Audition

Alright.  Worked a full shift today.  Time running out at the job.  Tomorrow there is a big "accounting" meeting at work, so there is a lot of work to be done.

Things will begin changing when I have more time to devote to this space as well as to making my videos.  I had a brainstorming session today with my old college roommate and we were thinking that the web series may be a played out idea.  The web sketch comedy show - not so much.  We are going to mine that fertile comedy ore for all that its worth.  Who knows, maybe if the right big wig catches one of my punch-lines then maybe they will be putting me in the 11:30 timeslot on NBC next. 

I'm still spit-balling good column/post ideas to put up here over the weekend and next week for your reading pleasure.  For the NBA fan out there, I think I will be doing a series of All-Star Game related posts coming up.  The first one will be a play-by-play of the 1992 NBA All-Star Game, which I conveniently have on the flips side of my Magic Johnson DVD.  Not the most competitive game, but my lord when you get a breakdown of the rosters - you will be salivating.

Anyway, more to come as always. Just stay loyal, stay with me and you will be repaid by my riches.

Now, the next installment of From Here to the Last Mound of Dirt.

Tom

I saw the snow.  The trees could’ve been birches, but they were white with snow so who would’ve known.  I walked watching the tracks glow with small blue flame because a train had just passed by with its electricity.  Tracks that run with fire.  I stepped around them as I saw the train moving away to the station.  My feet left marks, showing pebbles, gravel.  I stepped over fire and down the slope. I almost slipped, seeing an odd root sticking above the white.  The day was quiet, white and grey except for a crow.  Where the hill dipped, when I looked straight – when you look straight – the sixteenth green rose up –rises up -, revealed wealth, revealed the summer golf and martini, the winter sled and promise of a kiss.  Where the hill dipped – where it dips – there was the creek.  I sloshed stepped in boots to the creek.  Leaves below, leaves with snow.  My soul was –is – a soul swooning in snow.  My soul was a flake.  The creak was frozen with black holes of water.  I heard the train whistle.  I thought of my boots on the blue and grey upholstery.

“Feet off the seat.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“Ticket?”

“Thanks.”

“Switch at Huntington.”

    The creek had black holes of water in it.  The snow had leaves.  White snow.  White golf  balls.  Clear martinis.  What color was a kiss? What color is a kiss?

    “I’ll be right back,” Natalie says and slips back into her house.  Correction, her parents house.
    I sit and look out through the screen of the screened in porch.  I put my boots up on one of the white curved legs of the table.  I bet they bring this table in during the winter.  I bet they store it up in the shed that is over there in the corner, where behind it there are bushes, shrubs, a small wood separating the homes.  And maybe within that wood there is a fence separating yards.  A dog barks – barked – and Natalie tries to catch the bus to school.  I didn’t know this neighborhood so well.  But I didn’t know other neighborhoods when I was a kid.  I just knew mine, that corner with the cracked curb, where for one year I watched as James drove to school with his friends and laughed passing me by.  I didn’t really care.  That’s the way it worked.  All younger brothers wanted to ride in cars like their older brothers.  But I looked up at that tree across the street.  The tree with the perfect piney branches to climb and I climbed it.  And I was on top while the other kids tried to make fun of  me. “What the fuck are you doing up there, retard?” And the two stoners smoked, crouching by the bushes.  I was still on top when the bus came and I could see those two emergency escape hatches.  Seeing them from the top of that tree was one of the best feelings I’ve ever known.  When I climbed down I could still smell the exhaust, but it was mixed with the fresh pine stink of my shirt.  I started walking towards Ridgeway when dad slowed by.  I knew I’d get caught.

    “How’s that English class, stranger?” He tipped an imaginary cowboy hat.

    “Just mindin’ my A’s and B’s and C’s” I played along.

    He tapped the wheel. “Get in, Thomas.”

    Then we were off.  I know I learned something when we got there.

    I hear the gentle touch and swish of the rubber on the end of the door.  Natalie is back.  She carries out two thin cylinder glasses on a tray like she’s a waitress.  I’m glad to see they’re filled with club soda.

    “I hope you don’t mind,” she says.

    “I don’t.”

    “I figured this would be best.”

    “It is.”

    She sits down across from me.  Then she nudges the chair so that it scrapes at the floor and she is closer to me.  She crosses her legs with the sex and easiness that all girls seem to be able to do.  If she were riding on a train with me I’d try to talk to her. I’d drop my Times, or maybe she’d drop hers.

    “Are we old now?” she asks.

    “No,” I say. “I don’t think so.”

    “Then we’re acting like rather sophisticated sad bastards aren’t we?’

    I laugh.  It hits me right in my chin and my cheeks respond.

    “I guess we are.”

    “But your mom just died so..”

    She feels closer to me.  And I think she is closer to me.  I can smell her hair.  It smells like shampoo, but not fruity or just clean.  There is something else to it.  Its feminine but not like perfume.  It’s more natural and feminine than perfume would ever dream.

    “Let me ask you something, Natalie?”

    “Proceed, senator.”

    “Why weren’t we always like this?”

    “What do you mean this?”  She seems taken aback.

    “I don’t know,” I look at the fizzing bubbles in my glass.  The taste of opening air so refreshing.  What did my escaping breaths look like from the black of the creek among the ice and the snow?  That kid – Sirch was his last name – never told me.  He’d just wave and smile at me whenever he saw me after that.  Big as he was. So different from me.  Strong, and me? Strange in loafers.  Strange with messy hair.  Strange like a saint or an old photograph from the 1920’s.  If only a bubble could pop open and tell me an answer.  Show me a picture of myself sitting here with this girl – a woman now maybe and I’m sure in many ways – two noses, one upturned, and let me know the truth.  Let me know the inner light that two postures - making one together, one scene – have, let me know what they can reveal.  Patron and paritioner summoning saint and saviour.  The bubbles are rising, my drink is breathing.  I am too.

    “I mean how we are so cozy right now,” I say.

    “Cozy?”

    “Yes.”

    “I don’t know.  But I do know what you mean.  There is something strange going on between us right now.  And I’ve never come out and said it when I’ve felt it before.  I don’t know if I’ve felt something like this.  I’ve usually just been kissed or tried to kiss.  I’ve never sat with club soda in September.”

    “You speak beautifully.”

    “It is cozy, isn’t it?”

    “Yes.”

    Our drinks explode at their surface in between us.  The crickets are out there in the dark beyond the screen, they’re chirping.  Everything – every creature, even me – is releasing a dew into the air.  Did you plan this, mother?  Are you breathing onto the world?  Is this your soul revealed?  Is this what they feel like and smell like and taste like?  A soul: a club soda and a girl?

    “Can I ask you something?” she says.

    “I was hoping you would.”

    “Can I come to the funeral tomorrow?”

    I take a drink.  There are no answers in the carbonation.

    “Yes, I was hoping you would.”

    “Thanks.”

    She turns out towards the screens and the crickets.  Her elbow is on the honeycombed glass.  Her hand lays across her face, one finger draping the bridge of that nose.

    “She was a sweet woman.”

    “Thank you.”

    She looks back to me. She wants to speak.  She takes a drink first, admires it, or at least pretends to.  Maybe she is regarding it.  Maybe she wants this glass, this liquid to speak to her and show her something as much as I want it to, want anything to.  Crucifix, club soda, cricket, lacrosse ball, Cutty Sark.

    “How come you aren’t sadder?” she asks above her drink.

    “I am,” I say. “I loved my mother.  But there is a lot of life still out there.  There’s my father, whose probably passed out on the floor.  There’s me, the general mystery of myself.  There’s you.  There’s
crickets out there- a general strangeness of people.”

    She raises her eyebrows and laughs.  I feel my face getting red.

    “What?”

    “You speak beautifully,” she says.

    I’m going to kiss you now, I don’t say.  I kiss her.  I kiss her and I smell grass.  I smell the freshness of the soda water.  I can see James and myself as I feel her nose on my nose.  I can see James wearing a red lacrosse jersey.  He’s young, we’re both young.  We’re wrestling on the grass.  I was on top for a moment. I looked down at him.  He was laughing.  My brother was laughing hysterically.  I stopped.  The match was over.  But he turned me on my back quick and then was on top.  He was laughing and he wouldn’t stop until I started.  The grass on his arms. I feel it on my cheek now as I feel her cheek.  Then space.  The night dewy like a soul.  The crickets.

    “What is this?” I ask.

    “Cozy.”

Step into the Arenas

See you just have to love the NBA.

I was walking down the street on New Year's Day this year, not so much headache hungover, but bleary-eyed and feeling loose and goofy.  I was walking with my roommate of Motel Motel fame and four of my best friends from growing up.  I had one beer already and we were looking forward to having a few bloody mary's at the local French restaurant, Le Baricou.  My friend stepped into a bodega to grab a pack of smokes, when I spotted the always beautiful back cover of the New York Post.  The headline read:

Wizards Gilbert Arenas and Javaris Crittenton pull pistols on each other

This eye-catching headline was followed by a scintillating bit of reporting that reads accordingly:

Guess they're still the Bullets at heart. 

NBA all-star Gilbert Arenas and his Washington Wizards teammate Javaris Crittenton drew guns on each other in the team's locker room during a Christmas Eve dispute over a gambling debt, The Post has learned. 

Now, when I saw this I just had to laugh.  There is only one sport where this sort of headline is conceivable.  Just when you think the sensational stories of Stephon Marbury and Isiah Thomas having group sex in the back of an SUV while they were both with the Knicks weren't low brow enough, this sort of head scratcher comes along.  Of course, the dry way the Post reports the story gives the chuckle effect, because when you read an action like two teammates pulling guns on each other in a dispute over a gambling debt in a newspaper it just seems too crazy to be true.  You also get the image of a smug sports reporter typing out the story in its detached manner and thinking "Oh, yes.  I am better than these two idiot millionaires."

That journalist may very well be right.  I haven't been the biggest Gilbert Arenas fan over the years.  Admittedly I was sleeping on college basketball when he attended the University of Arizona from 1999-2001 and went to the NCAA Championship Game against Duke in 2001 on team with Richard Jefferson and Luke Walton.  Even when Gilbert was catching fire in 2003, 2004 and 2005 with long 3's and big scorig nights, I didn't find him that appealing.  I only liked that he started calling himself Hibachi and fit under the category of "this guy is eccentric, he might be crazy, sort of makes up for him being a selfish player."  The thing about Gilbert that always rubbed me the wrong way, was that he espoused the fact that he was one of the top point guards in the league, but was never unselfish enough to truly be one.  Gilbert always reminds me of another era of basketball, one that I have only read about and not seen enough of to truly speak on: the late 70's early 80's.  He doesn't fit the mold of the spoiled stars in the late 90's and he certainly falls short in the golden era of '87 to '93.  However, his eccentric personality, his grace, and his undeniable talent put him snugly into another era of stars such as George Gervin and Elvin Hayes.  Gilbert has a terrific jump shot, but he relies on it too much - too many pull up threes.  He has great off the dribble moves, but he doesn't use them enough.  He has talked big and then choked like against the Cavs in the Playoffs in '05 and '06.  On a team with an unselfish and equalled skilled player like Antwain Jamison and a quality third man like Caron Butler, Gilbert should be facilitating more, those Washington teams should be doing a whole lot more to make an impression on sports fans and on an open era in the NBA.  However, they have not and I think a lot of it falls on Gilbert.  But who am I to say and who knew I would have gone on this long about Gilbert Arenas anyway.  I barely even care about him as a player.

But that New York Post reporter might not be correct.  Maybe I'm a sucker.  I know carrying guns with the correct license is legal and part of this country's core legislature - but its probably not the way to go.  I know that Gilbert bringing a gun into his team's locker room and then pulling one on his teammate over a gambling debt (doesn't sound any less insane the more you type it) is probably a little unwise. However, when I see those headlines about NBA players, it hits some soft spot in me.  Like the class clown or the rebel who can just never do good, but there is something so endearing about it, something that makes you want to say "Ah, he just doesn't know any better."  That's what the NBA is to me.

Its unfortunate that's the way its become. However, you have to take the highs and the lows - the ultimate arena for one on one showdowns, the most personal team battles, the most physically demanding and beautiful of all the sports, and the sport that draws the most "how is that even possibles." For all of the continued bad behaviour and the head scratchers that occur, I will be there every October through June scrolling through box scores, laughing at players I hate, trying to jinx players and teams I hate, and loving the players I love with complete and utter blissful ignorance.  Wade is better than Lebron - you're damn right.

Around the NBA:

- One of my favorite things about the NBA is watching players I appreciated and followed in college begin to grow and fit into their roles in the league.  This is happening in Memphis and Oklahoma City as a lot of young players are playing together and starting to gel.  We all knew that Oklahoma City would soon be a good team because Kevin Durant had star quality written all over him.  However, we didn't know that Westbrook would be able to continue his strong point guard play and that Jeff Green would become one of the best young "glue" players in the entire league.  Throw in rookie addition James Harden who has been giving them quality minutes and they are filling in the Durant-Green-Westbrook foundation well.

Memphis likewise has a nice foundation of O.J. Mayo-Mike Conley-Rudy Gay that has mixed suprisingly well with Zach Randolph who seems to have revitalized his career this season.  He is averaging a double-double and actually seems motivated.  They even picked up a nice bench piece in the draft when they got Sam Young from that tough Pittsburgh team from last year. The average age of the team is 24.3 so there is a chance that some of these guys will be able to stick together to actually gel into a team and perhaps gain some fanbase and momentum in Memphis.  I like the idea of a team in Memphis - maybe not the Grizzlies as a team name, though.

- The Heat.  They are terrible.  Wade needs help.  We need to get Chris Paul in Miami or we need to get Wade to a team where he will not be wasting the peak years of his career.  Right now, it is like watching a more complete, friendly, team orientated version of Kobe from 2005-2007.  Arguably the most talented two guard and arguably the best player in the league floundering on a sub-par team during the peak years of his career.

- Are the Celtics for real? Will they be able to make it all the way to the Finals? Will Rasheed appear to care about basketball so that his fans and supporters over his crazy years (me!) can continue to get his back.  Rasheed has always been one of my favorite players and personalities, but he seems to have just lost it.  I hear there is a rift in this team between the young players like Rondo (All-Star) and Perkins (one of the toughest low post players playing) and Garnett, Pierce and Allen.  Big Baby comig back will give them a boost and help spread out minutes, but if this team can't completely gel as they once did, then they may not make it to the Finals.

- Are the Lakers for real? What happened to that team that looked like a history maker?  Will Bynum ever become the center all basketball fans were hoping he would become? Is Kobe really becoming the reincarnation of Michael Jordan in 1997? He has tried so hard to emulate Michael and he is actually doing a damn good job of hitting Michael Jordan in 1997.  Sort of weird.

- Portland and their injuries.  They seem to be losing players left and right, but they are still at the top of the West standings.  I don't know how far they can actually make it, but when you watch them, you just imagine if they had all of  their players healthy, and a stronger veteran presence thrown into the mix to give them some sort of killer edge.  They just don't have it and I don't care how many nice, young talented guys like Roy (could become a killer maybe) they get, they need a killer.

- The Mavericks.  Maybe its their year.  Dirk is playing out of his mind and they have a toughness or an savvy that they lacked when they were so good in 2006 and 2007.  They sort of feel like an early 2000's San Antonio team.  Dirk is no Duncan.

- The Spurs.  They're lurking around.  Dejuan Blair.

- I don't know what is going to happen the rest of the season, but the offseason keeps getting more and more interesting. I hope it doesn't let down.  We are also getting closer and closer to the trade deadline and the All-Star Break so we'll see if there are any midseason shakeups.  This is a weird NBA season so far.  I can't get a real grasp on it.  But I'll keep you all up to speed.  Plus I'm catching a Knicks-Heat game in April with my buddy at the Garden so I get my first in person look at Dwyane Wade on the court.  Hopefully, he's not resting and the Heat don't suck as much as they do now.

Next: The much hyped, the much heard about, the award winning synopsis of Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band starring the Bee Gees and Peter Frampton and a FRENCH HORN!!!

Now: The next installment of From Here to the Last Mound of Dirt.

 Tom

  
Drum kick punch and the cymbols tip. I can hear the music from the speakers, they are wired along the edge of the roof.  It’s a good song but it sounds stale from overplay.  With space and time will come the love remembered; like any classic, like any old thing.
  
I move my attention from my ears to my eyes.  My heart is on edge watching Natalie as she fingers the bridge of her nose.  She must be self-conscious of it now that I’ve professed my love for its shape – its Grecian curve, although an art  historian would have a field day with that and with me in general.  How can I speak when there is flesh like that in the world? Taaaakeee and ssseeeee.  When objects move and perform and have a past that is well known but never fleshed out.  I’m not simple, but her nose is and I must take action in the silence among the torches.  Speak!
  
“Is this the first time you’ve been here since you’ve been home?”
  
“Yes.”
  
“Afraid to be seen out?”
  
“No.  Well maybe yes.  I like to go to the Corner sometimes.”
  
I didn’t think she had it in her to go to a place like the Corner.  I’m always surprised that there are ever girls in there at all.  The bathroom is disgusting and seems like it hasn’t been cleaned in a decade.  The urinal doesn’t flush and runs a somehow never rising pool in its small ceramic basin.  The plastic soap dispenser is forever empty.  I’m not sure there is a girl’s bathroom.  But she goes and now that I look at her finger on the very tip of her nose - her glass oozing a slug’s trail on the flicker lit table – maybe it does make sense.
  
“I like the Corner,” is what I can say.
  
“What about you?”
  
“Me?”
  
Now she’s leaning over her drink. Her finger extends down from her nose where everything seems to emnate from – at least now – and falls over her pouting lips.  Not big and cartoonish and not thin – they simply are lips.  And that’s what makes my heart sharp.  The torches show themselves in the small puddles of condensation and melted ice on the table.  I can’t help but think of my friend Jeff.  He drank nothing but water until we were sixteen years old.  He was slim and nothing ever seemed to stick to him.  It was only until recently I connected that to his always drinking water.  Now he’s gone and I’m here.  He’s made of water -75 percent, maybe 80 – and I’m made of something I can’t figure out.  But I’m here and the torches burn and she’s leaning with a nose.
  
“Yes, you.”
  
“And?”
  
“Aren’t you afraid to be seen out?”
  
“Well its not like I went away anywhere.”
  
She is about to say something.  She decides to touch her hair instead and I’m fine with that.
  
“Why was that?”
  
I’m not weak and I can’t really say why it was that it was that I did or didn’t.  But there is something about her that makes me want to tell her everything.  Even in this thick night that belongs to Georgia or Alabama, where the air smells faintly of fertile dirt, when she speaks I smell the mothballs of a church basement.  Which is to say that I want to confess everything to her as if I were seven and truly believed in reconciliation.  When I was seven and first understood death through the story of a cat being hit by a car in my CCD book and then later that night when I read – in bed with dad - the story of Martin Luther King.  And now mom is dead like the cat and the Doctor Martin Luther.  But she is here in torch light and wants to know me like we once knew each other.

“I can’t really say.”
  
“You can’t or you won’t”
  
She turns away.  All of sudden this seems much more intimate.  Her nose in profile, the dancing light, the moistness and earthy fragrence  of the night air.  It seems like we are a reconciling couple.  We were friends – very close friends at one time – sure, but the way she is acting would sound and look like something more.  If we were a painting on display, or merely caught by a nosy churchwoman walking her dog to burn calories.
  
“This is strange.”
  
She’s turned back. “Why?”
  
“Its been so long since we’ve spoken and now.  This feels like some kind of familiar rhythm.  Our postures.”
  
She looks at me.  She’s looking long and hard.  Studying my face to see if I’ll move or flinch or look away.  Maybe I’m too stupid to look away.  Maybe I’m too strange like everyone has always said.  But either I can’t or I won’t and she knows it now.
  
“Yeah,” she looks down. “I think there is something.  It makes me think that there might’ve always been.  There might’ve always been and…”
  
“I can’t really say why because I don’t really know,” I find myself saying.  She on the edge of a secret, revealing her sentiment, and I find myself talking.  Not wanting her to show everything, not wanting her to bear that.  Because I’m not sure if I am ready to hear what she has to say.  I just want to watch the glow around her nose and cheeks and feel my blood. I want to feel the dabs of drinks I’ve had over the course of this day.  I’m not ready to have anything bared.
  
“Oh,” she says.
  
Or am I?
  
“Let me buy you another drink.”
  
“No,” she says.  I’d be nervous, but I’m not.  I see her pause.  She looks back up, squinting a little.

She’s trying to see me better. “Do you want to come to my house?”

 I look at her.  I know I’m simply looking.

 “Er…my parents’ house?”
  
I smile at her.  I know I’m simply  smiling.
  
“Yes.”
  
I don’t know if I want her to bare anything to me.  I might just want to walk with her and breathe in the soil richness of the air.  Or maybe its that I want to run.  To find a place that’s quiet like snow.  I’m kidding myself of course.  I just want to kiss her.

All I Want for the NBA

I'm going to spend most of this space talking about my "Christmas" wishes for the NBA and for basketball in general. I don't know as much about the NBA as I'd like to think, but I certainly love it enough, so maybe that will be conveyed in some manner.

First, however, I'd like to post a little follow up to my Self Portrait review from last week. This comes from the Wikipedia entry on Self Portrait, it is a comment that Bob Dylan made about the lead up to his making of the album and to the actual theory behind the album itself:

"At the time, I was in Woodstock, and I was getting a great degree of
notoriety for doing nothing. Then I had that motorcycle accident [in
1966], which put me out of commission. Then, when I woke up and caught my senses, I realized that I was workin' for all these leeches. And I didn't wanna do that. Plus, I had a family, and I just wanted to see my kids.

I'd also seen that I was representing all these things that I didn't know anything about. Like I was supposed to be on acid. It was all storm-the-embassy kind of stuff — Abbie Hoffman in the streets — and they sorta figured me as the kingpin of all that. I said, 'Wait a minute, I'm just a musician. So my songs are about this and that. So what?' But people need a leader. People need a leader more than a leader needs people, really. I mean, anybody can step up and be a
leader, if he's got the people there that want one. I didn't want that, though.

But then came the big news about Woodstock, about musicians goin' up there, and it was like a wave of insanity breakin' loose around the house day and night. You'd come in the house and find people there, people comin' through the woods, at all hours of the day and night, knockin' on your door. It was really dark and depressing. And there was no way to respond to all this, you know? It was as if they were suckin' your very blood out. I said, 'Now wait, these people can't be my fans. They just can't be.' And they kept comin'. We had to get out of there.

This was just about the time of that Woodstock festival, which was the sum total of all this bullshit. And it seemed to have something to do with me, this Woodstock Nation, and everything it represented. So we couldn't breathe. I couldn't get any space for myself and my family, and there was no help, nowhere. I got very resentful about the whole thing, and we got outta there.

We moved to New York. Lookin' back, it really was a stupid thing to do. But there was a house available on MacDougal Street, and I always remembered that as a nice place. So I just bought this house, sight unseen. But it wasn't the same when we got back. The Woodstock Nation
had overtaken MacDougal Street also. There'd be crowds outside my house. And I said, 'Well, fuck it. I wish these people would just forget about me. I wanna do something they can't possibly like, they can't relate to. They'll see it, and they'll listen, and they'll say,
'Well, let's get on to the next person. He ain't sayin' it no more. He ain't given' us what we want,' you know? They'll go on to somebody else. But the whole idea backfired. Because the album went out there, and the people said, 'This ain't what we want,' and they got more resentful. And then I did this portrait for the cover. I mean, there was no title for that album. I knew somebody who had some paints and a square canvas, and I did the cover up in about five minutes. And I said, 'Well, I'm gonna call this album Self Portrait.'"

Hmmm. He reminds me of a young me. In any event, I thought that would be interesting to put up here in light of my sermonizing and postulating at the possible meaning that could be gained from the album. I had actually read this some time ago, before I rambled that post out last week - maybe I should have consulted my own memory a little better.

Now, I will use the rest of this week's allotted time (unlimited) to post some wishes I have for the NBA. These are things that I would like to see happen in the league this year, things regarding the NBA I would like to have in my possession and things that I wish to happen for the league in general. I have to say that these items haven't been thought out at all and they may not make much sense. However, I have written a good deal about music in the past few weeks so I figured I should shower my praise and lovelight back onto the NBA, before I get into another list for next post, which will be my "Top 20 Movies to Watch on TV." See, sounds like I put more thought into that one, right? I even have a limit on the list. Salivating for that one, right? Sounds stupid, right? Oh, wait, I've got a list to do now.

Without further ado, my "Christmas Wishes" for the NBA:

1. Bill Simmons' Book of Basketball to replace the Gideon's Bible in hotels across the country until Game 7 of June's NBA finals when a scrappy Celtics team derails a potentially legendary Lakers team and Ron Artest shows up to the game in his underwear, scoring the first basket before being prompted to put on a shirt.

2. After scorching first quarters of the season, Carmelo, Durant and Nowitzki cool off scoring, the greatness of the Lakers overshadows Kobe's all around game, and Dwyane Wade galvanizes the Heat in an amazing second half stretch of the season, submits a better season than last year and wins your 2009-2010 NBA MVP award.

3. Tracy McGrady retires so we can forget about him and never speak of him again.

4. Chris Paul is traded to the Heat midseason for half of their roster, while in the off season, the Heat sign Chris Bosh and spend the remainingg $500,000.00 paying undrafted college players to be unselfish and not mess up. 2010-2011 NBA Champions, anyone?

5. Greg Oden is actually the inspiration for F. Scott Fitzgerald's "The Curious Case of Benjamin Button" and is really 120 years old. And once again we find out that Hollywood is racist.

6. The two movies I get for Christmas are the 1993 Finals and "All I Want for Christmas" starring a young Ethan Embry and Thora Birch and the "Mysterious Girl of 1991." If you've seen this movie, you know what I'm talking about.

7. TNT, ESPN and ABC get wise and put the best young NBA on TV as frequently as possible - The Oklahoma City Thunder - so that American can get a good look at Kevin Durant, Jeff Green, Russell Westbrook and the immortal Nick Collison (ah, Kansas 2003!).

8. Basketball loving president, Barack Obama, recruits NBA commissioner David Stern as part of his cabinet and in a precident setting move on Christmas Day of 2010, makes Stern VP midterm. Leading to Stern turning on Obama, hitting him in the head with a chair at Game 6 of the OKC v. Miami (what?!) Finals in 2011 and then running against Obama in the most thrilling and wrestling themed election of all time in 2012.

9. Shaq and Lebron's chemistry fades or never takes off, leading the 2009-2010 Cavaliers to tumble, while Mo Williams becomes fascinated with moustaches and running floaters. In the offseason, Shaq declares his own retirement to take away from the excitement of Lebron's free agency decision. Only, no one cares, and Lebron decides to play on Mars where the market never takes off, however, causing the ire of U.S. VP David Stern he is banished from the league until 2012, when the world may very well end!

10. Lakers v. Celtics in the Finals. It's just good basketball.

11. Kevin Garnett's return to glory and a second title.

12. Rajon Rondo is finally in people's everyday catalogue as one of the premier players in the game and not an appetizer at an Indian restaurant.

13. Tyler Hansborough becoming a better pro than people thought.

14. People remembering Allen Iverson for who he was when he revolutionized the league in 1996 like no one else had except maybe Michael Jordan and not for the overly proud, sentimental aging Allen Iverson he is now. (But God do I still love him and God does he have one of the most riveting and compelling personalities and professional storylines of any athlete. Just YouTube young Iverson. Please!)

15. I travel back in time and shadow Michael Jordan on all of the teams he played on. From UNC to the first-run Bulls to the Dream Team and then to the second-run Bulls. Much like the dreams I have every night when I get layups off of feeds from Jordan and then play "commendable and inspiring defense," as M.J. tells me.

16. MTV becomes NBA and completely non-related to music or the Jersey Shore.

Welp, that's about all I have for now. Christmas is upon us and so are these very possible NBA fantasies. I'll be back next week for my "Top 20 Movies To Watch on TV."

Now, the next installment of "From Here to the Last Mound of Dirt":

Tom

“Tom! Hey look its my little brother. Where’ve you been? And who is this?”

James is talking and he’s excited. He must be drunk. It’s good for him take his sober serious sombre leadership edge off. I guess I’m more of the sombre one. Well we all are now.

“This is Natalie. We went to school together.”

“Hi,” Natalie says. She holds out one of her lean athletic arms. They were always like that. Even in English class back in tenth grade I’d look at her exposed shoulder and notice the gentle tone of the muscle. That was something extremely feminine.

“I don’t remember you coming over to the house at all,” James says.

“I was at one of your parties.”

Is this song Bruce Springsteen? The pretty girl next to James is talking.

“Hey you knew my sister didn’t you?”

“I don’t know,” I say.

“Anne Gregors.”

“Oh, you’re Arielle.” I pause. I pretend to reflect. “I see the resemblance.”

“Yeah,” she says. “Where did you go to school?”

“I didn’t.” I can see her eyes sort of glaze. “I was a year behind Anne anyway. She and I just had a few classes together.”

“Oh.”

Thankfully, Natalie is touching my elbow. “Let’s go get a table in front or outside.”

“Alright.”

We start to move past them. James grabs my shoulder.

“What is this?”

I shrug and keep following Natalie. We get through the crowd who are hovering around the bar with shots and necks tilted up at the games on TV. Natalie leads along the main passage past the old Pac-Man machine and the hunting game. She walks balancing her drink up high in her left hand. She carries it like it were a grail. Maybe not that holy but something delicate and precious. Does she treat all meaningless things that way? Maggie and Liza are still playing darts with Eve standing there looking a bit forlorn. Why has James left her standing there?

“Tom. What have you got there?” Maggie says. Everyone is in pretty good spirits. I’m surprised they all wanted to come down too. Our mother is dead and we are all out drinking together. Is dad secretly mad at us? No, he wouldn’t hold this against us. He understands our grief – we all feel it. This is a release.

“Just an old friend.”

Natalie waves like a passing sports icon through the stadium’s tunnel. I see Liza and she smiles at me.

“Let’s just go out front,” I say to Natalie.

She continues to the door.

“Are you leaving, Tom?” Liza asks me.

“No. Going out front?”

“Oh. Weren’t you just outside?”

“Yeah.”

“Oh.”

Liza sips her beer and turns back to Maggie and the darts. I pass by a big guy in a black sweater that is too tight for him standing by the door and move back outside into the night. There are torches burning along the porch. Across the way is one of the historic colonial homes with its wood fence. It has a nice open field or lawn that I used to go and lay in some nights when I’d take walks. There’s an empty table in the front corner of the deck by the bushes. Natalie keeps going and we sit down.

“Perfect spot,” she says upbeat.

“Better out here. More space.” I feel shy.

“You know,” she smiles. “It makes sense that I’d catch you peeing out back.”

I bow down into my beer a little bit.

“It’s a good thing.” She says.

“Thanks.” I pause look down look up at Natalie. “You know. You’re one person I didn’t think I’d ever see again.”

“What? Me?”

I laugh. “Who else.”

“C’mon, Tom,” she says. “We were buds.”

“Were we?”

“I thought we were. Maybe not.”

We both take a drink. I think we’re respecting the awkwardness or maybe the tension. Is this sexual tension? It must be close to it.

“I’m going to be bold,” I say.

“I’ll be myself.”

“Your choice.”

“Well, then, bold.”

“I still think you are absolutely beautiful. You have a terrific nose. I’ve always thought so.”

She rubs both of her hands along the sides of her glass. The ice makes a perfect tinkling sound as it sloshes and becomes water with her alcohol.

“Quite a compliment.”

And I mean it more than I’ve meant something in awhile.

Photos

So I am going to get to more substantive posts soon. However, in the meantime, I just want to provide some more signs of life that I, and this blog that lives off of me, are both alive. So I am going to link you to a website of a man(boy? kid?) named Christoffer Delsinger who comes through Kittens Ablaze, one of the bands who played the Brooklyn Invitational. Mr. Delsinger took some fine photos of the event and you can see them at HIS WEBSITE. Rich Lee and I both thank Chris for taking these photos and perhaps we will even meet this legendary person someday.

In the meantime, the NBA Draft comes up this Friday. The Wilco album is released next Tuesday, June 30 and then we have the Fourth of July weekend. Summer has definitely kicked in. Stay tuned for the Acoustic Rooftop Barbeque and the End of Summer Ice Cream Social, which will be coming your way from the two guys who drove to Washington D.C. and back in ten hours to pick up art for this man and who brought you the Brooklyn Invitational.

Shill, shill, shill.

Now, the next installment of "From Here to the Last Mound of Dirt."

Tom

I feel a little drunk but I’ve been drunker. Taaake and eaat. I wonder if Liza can smell the church on me. She asked me if I was like dad and I said no. I think that is the right answer. No, it definitely is. I’m nothing like dad. If she was asking me if I was a drunk then the answer is, “No, I’m not a drunk.” But then again, dad wasn’t a drunk either. He was and then he wasn’t. Now he was again. Rather he is again. What does that make him? What would he be? I think that is a question we’ve all tried to get at.

“Have you been packing?” Liza asks me as we release our embrace. She smells like lavender, or what I imagine lavender to be. Flowery, soft, like rainwater maybe because she’s been soaking and marinating in the scent standing outside so strangely. I feel good in this warm wet afternoon. I stretch my arms out again and Liza looks at me strangely. My pants are damp.

“No, not really. I guess I should before James yells at me.”

Liza smiles at me.

“Sorry, Jimmy-boy,” I try to say like a gangster but I feel a little foolish. I don’t make the jokes. Dad does or James will sometimes or Maggie skewers us with her sarcasm and wit. That is the formula, that’s how it works very simply.

“Do you think it’s a good idea to let dad go ahead with leaving the house behind?”

Its not a good idea and I know that. I mean you can’t just give up a place like this. It’s more of an investment than a house. The finely done stonework here around the pool, the little waterfall that falls from the hot tub into the main pool itself. Also the landscaping around the front walk and the stone patio in the front. I watched those Mexicans do it. They weren’t really Mexican. I talked to them and gave them beers. Dad told me to do that. They were from Guatemala some of them, others from Ecuador. No one is really a Mexican; you have to find out the truth, the real story about where someone is from. I think that’s something dad always cared about. Maybe he cared about it too much when he was younger.

You look around this backyard and at the big white shape of the house itself with the black shutters. They’re really navy, though, I think. It is an investment. That’s what people do when they get older, they make nests, nest eggs, they put their money in something. Mom believed in that, putting your money into real estate, your real estate, something extremely personal and I bet they did make a lot of money from when they first moved in here years ago. Things only get more expensive as time goes on. I think its because people forget about how things originated and keep guessing at what everything costs until they become lost in values. That’s not true. Its all based on markets, demands, supplies, loans, mortgage rates and freezes. I’m just thinking the way mom would. I look over at Liza and mess my hair up at bit with my hand.

“No, it’s not a good idea. But I think its what dad wants.”

“I know that, but I mean if he’s going to lose money on it or mess up the plans mom had then maybe we should stop him.”

I look past the pool to the corner of the house where the blackberry bushes are. I could go for a handful.

“Let’s pick some blackberries.”

“What?”

“Blackberries.” I nod my head in their direction and slide my hands into my khaki pockets feeling debonair. Feeling like George Clooney feels.

In the darkness of my eyes I see the flashing of the train in the sun. I see Christ on the cross and the priest in white and black with his purple Lent sash. The train is silver and it streaks blue. The wire and antennae above strike for a moment and sparks leap out and rain down around me. Just a chance encounter or are things planned like that like tracks everyday? The train is moving down the line and its night I watch the red lights on behind. The gap between the platforms is a gaping hole that wants me to step down into it one way or another. Where am I? Who will save me?

“No, I want you to tell me what you think.”

Fine.

“I think that even though it’s wrong, its what dad wants and he’s entitled to it after all of this time. After spending most of mom’s life with her, loving her and doing exactly what she wanted of him.”

I realize that I’m breathing sort of heavy. Liza seems satisfied with that answer. She looks over to the blackberries too and nods. Rain drips off the gutter and a breeze picks up a strand of her hair on the side of her head, lifts it, drops it.

“You are a little drunk aren’t you?” She asks me.

I laugh. I can’t help it. “Maybe.”

“Let’s pick some.”

We walk alongside the pool. There are leaves and silver reflections of the trees and the grey sky on the surface. We pass the back windows and I can the light of the den on and dad’s shape seated in the recliner. It’s so hard to read him. I think we connected sitting at the table. I can’t know what he’s feeling. Is trying to wrong?

We step down the little hill by the deep end of the pool and walk to the gate. Liza lifts the latch, we pass through, and it clanks. So many times that little piece of metal hit the other pole of metal and made a noise. Time passes and it becomes memory, routine and music. But it’s just a sound. Is it special because I have pictures in my mind to go along with it? Because I see a slideshow of us growing up. I see Liza tiny in a neon pink one-piece bathing suit her hair whitish blonde like it used to be. Now she slides along the wet grass next to me.

“What are you doing here?” I ask her.

“You’re so strange, Tom.”

“You should be at school, you don’t need this.”

“I do need this. I have to be home for this. What are you talking about?”

I shake my head. She shouldn’t go through with this. She should be away, be having fun. It’s the beginning of school. Things never get more beautiful or more optimistic than at the beginning of a school year of any school year. You dread going back, but once you are there the first month is like no other feeling, no mixture of emotion anytime else. At least that’s how I always felt. But then, I never went to college.

We walk up to the berry bushes. There are many dead and rotten ones on the dirt below the bushes. There are some confused one’s that still aren’t ripe and others that look just ripe. I reach out and pick a few. I look at them in the palm of my hand – five. All of their little circular pockets of juice. It’s my favorite fruit. Liza pushes her palm up to her mouth and chews the berries. She shows her hand, its purple black like a scab or more like that sweater mom got me for Christmas when I was thirteen.

“Still taste good. A little sour.”

I look down at the berries.

“It’s something simple.”

Liza nods and reaches her hand to pick more. She grabs one that is full. It looks ripe, delicious and perfect. It even shines a little bit like cartoon fruit. She holds it between her forefinger and her thumb regarding its shape, twisting it, trying to see it from all possible angles. She extends her hand to me and I look at it.

“I’d eat it in a second.”

She looks down at and spreads her fingers out. She flicks her palm and the berry pops up. She catches it in her mouth like a child. Like we all used to do. Chewing, she spits a bit of purple on the ground.

“A little sour.”

“Ah.”

She swallows the rest.

“Why didn’t anyone tell me about dad’s accident, Tom?”

“Because mom wanted to spare you the knowledge.”

I have a tendency to spit back immediately when I am offguard. I couldn’t help it. She wanted to know.

The Journey Forward

Well the reviews (some) are in. I submitted The Journey Forward in Amazon.Com/CreateSpace's Breakthrough Novel Award contest. It is a contest that (shocker) allows aspiring and unpublished novelists to submit their manuscripts in hopes of winning a book deal with Penguin. While my novel did not make it to the quarterfinals, they still provide you with feedback. Anyone following this blog or this novel can see what some of the great critics of this internet world are saying about The Journey Forward:

"I like this so far because I was an English major and took several classes on the American Novel, so right away I was hooked. However, I think the author's assessment of the Great Gastsby is a bit off but most of being an English major is having a difference of opinion and convincing people you know what you're talking about.
Aside from that, my curiosity is aroused about the characters brought up in these pages. What goes on between Mark and Sophie? What happened between Mark and Petr? The writing is clear and I like the descriptions of the senses, taking in the colors, the smells and the feel of the warmth. I'd like to see where this goes." - Expert Reviewer #1

"Ah, the wonders of youth, college, love, and the Great American Novel. "The Journey Forward" begins in a very open-ended fashion as we follow Mark Deluca, a young literature student with the Gods of Tolstoy, Shakespeare, Joyce, and Fitzgerald on his mind and on his lips. Amid the warm spring weather and the rising sap in the student body, the author describes Mark right before term break, a much-anticipated trip to Burlington with his friends.

I enjoyed the author's introduction of the various characters; future roles and motivations are implied in various ways such as seemingly passing conversation, his professor Louis Stevens' attention to an attractive blond as well as his attention to Mark, an underachieving friend and a pugnacious roommate, his girlfriend Sadie Gordon whose intensity matches Mark's. The prose strikes a good balance between nonchalance and portent -- in which direction will the author take us?

At one point right before a class discussion of "The Great Gatsby", Mark has a premonition of a car accident on his way to Burlington including "Snow, cold, wreck, red blood". Weather is repeatedly described and alluded to throughout the first chapter, leaving the reader to wonder if Mark's thoughts describing the only serious passage in the first chapter as well as mentions of God, guilt, and Catholicism will be one of the novel's critical events.

"The Journey Forward" will prove engaging for younger readers in particular. The conversations and descriptions are believable and swiftly moving, although perhaps a bit mundane for a novel's opening; I would have liked a passage that might provide a better hook or a signpost for future plot and character development. Still, this is solid writing; Mark appeals to intelligence and he is presented with a youthful joy that leave me wondering about his coming journey." - Expert Reviewer #2

Well there you have it. They did not get to read the whole novel but a lengthy excerpt. Good and bad take the comments in and perhaps see for yourself about this manuscript. Maybe you'll enjoy it.

In more blog related news, in the upcoming days and weeks you can look forward to posts about Paul Simon's first solo album, Talk Talk's album "The Spirit of Eden," a review of Tony Earley's book "The Blue Star," a wrap-up and review of the Final Four, and a preview of the NBA playoffs, and of course more editions of "From Here to the Last Mound of Dirt" and more heartwrenching poems.

See below for the latest installment of "From Here to the Last Mound of Dirt":

Tom

I’m in the darkness of my eyes. In the beginning there was the word. Repent your sins and welcome the love of the lord. Taake aaand eeat. Taake aaand eeat. Let me escape from this past from what is holding me back. Forgive me for hating my brother and for not knowing my family well enough and for being glad that my mother is dead in some way because it sets me free somehow and I think she knew that overall. She knew that by dying she would be able to bring us together again even though we’ve always been together something needed to change and she being the woman she was knew that in some way too. I move my knee on the blue and smell perfume and mothballs. There are stars and rings of color in the darkness, in front of me I hear the shuffling of feet on the stone floor, and I know that hanging up there is the crucifix and Christ. Forgive me for not taking advantage of the opportunities given to me. Why am I afraid to move on with my life? Why didn’t I go away to college? Why am I content to work two jobs I don’t care about? I come to church for answers because it is the only thing I know. It is what my mother knew and so stubbornly stuck to. We’re all not believers.

Next to me one of the two old women is coughing. I think it’s the one wearing a fur coat and she must be hot in it. One of the women – I think it is the same one – is blowing her nose. They’ve stopped singing the communion hymn and now the organ just plays its chords and notes. The organ has such a resonant sound; there is something about it. I wonder if Maggie could play the organ if she tried. Her auburn hair. James’ short and clean cut brown hair, his still athletic build and broadish chest. Liza’s light brown almost blonde hair that seems so out of place with the rest of us. Dad is grayer and grayer. We all have to move away and grow up sometime. Why is that? Why do we have to keep moving and growing up? What does it all add up to? Why can’t we just be young forever? We have to die don’t we? Our parents will die the ones we came from and so must we. These things are too morbid I have to open my eyes but I can’t. I’m deluding myself of something and I think that something might be death but its what we all have to face and understand isn’t it? I don’t know. Open!

I look up at the wooden sailboat ceiling of the church. Everything looks the same as it did before I closed my eyes and stepped into the dark. I wish I hadn’t come to church and just stayed at home and slept in my bed or sat with Liza or James or Eve. I look at the two old women next to me. The one in the fur coat smiles. She has white hair and she reminds me of a substitute teacher I used to have in high school. The other one is still closed within herself praying to God. Her brow is furrowed. I can only imagine what things she is facing inside of herself after being alive for so many years. I remember to smile back at the woman and then I turn away and gaze up at the cross. Christ is thin in his frozen middle age.

In two days we’ll watch mom go beneath the ground. Then we’ll have to leave this house behind unless James manages to change Dad’s mind. Something has to give within me.

Christ is sad and bleeding. He knew he couldn’t escape. None of us can. I haven’t truly even tried. But I can’t, James can’t, Eve can’t. Maggie can’t either.

I’ll get a beer from 7-11 on the way home.

Double Dip (Not Skoal, Grizzly or Kodiak) aka Red Rose Speedway

So February was a long month and not filled with much promise - well as far as this blog was concerned. But for me, it wasn't a bad month. It was cold, sure; there was Valentine's Day, sure; the recession got worse each day on as if it were that first cup of coffee in the morning moving your bowels on cue - and in many ways and for many people it was. For me, as I say, it was an enjoyable month topped off by just seeing Grizzly Bear play with the Brooklyn Philharmonic Orchestra at BAM on Saturday, February 28. My dog got to stay with me in my apartment for a month which really raised morale for me. It's hard to describe or really emphasize how much having a little furry pal to come to changes the dynamic of the living square you spend your time in when it is cold outside. The morning walk, the evening walk and everything else changed up my normal routine of waking up, not really wanting to work but being glad to be up and the sun is shining, coming home making dinner, drinking 60 beers listening to music and trying to write while the traffic of Grand Street goes by. This all leads me to something I am going to write about
now.

It seems to be a common trait or at least accepted phenomenon in the climate we find ourselves living in, that climate being the year and the impulses culture propels itself with, that large scale issues out drive a simple pleasure. I know that even that sentence makes a person sound outdated or at the brink of being a codger or as the old say "youth is wasted on the young." However, with iPod touches and iPhones and how great the internet is at placing you into any place in time or on the planet you want to be - something as elemental or clean (well many times not that's why you bring the bags) as walking a dog can be lost. Internet, fast-paced TV, handheld devices are great at giving us the news and opening up small portals of the vastness of this planet - of the atrocities and injustices that occur daily, the differences in culture and pace of life. However, it is those clean motions and small enjoyments that lend the portal into the vastness of the universe. For as our news and immediate gratification through song let us see the differences in things, just walking a dog at a slow pace, underneath a cold sky that, even if you are in a place as polluted as New York City, feels like crystal because it IS cold and the sky is that damn blue and there is just a hint of the fact that there are stars up there and the silhouette of buildings turns the night into a contained barnyard, where planes from two different airports take their dips in the trough.

This is for art as well. The art I find myself drawn to and the art I feel compelled to create. The simple will lend to the profound - or rather the messy things that seem profound. A teacher from my college that I loved, that was much like a father figure to me tried to teach myself and many of my classmates of the importance of novels and art that leant to the exotic. He warned against the allure of exoticism that a text's subject could provoke in a reader, however at the same turn he found himself in that same allure. A novel about radicals in South Africa, or a novel about a crusade in 14th Century Albania FEELS much more important because we don't know those things in the most immediate sense. I do not know a thing about the suffering that goes on in South Africa or the suffering that went on centuries ago. I don't know a great many things about a great many people. However, that take on art or on your life is crippling. You might as well make the amputation at the start. For as much as we do not know the sufferings of those from another time or another remote place on this great planet, we do not know the sufferings that lie beneath our own skin or beneath the skin of the people who are closest to us. What is that strange look, that glance to the side a friend of 20 years gives you? What eternal message is that telling you - that is the message of mankind. The ritual of sharing one drink on a curb in suburban Long Island, of enjoying the company of a canine connects us to the vastness that is history and space, rather than being boring, it is all time, it is all things. The pain you feel relating to a garbage man on a cold day because you are damn glad you aren't him but you wish things could be better, but they aren't and that is the way things are, cut and clean and that man came to that just as you came to work a job in an office you don't want to, or come to make the decisions you don't want to make. That is where art is. Art is not in the exotic. Artsy is exoticism.

However, what of the civic life? You can't turn your head to your naval your whole life. A bottle rolling along a curb won't solve any economic problems. For me, art was never meant to answer our politics and our economies. All The Kings Men was a story about fathers and sons and about love between a young man and a young woman couched in a political mystery. The best art is meant to make us turn and evaluate our humanity, where we stand in the story of history, the history of people borne by mothers and fathers, forever separating ourselves from death by calling ourselves Kings and Queens, politicians, Presidents, lovers, artists when all we are left to approach is that initial cause, that word known to all men, which we have all forgotten and are forever seeking to find the answer to. Art was not made for "The Times They Are A Changing," "Ohio" is not even one of Neil Young's best songs. '64 Bob Dylan had to be murdered by '66 Bob Dylan who was then murdered by the press and people looking for '64 Bob Dylan, but that kind of art doesn't exist and was never made to - which is why Nashville Skyline had to be culled, to create that barrier. Even War and Peace, a book that is heralded as the story of Russia, is really the story of Tolstoy's youth, couched in a sweeping epic of wars and eras of Russia. Which is why it is a masterpiece, it cradles the fine line of the simple, of the way things are, and perhaps no one did that better than Tolstoy. It was either Joyce or Tolstoy who did it best. This is the way things happen, this is a man shitting in all its disgustingness and reality, but didn't Odysseus shit?

A strong example of the simple is Merriweather Post Pavilion. "My Girls" alone attests to the power of the simple. "All I want is four walls and adobe slabs for my girls." Politicians, stock brokers, pet shop owners, musicians, and the dead wishes of corpses all have that same desire burnt into their bones, in all of its manifestations. That album features the best love lyric of all time, "I want to walk around with you." What do you want to do more when you are in love, than to walk around with that person?

Anyway, you may say that this entry sounds like David Foster Wallace. I never read him. I'm just drunk and listening to Little Feat. Anyone else done that?

Here's Tom from From Here to the Last Mound of Dirt



Tom

It’s cloudy this morning but it’s still warm. I could’ve drove, but here I am walking to church. I didn’t ask anyone else because I know they wouldn’t want to go. Well maybe I should have asked Liza to go; she and I were the only two who would go with mom before…

Dad would come every other week or two weeks, he’d use excuses about the new receptionist or the people in billing so he had to lower himself to clerical matters on a Sunday. I knew he wasn’t working but relaxing. Not like the old days when we’d all go all six of us and stand there proudly in our khakis and polos and button downs and skirts and dresses.

I can see Saint James’ white tower as I walk up the hill. I check my watch. 10:10. I’ll be there just in time for mass. I’ll walk in and smell that initial blast of perfume and incense and then the wet of the water on my forehead, the cross, and then kneeling and sign again. Then I will sit on the wood of the pew and feel the heaviness of church. What will I pray for? Mom of course. What else could I possibly pray for? I’ll pray for her and for dad. He was bound to take this the hardest and he has. I don’t like to see him this way, lolling and drunk, zoning out and then laughing and cracking jokes like an imbecile. He is almost speaking his own language, though in a way I guess he always did that.

The tractors are moving over the dirt on the farm. What do they grow there anymore? It was always pumpkins in the fall. When we were kids, we’d take field trips and pick out the best pumpkin. It didn’t always have to be the biggest, you could get one with the best shape or one that would curve easily although that was tough to figure out and I don’t know if you could ever really direct that to a science. But we would carve them and have a school wide contest. In fourth grade I won for the grade with my carving of Mona Lisa. Maggie and James both helped me. Maggie did the vague outline with me using that small metal carver. She was always a great lover of paintings, especially Cezanne. And then James would help me carve out the rough and thick sin. It was tough work. We messed up twice and had to go back to get new pumpkins. No one noticed, though.

I hear a plane fly overhead and on my right a door slams and I can hear the echoing of a basketball bouncing. A young kid comes out wearing shorts and a t-shirt. He’s yelling, “Mark! Mark! Mark!” Mark is probably his brother or his cousin. It could be Deluca’s little brother or cousin. I don’t remember him having a little brother just a sister, and I don’t think he lived in this part of town anyway.

It’s nice to have siblings. I was always glad to have an older brother and sister and also a younger one. It makes you more well rounded I think to juggle all of those different interactions. I’d never give any of the fights and awful car rides back. In a way, I’m glad Mom died. Now we’re all back under the same roof. My brother is back and maybe I can tell him how much I hate him for moving away. I’m not really glad that Mom’s dead.

I turn onto the church drive below the overhanging trees and I can see into a sideyard with a little wooden swing set. On my other side is the second half of the church’s cemetery. We won’t bury mom here. Grandpa had a plot all set up out east. We will bury her there. I wish she were alive so much. Just so I knew that she would be around to help me with my problems, to help me explain how I feel when I’m stifled, frustrated and trapped on this Island. I know I’ll get away someday. The way Mom never wanted me to. She was a simple God-fearing woman at heart. But she was good with words in a way that I’m not. I bet she could’ve been a writer or maybe even a psychologist with the way that she explains things. Explained things.

The parking lot is nearly full. Families pull up in mini-vans, dads in leather jackets holding the hands of their kids. There are some frumpy mothers and also sleek well-kept rich mothers with nice neat tan coats and slim black and brown sunglasses. There are old people too; there are always old people at mass. Walking or caning their way up to the altar to receive communion in ivory white sneakers. Or the old dames like grandma when she lived with us with her big hats with bows and feathers and large pearl necklaces. The perfume of church is a mix of mothballs and incense.

I open the heavy white door and enter in. An old woman hands me the weekly flyer, which is written in maroon ink. I push open the lightweight light wood door and hear the large echo of coughs and whispered talk. The organ is playing low. I reach my hand over and touch my fingertips to the water in the iron bowl. I always forget the real name of the holy water holder. I cross myself and a little drop of water remains on my forehead. I can feel it. At first glance I don’t recognize anyone. I slide into a pew closer to the back. I look up at the wood ceiling that always reminded me of a ship. It’s wooden, curved, and highly polished. The wood just looks strong like a ship. Then my eyes fall on the cross. I pull out the kneeler and it squeaks and is made of blue padding like always. I feel the heaviness of church, but it has a different twist because I’m alone at mass for the first time in my life.

Section 7 & 8 - Liza and Tom

It's been a hectic week. I have been trying to get a lot more work done on "From Here to the Last Mound of Dirt," as well as work on putting "The Journey Forward" on CreateSpace. I'm having trouble formatting my cover design for the CreateSpace templates. It's not really as easy as they make it out to seem when you read about it in praising articles and the visions of self-publishing grandeur you have in your head. I am going to work at it. In the meantime, to tide anyone who reads this over, I will post the next two sections of "From Here to the Last Mound of Dirt." I have some good rambling ideas for posts to come in the next few days or next week. This weekend, one of my oldest friends will be visiting from out of town so I have to pay attention to that. I want to write big posts about 1. Dwayne Wade - his never-ending greatness and his resurgence, 2. Role Models and the ascension of The State alumni to pop culture, 3. Red Rose Speedway (see above) and solo Paul McCartney for any doubters of the Pop Jesus. I will get these up as soon as I have the neccessary time to ramble them as well as any readers of my words that I type deserve.

Below find Tom and Liza's sections. You will have to scroll further down for Section 7 which is Liza and the Tom's section follows that. If you have any questions, feel free to e-mail me your complaints. Any mail is appreciated over here at Fuck City.

Enjoy.


Tom

I forgot how much I liked spareribs. I chomp into the grey-colored meat with its reddish brown crust or marinade on the outside. I’m ripping flesh and meat off the bone. Tissue too. Leaving it bare and grey with a few white marks that may or may not be from my teeth. The bone rattles on the old light-grey ceramic plates we’ve always used. There is a pile of four bones. Two are licked clean and two have pieces of chewed pale meat sticking to them. I’m a pale piece of meat.

James is talking.

“I think what we first should do is box up all of our old bedrooms. We can start that tomorrow. Then we work our way around the house. The moving truck gets here on Wednesday and they’re going to pack it that day and the next.”

“The funeral is on Monday?” Maggie asks.

James is eating his food and he nods.

“We’ll pack up the kitchen last right?” Liza asks.

“Absolutely. That way we can cook if we need to and have an area that’s not a complete disaster. Can you hand me the rice, honey?”

Eve passes the rice. But with her, there is something more. I want to say that she is swanlike in the way her arm raises, falls, rises again and slides the box of steaming rice. I think I’m in love with her and always have been since James first brought her home for Christmas. There was nothing like the way she looked on the wedding, though. She wore a white dress of course, but it was everything. The way her skin looked even more glowing in that way it has. Like honey in the sun or a bright penny but, no, lighter than that. And her hair was done in a certain way with strands threaded in a design I don’t even know the first thing about. I hate that he gets to live with her down in D.C. I still haven’t been to their house yet. I ride the train every Saturday and hope that a girl like her will come and sit down next to me and if she did, I know I’d have the courage to make her fall in love with me.

James again:

“Dad, did you really have to buy a new place so quickly? I hate to think that you just wasted some money by being brash.”

Dad is licking a sparerib bone. He turns to the Cutty Sark, which has about a third or so of its orangey liquid left. I look around the table. Eve looks concerned and so does James. Maggie tosses back her hair; she still has so much of it. Liza is quiet sitting next to Dad; she’s looking at her food.

“Jimmy,” Dad says. He rarely ever called him Jimmy. None of us did. “That’s the way I’ve always been. But didn’t you know?”

“Know what?” James says.

“Know that he was brash,” Maggie adds.

“No,” Dad is shaking his head. He lazily pokes his fork at a dark dripping piece of beef. “Didn’t you know that your mother was a magician?”

James looks at Eve.

“A magician, Ben?”

Dad nods and chews. Nods and chews.

“How do you mean, Dad?” Liza has piped up at the mention of Mom.

Dad looks over at her and smiles. He grabs the top of the Cutty Sark and begins to rotate the bottle. It makes that hollow sliding sound that glass makes on wood.

“She played a trick on you all, on anyone that has known us, and even on me.”

I’m confused. It seems like he’s going to drop a bombshell. But what kind of bombshell? What kind of secret is he toying around with? Or is he just playing, patting some dead rat around like a tomcat. That’s what his legend was. The big joker, the wit, the famous drunk. He has to be playing. My stomach feels bloated and it flips for a moment. Maybe Mom tricked him? An affair?

James is talking.

“What are you talking about, Dad?”

“The greatest trick of all that only your mother could pull off.” Dad is looking at Eve as he talks. “Making me seem like a respectable and successful man.”

I feel relieved. Everyone is rolling their eyes.

“C’mon, Dad,” Maggie says.

“No, Mags, it’s true. Now that she’s gone I can feel my old ways coming back to me. I’m becoming undone. All the stitching she did to fix me up over the years is loosening. She turned me into a doctor, but not a surgeon. That was her job.” Dad is standing with his plate in his right hand and the bottle tucked into his armpit. “I hope you will all come visit me at my new home. Feel free to bring any grandkids. You know how I always loved children. That’s what I wanted to be when I grew up.”

“Oh, come on, Dad,” Maggie says. “Don’t be like that.”

The faucet comes on and then there is thud of the dishwasher door opening. After that, it’s the clank of the dish and then the muffled close of the dishwasher. I hear Dad unscrew the bottle.

“I’ll be in the study,” he says.

We’re all quiet at the table. The Chinese food has consolidated into a lump in my stomach. I feel my skin bulge out and I’m tired.

Maggie is looking at James.

“What?” James says.

“Let him go through this.”

James plays with the food on his plate. He sighs. “I can’t just let him act like a fool. He’s got to take care of his money and himself now that Mom is dead.”

“This is how he’s grieving.”

“By reliving some sort of fantasy of himself from thirty years ago?”

“She’s gone.”

“I know.”

Maggie wants to speak but she remains quiet. James is home now and all of the feelings are starting to come back to me. The way he was always in control, trying to help everyone, taking responsibility. I’m looking at the grey bones on my plate. I love him and I’m glad he’s back. But I hate him for leaving and I hate that he’s going to go away again with his wife who I’m in love with. And I’ll still be here, riding the train, taking walks, stuck on this jut of land, which I’m tied to for some reason that I don’t understand.

I’m standing with my plate.

“I’m going to go for another walk.”

Section 2

Below, find the second section of From Here to the Last Mound of Dirt. Review, comment, eat a sandwich, enjoy (?) hopefully.


Tom


James hasn’t been home since Easter. The pavement looks like my skin as I move away from the thick yellow line and the heat of the train and the sun make my skin feel uncomfortable. It feels red even though it isn’t. I throw my beer in its paper bag out. The bottom is sopping and the brown paper has come apart down there revealing the silver aluminum and red and white coloring of the can. Another Saturday in the city but when I get home James will be there with Eve and most likely Maggie will have arrived. It’s funny that I call it home. It’s not really my home anymore, it certainly isn’t James’, not Maggie’s, and Liza is just learning what home means. But we’ll all be leaving it soon. Everything has to go – even Dad. The house will be hollowed out like some harvest-time fruit until there is only a shell or rind of what once was a life and a family left. There’s no changing Dad’s mind. He doesn’t want a wake and he doesn’t want to stay in the house alone. The cars pass along the road, glinting in the sun. The stained white, orange and green of the 7-11 sign even has a shine to it.

I walk across the track crossing and run my sneaker on the iron of the rails. A shock of electricity could jump up and take you out. In an instant you’re gone just like the universe was created in an instant out of a bang and a ball of light. It’s the same thing. The universe and an individual life. That is a profound thought; mom would’ve liked that. She was stubborn in her religion but she gave philosophy its own fair share. The religious philosophers of course like Aquinas. I remember when she tried to institute a policy of reading it aloud after dinner. Dad wouldn’t have it. He’d push his plate aside, usually clean or maybe with a scrap or two of meat, some remaining juice or blood pooled on the grey ceramic.

“Taking the children to church is one thing, but bringing the church and this religion home is another. I won’t let God and Jesus Christ upset my digestion.”

Mom would nod quietly and press the book closed. Then they’d look at each other from across the table. There was some kind of recognition between them. They always had their secrets. The magic in their relationship. Mom’s Catholic piety and Dad’s unrelenting wit. You’d think they would’ve clashed more often but instead they wove together in a way. A tightly woven band of years. Four children full of tightly woven strands of DNA.

I left my car at the house. Liza got in last night. I picked her up from the train. I’m walking underneath the shade of the maple trees but it’s impossible to avoid the trickling sunlight. Light and dark swaying with the wind. Cicadas are buzzing and a woman is riding her bike up the main drive of the Clark School. The woman’s daughter rides beside her on a pink bike with training wheels. I can see them across one of the fields. The cicadas buzz and buzz while the woman and child ride, their wheels slowly pushing up on the black concrete moving away from me. The white house on my right has a pile of dirt on its front lawn and I can hear someone hammering in the backyard.

Why are cicadas so ugly? Why do they bide the time of the longest days, the season my mother died in? Electricity didn’t overtake her body. It simply left her body to move elsewhere. To move away from me and leave an empty shell of my mother.

I hope Dad isn’t too drunk.