Via Post

Thanks you guys for all the love and inputs. I'm still not sure what to do, but at least the sun has started shining like crazy here and I'm feeling like whatever I end up doing, interesting and unexpected things will happen. And things will be fine.

Speaking of, two packages arrived recently. One from myself and one from my hero, Dr.C.,MD, you may know her as Cookiesforbreakfast. Totally unexpected (the one from me was ordered from UDP so many eons ago, I'd just assumed it lost), and both totally extravagant and rad! So, as I've no news to report beyond the weather and my continuing indecision, I'll just adopt the brilliant MTBE-style book review format to convey the packages' contents' bounteous awesomeness (and - ahem! - get Navel Gazing off the top of the page). OK, here we go:

1) F.R.David - The "Stuff and Nonsense" Issue (Winter 2008), de Appel, Amsterdam. [This one was from C., how did she know that it was totally what I needed right now?]

first line: "Words, Don't come easy."
last line: "Is GOLDEN!"

2) Vanessa Place and Robert Fitterman, Notes on Conceptualisms (UDP, 2009)

first line: "In the winter of 2008, at a launch for The noulipian Analects (C. Wertheim and M. Viegener, eds., Les Figues Press, 2007), Vanessa Place, Anna Moschovakis, and I were engaged in a conversation about the poetics of erasure techniques."
last line: "Use them all." [Actually, the last "line" is a page with a dot or period in the center, but that kind of felt like cheating.]

3) Aram Saroyan, Complete Minimal Poems (UDP, 2007)

first line: "a man stands"
last line: "Gailyn is doing the dishes."

4) Vito Acconci & Bernadette Mayer, eds., 0 to 9, The Complete Magazine: 1967-1969 (UDP, 2006)

first line: "Not '0 Through 9,' we said to each other, that would subsume us into Jasper Johns; let's call it '0 To 9' instead."
last line: "The tape is still available from The Malabe Co., Inc. but the price has gone up to 14¢ a yard."

5) Aleksandr Skidan, Red Shifting, Genya Turovskaya [et al], trans. (UDP, 2008)

first line: "In speaking about 'red shifting' I would not start with the Doppler effect, because it has no room for the word 'red,' just as in subsequent definitions of this physical process, be it cosmological, mathematical, or poetic."
last line: "knives {and}"*

*Those should be triangley brackets, but those doesn't show up in web browsers...

Bonus #1: I uploaded the editorial intro from F.R.David, cause it was just so gosh-darned right about everything. (It's about how art is not about communicating things. To which I say, YES!)

Bonus #2: Here are some of the Saroyan poems:

COUPON
Coupons are the brightest yellowest
Reddest headiest delights on the face of the earth!

--

PLACID TEAS
The cream

made an "e"

in the tea.

--

SONG
My father's my father's,
My mother's my mother's,
My sister's my sister's,
I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm.

--

It may
be the
coffee-
maker

Or it
may be
the ra-
diator.

--

I see
this
little

and
even
less.

--

JULY
It'll hit you you in July.

Navel Gazing

An extremely weak attempt at punnery. And with the wrong fruit, no less.


So, friends, it is nearly the end of April. And where does that bring us? Old MasterGote is contemplating what in the world to do next year? A weighty decision and a mighty puzzle, to which the answer seems entirely unclear. Some days, the bahn mi of Brooklyn beckon. Others, the inertia (or is that momentum?) of work makes me think I'd be a fool not to stick around. Things here are at once so easy and so clear. Everything has been pared down to the bone, a sort of delayed coming-true of some f-ed up dream I've had in the back of my mind since at least 1999. Asceticism and productivity. Simple living and all that. But, as anyone who's had a wish fulfilled would tell you, it never happens the way you'd imagined it.


I miss you guys in real life. I miss LFarns. But the most frustrating part is that I cannot tell with any clarity what might be the right decision. I don't know what goes into the scales - what I'm gaining or losing. As far as I can tell, the two seem pretty equal, each has its perks and disadvantages. It is infuriating.


What should I do, internet? Please send your carrier pigeons with the answer soon! Avoid personal bias if you can; personal anecdotes encouraged.

Russia-88

For those of you waiting for a report on "Russia-88," the movie about young Russian skinheads, you're going to have to keep waiting. I tried to go to the special screening today, and was told unceremoniously that that movie would not be shown, because the print had not been delivered. Instead, they would show "J'ai toujours rêvé d'être un gangster." Boo.

update: The story about the print was a red herring. Apparently, there was a possible threat of violence; however, police were prepared and the director himself did not know where the pressure to cancel the screening had come from. (h/t to vk)

Braggy-Braggy

This post is just to say that, while MasterGote may never experience the pains of childbirth, running a marathon, or occupying the highest tax bracket, riding an off-brand, $125, 17kg behemoth of a mountain bike with a loose saddle through snow, mud, sand, and occasional stretches of asphalt for 74km can now be checked off the list of the quite painful (but potentially awesome) things to do in life. Sore bottom, sunburn, and multiple bruises notwithstanding, it was one of the funnest things I've done so far in Russia. The people were absolutely lovely for letting a bum like me join in on their ride, considering I've never "ridden" longer than from Brooklyn to Queens and back and didn't even know the right way to change gears for going uphill (wha? there's a way to go up a hill without standing on the pedals???). Anyway, here are some pictures and here are some more braggy-braggy stats about the ride (in Russian). People back in the BK, start training...

The View from Here

Took the metro to the wrong stop yesterday and decided to walk the long way home. Turns out that this bridge eventually leads to the street where my pool is, which is also the southern border of the woods near my house and the one I used to always confuse with the street I actually live on. (One is bol'shaya, one is malaya.) We once tried to walk this way back in January or February, but it was too cold, and I chickened out. This time, the weather was more accommodating, and I watched some dogs frolicking on a patch of grass and listened to The Microphones as I walked.

The stop where I got off is a strange forest of unfinished high-rises on the edge of the river. It's built in a way that a pedestrian would have no idea which direction the river actually was, as the raised highways, overpasses, and tall glass steles tend to throw off one's sense of direction. All you get is a view of one's immediate block, no views through of any kind. A strange, urban claustrophobia.* I used one of the seven sisters poking out above the fray and the highway signs as orienters, but still ended up taking the wrong bridge across. Reminded me of the view from the Queensboro Bridge, though the apartments (would we call them projects?) seemed a lot cheerier. Also, to my great relief, despite all the urban/industrial impedimenta, there was always a sidewalk, an overpass, or a zebra crossing along the whole way home.

*This was before I finally found the bridge in the pictures.