Hunger

I have to be getting started. Right now.  8:27 p.m. (1:19 p.m. November 21, 2011: I was going to delete the period following the 'm' in 'p.m.' but realized it was good.  I am elsewhere now.) November 20, 2011.  I wiped my left eyebrow with my right hand.  Boy it’s hot in here.  I think this spaghetti will give me acne.  I just wiped my left eye with my left pointer finger.  I should take off my sweater.  I stripped last night.  Do you think I’m hot?  8:29 November 20, 2011.  Car engine starts outside.  I wipe my mouth with my left hand.  There’s nobody else home.  I should have said this earlier—just farted—but I’m listening to Eddie Vedder.  8:30 November 20, 2011: originally I didn’t—just farted—want to infect this writing with cultural associations.  Especially pop-culture ones.  I take another bite. (8:59 November 20, 2011: I deleted ‘ha,' and added 'actually,' right here): Actually I lied. I didn’t take a bite, but just looked at spaghetti then back at the computer.  I didn’t mean to lie, just did.  8:31 November 20, 2011.  My lower lip tastes really salty.  I have licked it 10-20 times.  It won’t go away.  I’m concerned.  

8:32 November 20, 2011.  I can’t seem to eat (9:01 November 20 2011: I’m deleting ‘to take a bite anymore’ and adding ‘to eat’, see? look up: it’s not there)  But I am hungry. I'll admit that I’m leaving a lot of things out: facts, emotions, things I see. What you’re reading—this "time thing"—was supposed to be like (8:40 November 20, 2011, now we’re in the editing stage. 9:03 November 20 2011: which, I realize, we already were, spatially speaking.) a diary or something.  Because 8:34 November 20, 2011 I want to be truly, truly honest.  But I’ve already told you that I lie. People have attempted this before...the constant recording of their thoughts. Some sort of pining for immortality. There is actually a man who writes in his diary every five minutes.  He’s somewhere in his forties, I think. Actually I don’t know how old he is, but he has like, millions of pages. 8:35 November 20, 2011. And nobody will ever read them (9:05 November 20, 2011: I’m changing ‘it’ to 'them' because that’s correct. "Nobody will ever read them." Right. 8:42: I deleted the word ‘all’ that was to come after the soon-to-be-deleted word ‘it’.  8:45. Burped and added the apostrophes to the aforementioned instance of the deleted word ‘all’. 9:07 November 20 2011: But you never saw ‘all’ at all, but there it was four times anyways) because they would take up your entire life.

8:36 November 20 2011.  I just ate more spaghetti.

(8:47 November 20, 2011: I remember taking a bite of spaghetti. That was around ten minutes ago.  I’ve since changed rooms; my computer was dying.  Here comes my roommate Dan at 8:48 November 20, 2011.  He’s wearing a shirt from Fat Harry's, which is a bar, and I suppose he's just finished his shift. [A day later, at 1:24 November 21, 2011, I still do not know where he was coming from. I'm at the university library and I just coughed on a public keyboard without covering my mouth. Nobody saw.])  

But isn’t it sad, in a way, that the truest documentation we’ll ever have of a man’s life will never be read in its entirety? The Diary Guy wrote and wrote, nearly every minute of every day, emptying himself, trying so hard just to exist. And he does, I suppose. People are talking.  But (8:55 November 20, 2011: I’m about to move "to truly know him," which once followed "but" [which is the most common point of departure for fancy and honesty; the knife that easily cuts close things into two. So listen. See? Let's not; I have you, and I have you.] to 147 words from now because I think it looks better that way, and you may have forgotten where you were otherwise or lost track of time.) to truly know him you’d have to become the story and the person who wrote it and make the decision soon.

2:21 a.m. April 22 2013

It's been 1 year, 5 months, 3 days, 5 hours and 54 minutes since this began. During that time my grammar has improved, but I've made some big mistakes (I miss you). I was called unlovable by someone who wasn't even trying to hurt me. That's honest. And I moved to a new home. When I started this post, for example someone else lived here, and I was elsewhere, like you are now. I wonder if one year, five months, three days, six hours and forty-eight minutes ago someone was in this room, sleeping behind me—pacing or looking out the window. I don't know how the furniture was arranged (I keep my bed by a window that faces south) or if this was a bedroom at all. Maybe the house was empty. And maybe if I turn around you'll be here with all my things looking placid at the window and waiting for me to stop whatever I'm doing and gobble you up. Though it’s no coincidence, it's worth nothing that I'm hungry again. Starving actually. Mainly I wish I still had some of that spaghetti, and wish I hadn't let so much go to waste. 

3:33 a.m. April 22 2013.

Writing

I just woke from this wonderful dream where I finally gave up writing. It happened like this:

I had this big suitcase full of all my writing: all my scribblings, all my poems and luggage. It was bulky and awkward to carry, so I left it outside and went to dine in an Indian restaurant alone. It would be safe, I thought, by the curb.

The meal was fine and exotic. The busboy was Mexican—and I made a mental note to write that down. But when I came outside, all my notebooks and pens, all my stories, all my luggage was gone.

A homeless man motioned toward the street. “It was just...," he began—and then I saw the culprit. A younger, more-attractive man sprinting through the park, handling the bag as if it were weightless. I didn't follow him though, because I didn’t know where to go. 

There was some good stuff in that bag too, including all fifty two of my favorite story's revisions, an idea for a new character—a perfect one, to be placed in some story or other—and the fourth start of my first novel. All gone.

So I went back to school. I took a cab and when we pulled up out front I realized I didn't have money to pay the fare. The driver turned around and said it was OK. After all, my bag had just been stolen. And in a motherly way, she opened the door such that it seemed to open on its own.

I thanked her and walked up under the stony arches of University, cutting through the bright-eyed, babbling freshman in the dark museum halls where colorful banners for bands and sea turtles and marine biology programs hung from the rafters. I wondered why I hadn't studied marine biology, or turtles, or bands. Everyone seemed so happy.

Then as if by miracle, there she was—walking right beside me. We were in the bookstore where we'd first met. I glanced to my side and thought to ask if she hated me yet, but she was smiling, exploring—babbling about literary theory and psychology—adding more and more books to a wheelbarrow-borne stack that nearly touched the ceiling. 

I couldn't afford to buy them, and of course neither could she. But she didn’t seem to mind. I just gazed at the books as she floated there, speaking in quiet little cycles that reminded me of silence produced by a stream. Then she turned to me, cheerily, and exclaimed, “Me and you in the bookstore!”

I tried to return her toothy grin, but as I scanned the books she’d chosen I was stunned to find that I’d read every single one. I wanted to know if she remembered that it was I who first introduced her to John Irving, and if she knew that all his books were the same. I wanted to know why she’d never read Tolstoy, Melville or Dostoyevsky—and if she intended to read War and Peace, Moby-Dick, and The Brothers Karamazov, or just buy them.

And I wanted to point out that she should have said “’You and I in the bookstore’ not ‘Me and you,'" and moreover admonish her for lying—(I couldn't be ‘in the bookstore’, as she’d claimed, because I was obviously in my bed, dreaming). But then I stopped. 

Because I was in my bed dreaming. And really I'm most intrigued by the things I can't control.  

When Did the Chicken Cross the Road?

It’s January 1st, 1999. The Euro is established. A month later the U.S. Senate acquits Bill Clinton of impeachment charges. Then Star Wars Episode I, Napster, the Columbine High School massacre—and in an article entitled “Fragmented Future,” Darcy DiNucci states that, “The first glimmerings of Web 2.0 are beginning to appear…”

That was fourteen years ago, and I don’t remember anything called Web 2.0. What I do remember are static web browsers, the screech of the dialup modem, mom yelling from the kitchen about the busy phone line, sister screaming from her bedroom about the computer, Hotmail, and AIM chat rooms — certainly not the Post-Internet suggested by DiNucci.

So what was she seeing that I wasn’t? When she said “The web we know now… is only an embryo of the Web to come,” did anybody stop to ask her what she meant? Is the Internet of today even knit from the same fabric as that of 1999? Perhaps. But it takes benchmarks to notice the change. Here was my wakeup call: Chick-Fil-A.

Blasted by liberal groups for being opposed to gay marriage, the conservative corporation then found itself in hot water for allegedly creating a fake Facebook (FB) profile of a teenage girl and then using it to defend the CEO’s socio-religious views. Abby Farle, the would-be chicken fanatic and Chick-Fil-A defender, ended her posts exclusively with “…John 3:16” or “Derrr,” and was finally exposed for being non-existent after a lengthy battle on the company’s own FB page when a visitor adroitly pointed out that Abby had joined the social network only a day prior, and that her profile picture was drawn from a website that supplies publicly licensed stock photos for commercial use. Shortly thereafter, little redheaded Abby Farle fell silent.

What caught my attention (and the reason I'm writing) isn't that we have another example of corporate dishonesty, but just how depressingly fickle this entire story is. What’s more concerning than the fact that Chick-Fil-A (a quick-service chicken restaurant) is opposed to gay marriage is that we care that a quick-service chicken restaurant is opposed to gay marriage. Sure: they’re a 4 billion dollar (and growing) corporation, but they’re not shaping public policy..Are they?  

[1] (Following the 2008 recession, formerly middle-of-the-road Americans either acknowledged that corporations had huge incentive and opportunity to lie [and probably were] or turned on talk radio.) [2]  (The Tea Party’s creation story [it’s worth noting] is a fascinating example of how mass media can create chicken-or-the-egg causality dilemmas—out of thin air.)

What else could cause this commercial behemoth to resort to such childish techniques? Is this what DiNucci was talking about?

FB and Twitter may be ushering us toward an unexpected conclusion: that objective truth never existed, and only a lack of alternative viewpoints could create the illusion that there was one. It’s not that people are more apt to mislead—that we’re an especially rabid generation of liars—but that there are just far more voices for the truth to contend with.

Even the article that broke the Chik-Fil-A story seems strangely suspect. Published on Gizmodo.com under the title “Did Chick-fil-A Pretend to Be a Teenage Girl on Facebook?” the story’s hard evidence consisted of no more than a screenshot. And whoever took the screenshot (presumably someone from Gizmodo or one of the belligerents) had only one friend on their FB chat—and, at any given time, who only has one friend online? Was this a case of a fake person exposing another fake person? Is this Web 2.0?

Maybe it doesn’t matter—when a chicken company cares about public opinion enough to create fake [3] (Arranging these words in this order is, for some reason, not troubling.) advocates to support an ideology that’s unrelated to their product (i.e. lie, which isn’t very Christian) something is wrong—and it’s not just Chick-Fil-A. It’s us.

If social media has come to serve as the hammer and anvil of truth and transparency (see Wikileaks, Tahrir Square, Syria) and our voices are to be the liberalizing agent, what’s to be done when a conservative voice like S. Truett Cathy (Chick-Fil-A CEO) starts chirping? Mr. Cathy doesn’t appear to be affecting my life, so why can’t an asshole be an asshole in peace?

While a democratic society provides a somewhat-perfect nest for social media, let’s not forget that society and democracy are only somewhat perfect. They are only as good as we are—and the same applies to even the most public and most inclusive forums on the Internet.

FB seems rather in-line with the everyone-matters, everyone-has-a-voice, everyone-gets-a-fair-shot underpinning of the middle-of-the-road American psyche, and maybe that's what makes it so addicting. There’s a face I can control; there I’m always smiling; there I am, before X,Y, or Z bankrupt, left, or forgot me; there’s my idealized life. I’m still skinny, married, tan. So has FB made for us the illusion of a second life?  

Is this 2.0? Is it real? If this internal/external, personal/communal relationship doesn’t constitute a second life—or if having one isn't that important—why was Abby Farle conjured up in the first place? What could she hope to accomplish? And what are we to do with our dead friends who (now) never really die? Should FB bury its dead?

As we grow with FB, our enthusiasm dwindles. Of late, a cynical (albeit more addicted) lethargy toward the social network seems to be prevailing. Maybe this is due to the realization that corporations have also embarked on their own second lives—following us through the wormhole. Or maybe it's the widening, (probably) unsubstantiated fears that Facebook will allow local, state, or federal government agencies to access our online identities, messages, and secrets—which (presumably) would point to offline identities, our interpersonal relationships, and our geographic locations.

I wonder, do these possibilities strike anyone else as so completely ironic that the irony is itself difficult to discern? Despite the volumes of our lives we put on FB, there’s no life within it. Even the mildly devoted user must know that they will never truly meet someone on the Internet. Is it not obvious that the Internet seems to present us, really, with more of a social buffer than a conduit? I wonder. 

And it's getting bigger every day. It expands, and its growth appears increasingly organic. In many ways, it is. So, perhaps we need to acknowledge that this new mode of communication may actually alter what it means to “meet” someone (in the same way that KFC [the vanguard of chicken producing conspirators] altered our understanding of “meat”[4] {Life, nature, God, and science} by genetically modifying their birds.

Maybe, in 1999, everyone knew that the web was going to change—and maybe when Darcy DiNucci said “Web,” she really meant us, our human condition. Or maybe she was just more prophetic than she intended. [5] (Otherwise known as luck.)  Either way, what “Fragmented Future” reminded me to do was look back and remember how things were just a very short time ago, and then to ask whether this instrument—with its capacity for beauty and creativity, complete good and evil—is the signal or the noise of human progress. 

Go smell a flower.

Communion

Something like precision

The journey of Man is intrinsically linked to science and technology. Together, they form the narrative of human history. Time is on the X axis and technology is on the Y axis and the relationship between the two is like this: /

                                                         

Modernity postulates, by looking from the future backwards, that the present state was inevitable. It purports to write its own history, following that skinny line (/) right back to the bone.

enumerates space

Conventional physics says: force= mass x acceleration.

OK.

And purports to have answers

But Einstein said, “An event may be the cause of another only if both take place in the same point of space.” This means that there are no guaranteed cause and effect relationships between separate entities (that is, anything). Einstein also said “God doesn’t play dice with the universe,” which means that when we see disorder or chaos, it’s only that we cannot see. The rhythm of the universe is too large; the fathoms of time and space are too great.

But last week I heard we sped up a particle past the speed of light—the implication being that it briefly traveled somewhere else in time. This leaves us with a serious philosophical problem: if a direct relationship between G and D or X and Y or J and C can never be established to a certainty, it follows that 1+1 is sometimes 0.

It’s also sometimes eggsnfishnkneesntoes. Sometimes it’s cornmealhashumbrellasquare. The universe must have space for these realities.

to lymph pus and salt water;

This is us. Blobs.

To one misguided glance

There is an inherent flaw in our nature—in our ability to understand one another— ; every human being has a private life. Complete knowledge of a living, breathing person is unattainable. 

And this barrier is challenged by the great human project: love. Love.

or chosen word.

Love. OK. The Arabs said that the body of a woman was like a fruit, but I don’t know. The Greeks said it was like a tree. When English painters set out to capture a landscape, they were thinking of women’s bodies—they painted hills, draws and mounds and sometimes gave them flowers. When they did women, they were always laying down. 

A thousand ways I could tell you one solitary thing;

We cannot simultaneously know the speed and location of a particle without interfering in its behavior. These submicroscopic particles rear their heads at our devices and begin spinning because they are, themselves, nearly the size of the light we use to see.

The problem looks like this: r=E(w{i}) (a{i}) (a{i}) I love you.

It’s obvious.

that in the end,

The most fascinating effect of sexuality is its production of involuntary physical reactions from without.

All food comes down

But let’s drop all the science mumbo-jumbo for a second. Some questions for Albert Einstein (regarding his theory of cause and effect) : Is my penis endowed with foresight? Does it project into the future? — Or is it simply an optimist? Why all these erections? I ask you, you dead man: do you know how to make a man?

to eating;

Start by cutting a silhouette from cardboard. Make it life-sized and give it feet to stand on. Regular shoes and socks will do. Put paint on the face, if you wish. Place him out in a sprawling desert, then make holes for his eyes. Draw yourself a penis, if it pleases you. Splatter a heart on his chest in red—it will stand out so much against the rocky sand. And put a cut on his hand—make him feel like a man. Then leave. 

Let him float around and explore until the landscape changes and he starts to break down. The weather will bring him near the ocean, where the land is lined with brambles. His eyes will become large and his knees will sag and he will fall into the brush with his mouth open. The last part of him will be some insignificant bit like his arm or foot, and a small hill will form where he was.

Every partner is one meal

Do you see me? I see you from a distance. Your breasts are round—and nice—right in the middle of your frame.  A white shawl that clings to your shoulders becomes erect in the wind. You see me sitting patiently in a lime green chair and your clothes begin to fall off. 

you never tire of,

For I had it wrong all along.

And between them is for once nothing.

The way entering you feels—

All your favorite names, words, and all your friends—foreign signs and distant roads you know—for a moment fill my mind.

Love that little space

Where your ass meets your back—

Finger fits right in there.

Fire

I never got to go camping as a child. I never went on hikes. I wasn’t a Boy Scout, and I wasn’t made aware of any great spirit. I never connected with nature—or, at least, what I now consider ‘nature’ to be. I thought of autumn trees and rolling hills. Eagles. Nature was a place that was somehow quiet on its very own. If you go to the woods, don't build a fire. Sit still; you are responsible for very little; you are free.

I grew up in a small town on Route 1 in the south of Louisiana, where there were no forests or hardwood trees—just bayous and rivers and lakes and reeds. There was no firm ground from which to transcend. "The Outdoors" was not a destination, but a great obstacle that spanned the space between other things that mattered. The rivers moved one way, the bayous swayed by anything. Even when we drove north, to Mississippi and the woods, we went hunting and there was always the gun.

With each passing year what I came to relish was the absence of activity, the absence of human machination. I wanted to connect with something greater than myself. Once, as I was driving above the swamp on a long, raised bridge, my car ran out of gas. There was no way to turn around. It was then that I realized I was looking for something that was scattered all around me, but I would have to run away from everyone I knew in order to find it. I had been rejecting it all my life by sitting still, offending nobody but myself. Because out there, wrapped and waiting, was my life. 

I guess I’m making up for all that now. I am alone in the woods, and I am perfectly happy. It’s winter in Tennessee. The Appalachian Trail sits about two miles distant across the valley on a vertebras ridge. I’ve laid out a few boughs. I have a small tent. I brought a few books along, but none of them have caught.

The fire has reached its peak, and the snow melts in a widening circle. There's a half-foot of powder out amongst the hibernating trunks. It fills the thickets of rhododendron and the holes left behind fallen trees. I have a nice fire going. A nice fire, and I have nothing to worry about. Bears are afraid of the fire. The cool, blue center of the flame. If I can keep it going I will sleep below this black bowl and the snowline. I should save the kindling for later—but it’s nice to be warm. I throw the last of the sticks into the fire, switch sides, and warm my back. 

Looking into the black forest, I think that maybe "nature" cannot be classified; it's just what you decide it to be. After all, what is natural? And what is unnatural? What would an African tribesman living in a mud hut say to me if I asked him, "Do you like nature?" Distinctions like this are absurd; I cannot speak for anyone else, but for me one thing is certain: a man in the woods is natural.

A branch cracks behind me. I turn and see that my fire is out. The coals have settled into a small pile and the logs sit above them, deep and black, twisted like two arms straining against an invisible weight. 

Snow compresses and squeals in the woods. At first I am still, and then I paw for something to throw on the fire, but I've burned my wood and I find only a book: Self Reliance by Ralph Waldo Emerson. I kick the consumed logs aside, tear out several folios of paper, and throw them over the embers. They smolder a moment and then ignite. My eyes search the woods. A growl and a voice crawl from the fugue. I grab a carbon-covered log and hold it cocked and ready in my arm. Two silvery orbs come determinedly forward.

“Hey!” I yell. “Hey!” I cry out, waving my arms.

“Hey.” The flat brim of a hat, the gleam of cufflinks, and a golden badge emerge from some pines. It's a park ranger. "Sorry to bother you," he says and points to the disappearing leaves. "I saw the fire." 

“Oh. OK."

He stands business-like, boots on the edge of the unmelted snow. "You’ve got the Louisiana plates? The Saturn?" I nod and he begins prodding with a flashlight, smiling up to his bushy eyebrows. “Well, you left your lights on.” 

"Shit."

"Hope your battery isn't dead." He shines the moon-white light over my face, noticing the tent, the torn book cover and scattered pages, and my arm, cocked back with a black log. He freezes. “Everything OK?”

"Oh." I drop my arm quickly. "Sorry."

“I scared you." 

“I thought you were a bear."

"They're sleeping," he says, motioning around. He clicks off his flashlight. The black dome lowers like a curtain and he steps toward me through the middle of a withering fire. "It’s people you have to be worried about in the woods.”