Monthly Archives: June 2012

The Headphones Clause: the politics of my digital relationship #njpoet

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Luz was sitting on the bed a few feet from me, but she was deep into coding my website redesign. She was gmail chatting with, collaborating with Luke Mulks, our friend from Social, an artist/web developer from just outside San Francisco. He likes my work, calls me “the wordsmith,” has even started referring to the #BivonaLitSquad on Twitter. A great guy. He volunteered to help Luz redesign this website that got me fired from my professor gig.

It’s hard to believe that was just a few years ago.

I was finishing up my own gmail chat with Chewstroke, another artist—a street artist—also in the San Francisco area, and also a fan of my work.

“It was the ‘retired ass model’ thing that made us love you,” his colleague once told me.

Anyway, Chewstroke wanted to design a postcard featuring one of my shorter poems. He wanted to donate 100 postcards to be auctioned off for small donations—a gift to help to fund njpoet.com. That was the crux of our meeting. Another great guy.

So, I finished my chat meetings before Luz finished coding—I always do—and turned to my evening round of speed reading articles while YouTube videos stream, Tweeting relevant links, blogging impressive quotes on Tumblr, reposting political memes on Facebook, and trying to decide what the hell I’m going to do with my Google+.

If you work in Social Media, you know the drill.

Suddenly, a crisis. Where are my headphones? I groped around for a few minutes, checking on the floor, along the side of the bed. Our cat is a sneak thief. He runs off with our headphones often.

“Have you seen my headphones?” I asked Luz. She waved me away.

“No. Shh. Coding your site.”

Her eyes were focused like lasers on the screen, her ear buds were plugged snug in her ears, her head was rocking to whatever underground hip-hop she was streaming.

“Five more minutes of searching,” I told her, “and I’m invoking the headphones clause.”

She laughed. “Ok, Charlie. Sounds good.”

The headphones clause is this: I will acquiesce, do without, in every situation where only one of us can indulge in something fantastic. For example: the last piece of “Donkey Kong Roll” at our favorite sushi restaurant—if we can ever afford to go out to dinner again—that last piece of awesomeness will always be hers.

Indeed, every time we hit that impasse in our life together—only one slice of pizza, only one chocolate covered strawberry, only enough money for one cup of coffee—she will always get whatever deliciousness is in question, and I will do without.

And yes, it’s mostly because I love her. Sure. But it’s also to insure that if there is ever a shortage of headphones, if there is ever only one pair of headphones for two sets of ear lobes, it is hereby agreed that Charlie will always win out. Charlie will always be the one with headphones, and Luz will do without.

Because headphones are very important to me. They’re part of my writing/research process. I like to imagine that plugging ear buds into my ears flips some switch in my brain that turns on my deep poetic information processor.

I know it’s silly, but I’m a writer. We’re good crazy people. We sometimes need unusual things to get us working. And I need headphones to write.

“Can you help me find my headphones, please?!”

Luz sighed, stopped coding, waved her hand underneath her pillows, found my headphones, smiled, and handed them to me.

Crisis averted. She went back to coding, and I watched another video clip from The Majority Report.

In all our years together, I have only once successfully invoked the headphones clause, and it was a brilliant stand off.

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I told him to just fill the paper with words… #njpoet

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I told him to just fill the paper with words, and the writing will find its own form. Don’t try to make it be a poem, or a story, or an essay on this or that modern or ancient war. Don’t go into your writing with these crippling limitations. Let whatever needs to be said about what’s going on inside you come out, I told him. And then he did it.

He showed up at my apartment with a notebook filled with paragraphs, stray sentences, thoughts piled on top of thoughts. It was unbelievable, he told me, over and over. He just grabbed any stray thought, any one, at random, and wrote it down. Then he wrote the thought that followed logically from that idea, and he had his starting point. He was writing a…he was writing.

At first it was just a group of sentences, but he kept at it. Then it was a paragraph. Eventually, it became the draft of a personal essay about the heartbreak of looking for work at 24, having just graduated from college, and being asked, almost daily, regarding his degree in history: “What are you gonna do with that?”

I winced when I read that phrase in his work. “What are you gonna do with that?” But I’ll let him speak for himself.

“I used to outline how knowing history creates awareness of the structures of human social behavior. That, in turn, it creates a self-reflective individual capable of solving large scale problems with executive precision. Furthermore, I’d add, studying history enriches us with a sense of purpose and identity. Immediately following graduation, I’d make speeches like this daily; but now, I don’t. I just remain silent. “History? What are you gonna do with that?” resounds in my psyche all too often. It’s been six months since I graduated, I still haven’t landed a full-time job, and the sound of that student loan clock ticking is not making things any better. In my defense, my efforts are valiant, dropping my résumé with the aggression and frequency of the German Blitz. But I am losing this multi-front war for employment, and, soon, I must pay the reparations. Until then, I just remain silent, because whatever I say in response to their inquiry–“History? What are you gonna do with that?”–bears no semblance to a justification. All I can offer is my empty hope for victory.” -Matt Vargas

 

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All I ever wanted was to write poetry. #njpoet

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All I ever wanted was to write poetry, to teach people how to use literature, how to enhance their individual and collective humanity with words. I was well on my way to being that poet when two planes took out the Twin Towers. Those buildings had been there my entire life—in the background, on the horizon. And suddenly, in a day, they were gone. I still can’t put the sensation of that into words. That violent absence. That drifting plume of smoke in the background, on the horizon. I just remember calling my best friend on that Tuesday. I remember I called him from the pay phone outside of my 9-5 gig. I remember telling him that the United States would be unrecognizable—verging on a police state—in just about a decade. And I remember all he kept saying, over and over, as I ranted about historical precedence, about corporations, about the military industrial complex, I remember all he kept saying, my equally startled best friend, was this:

“Dude, I know. I know. I know you’re probably right! But, fuck! I hope you’re wrong.”

 

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This started last night: a freewritten prose poem type thing [for @chewstroke]

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Frustration. But that’s not the right word. Boredom. That’s closer. A tense boredom and a sense of dread, doom, or just dumb fear of what’s next. Fear of next month. Fear that some luxury will be turned off—phone, internet, gas, electric. I’d like to ditch the phone right now, to be honest. I hate the damn thing—so tired of “devices.” I’d like to ditch the phone bill and use some of that money to buy a new pair of shoes. These worn out sneakers are killing my legs, killing my back, killing my feet. But my mother loves to call for chats, keep me up on the family news. She’s been lonely since my grandma passed. So, I’ve decided to keep the luxury of my phone, to keep my nightly talks with mom, despite that prick of a bill collector who suggested I surrender my phone bill—use that money to make small payments on one of my interest-bloated student loans. Better than nothing, he figures. Actually, what that stupid prick really said was this: “Well, if ya can’t fucking afford to pay me, how do ya afford this god damn phone you’re talking to me on?” Actually, I’m still revising for him, making him sound much more eloquent than he is, because he is clearly a stupid prick, I think. And that’s fine. People can be idiotic. That’s their choice. I’m not one to go on “You’re a fucking moron” rants. I reserve that dark poetry for the climate change deniers, because, seriously, how dare you cling to your ignorance with so much at stake for all of us.

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American Politics 101: with @SamSeder [via @MajorityFM]

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A Tinge of Nationalism and Racism: the Fascists are Back [with @Thom_Hartmann & @SageFrancis]

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Ghost Writer – 2: The Garden | #fiction

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Billy’s basement office was a few blocks from the Garden State Diner—the coffee dive my group of college friends had renamed “the Garden.”

Four years of late night writing groups, hours of conversation, came flooding back when I slid into the booth, ordered a cup of coffee, and sat there next to the plate glass window staring into the parking lot.

I’d passed my old college and the diner on my way to the job interview. So, when Billy hired me, it seemed only natural to stop at the Garden to celebrate. But it only seemed like a good idea until I slid into the booth, until I heard the familiar fart of the leather, until I tasted and smelled the bitter staleness of the coffee. It was then that I realized, suddenly flushed with memories of loss, that I had never been to the Garden alone before.

In college, I was always surrounded by friends and lovers, writers and artists, historians and philosophers, each of whom, in turn, had given up on their “artsy fantasies,” as they told it. They had each settled on a sensible career, leaning heavily on family connections. Many went into law, some into finance, one into university administration.

It was just time to grow up, an old friend reasoned at my 35th birthday party. My remaining friends threw the party together—a last minute thing. My social life was growing thin. Children and family trumped all for them. A few more years into my 30s and all of my oldest friends would be strangers.

No one is saying you should stop writing, my ex-fiancé, Sarah, sighed during her annual birthday call. She’d moved to New Mexico to marry a podiatrist less than a year after she threw me out of our apartment. I would never give her what she wanted, as she told it.

I don’t want you to stop writing, Sarah repeated. I’m just worried about you. I mean, you never get paid for the work you publish. These literary journals send you publication copies as payment. And, I mean, selling used books and being broke all the time is just no way to live.

Sarah fell silent. I said nothing. She continued.

Why don’t you get a job writing? Swallow your pride; write for money. I mean, you’re so talented.

She let the compliment hang in the air for emphasis.

But listen, she cut off my attempted response, I have to get going. Randy (the podiatrist) wants his lunch. Happy birthday.

Call ended.

Fond college memories of the Garden clashed with fresh memories of my conversation with Sarah—just a week ago—as I sipped the bitter coffee, as I picked small bites from the bran muffin I’d ordered.

Ultimately, it was Sarah’s birthday phone call—the disappointment, the pity in her voice—that led to my late night search for writing jobs on Craig’s List, and to the small ad Billy had posted earlier that day.

—

Can You Write Great Business Letters?
Home business requires business writer.
 Email sample letters to __________@hotmail.com.
 Include phone number. Immediate Opening.
Subject Line: Attention: Billy
—


All reading is re-reading.


»Re-Read Part One«


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				The Stuff of Which Dictatorships are Made
			

						
			

				

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»Unfolding History«


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				Ghost Writer: beginning some #fiction
			

						
			

				

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I had no respect for what he did in the world, for how he made his money, but I needed a job and he was willing to hire me as a ghost writer. Specifically, to write business letters. More specifically, threatening collection letters to his clients. As in…




Pay me or the vividly poetic legal and social disaster that I’m about to describe—that I’m now planting in your mind like a nightmare with every bit of this syntax—that cinematic shit storm will happen to you, my friend. Pay me now! Sincerely Yours, Billy _______




My actual work was slightly less dramatic than that, but you get the idea. Billy, my boss, paid me $25 per letter, under the table. He gave me my own desk, my own computer, in his basement office.


I worked with Billy—a 50 year old man who preferred to wear tank tops, his wife, Pat—a 48 year old woman who just wanted me to accept the love of Jesus, and their 25 year old daughter, Jen.


But Jen preferred to be called Cheyenne, she said, “when the rents aren’t around.” That was her “spirit name,” representing her “true self,” as she told it. She had the name tattooed on the pelvic curve of her left hip—Cheyenne—with a jagged sketch of a tribal heart hovering in the footnote position.


But that’s skipping way ahead in the story. And it’s best to stick with a linear plot.


Chapter One: My new boss, Billy, he was in sales. He sold whatever you wanted to buy, for a small fee, of course. And I was his new ghost writer.


 




»Read Part Two«


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				87% of Those Stopped and Frisked Were Black and Latino
			

						
			

				

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In 2011, 685,724 New Yorkers were stopped by the police.

605,328 were totally innocent (88 percent).




350,743 were black (53 percent).

223,740 were Latino (34 percent).

61,805 were white (9 percent).

341,581 were aged 14-24 (51 percent).


—


Let’s here it for the NYPD! Way to give all cops everywhere a bad name. On behalf of my friends, and specifically my family, who serve in law enforcement—and on behalf of my friends, and specifically my family, who are black and/or Latino [my wife, my in-laws]—I’d just like to thank those officers involved for making things worse for everyone. Well done! ::golf clap:: -CB


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Statistics via nyclu.org»


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