onto
his mother's soft back
and stand there for hours.

The view from up there
was incredible. He could
see into the next pen,
out across the yard,
dozens of other goats
who all gazed back up at
him in admiration.

Maybe the best idea I've ever had

"I am for an art that is political-erotical-mystical, that does something other than sit on its ass in a museum. I am for an art that grows up not knowing it is art at all, an art given the chance of having a staring point of zero. I am for an art that embroils itself with the everyday crap & still comes out on top." - Claes Oldenburg

So I'm going to need 100 second graders. We're going to do 2nd grade flash mobs, but very carefully rehearsed ones. One of them will involve the Olympic fountain at the Gateway in Salt Lake, 100 plastic bottles of different colors, and a carefully choreographed dance.

I just need someone who can help me find willing second graders, someone with a lot of plastic bottles, and someone who can choreograph bottle fountain dances.

August 13, 2009

So here's the breakdown:

Imagine a really hot day, but that you don't want to be hot. That's about the feeling. But the AC's out, so what can you do? You live with it.

And you remember that winter is coming, which is only momentarily comforting, 'cause you really hate the cold.

Here's the idea: A boxer, a prizefighter. One of the best in the world. Win after win after win. Championships. Trips across continents. And then a change of plans, a dying father, a decision to leave the ring, and then an ordinary life. Not unlike a lot of stories, but instead of going back to the ring in a miraculous comeback, he moves to a little town and gets involved in local politics with dreams of ruling the world again only to find that everyone's corrupt. He tries to make reforms, can't beat the system, so he just goes back to his house with dreams of planting a plum orchard in his big back yard. But he knows he's going to need more land and a lot of money for the start-up costs. So he just stays put, deals with the murder of his dog, and lives one day at a time. And the drunk guy who thinks about hitting on his wife while they're out for a walk would do well to reconsider.

Don't worry, though, because at least winter is beautiful. If you really hated it that much, you'd have moved by now. And dreams of a plum orchard are more than enough.

Elder Holland on Lot's Wife, Paraphrasedish

Her attachment to the past outweighed her confidence in the future. In short, she doubted the Lord's ability to give her something better than she already had.

At the risk of repeating myself.

"The sage is full of anxiety and indecision in undertaking anything, and so he is always successful."

This is a quote that I've used before, but I felt like repeating it so that it would be seen/seen again. It's always reminded me of you. Whatever that means to you.

I'm done

I'm done being miserable, thanks for your patience.

It's funny how long it's been since I've had pancakes for breakfast. It's not uncommon for me to think, "Maybe I could make pancakes this morning." But I never do. This morning, for example, I will have cereal again.

Lunch is anyone's guess.

Understanding

Suddenly, I feel like I understand Charles Bukowski a little better. Not his actual poetry, I haven't read that.

You win some, you lose some.

Today, I did some of each. I hope.

Something along those lines

Here we go... Have you ever read the book Frankenstein? By Mary Shelley? I haven't, and I only partially regret that. There are a lot of books out there, and I can only read so many of them in my lifetime. Do you think Eternity will be enough time to read every book? Or will there be an eternal stream of new books being published? This is one of the great questions that must come to haunt each of us at one point or another in our lives. Here's another: If you were a seagull, where would you live? I mean, it's just as cheap to live in Vancouver as it is to live in Costa Azul. Etc. So your choice wouldn't be based on monetary concerns. This may just haunt me for the rest of my life, because I'll never know the answer. And I'll always wonder if maybe I'd be one of those seagulls at Cape Henlopen. And I'll always wonder if I would be a happy seagull at Cape Henlopen. Or would I have doubts about my choice of residence? Would I dream of Miami Beach or La Verkin or Akron at night, and wake up with cold sweats? This will haunt me: do seagulls have cold sweats when they doubt? What about French Fries? Would I eat French Fries as a Seagull?

Here's the frightening thing: These questions are really starting to bother me. Not the French Fries. I really don't give a dang whether I'd eat French Fries or not. I don't really give a dang that French Fries is generally not written with the first letters capitalized. But the other seagull questions are starting to bother me. If I were a Spanish Seagull, I'd be a gaviota. I think I could live with that.

My Greatest Passion

Yesterday, my life changed forever: I rode on a MONORAIL! Among other things... But let me tell you why my greatest passion is: MONORAIL. They go on just one track! They're in the AIR! They're featured in the song Johnny on the MONORAIL by the Buggles!

I didn't take this photograph, but I could have because I WAS ON THIS MONORAIL! Actually, I sort of did take this photograph, but in a different sense than is usually implied when one says that he or she took a photograph. I took it from this web page: MONORAIL!!!

I now know all about the Supreme Court from 1967 to 1980.

You name it, I know it. Or I'll make it up. I can even make it sound pretty convincing.

Best Fourth of July Ever

Take that, October 19

So you remember how I said that Sunday, October 19, 2008 had been one of the best days of my life? Monday, June 22, 2009 beat it hands down. Some of you will eventually know why, I reckon. Others may or may not figure it out.

Let me tell you this, which is completely unrelated:

I'm going to Salem today to vote on the bond election for the Nebo School District. I plan to vote in favor.

Pain and Lilies

I saw pain two times in the desert.

For what am I looking?

I thought it was appropriate for crushed aspirin to fall from my backpack onto the sand. But it wasn't nearly enough. Sometimes the desert reminds me of a song I hate, sometimes it reminds me of immensity, sometimes I cry with those who aren't actually crying. I do not think that they will cry for me.

"When you expect your opponent to yield you should also avoid hurting him." This came in a fortune cookie, written on a fortune. Probably in 2000 or 2001. Have you ever wondered if maybe you are that opponent whom you should avoid hurting? Have you ever wondered if maybe you should have licked up that aspirin despite the sand that would come with it? Have you ever written an essay about love crushed, only to discover you were both mortar and pestle and sand grain and aspirin?

"What's the point of forgetting if it's followed by dying?"

This is my Memorial Day 2009.

National Turtle Wax Gifting Day

Also National Turtle Wax Gifting Day.

National Toaster Gifting Day

May 22, 2009 will be National Toaster Gifting Day. Like a Billiken, it's luckier to receive a toaster as a gift than to buy your own. Luckier still to steal one.

I just ate a lot of guacamole

It wasn't even very good guacamole.

Learning

I just took a survey for seniors about to graduate from BYU. The final question, or one of the final questions, asked for me to describe an experience at BYU that significantly affected how I think about learning. I chose the lab I did last month for my geology class which involved drawing a few lines and coloring, and then counting up sections in which I'd colored both yellow and red. It was a total waste of time, but it got me thinking about how little I've learned in so many classes compared to what I could have learned. I think it comes down to the fact that learning in a university setting is often motivated only by the desire to fulfill a requirement - get a good grade on a lab and in a class, graduate, get into grad/med school, or get a good job. I'm afraid that more often than not, that's why we do assignments and why we go to school. So in the survey I described this and said that if I were to create a university, its mode of operation would be fundamentally different than that of BYU. And that more learning would take place. I'm pretty sure this is true.

I'm not sure that this is exactly the kind of response they had in mind. I hope it is.

I also hope that they give out free hot dogs to encourage me to donate to BYU.

My trip to UC Davis

So it seemed like it might be in order for me to give some sort of report or summary of my trip to the University of California at Davis, from which I returned late Tuesday night. In case anyone's curious, and hasn't heard my report yet. For that reason I began this post, but I've changed my mind, and will instead discuss my trip to Smith's last night. This wasn't a particularly interesting trip, but it's what came to mind.

Here are two things that occurred at Smith's: 1. I went to buy salsa, and decided I didn't want the Pace Picante Sauce, even if it was on sale. Nor did I want Kroger Picante Sauce, which was on an even better sale. Instead I bought the Pace Tequila Lime salsa which was maybe on sale. Maybe not. But it sounded more delicious at the time. 2. I saw some canned beverages in the Foreign Foods aisle, and remembered that Greg was raving about a lightly carbonated all juice canned beverage earlier that evening. I decided to look for such a beverage in order to purchase it. Later, as I was walking through the store, I saw the chilled beverages aisle, which I think mainly includes beer, hard lemonade, and the like. I decided the drink I had in mind probably would instead be with the soft drinks. Then I forgot about it, and didn't buy it. I did see Chili flavored Lindt chocolate at a fantastic Fresh Values price, which I did purchase.

The chocolate might technically be a third thing, because it wasn't really conected to the drink in any way.

His breathing turns a wheel

I'm thinking that one of the coolest moments in President Obama's life this year had to be when he looked at the calender and saw Presidents' Day and realized it's now his day too. If you catch my meaning.

I think my brother knows this kid.

Here's one of the most hilarious things I've ever heard/seen involving a stranger on a bicycle that may be someone my youngest brother knows:

So I'm walking up the long hill/ramp at the south end of BYU campus - the one divided between pedestrians and cyclists - and it's snowing. This was yesterday early afternoon, just a little before 2 pm, and when I'm maybe 100 feet from the top of the hill, a kid on a bicycle starts down it on the other side. He's remarkable in that he's got a bass violin (double bass) in a soft bag over his shoulder and is carrying it behind his back in this manner while riding his bicycle. I've seen him before, and I always think this looks a little ridiculous and rather dangerous. But right as he's gaining speed heading down the hill with his string bass on his bicycle into the snow, I hear him say (and I don't think he was trying to say this to me but was talking to himself - which wouldn't surprise me from the kind of person who carries a bass violin on a bicycle), " I can't see." And then he weant speeding down the hill squinting to try and keep the snow out of his eyes, and wobbling a little. I found this absolutely hilarious.

Here's the essay in it's final form, which I'll be reading next Friday at the English Reading Series at noon in the HBLL auditorium. If you don't read it now, and come on Friday, it will be more of a surprise. I'd recommend reading it and skipping Friday, but that's your call.

Love is Like Grinding Soil

Love is like grinding soil. This thought came to me last week while I spent an afternoon doing just that - grinding soil samples. It's a time-consuming task, it requires great care, it can become tedious, and it gets a little dirty. But there are occasional moments throughout when the ways in which shades of red and rich browns and near blacks contrast with a creamy-colored mortar and pestle cause sudden waves of inspiration, scatter sudden drops of beauty, incite sudden floods of joy. Add to that the eventual rewards – satisfaction, knowledge, and eight dollars an hour – and the parallels to love are numerous and obvious. Or at least this is what I imagined as my arm tired from beating away to crush grains of sand into a floury powder.

The analogy is, of course, ridiculous. Although there are two or three similarities, it's difficult to imagine two things more dissimilar than love and soil grinding. But somehow the comparison, for a brief moment, seemed apt to me. And after a little thought and a little research, I've discovered I'm not alone in using analogies to try to pigeonhole love by tying it to something a little more concrete – like a mortar and pestle, or a pigeon hole. It seems, as a culture, we tend to talk more about what love is like than we talk about what love really is.

Search for "love is" in a database of pop music lyrics, and you'll quickly see what I mean. If we can believe pop musicians (and when it comes to love, why wouldn't we?), then love is a losing hand, a losing game, just a game, a contact sport, and a blood sport. Love is a battlefield, camouflage, and war. Love is the holocaust, a killer, a cannibal, it is dead (but also living and life) and it's a life-taker. Love is like cancer, the cure, bad medicine, drugs, a cigarette, and heroin. Love is like a shooting star, tears from the stars, and brighter than the brightest star. It's wider than the sky, and like the wind, or the sun that comes out after the storm, or a cloud, or the rain and the sea. Love is a shining sea, an ocean, a river, a flood, a tidal wave, a heat wave, the seventh wave, all seven wonders, just a myth, just a lie, no big truth, nothing but the truth, the law, a higher law, a crime, but also not a crime. And love is hate.

Beyond these relatively simple comparisons, however, there are some even more creative analogies: according to Bo Burnham love is like a homeless guy "finding a bag of gold coins and slowly finding out they're all filled with chocolate;" Jewel compares love to barbed wire flowing through her veins; and who among us can forget what Dean Martin taught - when the moon hits your eye like a big pizza pie, that too is love.

So maybe my soil grinding analogy wasn't too ridiculous after all. In fact, it may even be an improvement on many analogies to love. It's certainly an improvement on some of the other analogies I've written. For example, in high school I was asked to write a love song. In it, I compared love to dead plums hanging from a dead branch and a freezer full of ashes buried in my back yard. More recently, I wrote a love poem in which the object of my affection was represented by a dead sea lion washed up on the beach. The sea lion, and the poem, met their ends in flames – a pyre of simile and metaphor.

Maybe examining my own analogies to love is the best way to shed some light on why these are more than just a ubiquitous feature of bad poetry, but also a spreading societal phenomenon. (Whether it's spreading like a flood or like cancer I can't say.) I've chosen to create these analogies mostly because I don't know how to accurately describe what love is. In fact, I don't even know what love is. But I do know a little about some of its attributes: love is a many splendored thing, but it's also terribly complex, and it's understood first in the heart. That is, I know that love is hard to explain. So I've dodged that bullet altogether by not even attempting to explain love, but instead explaining something that might be vaguely similar to it. And as a result, a battlefield, a cannibal, and dirt in a mortar and pestle become love.

Another possible explanation for why we use analogies to describe love is that not only can the analogy allow us to pretend to convey meaning, but it can also allow us to disavow that meaning if it isn't well received: "You thought I was comparing you to a dead sea lion? Why on earth would I ever do that?"

There might be other more substantial explanations for why we use analogies to love. It's possible that these analogies actually explain facets of the diamond that is love in a way that nothing else can. It's possible that they convey emotions felt on the roller coaster of love that are otherwise inexplicable. Maybe analogies add beauty and depth to the poem of love. Maybe they've got some actual literary merit.

This is evidenced by the fact that such analogies aren't limited to pop music. They've also been used by some literary heavyweights: Rochefoucauld said that true love is like ghosts, Charles Bukowski wrote a collection of poetry titled "Love is a Dog from Hell," Emily Brontё compared love to the wild rose-briar, T. W. Robertson described love as being like red-currant wine, and even Shakespeare wrote that "Love is like a child, That longs for everything that he can come by."

There's a good chance, however, that these examples prove less about the validity of analogies than they prove that even supposedly great authors have chosen to dodge a few bullets themselves. Maybe all this proves is that Shakespeare, too, was a cop-out.

Looking at the dozens of lyrical and poetic analogies to love, as well as my own analogies, I have no idea what any of them really mean. To say that love is like an ocean sounds nice at first, but does it really make any sense? How much does love really resemble a giant body of salt water? And if love is really like an ocean, then is it becoming more acidic because of increased carbon dioxide emissions?

Red-currant wine paints a nice image of love, but Mr. Robertson himself would have to admit it's a bit of a stretched illustration. Maybe he came up with that one after drinking a couple too many glasses of the stuff.

And maybe Mr. Martin had some sort of epiphany while picking bits of tomato sauce and pepperoni from his eyelashes, but he's left the rest of us baffled.

Comparing love to dead plums may be terribly romantic, but does it really have any connection to truth?

If I learned one thing from my eleventh grade English Class, it's that all analogies are false. Maybe, given that, love is like an analogy. Except it's true. And maybe, given that, an analogy is the best possible device to explain love.

In the end, whatever the reason we use analogies when we talk about love, it's a part of our culture that's not about to disappear. Love is such a devastating and engulfing enigma, such a strange and beautiful beast, that it seems to demand the comparisons.

You see, using an analogy to explain love is like finding yourself in Rome without knowing a word of Italian, and you desperately want to communicate, but can't. Instead, you have to trust in a stranger you meet, who nods when you ask if she understands English, to explain to the museum guard that the ancient vase was already shattered on the floor when you entered the room. The analogy is the stranger, the person you so desperately love is the guard, and your love for her is on the ground, crushed into a thousand shards.

Crushed like a bad analogy under the foot of a heartless English teacher.

Crushed like grains of sand in a mortar and pestle.

Cellular Telephones

Here's maybe the second best thing about Cellular Telephones:

If you want to talk to yourself, but there are other people around, you can pretend to get a call, and then you just have to do a little fake intro conversation and go into whatever it is you want to say. No one will be the wiser, unless you're a really poor actor, and it's obvious that no one actually called you, and then you'll look even weirder because you're not only talking to yourself, but you're pretending to talk to someone else, and even waiting for them to say stuff.

Here's maybe the third best thing about Cellular Telephones:

Rural electrification: seedbed of the unforseen.

Called life, she is a pomegranate pecked clean by birds and entirely become a part of their flying

This is something I liked:

"All the world exists because God keeps asking, 'Do you love me?', and God keeps answering, 'I love you.'"

Sunrises vs. Sunsets

So I thought of one other story about bad poetry that I thought I'd include in a separate post:

My high school had a yearly "knowledge bowl" competition, which I entered all three years that I was there. My first year, this was as a sophomore, I was on a team with Ross W. Warren (the W. stands for William - he wasn't too fond of that name and probably wouldn't want me to include it here) and Catherine Green and Sherry Cope. There was a rule that each team had to have two guys and two girls, which was instituted after my older brother's all-male team blew the competition (much of it co-ed) out of the water. The way they explained the new rule when it was announced was that it was intended to "give the girls a chance," so my sister refused to ever participate while she was there, even though Johnny Frandsen (?) practically begged her to join his team. Anyway, Ross and I were by no means sexist (though Ross might have been a little sexist at that point - I can't say for sure) but we weren't around when they made their outrageous statements justifying the co-ed teams, so we didn't feel like a boycott was necessary. Our problem was that we didn't have many female friends, so Ross basically walked up to a group of girls who were in some of our classes, and asked if there were two who wanted to join our team, and Catherine and Sherry volunteered. That's only sort of my memory - I think I've mostly invented it, but I have no other memory of how the team was assembled.

On the first day of Knowledge Bowl competition, I went to meet my team outside of the auditorium about 15 minutes before our first round was supposed to start, as we'd arranged. However, no one was there. I waited a while, wondering why nobody was showing up, until a minute or two before we were supposed to be competing, the three of them showed up together. Apparently, someone had reported to the principal that Ross had made the girls on our team sign a contract saying that they'd never answer any questions or participate in any way - just sit there to fulfill gender requirements. This was in no way true (though it wouldn't have been entirely unbelievable from Ross), so the principal, after Catherine and Sherry assured him that they'd never signed any such contract or made any agreement like that in any way, decided not to disqualify us. We went on to win that first round handily. The girls didn't say much, but I think eventually both of them answered multiple questions. A lot of that related to their being less aggressive in buzzing in to answer than Ross and I were. But after buzzing in, we'd have a few seconds to discuss things if we wanted, and even if they hadn't buzzed and didn't give the answer, they would give their opinions in these situations.

Later, while we were waiting for another round, we were sitting in the auditorium watching two other teams compete. We also happened to be sitting right behind the team against which we were about to compete. We would, as a team, whisper answers to questions as this round progressed. Mr. Mike Olsen was reading questions, and he got to one which he began by giving a category - "The category for this next question is: Bad Poetry." So I immediately whispered, "Charge of the Light Brigade." Ross laughed, and Mr. Olsen read the question - "What poem contains the following line: Into the valley of death rode the six hundred?" My jaw dropped and I turned and looked at Ross, who was also in shock, because I'd been right. When neither of the teams competing at the time got it, Mr. Olsen read the answer, and immediately all four members of the team in front of us turned around and stared at me with these kind of "What kind of a sicko are you?" looks - apparently they could hear our whispering. I just kind of smiled back with a "You've got no idea" smile, which must have been enough to intimidate them because we beat them pretty easily as well.

We went on to make it to the finals that year, and were competing against two teams of seniors. Justin Thorpe and Matt Edwards were on one of the teams, PJ Bingham, that cocky son-of-a-gun, was on the other. There were other people, but I personally knew Justin, Matt beat out my sister for Valedictorian, and PJ was a cocky son-of-a-gun, so I remember them. The whole school came to watch the finals in an assembly, but those competing got out of class a few minutes early to do... whatever, so I left class at the appointed hour only to find PJ Bingham exiting the classroom next to mine. We had no choice but to walk to the auditorium together, and he took advantage of that opportunity to do some trash talking. He said something about how it was pretty good for a team of sophomores to make it to the finals, but everybody knew this was going to come down to a competition between the two teams of seniors. I nodded politely and smiled, and said he was probably right, but I'd have two more years to keep trying to win.

So the competition began, and after maybe half an hour, all the prepared questions had been given. The score stood at 21 for the Thorpe/Edwards team, 21 for my team, and -1 for the PJ Bingham (that cocky son-of-a-gun) team. In the match, there were several music questions for which they would play a clip of a (classical) piece of music and we had to identify either the name of the song or the composer. There were also similar art questions for which they'd project a painting onto a screen and we had to name the title or the artist. Justin Thorpe got at least 9 out of 10 music questions, and I got about the same percentage of art questions, which had helped to keep our scores pretty even throughout the match. I only remember PJ Bingham answering one question, and that was one when I thought I'd been the only person to buzz in and gave the answer - Deleware - when he'd actually beat me to the buzzing but couldn't think of the answer until I said it. Justin Thorpe got one art question - and I shook my head in protest because he said The Screamer instead of The Scream for the title of that Munch painting. Mr. Mike Olsen hesitated when he said that, but decided to give it to him.

So when we got to the end in a tie, they were trying to decide how to break it. I thought they should take away the point from that close but incorrect answer and call us the winners, but instead they decided they had a lot more clips of music on their CD that they hadn't used yet, so they'd give us five more music questions for the tie breaker. Ross guessed "Carmen" for an operatic piece - I, though I didn't recognize the opera, thought we should go with Verdi for the composer just because it seemed like Verdi wrote 5 out of 6 operas. It wasn't Carmen. It was by Verdi. And we lost.

Sunrises v. Sunsets

Sunsets are a lot more attractive that sunrises. I don't understand why, but there are always, or generally, much better colors at sunset. Some people may claim that this has to do with physics, but I would argue it's just a matter of character. But I've decided I like sunrises more than sunsets, overall. Sunsets are just a little too fleeting, if you know what I mean. Sunrises are still attractive, but they seem a little more down to earth, a little more substantive, a little more encouraging. I was on the staff of the literary magazine for my high school in 2003, and mostly helped to judge the poetry and short story competitions. Let me tell you, a lot of junk gets written in high schools. The sad part is that the people who write it must feel like it's good. Anyway, I wrote two poems for the literary magazine. One because each member of the staff was asked to submit one, and one to submit to the poetry competition under a fake name. See, other staff members went around to all the English classes to announce the contest, and by the time they came to my class, they'd invented a rule that poems couldn't be about suicide. So I wrote a poem which I titled "Suicide" and submitted it under the name of Hester Nesbit. It had essentially nothing to do with death, other than that it began and ended with the line "I have no fear of death." I also submitted a story as Hester Nesbit to the short story contest, it was intentionally terrible but written in a way that the other members of the staff might think it was good. I wanted to see what they'd do with it. Unfortunately, there was only one other kid there when we judged the short stories, and he said he really liked it, but Mr. Filmore, our adviser, pointed out that it didn't have any kind of a plot in any way. And the kid said, Oh, I guess that's true. Mr. Filmore asked me what I thought about it, and I said I liked one sentence (I did) but the rest was pretty terrible (it was). Which was the end of that story. "Suicide" didn't win any prizes either, though it probably should have. It wasn't that great, but really, when 9 out of 10 poems are:

I hate the world.
Everyone else sucks.
You're all losers and
can go to hell for all
I care because you are
stupid and don't understand
me. My boyfriend said he
cared but then he was
with that slut the next
night so I just said
f*** you and flipped him
off.

Sorry for the language, but that's a direct quote. Or close enough to a direct quote to justify the language, though I did at least edit that one bit. (I really do try to be sensitive.) "Suicide" just got thrown out with these type of poems by every one else on the staff, and I couldn't say much because I didn't want Hester Nesbit to win the $20 Barnes and Noble gift certificate.

But back to sunrises - the poem I submitted under my own name was in part about a sunrise, and I titled it WINTERS COMING in all caps like that. The idea was that, given that the opening lines talked about snow, you'd initially think of the title as a possessive - Winter's coming - but then you'd realize that there wasn't an apostrophe, so maybe a direct reading, with coming serving as an adjective modifying multiple winters, could be intended. Which was about half of the poem's merit - leading thoughts from a single winter to many, from present to future. I'd reproduce the poem here, but I'd rather not. Really, I don't like it much. But get this - whoever typed up this poem for the literary magazine decided to "edit" it and corrected my title, so that in its published form, it's titled "Winter's Coming." They also changed the damns in Hester's story to darns. This only made it even worse, and it should never have been published, but they only had three or four stories submitted, so they printed them all.

The saddest thing I've ever seen in my life was an article in the Spanish Fork Press about a local woman who'd won a poetry competition. This was all fine, but when I went on to read the article, it turned out it was an online poetry contest that she'd entered, and within just a couple days she got an email announcing that she'd won and they wanted to publish her poem! She could even purchase a leather bound, archival quality volume with gold-colored edging featuring her poem with the other winners! And she could purchase multiple copies to give to her friends and relatives so that they could recognize her achievement! And she could buy a trophy for her 1st place poem! They article featured a photo of her being (mock)presented this trophy by her son or someone. She probably also bought several copies of the book. They printed her award-winning poem, and it looked about like the kind of poem that most often wins poetry contests - really really bad, but acting like it was good. I've never claimed to be a good poet (which is probably a lie), but I've got a pretty good eye for really bad poems, and this one was among the worst. I was heart-broken to imagine her celebrating her victory and contacting the local paper to have them write a story about it. But I'm sure she's still very proud of her poem and her achievement, and has never regretted spending potentially hundreds of dollars on archival quality volumes of poetry and trophies, so there's maybe no reason to be sad at all.

This is all on my mind in part because, as Chandler pointed out, most of the poets we're likely to find in Argentina will be pretty mediocre at best. But I think the purpose isn't to find good poetry or bad poetry or to make any kind of judgment of poetry - but in sharing poetry as a way to meet random interesting people. And moving away from poetry as art to poetry as human.

These are the things I can't tell you:

I

What I can’t tell you,
I can hide in what I can.

II

For example, I can say:
I wish that I lived in the
sea – black, wet, dark,
wet and floating under
white foam and black
waves. I can write: I

wish white foam would
carry my dead form to
wet sand, dark and
floating around and over
your bare feet. I can

dream that the sun
would dry me to black
and brittle meaning, that
memory and deceit would
evaporate beside white
foam. A divulging pyre.

III

If I were a crab, I would
run the wrong way, not
toward the water at all,
but toward the camera.

IV

The last time I went to the beach,
it was a cold and windy day.

I wasn’t dressed to swim, or even
to wade in salt water. Instead

I was dressed to walk along the beach
and look at the colors of plants

made from plastic – ironic colors
designed to contrast with the grey sky.

I was dressed to discover a dead sea lion
on the beach. To see it from a distance,

but not to get too close.

Polenta

The purpose of this blog is to tell of polenta and its many wonders. Actually, I've no intention of doing anything of the kind. Instead, I have half a mind to write about Victory. What would be more interesting, however, is a discussion of the Curtiss Candy Company, and the Baby Ruth Candy Bar. Maybe you've heard it explained before that the Baby Ruth candy bar isn't named after Babe Ruth (which seems the obvious explanation for the name) but was instead named after Ruth Cleveland, the daughter of President Grover Cleveland who was born between his two terms as president. But apparently, this was all just a lie made up by the Curtiss Candy Company when they first made the Baby Ruth so that they couldn't be sued. This is all explained here. What is also fascinating is the merger history of Nabisco.