The Proust Questionaire

Cribbing a post from Snobber because I read an interview yesterday with Alan Moore which got me thinking I might be done for some self-analysis, a little self-reflection, since I have a lot of self-referential writing to worry as we enter the heavy grant and literary contest season.

What is your idea of perfect happiness?
A peaceful life surrounded by people I love, and a house on a lake somewhere to get away to.

What is your greatest fear?
Locusts, the biblical kinds. And being a burden on people.

What historical figure do you most identify with?
I am trying for the Buddha, but Gandhi is up there as well. Also a big fan of Einstein.

Which living person do you most admire?
My mom and Norman Borlaug. One raised two kids on her own, the other saved a billion people from starvation, and both of those feats seem herculean. My mom doesn't have a website so no link for you.

What is the trait you most deplore in yourself?
My lack of follow-through.

What is the trait you most despise in others?
A lack of purpose.

What is your greatest extravagance?
Living in Brooklyn.

On what occasion do you lie?
When I don't know what the truth is.

What do you dislike most about your appearance?
El guttock. Just can't strip that last 20 pounds.

Which living person do you most despise?
Don Blankenship, CEO of Massey Energy

Which words or phrases do you most overuse?
Verily. I've got a Wisconson in here. I'm comin' outta tha hoos!

If you could change one thing about yourself, what would it be?
I wouldn't be in debt, or that I wouldn't feel I was so unlucky.

If you could change one thing about your family, what would it be?
I'd want to have the money to help them more.

What do you consider your greatest achievement?
My MFA.

If you could choose what to come back as, what would it be?
A Bodhisattva.

Who are your favorite writers?
Kurt Vonnegut, Jeanette Winterson, Thomas Pynchon, Frank O'Hara, Flannery O'Connor, Italo Calvino, Alan Moore

Who is your favorite hero of fiction?
Constantine Levin (Anna Karenin)

What is your most treasured possession?
My Sandman Hardcovers and things my friends and family have given me over the years.

What do you regard as the lowest depth of misery?
To be unable to gaze in awe at the world around us -I think Einstein said it, and its pretty close to the mark.

Where would you like to live?
Somewhere on the New England or Pacific Northwest coast.

What is your most marked characteristic?
My devil's brow.

What is the quality you most like in a woman?
Having enough reason to realize life is very unreasonable and that happiness is made out of little balls of gas conjured out of the air.

What is your greatest regret?
That I did not find a way to be both a scientist and a writer. That I let myself be forced to make a choice of one or the other.

What or who is the greatest love of your life?
Good question.

If there is a Heaven what would you like to hear God say when you arrive?
Well if this isn't nice, what is?

A Notice of Judgement

We're crowded together,

tunneling through the humanity

we reciprocate

according to the humor of our

statehood; there are some 

wishing more books carried the

embossments of dreams and the

keys to hell.

We spend disappointment

forgetting our invincibility and

the power of flight.

Calling Out the Neighbors

Mixtapes came up twice today, so I am making it a thrice, laying it down on a trifecta while I nostalge over the Nirvana Unplugged (from those so often lamented days when MTV played music and weren't wuss-assed pud- nut wankers).

Don't know why I feel the animosity, probably Cobain's voice (I forgot Cobain wasn't spelled with a K for a second. And this bothers me. I'm nearly 28, and you all know when he died. I don't know why that down-the-middle split should be affective, but I feel something considerable in mulling over this, in mulling over the album, often lamented for its soul and seriousness so soon before his death, and coaxing the CD off the stack it's been relegated to, a spare black spindle once carrying blank cds during the intervening moves following fires and job loss, the arrival and departure of loved ones, the elements of life that are too easily blurred by the ever-growing tumult of it all. We're on the last song now, Polly, and I have to admit, I am not entirely removed. I never have been. Something about the line "I'm going where the cold wind blows" has always tacked itself too me like I was a donkey sans a tail and I have often let my own voice reach into its horse octaves to the shivering of the chorus, letting it carry out over the false sephira and drop, falling, down to where Kurt himself found himself one too many times.

We call him Kurt I think, as inevitably as the sun rose the morning after he died, because he gave himself to us. We were the 13 year olds of In Utero, the 11 year olds of Nevermind. Those numbers alone meant we would always be there, listening to the songs, sitting with them.  Had we read enough, had Moore written Promethea by then and explained enough, and if The Sandman had finished before that, well things might have been different. We might have known it rather than felt it, we could have looked more closely at what swirled around us, known where the edge was, but as I said, it was inevitable.

But knowing now, with the lingering strain of that place, where the sun don't ever shine, we in our turn cannot help but shiver the whole night through.)

Here's the mix, it's from a while back: