Apricot

JM, Apricot, 2.23.08 and 3.9.08

Lots of apricots. Two years ago, we had enough for eleven pie-sized tarts---at about twenty-two apricots per tart, and who knows how many eaten in between and given away, that was over 250. But last year, there was a rare freeze, and we had none last summer.

This year, the tree lumbered towards full bloom about two weeks ago, and now there are marble-sized green apricots all over it again.

The tree is about sixty years old, which is about the lifespan of an apricot. It's showing its age; it's crotchety but graceful, still full of life, even though we hold our breath forward from mid-February until it blooms, every year.

~

Easter Sunday

JM, Irises / Arugula / Walnut, 3.23.o8 - click image to enlarge

There aren't many Easters so early, the first week of Spring. There are no roses yet---damn close---but there are plenty of irises. The arugula, a weed, has reached nearly fennel height.

The walnut doesn't really put out leaves until the last week of April.

The photo really shows it all: also included are the rosemary patch to the right, the rose bushes in the spiral, not yet blooming, the bougainvillea rimming the garden wall. The view was impossible until a couple of years ago, when I finally cleared some space for sitting on the south side of the garden.

I'm not big on fancy grass; too suburban. The incidental grass is engagingly awful, the way Burgundians keep it.

The irises are from one bulb, from Italy, smuggled in many many years ago.
~

Good Friday

JM, Augustinian Saints, 03.09.08

What actually made today a little easier was what was hardest about it. The hardest thing about this good Friday was not listening to Bach's St. Matthew's Passion. I have listened to it every good Friday for the past fifteen years at least, and even saw it performed one good Friday about five years ago. I have heard the strains of the ominous and harrowing beginning throughout the day. But today I won't let myself. I won't honor the story. It's not that the story is so awful; it's that the people who are asked to listen to it do not listen very well. They are so anxious for their own reward that they need to put on blinders to those currently bearing a cross.

Once I started expressing some depression, some anger, it didn't take long for the churches to which I have given so much of myself to forget about me entirely. Churches are just like hospitals: they keep telling you to smile and have faith and character despite painful circumstances, mostly so you are easier for the people tending to you to deal with. If you're spiteful, resentful, bitter, angry---ordinary human conditions for people dealing with physical, emotional, financial, sexual, psychological, or spiritual problems---they'll simply cut you away. I must say, that's good to know that; when the cards that came started leaving my name off, so did I strike names from my mind. The worst part of any church or temple is in being asked perpetually to suffer fools gladly.

I have constantly reminded myself these past few weeks, as Heather told me, that Jesus says in a few Gospels "Take this cup away" and later asks "Why have you forsaken me?" Nobody denies him these human moments---but yet, we deny them to each other. The request from the sanctimonious to mere mortals is to shut up, to bear all indignity, to be happy about things. I'm not like that, I never have been, and I won't be now. I would be far less of a partner to feign happiness at this time.

In the words of one of my friends who once lost a child, for some of us God is either too indifferent or too cruel to bother thinking about very much. To me, such a thought is a highly spiritual thought all by itself; maybe it's the highest spiritual thought you're capable of when you're otherwise so very angry and pained. That is what good Friday is to me this year: fraught with anxiety, hoping for the best...and turning my back on fickle groups and fickle churchgoers.

Holy Thursday

JM, Lotus, 3.20.08

When you can do a full Lotus, you can wash your own damn feet.

Printemps

JM, Rosemary, Silver Lake, 2.18.08

Spring arrived last night at 10:48 p.m. The early date owes to it being leap year.

"The Mermaid is toast," Garrison says in a comment. That's disturbing to me; part of my beach psyche will only admit a Hermosa north of the pier that has a Mermaid. But I'm glad Garrison made it over here. Between MayorSam and crew, Will Campbell, Garrison and Rodger Jacobs, you'd have to say that most of LA's premiere noncommercial bloggers all check in at this quiet little place.

Noncommercial bloggers are the only bloggers worth reading. The commercial ones are just giving you someone else's publicity.

Yesterday I gave a talk to a crowd at Hollenbeck Palms, which is probably the eastside's premier retirement facility. Lisa Exit was there and at one point she adjusted the mike I was pointedly trying to ignore; I couldn't ignore it after that...."It's great to be speaking at a podium; unfortunately, I never bring any notes to use it optimally," I began. I was to speak about keeping journals, and I did, but I also mapped out my view of the local print journalism scene. An hour, extemporaneously---this is about my favorite kind of talk.

It's amazing, when you do this kind of a thing, how much you find out that the LA Times is despised by people who are otherwise very polite, even sweet. It's no wonder that nobody knows anything about local politics in town; they can't stand the leading local paper.

Today I wrote a fill-in, morning round-up post at MayorSam, which I sometimes do when the Mayor's away, preoccupied, or drunk, and after I finished I realized that I knew half the people in it. So why is it that I mostly feel like I don't know anybody at all?

Pier Avenue

I don't have many things from thirty years ago but one thing I have from twenty-nine years ago is this button from Hennessey's Tavern, Hermosa, from St. Patrick's Day 1979.

Yes, I was drinking age, even then.

My copy of anti-Oedipus is slightly older. Truth is, these days I prefer the Mermaid when I'm in Hermosa.

I lived in Hermosa when I was three and four, on Loma Drive.

In high school, I hung out there quite a bit, especially watching the volleyball tournaments in the summer. My favorite team was Buzz Swartz-Matt Gage. You can see their names on the Manhattan Pier, where the City of Manhattan Beach has installed the names of winners of the Manhattan Open from the early sixties until recently.

In college, I went to Either/Or, Hennessey's, and read on the beach. It's such a luxury to be able to stay at Bev's down there sometimes. It's like a vacation home.

Trivia: the cat's name at Either/Or? Justine.

Easter Octave

~
Tonic

something we accept
without questioning:
This day is a Sunday.

And that day is a Tuesday, and the cycle
is seven. But there is nothing
celestial that happens every
seventh, nothing
inviting weekly
modulation.

Subdominant

Questioning: Where were you
when the fourth note was played
announcing the tonic ruin
of all the other days?

Dominant

Doe, a deer. Ray, a drop.
Seven days like lieder keys
like a-b-c-d-e-f-g,
like the coming Easter octave.

Tonic, subdominant, dominant

Music is genesis, it must be
where all these days
have come from
and how all the weeks
are Holy made.

Kafka's Mouse

Because I don't maintain enough of my fiction self on the Internet, I have started a blog devoted to it.

The blog is called Kafka's Mouse. It's over on Wordpress. It owes an enormous debt of gratitude to the exemplary Carver's Dog of Rodger Jacobs.

The blog will feature excerpts from my novels, as well as short stories (or links to them if they're elsewhere), and especially flash fiction, which I am anxious to do again, as I am finding that so many disturbing parts of my life warrant fictionalizing.

Because I do a lot of journalism and also daily journaling, that is the way most Internet readers are acquainted to me, and thus my fiction has always been tough to blend in at any blog. Readers may expect one or the other, but not both in the same place. But watching Carver's Dog unfold over the past few months alerted me to the possibility that readers seeking either might benefit from dividing my personal output into two blogs, one devoted to fiction and the other (this one) to personal nonfiction. Today I stumbled on the phrase "Kafka's Mouse," and the new blog was born.

Reviews and reviewers

I've been amazed---and yet not surprised---at the Love and Consequences kerfluffle, and I've said why elsewhere. But what really strikes me as most amazing is how approachable most authors are, and yet how detached reviewers stay from them.

Print reviewers used to maintain an arm's length distance from authors by design. That was back in the day when houses actually knew their books and authors, and integrity was part of the process; book reviews didn't want you to know the author for fear of conflict of interest. They could indulge you with facts on the author and the book even when the author couldn't without rendering herself a publicist.

But these days, integrity has entirely fled the system. The corporate publishing houses are not great filters, they are mere cash machines. They barrage you with cheap publicity that is often hastily assembled, tied more to marketing than to text, and distributed by a thirty-one-year-old who hasn't read a damn thing. If you can get away with it, it makes far more sense to talk to the author directly than to the house; the information is far more straightforward, and the talk far more honest.

The week's events in publishing left me to consider my own relationship to the books I like. (And to be fully disclosed, I do promote books---I literally receive hundreds of them from presses a year---though not in the pro forma way, but nonetheless in a way that enhances readership: I mention them at various blogs, including here, and tout their strengths and weaknesses, and I talk to librarians and bookstores about what they might consider ordering and hosting talks around). And I have to say that even from my own tiny and isolated point of consciousness here in the universe, I would never be able to fall for Love and Consequences the way so many so-called book reviewers did.

First off, it would never occur to me to talk about a book these days without talking to the author. There are many good reasons for that. One reason is purely selfish at bottom: I'm a writer myself, and the more data I get on how other writers practice their calling, the better knowledge base I have for mine (most people review books for purely this precise reason, but so many end up getting caught up in the publicity part---many, in short, end up not thinking for themselves).

But mostly, I want to talk to the author because these days the author can tell me things about the book that nobody else is in a position to.

The publicist...that's not dependable information, and typically it comes from someone who is merely doing a job and eyeballing a budget that governs her priorities even as she's emailing you.

The publisher: with the twin poxes of corporate ownership and closely-held ownership, they're too tied to the financial outcome to be very forthcoming about anything (they are now even far more tied to this outcome than the author is).

No, these days, with marketing driving everything, the only person in the chain who has reliable information on what's in a book is the author herself.

It shouldn't be a matter of scope. I happen to know, for instance, that Heather King's advance for Redeemed, a book from a very comparable genre, was larger than the advance for Love and Consequences. But I've sat down with Heather not once but twice, and will likely do so again, even before writing a single word. She even indulged me for a cell photo. I have, from those discussions, 100% confidence in every anecdote in her book, and I have the names of a host of people in pocket to follow up with should I doubt anything. Would it have been so impossible for a book reviewer to talk to "Margaret B. Jones"?

LA reviewers (and there are a few who read this little blog for ideas), try this fun experiment the next time a publicist hounds you: ask her who Richard Eder was.

If she can't answer, why are you hinging your own review on what this person of all people is saying? You owe it to yourself to talk to the author directly, don't you think?

The truth is that book reviewers themselves are the ones mostly acting as publicists these days. They're anxious to jump on a bandwagon to get their own names attached to something; they're so anxious, in fact, that their reviews often belie common sense. To see Michiko Kakutani, a mathematician's daughter, btw, swallowing a book that belies all statistical probability the way Love and Consequences does is really not surprising: to Ms. Kakutani, books are something publishers publish, more than they are something writers write. But the NYT has stuck with her through the years anyway.

Reviewers: she may have a Pulitzer, and she may be feared a bit, but she's not the model, she's the problem. Don't do what she does. Times have changed; times are dark. Now more than ever, question the author, question the press. Use your heads.

Five minutes, public library

JM, Atwater classics, 3.6.08

A psychotic man in a blue windbreaker. A hippie with an American flag printed on his green tank top. A wall-eyed librarian. A fishmouth librarian.

Women's History Month: Silvia Plath, Virginia Woolf, Joan of Arc, Nappy.

A poster: Yoda says, Read.

One more minute. A men's restroom key tied to a clipboard; a woman's restroom key on an ordinary keychain.

Somebody

JM, Chess Life, Glendale Central Library, 3.3.08

Lynn went to something Catholic on the westside last night. Somebody sent me some sample premium scotches and I tried one. Somebody asked me to speak to a classroom about journalism and I said yes but there's no date. Somebody asked me to edit a paper for them and I said maybe. Somebody wants me to talk about journaling, not journalism, to their elderly group on St. Joseph's Day and I said yes.

I have a few good articles coming up, including on opera recitals at Brand Library, LA's intellectual bar scene, and new developments regarding ovarian cancer. I sent Lewis Segal a note of congratulations on such a fine run at the Times; I can't believe the paper would let him go even while hiring some others. The Times' message of late is that they're not interested in writing that becomes vital or transformational, they're interested in visual chewing gum.

I lead half my life and half my life is led for me. The half that is led for me makes me more melancholy than the half I lead myself, but mostly I lead myself to the parts that are lead for me, which is an ultimate melancholic sourcing.

I am up at 4 most mornings. I am haunted by many people I used to know but no longer really do. I am editing my novel extremely slowly, a mere page at a time. I can still taste the scotch from last night; it bills itself as the smokiest scotch whisky in Scotland, and it is. Lynn had a sip and said it tasted like a campfire. She didn't like it; I did, and its finish lasts about twelve hours.

I am in libaries. The March Chess Life is a tribute to Bobby Fischer, of course; but in the back, Benko has a great article debugging some Reti endgame solutions that were maybe a bit too hasty.

Fischer, Reti, Capablanca, Morphy, Benko, Kasparov, Karpov, Nimzovich, Tal, Lasker---everyone in chess has the perfect name for themselves.

When I was a young boy, I studied chess openings. In my thirties, I became more interested in the midgame, and chess friends recognize me still as a midgame player. But of late I've been more obsessed with endgames; they're creeping in, more and more. The board is emptier, the math more vital.

L'Abecedaire

JM, Deleuze: L is for Literature, Mandrake Bar Screening, 3.2.08

In literature, all the great characters are great thinkers. --Deleuze


So much has changed since my early adult days. I was at this bar on South La Cienega last night to see a screening of one segment of the long interview with an ailing Gilles Deleuze known as Deleuze A to Z. And probably the best one, at least as far as writers are concerned, "L is For Literature."

Thirty years ago, we'd have to wait for this film to come to the Fox Venice. Then we'd be obliged to sit through all eight hours of it to see the segment we want to see.

Now, they boot it up somewhere, a segment at a time, on a Powerbook and project it. Watch it for a drink.

And now not only do I carry a phone with me, but it has a camera too. I can imagine dragging my old Nikon F into a bar and trying to get a screenshot and then taking it home to develop it and then sending prints to all my friends.

My concern with tech remains that people use it too much as an end in itself rather than as a tool. Literature really started to suffer in 1995 (Deleuze says as much in the film) and that's the time France's Minitel is coming on and AOL is starting to grab people at home. We need to teach people how to use tech as a tool to extend their lives, and not as the extension of life itself.

Mandrake is a great bar, by the way.

Cheap Thai

Four hours since the last Modelo
and now we are going to the place
we don't know the name of, but we know
it doesn't serve alcohol. Doesn't

matter, you said. It serves
things we still haven't had
like the green curry, not green at all
but there's basil, mint, and honesty

in it, and in the tom kah kai
its cheap Thai propane sizzle
flaring like my Alfa's fuel injector,
which killed the car in its dying days

which were two days after I met you, and
what if two days earlier? You and I
would never have been to our places
our thousands of dinners, our privacies

our Paris, our Guanajuato, our Quebec,
all the glories and books and movies
and there would be no you and me,
only the fork, the knife, the ladle spoon

and an empty plastic bent-wood chair
where you sit now, happy
with another unfamilar taste
again.