The Dust

Ever see one of those Aztec cheekbone sets coming at ya down the street? Two tan roof slopes at a subtle incline type of thing. A while ago, I stood before a mirror and set my type. "Ah yes." That moment of realization. I need a few to get from here to the next city. The next city was Tegucigalpa, at the intersection with the whitewashed church sitting cozily on the dusty yellow sand. As usual.

Two bikes slowed to the intersection rhythm. They stood and said something in their native tongue. Something along the lines of, "I thought you were gonna go." So then they each started at each other, and slowed again. One said, under its breath, "For God's sake I thought you were going to go." The other one said, under its breath, "Jesus, I thought he was going to go." This kept on for a while, in front of the white church at the intersection of two dusty gravel roads in the yellow desert. Surely God was present, who else was driving?
If God tilted this scene on its side, as if it were the background under a glass cutting board in God's kitchen, and all the stones on the gravel path rolled out onto God's kitchen floor - THEN, I'd believe in God. Holy Moholy. If God picked up one of the bikes and twirled it around in a dusty wind funnel that was actually the water drain in God's kitchen drain - THEN...you know. Joan. Joan.

All the little rocky gravel chunks rushed down the serpentine staircase and crashed in a most inconvenient manner for the earthball, and by that I mean the volume on Earth was turned up by a few thousand centibels. It was like when you get your ears back after a cold a thousand times magnified. And he stood there, Napoleon, standing all Vitruvian in between the Legend's legs (he was also standing Virtuvian - only there was fire coming out of his mouth and he looked glorious). I've never been so proud, I've never been so spiritual.

And then a drone came - it was God's amplification correction system, correcting the rolling stone's effects on the earthball. A few ballerinas slipped sideways off a bridge, off the "cutting board." Ted, a man, crashed his car. Two Aztec men looked up at the sky from their rooves (well, not their rooves). The drone had to continue for a while. Oh it was gross. It was a Dark age. It was not what I'd expect. Then the drone receded and these little fader tests slid up and down and the sky flickered as the drone came back in the background. The church shuttered. The floors creaked and the kickstands used all their might to prop the bikes up. They both said, at the same time, "let's get out of here man."

All this at the same time it was too much for me to believe. I've been fed dogma before.

Empty Are The Fairgrounds

A smile or a smirk thick a downbound chat leaves my blood fuzzy and heartbeats gluggin. I lick it up! The tall brown trunks gallop brisk by the castle. An old English estate roll gently nudge a thick blurry line left to right climbsky, fairground, south border. The downbound border swim a silky slick reptile, stride an old English horse - from America, fly a fruited plane, [exam] pass an ocean too many, you've gone too far.

We watched the dinghy descend with the tide. Some seaweed was visible on its shaft. It looked as if the nutrients had been sucked dry. There was a stiff skeletal breeze on my nose and knuckles. I pocketed my hands and hummed a lunar tune. Flies are 'seabugs' when they live near the ocean. They scratch and crawl and hum lunar tunes. I picked up the news and the top fold whipped in the wind. A headline ran and drops of inky water hit the sand between waves. I heard wood creak and felt insects on the undersides of my ribs and crawling in my earlobes. The bridge of my nose itched interminably and the salty air bit at my eyes. All the wood tunes were lost on me. All the fiery warmth escaped me. And I stood and wished I were leaning. I breathed out and didn't feel like breathing in, because all the goddamn seabugs sang meekly in my ears and slid down little tracks on my scalpstrings.

In a black pasture we groomed and grazed. The man in suspenders sat there thinking about nothing, and alternately, he realized his hunger and the noise his workers made. He achieved this great little equilibrium among the swinging bench, his ass, the sole of his foot, and a porch spindle. He thought, supper bowl grain tax hummer yelluh spring pitch plow sleepy trucker tax chain. I ran up to the aluminum door next to the swing and bashed at it with my skull until blood from the gash ran in the metal crease.

After our ears stopped ringing in the flourolight hellhole, the perpetrator left the room and we gazed at each other. He went down the elevator and bounded down the lobby stairs. He clicked and clacked in his highway shoes. "Until further notice, the answer to that question is 'same shit, different day.'," he replied, but he had no idea the troubles we'd seen. And the troubles mounted tall black steers. Down the highway we escaped, these two tricky chords rapped successively. Rain clapped on the hood and filled the streets.

Thirty-Five Minutes To Ten

I neatly folded some harina masa into my stockings, and this left the commission bewildered. And what was the name of that ridiculous song I enjoyed so. What I'm trying to say is that I never liked the Simpsons as much as you guys did! I'm a friend in the end, and the word 'testicles' is both an ice-breaker and a powerful punchline word. Those are the two, these are the two, them's the two. Lisa and Bart. Lisa double-peeled the fleshy beans while naked and amidst the exotic jungle animals. They were quiet but very, very aware. Demarcus and the pinstriped haircut kid, staring at the canvas. "It's a Gauguin, and it's not for kids." (I would check with the MPAA on that one - last I checked...PG...[shrug]).

The commission laughed heartily and the bald man in the back with the South African accent dropped a few coins on the ground. Everyone laughed some more, and I kept folding the corn meal. Lisa kept parboiling and peeling those dreaded, fleshy beans. Bart cried at night, when the pencils were down, when graphing calculators recharged. Antonio fell on the Tampa ice, and when he looked up at the sky, he felt America. The America from that song about the fruited plains and the multitudinous bounty of wheat.

This is a back-loaded endeavor said the man indicted in the automobile manslaughter lawsuit. You are a suit, Thrill, and that's ironic, sure, but it's more than that. You're a whore. Lisa's no ho! Bart! I went to this new city the other night, and I noticed some sweet nothings. I caressed them on their legs; between me, my love of carnal pleasures, my hands, and Her sweet nothings, were some tamale-ass stockings like you can't believe! And that's what happens down under when I'm involved.

Through a small hole in all of this (it had been cut by an Italian-American craftsman), I saw a birthmark on a butt cheek, but that went out of focus quite, and I mean, very, quickly, and in the distance I resumed my quest. In a distant era, beyond major chords, where brass isn't a factor, a faction, or another word for testicles, there are tightly-pulled lines. And on that banjo he played a fishing ditty, and it went something like this:

To all the rocks and stones who delight in my hunger
I don't care, I'm a fisherman proper
You're a wild salmon robber
I'll have my way with you.

I slapped everyone all at once, and in doing so, irritated lots of people I didn't know and never had a problem with. This is the method. This is the mathematical method. Step one, oh shit! You fell down the abyss! There was an abyss so close to step one and look what you did. I suppose you're still falling, it's an abyss for god's sake. I made some eggs, they were gritty, and I slathered them all over my pool table. Picture a pool table with corn-ass grit felt, pale yellow because I used inexpensive eggs dropped down a conveyor belt that screams its anthem:

So this isn't my day, but what is?
There are the stinky ovulating gatekeepers
But the shop is a Catholic shop, and Master believes.
So nothing slides on Sundays. Just my icy steel, weeping pysche.

There are insects, and there are parties. There are green hues, and there is a war with guns and bullets and heat. Do you know what's involved in refueling a fighter jet in mid-air? They do it. They do it, you need a cable. I fear for our collective organs. And then the typo came. The typo was bent over like a desperate twenty-something on an anonymous Friday night when the monotony of the city got to her like a hurricane gets to all the marine animals. And it cmae hard. Like the second-hand starting a run from the summit. I whirled around and picked up some sand. And I uh...picked up a glob of it, it was sandy. I whirled around like an Olympian discus-thrower, and I showered like a decrepit man - and the acid stung - it climbed and slithered through my skin. I felt the temporary pain; I felt my rationale.

I know these two dudes, god I wish I had a story about a time they made a corn joke, but the bottom line is that corns don't happen to them. This is a different era and there just aren't advertisements like that anymore. There are products, there are white, porcelain plates and they know no owner. Misplace me. Mommy I'm lost. There are quiet fish and loud fish and tiny fish and big-ass cornbread jalapeño dunkers and I'm gonna turn myself in, once and for all - spill my GUTS! "You should come too!" one dude said to the other dude! There was a knock and the units filed in. There was a sinister man keeping track of everything in the corner with a clipboard and some banana chips. It's always...always about nutrition. Ain't it Thrill? You suit. I'm bitter, and you don't want to see me up-close, Lisa. "Go ahead!" she said.

But I had to save you. Your altitude was distressing. Terminal velocity is reached very quickly when you fall into an abyss. I jumped into the abyss, singing the Song of the Abyss:

Roll and throw and lift and listen
I'm the captain's whip, the seamstress' zipper
Can you feel my depth or hear my whisper?

We're headed down to the Maker's lair
Wheels and apples - laws and globes
Expose your bare neck, chest, and bones
Your fancy moves aren't your own.

You've scaled and froze and wiggled around
So trace back brother! Swim back, friend!
They'll find you one day!
Rotting far down, fancy clothes on bones
Filleted and poached for dinner!

Changing Guards

In consideration of an edifice's verticality, that is, its upright girders, one needs context. So we provide this measure, at once, below. References are provided in short fragments - specifically - if unsophisticated.

Throughout its history, my street has maintained relative anonymity. And for that reason it believes in the Lamb. For that very reason, it elaborates upon weighty matters in brief gasps and short strokes. It is the attention-deprived nervous system of city streets. It can not deliver packages of increasing complexity or increasing volume. My street has fulfilled the promise of streets federated upon the fleshy underside of the Manhattan island, and has done so with quiet dignity despite its short stride, ambiguous pronunciation, and deepening paracitification.

You may recall that during the last few years [exposition of statistical trend]. I mean, isn't that a kicker? Big smile. Frantic chuckle fishing, frantic code red code blue the worst color code alarm. Nothing? So it's passed. I seek to describe the rigid cell wall in uncertain terms: it's over. It's over. Continuity is no longer an option, I doubt ordinary chemical treatments can help in this matter. There are two hard outer crusts between us, and I learned of these conditions bathed in a golden light at an uneasy altitude atop the city.

So the throne awaits. The lofty throne that has been occupied so many times before. From this perch, a panorama of the ages surfaces awkwardly against the walls. You can see the breaks in the wallpaper. You can tell that the architect was unable to acquire certain permits. So walk up to the throne. Stumble up, this is a public monument, after all. This is a split-second recalculation, an unthinking audible, a fiery near-disaster. There is an inscription but I'm too lazy to read it. So I stumbled down. I rolled off like a statistic in a mime show. We cornered in together, but agreed on something at once: [secret opinion on the Anglo-Saxon linguistic arsenal]. The train was packed, so we wedged. We ruined a world we weren't always part of - no I'm not thirsty.

It's Grand Really

Stunning in its Understatement
I actually watched this video for the entire 4:06. I can't tell you, I just, I - what would POSSESS someone to post this! I mean it's useful. Please imagine for a second the person behind the camera. They stood over a bowl of clams, one of nature's most inanimate living objects, for FOUR MINUTES. Arresting.



Inspired by the best linguine white clam sauce I've ever tasted (prepared by the Golden Goddess, she of Legend fame), I give you my recipe for spaghetti and Manila clams. As a soup fiend, I love it when my sauces collect at the bottom of the bowl and wait for me to finish the pasta before I tuck in for a delicious, passionate, saucy finale. Slurping sauce off a fork for ten minutes is the reason I love food, and in turn, life.

This is not linguine white clam sauce, the Italian-American standby. That's a simple recipe too, but I would use bigger, littleneck clams for that. Whereas linguine white clam sauce is most delicious with each component cranked to 11 (garlic, clam juice, cheese, parseley, butter, olive oil), my spaghetti Manila clams relies on a more delicate harmony of flavors.

The idea with this dish is to let each component impart its freshness onto the just-undercooked spaghetti (which I prefer to linguine because it's lighter). I leave the clam shells right in the bowl because I want the essences of the clam juices to mix with the pasta as much as possible. I use tiny pieces of crispy diced bacon and hope that they find their way to some nook in the clam, because everytime you eat cured pork meat and shellfish in the same bite, a baby stops crying.

z911spaghettiManilaclams
Serves 4 as a first course
Serves 2 if you're a close friend of mine

1 lb. Manila clams (2 or 3 dozen), scrubbed under cold water
6 strips of bacon, trimmed of fat and diced
1/2 lb. good spaghetti (like DeCecco), split in half lengthwise
2 cloves garlic, 1 razor-thinly sliced, the other cut in half

small baguette, cut into half inch slices
extra virgin olive oil
parseley, chopped
red pepper flakes

1. Fill pot with water, salt aggressively, transfer to stove on high heat
2. Bring water to a boil, drop in the pasta, stir immediately.

3. Pour a glug or five of olive oil into a saute pan and heat slowly, drop in the garlic halves. Just as they turn golden, throw the bacon in the pan. Bring the heat up slowly so the bacon crisps up. Remove the garlic.

4. Lightly dunk both sides of the baguette pieces in the garlic/bacon oil, place in a broiler pan or some tin foil and broil/toast until crispy.

5. Meanwhile, in the saute pan, introduce the clams and the thinly-sliced garlic. Splash the pan with a some pasta water to coat the surface of the pan, or, if you're so inclined, use white wine here. Cover the pan so the steam circulates and cooks the clams' muscles into submission (causing them to open).

6. Once the pasta is about two minutes shy of recommended cooking time, transfer it to the saute pan using tongs. You definitely want some of the pasta water to hit the clam juice/bacon/garlic/olive oil mixture. Cover the saute pan again and cook for a minute more.

7. Take a crostini piece and place one in each serving bowl.
8. Add a pinch of red pepper flakes and a pinch of parseley to the pasta and clams, and mix well. Serve the pasta over the top of each crostini, making sure you portion out the sauce evenly.

Notes and Tasty Substitutions
You can definitely purchase premade crostini or croutons at any supermarket. They'll work fine. To that point, if you don't add enough of the pasta water to the oil mixture, you won't get enough liquid to soak the bread and make it taste delicious. At the same time, if you drown everything in salty water the subtlety of the clam juices and garlic/bacon oil will be lost. You're going for a greyish solution with globs of olive oil to coat the bottom of your saute pan. I would top the dish with a quick drizzle of olive oil.

In my mind, Manila clams are the poor man's cockles. I get my Manila clams on Grand Street for about $3.99/lb. That means you can easily pull this dish off for under $10.

Cockles are these vibrant, symmetrical, uniform little clams. If you can find and afford cockles, more power to ya.

Substitute pancetta for bacon? Definitely. In general pancetta has a more subdued flavor, and the theme of this dish is to remove knock-you-over-the-head-ingredients.

Winter Wind

Would you say it's more ethno- or anthro-, Missy?
Frankly, it's more anthro.

Two friends marched towards a clearing in the woods. They were three or four thousand feet above sea level, and the lack of precision was getting to both of them. In statistical parlance, Nick was a 3SD kind of guy. Steven, a 2SD. They both enjoyed the outdoors in precisely these circumstances: accompanied and armed. Once they reached the clearing, they each allowed themselves a romantic turn at the vista.

Nick imagined a moment when the terrain had all its flora skinned bare, exposing the game to unfettered glassing and gravity. He imagined deep red soil and a fiery seat at the base of the upper stratosphere, watching comets and satellites rush past him. In the distance stood tiny marking stations and plush red curtains. He lept off the clearing, holding his shotgun with both hands, cushioned by the Protagonist Buoyancy Clause. He landed back among trees, standing in the front seat of a vintage old Buick. He hopped beside the muscle. The sky swirled around him like highway headlights in a thousand anonymous photos. Only this wasn't some lame bridge shot. It wasn't some deep last chance. Nick's mind cycled through it all, and took it all in: the smell of things that don't really have a smell like "this night," and he heard the "symphony" of creature noises harmonized by Missy's gradually softening sighs. He'd rather this than anything else.

Steven rolled down the clearing onto a mattress of dried leaves. When he looked up, the sky flashed dusk and the stars at him. He raised his arms above his head and clutched his shotgun in his right hand. Maybe the river flowed past him. He spotted a doe at about fifty yards among the brush and gently set his weapon on the ground. He crept towards her. She sensed him. He took a knife from his ankle holster. She heard it being unsheathed. A chipmunk stammered, "You, you don't have the guts to use that." A fox ran up a tree and caught Steve's attention. As he followed the fox up the tree he caught a glimpse of a highway sign. He must've been standing on the county line. She turned and looked right at him. He froze. They both ran towards the shotgun, he swinging his knife, she bobbing her white tail. He got to the spot about twenty seconds after her, and she had run past it, oblivious. He scoped her back side as she fled, and fired off a shot. Her right hind shank exploded and her momentum tore her rib and crown roasts.

Then the two friends followed the ridge line farther up to a designated glassing area. They reached it and glassed the landscape. Nick tweaked the focus but still couldn't see anything. Steve's binoculars had better technology. He glassed from left to right, looking for anything moving, but he also saw nothing. "It stayed hot too long again this summer." "Yeah."

Later that day they marched home with nothing to show for all their hiking, glassing, and good decisions. Nick hung up his mountain coat, Steven opened a bottle. They sat at a wooden table and said something like...

"What do you think of her Nick?"
"She's great buddy you know I like her."
"I know I know just checkin'."
"I'm in it. I'm really in it."
"Oh yeah?"
"I really am, and I'm thinking about really going for it."
"You should if you think it's right."
"I don't care whether or not it's right you know?"
"You'll never know if you don't try it."
"I hate that saying, it's so vacuous."
"Yeah."

Nick asked Steven for a pour, he obliged. They sat there thinking about her for a second. Their rifles rest against some cold stone formation in the cabin's living room. Nick remembered the best way to protect against the cold, the heat, and a variety of other things vaguely removed from instinct. Steven got off first. He thought about his accounting, his career, and his education.

"What do you think of Vitaly?"
"Ah I don't know the guy does what he wants. He's a little unhinged."
"I guess, but he's made a lot for himself, and he's honest enough."
"There's nothing wrong with it, but to each his own, you know?"
"I hate that saying, Nick. Why don't you just explain your judgment instead of admitting that you're judging someone and you're too tight-assed and afraid to say it out loud? How long have we been friends?"
"Allright. I respect that. I think Vitaly is a hard-working guy who knows what he wants and knows how to get it."
"Yeah."
"You know the truth of it, Steve, you know my tight ass can't wrap itself around something so risky."
"Then keep your mouth shut about Vitaly, and anyone else that doesn't meet your outdated standards."

They looked at each other for a second and then both clicked their recliners back. Nick looked out the great room's window and out at the imminent twilight. He thought he saw something moving in the distance. Then it got a bit closer and he confirmed it. It was a deer. Steven saw it too. They followed it across the landscape. Steven's parents had hung some knit quotations on the wall above the window before the ceiling. They said stuff like, "It takes hands to build a house, but only hearts can build a home." Nick thought of something to give it a little edge, but either couldn't say it out loud or couldn't come up with anything clever enough.

Nick looked up at the vaulted ceiling, the crossbeams and the logs' symmetry, "Listen man you're right about Vitaly I shouldn't say anything, and you're right about that retarded saying, it's a total cop-out."
"Ah whatever I'm just pissed about Teresa as usual."
"What's going on with that?"
"Same as always: nothing, and then blips of gold-plated nothing."
"Bullshit man. She's not worth your energy."
"Ah! But who is, Nick? When do you just go for it? You know?"
"Yeah I'm having trouble with that myself."
"You're fine just go for it, you already said you're in it."
"I don't know. I don't want to be left standing out there naked and all alone."
"Seriously, you say go for it with Teresa but what do I even say? It's a complete dead end at this point."
"I think you need a kamikaze mission, I do that now and then."
"What's that?"
"Just, go all out recklessly."
"You've never done that, Nick."

Night fell, the lights in the cabin completely obscured the outside. It was a scene - the two of them, wrapped in blankets, Nick's off-white, Steven's navy blue, sitting in recliners looking up at the ceiling and the beams. Joke. Their boots had dried over by the front door over the cheery "Welcome Home" mat.

"Yeah. I've never done it. Never had the probability of success where I need it."

Half Purple, Half Black & White

Next time we goin' east side. East side. I heard. I'm gettin' squeezed she said, I mean...he said...to her, and she didn't really get it. Well, that's what she gets - he said. Later on, when the candle ran out but the track had plenty left, I left - cuz I was gettin' squeezed from both sides. And each time, I turned to my side - tried to create a little friction, you feel me? I asked. She rubbed my side - tried to create a little friction. She asked, did you hear me? I heard. Next time, east side.

I really am gettin' squeezed though...it's tough to get up. Mornings are hard. Evenings ain't much better. Two sides meet, get the job done. In a manner of speech, of childish dreams obliterated, the side of my head - tryin' to create a little friction - is my heart made of stone? Hand me a saw, it'll get the job done.

So there I was hangin' tight on the handles beside the open sliding doors. A pill dropped from my mouth and fell 18,000 feet onto the desert floor. Against everything I knew, I thought about jumping. The thought, crossed my mind, it took a while. It came in from my left ear actually, and it juked for a while. And for a while, I stood there bracing myself with both arms outstretched - no intention of jumping.